John Wilson explores the intimate moments of creative inspiration that have been experienced by some of our best known artists.

Opera superstar Danielle De Niese remembers how her mother inspired her to sing as a young girl growing up in Australia, with an interpretation of Barbra Streisand’s Evergreen that taught her that singing is as much about personal interpretation.

Gabriel Krauze was longlisted for the Booker Prize for his debut novel Who They Was, based on his time as a member of criminal gangs as a young man on the streets of west London. An obsessive reader of fiction as a child, he remembers the epiphany of first hearing It Was Written, an album by New York rapper Nas which inspired him to tell his own stories of criminality and survival.

As a young girl, actress Olivia Williams wanted to be a ballet dancer after falling in love with Rudolf Nureyev when she saw him dance in Sleeping Beauty. She was inspired to become a stage actress Royal Shakespeare after seeing Judi Dench lead a comedy musical production of A Comedy Of Errors in the mid 1970s.

Ceramic artist and author Edmund de Waal first discovered the pottery wheel when he was taken to an evening art class at the age of five, a moment of epiphany that set the course of his life for the next 50 years.

Produced by John Wilson
Executive Producer: David Prest
A Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4 Show less