Whatever the recording industry may try to tell you, there is rarely any such thing as a single “best” among today’s pianists. We’ve had Benjamin Grosvenor and Leif Ove Andsnes, excellent artists both, touted as a cut above the rest. But hearing pianists in all corners of the world, you realize how much phenomenal and ungradable talent there is out there.

During its 10-season run on BBC One between May 2002 and October 2011, Spooks built a lasting reputation as a superior espionage thriller, charting the battle of a squad of MI5 agents to protect the realm against its fiendish and unscrupulous adversaries. Despite the inevitable plot-holes and sometimes incredible storylines, Spooks managed to keep itself anchored in the bleak realities of intelligence work, where it was wise to trust nobody and if you were paranoid, that's because the bad guys really were out to get you.

Peter Perrett (b. 1952) is best known as the singer and songwriter of The Only Ones, a group who originally flared to brilliant life between 1976 and 1981. Born to an English policeman-turned-builder and a mother whose immediate heritage lay amid the tragedy of Austria’s 20th-century Jewry, Perrett grew up in London. Already precociously bohemian, at 16 he ran away with his girlfriend, Xenoulla “Zena” Kakoulli. She would prove to be his lifelong soulmate and partner.

Shami Chakrabarti (b. 1969) is the director of the civil liberties organisation Liberty, a position she famously and, some would say, fortuitously took up the day before 9/11. Raised in suburban north-west London, she became a barrister for the Home Office in the mid-Nineties. Regularly voicing her opinions on a multiplicity of current affairs programmes, notably Newsnight, she has spoken out on a huge number of issues, especially taking a stance against Britain’s “anti-terror” legislations.

Ron Sexsmith is a singer-songwriter who should, by rights, need no introduction: Critics and fellow musicians, after all, fall over themselves to praise the 51 year-old Canadian. Yet, despite a gorgeous back-catalogue and fans including Paul McCartney and Elvis Costello, widespread commercial success has, hitherto, largely eluded him. Still, the singer remains philosophical.

No soul singer has been associated with one hit in quite the same way. Percy Sledge, who died last week at the age of 74, recorded “When a Man Loves a Woman” in 1966 and launched himself as a tearful balladeer. Its simple chord structure, featuring a descending bassline familiar from Pachelbel and Bach, was the bedrock over which Sledge howled plaintively of a lost love. There were other hits, until his producers retired in 1974 just as soul music was going priapic, but the first cut was always the deepest.

Alice Coote (b.1968) is one of the world’s leading mezzo-sopranos. She grew up in Cheshire, born to two painters, Mark Coote and Mary Moss, and learned her craft at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, the Royal Northern College of Music and the National Opera Studio. Her breakthrough came in 2000 when, within the time frame of a fortnight, she sang Ruggiero in Handel’s Alcina at the Edinburgh Festival, and Poppea in Monteverdi’s The Coronation of Poppea at the ENO.

The Nobel prize-winning writer, playwright and artist Günter Grass was arguably the best-known German-language author of the second half of the 20th century. Kate Connolly met him in May 2010 in Istanbul where, after attending a series of literary events, Grass was forced to stay on for some days as volcanic ash closed European airports.

Born in 1927 in the port city of Danzig in what is now Gdansk in Poland, he was among the hundreds of thousands of ethnic German refugees who settled in West Germany in 1945. His literary career started with his debut novel, The Tin Drum (1959), which remains his most famous work. It formed the first part of his Danzig Trilogy and is steeped in European magic realism. The book was adapted for the screen by Volker Schlöndorff in 1979. Like many of his novels it deals with the rise of Nazism and the experience of war.

From Singin’ in the Rain and Anything Goes to Hello, Dolly! and Mary Poppins, Olivier Award winner Stephen Mear has done more than any other British choreographer to usher classic musicals into the modern era. But adept as he is at razzle-dazzling ’em, there’s more to Mear, as recent excursions like City of Angels at Donmar Warehouse and Die Fledermaus for the Metropolitan Opera prove.

There is no mistaking the music of Unsuk Chin. Born in Korea and based in Berlin, Chin brings a range of cultural perspectives to her work. She often describes her music in terms of light and colour, and evokes dreamscapes when recalling her inspirations. Yet her music also has a strong gestural quality, her musical ideas are clear and definite, often subtle but never ambiguous.