Midweek - 22/09/2010

This week Libby Purves is joined by Philip Townsend, Alexei Sayle, Tony Fitzjohn and Harriet Mead. Philip Townsend is the celebrated sixties photographer who was renowned for taking the Rolling Stones' first ever photo shoot. In a new exhibition at The Lowry, over sixty images documenting the people, the style and the musical revolution of that decade will be on show, many for the first time including Grace Kelly, Twiggy, The Beatles and private fashion shows at Mary Quant's HQ. Mister Sixties: Philip Townsend's Portraits of a Decade is at The Lowry, Salford Quays. Alexei Sayle is the writer and stand-up comedian who was a central part of the alternative comedy circuit and a star of shows such as The Young Ones. In his newly published memoir he tells of his growing up in Stalinist household in the 1950s and 60s in Liverpool and how it made him want to leave home and become a stand up comic. Stalin At My Homework is pubished by Hodder. Tony Fitzjohn was George Adamson's assistant at Kenya's Kora National Reserve for over eighteen years where they re-introduced lions back into the wild. He now runs the Mkomazi National Park in Tanzania and is one of the world's leading field experts on the relationship between man and African wildlife. His book Born Wild is published by Viking. Harriet Mead is a wildlife artist and the first woman to be elected President of the Society of Wildlife Artists in its 48-year history and the youngest. Working mainly in steel, she uses found objects to construct sculptures of the wildlife around her, using a MIG welder that she describes as a "sewing machine with sparks". The international wildlife exhibition, The Natural Eye, is at the Mall Galleries in London.