Ian Rankin: Read crime fiction to find out about a culture

Ian Rankin: The origins of Rebus

Lucy Worsley: Did Jane Austen ever have sex?

Will Self: Truth, the internet and the individual

Graham Norton: Bill Murray got quite wild

Nadya Tolokno: I read The Gulag Archipelago in prison

Hay we go!

Bettany Hughes: Protest has always happened in Istanbul

Frank Cotterell Boyce on the book that inspired the Olympic opening ceremony

Nadya Tolokno: What you need to know about Putin

Bettany Hughes on the slave girl who negotiated with Elizabeth I

Colm Tóibín: I had to build up to the idea of a son killing his mother