imagine... - Season 32

An unflinching and uncompromising portrait of one of the most controversial photographers.

For decades Margaret Atwood has been universally acclaimed as Canada's greatest living writer. Fearlessly outspoken in life and in her work Atwood has always been an unrelenting provocateur. Now at the age of 77 her star shines brighter and bolder than ever with an explosive television adaptation of her best-known work The Handmaid's Tale which was first published in 1985. It's a dystopian work of speculative fiction set in the future, which has drawn comparison with aspects of Donald Trump's leadership, in particular the charges of misogyny which have inflamed anti Trump campaigners across America.

Alan Yentob meets up with Margaret Atwood in Toronto and discovers how a childhood spent between the Canadian wilderness and the city helped shape her vision of herself and the world, set alight her imagination and set her forth on a path to literary success.

In this imagine… profile, Alan Yentob meets the musical prodigy Alma Deutscher.

Aged 11, Anna is staging her first ever full-length opera, Cinderella.

Composer, pianist, violinist, Alma learned to read music before she could read words. She began playing the piano aged two and at four years old she was composing her own music. From a tree house in Dorking to an opera house in Vienna, imagine… spends time with Alma at work and at play.

In the months leading up to the premiere of her opera in Vienna, we discover the inspiration and motivation behind a truly remarkable talent.

Sir Cameron Mackintosh was once a theatre stagehand on Drury Lane and is now a musical theatre impresario, with a career spanning 50 years and a catalogue of musical theatre hits to his name - including Cats, Les Miserables, Phantom of the Opera and Miss Saigon, and he is now about to launch the US hit musical Hamilton in London.

Alan Yentob meets Cameron Mackintosh to discover how a timber merchant's son with a passion for song and dance, an abundance of ambition and a keen eye for detail became the most successful man in the musical theatre business and in the process changed the face and sound of musical theatre across the globe.