The Essay

'Dear Geoffrey Chaucer, Can I call you Geoff..?' In a series of imaginary correspondences, novelist Ian Sansom is writing letters to five of literary history's most celebrated figures and interrogating them about their art.'Oh Agatha Christie, Please - do tell - what is the secret of your success?'As his correspondence unfolds, queries are raised and jealousies revealed.'Dear Virginia Woolf, Please accept my apologies. For a long time I thought you represented everything that's wrong with literature...'How exactly does George Eliot do it? And why does she keep ignoring Ian's letters?'Dear George Eliot, You are simply so far out of my league as a correspondent that it is embarrassing even to put pen to paper and to address you directly.In his on-going epistolary quest, Ian attempts to find out everything you wanted to know about some of our best-loved writers but just were too afraid to ask.Producer: Conor Garrett.

Film and theatre director Sir Richard Eyre describes how he was inspired by "The People's War" by Angus Calder. This social history of the Second World War relives the experience of ordinary citizens during the conflict: "their endurance and patience and their cowardice, complaints, and selfishness, as much as their heroism and humanity." It provided Eyre with a vision - albeit unfulfilled - of social justice, which was in sight during the social revolution of wartime. "So I return to this book, this litany of courage and misery and endurance and hardship - the only book I return to constantly and obsessively - for solace." Producer: Smita Patel.

The artist Tacita Dean describes how "Fires" by Marguerite Yourcenar changed her life and art. She discovered the book of prose poems as an undergraduate. "Somehow, her pithy and uncompromising language appealed to me, and my own love tragedy," she says. Yourcenar's work helped her find her voice as a feminist, writer and film-maker. "She gave a female voice to my passionate and romantic younger self who was trying to find an artistic context for the desire I had to reach out and touch the classical past."Producer: Smita Patel.

Ben Anderson, correspondent with Vice News, on how "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" led him to become a journalist. He discovered the book, ghost-written by Alex Haley, as "a skinny white kid living in Bedford". Yet the story of the American firebrand for the cause of black power became his touchstone. He was inspired by the way Malcolm X devoured every possible book while in prison. "Suddenly a fire was lit inside me. I had a path to follow," Anderson says. And Malcolm X's urge to see the world for himself was another source of inspiration. "This basic approach of just getting there and witnessing has become my job," he says. Malcolm X's " constant search, his relentless curiosity, his willingness to face unpleasant facts and reinvent himself, set an example that I?ve tried to follow ever since." Producer: Smita Patel.

Pauline Black, the singer who found fame with the ska band The Selecter, on how Harper Lee's "To Kill A Mockingbird" helped her understand her place as a black girl adopted by a white family. She both identified with Scout, the tomboyish main character, while it was the first book she read in which the black characters "shared a dignity and gravitas". It allowed her to understand the racial tensions and hypocrisy which surrounded her childhood. "This novel gave the little black girl that timidly lingered inside me the security to come out and fight against racial injustice with my chosen profession, music." Producer: Smita Patel.

David Simon, the author and creator of the TV series "The Wire", describes how "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men" by James Agee and Walker Evans changed his work as a journalist. The celebrated work capturing the lives of ordinary people during the depression made him realise the importance of sharing "the simple, raw vulnerability" of lived experience. "Page after page was fully ripe with the delicate work of a thinking journalist who knows with all moral certitude that he is approaching and attempting to capture the love, fear and sadness of real lives." Producer: Smita Patel.

Novelist Kit de Waal reflects on the architecture of Winson Green Prison, in Birmingham, where she worked. This week's Essays are part of the 70th birthday celebrations of the Third Programme: the network discussed architecture from its earliest days, covering both new initiatives and historic buildings, most notably in talks by Nikolaus Pevsner. Producer Clare Walker.

Author Dr Gavin Francis passes the new Queensferry Crossing every morning on his way to work. When it is finished in May 2017, it will be the largest balanced cantilever ever built. Gavin believes it is the most impressive structure under construction in these islands today. This week's Essays are part of the 70th birthday celebrations of the Third Programme: the network discussed architecture from its earliest days, covering both new initiatives and historic buildings, most notably in talks by Nikolaus Pevsner. Producer Clare Walker.

Poet Helen Mort can see Chesterfield's Crooked Spire Church - The Church of St Mary's and All Saints - from the window of her house. She explains why it has inspired her since childhood. This week's Essays are part of the 70th birthday celebrations of the Third Programme: the network discussed architecture from its earliest days, covering both new initiatives and historic buildings, most notably in talks by Nikolaus Pevsner. Producer Clare Walker.

British Painter Humphrey Ocean RA introduces us to Impington College, the only building the Bauhaus architect Walter Gropius built in Britain. Humphrey believes it accidentally became the template for the proliferation of the kind of brave, new, post-war architecture he grew up with. This week's Essays are part of the 70th birthday celebrations of the Third Programme: the network discussed architecture from its earliest days, covering both new initiatives and historic buildings, most notably in talks by Nikolaus Pevsner. Producer Clare Walker.