Culture 6 December 2018 The night that changed my life: writers share the cultural encounters that shaped them Jonathan Coe, Eimear McBride, Simon Armitage, Musa Okwonga, Olivia Laing and others recall life-altering moments. UNITED ARCHIVES GMBH / ALAMY Steve Jones, Glen Matlock, John Lydon and Paul Cook (L-R) of the Sex Pistols. Paul Morley recalls their 1976 gig Sign UpGet the New Statesman\'s Morning Call email. Sign-up Read all the pieces in the New Statesman’s “The night that changed my life” series, available now in our Christmas special issue. Rose Tremain on interviewing her teenage icon: “He is 77 and I am 57. My hands are shaking. My heart is furiously beating.” Paul Morley on the Sex Pistols’ legendary 1976 gig: “It made me the writer I wanted to be”. David Hare on a sunlit afternoon with Hitchcock: “we sat all afternoon, eating cold roast beef and baked potatoes and asking him anything we wanted.” Simon Armitage on David Bowie at the V&A: “The exhibition turned me from a grumpy old man into a weeping 15-year-old boy.” Kate Mosse on her first trip to the theatre: “Launched into another world, perfect and bright and different, exciting and confusing.” Rowan Williams on watching Ivan the Terrible on TV: “it was the start of a lifelong fascination with Russian history, culture and religion.” Olivia Laing on the cabaret that helped her discover her queer identity: “I’m trans,” I told a friend on the steps outside”. Alan Johnson on joining the Labour Party: “Three pints with Mick from four doors down was all it took for me to sign up.” Sarah Hall on seeing Eric Clapton live: “It didn’t make me a rock convert: but it hooked me on live music.” Simon Callow on his first opera: “I was a 16-year-old schoolboy besotted by classical music but only, so far, on record.” Musa Okwonga on a game-changing hip-hop night: “On my schoolfriend Nick’s 18th birthday, I learnt what stage presence was”. Margaret Drabble on Watching Pirandello on TV in 1954: “I felt I was entering the adult world”. Jon Savage on discovering Aubrey Beardsley: “The exquisite line drawings opening my eyes to art”. Kevin Barry on watching Paris, Texas with his father: “I could see that he was moved by the story, perhaps uncomfortably so.” Lavinia Greenlaw on Anni Albers at the Tate: “I left the Albers retrospective feeling a mixture of triumph and rage.” Jonathan Coe on the premiere of Steve Reich’s Different Trains: “The impact, on me and on everyone else in the hall that night, was overwhelming.” John Gray on eating ice cream with JG Ballard: “I found that he embodied everything I admired in his work.” Eimear McBride on Romeo Castellucci’s take on the Divine Comedy: “It was revelatory”. Philip Hoare on a lifetime shared with David Bowie: “It’s one long performance, one long evening shading into brilliant night.” Josie Rourke on an all-male As You Like It in Manchester: “I realised that there was such a thing as transcendent performance.” Frank Cottrell-Boyce on seeing The Pogues by accident: “Their performance showed me that sincerity always beats irony.” Suzanne Moore on her daughter’s coma: “People think they know about comas but they don’t. It’s not like the films.” › Why the arrest of a Huawei boss puts US-China relations in jeopardy This article appears in the 05 December 2018 issue of the New Statesman, Christmas special