Tate director Maria Balshaw's lockdown culture recommendations, from Derek Jarman's diaries to the Pet Shop Boys

In a new series, London’s leading arts figures reveal the books, films, TV and more they're loving in lockdown.

Tate director Maria Balshaw gave us her recommendations, from Fleabag to a new book from Olivia Laing.

Books

I am reading the wonderful Underland by Robert Macfarlane. Its focus on the deep earth and deep time feels very reassuring at the moment. In a similar vein but fiction is The Overstory by Richard Powers. I am a bit tree-obsessed at the moment given their monumental impact on our world.

I’m homeworking from the North Kent Downs and thinking about the artists who lived and painted near here, so Ravilious & Co: The Pattern of Friendship by Andy Powers will be read. I also helped raise the money to save Derek Jarman’s Prospect Cottage in nearby Dungeness and am treating myself to reading his diaries again, so his Smiling in Slow Motion is reminding me of other times of adversity.

Tayari Jones’s An American Marriage waits to be read, as does the latest Hilary Mantel, but everyone will have said that. I also just finished Exit West by Mohsin Hamid: tough, spare and compassionate. Just out is Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency, by the wonderful writer and critic Olivia Laing. I was lucky enough to read a preview copy and I can’ t think of a better read for the times we are in.

Music

My daughter Lily, who is 20, would say that Dave’s Psychodrama is the soundtrack of her generation, with Stormzy’s Heavy is the Head coming an honourable second. I have loved them getting under my skin too. I have a lifelong love of Pet Shop Boys, so I was delighted their latest album, Hotspot, was released on my birthday this year. It’s as good as they have always been. For calm in this crisis I turn to Toumani Diabaté, The Mandé Variations. The sound of the kora stills the air around it.

TV

For those who missed Years and Years, surely now is the time to watch. For younger generations I think discovering the whole of ER is essential now and kindly available on YouTube and Google Play. Luther, for anyone who missed it, is also a grand treat; likewise the majestic Fleabag.

Films

Continuing the Jarman theme, The Garden is available on BFI Player; Tilda Swinton, who collaborated often with Jarman, is worth watching in Orlando, We Need to Talk About Kevin, or almost anything else she is in. Rewatching The Piano would be good for empathy about solitude.

From recent releases, I am looking forward to watching Portrait of a Lady on Fire; Bacurau, an amazing Brazilian horror-thriller; and Mati Diop’s Atlantics; from old classics, Gilda with the incomparable Rita Hayworth.

Podcasts/radio

I’m a reader in any spare time so I never fit in podcasts, but I love Radio 6 Music and could not live in solitude or company without Mary Anne Hobbs’s show.