The Levin Interviews

From this beginning as the ' angry young man', Osborne's contribution to the theatre has spanned a quarter of a century and over two dozen plays. Tonight he looks back with BERNARD LEVIN , who on separate occasions has said of his work: original, symbolic, subtle, dignified, profound ', ' ... a ramshackle, top-heavy and profoundly unsatisfying play'.

Bernard Levin talks to Sir Colin Davis Tonight his guest is the Musical Director of the Royal Opera, and perhaps the greatest living interpreter of Mozart. Davis secretly decided to become a conductor at the age of 14, but it was nearly 20 years before his talent was acclaimed. After he had conducted Don Giovanni in place of Otto Klemperer , The Times described him as ' a conductor ripe for greatness'.

ANTHONY BURGESS spent much of his early life convinced he would become a famous composer. He wrote his first symphony at 16. Instead, after a period as a school-master, he became a prolific novelist, critic and linguist, a man of letters in every sense. He has written 42 novels to date, the best-known being A Clockwork Orange, and the most massive his latest, Earthly Powers, which was tipped last year for the Booker Prize, but did not win. Burgess now finds compensations in literary fame - his symphonies get played.

Bernard Levin talks to the philosopher Sir Isaiah Berlin who has been described as ' one of the diamond minds of our generation'. Berlin abandoned pure philosophy after the last war in favour of the history of ideas, on the grounds that he preferred ' a field in which one could hope to know more at the end of one's life than when one had begun '.

When ALAN PATON published his first novel, Cry the Beloved Country, he was 45 and immersed in the struggle against racial injustice in South Africa. He has been an active politician and a penal reformer, testing his liberal ideals and Christian faith against the harsh realities of apartheid. Now, at 78, he has just published his autobiography Towards the Mountain.

Lord Weinstock LORD WEINSTOCK has been Managing Director of GEC for nearly 20 years. Since then it has been among the most consistently successful companies in Britain, and Weinstock has been largely viewed as the prime mover, ' a key figure of contemporary British mythology '. Tonight BERNARD LEVIN talks to the man who is also a valued adviser to both Labour and Conservative Governments, and closely involved in the shaping and managing of nuclear power in Britain.

Levin's conversation is with DAVID HOCKNEY who has graduated successfully from the early days of fame as a popular painter, to the position of arguably the greatest of living English artists. At 43, he is still experimenting with as wide a range of styles and techniques as he did in his student days.

KRISHNAMURTI was brought up to believe he was a reincarnation of Christ, the New Messiah. Fifty years ago he denounced this, and has spent the time since teaching his own philosophy of life all over the world. At 86, his reputation as a major spiritual leader has not diminished. His recent annual public talk in Hampshire was attended by 4,000 devoted followers.