Private Passions

Bryan Ferry Nov 03, 2024

Bryan Ferry has been a very familiar voice for more than 50 years, as the co-founder of Roxy Music and as a solo artist and songwriter.

When Roxy Music first appeared on Top of the Pops in 1972, millions of viewers suddenly saw something new: an extravagantly dressed band, featuring an early synthesizer, an oboe, and Bryan leading from an upright piano, wearing a sparkling black and green jacket. 'This one definitely arrived from Planet Mars', according to one critic. It was a performance which helped to propel Bryan to stardom, and a career which has produced two dozen studio albums, and numerous international hits, as well as explorations of jazz and the songs of Bob Dylan: his most recent release, Retrospective, includes a new version of Dylan’s 1965 song She Belongs to Me.

In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Bryan reflects on his early days in County Durham, the role of his art school education and his approach to song writing. His musical choices include works by Prokofiev, Elgar, Mahler and Charlie Parker.

Presenter Michael Berkeley Producer Clare Walker

Brian Cox Oct 27, 2024

Brian Cox has enjoyed a prolific career in theatre, film and television over the last 60 years.

Born in Dundee, he was obsessed by film from an early age and when he left school he worked behind the scenes at Dundee Rep theatre. He soon fell in love with the life he saw there and moved to London to train as an actor. Over the years he’s never been afraid to take on difficult, unlikeable characters, including Hannibal Lecter in Manhunter, Hermann Goering in Nuremberg and most recently the terrifying media tycoon and patriarch Logan Roy in the TV series Succession, for which he won a Golden Globe.

On stage Brian has played King Lear at the National Theatre and won Olivier awards for his performances in Titus Andronicus and Rat in the Skull. In 2023 he portrayed the composer J S Bach in a play called The Score at the Theatre Royal, Bath.

His musical choices include Bach, Mahler, Verdi and Joni Mitchell.

Presenter Michael Berkeley Producer Clare Walker

(This is an extended version of a programme first broadcast in 2023.)

Garth Greenwell Oct 20, 2024

The American writer Garth Greenwell won widespread acclaim for his first novel, What Belongs to You, including the British Book Award for the Debut of the Year in 2016. This success would have surprised his high-school teachers in Kentucky. As a teenager, he failed English and decided to follow a very different path: he turned to singing and eventually trained as an opera singer.

Studying music led him back to literature – writing poems, novels and working as a teacher in Bulgaria. His most recent novel, Small Rain, focuses on a severe medical emergency which leads to deep meditations on our vulnerability, life and love.

Garth's musical passions include works by Mahler, Britten, Richard Strauss and the 16th century English composer John Taverner.

Presenter Michael Berkeley Producer Clare Walker

Sarah Ogilvie Oct 13, 2024

Sarah Ogilvie is a lexicographer and a proud and self-confessed word nerd: languages are her passion and are at the heart of her writing and scholarship.

She worked as an editor at the Oxford English Dictionary and went on to write a book about the thousands of volunteers around the world who submitted words for its first edition. She has researched endangered languages in Australia, North America and most recently Indonesia.

She is also the co-author of Gen Z Explained, where she analysed how 16-25-year-olds communicate with each other, in words, images and emojis. She’s currently a senior research fellow at the University of Oxford.

Her musical choices include Monteverdi, Allegri, Mozart and Nina Simone.

Presenter: Michael Berkeley Producer: Clare Walker

Jenny Beavan Oct 06, 2024

The costume designer Jenny Beavan has won three Academy Awards for three very different films: the elegant Merchant Ivory drama Room with a View; the post-apocalyptic Mad Max: Fury Road; and most recently the Disney film Cruella, for which she created a huge, vibrant parade of 1970s-inspired fashion.

She’s received a further nine Oscar nominations across her 40 year career. She found just the right top hat for Colin Firth in the King’s Speech and ditched the deerstalker in favour of a bowler for Robert Downey Jr in Sherlock Holmes. And despite claiming she has “never been interested in fashion”, she re-created striking Dior outfits for Mrs Harris Goes to Paris.

Jenny's music choices include Handel, Mendelssohn, Sondheim and - with a nod to the film the King's Speech - Beethoven.

Presenter Michael Berkeley Producer Clare Walker

Lucian Msamati Sep 29, 2024

Lucian Msamati has played leading roles on our most famous stages: Salieri in Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus at the National Theatre, Iago in Othello at the Royal Shakespeare Company and Estragon opposite Ben Whishaw in Waiting for Godot at the Theatre Royal Haymarket in London. He started out performing – in his words – ‘for farmers sitting on beer crates in rural Africa, with tables for a stage’. And when he decided to leave Zimbabwe, where he began his career, to see if he could make it in the UK, he had to work as a cleaner to pay the bills. His perseverance paid off: as well as success on stage, he's appeared in high-profile TV shows, including Game of Thrones and the Number One Ladies Detective Agency.

After his role in Amadeus, it’s no surprise to find Mozart among his musical passions, which also include Satie, Tchaikovsky and an unusual track by Stevie Wonder.

Presenter Michael Berkeley Producer Clare Walker

Jay Rayner Sep 22, 2024

Jay Rayner has his dream job: he loves writing and he loves food, and for the past 25 years he’s been the restaurant critic for the Observer.

Jay is also familiar as a broadcaster, appearing as a judge on Masterchef, and hosting The Kitchen Cabinet on Radio 4. His recent book, Nights Out At Home, provides recipes to enable readers to create some of his favourite restaurant dishes in their own kitchens. He started out as a news journalist, after growing up in a house in which his mother – Claire Rayner – was a prolific magazine and newspaper columnist and the author of dozens of books.

Jay has a very public musical passion: he performs as a jazz pianist, leading his own band in venues around the country. His choices include music by Rimsky-Korsakov and Madeleine Dring, along with a classic Broadway overture and jazz from Michel Petrucciani.

Presenter Michael Berkeley Producer Clare Walker

Ann Cleeves Sep 15, 2024

Ann Cleeves is one of Britain’s most successful and prolific crime writers, reaching millions of readers around the world.

She’s reached millions of television viewers too, with series including Vera and Shetland, adapted from her books.

She has written on average a book a year for almost four decades, but success was anything but instant. She was 32 when her first title was published, and she only became a full-time writer in her early fifties. In 2017 she was awarded the Diamond Dagger from the Crime Writers’ Association, the highest honour in British crime writing, and in 2022 received an OBE for services to reading and libraries.

Her choices include music by Britten and Elgar, a film score by Patrick Doyle and fiddle music from the Shetland Islands.

Presenter Michael Berkeley Producer Clare Walker

Norman Ackroyd Sep 08, 2024

Artist and printmaker Norman Ackroyd was born in Leeds in 1938. He fell in love with the landscape of the Yorkshire Dales, riding around on his bicycle as a young boy and studied art despite his father believing it was a waste of time. He is now one of Britain's most acclaimed contemporary printmakers, with works in collections around the world including the Tate, Rijksmuseum and MoMA.

Norman has travelled all over the British Isles to visit what he calls "the farthest lands" which inspire his elemental etchings of rock formations in all weathers. His musical inspirations include Schubert, Beethoven, Bob Dylan and a BBC archive recording of Cwm Rhondda.

Thomas Adès Aug 27, 2024

Thomas Adès is one of the UK’s foremost and most successful composers. His first opera, Powder Her Face, was premiered in 1995, when he was just 24. With its racy subject matter, based on the life of the Duchess of Argyll, it put him squarely on the musical map, winning widespread critical acclaim. His catalogue now includes almost 90 works, with commissions from the world’s leading orchestras and festivals, two further operas, The Tempest and The Exterminating Angel, and an epic ballet score for Wayne McGregor, Dante, based on the Divine Comedy.

To anticipate the UK premiere of his new work, Aquifer, at the 2024 BBC Proms, Thomas Adès talks to Michael Berkeley about his musical inspirations and passions, including works by Schubert, Chopin, Walton, Stravinsky, Berg and Harrison Birtwistle.

Producer Graham Rogers

Daniel Handler Jul 28, 2024

The best-selling American writer Daniel Handler is perhaps better known by his pen name, Lemony Snicket.

Lemony is the cynical narrator of a thirteen book saga called A Series of Unfortunate Events. It’s the tale of three unlucky orphans, Violet, Klaus and Sonny Baudelaire, who are hounded by their guardian, the sinister Count Olaf. The books are a phenomenon, selling more than 70 million copies around the world, along with a film starring Jim Carrey and a series on Netflix.

Lemony has published many more books for children, and Daniel has also written seven novels for adults under his own name, as well as a screenplay inspired by Verdi’s Rigoletto.

He’s also a keen accordion player and has performed with bands including Death Cab for Cutie, the Decemberists and the Magnetic Fields.

Daniel has described himself as an ‘unrepentant classical zealot’ and his musical choices include Dvořák, Scriabin and Berlioz.

Clio Barnard Jul 14, 2024

The director Clio Barnard won prizes and critical acclaim for her first feature film The Arbor: it blended fact and fiction to depict the short, troubled life of the brilliant Bradford playwright Andrea Dunbar.

Since then she’s taken on a wide range of British stories. She directed Claire Danes and Tom Hiddleston in The Essex Serpent, a six part adaptation of the best-selling book by Sarah Perry.

She returned to Bradford for Ali and Ava, a love story which won a BAFTA nomination for outstanding British film, and for The Selfish Giant, the tale of two children trying to make money from selling scrap metal.

Music often plays an important part in her films, and her choices include Alice Coltrane, Biber and Philip Glass.

Richard Thompson Jul 07, 2024

Richard Thompson began his career as a guitarist and a songwriter when he was still a teenager – and six decades on, his passion for making and sharing music is as strong as ever.

In the late 1960s he co-founded the pioneering folk-rock band Fairport Convention. In 1969 alone, they released three albums. All featured the voice of Sandy Denny, and one - Liege and Lief - was later acclaimed as the most influential folk album of all time. In the early 1970s, Richard left the band to form a decade-long musical partnership with his then wife Linda.

He’s now spent over 30 years as a solo artist, winning an Ivor Novello Award for songwriting, a Lifetime Achievement Award from BBC Radio 2 and countless plaudits for his guitar playing.

Richard's music choices include Beethoven, Purcell, Britten and Manuel de Falla.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall Jun 30, 2024

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall has long been passionate about food – not just about what we eat and how we cook it, but about how it’s produced and the wider environmental consequences of our appetites.

He first appeared on our TV screens in 1995 in A Cook on the Wild Side - foraging for roadkill and frying up woodlouse fritters, earning him the nickname Hugh Fearlessly-Eats-it-all.

He went on to document his early attempts as a smallholder trying to produce seasonal, ethical food in the River Cottage series on Channel 4. Out of this came the highly successful River Cottage Cookbook. Over two dozen books have followed – the latest of which is How to Eat 30 Plants a Week.

He’s also enjoyed success as a food campaigner. Hugh’s Fish Fight brought about changes in fisheries law at the European level, Britain’s Fat Fight examined the national obesity crisis and War on Waste challenged supermarkets and the fast food industry to change how they operate.

Hugh's music choices include Beethoven, Schubert, Verdi and Keith Jarrett.

Olivia Laing Jun 23, 2024

Olivia Laing has won prizes and critical acclaim for her books, but readily admits that she led quite a wild life before becoming a writer: she dropped out of university, lived in a treehouse on an anti-road protest and later trained and worked as a herbalist.

Her non-fiction books include The Trip to Echo Spring, which examined how writers who were damagingly addicted to alcohol could still produce great literature. She drew on her own experience of extreme loneliness in New York to write The Lonely City, which blended memoir with reflections on the works of artists including Edward Hopper and Andy Warhol.

Her first novel, Crudo, was a Sunday Times bestseller and won the James Tait Memorial Prize.

And most recently she’s written The Garden Against Time: In Search of a Common Paradise. It’s an account of how she’s restoring a walled garden in Suffolk - and an investigation into the history of gardens and the solace and pleasure they can bring.

Olivia's music choices include Puccini, Purcell, Wagner and Bach.

Frank Gardner Jun 16, 2024

Frank Gardner is the BBC’s security correspondent, familiar to millions of viewers and listeners from his reports, which regularly take him around the world.

He’s also written six books, including a memoir about his 25 years in the Middle East, and more recently, four thrillers about the adventures of MI6 operative Luke Carlton.

In 2004, while filming in Saudi Arabia, Frank and his cameraman Simon Cumbers were ambushed by al-Qaeda gunmen. Simon was killed and Frank was shot six times and left for dead. He survived, but was partially paralysed. He returned to reporting within a year, using a wheelchair.

Frank's music choices range from Schumann and Shostakovich to Fats Waller, and he also includes part of a concerto for oboe and strings written by his father, Neil Gardner, who was a keen and accomplished amateur musician.

Brian Cox Jun 09, 2024

For years Professor Brian Cox has encouraged us to look up to and beyond the stars and to understand that the universe is very, very large and our place in it very, very small. He is Professor of Particle Physics at the University of Manchester – and through his extensive work on television and radio, he’s shared the wonders of the universe and of science with millions of us around the world.

As a teenager and then a student, Brian combined his passion for physics with a parallel career in pop music as a keyboard player. His choices include music from the jazz improviser Keith Jarrett, Mahler, Charles Ives and Richard Strauss.

Dorothy Byrne Jun 02, 2024

Dorothy Byrne has worked in journalism for more than 40 years, including almost 20 years as Head of News and Current Affairs at Channel 4 from 2003 to 2020. She talks to Michael Berkeley about the sexism and harassment she experienced as a young producer, which she detailed in her MacTaggart Lecture at the Edinburgh Television Festival in 2019, in which she added that she would still recommend journalism to young women today - ‘in what other line of work, when... you hear of some absolute disgrace, can you say to yourself “I’m going to make a programme exposing that and I’ll put a stop to it!” And sometimes you even do.’ She has also argued that challenging journalism which calls politicians to account is a vital part of any healthy democracy. Since 2021 she has been President of Murray Edwards College, a women-only college at the University of Cambridge. Her music choices include pieces by Mozart, Handel, Amy Beach and Nina Simone, as well as a recording of her college choir performing music by Hildegard of Bingen.

Producer: Graham Rogers

Imtiaz Dharker May 26, 2024

Imtiaz Dharker was awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry in 2014, and has published seven collections of her verse. She’s performed her poems to thousands of students at Poetry Live events, a scheme founded by her late husband Simon Rhys Powell.

Imtiaz was born in Lahore in Pakistan and was six months old when her family moved to Glasgow. There she grew up as – in her words – “a Muslim Calvinist”.

When she was 17 she fell in love with her first husband, married in secret and eloped to India. As a result she was disowned by her family, but began to publish her first poems. She illustrates all her collections with pen and ink drawings.

Harry Cliff May 19, 2024

Harry Cliff is a particle physicist working on the Large Hadron Collider – the huge particle detector buried deep underground at CERN near Geneva. He’s part of an international team of around 1,400 physicists, engineers and computer scientists studying the basic building blocks of our universe, in search of answers to some of the biggest questions in modern physics.

Harry is also passionate about explaining these mysteries to the widest possible audience. He has curated two major exhibitions at the Science Museum in London – one about the Hadron Collider, another about the Sun, and his first book was called How To Make An Apple Pie from Scratch, a title which draws on a comment by the astronomer Carl Sagan: "if you wish to make an apple pie from scratch you must first invent the universe". His most recent book Space Oddities looks at some of the strange things – anomalies - that are currently confounding scientists, and transforming our understanding of physics.

Alison Owen May 12, 2024

Alison Owen is one of the UK’s leading film producers. Her credits range from the zombie apocalypse comedy Shaun of the Dead to Saving Mr Banks, the story of the making of the film Mary Poppins, starring Emma Thompson and Tom Hanks.

Her most recent film is based on the short life of singer-songwriter Amy Winehouse and the making of her album Back to Black.

Alison probably knows better than most what it’s like to be a young woman in the spotlight, as the mother of a high-profile star herself: the singer Lily Allen.

Her music choices include Beethoven, Coltrane, Ravel and Puccini.

Percival Everett May 12, 2024

The American writer Percival Everett is enjoying a moment in the spotlight: his novel The Trees was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2022; an earlier book, Erasure, was adapted into the recent Oscar-winning film American Fiction; and his latest novel, James, is already a best-seller in the United States. It’s a powerful re-telling of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, from the perspective of Huck’s enslaved friend Jim.

In the past four decades he's published two dozen novels, and another dozen books of stories and poetry, but he's just as happy away from the world of literature, fly-fishing or painting. He's also worked as a horse trainer, a cowboy and a jazz guitarist. Jazz and blues feature among the music he shares with us, along with Dvorak, Schoenberg, Gustav Holst’s The Planets.

Edith Hall Apr 28, 2024

Edith Hall is Professor of Classics at Durham University – and her passion for her subject reaches far beyond the lecture hall or seminar room. She wants us all to understand how the writing and thinking of ancient Greece still influence how we write and think today.

She leads a campaign called Advocating Classics Education, to promote teaching in state secondary schools, and her books include Aristotle’s Way: How Ancient Wisdom Can Change Your Life, and Ancient Greeks: Ten Ways They Shaped the Modern World. Her writing and teaching are based on decades of scholarship, with a focus on ancient Greek drama, and she’s also a familiar voice as a broadcaster, on programmes such as In Our Time.

Her most recent book is Facing Down the Furies: Suicide, the ancient Greeks and Me - a deeply personal account of the psychological damage that suicide inflicts across generations, drawing parallels between her own family history and characters from Greek tragedy. Edith's music selection includes Schubert, Beethoven, Gluck and Handel.

Sathnam Sanghera Apr 21, 2024

Sathnam Sanghera is a best-selling writer and journalist. He grew up in Wolverhampton to Punjabi parents in a home where, in his words, “no one read books or owned them, let alone wrote them”. When he started school, he couldn’t speak English but he went to graduate from Cambridge University with a first-class degree in English Language and Literature.

He started out writing for newspapers, winning the Young Journalist of the Year at the British Press Awards in 2002. He now writes for The Times. In 2008 he published his memoir of his early life called The Boy With the Topknot.

More recently he has focused on our colonial history. In 2021 he published Empireland: How Imperialism Has Shaped Modern Britain, which was named a Book of the Year at the National Book Awards. Then came Empireworld: How British Imperialism has shaped the Globe, which quickly became a best-seller. Sathnam's musical choices include Bach, John Coltrane, Debussy and Jasdeep Singh Degun.

Professor Sue Black Apr 14, 2024

Professor Lady Sue Black is one of the world’s leading forensic scientists. She says “I have never been spooked by the dead. It is the living who terrify me. The dead are much more predictable and co-operative.” Her painstaking work and expertise mean she can work out how people have met their end, and police forces, the Foreign Office and the UN have called on her evidence in countless high profile investigations. She was the lead forensic anthropologist to the British forensic team during the international war crimes investigations in Kosovo and the Thai Tsunami Victim Identification Operation. Back in the UK she provided evidence that helped prosecute Scotland’s biggest paedophile ring. She is currently the President of St John’s College, Oxford, and in 2021 she entered the House of Lords as a crossbench peer. She has just been appointed to the Most Ancient and Most Noble Order of the Thistle, the highest honour in Scotland. Sue's music selections include Bach, Handel, Mendelssohn and Elgar.

(Photo: Sue Black. Credit David Gross)

David Mitchell Apr 07, 2024

David Mitchell is the author of nine time-traversing, genre-bending novels. His first, Ghostwritten, was published 25 years ago, and his third, Cloud Atlas, made his name around the world, and later became a Hollywood film. It follows six interlocking lives in an ambitious narrative that circles the globe and travels through time from 19th-century New Zealand to a post-apocalyptic future in Hawaii – and back again.

Closer to home, he drew on his own childhood in Worcestershire in his coming-of-age tale Black Swan Green, about a teenager attempting to overcome a stammer and negotiate playground hierarchies, all against the backdrop of the Falklands War.

His most recent novel, Utopia Avenue, charts the rise of an imaginary rock band in the late 1960s.

David's musical choices include Debussy, Rimsky-Korsakov, Sibelius and Hildegard von Bingen.

John Krebs Mar 31, 2024

John Krebs is a zoologist who has specialised in the behaviour of birds. Although he was the son of a Nobel prize-winning chemist, ornithology was a very early passion: he hand-reared birds as a child and allowed them to fly freely around at family mealtimes.

In his later research, he discovered that birds that store seeds for the winter have remarkable spatial memory and an enlarged hippocampus – the part of the brain essential for remembering.

Alongside his academic career, he’s taken on high-profile public roles: he was the first chairman of the Food Standards Agency, where he faced the outbreak of foot and mouth disease. He’s also a cross-bench peer and was principal of Jesus College, Oxford, for a decade.

His musical choices include Haydn, Schubert, Schumann and Corelli.

Helena Newman Mar 17, 2024

Helena Newman has many strings to her bow, She is the Chairman of Sotheby’s Europe and the Worldwide Head of Impressionist & Modern Art. She is one of only a handful of female auctioneers and presided over the bidding of the most valuable painting ever sold at auction in Europe – Gustav Klimt’s Lady with a Fan – which went for $108 million in June 2023.

Helena also plays the violin and the piano and her musical background has come in handy when standing on the auction block. She also loves the cross-over between music and art and how one can inspire the other.

Her musical choices include Beethoven, Schubert, Mozart and Bach.

Mark Cousins - Sound of Cinema Sunday Mar 10, 2024

Michael Berkeley’s guest is the film-maker, producer and writer Mark Cousins. His documentary work includes The Story of Film, an epic 900-minute journey through the history of cinema, from the earliest moving images in the late 19th century to the digital innovations of our own times. Mark has interviewed many of the most significant directors and actors of the past half century, and with Tilda Swinton he created the Screen Machine, a large portable cinema which they and their supporters sometimes pulled by hand through the Scottish Highlands.

Mark’s choices of film music range from Doris Day and Henry Mancini to a score by Alfred Schnittke and a song from Neneh Cherry.

Michael Winterbottom Feb 25, 2024

Michael Winterbottom is one of Britain’s most prolific and eclectic film directors: his work encompasses political thrillers and pop culture, reworkings of classic novels and retelling real events.

He’s made three films based on the novels of Thomas Hardy, including a version of Jude the Obscure with Christopher Eccleston and Kate Winslet.

He’s worked extensively with Steve Coogan, starting in 2001 with 24 Hour Party People, in which Coogan played the Manchester music impresario Tony Wilson. More recently they’ve made four series of the BAFTA award-winning series The Trip, in which Coogan and Rob Brydon tour restaurants in England, Italy, Spain and Greece.

Many of his films react to real-world events, including Welcome to Sarajevo and The Road to Guantánamo. In 2022 he co-wrote and co-directed This England, a TV series about Boris Johnson’s leadership during the Covid crisis, with Kenneth Branagh playing the former Prime Minister.

Michael’s most recent film, Shoshana, is a political thriller set in the 1930s in what was then British Mandatory Palestine.

His music choices include Schumann, Bach and Philip Glass.

Ray Cooper Feb 18, 2024

The percussionist Ray Cooper is often referred to as the ‘father of rock and roll percussion’. He is renowned for his exuberant stage presence and for incorporating unusual instruments, including cowbells, glockenspiels, timpani and tubular bells to name but a few. He has worked with many of the world’s leading musicians including Pink Floyd, the Rolling Stones, Billy Joel, Carly Simon, Eric Clapton, Sting, Art Garfunkel, Paul McCartney, John Lennon, Ringo Starr and George Harrison.

His most enduring collaboration has been with Elton John. Ray is on more than 90 of Elton’s recordings, and has performed over 1000 concerts with him, most recently on the Farewell Tour.

In 1979, Ray was asked by George Harrison to help run Handmade Films and he remained at the helm for just over a decade, overseeing the production of seminal British films such as Withnail and I, Time Bandits and The Long Good Friday.

Ray's musical choices include Bach, Shostakovich, John Tavener and Elton John.

Producer: Clare Walker

Raymond Blanc Feb 11, 2024

Raymond Blanc is one of the finest chefs in the world and he is completely self-taught. He grew up in post-war France in Besancon in the Comte region of eastern France between Burgundy and the Jura Mountains with his four brothers and sisters.

Raymond’s mother – Maman Blanc - was his culinary inspiration. She would whip up delicious fresh, seasonal, local dishes, which became his guiding principal when he opened his first restaurant in Oxford, Les Quat’ Saisons, in September 1977. Within two years it had been awarded a Michelin star and Restaurant of the Year by food critic Egon Ronay.

Often working 18 hour days, he launched a bakery chain Maison Blanc in 1981 and then renovated and opened Le Manoir aux Quat'Saisons a country house hotel which was awarded two Michelin stars and is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year.

He’s also appeared on numerous TV shows including The Restaurant on BBC and the cookery series Simply Raymond on ITV.

Raymond's musical choices include Vivaldi, Verdi, Beethoven and Leonard Cohen.

Louise Welsh Feb 04, 2024

Louise Welsh worked in a second-hand bookshop in Glasgow before she took the plunge to become a writer, bursting onto the scene in 2002 with her prize-winning crime novel, The Cutting Room. As the author of seven novels and the Plague Times Trilogy, she doesn’t shy away from difficult subjects and unpalatable truths in her fiction, exploring issues of identity, sexuality, class, immigration, viral pandemics and shady economics.

Her latest book, To the Dogs, is a thriller centred around a university professor who finds himself dragged into his former life of violence and danger when his son is arrested on drugs charges.

But despite these serious themes, Louise’s work is punctuated by a playful, dry sense of humour, highlighting the absurdity of certain situations - and a vivid vocabulary. She is Professor of Creative Writing at Glasgow University and she loves to collaborate. She has written short stories and plays, edited collections of poetry and has a long-standing working relationship with the composer Stuart MacRae, with whom she’s written four opera librettos.

Her musical choices include works by Debussy, Purcell and Verdi.

Neil Hannon Jan 28, 2024

Neil Hannon is a singer, songwriter and the driving force behind the band The Divine Comedy, which he founded in 1989. Along with hit singles such as National Express, and 12 albums with the band, his music appears in an impressively varied range of settings – including original songs for the recent film Wonka, a chamber opera inspired by Tolstoy for Covent Garden, and the theme tune for the sitcom Father Ted.

Neil talks to Michael Berkeley about growing up in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland with a bishop for a father, writing his first pop song when he was 14, and how, as a self-described "pathetic twerp", he managed to make it in the pop world. His typically wide-ranging musical passions include works by Puccini, Stravinsky, Chopin and Ravel, alongside tracks by Michael Nyman, Kate Bush and Scott Walker.

Producer: Graham Rogers

Lorna Dawson Jan 21, 2024

Professor Lorna Dawson is one of the UK’s leading forensic scientists. She examines soil in order to solve crimes. For over thirty years her pioneering techniques, using soil evidence on shoes, clothing and vehicles, have led to numerous high-profile convictions. Her work has received global recognition and now inspires crime writers such as Ian Rankin and Ann Cleeves.

Lorna is head of the centre for soil forensics at the James Hutton Institute in Aberdeen, which conducts research into land, crops, water and the environment. She also works with SEFARI, the Scottish Environment, Food and Agriculture Research Institutions, delivering farming systems that benefit the environment and nature.

Lorna's choices include music by Elgar, Mozart and Ravel.

Merlin Sheldrake Jan 14, 2024

Merlin Sheldrake is a biologist and writer with a mission: to make us look at and understand fungi. While we’re familiar with mushrooms, truffles and toadstools, there are millions of varieties of fungi all around us; in the soil, in our bodies, in the air we breathe - and only 6% of them have been identified. Merlin’s book “Entangled Life: how fungi make our worlds, change our minds and shape our futures”, was an international best-seller. It caught the eye of the Icelandic singer and musician Bjork, who recently released an IMAX film with Merlin, which she narrates. It’s called Fungi: the web of life, and follows Merlin to the Tarkine rainforest in Tasmania, on a quest to find an incredibly precious blue mushroom. Merlin's choices include works by Chopin, Tallis, Bach and Purcell.

Nina Stibbe Jan 07, 2024

Nina Stibbe was fifty when she first became a published writer with Love Nina, a collection of letters she wrote to her sister in the 1980s about her time working as a very inexperienced young nanny for Mary-Kay Wilmers, editor of the London Review of books.

She found herself running a home where Alan Bennett often appeared at suppertime and other famous neighbours and people would pop round - though Nina had often no idea who they were. Her affectionate, witty memoir won non-fiction Book of the Year in 2014 and was adapted by Nick Hornby into a BBC TV series.

After nannying, Nina worked in publishing and then moved to Cornwall where she lived with her partner and children. Since the success of Love Nina, she has written six more books, four of them novels. Her latest, Went to London, Took the Dog, charts her first return to the capital for twenty years. It’s a break from domestic life back in Cornwall, or perhaps a fresh start altogether.

Nina's musical choices include music by Handel, Mozart, Brahms and Benjamin Clementine.

Johnny Flynn Dec 31, 2023

Johnny Flynn is a polymath – as comfortable as an actor on stage and screen as he is writing and performing songs. You have perhaps seen him as Mr Knightley in the film Emma or as Ian Fleming in Operation Mincemeat. In his latest film, One Life, he stars alongside Anthony Hopkins, as the young Nicholas Winton, who helped Jewish children flee from the Nazis in what became known as the Kindertransport.

He’s currently starring as Richard Burton in the play The Motive and the Cue, the story of how Burton and Sir John Gielgud clashed as they staged Hamlet on Broadway in 1964.

Johnny has also released four albums with his band Johnny Flynn & The Sussex Wit. He composed the theme song for the acclaimed TV series Detectorists, and more recently he’s collaborated with the nature writer Robert MacFarlane on two folk albums: Lost in the Cedarwood and The Moon Also Rises. His musical choices include Paul Robeson, Sondheim and Bizet.

Dame Ottoline Leyser Dec 10, 2023

Professor Dame Ottoline Leyser first realised plants are extraordinary and astonishing at school, when introduced to the round and wrinkled peas of Gregor Mendel. She is fascinated by plant genetics and as Regius Professor of Botany at the University of Cambridge her particular focus has been on a hormone called auxin which controls the growth of plants.

In 2020, she was appointed the chief executive of UK Research and Innovation whose mission is to work in partnership with research organisations, universities, businesses, charities and government to “push the frontiers of human knowledge and understanding" and deliver economic, social and cultural impact, with a budget of more than £8 billion each year.

Dame Ottoline is a fellow of the Royal Society and in 2017 she was appointed DBE for services to plant science, science in society and equality and diversity in science.

Her music choices include Mozart, Vaughan Williams and Debussy.

Walter Murch Dec 03, 2023

Walter Murch is a Hollywood legend. He’s won three Oscars for his sound and editing work on Apocalypse Now and The English Patient, and his credits include some of the most acclaimed and discussed films of the past half century – The Godfather trilogy, The Conversation, The Talented Mr Ripley.

He co-wrote the first movie George Lucas ever directed – the dystopian science fiction drama THX 1138. In 1985 he made his own directorial debut with Return to Oz – an unofficial sequel to The Wizard of Oz. As an editor and sound mixer - and the only person to win Academy Awards in both categories - he’s thought deeply about the craft of cinema and all its possibilities, ideas which he shared in his book In the Blink of an Eye.

Walter's musical choices include Wagner, Beethoven, Pergolesi and Chopin.

Kevin O'Hare Nov 26, 2023

Kevin O’Hare is the director of the Royal Ballet and he probably finds it hard to remember a time when dance wasn’t part of his life. He started young, and joined the Royal Ballet School at the age of eleven. He went on to dance with Sadler’s Wells and Birmingham Royal Ballet, taking on roles such as Prince Siegfried in Swan Lake, Albrecht in Giselle and Romeo in Kenneth MacMillan's Romeo and Juliet.

He retired from the stage in 2000, at the age of 35, but before long he was back in the world of dance – this time behind the scenes. By 2009, he was Administrative Director of the Royal Ballet and oversaw their first tour to Cuba. Three years later he became overall director. He has since worked with a wide range of dancers, choreographers and composers, and helped steer the company through the Covid crisis.

Kevin's choices include music by Tchaikovsky, Thomas Ades, Rachmaninov and Anna Clyne.

Mali Morris Nov 12, 2023

The abstract painter Mali Morris is fascinated by colour and light, and has been exploring their possibilities in her work for more than 50 years.

She was born in Wales and studied at the University of Newcastle, where the Pop Art pioneer Richard Hamilton was one of her teachers. He brought her and fellow students news of New York which she says “seemed as far away to me as the moon”.

Mali herself taught at a number of art schools including Chelsea, the Slade School and the Royal College of Art. She was elected a Royal Academician in 2010, and last year, flags made from her work hung above Bond Street, not far from the Academy, in a riot of joyous colour.

She currently has a major exhibition at the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham.

Her musical choices include Bach, Beethoven, Vivaldi and some blues singing and whistling by Professor Longhair.

Abdulrazak Gurnah Nov 05, 2023

Abdulrazak Gurnah won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2021, honouring a career in which he’s written ten novels, and many short stories and essays. He’s an Emeritus Professor at the University of Kent.

He was born in 1948 on the island of Zanzibar off the coast of East Africa, and first came to Britain as a refugee at the age of 18, in the aftermath of the Zanzibar Revolution.

In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, he recalled how, even as a young schoolboy, he loved writing stories. He also reflected on how his move to England changed everything: "there", he said, "in my homesickness and amidst the anguish of a stranger’s life… I began to do a different kind of writing. There was a task to be done."

Abdulrazak's musical choices include Shostakovich, Mendelssohn, Miles Davis and the Malian kora player, Toumani Diabaté.

Chris Addison Oct 29, 2023

Chris Addison has built his career on laughter, as a stand-up comedian, a panellist on shows such as Mock the Week, and as an actor and director.

You perhaps saw him as Ollie, the hapless junior Whitehall adviser in The Thick of It, the political satire created by Armando Iannucci. He’s worked as a director on another highly-acclaimed comedy in the corridors of power: the Emmy Award-winning Veep, set in and around the White House. He has also co-created and directed Breeders, a brutally honest sitcom about parenthood, starring Martin Freeman.

Chris has also performed in opera on the stage at Covent Garden – though in a speaking role. He is an opera fan, so his musical choices include Mozart and Rossini but also folk music by Eliza Carthy and a Swedish Christmas song.

Black History Month Oct 22, 2023

A special edition for Black History Month celebrating the lives and music of black women. Michael Berkeley revisits some of the many inspiring guests from the last few years who chose music written or performed by black women, and who have made their own important contributions to black history: artists Helen Cammock and Theaster Gates, writers Kit de Waal, Nadifa Mohamed and Isabel Wilkerson, jazz saxophonist YolanDa Brown, broadcaster Johny Pitts, and Kadiatu Kanneh-Mason, mother of seven brilliant young musicians including 2023 BBC Proms stars cellist Sheku and pianist Isata. Their choices range from music by Florence Price to performances by Nina Simone and soprano Jessye Norman.

Producer: Graham Rogers

Fay Dowker Oct 08, 2023

Professor Fay Dowker is a theoretical physicist fascinated by space and time. She was obsessed with maths from a young age and went on to study at Cambridge University. There Professor Stephen Hawking became her mentor and a very close friend.

She is currently Professor of Theoretical Physics at Imperial College London where she researches “quantum gravity” – how the force of gravity works on the universe's tiniest particles.

Fay's musical choices include John Coltrane, Shostakovich, Bach and Handel.

Olivia Harrison Oct 01, 2023

Olivia Harrison is a prizewinning film producer and charity director. Last year she published Came the Lightening, a poignant collection of twenty poems dedicated to her late husband George Harrison of the Beatles. George died in November 2001, at the age of just 58, and Olivia describes her poems as ‘thoughts, feelings and words about life and death, but mostly love and our journey to the end’.

Olivia grew up in Los Angeles, and in her early 20s she joined A&M Records. She first met George in 1974 through her work, and went on to help run his Dark Horse record label. They married four years later. Olivia has protected George’s musical legacy since his death and continued the work of the Material World Foundation, the charity he founded 50 years ago. She also worked with Martin Scorsese to create an acclaimed, Emmy-winning documentary about George.

Olivia's musical choices include Bach, Mozart and Ravi Shankar, as well as recordings from Mexico and Bulgaria.

Peter Frankopan Sep 26, 2023

Peter Frankopan is a historian who likes to take on big ideas, sweeping across many centuries and national boundaries.

In his acclaimed book The Silk Roads: A New History of the World, published in 2015, he argued that the Persian empire gave rise to the West and he explored the importance of the trading routes that linked Arabia and Asia to Europe, and how they spread ideas, culture and religion. The book was a bestseller in the UK, China and India and even inspired a musical collaboration between singer Katie Melua and students at Oxford, where Peter is professor of global history. His follow-up, The New Silk Roads: the Future and Present of the World investigated how economic power is shifting eastwards.

More recently Peter has turned his attention to climate change. In The Earth Transformed he examined how it has dramatically shaped the development - and the demise - of civilisations across time.

Peter's musical choices include works by Tchaikovsky, Mozart and Edward Naylor.

Rhiannon Giddens Sep 17, 2023

Rhiannon Giddens has won two Grammy awards for her folk music albums, and a Pulitzer Prize for her opera, Omar, proving that she’s a musician who can’t be quickly categorised.

She grew up in Greensboro, North Carolina, and as a singer, fiddle and banjo player, she’s been fired by a desire to chart and reclaim the stories of people whose contributions to American music have been overlooked or erased. Her musical journey originally had a rather different destination: she trained as a classical soprano at the Oberlin Conservatory in Ohio.

Now she draws on all these musical traditions as a composer for ballet, opera and film. She also finds time for acting – appearing in the TV series Nashville about the tangled lives of country music stars – she presents podcasts and has even written children’s books.

Her music choices include Bach, Dvorak, Duke Ellington and Stephen Sondheim.

Jeremy Deller Sep 10, 2023

Jeremy Deller is a difficult artist to pin down. He’s won the Turner Prize and represented Britain at the Venice Biennale, but you’re just as likely to find his work on our streets as in a gallery.

In 2016, marking the centenary of the Battle of the Somme, thousands of young men in World War One uniforms appeared unannounced in stations, shopping centres and towns across the UK. Each participant represented a soldier who died on 1 July 1916. Jeremy called this work We’re Here Because We’re Here. 15 years earlier, he recreated the clash between striking miners and police officers in the Battle of Orgreave. He’s toured a rusting car from a street bombing in Iraq around the USA, and in 2012 he created a life-sized inflatable version of Stonehenge which you could bounce on.

His musical choices are suitably wide-ranging and sometimes unexpected: taking us on a journey with sounds from across the world, but including Beethoven, Monteverdi and Vaughan Williams.

Raynor Winn Sep 01, 2023

Raynor Winn is a writer whose first book, The Salt Path, followed the remarkable 630-mile journey she and her husband Moth made around the South West Coastal Path.

It was a story of endurance as they had lost their home, had little money and Moth had been diagnosed with a terminal illness. But they found solace in nature and kept putting one foot in front of the other, living for the now: a message that obviously chimed with readers, as the book became a bestseller and is currently being made into a film.

Raynor has since written a sequel called The Wild Silence, about readjusting to four walls and normal life after that seminal walk, and Landlines where she and Moth again embark on a thousand-mile journey from Scotland back to the familiar shores of the South West Coast Path.

Raynor's musical choices include works by Britten, Schubert and Vaughan Williams.

György Ligeti Aug 20, 2023

2023 marks the centenary of the composer György Ligeti's birth, and in this programme, first broadcast in 1997, he joined Michael Berkeley to share some of his musical passions. They include piano music by Beethoven, player piano music by Conlon Nancarrow, a thinking song by the Gbaya people of central Africa and gamelan music from Java.

A Classic Arts production for BBC Radio 3 (revised repeat)

Isabella Tree Jul 09, 2023

Isabella Tree is an author and travel writer. Her award-winning book Wilding: the Return of Nature to a British Farm, describes how she and her conservationist husband Charlie decided after many generations of intensive dairy and arable farming to undertake a pioneering experiment. They would rewild their 3,500 acre estate, Knepp in West Sussex – returning it to nature.

Using herds of free-roaming animals to create new habitats, their rewilded land is now – more than 20 years later - a haven for wildlife and rare species like turtle-doves, nightingales and purple emperor butterflies. The estate has become central to the debate about how we look after and regenerate the land.

Isabella is also a travel journalist and has written books about her journeys to Nepal, Mexico and Papua New Guinea. Her music choices include works by Schubert, Handel, Bach but also compositions made in response to the Knepp estate.

Alexander Polzin Jul 02, 2023

Alexander Polzin is a German sculptor, painter, costume and set designer. He began his career as a stonemason, but is now well known for his collaborations with writers, composers, choreographers and scientists.

He has created sets, often drawing on his work in sculpture, for operas including Verdi’s Falstaff and Rigoletto, and Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde, for which he created huge illuminated stalactites, suspended above the stage. For a 2022 production of Mozart’s opera Mitridate in Copenhagen, the centrepiece was an enormous layered ochre-coloured rock formation, with which bodies merged or slid across.

As a painter and sculptor, he’s enjoyed exhibitions in galleries around the world, and has collaborated with the Aldeburgh Festival in Suffolk, in 2016 and 2023. His work also appears in prominent public spaces, including his statue of Giordano Bruno in Potsdamer Platz in Berlin.

Naomi Alderman Jun 18, 2023

Naomi Alderman is a writer who likes to question established ways of thinking. In 2017 her novel The Power won the Bailey’s Women’s Prize for fiction. It imagines a world where women develop the ability to emit electric shocks from their fingers, leading to a worldwide reversal in the traditional balance of power between the sexes. The book became a global bestseller, and more recently a nine part TV drama. A sense of rebellion was evident in the title of her first novel, Disobedience: it’s tale of a woman who questions the conventions of the strict Orthodox Jewish community in which she grew up, and draws in part on Naomi’s own experiences. Along with four novels, Naomi created and written computer games, including Zombies, Run! This immersive app encourages you to improve your fitness – by running faster to escape predatory zombies. Naomi's musical choices include Mozart, Respighi, Bach and Stephen Sondheim.

Photo of Naomi Alderman: Annabel Moeller.

Beccy Speight Jun 11, 2023

Beccy Speight has been the chief executive officer of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds since 2019. It is the UK’s largest nature conservation charity with over a million members and manages more than 200 nature reserves providing a home to at least 18,500 species.

Beccy began her work in the conservation sector when she joined the National Trust at the turn of the millennium. From 2014, she focused her energies on our trees and woods when she became Chief Executive at the Woodland Trust.

She has said she moved on to the RSPB because she wanted to be ‘where the really big fights are in terms of our natural world’ – and where she could make a difference to something she cares deeply about.

Beccy's musical choices include Elgar, Vaughan Williams and the folk singer Karine Polwart.

Kit de Waal Jun 04, 2023

Author Kit de Waal was brought up in a working class family in the Moseley suburb of Birmingham in the 1960s and 70s. She talks to Michael Berkeley about how reading wasn’t part of her childhood; she didn’t discover a love of books until much later in life. Her bestselling first novel, My Name is Leon, written in her 40s, draws on her own childhood experiences and her early career as a legal worker in the foster care system, and she devoted some of the proceeds to setting up a scholarship for aspiring authors from working class backgrounds.

Her music choices include tracks from classic film scores - her father was an avid film buff - including Rachmaninov, Gershwin and Oscar Hammerstein's Broadway version of Carmen, alongside Bach, Chopin and Miles Davis.

Producer: Graham Rogers

Sarah Lee May 28, 2023

Sarah Lee is a photographer, who was first given a camera on her 18th birthday. She taught herself how to use it by taking photographs for the student newspaper while studying for a degree in English Literature at University College London. The offer of free film and the use of a dark room proved irresistible.

Since then her images, with their focus on people, have appeared in Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, Time magazine and many more. She’s worked for the Guardian newspaper for more than 20 years and is an official photographer for the BAFTA awards. There she captures the likes of Nicole Kidman and Leonardo DiCaprio backstage or on the red carpet, in intimate black and white shots.

Her musical choices range from Bach and Mozart to Scarlatti and Nina Simone.

Mary-Ann Ochota May 14, 2023

Mary-Ann Ochota is an anthropologist and broadcaster. She is fascinated by what it means to be human and why we behave as we do.

Her work has taken her around the world from the poorest parts of Dhaka and Delhi to the Chernobyl Nuclear disaster zone. She has lived with Yak herders in the high plains of Tibet and sailed across the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.

Closer to home, she’s written two books about British archaeology, full of tips on how to read the landscape from ancient burial mounds to medieval woodlands.

Landscapes have inspired some of her musical choices – from the Scottish Highlands to Mount Fuji in Japan.

Ben Watt May 07, 2023

Musician and writer Ben Watt released his first single when he was just 19. In 1981, on his first day as a student at Hull University, he met Tracey Thorn and together they formed the duo Everything But the Girl – taking their name from the slogan of a local furniture shop. Over the next twenty years, they had 12 top 40 singles and 7 top 20 albums. Since then Ben has experimented in dance and electronic music, run his own record label and returned to songwriting with the release of two solo albums.

Ben has also written two acclaimed books. The first about his experience of a life-threatening autoimmune disease and the second, a poignant portrait of his parents. Most recently, he’s returned to making music with his wife Tracey Thorn in a new Everything But the Girl Album.

Isabel Wilkerson Apr 30, 2023

The Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Isabel Wilkerson was born in Washington DC. Her parents moved there in the Great Migration – when six million African Americans left the rural south to escape poor economic conditions and discrimination. Isabel later wrote about this exodus in her bestselling and widely acclaimed book The Warmth of Other Suns, the product of 15 years of research and more than 1200 interviews.

She started out in newspapers as a reporter and feature writer, and in 1994 she became the first woman of African-American heritage to win the Pulitzer Prize for journalism, when she was Chicago bureau chief of the New York Times. More recently she published her second book Caste: the Origins of our Discontents, an examination of racial stratification. The New York Times described it as the “keynote nonfiction book of the American century thus far” and it also won praise from President Obama.

Isabel's choices include works by Camille Saint-Saëns, John Coltrane, Philip Glass and Georg Philipp Telemann.

Libby Jackson Apr 16, 2023

Libby Jackson is the head of Space Exploration for the UK Space Agency. She has turned a childhood passion for space into a wide-ranging career. She was flight instructor and controller at Europe’s Mission Control Centre for the International Space Station. She then joined the UK Space Agency in 2014 and led their education programme when the astronaut Tim Peake went into space. She is now one of Britain’s leading experts in human spaceflight, and last year was awarded an OBE for her work.

Libby’s musical passions reflect the vast wonder of space but also her love of choral music and her adventures in Newfoundland as a teenager with works by Handel, Verdi and Shanneyganock.

Producer Clare Walker

Steve Rosenberg reveals his all-time musical highlights Apr 09, 2023

Steve Rosenberg is the BBC’s Russia editor.

After studying Russian at university, he moved to Moscow in 1991 and since then has charted the transformation of the country – from the conflict in Chechnya and the Beslan school siege to President Putin’s rise to power and the impact of the current war against Ukraine.

His musical passions include - perhaps unsurprisingly - Russian composers such as Rachmaninov, but his choices also draw on childhood memories and the many hours he spent watching TV. Steve is a keen pianist, and he recalls the moment he played for President Gorbachev, who sang Russian songs to his accompaniment. Steve also posts piano improvisations and compositions on social media - anything from Postman Pat in the style of Tchaikovsky to a piece he wrote inspired by birds sitting on a telegraph wire.

Producer Clare Walker

Robert Powell Mar 28, 2023

Robert Powell is one of our best-known actors, with a career that began in the late sixties and exploded into almost instant fame; since then, there have been some fifty films, including “The Thirty-Nine Steps” and “The Italian Job”, numerous theatre roles, and television appearances which have included six years on Holby City. For many people, though, he will always be Gustav Mahler thanks to Ken Russell’s 1973 biopic; for some, he became a memorable representation of Jesus Christ, thanks to his starring role in Zeffirelli’s six-hour epic.

Robert Powell begins by choosing Mahler’s famous Adagietto from the Fifth Symphony. He listened to Mahler non-stop when rehearsing for the role, but was still surprised by some of the eccentric things Ken Russell asked him to do: he will never forget floating for hours in a freezing lake. He talks about the impact of early fame, conjuring up the excitement of the King’s Road in the “swinging sixties”, and meeting his wife, Babs, who danced with Pan’s People. And he tells the story of how, when he was playing Jesus, he delivered the Sermon on the Mount and “something really extraordinary happened”. These days he is a devoted grandfather, making up for the time he couldn’t spend with his family when he was away filming. Other music choices include Stravinsky, Bach, Janacek, and his hero Bob Dylan.

A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke

Helena Kennedy Mar 19, 2023

Helena Kennedy is one of Britain's most distinguished lawyers. Brought up in a Glasgow tenement flat, she was the first in her family to go to university. But instead of going to Glasgow University to read English and becoming a teacher, as they expected, she startled everyone by travelling to London - to study for the Bar. Some of her friends misunderstood and thought she’d gone south to find bar work. This was the end of the sixties, a time when there were extremely few women barristers. Since then, her ambition, fierce intelligence and considerable charm have taken her right to the top, and she now sits in the House of Lords as Baroness Kennedy of the Shaws. She created a huge stir when she published her first book, Eve was Framed, in 1992 – a shocking examination of how the criminal justice system fails women. Three years ago, she felt so little had changed that she published a sequel – in a book with the title Misjustice. Helen Kennedy campaigns now too on wider human rights issues, such as the persecution and murder of women in Iran and the shocking genocide of the Uighurs in China.

In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Helena Kennedy looks back to the childhood which has been so influential on her campaigns for justice, and chooses the music which has sustained her through a series of difficult and high-profile cases. Her playlist includes Handel, Bach, Schubert, George Benjamin, James MacMillan, and her favourite Puccini opera, with Mimi’s famous aria from La Boheme.

A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke

Peter J Conradi Mar 12, 2023

Back when he was studying English at UEA, Peter J Conradi had a friend who ran the student literary society, organizing writers to come to Norwich and speak. He went along to a meeting and the speaker there changed the whole course of his life. The writer was Iris Murdoch. She became a friend, and he became – in his words – her “disciple”, and eventually her biographer. And then Peter and his partner, Jim O’Neill, spent eight months caring for Iris at the end of her life, as Alzheimer's took hold – they listened to a lot of music together. Peter has spent his career as an English Professor at the University of Kingston and his biography of Iris Murdoch is not his only book: he’s also written about Dostoevsky, John Fowles, and Angus Wilson; about grief, about becoming a Buddhist, and about dogs.

In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Peter discusses the extraordinary power Iris Murdoch exerted over all her friends and lovers, and her secretiveness, so that each would be kept in a separate compartment. He remembers how she kept singing and dancing right up to the end. And he reveals his own mental health struggles, and how Buddhism has helped him. Music choices include Strauss, Bartok, Bach, Britten’s War Requiem, and the Anthem by Leonard Cohen that contains the famous words “There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.”

A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke

Wayne Sleep Feb 26, 2023

Wayne Sleep tells Michael Berkeley about the music that has inspired his career of nearly 60 years.

Wayne Sleep is one of the most celebrated dancers of all time. He’s performed more than fifty leading roles for the Royal Ballet, and had roles created for him by choreographers including Frederick Ashton, Ninette de Valois and Rudolf Nureyev. Equally at home on the stage of the Royal Opera house, performing musical theatre in the West End, choreographing, directing or teaching, he’s known for his versatility, flawless technique, dramatic flair and humour.

He made headlines around in the world in 1985 when he danced – to the total surprise of everyone there - with Diana, Princess of Wales, on the stage of the Royal Opera House. He tells Michael about the secrecy surrounding their rehearsals and the friendship between them that followed their performance.

Wayne chooses the music that has shaped his long career including pieces by Mahler, Britten and Andrew Lloyd Webber. And, in a highly emotional moment, he hears for the first time since his childhood the voice of his adored mother on a record specially restored for this programme.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Susie Boyt Feb 21, 2023

The novelist and journalist Susie Boyt tells Michael Berkeley about her lifelong passions for music, theatre and dancing.

Whether she’s writing black comedies about dysfunctional families or about her intense love of Judy Garland, Susie Boyt is unafraid to address the big questions in all our lives. Her seven novels explore how we can best take care of people, how we can survive life’s inevitable traumas and how we might live alongside the loss of people we love.

Susie chooses pieces by Mozart, Beethoven and Britten as well as music from the ballet Giselle that conjures up the fragility and vulnerability of childhood. Susie’s father was the painter Lucian Freud and we hear a song by the music hall star Gus Elen which recalls the many hours she sat for him in his studio sharing their love of song lyrics.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Simon Thurley Feb 12, 2023

The historian Simon Thurley tells Michael Berkeley about his passion for ancient buildings and the music associated with them.

At the age of seven, Simon Thurley dug up what turned out to be Roman remains in his back garden in Cambridgeshire, and a lifelong passion for history - and historic buildings - was ignited.

He went on to work as Curator of Historic Royal Palaces and as the Director of the Museum of London. Then, in 2002, at the astonishingly young age of 39, he was appointed Chief Executive of English Heritage, a post he held for 13 years, during which time he was responsible for overseeing over 400 historic sites from Dover Castle to Stonehenge.

He is the author of more than a dozen books about history and architecture and since 2021 he has chaired the National Heritage Memorial Fund, the fund of last resort to protect the nation’s most vulnerable heritage when other routes have failed.

Simon tells Michael about the building mania of Henry VIII, how we can make old buildings sustainable to live in today, and what the future might hold for the Royal Palaces under King Charles III.

He chooses music by Holst which reminds him of his religious childhood, an opera by Bellini which conjures up the English Civil War, and music by Purcell which reminds him of up Hampton Court, one of the buildings he loves most and which he helped to restore after a devastating fire.

Producer: Jane Greenwood

A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Kaffe Fassett Feb 05, 2023

Kaffe Fassett’s textiles are unmistakable: in bright cerise and crimson and cobalt, his stripes and flowers burst onto the scene back in the seventies, and he’s been designing ever since. Brought up in a log cabin on the Californian coast, he’s lived for fifty years in Kilburn, north-west London, a house where every surface is painted or mosaicked or embroidered – and stuffed full of antique textiles and pots. In fact, it’s so full of stuff that his partner, Brandon, had to retreat to a white room of his own. But Kaffe would like us all to get sewing, or embroidering or knitting. He’s the author of numerous books which share his designs, and currently has an exhibition of his quilts at the Fashion and Textile Museum that will soon travel around Scotland.

In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Kaffe reveals that he first left California for Britain as a young man after a chance meeting with Christopher Isherwood, who so beguiled him that he was determined to see Europe for himself. He talks about growing up gay at a time when it was still illegal, and how he never felt he fitted in – he was the boy at school wearing bright orange corduroy. He reveals that he bought some wool and then begged a woman opposite him on the train home to teach him to knit. Since then, he’s never looked back, and however busy he is, he makes time to knit and embroider, finding it a chance to meditate and recover.

His music choices include Arvo Pärt, The Beatles and Schumann’s “Scenes from Childhood”.

Joanna Scanlan Jan 29, 2023

Joanna Scanlan is one of our great comic actors; she’s best-known for “The Thick of It”, where she plays the obstructive civil servant Terri Coverley. But her range is much wider than comedy. She’s extraordinarily moving in “After Love”, Aleem Khan’s 2021 film about a widow who discovers her husband’s secret life – a performance so powerful that it dominates the whole film, and won her BAFTA’s lead actress award in 2022.

Before that, she played Charles Dickens's long-suffering wife, Catherine, in “The Invisible Woman” – and appeared in “Girl with a Pearl Earring” and “Notes on a Scandal”, to name just a couple of her film roles. On television she’s familiar from “The Larkins”, “No Offence” and “Puppy Love” – a series she co-wrote. She also co-wrote “Getting On”, a blackly comic portrayal of life on an NHS ward, which has become a great deal more topical in the fourteen years since it was first broadcast.

Born in Merseyside, Joanna Scanlan grew up in North Wales; she went to Cambridge to study history and law, and only got her first job as an actress when she was thirty-four, after having a breakdown.

She tells Michael about how that breakdown became a turning point, thanks to a doctor who told her that she would be ill all her life unless she acted. She remembers her schooldays in Wales, when she sang in a choir five times a day, and her early career working for the Arts Council, where the power-mad clock-watchers she worked with became the inspiration for the character of Terri Coverley.

A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke

Hugh Brody Jan 23, 2023

Brought up in a comfortable suburb of Sheffield, Hugh Brody has spent his life travelling to the most inhospitable corners of the world. For more than ten years he lived among the peoples of the Arctic and sub-Arctic, learning their languages, discovering their ways of being in the world, and helping map their territories so they could claim land rights. He has also worked in isolated villages in the west of Ireland, in the southern Kalahari, on Skid Row in Edmonton, Canada, and in tribal communities in western India.

He has explored these places over the last fifty-five years in a considerable body of work: more than a dozen films, dozens of essays, and ten books. The latest is a moving and beautifully written personal memoir, “Landscapes of Silence: from Childhood to the Arctic”. Married to the actress Juliet Stevenson, Hugh Brody now divides his time between Highgate, North London, and a house on the Suffolk coast, though he admits that he has never really “settled down”.

Hugh Brody’s music choices include Beethoven, Sibelius, Stravinsky, Clara Schumann, and the music he heard every day when living with an Inuit family: Johnny Cash.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Diana Melly Jan 15, 2023

The author Diana Melly tells Michael Berkeley about her life lived on a rollercoaster: she has experienced passion, great friendships and celebrity but also depression, illness, heartbreak and the deaths of two of her children.

Running through her life for 46 years was her enduring - but extremely complicated - marriage to the jazz musician and bon viveur George Melly, who died in 2007.

She has written two novels, a searingly honest memoir, and has co-edited the letters of her friend Jean Rhys as well as campaigning for charities concerned with dementia and drug abuse.

Diana Melly talks movingly about the deaths of her children and the happiness she and George found at the end of his life. And she describes her passion for trying new things late in life including ballroom dancing, philosophy and riding a tandem.

But her greatest new passion, developed in her eighties, is for opera and she chooses her favourite arias by Puccini, Massenet, Mozart, Gluck and Verdi.

And she reveals why, having been married to a jazzman for 46 years, there is no jazz on her music list.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Todd Field Jan 08, 2023

Todd Field began his career as a jazz musician and as an actor; he has appeared in over forty films, including Kubrick’s “Eyes Wide Shut” and Woody Allen’s “Radio Days”. He then went on to direct two full-length award-winning films, “In the Bedroom” - about grief and revenge in a close-knit family - and “Little Children”, starring Kate Winslet. Both were nominated for multiple Oscars. This week his third feature film “Tar” opens in Britain. Cate Blanchett stars as Lydia Tar, the conductor of a major German orchestra; the film is an exploration of the darker side of the classical music world, the power of the conductor, and of abusive power more generally – it’s also a celebration of some really wonderful music.

In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Todd Field talks about how he started writing “Tar” by interviewing classical musicians, and particularly women working in the industry. He looks back on his “free-range” childhood in Oregon, and tells how his wife financed his ambition to become a film director by buying a truck, going round flea-markets, and starting an interior-design shop. He reveals the struggle to release his award-winning film “In the Bedroom” after Harvey Weinstein bought it and demanded more and more cuts. Field won the fight and retained the film he believed in, but it took six months and a fiendishly clever strategy invented by his friend Tom Cruise.

Todd Field started out as a jazz musician in a big band, and his choices include two tracks by Sarah Vaughan, whom he met backstage at a concert in Oregon. Other choices include Mahler’s Symphony No 5; Elgar’s Cello Concerto; and Gorecki’s second string quartet, which played constantly in his head while making “Tar”.

A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke

Jonathan Romain Dec 11, 2022

Rabbi, writer and broadcaster Jonathan Romain is minister of Maidenhead Synagogue and one of Britain's leading rabbis in Reform Judaism. He’s the author of twenty books – some scholarly and learned, and others which are very funny – revealing the ups and downs of his day-to-day work, in a way that will resonate with vicars, priests and religious leaders of any description. He’s become a kind of agony uncle, dispensing advice on love affairs, marriage, parenthood, and he’s written about all this in “Confessions of a Rabbi” and in his latest book, “The Naked Rabbi”. On the more serious side, he’s a prominent figure in the campaign for Assisted Dying, he was awarded an MBE for his work on inter-faith marriage, and he’s spent much of the last year working with Ukrainian refugees.

In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Jonathan Romain talks about what he’s learned over the years as a rabbi about love and marriage, and why some of his views put him very much out on a limb. His playlist takes in Max Bruch, Leonard Cohen, Rimsky-Korsakov, and a tribute to his love of football. And he tells us his favourite Jewish joke.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Roma Agrawal Dec 04, 2022

The structural engineer and author Roma Agrawal tells Michael Berkeley about her passions for tall buildings, bridges, concrete and Indian classical dance.

Roma Agrawal is a highly successful woman operating in what is still very much a man’s world. Her job is, essentially, to make sure that the buildings, bridges, roads and tunnels we use every day don’t collapse. She spent six years working out the incredibly complex structure of the spire and foundations of the Shard in London, the tallest building in western Europe.

As well as engineering, Roma has another passion: she tells Michael about her lifelong love of the ancient Bharata Natyam form of Indian Classical Dance, and we hear the first piece of music she danced to as a child in Mumbai. She chooses songs by Abida Parveen, Anoushka Shankar and Nitin Sawhney as well as pieces by Tchaikovsky and by Carl Davis which drew her to Western music.

Roma tells Michael about her campaign to encourage more women to become engineers, why she decided to speak out about the emotional and physical strain of IVF and how working on the Shard helped her overcome her fear of heights.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Adam Rutherford Nov 27, 2022

The geneticist and broadcaster Adam Rutherford tells Michael Berkeley how his passion for music allows him to escape the rigours of science and enjoy the emotional side of life.

Adam Rutherford’s career in science has taken him from a PhD on the role of genetics in eye development to becoming a well-known broadcaster who campaigns against pseudoscience and racism.

Presenter of Radio 4’s Start the Week and The Curious Cases of Rutherford and Fry, he’s also the author of six bestselling books; a lecturer at University College London; and the recipient of the Royal Society David Attenborough Award for outstanding public engagement with science.

Adam shares some astonishing facts about our genes and our common ancestry: everyone of European descent is definitely directly descended from the eighth-century Emperor Charlemagne – and from the person who cleaned his boots.

Adam was a music scholar at school and his passion for the violin started with lessons at the age of four and culminated in playing with his teacher in Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique. We also hear his favourite piece of violin music, Beethoven’s Violin Concerto. Adam is the President of Humanists UK but asks for music from his two musical gods, Bach and Radiohead.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Simon Warrack Nov 20, 2022

Simon Warrack travels the world restoring the most sacred and beautiful buildings. As a stonemason he’s worked on the Rose Window of Canterbury Cathedral, the Trevi fountain in Rome, and the Temple of Angkor Watt in Cambodia. Coming from a professionally musical family - his father is the music writer John Warrack, his grandfather was the composer and conductor Guy Warrack – it’s no surprise that classical music is very important to him. But after taking a degree in Renaissance History at Warwick, Simon discovered his own personal vocation, and he’s now pre-eminent as a stone carver and advisor on the restoration of temples and religious statues. He lives in Rome but is currently in Britain with a delegation from Cambodia who are examining the treasures of British museums to see how many of them were looted illegally and should go back.

In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Simon Warrack talks about the joy and difficulty of cutting stone, and about how finding a pair of stone feet in the Cambodian jungle led him on a detective trail to discover how many religious artworks had been looted during the 1970s. Music choices include Mozart, Verdi, Elgar, Britten, Tippett and Vivaldi.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Julia Blackburn Nov 13, 2022

The writer Julia Blackburn talks to Michael Berkeley about how music helped her through her traumatic childhood and about the joy of late-flowering love.

Julia Blackburn is the author of novels, poetry, plays and books about historical figures including Napoleon, Billie Holiday, Goya, and the Norfolk artist John Craske, as well as books about grief, her love of animals, and the natural world. She’s also published memoirs, including an astonishing book about her childhood, The Three of Us.

Julia shares her love of Beethoven, Pergolesi, English folk song, music from central Africa, and the songs of Billie Holiday, which helped her through her a childhood marked by chaos and neglect.

And she tells Michael Berkeley about the happiness she has found in bringing up her own children, and the delight she has found in love later in life.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Stuart MacBride Nov 06, 2022

Stuart MacBride was born in Dumbarton and raised in Aberdeen; abandoning his studies to become an architect, he went to work on the oil rigs, scrubbing toilets. He then tried out careers as an actor, a web designer, and a computer programmer, all the while writing away after work – he wrote four novels before his first, Cold Granite, was published in 2005. Since then, he’s become one of our most successful and prolific crime writers, with twenty-four titles in all, sometimes labelled as “tartan noir”. His latest, about the hunt for a serial killer, is called No Less the Devil. Reviewers say things like “this isn’t a novel to read over dinner”, or “slick, gruesome and brutally intelligent.” Gruesome crime-writing apart, Stuart MacBride’s other notable achievements include winning Celebrity Mastermind (his subject was A.A. Milne) and coming first in the World Stovies Championship.

In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Stuart MacBride reveals how his “very dull” childhood developed his imagination as a writer, and how he first discovered crime fiction in the Aberdeen public library. He went to the library every day, read under the covers at night, and borrowed new books the following morning, moving on from the Hardy Boys to Dashiell Hammett.

For Stuart MacBride, music is essential; he listens continually when he works, and his latest novel was written entirely to the soundtrack of Wagner’s Ring. Alongside Wagner, choices include Beethoven, Purcell, Bruch and Holst. He also introduces music by the Australian composer Sean O’Boyle, a concerto for didgeridoo, which he loves because it’s so dark.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

William Kentridge Oct 23, 2022

It’s hard to think of an artist with a more striking and ambitious range than William Kentridge; his work spans etching, drawing, collage, huge tapestries - as well as film, theatre, dance and opera. He was born in Johannesburg and brought up during the apartheid regime; his art is highly politically charged. His parents, both lawyers, were notable figures in the anti-apartheid movement – his father being Sir Sydney Kentridge, who represented Nelson Mandela. For forty years now William Kentridge has used his art to explore the legacy of colonialism, and the barbarity of war. He’s probably best known for his charcoal sketches, which become stop-go animations, preserving almost every change and rubbing-out. But he has a keen eye for the absurdity of life too, so we watch typewriters turn into trees, birds flying off the pages of dictionaries, or a film titled “Portrait of the artist as a coffee pot”.

In conversation with Michael Berkeley, William Kentridge talks about the importance of music in his work, and brings a playlist that reflects a lifetime of listening. We hear a famous 1937 recording of a Monteverdi madrigal; Janet Baker singing one of the songs from “Les Nuits d’ete” by Berlioz; a duet from The Magic Flute; a rare recording of the American guitarist Elizabeth Cotten; and a collaboration between the Kronos Quartet and a trio of musicians from Mali.

He looks back to his childhood in South Africa, and what it was like to grow up under the cruel system of apartheid; and he reveals how important early failures were in enabling him to see the way forward.

A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke

Arifa Akbar Oct 17, 2022

Arifa Akbar tells Michael Berkeley about her nocturnal life as a theatre critic and her desire to tell the story of her sister's death from tuberculosis.

Arifa Akbar almost never has a quiet night in; as chief theatre critic of the Guardian she is out reviewing a production almost every evening. She also sits on the boards of the Orwell Foundation and of English PEN, and judges prizes including the UK Theatre Awards and the Women’s Prize for Fiction.

In conversation with Michael Berkeley, she discusses the book she wrote about the death of her older sister, Fauzia, from tuberculosis, in which she explores Fauzia’s troubled life and why the medical profession failed to diagnose her illness until it was too late.

Arifa chooses music from Bollywood films which remind her of her childhood, which was split between a prosperous and lively extended family in Lahore and poverty and social isolation in London. And she reveals how, after the death of her sister, she began to explore the tubercular heroines of nineteenth-century opera. Initially repelled by the glamorization of these women dying awful deaths, she has now come to love the music of Verdi and Puccini.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Ronnie Archer-Morgan Oct 09, 2022

Ronnie Archer-Morgan, from The Antiques Roadshow, tells Michael Berkeley about his tumultuous life and the music that has accompanied it.

Ronnie had a terrible start in life. His English father died in a car crash before he was born and his Sierra Leonean mother had severe mental health problems that made her violent and abusive. His childhood was spent in and out of the care system.

He tells Michael Berkeley how a school trip to the Victoria & Albert Museum in London ignited his life-long fascination with antiques, and how he learned the tricks of the trade exploring junk shops and markets while doing a rich variety of other jobs – model-maker, DJ at Ronnie Scott’s, boutique manager and celebrity hairdresser.

Eventually antiques took over from everything else: he became a consultant to Sotheby’s, opened a Knightsbridge gallery, and he delights in presiding over the ‘miscellaneous’ table on The Antiques Roadshow.

For Ronnie, the importance of objects is in the stories they tell and their emotional significance – and music is the same. He chooses pieces to remind him of different times in his life: a Handel aria that takes him back to rare moments of peace in his childhood; jazz from Donald Byrd which he played at Ronnie Scott’s; pieces by Mozart and by Dvorak that sparked his passion for classical music; and a song by Marvin Gaye, who wandered one day into Ronnie’s hair salon and shared a beer with him.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Jules Montague Oct 03, 2022

Jules Montague trained as a doctor in Dublin before moving to London and becoming a consultant neurologist, specialising in treating people with dementia. This led to her first book, "Lost and Found: Why losing our memories doesn’t mean losing ourselves". After fifteen years as a doctor, she has now left clinical practice to become an investigative journalist, focusing on some of the deeper questions raised by her medical work. Her second book is called The Imaginary Patient: How Diagnosis gets us Wrong.

In conversation with Michael Berkeley, she explains that although most of us are relieved when our symptoms are explained by a medical label, diagnosis is not always a good thing. Her experience working as a doctor in Mozambique and in India has revealed how differently diseases may be diagnosed across different cultures. In some ways, she claims, a diagnosis of “spirit possession” may actually be more helpful to the patient than the label “PTSD”. She talks too about her work as a neurologist treating patients with brain damage and dementia, and how it’s led her to ask questions about how much of the “real” person remains when memory is lost.

Jules’s parents are from the Assam region of India and took her back as a child to spend time there; her music choices include a New Year dance from Assam, as well as piano music by Beethoven, a heart-breaking scene from Puccini’s Madame Butterfly; and music by Stravinsky, which he finished soon after suffering a stroke.

A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke

Gwen Adshead Sep 25, 2022

The Broadmoor psychiatrist and psychotherapist Dr Gwen Adshead shares her passion for choral music with Michael Berkeley.

When people ask Gwen Adshead what she does for a living she sometimes tells them she is a florist, because she is unable to face another conversation about why she has devoted her life to working with ‘monsters’.

Gwen has spent thirty years as a psychiatrist and as a pioneering forensic psychotherapist working at Broadmoor Hospital in Berkshire with some of society’s most violent, and vilified, offenders.

The author of more than 100 academic books and papers, Gwen recently co-wrote a best-selling book, with her friend Eileen Horne, for a more general audience: The Devil You Know takes the reader into the therapy room at Broadmoor to try to understand people often labelled as ‘monstrous’, including serial killers, stalkers and child sex offenders.

Gwen tells Michael about her work at Broadmoor, encouraging offenders to understand what drove them to violence, to face up to what they have done, and to try to find a future free of violence. She finds parallels in her work with music: the leader of a group therapy session has much in common with a conductor; and as a psychotherapist Gwen has to listen to her patients with the same concentration as when she is listening to fellow choir members.

Gwen’s passion for choral music runs through the programme with pieces by Tallis, Gibbons, Lauridsen and Verdi, and a Maori song that conjures up her early childhood in New Zealand.

Producer: Jane Greenwood

A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

James Runcie Sep 18, 2022

Sometimes a musical work of art is so perfect, so magnificent, that it’s almost impossible to remember the work that’s gone on, behind the scenes, from the early drafts to the anxiety and relief of the first performance. That’s certainly true of a masterpiece such as Bach’s St Matthew Passion. But writer James Runcie wants us to think about what went on in Bach’s mind while he was creating that magnificent Passion, and he’s written both a play and a novel about it. The novel, his twelfth, is called The Great Passion and it was published earlier this year; it was also broadcast on Radio 4 just before Easter.

James is an award-wining film-maker, playwright and artistic director who has worked at the BBC, the Bath Literary Festival and Southbank Centre. He’s also the author of the Grantchester detective novels, now filming their eighth series for television. The hero’s a young priest, who solves crimes while wrestling with problems of religious faith - and religion is something James Runcie knows all about, as his father was Archbishop of Canterbury.

In conversation with Michael Berkeley, James Runcie talks about the influence of his father, and of his unconventional mother, who was a pianist and piano teacher; in their household, he says, religion was optional, but music was compulsory. He shares his passion for the works of Bach in three of his choices, including the Matthew Passion. And he talks movingly about the death of his wife, the drama director Marilyn Imrie, from Motor Neurone Disease. When she was no longer able to speak, he played her music.

A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke

Katherine Rundell Jul 09, 2022

Katherine Rundell started writing for children at the age of only 21; in little more than a decade she’s become one of our leading children’s writers, with six books so far, including the award-winning Rooftoppers, the story of a girl who travels across the rooftops of Paris looking for her mother. Katherine herself is a roof climber and a tightrope walker.

Born in 1987, she grew up in Zimbabwe and Brussels; after taking her undergraduate degree at Oxford, she was elected a Fellow of All Souls College where she wrote her PhD thesis on John Donne. Her book on that great metaphysical poet, Super-infinite: The Transformations of John Donne, was published earlier this year, to celebrate the 450th anniversary of the poet’s birth.

Katherine Rundell tells Michael Berkeley that her books set out to explain to children that life does contain loss, and pain, and darkness, but that it is always possible to discover joy. Her own childhood was marked by the loss of her sister and she says it is no accident that she lost her sister when she herself was ten and that she writes for ten-year-olds now. She talks too about her love of tightrope-walking and roof-climbing, and about her passion for John Donne, choosing two musical settings of his work. Other music choices include Mozart, Bach, Strauss, Fauré and Miles Davis.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Francesca Simon Jun 12, 2022

Anyone who’s spent any time with children in the last thirty years will know Horrid Henry and his brother, Perfect Peter. They’re the creations of Francesca Simon, and they’ve appeared in 25 books, been translated into 31 languages and sold 25 million copies. They seem to embody archetypes: the chaotic, naughty brother who’s always in trouble, and the neat well-behaved sibling who’s always anxious to please the parents.

In Private Passions, Francesca Simon tells Michael Berkeley that her own emotional memories of childhood are extraordinarily vivid. She was brought up living on the beach in Malibu, where her father Mayo Simon was a screenwriter, but then moved around to Paris and New York and London. It all sounds glamorous, but actually, she says, it was hard. They moved so often that she always felt like an outsider. Francesca chooses music that reflects the very diverse influences of her early life: Yiddish and Breton folk songs, and Jascha Haifetz playing the Bach Double Violin Concerto. She also chooses music by the young British composer Gavin Higgins, for whom she’s written a libretto for his new work The Faerie Bride, and by E. J. Moeran, a composer she thinks should be much better known.

A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke

Anne Glenconner Jun 07, 2022

In this special programme for the Queen’s platinum jubilee, Michael Berkeley’s guest is the author and former lady-in-waiting to Princess Margaret, Anne Glenconner, who tells Michael about her long life as a friend of the royal family, her marriage to the outrageous Colin Tennant, and how she survived unimaginable family tragedy.

At 11.15am on June 2nd 1953, Lady Anne Coke stood at the door of Westminster Abbey, dressed in a gorgeous embroidered white satin gown. She was 20, one of six maids of honour about to pick up the Queen’s 21-foot-long velvet train and follow her up the aisle at the start of the Coronation.

What followed that momentous day for Lady Anne Coke, who became Lady Glenconner, was a life of continued service to the royal family, as well as running enormous houses, having five children, hosting glamorous parties, and travelling the world. Then at the age of 87 she published her bestselling memoir Lady in Waiting, followed by two novels. Her new book Whatever Next? will be published in the autumn.

Anne Glenconner tells Michael about the exciting days leading up to the coronation and her emotions as Elgar’s Nimrod was played at the very start of the service. She reminisces about playing on Holkham beach as a child with the Queen and Princess Margaret, and plays music that helped her through the terrible events that engulfed her three sons in the 1980s.

And she also talks frankly, and with great humour, about life with Colin Tennant, later Lord Glenconner: the temper tantrums which got him banned from airlines, the ruined trips to the opera, the excruciating first evening of their honeymoon, and the final, awful twist in the tale of their marriage.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media Production for BBC Radio 3

Jarvis Cocker May 29, 2022

In a wide-ranging and engaging interview, musician Jarvis Cocker tells Michael Berkeley about the role classical music plays in his life and relationships.

Fortunately for the world of music Jarvis Cocker abandoned his early ambition to be an astronaut and instead, at the age of 14, had the idea of forming a band called Pulp during an Economics lesson at school in Sheffield. Some 15 years later, Pulp was one of the most successful bands in the world, with a string of witty, emotionally raw, and musically inventive hits rooted in the details of real life.

Since then, he has become a much-loved radio presenter with the long-running "Jarvis Cocker’s Sunday Service" on BBC Six Music, and "Wireless Nights" on Radio 4. Amongst numerous other projects he has formed a new band, JARV IS…, and he has just published a memoir of his childhood and the early years of Pulp called Good Pop, Bad Pop.

Jarvis describes how, during a long period of convalescence after an accident, he transformed the way he wrote songs, realizing that the details of everyday life around him in Sheffield provided a goldmine of material. He tells Michael how he coped with fame when it eventually arrived in his thirties, and how he has never conquered his stage fright.

Jarvis chooses music by Schubert, Max Richter, Rachmaninoff, Eric Satie and Delius, all guaranteed to give him the ‘tingle’ factor. He talks about the power of particular vinyl records to bring back memories of his teenage years in Sheffield and of his son as he was growing up in Paris. And he talks movingly about the role Richter’s music played in his relationship with his dying father who had been absent for most of Jarvis’s life.

Producer: Jane Greenwood

Kat Arney May 22, 2022

The science writer and broadcaster Dr Kat Arney shares with Michael Berkeley her passion for the harp and her revelatory new research into the causes of cancer.

Gone are the days when cancer could not be mentioned but was “the Big C”. It is just as well, since about half of us will develop cancer during our lifetime. And as the treatments and drugs improve all the time, so does our knowledge of what causes it. Kat Arney’s latest, award-winning, book, Rebel Cell: "Cancer, Evolution and the Science of Life", explains the revelatory new breakthroughs happening in labs around the world.

After a PhD in Genetics at Cambridge University, Kat Arney worked for ten years as Science Communications Manager at Cancer Research UK. And then she left that job to go freelance - writing books and newspaper articles about science, broadcasting and podcasting including a recent Radio 4 series, Ingenious, about how individual genes shape our lives.

But as well as science Kat Arney has another passion, for music, and particularly the harp, which she has played since she was a teenager both as a classical instrument and in bands. She chooses music by the harpist Ruth Wall; Arnold Bax’s Harp Quintet; and we hear Kat herself playing with the Ethiopian musician Mulatu Astatke and the Heliocentrics.

And she lets Michael into the secret of how to fit a harp into the back of an Austin Metro.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Waheed Arian May 15, 2022

As we’ve watched the war in Ukraine unfold, we’ve seen huge crowds of people queuing at the border, dragging small suitcases, carrying babies and children, leaving their homeland behind. Dr Waheed Arian knows what it’s like to be forced to leave your home, suddenly, and under fire; he’s a refugee from an earlier war, the Soviet-Afghan War, which lasted for almost ten years and claimed the lives of as many as two million Afghan civilians. Five million people are estimated to have left the country as refugees, and Waheed Arian was one of them.

In 1988, at the age of five, he escaped on horseback from Afghanistan to Pakistan, arriving at a refugee camp on the North-West frontier. In the camp he almost died from malnutrition, malaria and TB. But – just in time - he managed to get medical treatment, and the doctor who treated him inspired an ambition to be a doctor himself. Dr Waheed Arian is now an A and E doctor in the NHS and he has founded a pioneering medical charity, Arian Teleheal. He has received many awards for his work, and has written about his life in a vivid memoir, “In the Wars”.

In a moving conversation with Michael Berkeley, Waheed describes the dangerous journey that brought him to Britain, where he was at first imprisoned in Feltham Young Offenders Institution. He reveals how he fulfilled his early ambition to become a doctor, despite having had almost no schooling. And he chooses music which takes him back to childhood, watching Bollywood films with his family, and to his early years in Britain, when he was befriended by an old woman who played Schubert to him. Other choices include music by Charlie Chaplin, and a song by Ahmad Wali, who like Waheed fled Afghanistan.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus Media Production for BBC Radio 3.

Osman Yousefzada May 01, 2022

The fashion designer and artist Osman Yousefzada tells Michael Berkeley about his childhood in a strictly religious Pashtun community in Birmingham.

Osman Yousefzada shot to fame when Beyoncé wore one of his designs to the 2013 Grammy Awards. Lady Gaga, Thandiwe Newton and Taylor Swift are among his many other celebrity clients. He is also an acclaimed artist, curator and film-maker, and the creator of one of the world’s largest ever pieces of public art: the ‘wrapping’ of the Selfridges building in Birmingham in geometric patterns inspired by Islamic art.

Educated at the School of Oriental and African Studies, Central St Martins and Cambridge University, Osman grew up in a community described by the Daily Mail as ‘the Jihadi capital of Britain’. His newly published memoir, The Go Between, is a fascinating account of his childhood and his first steps into the outside world while navigating both racism and family expectations.

He tells Michael Berkeley about his beloved mother, a talented seamstress who inspired him as a designer: she was married at 14, had her first child at 15 and lived most of her life in Birmingham, but remained illiterate and never learned to speak English. She hardly ever left the house. Osman’s sisters were taken out of school at the age of 11 and also shut away inside the family home.

Osman chooses music inspired by the Sufi tradition of Islamic mysticism by Abida Parveen and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, and a song by the Grammy-winning Pakistani-American Arooj Aftab, as well as pieces by Philip Glass and by the Canadian composer and cellist Zoe Keating.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Clare Marx Apr 24, 2022

Looking ahead to International Women’s Day, this is a second chance to hear Michael Berkeley’s interview with the trailblazing surgeon Dame Clare Marx, who sadly died in November 2022; the programme is repeated by kind permission of her husband, Andrew.

Clare Marx was the first woman to become President of the Royal College of Surgeons of England in 2014, and the first woman to become the Chair of the General Medical Council five years later. Clare Marx had to overcome significant prejudice to reach the top of her field but in 2007 she received a CBE and in 2018 a DBE for services to medicine. But then came the blow of a terminal diagnosis of incurable pancreatic cancer. With characteristic courage and grace, she announced her resignation from the General Medical Council.

When she came into the studio, Clare Marx had only eight months to live, but no one would have guessed she was ill. She was calm, elegant, composed. But she knew that this would be her last broadcast interview, a message to her colleagues, her family, indeed to everyone listening. Her music choices include Britten’s Sea Interludes, Verdi’s Requiem, and Mozart’s trio “Soave sia il vento”, a message to all who are about to sail away across the sea. “May the winds be gentle, may the waves be calm.”

Michael Berkeley began by asking Clare about that moving public letter of resignation, in which she said: “Since receiving this news, I've been reminded once again of the importance and power of kindness in everything we do as doctors.”

Pancreatic Cancer UK www.pancreaticcancer.org.uk

Information and support: Cancer https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/1KkkxvD0G1w4l294QCrQZbh/information-and-support-cancer

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Tim Birkhead Apr 17, 2022

For Easter Day, Private Passions celebrates Spring and the music of birdsong with one of the world’s leading experts on birds, Professor Tim Birkhead.

An award-winning scientist, author and university lecturer, Tim Birkhead is Emeritus Professor of Zoology at the University of Sheffield, and the author of many books that communicate his life-long passion, including “What it’s like to be a bird” and most recently “Birds and Us”, a 12,000-year history of our relationship with birds, from cave art to conservation.

His choices include music that Mozart taught to a starling, and the old Catalan “Song of the Birds”, played by Pablo Casals. There will also be the music of birdsong itself, from the Dawn Chorus to the song of the bullfinch, which Tim Birkhead regards as the ultimate songbird. The programme includes the famous recording of Beatrice Harrison playing her cello to a nightingale with the nightingale answering back. Tim Birkhead explores the story of the recording and considers the enduring impact of Beatrice’s duet.

A correction: Since we broadcast this programme, new evidence has been brought to light. We’ve now learned that the recording initially believed to be the original 1924 broadcast of Beatrice Harrison and the nightingale, as labelled by the BBC Archives and the National Sound Archive, is instead likely to be a commercial recording released in 1927 by HMV. The labelling has now been corrected to ensure this mix up won’t happen again. Suggestions that the song of the nightingale in 1924 may have been sung by a siffleur are not new but probably impossible to verify since it seems likely that the original 1924 broadcast was never recorded, as the recording technology did not exist at the time. Claims about the real bird being replaced in 1924 by a professional bird imitator, Madame Saberon, are based on written testimony to the BBC from relatives of Madame Saberon, as well as accounts from Madame Saberon herself. There continues to be competing accounts of this extraordinary musical event as well as huge public interest; this demonstrates just how important the story of Beatrice and the nightingale is in the history of broadcasting.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Francesco da Mosto Apr 03, 2022

Michael Berkeley’s guest is the architect, author and broadcaster Francesco da Mosto.

With his shock of white hair, boundless energy and unmistakable accent, Francesco da Mosto is for many of us the quintessential Venetian.

His distant ancestors were some of the first settlers to colonise the swampy islands that were to become Venice, fleeing Attila the Hun in the 5th century, and since then the da Mosto family has been at the forefront of Venetian public life.

One of the team of architects who restored the opera house in Venice after a devastating fire in 1996, Francesco shot to fame with his BBC television series exploring Venice, Italy and the Mediterranean. And with his English wife Jane, he’s at the heart of the campaign to find a sustainable future for this most beautiful and vulnerable city.

Francesco tells Michael about the joys and travails of living in Venice, and about his life in a crumbling palazzo just off the Grand Canal, shared by his parents, his children and more than twenty other Venetian families. And he tells Michael how to cook his favourite Sunday lunch dish.

His music choices are a celebration of Italy, with arias from operas by Puccini and by Verdi; a much loved song by Mina Mazzini; music by Ennio Morricone, Alessandro Marcello, and the most famous Venetian composer of them all: Vivaldi.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3.

Richard Holloway Mar 27, 2022

Richard Holloway, former Bishop of Edinburgh, talks to Michael Berkeley about faith, doubt, compassion and the powerful emotions stirred up by his favourite music.

In 1948, at the age of just 14, Richard Holloway left his home in a small town near Glasgow to train for the priesthood at an Anglican monastery in Nottinghamshire. Nearly four decades later, after working in some of Scotland’s most deprived inner-city parishes, he was appointed Bishop of Edinburgh and Primus of the Church of Scotland. But in 2000 he resigned, unable any longer to reconcile his religious doubts, and his views, especially on gay rights, with church orthodoxy.

As he’s navigated his unusual spiritual journey he’s remained an honest, compassionate voice, cutting through dogma and unafraid to engage with uncertainty and celebrate our humanity.

Richard Holloway has presented many radio series and has written 33 books, the latest being Stories We Tell Ourselves: Making Meaning in a Meaningless Universe, an exploration of how we can try to make sense of our fleeting lives in a post-religious world.

For Richard Holloway, listening to music is a deeply emotional experience; he chooses pieces by Rachmaninov, Elgar and Brahms, and a psalm and a hymn that bring back powerful memories of life in the seminary as a teenager.

And Robert Burns’ Ca’ the Yowes reminds him of the joy of singing with his family around the kitchen table.

Producer: Jane Greenwood

A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Misan Harriman Mar 20, 2022

Misan Harriman didn’t become a photographer till five years ago, when his wife gave him a camera for his fortieth birthday. Since then he’s become world-famous, photographing celebrities such as Tom Cruise, Cate Blanchett, and Meghan Markle – his was the romantic black-and-white photograph of Harry and Meghan announcing her pregnancy last year. Alongside these high-profile celebrity commissions, he’s also become a photographer known for documenting Extinction Rebellion, anti-Trump protests, and the Black Lives Matter movement. In 2020 he became the first black person in the 104-year history of British Vogue to shoot the cover of its prestigious September issue; last year he became the Chair of the Southbank Centre, the renowned arts complex in London.

In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Misan talks about his journey to become a photographer, from early childhood in Nigeria to his time at an English boarding school. He reveals his “superpower” of dyslexia, and how he’s found a new way of shooting portraits in lockdown: “remote photography”.

Misan Harriman is a passionate film buff, and all his music choices come from movies that have made a profound impression on him, from the soundtrack to “Ghost” which he saw as a boy, to William Walton’s score for “Henry V” and the moving Dunkirk scene in “Atonement”.

A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke

Katy Brand Mar 13, 2022

Katy Brand talks to Michael Berkeley about obsession, opera, brass bands and juggling her career as a comedian, actor, novelist and screenwriter.

On television, Katy Brand’s Big Ass Comedy Show ran for three series and won her a British Comedy Award, and she has appeared in everything from Peep Show to Midsomer Murders. Her stand-up shows at the Edinburgh Festival have been highly acclaimed, and she is a regular on BBC Radio comedy and drama. Katy has starred in musicals such as West Side Story and Everyone’s Talking About Jamie; and she has written plays and screenplays – her feature film Good Luck to You, Leo Grande, starring Emma Thompson, premiered at the recent Sundance Festival and will be on our cinema screens this autumn.

Katy tells Michael about her childhood experience as an extra at the Royal Opera House; her grandfather, the trumpet player and brass band conductor Geoffrey Brand; and her passion for the madrigals of the 17th-century Italian composer Carlo Gesualdo.

And she describes the obsessions that dominated her early life, which have provided rich material for her books and comedy shows: her conversion to born-again Christianity as a teenager and her ongoing passion for the films Dirty Dancing and Mary Poppins.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Esther Rantzen Mar 06, 2022

Back when Mrs Thatcher was prime minister, it was said there were three powerful women in Britain. There was Mrs Thatcher herself; there was the Queen; and there was Esther Rantzen. Breaking into television at a time when it was very much a man’s world, she became one of the most recognisable and powerful voices in the country, thanks to her Sunday-night show, That’s Life, which ran for 21 years. In today’s fragmented television world, it’s almost unbelievable quite how popular that programme was in the 70s and 80s; up to 22 million people tuned in for a mix of consumer affairs, cheeky vox pops, and rudely shaped root vegetables sent in by viewers. It was a programme that exposed both faulty washing machines and the shortage of organ donors, and it created some serious social campaigns. In 1986 Esther Rantzen set up Childline, which is now run by the NSPCC, and in 2012 she launched Silver Line, offering support to older people. In 2015 she was made a Dame for services to children and older people.

In conversation with Michael Berkeley Esther Rantzen looks back on her early days in broadcasting, when her job was to create sound effects for dramas by running round the studio flapping a huge umbrella (to simulate a pterodactyl, apparently). She talks about how she began to realize the scale of abuse suffered by the children in this country, which led to the creation of Childline. She reveals, too, the pleasure she takes now in living in the country, leaving her career behind, and realising that life is for living, not working.

Music choices include Elgar, Georges Brassens, Brahms’s Double Concerto, Grieg, and Carmen Jones.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Theaster Gates Feb 27, 2022

Theaster Gates is a potter, a sculptor, a film-maker, a curator of black history, a real estate developer and a professor of fine art in Chicago, where he lives - and where he’s also transformed a whole run-down area near the university. When he was made a professor in 2007, he bought a derelict bank for a dollar, tore out the urinals, cut them up and sold them off at five thousand dollars each as artworks – thereby raising enough money to create a large new art centre. That was just the beginning, as he explains. Gates’s art and installation work is shown all over the world, and current projects include a library for Obama and this year’s Serpentine Pavilion building. As his recent show at the Whitechapel revealed, his work is ambitious and provocative - he takes pots and deconstructs them so that they’re exploding, back to the original clay. He films his work in dream-like spaces - a huge abandoned factory, for instance, full of broken bricks and haunting music, including his own singing.

Theaster Gates is also a musician, the founder of a group called The Black Monks of Mississippi, which aims to rescue old songs from the black South. He brings Michael Berkeley a playlist that includes Scott Joplin, Joseph Boulogne, Rachmaninoff and gospel music sung by Leontyne Price.

A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke

Kate Bingham Feb 20, 2022

On 8 December 2020, a 90-year-old grandmother became the first person in the world to be given the Covid jab as part of a mass vaccination programme. Within six months more than 30 million people in the UK had received at least one dose. Many people say that extraordinary achievement would not have been possible without Dame Kate Bingham. A venture capitalist with a first-class degree in biochemistry, in May 2020 she was asked by the Prime Minister to head a new Vaccine Taskforce, leading British efforts to find and manufacture a Covid-19 vaccine for the UK and abroad. Her appointment was not without controversy. But, in the words of Professor Dame Sarah Gilbert, who invented the AstraZeneca vaccine, “her calm decisions in the uncertain early days of the pandemic saved countless lives”. Kate Bingham was appointed Dame Commander of the British Empire in the Queen’s 2021 Birthday Honours List.

In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Kate Bingham reveals what it was like to create the Taskforce, working remotely from home in Wales. It was her first encounter with the inner workings of government, a culture she describes as paralysed by “groupthink”, and “a massive aversion to risk”. She reveals the music that sustained her, and which she listened to at night when she ran. Kate is an oboist, and she begins her music selection with Alessandro Marcello’s Oboe Concerto; other choices include Gustav Holst, Robert Schumann, Arturo Marquez, Guys and Dolls, and a song with lyrics by her son Sam.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Sanjeev Gupta Feb 13, 2022

The geologist Sanjeev Gupta tells Michael Berkeley about his search for evidence of ancient life in rocks on Mars with the help of NASA’s Mars Rovers, and he plays unique recordings of sounds from the surface of Mars.

Professor Sanjeev Gupta is a scientist who takes the long view, the very long view, into Deep Time. As the Royal Society Leverhulme Trust Senior Research Fellow at Imperial College London, he investigates how landscapes have evolved over vast spans of time. His work as a geologist has meant camping out alone for months at a time in some of the world’s most remote places.

And Sanjeev Gupta is part of a team of hundreds of scientists working on one of humanity’s most ambitious expeditions ever - NASA’s three billion dollar Perseverance Mars Rover which is helping us to understand what that planet was like an astonishing three-and-a-half billion years ago. The team is searching for evidence of ancient life in rocks on the Red Planet, rocks that will hopefully be returned to earth for analysis in 2031.

Music is vital to Sanjeev Gupta’s life. He brings Michael Berkeley music by Bach, Messiaen and Handel and by contemporary composers Peteris Vasks, John Luther Adams and Anna Meredith, music which conjures ‘visions of the beyond’ – starlight, canyons, oceans and heaven.

Sanjeev describes the surreal experience of helping to operate the Perseverance Rover as it landed on Mars in February 2021 from a flat above a hairdresser in Lewisham when restrictions prevented him from travelling to NASA Mission Control in California.

And he recalls the transcendent experience of listening to music alone on long field trips in the vast deserts of Utah.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Barbara Taylor Bradford Feb 10, 2022

Barbara Taylor Bradford’s life story is every bit as extraordinary as one of her novels. As she tells Michael Berkeley in a warm and frank interview, she was born in the back streets of Leeds in 1933, left school at 15 to work as a typist at the Yorkshire Evening Post, and at 18 was the first editor of the paper’s 'Woman’s Page'. By 20 she was an established Fleet Street journalist.

And then came the novels - her first book, A Woman of Substance, was published in 1979 and has sold over 32 million copies: it is the story of Emma Harte, an impoverished maidservant who through sheer grit rises to become a phenomenally successful businesswoman. Barbara Taylor Bradford has gone on to write another 34 books, with sales approaching 100 million; many were turned into films and television series by her late husband, the producer Robert Bradford.

Barbara takes Michael back to her childhood in Leeds, where her mother, Freda, introduced her to the composers she still loves today: Beethoven, Rachmaninov, Bizet and, especially, Puccini. She talks movingly about her long and happy marriage and how her determination to keep writing has sustained her since her husband’s death; she describes the ambition and determination, which drove her in the male dominated world of journalism in the 1950s; and her pride in the success of her novels.

And, at 88, Barbara Taylor Bradford shows no sign of slowing down.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Jamila Gavin Feb 09, 2022

Jamila Gavin was born in the foothills of the Himalayas; her Indian father and English mother met as teachers in Iran and married in Mumbai. By the age of 12, she’d lived in an Indian palace in the Punjab, a bungalow in Poona - and a terraced house in Ealing, west London. Ealing was where the family settled in 1953; Jamila went on to study at London’s Trinity College of Music, and to become a sound engineer and then a director in television. She didn’t start to write until her late thirties, beginning a career distinguished by many awards for her novels, plays and short stories – around 50 books in all. It’s a rich world of myths and fairy-tales, orphans and adventures, ranging from 15th-century Venice to the mountains of India. She’s best known for Coram Boy, her prize-winning novel, later staged at the National Theatre, about the Foundling Hospital – to which Handel gave the royalties from his Messiah.

In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Jamila Gavin reveals the shocking story, which inspired her to write her first book for children. Her books deal with serious themes: particularly slavery, both historic slavery and people-trafficking now. Reading them, you can forget that these are children’s books; but, she says, any experiences which children suffer should also be experiences they can read about.

Jamila Gavin’s playlist includes Handel’s Messiah, Tippett’s A Child of Our Time, Schubert, Brahms, Stockhausen - and her favourite Night Raga.

A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke

Katherine Parkinson Jan 23, 2022

Actress, comedian and playwright Katherine Parkinson shares her favourite music with Michael Berkeley.

Two years out of drama school and heavily in debt, Katherine Parkinson was offered a part in a new television comedy series The IT Crowd. As all fans of the cult series know, she played Jen, the hopeless boss of two computer geeks – she was the so-called “normal” one. The series ran from 2006 to 2013, with audiences of two million. For Katherine Parkinson, it made her career, winning her a British Comedy Award and a Bafta.

Since then Katherine Parkinson has appeared in everything from stage productions of Sophocles and Chekhov to television sci-fi drama Humans as well as Doc Martin and the sitcom The Kennedys. She has also moved into writing: her play about three people sitting for a painter premiered on television during lockdown.

Katherine chooses music by John Tavener, George Gershwin and Thomas Tallis, and polyphonic singing she discovered while filming in Georgia. She tells Michael how she tried to channel her inner Cecilia Bartoli during singing lessons at drama school, and how she had to pretend to be good at housework for her Olivier-nominated role in Home, I’m Darling at the National Theatre. And she talks movingly about her affection for her late father-in-law, the actor Trevor Peacock.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Dame Stephanie Shirley Jan 16, 2022

Dame Stephanie Shirley arrived in Britain from Vienna as a five-year-old, without her parents. It was 1939, and she was one of 10,000 Jewish children brought by train on the Kindertransport to escape the Nazis. She went on to become one of the most successful businesswomen of the 20th century; in 1962, working from home, she founded one of the first tech-start-ups: an all-woman software company, Freelance Programmers, which was ultimately valued at almost $3 billion, making seventy of her staff millionaires.

Since ‘retiring’, her work has been in philanthropy, with a particular focus on IT and autism – in memory of her son, who had autism, and who died at the age of only 35. She estimates that The Shirley Foundation has given away £67 million, not least for the establishment of three autism charities. She is the author of two books and is frequently asked to give motivational speeches about women in business and her own life story. She says, “I decided to make my life one worth saving”.

In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Dame Stephanie Shirley looks back on an extraordinarily dramatic life. She describes the Kindertransport train, with children sleeping on the luggage racks, weeping for their lost families. She tells the story of her early days in business, and how she took on the name “Steve” to be taken more seriously. She also had a tape recording of frantic typing that she used to play during work phone calls, to disguise the fact that she was at home. And she talks movingly about her son’s death and how that changed the direction of her life. Her music choices include Bach, Britten’s ‘Ceremony of Carols’, Dido’s Lament and the ‘Cat Duet’ attributed to Rossini.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

David Nutt Jan 09, 2022

Professor David Nutt is an expert on drugs, and how they work on the brain. He trained as a psychiatrist, and for almost 50 years his research has focused on new drug treatments for anxiety, depression and addiction. In the late 1980s, at Bristol University, he set up the first unit in Britain to bridge psychiatry and pharmacology. He’s now at Imperial College, where he is Professor of Neuro-psychopharmacology. He has published hundreds of scientific papers and 27 books.

All of this makes David Nutt sound like a pillar of the establishment. But the reason most people know his name is that he has repeatedly challenged the government over its policies on illegal drugs and alcohol, arguing, for instance, that it’s more risky to go horse-riding than to take ecstasy. In his words: “no one in a position of authority dares to speak the truth”. But he also stresses “I have repeatedly said that cannabis is not safe”.

In conversation with Michael Berkeley, David Nutt looks back on the childhood that gave him the confidence to challenge established opinion. Living on a council estate, he felt out of place at Bristol Grammar School, and was a very anxious child who couldn’t sleep. At night he used to creep to the stairs to hear the Proms drifting up from his father’s radio. Professor Nutt describes fascinating new research into treating depression using the active ingredient of magic mushrooms, and he reveals which music he plays to his patients during these experiments.

Music choices include Faure, Nielsen, Grieg and Beethoven – his Seventh Symphony, which David persuaded the crowd to dance to at a New Year’s Eve party. That experiment, he says, was a resounding success.

A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke

Meg Rosoff Jan 02, 2022

Meg Rosoff waited until she was 45 to write her first novel, How I Live Now, the story of a passionate love affair between young teenage cousins, set against the background of apocalyptic war. It changed her life, selling a million copies and becoming a film starring Saoirse Ronan. She gave up a series of unfulfilling jobs in advertising and reinvented herself as a writer. Over the last 16 years she’s published eight more novels, as well as eight books for younger readers, including four about McTavish the rescue dog. She’s won numerous awards, including the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award - half a million Pounds, the biggest prize in children’s literature.

In Private Passions, she talks to Michael Berkeley about the ways in which she’s reinvented her life over the years. First, there was the decision to come to England from New York and begin a new life here; then, after the tragic early death of her sister, there was the decision to become a writer. It didn’t begin well; she decided to write a book about ponies aimed at teenaged girls, but no publisher would touch it – it was far too sexy. Finding her voice as a writer took a while, and has led Meg Rosoff to think about “voice” in relation to musicians and composers too. Music choices include Bach’s B Minor Mass; “London Calling” by the Clash; Brahms’s Second Piano Concerto, and Ravel’s String Quartet in F Major.

A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke

Valentina Harris Dec 26, 2021

Over the last 40 years, Valentina Harris has done more than anyone else to convince the British public that there is a lot more to Italian food than pizza and Spaghetti Bolognese. Her television series and her more-than-50 books have brought her passion for Italian food, wine and culture to a huge audience.

She tells Michael Berkeley about her childhood in Tuscany, choosing a romantic song by Georgio Gabor for her aristocratic Italian mother and Stravinsky for her father, who taught her to speak English without a trace of an accent. We hear music from the great gourmet Pavarotti, and a celebration of Italian food by Rossini.

Valentina describes her horror of tinned spaghetti on toast when she arrived in England in the 1970s, and shares her tips for using up Christmas leftovers, Italian-style.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

John Cleese Dec 12, 2021

John Cleese has been making us laugh for more than 50 years. Back in the 1970s, he became a comedy legend in Monty Python and in Fawlty Towers, and he now has a second generation of fans, discovering for themselves his unique combination of surreal humour, verbal pyrotechnics and farce. So much so that even now, as he enters his eighties, John Cleese is recognised in the street all across the world.

With almost six million Twitter followers, his is still a powerful voice, mocking those in power and generally trying to stir things up a bit.

This programme was recorded while John was in Britain for a couple of weeks, over from LA to work on the script for the musical version of A Fish Called Wanda. In conversation with Michael Berkeley, he looks back on his childhood in Weston-super-Mare and the physical awkwardness that made him stand out from an early age – “six feet of chewed string”, as one of his teachers remarked. He remembers his fateful early decision not to be a lawyer but to try comedy instead. And he shares what he’s learned about the strange unconscious process of creativity.

Music choices include Tchaikovsky, Scott Joplin and John Williams, as well as comedy sketches by Peter Cook and Dudley Moore – and John's favourite sketch from his own career, a double-act with Rowan Atkinson, “Beekeeping”.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Hayley Mills Dec 05, 2021

In a warm and frank interview, Hayley Mills talks to Michael Berkeley about the joys and difficulties of growing up in Hollywood as a child star and about the music that reminds her of her family.

Hayley Mills was described by Walt Disney as ‘the greatest movie find in 25 years’. After winning a Bafta at the age of just 12 in the British crime thriller Tiger Bay alongside her father, John Mills, she was signed up by Disney for a six-movie deal which included The Parent Trap, In Search of the Castaways and Pollyanna - for which she won an Oscar in 1961.

In a career spanning more than six decades, Hayley Mills has gone on to work all over the world in films, television and on stage, and she has just published a memoir of her early life called Forever Young.

She tells Michael why she was unable to collect her Oscar, and about the agonies her parents suffered trying to decide whether or not she should sign with Disney and the pressures of juggling a double life between Hollywood and a chilly English boarding school.

And she talks frankly about suffering from bulimia as a teenager, the problem of her mother’s drinking, and how her life changed forever at the age of 21, when she had to hand over almost all her childhood earnings to the Inland Revenue.

A proud mother of two sons and grandmother of five, Hayley Mills chooses music by Tchaikovsky, by Mendelssohn and by Bach, which reminds her of her sister, the actor Juliet Mills; of her mother, the screenwriter Mary Hayley Bell; and of her partner, the actor Firdous Bamji.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Iain Sinclair Nov 28, 2021

Iain Sinclair describes himself as an urban prophet: in book after book, he has walked through London, recording the graffiti, the rubbish, the electric-green scum of a canal, the things you glimpse out of the corner of your eye and perhaps would rather not see.

He brings to these pilgrimages many rich layers of reading about the city, interpreting what he sees through the eyes of past writers, particularly William Blake. In fact, he seems always to be walking with ghosts. It’s very hard to categorise his work, which is a rich blend of history, geography, travelogue, poetry, photography, literary criticism – sometimes all within a single book. Among dozens of publications over fifty years, he is probably best known for his walk around the M25, which became a film and a book, “London Orbital”. But in 2019, just before Covid, he embarked on an even more daring journey, to Peru.

In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Iain Sinclair talks about the journeys, which have shaped his life, and about how music has inspired those wanderings. Music choices include Stravinsky’s setting of the Dylan Thomas poem “Do not go gentle into that good night”; Mahler’s Eighth Symphony; a song by Britten originally intended for the song-cycle Les Illuminations; and the singing of the Bakaya People from the Central African Republic.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Nick Lane Nov 21, 2021

Nick Lane is a scientist who peers down microscopes at incredibly small cells in order to ask really big questions. How did life on Earth begin? Why is life the way it is? Why do we have sex? Why do we die?

He is Professor of Evolutionary Biochemistry at University College London and the Co-Director of UCL’s Centre for Life’s Origins and Evolution. He is also the award-winning author of five books, and his next – Transformer: The Deep Chemistry of Life and Death – is due out in May.

Nick Lane tells Michael Berkeley about his youthful ambition to be a violinist and how he funded his biochemistry studies by busking on the streets of London. He explains how his passion for the music of Janacek helped win him a place to study for his PhD, and how he unwound each evening to the sound of the early-twentieth-century American folk and blues musician Lead Belly.

Nick Lane still plays the fiddle with his band in pubs and now also busks with his teenage son. He chooses folk music inspired by Handel; Bach played by his hero, the violinist Nathan Milstein; and music by Peter Maxwell Davies that brings back an unforgettable jamming session in a pub in Orkney.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Tamsin Edwards Nov 07, 2021

In a special edition of Private Passions for COP26, Michael Berkeley talks to Dr Tamsin Edwards about her career as a climate scientist and her lifelong passion for music.

As a child, Tamsin wanted to be a concert pianist and she went on to play the clarinet, saxophone and double bass, and to sing in choirs. Music is still a vital part of her life but now she is one of our leading climate scientists, at King’s College London, studying the uncertainties of climate model predictions, particularly in relation to rising sea levels.

In 2018 she joined the author team for the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN body responsible for assessing the science related to climate change. Instantly recognizable with her trademark cropped blue hair, she is a passionate science communicator, blogging, writing for newspapers and frequently appearing on radio and television.

Tamsin tells Michael how performing music helped her to develop the confidence to speak about science to governments, corporations and the public. We hear part of a Beethoven sonata that brings back memories of the terror she felt playing it for her Grade 8 Piano exam. She chooses music by Liszt for her mother, a concert pianist, and we hear her late father playing the trumpet with his New Orleans jazz band.

And Tamsin talks movingly about her debilitating treatment for bowel cancer, paying tribute to the love and support of her partner, the television presenter Dallas Campbell, with piano music by Philip Glass.

Producer: Jane Greenwood

A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Matthew Walker Oct 31, 2021

In this special programme for Radio 3’s Twilight Season, Michael Berkeley’s guest is the sleep scientist Professor Matthew Walker.

So many of us have trouble sleeping, and are longing to find the secret of a good night’s rest, that when Matthew Walker goes to parties he is more likely to tell people he is a dolphin trainer than the world’s leading expert on sleep science. Otherwise, he says, ‘for me the evening is over’.

Matthew began his career in Britain, training as a doctor, but he is now Professor of Neuroscience and Psychology at the University of Berkeley, California and the founder and director of the Centre for Sleep Science. He is the author of more than 100 scientific papers and his best-selling book Why We Sleep has been translated into over 40 languages.

Matthew tells Michael about the ‘global sleep crisis’, the sleep deficit that is costing individuals their health and economies billions. He explains why it is so important to get at least seven hours of sleep a night and the dangers to our physical and mental health if we regularly get even an hour less than that. And he describes the joys of sleeping and dreaming, and the magic they work on our creativity, memory and wellbeing.

Matthew has chosen music with a restful, sleep-inducing tempo and rhythm by Debussy, Chopin, Handel and Purcell, as well as a track that transports him back to his home town of Liverpool.

And he tells Michael about the most important scientific conversation of his career – with a pianist.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Rory Stewart Oct 28, 2021

Diplomat, Soldier, Explorer, Politician, Academic – Rory Stewart defies easy labels. By his own admission, his identity is complicated: he describes himself as “a Scot, born in Hong Kong and brought up in Malaysia”. After Eton, he went on to Oxford and to the Diplomatic Service, but then abandoned this conventional career path and spent two years walking across Afghanistan and Iran. He became a deputy governor in Iraq after the 2003 invasion, and then ten years later entered British politics as a Tory MP, serving under both Cameron and May, and finally making a bold bid to become Party Leader and Prime Minister. When Boris Johnson won the election in 2019 he resigned, and threw his hat into the ring to become the new London mayor. After that contest was delayed by Covid, he left politics, and indeed left the country; he now teaches international relations and politics at Yale University.

In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Rory Stewart reveals that he feels nothing but relief at leaving politics behind. He looks back at the years he spent in Afghanistan and wonders how much of that work will survive, and he explains why he’s now moving with his young family to Jordan. Music choices take him back to his father, who often sang to him, and to his travels in the Borders and in Iran. He talks too about his search for religious belief, a yearning expressed by a Bach cantata; and why above all we must continue to hope – not despair – about the future.

A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke

Mark Solms Oct 18, 2021

Mark Solms is a neuroscientist who has spent his whole career investigating the mysteries of consciousness. His research throws light on some of the most difficult questions of all: how does the mind connect to the body? Why does it feel like something to be you? Born in Namibia and educated in South Africa, he came to Britain in his late twenties to avoid military service under the apartheid regime. He made his name with research into what happens in the brain when we’re dreaming; then he startled his scientific colleagues by training as a psychoanalyst, something which, he says, “put me at odds with the rest of my field”. He’s now very unusual in holding eminent positions within both psychoanalysis and scientific research. He’s the author of six books – his latest is "The Hidden Spring" – and he divides his time between London and Cape Town, where he also pursues his other career... as a winemaker.

In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Mark Solms reveals the traumatic childhood event which made him determined to become a doctor, when his brother jumped off a roof and suffered a major brain injury. He discusses the latest research on dreams, and how working with brain-damaged people can teach us about the nature of consciousness. And he tells the story of how he tried to rescue his family vineyard from the wider historical trauma of the apartheid past.

Mark chooses music which he hopes will illuminate the nature of consciousness itself: Beethoven’s Tempest Sonata, Bach, Ligeti, Chopin, and Talking Heads.

Esther Freud Oct 10, 2021

Esther Freud talks to Michael Berkeley about her extraordinary childhood and her passion for story telling in both words and music.

After attending drama school and making appearances in The Bill and Dr Who, Esther Freud changed direction at the age of 20 and turned to writing. She found instant success with her first novel, Hideous Kinky, which drew on her experience of living in Morocco as a very young child with her mother and sister Bella. She was named as one of Granta’s Best Young British Novelists and has gone on to write eight more books, the latest being I Couldn’t Love You More.

Esther tells Michael about her childhood passion for telling stories and how her experiences in Morocco dominated her imagination for years afterwards. She conjures up memories of life in North Africa with a song by the legendary Egyptian singer Umm Kulthum.

As she grew older she grew closer to her father, the painter Lucian Freud, partly by sitting for him and partly by their sharing a rare holiday. We hear Lotte Lenya singing Kurt Weill, which reminds Esther of her father’s German heritage.

Esther learned the cello at school and its sound has remained an abiding love; she chooses music by Saint-Saëns and by the contemporary English composer Michael Hoppé. And music from Britten’s Peter Grimes transports her to her beloved Suffolk coast.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Walter Iuzzolino Sep 26, 2021

Walter Iuzzolino is an Italian television presenter who has become well known on our screens thanks to Walter Presents, Channel 4’s free streaming service of European television dramas. He’s a man with a mission to open up European culture to the British, and he has now begun a specially curated publishing list too, so that we can read the latest European fiction. Alongside that latest venture, he’s created special playlists – because together with his passion for European television and literature, Walter Iuzzolino is a classical music fan, with a love of Chopin.

In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Walter reflects on the challenges of opening up British culture to “foreign” influences, and explains why he’d actually rather live in London than Genoa.

A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke

Francesca Stavrakopoulou Sep 19, 2021

Francesca Stavrakopoulou is fascinated by the Bible, and she’s a leading scholar of those ancient texts which have so profoundly shaped how we see the world. She’s Professor of Hebrew Bible and Ancient Religion at the University of Exeter; she’s also a convinced and passionate atheist. She is the author of several books about the Bible, and her most recent is her most daring: called “God: An Anatomy”, it draws on the Bible to describe the body of God, from head to foot, in a way she herself describes as “very controversial”.

In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Francesca talks about how her early fascination with Greek gods has inspired her to think differently about the God of the Bible. She talks movingly too about her partner, who served as a marine in Afghanistan, and how difficult it is to adjust to life after the army.

Music choices include Tallis, Beethoven, Elgar, and Handel’s portrayal of her favourite Biblical heroine, Athalia.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Helena Attlee Sep 12, 2021

The writer Helena Attlee transports Michael Berkeley to the sounds, smells, tastes and music of Italy.

Helena has spent most of her life immersed in Italian culture, and she has written two bestselling books that take her readers to the heart of Italy via unexpected avenues: The Land Where Lemons Grow tells the story of citrus-growing in Italy, from the Medici to the Mafia; and Lev’s Violin recounts her obsessive search in Italy and beyond to discover the history of a battered but beautiful old violin.

Helena chooses music by Paganini that takes her to the Tuscan garden once owned by Napoleon’s sister; a folk song from Sicily, the heartland of Italian citrus farming; and a moving recording of singing from the windows of Siena during the lockdown.

She tells Michael how for much of her life she felt excluded from classical music until one evening, and one violin, transformed her relationship with music and changed the direction of her life.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Peggy Seeger Sep 05, 2021

Peggy Seeger’s extraordinary musical career spans six and a half decades. Since the age of 17 she has been writing, performing and recording songs pretty much non-stop. At the age of 80 she won the BBC Radio 2 Folk Award for Best New Song with her son Calum and earlier this year, at the age of nearly 86, she released her latest album.

Peggy tells Michael Berkeley about her complex 30-year love affair with Ewan McColl, which was at the heart of the British folk revival; together they produced more than 40 albums, the revolutionary Radio Ballads for the BBC – and three very musical children.

Peggy describes her surprise and joy at falling in love with a woman 30 years ago; she chooses contemporary a cappella music that reminds her of her wife, Irene. And we hear a piece of extraordinary complexity by Peggy’s mother, Ruth Crawford Seeger, one of the most important modernist composers of the 20th century, whose early death changed the course of Peggy’s life.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Michio Kaku Jul 25, 2021

Michael Berkeley’s guest is the theoretical physicist Dr Michio Kaku - without doubt the only guest ever to have built a particle accelerator in their garage while still in high school. After that auspicious start Michio went onto become the co-founder of string theory in the 1970s; a professor at The City University of New York; and one of the world’s most prominent scientists.

He is also a great science communicator, so alongside his hundreds of scientific papers, he has written bestselling science books and appears regularly on television and radio all over the world. His latest book, The God Equation, describes his quest to continue Einstein’s search for a ‘theory of everything’.

Michio tells Michael how that particle accelerator drove his mother to distraction by blowing every fuse in the house and how his parents survived internment as Japanese-Americans during the Second World War. And he shares his passion for ice dancing to opera arias and his life-long love of the trumpet.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Carole Boyd Jul 18, 2021

Carole Boyd is an accomplished theatre actress: she has recorded some three hundred audio books, and she does all the female voices in Postman Pat. But all this pales into insignificance compared with the role she has played on radio for thirty-five years, as Archer's character Lynda Snell.

More than five million Archers listeners have been listening to her as the snobbish but good-hearted Lynda since she first arrived in Ambridge, in 1986. Lynda is the Archers’ theatre director, putting on pantomimes and musicals; and Carole Boyd too is musical, creating words and music shows.

In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Carole Boyd tells the story of how she became an actress, despite the opposition of her family (she applied to drama school secretly) and how she was inspired to create the inimitable grating speech of Lynda Snell by the voice of her husband’s secretary. She concedes that her identity has become somewhat blurred with Lynda’s, and that channeling Lynda’s assertiveness is very useful when doing battle with utility companies on the phone. She admits, though, that she has never got close to a llama (unlike Lynda).

More seriously, Carole Boyd talks movingly about what it’s like to care for her husband, Patrick, who had a major stroke in 2003. She speaks very honestly about the daily reality of life as a carer: the loneliness, the frustration, the mourning for the person you used to know, and still love.

Carole Boyd’s playlist ranges from Schubert and Debussy to The Beatles, taking in Vaughan Williams, Canteloube, and Aaron Copland. We hear too Laurence Olivier with the St Crispin’s Day speech from Henry V.

A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke

Veronica O'Keane Jul 04, 2021

One of the things that stands out, over more than 20 years of Private Passions, is the very strong connection between music and memory: as people choose music, which takes them way back, vividly evoking pivotal moments in their lives, it can be deeply emotional. Veronica O’Keane is perfectly placed to explain that response: as a practising psychiatrist, she’s spent many years observing how memory and experience are interwoven, working with patients whose memories are often broken or disrupted through brain tumours or mental illness. She’s Professor of Psychiatry and Consultant Psychiatrist at Trinity College Dublin, and the author of The Rag and Bone Shop: How we Make Memories and Memories Make Us.

In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Professor O’Keane explains the latest research on memory, and why unreal experiences such as psychotic delusions can leave people with lasting traumatic memories, even when they know they’re false. She chooses music that evokes a series of “memory snapshots” from her own life, going back to her childhood in rural Ireland. And she reveals that she has the perfect antidote to the sadness of her professional life: she swims every morning in the cold sea near her home in Howth.

Music choices include Bach’s cello suites, Maria Callas, John Lennon and Philip Glass, as well as the traditional Irish musicians she loves.

A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke

Alastair Campbell Jun 27, 2021

For almost a decade, Alastair Campbell was Tony Blair’s right-hand man, first as Press Secretary and then as Downing Street Director of Communications. He was at the heart of power through the Good Friday Agreement, the 9/11 attacks and the Iraq War, which involved him in the greatest controversy. These days he’s a writer and mental health campaigner, and he’s recently published a very frank book, “Living Better: How I learned to survive depression”.

In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Alastair Campbell talks about how music helps him manage depression, and reveals his lifelong passion for the bagpipes. His father, who was from the Hebrides, played, and he and his brother Donald learned as boys. Donald was diagnosed with schizophrenia when Alastair was only nineteen: “a defining event in my life”. Donald left Alastair his bagpipes when he died, too young; and he also left recordings of himself playing – one of which we hear in the programme. Alastair himself played the pipes as a busker in the South of France as a student, where he discovered a lifelong musical passion for the songs of Jacques Brel.

Other music choices include Mozart, Schubert, and Verdi’s famous drinking song from La Traviata. Alcohol has played a major role in Campbell’s life, and he talks about being drawn to the “drinking cultures” of both piping and politics. In fact, he says, it is not alcohol but politics – and his need to be needed by people in power – which is his real “demon”. He discusses too his inability to retire, his hatred of domesticity, particularly shopping with his partner Fiona, and why the satirical series “The Thick of It” is in some ways very close to the bone.

A Loftus Media production from BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke

Natalie Haynes Jun 20, 2021

Comedian and classicist Natalie Haynes talks to Michael Berkeley about her favourite music, making the classics funny and the joy of running.

Just like the ancient Greek dramatists she loves, Natalie excels in both tragedy and comedy. She has written three novels, which retell stories from Greek myth, and she has had a long-running parallel career as a stand-up comedian, including her hugely popular Radio 4 series, Natalie Haynes Stands up for the Classics. Central to all her work is her focus on the much-neglected stories of women in the ancient world and particularly in Greek myth.

Natalie talks to Michael about why stories and myths from the ancient world continue to resonate so powerfully today and how classics is changing as women scholars and novelists reclaim ancient stories and retell them from a female perspective.

She chooses music by Elgar, by Cole Porter, and by two contemporary women composers, Annelies van Parys and Calliope Tsoupaki, who have been inspired by women in Greek myth. And we hear one of the best-loved pieces inspired by a classical story: Dido’s Lament, from Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas.

We hear the music by Lin-Manuel Miranda, which Natalie loves to run to, and a surprising choice, which for her conjures up the beauty and power of the music of Orpheus.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Anya Hurlbert Jun 06, 2021

If you’ve ever wondered why you love blue and hate the colour khaki, or have spent hours arguing over a colour chart because you and your partner can’t agree on how to paint the bedroom, you’ll be fascinated by Professor Anya Hurlbert. She’s a neuroscientist and a leading researcher into how the brain perceives colour, and why we feel so strongly about it. Brought up in Texas, studying at Princeton and Harvard, she is now Professor of Visual Neuroscience at the University of Newcastle; she’s also spent years advising the National Gallery on how to show their pictures so we can see the colours most vividly. She’s married to the science writer Matt Ridley.

In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Anya Hurlbert discusses the scientific research that reveals the world’s favourite colour: blue. She talks about how the brain processes colour, and why colour perception is so individual and so bafflingly complex. A few years ago for instance, ten million people took to Twitter to argue about the colour of ‘The Dress’ – was it blue and black, or white and gold? Professor Hurlbert got hold of the real dress, put it in a tent in Newcastle, and invited people to come look at it. So, can she tell us what colour it is really?

Music is incredibly important in Anya Hurlbert’s life, and she grew up with an ambition to be a concert pianist. She still finds that playing Bach ‘calms her soul’. Music choices include Bach, Beethoven, and two composers she believes should be better known: Thea Musgrave and Elisabeth Lutyens. She chooses a song by Schubert which is all about the colour green. And she reveals her passion for country music, with Jerry Jeff Walkers “Up Against the Wall, Red Neck Mother”.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke. A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Laura Cumming May 30, 2021

The writer and art critic Laura Cumming talks to Michael Berkeley about the music and art she loves and the extraordinary story of her family.

Laura has been writing about art for The Observer for more than two decades, but her books suggest that at heart she’s really a detective. All three have unravelled mysteries: a missing Velázquez painting; the inner lives of great artists revealed through their self-portraits; and the secrets and lies which lay behind the kidnap of her mother, aged three, on a Lincolnshire beach in 1929.

She describes how her mother overcame childhood trauma and neglect to become an artist and the lynchpin of her own loving family. Her mother introduced Laura to classical music and she chooses a Chopin Nocturne and a performance by Andrés Segovia to remind her of the music they listened to together when she was growing up in Edinburgh.

Laura describes the emotional power of art and music, from the overpowering effect of her favourite painting by Velázquez to the music of Bach, Shostakovich, Mozart and the music of the Hebrides, where she spent childhood holidays.

And she reveals why, despite her passion for music, she can’t bear to go to concerts.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Zandra Rhodes May 23, 2021

With her shocking pink hair and extravagantly colourful clothes, Dame Zandra Rhodes has been an instantly recognisable figure on the British fashion scene for more than fifty years. An artist as much as a clothes designer, she tells Michael Berkeley about her experiences dressing everyone from Jackie Kennedy Onassis, Elizabeth Taylor and Princess Diana, to Freddie Mercury and Marc Bolan.

As well as fashion, she has developed a passion for opera, designing productions for San Diego Opera and for Houston, in America, and for the English National Opera. She chooses music from operas by Bizet, Mozart, Verdi and Puccini, and talks about her admiration for singers, and the particular challenges of designing costumes for the stage.

Zandra describes her evolution as a fashion designer, in particular how her screen-printed fabrics are at the heart of her designs. And how, at the age of 80, every morning she puts on brightly coloured clothes, jewellery and full make-up, and heads to her studio – with no intention of retiring.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

George Szirtes May 09, 2021

George Szirtes arrived in Britain at the age of eight, wearing only one shoe. It was 1956, and as the Soviet tanks rolled into Budapest, George and his family fled on foot across the border to Austria, eventually ending up (with many others) as refugees in London. It was such a hasty journey that one of his shoes got lost on the way. From a very early age, he wanted to be a poet – and he has certainly fulfilled that ambition over the last forty years, publishing close to 20 books of prize-winning poetry, and as many translations from Hungarian literature. His moving memoir, The Photographer at 16, won the James Tait Black Prize and was recently broadcast on Radio 4.

George talks to Michael from his house in Wymondham, an old butcher’s shop which he and his wife, the artist Clarissa Upchurch, have decorated with dramatic murals. He discusses his memories of leaving Hungary, walking across the border, and about how he then went further back, reconstructing his mother’s incarceration in concentration camps during the War. He explains too the project of writing a poem every day on Twitter, which has enlivened this strange period of lockdown.

His playlist includes Tallis, Bartók, Bach, Ravel and Berlioz – as well as an early blues recording from 1931. What they all have in common, he says, is that each opened a door for him into a new world.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Camilla Pang May 02, 2021

Diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder at the age of eight, Camilla Pang struggled to understand the world around her; in fact, she asked her mother if there was an instruction manual for humans that could help. Twenty years on – after taking her PhD in biochemistry and embarking on a career as a scientist – Camilla has herself has written that manual. She’s called it “Explaining Humans” and it won the Royal Society Prize in 2020 for the best science book . A highly original blend of scientific theory and personal memoir, it gives a real insight into what it’s like to live with autism.

In a fascinating conversation with Michael Berkeley, Camilla Pang talks about how she’s learned to thrive in a world which can seem very overwhelming. One of the issues for her is the sensory overload that people with autism spectrum disorder can experience. She’s very sensitive to certain sounds, and the morning commute to work can jangle her senses to such an extent that it takes much of the morning to recover. Music, on the other hand, restores mental calm. Camilla sings and plays the piano; although she has never learned to read music, she can “catch” a tune after hearing it only once. She did this first as a very young child, hearing her mother’s favourite Michael Nyman track and reproducing it straight away on her toy xylophone.

Camilla shares the music that has sustained her over the years; we hear Hubert Parry’s great coronation anthem “I was glad”; Michael Nyman’s music for The Piano; William Byrd’s “Ave Verum Corpus”; Debussy’s “Clair de Lune”, and Teardrop by Massive Attack.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Margaret Heffernan Apr 27, 2021

The writer and entrepreneur Margaret Heffernan shares her lifelong passion for classical music with Michael Berkeley and describes how we can best prepare for an unpredictable future.

Born in Texas, raised in Holland and educated in Britain, Margaret Heffernan has had a hugely varied career – she’s been a high profile entrepreneur and the CEO of multimedia technology companies in America; she’s written plays and spent 13 years as a BBC producer; she’s a Professor of Practice at the University of Bath; she’s written seven bestselling and prize-winning business books and her Ted Talks have been watched by more than twelve million people.

Underlying everything Margaret does are her unconventional, inclusive ideas about leadership summed up by her motto: ‘Let's not play the game, let's change it.’

Margaret’s intense curiosity about the world is reflected in her lifelong desire to discover music. She trained as a singer while living in America and she chooses music she studied by Vivaldi and by Monteverdi; part of a requiem by the contemporary composer Nick Bicat; and a piece by William Brittelle performed by the experimental vocal group Roomful of Teeth, to which her son introduced her.

And we hear part of Anthony Burgess’s rarely heard operetta Blooms of Dublin, which was produced for the BBC in 1982 by her first husband Michael who was killed when they had been married for just two years.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

James Shapiro Apr 25, 2021

James Shapiro is one of the world’s great Shakespeare scholars. A professor of English at Columbia University in New York, he is the author of seven major books, including the bestsellers "1599" and "1606", each of which zoomed in on one year, immersing us in Elizabethan and Jacobean culture and politics. His latest book is “Shakespeare in a Divided America”, an intriguing study of how the bard has been staged – and fought over – on his side of the Atlantic. But Professor Shapiro describes himself as “the least academic academic I know”: he is deeply involved in the practical business of staging Shakespeare, working with The Globe in London, with the RSC, and with a New York company that takes plays into schools and prisons.

In an episode to celebrate Shakespeare’s birthday, James Shapiro talks about how he first fell in love with the Bard, despite a terrible teacher at school who put him off as a teenager. He reflects on his upbringing in a Jewish family in Brooklyn, and the family reaction when he married an Irish Catholic. He reveals why holding hands had a different meaning in Elizabethan England. And, drawing on historical parallels, he tells Michael Berkeley that he is absolutely certain we will have a thriving theatre culture again soon: after a plague (or a pandemic) people need the theatre.

For Private Passions, James Shapiro creates a playlist which gathers together fellow-admirers of Shakespeare, with Mendelssohn, Duke Ellington and Cole Porter. The programme begins with an Elizabethan pop song with lyrics by Shakespeare himself.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Kieran Hodgson Apr 12, 2021

Kieran Hodgson tells Michael Berkeley how he turned his lifelong obsession with Mahler, and his own struggle to write a symphony, into comedy gold.

Fortunately for us Kieran put aside an early ambition to become a train driver and has instead forged a career as one of our most entertaining actors, writers and comedians. He’s won awards and accolades at Edinburgh for shows on the unlikely subjects of school French exchanges, British politics in the 1970s – and his obsession with late-Romantic music.

You might know him from his Radio 4 show Earworms – comic introductions to the great composers – and for his television roles in Two Doors Down, Upstart Crow and God’s Own County. And you might also be one of the tens of millions of people who have enjoyed his ‘Bad TV’ parodies on YouTube.

Music is central to Kieran’s life: he’s been playing the violin in amateur orchestras since childhood and composing since he was in his teens. He chooses an unfairly neglected concerto by Bruch; Schnittke’s breath-taking Choir Concerto; and music by Schoenberg, by Bernstein and – in a first for Private Passions – by the Dutch cabaret artist Wim Sonneveld.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Sister Teresa Keswick Apr 04, 2021

Some 40 years ago, Teresa Keswick exchanged her career as a London lawyer for life as a nun in an enclosed and largely silent Carmelite monastery in Norfolk. She’s devoted her life to prayer and work and has become a highly skilled embroiderer. Since 2014 she’s written a regular column for The Oldie magazine.

In a special programme, originally broadcast on Easter Day 2021, Sister Teresa shares her fascinating life story and the music she loves with Michael Berkeley.

Teresa tells Michael about her initial reluctance to accept her vocation and leave her busy social life in London for a remote monastery in the Norfolk countryside and the contentment she eventually found in the strict daily routine of prayer and work.

She chooses pieces by Handel and by Beethoven that reflect her life before she became a nun, and two pieces of plainchant that play a central role in the life of her community. She describes her ongoing love of 1960s pop music and we hear a song by Simon and Garfunkel that she still plays when she has a day off from work, once a month. And she appreciates the importance of having fun – in life and in music – choosing the party scene from the opening of La traviata, which recalls a wonderful evening at the opera when she lived in London.

Teresa describes how her community celebrates Easter Day and chooses music from Bach’s Mass in B Minor; she says this music is the only thing that comes close to describing Christ’s resurrection.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Bill Browder Mar 28, 2021

Bill Browder describes himself as Vladimir Putin’s number one enemy. When Putin came to power, Browder was the most successful international businessman in Moscow, seizing the opportunities offered by the collapse of communism to build up a multi-billion-pound investment fund. But then he uncovered what he calls serious corruption at various state-backed companies. In 2005, he was detained by the authorities and was kicked out of Russia. His tax adviser Sergei Magnitsky was arrested, and died in prison in Moscow in 2009.

In his memory, Browder has spent the past decade leading a global campaign against Russian corruption – Magnitsky Acts have now been passed in America, Britain and Europe – legislation freezing the assets, and banning travel, of officials guilty of human rights violations. Browder’s exciting account of his time in Russia, Red Notice, has become a best-seller on both sides of the Atlantic.

In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Browder tells his extraordinary and compelling personal story. He now lives in a secret location somewhere in London and lives in fear of his life. He talks about the guilt he felt when Magnitsky died, and how he found a new meaning in life afterwards, by campaigning for the laws which bear Magnitsky’s name.

Browder’s music choices reflect the high drama of his life, with excerpts from operas by Verdi and by Puccini which he discovered when he went to the Bolshoi in Moscow. He includes too music by the Russian composer Sviridov, a setting of a Pushkin short story. And he ends with Jessye Norman singing “Amazing Grace” – a hymn which reflects his belief that he has been helped, and sustained, by powerful forces outside his control.

A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke

James Rebanks Mar 21, 2021

The shepherd and writer James Rebanks shares his favourite music with Michael Berkeley and describes how he is restoring the balance of nature on his Lake District hill farm.

James Rebanks’s family have lived and farmed in Cumbria for over six hundred years. His grandfather taught him to work their land in the old-fashioned way, but by the time James took over from his father, modern industrial methods and economic pressures had made hill farming almost impossible. James has told the story of his farm, his family, and his renewed hope for the future, in two best-selling books: "The Shepherd’s Life" and "English Pastoral".

James tells Michael about the challenges and pleasures of spring for a shepherd, with long days and nights lambing his beloved Herdwick sheep, and his relief at the end of winter.

He describes the tensions in his relationship with his father when he was growing up and how films brought them together; he chooses film scores by John Barry and by Jerome Moross. James’s mother introduced him to books and classical music and Rachmaninov particularly reminds him of his mother.

James tells Michael the extraordinary story of his education: dropping out of school at 15 with just two O levels, he won a place at Oxford in his early twenties and gained a double first in History.

And he pays a moving tribute to his wife Helen with music by Michael Nyman as together they witness the joyful return of wildlife to their farm.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Sean Scully Mar 14, 2021

Dublin-born artist Sean Scully is known worldwide for his abstract paintings of blocks and stripes of bold colour. You can see his work in the Tate, the Guggenheim, and the National Gallery of Ireland, among many other prestigious collections. He was brought up in what he describes as “abject poverty” and his paintings now fetch more than a million pounds; he and his wife and son fly back and forth between two homes, one south of Munich and one in New York.

In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Sean looks back at his post-war childhood. His Irish father was a deserter and the family was on the run, often living with travellers. Once they moved to London, his mother earned a living as a vaudeville singer; she had an act with the transvestite performer next door. Sean worked as a builder’s labourer but discovered art through going to church with his Catholic grandmother. The stained-glass windows made an unforgettable impression. He went to night school, determined to be an artist, but was rejected by eleven art schools. He discusses the toughness needed to become an artist, especially in “brutal” New York. He admits that his restlessness now – constantly moving around the world, and buying up property – is a legacy from his traveller childhood. And he reveals the power music has over him when he’s painting.

Music choices include Brahms’ Cello Sonata No 1' Schubert’s String Quintet; Kodály’s Sonata for Unaccompanied Cello; Beethoven’s "Pastoral" Symphony; and Bartok’s First String Quartet.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Caroline Bird Feb 26, 2021

Caroline Bird was only fifteen when she had her first collection of poems published; she’s been writing since she was eight, hiding in the corner behind her bunk beds at home. This was in Leeds, where Caroline was brought up, the daughter of playwright Michael Birch and theatre director Jude Kelly. She’s now published six collections of poetry, along with a clutch of plays for theatre and radio. Her latest poetry sequence “The Air Year” was awarded the prestigious Forward Prize for the best collection of poetry published this last year.

In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Caroline Bird talks about the impact of being published as a teenager, and about the depression that led her to drug addiction by the time she was a student. She confesses she finds classical music without words almost unbearably emotional – as a child, it made her deeply sad. Understanding that sadness and coming to terms with it, she returns now to music she heard when she was young, going as far back as the music her mother played to her in the womb.

Music choices include Rachmaninov’s Sonata for Cello and Piano; Janet Baker singing Elgar’s Sea Pictures; Billie Holiday; and Lionel Bart's Oliver!

Produced by Elizabeth Burke

A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Tim Harford Feb 14, 2021

The economist Tim Harford shares his passion for contemporary classical music with Michael Berkeley.

Tim Harford has for many years been the Undercover Economist at the Financial Times; he is the author of nine books, and is a familiar voice on Radio 4 as the presenter of More or Less, Fifty Things that Made the Modern Economy, and now also How to Vaccinate the World.

Tim is on a mission to show us how, if properly investigated and explained, good statistics can help us see things about the world and about ourselves that we would not be able to see in any other way. He was awarded an OBE for services to improving economic understanding in 2019.

Tim talks to Michael Berkeley about how his love of music developed in childhood, encouraged by his father, who introduced him to composers such as Janáček and Britten. He chooses music by his favourite contemporary composers Philip Glass, Brian Eno and Steve Reich, and a beautiful piece of choral music by Arvo Pärt that was sung at his wedding.

Tim spends his working life pursuing cool-headed analysis of statistics and data but he reveals to Michael Berkeley the piece of music that makes him surrender to his most passionate emotions.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Rachel Clarke Jan 31, 2021

Rachel Clarke is a doctor who specialises in palliative care. She’s now on the Covid frontline; in March 2020 she moved to Horton General Hospital outside Banbury to care for the most gravely unwell patients on the Covid Wards. She’s the author of three books: the first, about being a junior doctor; the second, which was read on Radio 4, “Dear Life”, about working with the dying, and most recently, “Breath-taking”, which describes in moving detail what it’s been like in hospitals during the pandemic.

In a moving programme recorded in mid-January, Rachel Clarke gives a frontline report from the hospital where she works. When she looks out of the window, she sees lines of parked cars – and people just sitting in them, watching the hospital, for hours: unable to visit their loved ones, they are just getting as close as they can, yearning for a glimpse through the windows. Instead, nursing staff must give loving care to people who are at the end of their lives - Rachel reassures listeners that nobody in hospital will ever die alone.

In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Rachel Clarke reveals the music that gives her courage and hope on the way to the hospital every morning. She talks about the difficulty of explaining to her children why she has taken such personal risks to treat Covid patients, and shockingly she reveals the kind of abuse she faces on social media from people who think that Covid is fake.

Music choices include Vaughan Williams, Bach, and Tchaikovsky. She loves Jimi Hendrix too, and tells the story of driving down to the South of France with the man who will become her husband, terrified to tell him she loves him, listening to Hendrix all the way.

A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3. Produced by Elizabeth Burke.

Jamie Parker Jan 24, 2021

Jamie Parker shot to fame as one of Alan Bennett’s original History Boys – he was the one who played the piano. In this week’s Private Passions he tells Michael Berkeley about the vital role music plays in his life.

A decade after The History Boys Jamie took the title role in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, the marathon West End and Broadway show which won nine Olivier Awards, including Best Actor for Jamie. In between, he has sung in Sondheim, Gilbert and Sullivan and the Sinatra tribute Prom, and appeared in films such as 1917 and Valkyrie. And he has starred at Shakespeare’s Globe – memorably as the recorder-playing Prince Hal.

Jamie shares with Michael his lifelong passion for the clarinet – he chooses Finzi’s Clarinet Concerto, which he has played himself, as well as music by Gershwin and by Louis Armstrong with inspiring clarinet parts.

Two of Jamie’s favourite pieces of music come from films he loved as a child – Henry Mancini’s score for Blake Edwards’ The Great Race and the music for Watership Down by the neglected composer Angela Morley. Jamie shares her remarkable story: born a man, she transitioned in 1972 and was a largely self-taught musician. She wrote extensively for film, television and radio, including the theme tune for Hancock’s Half Hour, and she won three Emmys and was twice nominated for an Oscar.

And Jamie reveals how, in his long quest to play it, he instilled an enduring love of Rhapsody in Blue in his childhood dog.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Nadifa Mohamed Jan 17, 2021

Since the publication of her first novel while she was still in her twenties, Nadifa Mohamed has been a writer to watch. Her second novel, The Orchard of Lost Souls, won her the Somerset Maugham Award and gave her a place on the prestigious Granta List of Best Young Novelists. She’s about to publish her third novel, and is also turning it into an opera – a commission from the Royal Opera House. What’s striking in all her work is the epic sweep of her storytelling, which explores themes of exile and survival: her characters are caught up by war and love. Nadifa herself left Somali-land in northern Somalia when civil war broke out and she was only four when she came to Britain in 1985.

She talks to Michael Berkeley about her dramatic family history, and about her father, who was a travelling troubadour in Sudan. She pays tribute too to the Somali musician Hudeidi, who died of Covid this last April. He was her teacher on the oud for seven years, and her mentor, and she spent many evenings jamming with him in his west London flat. Her musical choices range from Pergolesi, Purcell and Vaughan Williams to Max Richter, Toumani Diabate and Louis Armstrong.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

David 'Kid' Jensen Jan 03, 2021

Michael Berkeley talks to disc jockey David ‘Kid’ Jensen about his career in pop music and his lifelong love of classical music.

In 1968 David Jensen left his native Canada to become the youngest member of Radio Luxembourg’s original ‘all live’ line up. He was just 18 – hence his enduring nickname, ‘Kid’. Since then he’s never been off the air, working at Radio 1, Radio 2, Capital Radio, Heart, and picking up five Gold Sony Awards along the way. And for many people of a certain age his appearances with John Peel on Top of the Pops were the highlight of their week.

David tells Michael about his first job in radio, at the age of just 16, playing classical music on a radio station in his native British Colombia and he chooses music by Dvorak that reminds him of that time.

His passion for opera is reflected in arias by Italian composers and a contemporary Icelandic composer, in honour of his Icelandic wife, Gudrun, and their happy marriage of 45 years.

In 2013 David was diagnosed with Parkinson’s and he talks movingly about the challenges of living with the disease and the determination and optimism with which he has faced it.

And he shares memories of practical jokes at Radio 1; holidays with Paul and Linda McCartney; football matches with The Rolling Stones; and how Billy Bragg helped launch his career by delivering a curry to David and John Peel at Broadcasting House.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Kadiatu Kanneh-Mason Dec 20, 2020

Anyone who saw Sheku Kanneh-Mason play the cello at the Royal Wedding, or win BBC Young Musician of the Year at the age of only 17, will realise that he comes from the most extraordinary family. Two of his siblings are also Young Musician finalists, and his older sister, Isata, is a professional pianist. Collectively the seven Kanneh-Mason children make music wherever they are. During lockdown, that was the family home in Nottingham, from which they performed live on Facebook.

Michael Berkeley’s guest is their mother, Kadiatu Kanneh-Mason: the woman who inspires them, who gets up before dawn to drive them to lessons and trains, who organises their practice schedules, who dances with them in the kitchen. She tells Michael Berkeley about how she does it – and why. She looks back on her childhood in Sierra Leone, and the huge transition of coming to live with her grandparents in Wales after her father died. She reveals her own musical ambition – to play the violin – and discusses how she manages to get the children to practise. She explores with Michael the question of prejudice in the classical music world. And she plays the reggae song the family will be dancing to at Christmas.

Other choices include Verdi’s “Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves”, Shostakovich’s Second Piano Trio, Mozart’s Requiem, Schubert’s Trout Quintet and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s “Deep River”.

A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke

Judith Herrin Dec 13, 2020

On this darkest day of the year, Judith Herrin brings to Private Passions the dazzling gold of medieval icons and mosaics: she has spent a lifetime exploring the history of Byzantium, that thousand-year civilization which led Europe out of the dark ages and into the modern era. She’s one of our greatest historians of the early medieval Mediterranean world, that melting pot of East and West, Christianity, Islam and paganism. She’s worked in Paris, Munich, Istanbul and Princeton, and is currently Emeritus Professor of Byzantine Studies at King’s College London. She is the author of eleven books, and her latest is a fascinating study of the north-Italian city of Ravenna, famous for its gold mosaics and once the centre of the Roman and then the Byzantine Empire.

In Private Passions, she talks to Michael Berkeley about her passion for Ravenna, which she first visited as a teenager. The mosaics there made an unforgettable impression – an almost mystical experience. As a young woman, Judith Herrin spent her summers in Prades in Southern France, working on a peach farm by day and going to hear Pablo Casals at night. She chooses a memorable archive performance of Casals, as well as a recording of Jacqueline du Pré, who was a friend when she was growing up. Her own instrument is the bassoon and she chooses bassoon music by Mozart and by Janáček. And she has never forgotten seeing The Doors at the Roundhouse in the mid-60s, with revolution in the air and the excitement of creating a new kind of history.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Alexandra Harris Nov 29, 2020

Michael Berkeley talks to Alexandra Harris, one of the very first Radio 3 New Generation Thinkers, about her passions for landscape, weather and music.

As the evenings draw in and the weather gets colder, Alexandra Harris could not be happier. There’s no greater fan of English weather – even the miserable cold, wet variety – so much so that she’s written a book about it – Weatherland: Writers and Artists under English Skies.

Alexandra is a Professor of Literature at the University of Birmingham, is this year’s chair of the Forward Prizes for Poetry, and among her other highly praised books are a biography of Virginia Woolf, and Romantic Moderns, about the complex relationship between modernism and tradition in English art and literature, which won the Guardian First Book Award.

Alexandra tells Michael about her love of weather, winter and Schubert’s Winterreise, and about the music that conjures up the English landscapes that mean so much to her: we hear pieces by Britten, by the violinist Laura Cannell and by the Norfolk composer Simon Rowland-Jones.

Alexandra’s twin passions, for early church music and for the quiet of the evening, are brought together in music by Tallis written for the monastic service of Compline – and she acknowledges how lucky she is to be able to listen to it in the warmth and comfort of her home rather than in a freezing medieval monastery.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Mike Brearley Nov 15, 2020

Mike Brearley, the former England cricket captain, talks to Michael Berkeley about the wide range of classical music that inspires him.

Mike is one of the most successful cricket captains of all time, winning 17 tests for England and losing only four. No one who follows the game will forget the so-called ‘miracle’ of the 1981 Ashes: recalled as captain, Mike galvanised the demoralised team in one of the greatest-ever feats of sporting psychology - and led England to an astonishing 3-1 series victory.

The Australian fast bowler Rodney Hogg famously described Mike as having ‘a degree in people’ – and that’s particularly appropriate as he’s gone on to have a long and successful second career as a psychoanalyst, as well as writing a series of books and working as a cricket journalist.

Mike talks to Michael Berkeley about the close engagement he has with music – he listens with the same intensity and concentration he brought to test cricket and that he brings to his work as a psychoanalyst.

He chooses music by Bach, Monteverdi, and Tchaikovsky, and a Mozart sonata that reminds him of his father, also a first-class cricketer.

Mike is drawn to the complexity and darkness of music written by Beethoven and by Schubert at the very end of their lives and to an opera by Harrison Birtwistle that he finds challenging and difficult but ultimately enlightening.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Sarah Perry Nov 01, 2020

Sarah Perry’s novels are like extraordinary highly coloured dreams - or nightmares. Her bestseller The Essex Serpent features a mythical sea-creature that roams the Blackwater marshes, and the novel that followed, Melmoth, is a terrifying gothic tale with a female ghost who always seems to be just behind you, almost out of sight.

In Private Passions, Sarah Perry talks to Michael Berkeley about ghosts and Gothic nightmares, and admits that the ghost in Melmoth haunted her too. She wrote the book high on painkillers amidst the ‘torment’ of spinal collapse, an experience of pain which thankfully she recovered from, but which has changed her view of life. She looks back on her upbringing in the Strict Baptist Chapel, in which popular culture was banned – but classical music was played on speakers so large they reached her shoulders, and Beethoven blasted her out of bed at night.

She talks too about Essex, and trying to live down the social shame of being an “Essex Girl” – before realising that Essex girls have a proud tradition, and being an Essex girl was something to aspire to: loud, pleasure-loving, refusing to fit in.

Sarah Perry was a viola player as a child, and her music choices include one of Hindemith’s sonatas for viola – which she describes as “the Essex girl of instruments”. She also loves late Beethoven quartets, and Dvorak, and Bach, and the contemporary composer Stephen Crowe, whose setting of fragments from Sappho is one of her choices. She hates jazz – well, almost all jazz. She invites us to hear the one track that completely seduced her.

A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke

Johny Pitts Oct 27, 2020

Michael Berkeley talks to writer, photographer and broadcaster Johny Pitts about the music from his European and American heritage that inspires him.

Johny was brought up on a housing estate in a tough part of Sheffield, the son of an African-American father and a mother of Irish descent. His prize-winning book, Afropean: Notes from Black Europe, describes his recent five-month journey through Europe exploring the idea of a shared black European identity.

He’s a musician too, part of the Sheffield-based Bare Knuckle Soul Collective, and classical music also plays a big part in his life.

Dvorak inspires two of Johny’s choices: an arrangement of the New World symphony by Raymond Lefevre, and music by Florence Price, the first African-American woman to be recognised as a major symphonic composer. Her story echoes that of Johny’s grandmother, who moved to New York in the great migration of the early 20th century when six million African Americans fled the racism and poverty of the rural South. Johny’s grandmother arrived in New York at the time of the Harlem Renaissance, a period immortalised for Johny by Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue.

Music by Wagner and by Sakamoto brings back strong memories of Johny’s childhood, and both aspects of his cultural identity are brought together in a Russian Rag from the WWI African-American bandleader James Reese Europe.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Gretchen Gerzina Oct 21, 2020

Gretchen Gerzina says that she’s drawn to writing about those who cross boundaries of time, place, and race. During a distinguished academic career, she’s explored the lives of black people in 18th- and 19th-century Britain and America, and she presented a ten-part series on Britain’s Black Past for Radio 4. She also has a passion for 19th-century children’s books and has written a biography of Secret Garden author Frances Hodgson Burnett - and a biography of Bloomsbury artist Dora Carrington.

Gerzina herself has spent a life moving back and forth between two cultures, Britain and the US. Currently Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts, as well as teaching, she’s also now writing a memoir about growing up mixed-race in America; she says: “It’s time to put the past to bed.”

Her music choices reflect her interest in 18th- and 19th-century black composers and include Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and Joseph Boulogne. She reveals, too, a passion for Early Music, with Corelli and Purcell, whose exuberant “Welcome, Welcome Glorious Morn” heads her playlist.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Jack Klaff Sep 27, 2020

Jack Klaff’s first movie was Star Wars: a two-day booking for which he was paid £250. Star Wars fans still write to ask him for his autograph. But to focus on that one film from 1976 is to miss the rich variety of an acting and directing career that has taken in Shakespeare, James Bond, Chekhov and Midsomer Murders, alongside writing more than a dozen one-man shows for television and the stage. He’s also been involved for thirty years in the public understanding of science, working both in a think-tank in Brussels and as a visiting professor in the US.

Brought up in South Africa and the son of a watch-maker, Jack now lives in South London, where he’s set up a home studio so he can do Zoom productions of Beckett. In conversation with Michael Berkeley, he looks back critically at the way he was brought up during Apartheid, and how he was affected when his uncle and aunt were imprisoned as political dissidents by the South African regime. And he talks about what it was like recording Star Wars – a franchise then so unknown that his agent put the booking in the diary as “Stan Wars”.

His playlist includes Schubert’s much-loved String Quintet, in a recording he loves from 1956; Yo-Yo Ma playing “Hoedown” with Bobby McFerrin; a late string quartet by Beethoven; Maria Callas in La Traviata; the African song Shosholoza; and Danny Kaye making fun of Russian composers.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Heather Phillipson Sep 20, 2020

Michael Berkeley’s guest is the artist Heather Phillipson whose giant swirl of cherry-topped, fly-blown whipped cream has recently been installed on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square.

Heather was a serious classical musician in her teens, and often uses music she’s composed and performed in her work.

She talks to Michael about music she’s loved since her childhood, including a Mozart symphony and Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf; a radical opera by Robert Ashley from the 1980s that has had a profound influence on her work; piano music by Grieg which reminds her of her grandmother; and the soaring emotional impact of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No 5.

Produced by Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3.

Anthony David Sep 13, 2020

Professor Anthony David works at the mysterious interface between the mind, the brain and the body. The Director of the Institute of Mental Health at University College London, he’s published 13 books and more than 600 academic articles, and his work focuses on illnesses at the edge of human understanding.

He tells Michael Berkeley about some of the patients he’s tried to help over the years: a man who thought he was dead; a strong teenage boy who appeared to be paralysed despite no detectable physical cause; and the manic patient he bonded with during a piano and guitar jamming session in the hospital gymnasium.

Music has been central to Anthony’s life since he played the flute in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in his primary school orchestra. He chooses that piece and complements it with Dudley Moore’s hilarious homage to Beethoven. And we hear music Anthony loves from Debussy, Copland, Bach and Sondheim as well as from a school friend who went on to become one of our most celebrated jazz pianists.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Brian Moore Aug 30, 2020

In an emotional and highly personal interview, the former rugby international Brian Moore tells Michael Berkeley about the role music has played during his extraordinary life.

Brian is a man of many parts – nicknamed ‘the pitbull’ for his fiercely competitive attitude on the rugby field, he won 64 England caps, playing in three world cups, and in the sides which won three Five Nations grand slams. He toured twice with the British Lions and in 1991 he was voted Rugby World Player of the Year.

But he’s also had a parallel career as a City solicitor, is much in demand as a rugby commentator, has written for newspapers not just about sport but wine too, is a passionate fan of Tolkien and Shakespeare, writes books, loves motorbikes and skiing, and even trained as a manicurist when his then wife opened a nail bar in Soho.

In a moving tribute to his 92-year-old adoptive mother, Brian chooses her favourite music, by Mendelssohn, and we hear the Overture from The Nutcracker, which he’s seen every year since he was 17 and now shares with his own daughters. We also hear the Mozart aria that convinced Brian it was the right time to retire from rugby.

Unafraid to talk openly about his personal lows as well as his sporting highs, Brian reflects on the power music has over his emotions. Indeed, one piece proves to be totally overwhelming and he has to leave the studio while it is playing.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Helen Macdonald Jun 28, 2020

Michael Berkeley’s guest is the writer Helen Macdonald, whose book "H is for Hawk" shot to the top of the bestseller lists, not just here but around the world. It’s perhaps no surprise that there’s a certain amount of birdlife in her playlist, from Stravinsky’s The Firebird to a piece inspired by a song thrush by the Finnish-English singer Hanna Tuulikki. She chooses music from A Carol Symphony by Victor Hely-Hutchinson, full of glittering ice, which consoled her when she was working in the UAE. We hear Britten’s Second String Quartet, Lully’s “The Triumph of Love”, Sibelius’s Seventh Symphony and a song by Henry VIII.

Helen Macdonald talks about why writing about nature can be a way of holding the world to account, and about how she finds joy in the fields and lanes around her in Suffolk, during this difficult time. She reveals too what it’s like living with her grumpy parrot Birdoole, who steals the keys from her computer keyboard.

A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke.

Peter Stanford Jun 14, 2020

For more than 20 years, in more than 20 books, Peter Stanford has grappled with religious belief. Starting with a book called Catholics and Sex, he’s gone on to write the lives of Martin Luther and Cardinal Hume, and the biography of the campaigning Catholic Lord Longford; he’s published books about the devil, about heaven, and most recently – a fascinating book about angels. They’re works which mix history, theology, literature and art history – and some really honest and funny personal stories; because although he was brought up a Catholic, he says he’s the kind of church-goer who always wants to jump up and argue with the sermon.

In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Peter Stanford reflects on his Liverpool childhood, and the challenges his mother faced living with MS. He talks about his commitment to prison reform, and his belief in the importance of rehabilitation, even for those who have committed appalling crimes. And he reflects on why so many people believe in angels, even when they say they don’t believe in God or any organised religion. Peter has never seen an angel himself; but at the end of the programme he does tell an extraordinary story about being touched by the supernatural.

Music choices include Hildegard of Bingen, Jacqueline du Pre playing Bach, Mozart’s Exultate Jubilate, the political protest singer Harry Chapin, and Jennifer Johnston singing a song that resonates now: “You’ll Never Walk Alone”.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Patricia Wiltshire May 31, 2020

Michael Berkeley’s guest is the forensic ecologist Professor Patricia Wiltshire, a solver of puzzles who has carved out a whole new discipline within forensic science. Patricia solves crimes with her microscope by meticulous examination of tiny particles such as pollen and spores left at crime scenes or found on the clothing of criminals or on their victims. She says: ‘Nature will invariably give up her secrets to those of us who know where to look.’

Patricia tells Michael how the course of her life was changed by a phone call from the police asking her to assist on a murder case. She was able to match the pollen left by the shoes of the murderers in their car to the plants where they had dumped the body of their victim, and thus secured their conviction.

Since then she has worked on nearly 300 cases including the murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in Soham; the Millie Dowler and Sarah Payne cases; and the Ipswich prostitute murders.

Patricia chooses music by Chopin that she played when she was learning the piano in her 40s, and music by Hasselmans, which expresses her regret at never having learned to play the harp.

We hear Russian ballet music, and a Mozart aria sung by her favourite singer Cecilia Bartoli. Patricia talks movingly about how her grief at the death of her infant daughter allows her to deal with the most distressing aspects of her job.

She describes the happiness she finally found with her second husband at the age of 63 and chooses exuberant flamenco music to celebrate their relationship.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Brian Greene May 27, 2020

Brian Greene is a professor of physics and mathematics at Columbia University in New York; he’s renowned for his ground-breaking discoveries in superstring theory. But the reason he's well known way beyond the scientific community is that he’s so very good at explaining science to a wide popular audience. He’s written six best-selling books, starting with The Elegant Universe, which explains string theory, and most recently Until the End of Time. In 2008 he and his wife founded the annual World Science Festival in New York, which is now held in Australia too, and gets forty million hits online. The son of a composer, he’s also worked extensively with musicians, and has collaborated with the composer Philip Glass.

He says: "Like a life without music, art or literature, a life without science is bereft of something that gives experience a rich and otherwise inaccessible dimension.” In conversation with Michael Berkeley, he shares his musical discoveries: pieces by Bach, by Beethoven, and by Philip Glass. He reveals how as a graduate student he learnt to play the piano purely in order to play the Brahms Rhapsody in G Minor. We hear too haunting cello music composed by his father, Alan Greene, and specially recorded for the programme.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Andrew O'Hagan May 10, 2020

In a moving and personal interview the novelist and journalist Andrew O’Hagan talks to Michael Berkeley about his family and the music that inspires his writing.

Andrew O’Hagan grew up on a tough housing estate in north Ayrshire, the son of a cleaner and a carpenter, and the youngest of four boys. He has gone on to become one of our most prolific, vivid and meticulous writers - an essayist and investigative journalist whose subjects have included Julian Assange; the invention of Bitcoin; and the Grenfell fire. And he has published five multi-award-winning novels, ranging from a fictionalised life of Lena Zavaroni to the tragedy of a Catholic priest in a small Scottish town - and the memoirs of Marilyn Monroe’s dog.

Andrew tells Michael Berkeley that his childhood ambition was to be not a writer but a ballet dancer, which did not go down well in his tough home and school environment. We hear the ballet music by Massenet that first transfixed him.

Despite living in England for many years Andrew returns to Scotland constantly in his novels. He chooses a setting of a poem collected by Robert Burns, which always takes him back to his homeland. And we hear music by John Field and by Beethoven, two composers who provide him with creative inspiration.

Andrew talks movingly about his love for his family and chooses music by June Christy that accompanied the birth of his daughter, and a poem by Shelley set by Frank Bridge which was played at his wedding.

Producer: Jane Greenwood

A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

John Dyson Apr 26, 2020

John Dyson spent 23 years as a judge, moving up through the High Court, the Court of Appeal, the Supreme Court and finally becoming Master of the Rolls. He retired as Master of the Rolls three years ago, but he’s back working on international arbitrations, busier than ever; in fact, he presided over the recent decision that the Saracens rugby team were being overpaid.

Through it all, the great passion that has sustained him is music. He's an accomplished pianist and took lessons from the legendary teacher Dame Fanny Waterman. Piano music is his first love, and so his music choices include Beethoven’s exuberant first piano concerto; Schubert’s F Minor Piano Fantasy for Four Hands, and Bach’s Goldberg Variations. He loves opera too, especially Verdi’s Otello, an opera written when the composer was in his seventies. Choosing Leonard Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms becomes an opportunity to talk about his Jewish heritage, and about his grandmother, who escaped from Bergen Belsen. John Dyson talks too about the rise of anti-Semitism now; he says: “our suitcases are packed.”

A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke

Chris Watson Apr 12, 2020

Wildlife sound recordist and sound artist Chris Watson talks to Michael Berkeley about how his favourite music is inspired by the natural world. Chris is most famous for his sound recordings for David Attenborough’s television series – for which he’s won BAFTAs – but he’s a musician too. A member of the influential post-punk band Cabaret Voltaire in the late 70s and early 80s, today he’s a sound artist and composer, creating installations around the world.

His 2003 release Weather Report, featuring soundscapes of a Kenyan savannah, a Highland glen, and an Icelandic glacier, was voted one of the 100 best albums to hear before you die by The Guardian, and has been described as ‘cinema for the ears’.

Chris’s mission in life is to make us stop what we’re doing and listen to the sounds of the natural world and this is reflected in his choices of music. We hear his own recording of a Sami calling to his ancestors across a Norwegian lake, and northern landscapes echoed in Sibelius’s symphonic poem Tapiola. And Chris chooses the music of multi-award-winning Icelandic film composer Hildur Guðnadottir, who worked with him to record the soundscape for the television series Chernobyl.

Chris tells Michael about the challenges of recording in cold and hostile environments for his many series with David Attenborough, and the pleasures of the year he spent recording the sounds around Aldeburgh for Benjamin Britten’s centenary, in 2013. We hear the magical combination of a recording he made of a nightingale in Britten’s garden paired with the Ciaconna from Britten’s Second Cello Suite.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3

Jools Holland Apr 05, 2020

Jools Holland, king of boogie-woogie piano, reveals his lifelong passion for classical music in conversation with Michael Berkeley.

The piano is at the heart of everything Jools Holland does. Since he left school at fifteen and joined Squeeze, he - and his piano - have been pretty much constantly on the road, touring with The Jools Holland Big Band, and now his nineteen-piece Rhythm and Blues Orchestra. He also finds time to present a regular Radio 2 show and has made a record-breaking fifty-five series of Later with Jools Holland, the longest running music show on television, chatting to and playing with everyone from David Bowie and Paul McCartney to Amy Winehouse and Jay-Z.

Jools tells Michael that his first musical passion was Bach, listening as a young child growing up in Deptford to a family friend playing from The Well-Tempered Clavier. He juxtaposes two pieces from this collection, played by his favourite pianists Edwin Fischer and Friedrich Gulda, to illustrate his passion for interpretation – for Jools, music is predominately about ‘the singer, not the song’.

He has a great passion for early recordings: we hear Kathleen Ferrier and Isobel Baillie singing Mendelssohn in 1945 with the pianist Gerald Moore; Elisabeth Schwarzkopf in Richard Strauss’s bitterly comic opera Arabella; and Tito Schipa, the great Italian tenor of the 1930s, singing an eighteenth-century French love song.

Jools tells Michael how he taught himself the piano and developed his trademark boogie-woogie style; how he’s kept sane and healthy during the decades he’s spent on the road; and how he winds down with the non-musical passion that he keeps in his attic...

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Stephen Schwartz Mar 22, 2020

Stephen Schwartz is a master of musicals. He wrote Godspell, Pippin, and The Baker’s Wife; he’s written the lyrics for films such as Pocohontas, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Enchanted - and many others. His musical Wicked, for which he wrote the words and music, has become something of a cult; it opened on Broadway in 2003 and in the West End in 2006, and it’s been running both in New York and in London ever since. He’s received numerous awards – three Oscars, four Grammys – and he’s over from New York for the opening of his new musical, The Prince of Egypt, a stage version of the popular film.

In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Stephen Schwartz reveals how classical music gives him ideas for his most successful musical numbers. In fact, he admits, he steals ideas from the great composers “flagrantly”. The opening of Wicked, for instance, comes from Rachmaninov’s Prelude in C-sharp minor – listeners to this episode can hear both, and compare them. He has been influenced too by Carl Orff and the exuberant orchestration of Carmina Burana. He also talks us through the bass chords he has borrowed from Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, and the two bars of Beethoven that he believes are the most moving music ever written. He reflects about the success of Wicked – and the “green girl inside us all”. Other musical choices include Bernstein’s Mass, Bach’s sixth Brandenburg Concerto, Copland’s Appalachian Spring, and Puccini’s opera La Rondine.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3

Isabel Allende Mar 15, 2020

Isabel Allende’s first novel, “The House of the Spirits” catapulted her to literary stardom, and was acclaimed as a classic of Latin American magic realism. That was nearly forty years ago and she’s not stopped writing since: with twenty novels and four volumes of memoir, she’s been translated all over the world and has sold some seventy-four million books. They’re vivid family sagas, with eccentric characters, dramatic reversals, discoveries of lost children, violent death, disease and revolution, and sudden consuming love affairs.

But Isabel Allende’s own life is as extraordinary as any of her novels. Abandoned by her father as a small child, she spent her early years travelling across South America with her stepfather, who was a diplomat. He was the cousin of Salvador Allende, Chile’s socialist leader, who became Isabel’s godfather. But when Allende was deposed by the right-wing government of General Pinochet in 1973, Isabel – by then married, with children – became caught up in the violent revolution and had to flee the country. She now lives with her third husband in California.

In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Isabel Allende reflects on her extraordinary life, and reveals how she has found happiness now in her seventies. Music choices include Vivaldi, Mozart’s Flute Concerto No. 1, Albinoni, the Chilean singer Victor Jara, a moving song from the Spanish Civil War, and a Mexican love song from the 1940s, “Kiss Me Lots”.

A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke

Women Composers Compilation Mar 08, 2020

As part of Radio 3’s celebration of female composers, Michael Berkeley draws together some of his guests who have championed works by women.

Turner Prize-winner Helen Cammock introduces the 17th-century Venetian composer Barbara Strozzi, and actor Greta Scacchi tells the story of her discovery of the 18th-century musician and composer Maria Cosway. There is music too by Hildegard of Bingen, the 12th-century writer, abbess and mystic, who is a role model for scientist Uta Frith; and a discussion of Clara Schumann and her complex relationship with husband Robert from biographer Lucasta Miller.

Architect Daniel Libeskind champions the work of the Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho, whose work for him conjures up the glittering beauty of modern glass buildings. And Michael Berkeley reveals the answer to the question he’s frequently asked about this programme: which composer gets chosen most often? And the answer is that, apart from Bach, probably the most popular choice of all at the moment – from men, women, young, old, artists, scientists, writers – is Nina Simone.

A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke

Piers Gough Mar 02, 2020

Piers Gough co-founded his own architectural practice while he was still at college, at the age of only twenty-two. He made his name during the redevelopment of London’s Docklands, though you can also see his work in Liverpool (the golden “bling bling” building), in Nottingham, where he built a centre for Maggie’s cancer charity, and in Glasgow, where he designed the masterplan for the redevelopment of the Gorbals. He’s won numerous awards for his buildings, not least for his bright-green triangular public lavatory in London’s Westbourne Grove. And six of his buildings have been listed by English Heritage, protected for posterity. He’s been president of the Architectural Association, he’s a Royal Academician... which all sounds steady enough, but trying to sum up his style, the Architects Journal said: “One’s never certain whether one is in a town house, a country house, a castle, or a gigantic piece of sculpture.”

In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Piers Gough reflects on the challenges of designing for the modern city, and on the influence of the accident that broke his spine and which at one point made him doubtful that he would ever walk again. He shares, too, the surprise and fun of becoming a father in his sixties.

Music choices include William Walton’s “Belshazzar’s Feast”; Monteverdi’s haunting love duet “Pur ti miro”; Handel’s “Semele”; and Piers's favourite country-music track, “Truckstop Honeymoon”.

A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke.

Chibundu Onuzo Feb 23, 2020

Michael Berkeley talks to author Chibundu Onuzo about the challenge of writing novels while studying for her A-levels, and the role of music and faith in her life.

At the age of nineteen, Chibundu became the youngest female writer ever to be signed by Faber and Faber. She started writing aged ten while growing up in Lagos, Nigeria and was working on her first novel, ‘The Spider King’s Daughter’, while doing her A-levels at boarding school in England. It was published while she was still at university and was shortlisted for a host of prizes – winning a 2013 Betty Trask Award. Her second novel, ‘Welcome to Lagos’, was published in 2017 to great acclaim.

Chibundu talks to Michael Berkeley about growing up in Lagos, and the challenge of adapting to life at boarding school in Britain. She chooses a carol, ‘I Wonder as I Wander’, that she sang with her school choir in Winchester Cathedral. The soundtrack to a Nigerian television advert from the 1990s speaks to her about the tensions between western and traditional values in Nigeria. We hear a miniature by Christian Petzold that will be familiar to anyone who has ever learned the piano, alongside music from Handel and from Dvorak’s Symphony No 9, ‘From the New World’.

And, in a special moment for Private Passions, Chibundu is joined in the studio by members of her family to sing a setting of Psalm 23 by her uncle, Bishop Ken Okeke.

Produced by Jane Greenwood. A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Jonathan Aitken Feb 16, 2020

In a frank and moving interview the priest and former politician Jonathan Aitken talks to Michael Berkeley about the music that has accompanied his rollercoaster life.

At one time Jonathan Aitken was widely tipped to be a future Conservative Prime Minister, but his glittering political career came crashing down just over twenty years ago, when he stood in the dock of the Old Bailey to plead guilty to perjury, after a lie he told about the payment of a hotel bill caused the collapse of his libel case against the Guardian and Granada Television. He left the court in a prison van with an 18-month sentence. Last December, he was back at the Old Bailey – this time leading the annual carol service, having recently been ordained as a priest.

Jonathan chooses pieces which bring back childhood memories of singing for Benjamin Britten and performing Messiah as a chorister in Norwich, and we hear a song John McCormack sang to him during the three years Jonathan spent on a Dublin TB ward as a very young child.

He talks frankly to Michael about the mistakes and pride that led to his downfall from public life, and how he survived disgrace, divorce, bankruptcy and prison. He chooses, with a smile, the Prisoners’ Chorus from Fidelio, and a setting of Psalm 24 that was a crucial part of his spiritual journey in prison.

Jonathan tells a funny musical story about when Nixon met Wilson, and he reveals the piece of music that best captures his sense of redemption and renewal as he embarks on his new life as a prison chaplain.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3

Ann Wroe Feb 09, 2020

Michael Berkeley talks to the writer Ann Wroe about the inspiration and comfort she finds in music.

Ann spends the first 36 hours of each week wrestling with the challenge of distilling the life of a person into just 1000 words – because, for nearly two decades, she has written the weekly obituary for The Economist.

The rest of Ann’s week is spent wrestling with biography of an altogether different kind - because she finds the subjects for her books in the shadowy territory where history meets myth. She dares to mix intense scholarship with her own imagination to capture the essence of figures as varied as Perkin Warbeck, the pretender to the English throne; Pontius Pilate; and the mythical lyric poet Orpheus. Hilary Mantel has said of her: ‘She is a genius, because she lights up every subject she touches’.

Ann tells Michael why she is attracted to such ambiguous subjects for her biographies and why she often chooses the quirky over the famous for her Economist obituaries – she’s written about the lives of firefighters, woodcarvers and even animals.

Passionate about the natural world, Ann chooses piano music by Schubert that conjures up walks on the South Downs; Jonathan Dove’s Seek Him that Maketh the Seven Stars; and Frank Bridge’s The Sea, which takes her to her beloved Brighton.

She talks movingly about her attitude towards death and what might come after it, and tells Michael why most of her music choices are ‘bittersweet’, including a song by Vaughan Williams to remember her late husband.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3

James Thornton Feb 02, 2020

Michael Berkeley talks to the environmental lawyer James Thornton about tackling the climate crisis, about Zen Buddhism and about James's love of the violin.

Every day we’re bombarded with more bad news about the climate crisis, deadly air pollution, and our oceans filling up with plastic. So who will save our fragile planet? The UN? Governments? Scientists? Activists? If James Thornton is anything to go by, it might well be lawyers. As the founding CEO of ClientEarth, an international not-for-profit organisation, he holds governments and corporations to account and forces them to uphold environmental legislation.

Many musicians support the work of ClientEarth – David Gilmour donated the $21million raised from the sale of his guitars – and James chooses music with an environmental theme from his long-time collaborator Brian Eno. He talks to Michael about his lifelong passion for the violin and how playing it helps him keep his life in balance - he chooses Jascha Heifitz’s astonishing recording of Sibelius’s Violin Concerto. He is also an ordained Zen Buddhist priest and we hear a key Buddhist text set by the master of modern gamelan, Lou Harrison.

And James talks about why he prefers life in the UK to his native USA, not least because he was able to marry his long-term partner, the writer Martin Goodman. We hear the music by György Kurtág which they chose for their wedding.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3

William Sieghart Jan 19, 2020

William Sieghart, the founder of the Forward Prizes for poetry and National Poetry Day, talks to Michael Berkeley about the music and poetry he loves.

Over the last twenty-five years National Poetry Day has become a popular fixture in the cultural calendar, and it was William’s idea to have permanent poems engraved at the Olympic Park in East London.

He’s also the creator of the hugely successful Poetry Pharmacy. At festivals and events, William sits in a tent and people bring him their dilemmas, problems and sadnesses - and he ‘prescribes’ them a poem to console, comfort or encourage. The Poetry Pharmacy has spread to Radio 4, television and hugely successful poetry anthologies, described by Stephen Fry as ‘a matchless compound of hug, tonic and kiss’.

William chooses music by Schubert and by Mendelssohn that reminds him of his father, who fled Vienna just before the Second World War, and he talks movingly about the effect of his father’s immigrant experience on his own life.

He describes how poetry and, later, music, helped him through his distress at being sent to boarding school at the age of eight and chooses recordings of music by Bach and by Debussy that have remained vital to him ever since.

And in the spirit of the Poetry Pharmacy, he reveals the poetry and music he turns to for comfort in a crisis.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3

Helen Cammock Jan 12, 2020

Helen Cammock grew up wanting to be a singer, and performed on the folk circuit as a teenager. But then she stopped, and became a social worker for more than ten years. Finally, at the age of 35, she took up photography, went to art school – and she’s never looked back. She’s known now for her richly-layered video installations, which mix film archive, dance and poetry with current interviews, all woven together with music. She is the joint winner of the 2019 Turner Prize; for the first time in its 35-year history, the Prize was shared between all four artists on the shortlist, at their request.

In Private Passions, she talks to Michael Berkeley about why music is at the heart of all her work. Last year the MaxMara art prize paid for her to spend six months working in Italy, and there she began to explore the subject of lament, and particularly laments sung by women. As part of her performance work, Helen Cammock began to take singing lessons again, and lament, loss, longing, and hopes for a better future, are all captured in the music she chooses. She shares the excitement of discovering little-known women composers of the 17th century Francesca Caccini and Barbara Strozzi. She talks about the troubling incident which persuaded her to give up a career in social work, when she was told to abandon a young woman outside a police station. She remembers the isolation and boredom of growing up in the countryside of Somerset, and the racist abuse her family faced every Saturday when they went shopping together.

Music choices include Jessye Norman singing Purcell’s “Dido’s Lament”; Glenn Gould humming along to Bach; Nina Simone on the piano; and Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto.

A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke

Carlo Rovelli Jan 05, 2020

As we start a new year, our thoughts turn towards the year ahead with all its plans and resolutions. And yet of course it is irrational to make this complete distinction between December and January; in fact, the more you think about it, the more you realise that everything about time is strangely slippery.

The slippery nature of time is something that preoccupies Carlo Rovelli, a theoretical physicist who has worked in Italy and the United States and who is currently directing the quantum research group at the Centre for Theoretical Physics in Marseille. His books “Seven Brief Lessons on Physics”, “Reality is Not What it Seems” and “The Order of Time” have become international best-sellers, outselling “Fifty Shades of Grey”.

In Private Passions, Carlo Rovelli talks to Michael Berkeley about how music has helped him think about time, and how memory of the past and expectation of the future come into constant play when we listen to music: “We don’t live in the present, we live a little bit in the future and a little bit in the past – we live in a clearing in the forest of time.” He looks back to his childhood, growing up in Verona, and hearing Vivaldi played every week in the local church. He discusses Philip Glass’s “Einstein on the Beach”, a work he admits he likes particularly for its title. He thinks about how Mozart represents the end of time in his “Dies Irae”, music he loves to listen to at full volume when his partner is out of the house. Other choices include Schubert, Arvo Pärt, Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis and the Bach cantata he discovered as a teenager that still astonishes him.

A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke

Darcey Bussell Dec 29, 2019

Darcey Bussell became principal dancer of the Royal Ballet at the age of only twenty; she went on to become a household name thanks to her seven years as a judge on Strictly Come Dancing, a job she unexpectedly stepped down from earlier this year.

In conversation with Michael Berkeley, she looks back at a career which started when, against the wishes of her mother, she went to ballet school at thirteen – and was desperately unhappy, thinking she’d made the worst mistake of her life. Alone, away from her family, she used to listen to Mozart’s Requiem again and again. She had little hope of becoming a star ballerina as she was “too tall” at five foot seven, and “not British-looking”; what this amounted to is that most British male dancers were not tall enough to partner her. But then she met choreographer Kenneth Macmillan, and he saw her potential. She reflects candidly on the “disciplines and sacrifices” of a life devoted to dance: the long hours training, dancing till your stamina runs out and you literally can’t feel your legs. Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty pushed her to the limit. She reveals how becoming a judge on Strictly gave her new confidence to speak in public for the first time and why she doesn’t mind being labelled as the judge who was “too nice”. She talks too about creating a new post-performance life out of the glare of the public eye, her mission to bring dance to all schoolchildren, about injuries and the battle for fitness, and about the toll dancing has taken on her feet.

Her music choices range from the intensely serious – Stravinsky's 'Agon, Poulenc's Gloria, the Mozart and Faure Requiems - to Dinah Washington’s “Mad about the Boy” and “Roxanne” by The Police.

A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke

Matthew Bourne Dec 22, 2019

As a small child, Matthew Bourne used to put on shows in his parents’ living room in East London; by the age of eight or nine, he was staging musicals for the whole school, co-opting his friends to star in Mary Poppins and Cinderella. (He played an ugly sister.) Fast forward to today and Sir Matthew Bourne is now Britain’s most popular and successful choreographer and director, with a long list of awards for shows including Nutcracker, Swan Lake, Cinderella, The Car Man (based on Carmen), Edward Scissorhands, and The Red Shoes.

Sir Matthew has become particularly associated with Christmas shows and he’s somehow nailed the essence of the Christmas “treat”. He attributes this to memories of the shows his parents took him to. But, despite their outings, it never occurred to anyone in the family that Matthew might make a living in the theatre, and he was twenty-two before he took his first dance lesson. This, he believes, has given him a strong connection with the audiences coming to see his shows. Despite this, there have been some bumps in the road: when he first staged Swan Lake with all-male swans and two male dancers dancing a love duet, some of the audience walked out. He reflects on the challenges of creating dances in which men dance together but are not strong enough to lift each other.

Matthew Bourne is a profoundly musical choreographer: he talks about listening to famous pieces of Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev over and over again. Other choices include a Percy Grainger setting of an old Christmas carol; film music by Bernard Hermann; Mary Poppins; and his favourite song from his favourite musical, The Sound of Music: “Climb Every Mountain” – which could describe his own stellar career.

A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke

David Nott Dec 08, 2019

David Nott is a Welsh consultant surgeon and Professor of Surgery at Imperial College London; for more than twenty-five years he has volunteered as a surgeon in disaster and war zones across the world. He has worked in Sarajevo, Kabul, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Iraq, the Congo, Yemen, Gaza, and, most recently, Syria. Often under fire, in makeshift tents or in rooms with no adequate lighting or machinery or drugs, he has risked his life to save others – operating on people injured by bullets and bomb blasts, delivering babies, stitching people together as the sound of gunfire raged outside.

In conversation with Michael Berkeley David Nott reflects on why he chooses to live so dangerously (“It’s a kind of addiction”) and on how his perspective has changed since he had a young family. He tells the story of saving the life of a man he discovered to be an ISIS leader, believing at every moment he was about to be killed. Once back safely in the UK, he suffered an extreme breakdown, and was helped by a friend who is a Catholic priest.

Music choices include Elgar’s “Nimrod”, Vaughan Williams's “The Lark Ascending”, and music from Africa and from Syria. And, as he says, unapologetically, his playlist is “very Welsh”, including “Myfanwy” and the Welsh hymn “Llef”.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3

Hannah Rankin Dec 01, 2019

Hannah Rankin grew up on a sheep farm near Loch Lomond. Earlier this year she made history by becoming the first Scottish woman to win a boxing world title when she became the IBO (International Boxing Organisation) super-welterweight champion. She’s recently returned from winning her first big fight in America.

But, as she tells Michael Berkeley, she is just as likely to be found in the woodwind section of an orchestra as she is in a boxing ring, because Hannah is also a highly accomplished bassoonist. She studied at the Royal Scottish Conservatoire and the Royal Academy of Music, and now teaches in schools and performs with the London Sinfonietta, at the St Petersburg Ballet Theatre, and the London Coliseum. With her fellow Royal Academy of Music alumni she founded the Coriolis Quintet.

Known on the professional boxing circuit as the Classical Warrior, Hannah explains how she balances her two lives, in the ring and on the stage, and what it’s like building up to a really big fight.

She chooses music by Mendelssohn and by Sibelius from early in her musical career, which reminds her of northern landscapes, and operas by Humperdink and by Tchaikovsky - composers who share her love of the bassoon.

And we hear music that transports Hannah back to summers shearing sheep on the family farm.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3

YolanDa Brown Nov 17, 2019

In a special programme to coincide with the London Jazz Festival the outstanding saxophonist YolanDa Brown talks to Michael Berkeley about her passion for spreading the joy of music, especially to children.

YolanDa presents 'YolanDa’s Band Jam' on CBeebies and hosts Young Jazz Musician of the Year. She’s an ambassador for BBC Music Day and chair of the charity Youth Music. She has won a string of awards, including two Jazz MOBOs – Music of Black Origin Awards – and her most recent album, 'Love Politics War', topped the jazz charts.

Less well known is that she started out on a career in social science research, taking masters degrees in both Operations Management and Methods of Social Research and beginning a PhD before veering back to her first love – music.

YolanDa talks about the importance of introducing children to live music at the earliest possible age. Her own daughter responded to music in the womb and went to her first opera at the age of four. We hear music from YolanDa’s own first musical outing to see Iolanthe with her father, also at the age of four.

YolanDa describes her vibrant mix of jazz and soul as ‘posh reggae’, influenced by her Jamaican heritage. We hear a track from her latest album and tracks from musicians who have influenced her, including Kamasi Washington, Dave Brubeck and Bobby McFerrin. She talks to Michael about playing the piano and violin as a child; classical music remains very close to her heart, and she chooses music by Schubert and Dvorak.

And we hear a special commission from film composer Hans Zimmer, part of the BBC’s Ten Pieces Trailblazers, which was introduced by YolanDa when she presented this year’s CBeebies Proms.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3

Ken Loach Nov 10, 2019

The film director Ken Loach talks to Michael Berkeley about the classical music he’s loved throughout his life and the dangerous power of music in film.

Ken Loach began his career directing Z Cars - but very soon entered the national consciousness in the late 1960s with films such as Cathy Come Home, Poor Cow and Kes. He’s kept up this prolific pace in the subsequent fifty years, making more than fifty award-winning films for cinema and television, and achieving a level of realism rarely captured by other directors. His latest film, Sorry We Missed You, is about the impact on families of the gig economy.

Ken talks to Michael about the music of his childhood growing up in Nuneaton after the war – he chooses Brahms's Academic Festival Overture to recall music lessons at school - and he we hear a piece by Schubert which reminds him of his own children growing up.

Ken picks recordings which bring back particular moments in his life: the sheer energy and excitement of Carlos Kleiber’s 1974 recording of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony; the 1968 recording of Dvorak’s Cello Concerto by Mstislav Rostropovich and Herbert von Karajan, which brings back memories of making Kes; and Geza Anda’s recording of Mozart’s Piano Concerto Number 21, which was used in the film Elvira Madigan.

Every one of Ken’s films has a cause at its heart such as homelessness, unemployment and civil rights. We hear the music of resistance that reflects the struggle of ordinary people for justice and dignity that has driven his career.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3

Philippa Perry Nov 04, 2019

Psychotherapist and author Philippa Perry talks to Michael Berkeley about the power of music to shape our emotions and tell the stories of our lives.

Philippa left school at 15 and did all sorts of jobs, including a stint in McDonalds before training as a psychotherapist and becoming a best-selling author, agony-aunt and broadcaster. Her graphic novel about the process of psychotherapy, 'Couch Fiction', was published in 2010, and since then she’s written 'How to Stay Sane' and 'The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read – and Your Children Will Be Glad That You Did'.

Philippa talks to Michael Berkeley about her thirty-year marriage to the artist Grayson Perry, and how a song from La traviata broke through her father’s dementia; she emphasises the importance of learning new things throughout our lives, choosing music by Shostakovich that surprised and delighted her at this year’s Proms.

We hear music played by the violinist Min-Jim Kym; a supremely joyful moment from Beethoven; and Philippa is moved to tears hearing a piece of Chopin that her aunt played when she was a child.

A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3 Producer: Jane Greenwood

Venki Ramakrishnan Oct 27, 2019

Sir Venki Ramakrishnan is President of the Royal Society and was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2009 for his research into the ribosome – the mysterious ancient molecule that decodes DNA, what he terms ‘the mother of all molecules’. He’s what you might call a science all-rounder: he gained a PhD in Physics before turning to Biology, and his Nobel Prize was in Chemistry. Born in India, he moved to the US as a postgraduate student, and in 1999 came to Britain to work at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge.

Alongside science Venki Ramakrishnan has another passion – for music, and, in particular, chamber music, which grew out of the Indian classical music he heard as a child. His son Raman is the cellist with the Horszowski Trio and we hear their performance of music by Schubert, as well as a Brahms piano quartet and a Beethoven cello sonata, reflecting both Raman's and Venki’s deep engagement with that instrument.

Venki's other great love is for the violin, and he chooses music by Mozart alongside Bach's Double Violin Concerto - which Venki himself played whilst learning the violin as a graduate student in the USA.

He talks to Michael about the central role of music in his life, about how he would reform the Nobel Prizes in science, and why he swapped the mountains of Utah for the fens of East Anglia.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3

Selina Cadell Oct 20, 2019

Selina Cadell is one of our most versatile and accomplished actresses - from French and Saunders to Chekhov on Broadway, and from Alan Bennett to Shakespeare, she brings humour and sensitivity to stage and screen. Michael Billington described her recent performance in Charlotte Jones’s play Humble Boy as ‘one of the best pieces of acting you’ll see anywhere'.

Instantly recognisable to millions as the infatuated neck-braced pharmacist in the hugely popular TV series Doc Martin, Selina has another string to her bow – as a director specialising in 18th-century drama and, particularly, opera. She talks to Michael Berkeley about how she coaches singers to become better actors and she chooses arias from operas she’s directed: Handel’s 'Arianna in Creta' and Stravinsky’s 'The Rake’s Progress', written in 1951 but set in Handel’s time.

Selina shares memories of her godfather Sir Ralph Richardson - and his acting tips – and we hear his beautiful reading of Keats’s Ode to a Nightingale. She chooses a song by Noel Coward in memory of her brother, the actor Simon Cadell, and she speaks movingly about the death of her husband and mother earlier this year, choosing Debussy’s 'La Mer' as a celebration of her husband’s love of the sea.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3

Peter Tatchell Oct 13, 2019

Peter Tatchell was still a teenager, living in Australia, when he started on what has been a long and headline-grabbing career of political protest. He was only fifteen when he began campaigning against the death penalty, and in support of aboriginal rights. At the age of seventeen, he realised he was gay, and the struggle for gay rights became his increasing focus: he was a leading activist in the Gay Liberation Front in the 1970s, and, more recently, a campaigner for same-sex marriage. He gained international celebrity for his attempted citizen's arrest of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe in 1999 and again in 2001, on charges of torture and human rights abuses. Beaten by Mugabe’s bodyguards, he suffered permanent eye and brain damage. He has also been beaten up by Neo-Nazis in Moscow, and held in prisons across the world. He says, ruefully: “I’m the master of the motorcade ambush”. One of his tactics has been literally to run into the road and throw himself in front of official limousines; he did it not just to Mugabe, but also to Tony Blair – protesting against the war in Iraq – and John Major.

In a rare personal interview, Peter Tatchell talks about the early experiences which fired him into trying to change the world. He grew up at a time when homosexuality was still illegal in Australia - his mother believed it was against her Christian principles. And yet despite this Peter loves, and forgives her.

The music list is a mix of stirring protest and softer romantic pieces which help Peter escape from daily pressures. Choices include Prokofiev’s “Battle on the Ice” from the film score to Eistenstein’s Alexander Nevsky; Mozart’s “The Magic Flute”; Prince; and the jazz drummer Billy Cobham.

A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke

Deborah Levy Oct 06, 2019

Deborah Levy was born in South Africa; when she was five, her father was arrested as a member of the ANC and spent four years in jail. The family left for England, arriving when Deborah was nine, in 1968. Unsurprisingly her work as a writer is concerned with themes of identity, exile, dislocation. Beginning as a poet and a playwright – her plays were staged by the RSC – she then turned to novels, and there are now seven in all, of which the last three have been nominated for the Booker Prize. The latest is ‘The Man Who Saw Everything’.

Deborah talks with Michael Berkeley about the music that means most to her. Many of the pieces she loves are to do with saying farewell: Lotte Lenya saying ‘goodbye’ in Brecht and Weill’s Alabama Song; Orpheus pining for Euridice in Kathleen Ferrier’s legendary recording of Gluck’s ‘Che Faro?’; sisters wishing their lovers safe travel as, purportedly, they depart for war, in the trio from Mozart’s Cosi Fan Tutte.

Deborah talks openly about her memories of her father’s imprisonment and of his return home; about the enormous transition in her life when, aged fifty, her marriage ended; and about how she found a room of her own in which to write, renting a friend’s garden shed and working to the noise of apples dropping onto the roof. Also among her music is Beethoven’s Pathetique Sonata (‘the silences are as important as the notes’); a song by Leonard Cohen; and a translucent setting of a Verlaine poem, ‘La Lune Blanche’, composed by Billy Cowie and sung by identical twins.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3

Jock Stirrup Sep 23, 2019

Lord Stirrup, former Chief of the Defence Staff, talks to Michael Berkeley about his passion for music from Renaissance motets to twenty-first-century opera.

Jock Stirrup was lucky to survive when a bird hit one of the engines of his Jaguar jet in 1983. With the cockpit glass obscured and one engine on fire, he chose not to eject from the plane, but to try to land it to save the life of his student pilot. For this he was awarded the Air Force Cross.

This calm under pressure served him well as he rose through the ranks of the RAF, commanding forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and becoming Chief of the Defence Staff – the head of all the UK’s armed forces – until his retirement in 2011.

A member of the Order of the Garter, he now sits as a cross-bencher in the House of Lords and has spoken critically about the regime in Russia and equipment shortages for troops in Iraq. He talks to Michael about the pressures of commanding forces, dealing with casualties, and speaking out on behalf of the men and women in the armed forces.

Less well known is Jock Stirrup’s lifelong love of classical music. Now he’s retired he spends as much time as he can listening to music live, and he’s chosen pieces that span five centuries and many genres – a motet by Josquin Des Prez, music by Bach and by Mendelssohn, part of George Benjamin’s 2012 opera Written on Skin, and music from Die Walküre, illustrating the passion he’s had for Wagner from his schooldays.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3

Siri Hustvedt Sep 15, 2019

It’s hard to sum up the extraordinary reach of Siri Hustvedt’s work. On the one hand, there are popular novels such as What I Loved and The Summer Without Men, which became international best-sellers and were translated into thirty languages. But underpinning her six novels there’s an impressive body of philosophical exploration – about Freud, neurophysiology, painting. Then there’s her own art work: Siri Hustvedt illustrates many of her own books. She has published a volume of poetry, and she’s also a lecturer in Psychiatry at Cornell Medical College. She lives in New York with her husband, the writer Paul Auster.

In Private Passions, Siri Hustvedt admits that she enjoys being hard to pin down, because much of her work is about identity and how it shifts across a lifetime. She reflects on her own youth in New York, where she was so poor that she ate by cruising bars during “Happy Hour” and eating the free snacks. She reveals too that she has neurological episodes where she loses consciousness, sees auras, and sometimes visions and voices. She admires the visionary composer Hildegard of Bingen, and also composer Meredith Monk, who is pushing the human voice to the limit in "Scared Song". Other choices include Mozart’s Don Giovanni, John Cage’s Sonata V, Webern’s Six Pieces for Orchestra, and Berlioz’s Les Nuits d’Ete.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3

David Cannadine Sep 08, 2019

David Cannadine describes himself as “staggeringly lucky”: he found what he wanted to do early in life, and it has rewarded him richly. He is one of our most distinguished historians; his period is the 19th and early 20th century, and he’s written more than twenty books, on Churchill, on class, on the aristocracy - among many others. He’s the editor of the Dictionary of National Biography and the President of the British Academy, and a frequent broadcaster on Radio 4. He was knighted for services to scholarship in 2009. But perhaps the most surprising thing about David Cannadine is that although he was born in Birmingham and his historical research focuses on Britain, he himself lives in America; he’s spent ten years at Columbia University and is currently Professor of History at Princeton.

In Private Passions he reflects on how his trans-Atlantic life changes his perspective, and enables him to see both Britain and the US as foreign countries. Although he’s now at the heart of the British establishment, he confesses that he’s always felt an outsider. His childhood in Birmingham was far from privileged, although the grand 19th-century buildings that surrounded him gave him a sense of Victorian grandeur, and his schoolteachers inspired him to aim high. They also inspired his passion for classical music, and many of the choices relate to his childhood and to his years at Cambridge and Yale. David's music includes Haydn’s Creation, Purcell’s King Arthur, Walton’s First Symphony, and Sullivan’s Iolanthe, in a performance of which, somewhat improbably, Sir David sang in the girls’ chorus.

A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke

James Ellroy Aug 25, 2019

James Ellroy has been dubbed the ‘demon dog of American crime fiction’, a label he relishes. His crime novels, fifteen to date, are international best-sellers; the world they depict is Los Angeles at its wildest and darkest, cops and criminals as violent as each other. Ellroy’s own life has been dominated by crime; his mother was murdered when he was ten, and Ellroy himself got involved in petty theft and, as a young man, spent time in jail.

In Private Passions, James Ellroy reflects on a turbulent life, and how he honed his story-telling skills in a cell with five other criminals. He reveals how much he owes to classical music – and particularly to Beethoven. He has a bust of Beethoven on his desk as he writes, and speaks to him every day. Sometimes Beethoven answers back. James talks too about his other heroes: Mahler, Shostakovich, Bruckner and Wagner, and his admiration for their monumental works. The choices have a strong romantic streak, perhaps surprising in a writer whose world is so violent and dark. But in conversation with Michael Berkeley, James Ellroy reveals himself as never before.

A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke

Hannah Sullivan Aug 18, 2019

Earlier this year, when Hannah Sullivan won the biggest prize in the poetry world, the TS Eliot Prize, the chair of the judges announced: “A star is born. Where has she come from?” Such a prestigious prize is a rare honour, as the book, Three Poems, was Hannah Sullivan’s first published collection. Up until then, she’d established a successful academic career, studying at Cambridge, teaching at Harvard and for the last seven years at New College Oxford, where she’s an Associate Professor of English.

In Private Passions, Hannah Sullivan talks to Michael Berkeley about the time in New York which inspired her prize-winning poems, and why she wanted to capture what it’s like to be alone and vulnerable in a strange city. She reads from a new poem about Grenfell Tower, which will be published next year. And she reveals a passion for Nina Simone. Other music choices include Strauss’s “Der Rosenkavalier”, the Dvorak Cello Concerto, the Schubert String Quintet, and a setting of a poem by Thomas Campion so perfect she wishes she’d written it: “What is love but mourning?”

A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke

Peter Piot Jul 28, 2019

At the age of 27, Peter Piot’s life was changed by the arrival of a special package from Africa. He was working as a researcher in a microbiology lab in Antwerp, Belgium; and, in September 1976, the lab was alerted that a package was on its way from Zaire: samples of blood from an epidemic that was stirring along the river Congo. Several Belgian nuns had already died of a strange new disease. The disease – which Peter Piot and his team identified, and named – was Ebola, and he went on to play a leading role in helping to contain the epidemic. He then led research into the worldwide epidemic which followed, the new disease of AIDS, becoming President of the International Aids society. Peter Piot has held prominent positions in the United Nations and in the World Health Organisation and has been ennobled both in Belgium and in Britain, where in 2016 he was made an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George. It’s a career which has taken him all over the world, and though Peter Piot is now the director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in London, he still travels a great deal. His musical choices reflect that, with music from Africa, including a piece performed for him on his 60th birthday by the 'king of Rumba Rock', Papa Wemba. He includes, too, a rarely heard viol piece by the Flemish composer Leonora Duarte, which he discovered when he was studying in Antwerp.

With the horrifying return of Ebola, Peter Piot reflects on a career which has been spent very close to the dead and dying. And he chooses music which helps him make sense of the tragedies he has witnessed first-hand: Kathleen Ferrier singing Gluck’s heart-breaking aria “Che Faro”.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3

James Burke Jul 14, 2019

As the 50th anniversary of the moon landings approaches, James Burke talks to Michael Berkeley about the music that brings back memories of the heady days when, new to science broadcasting, he was chosen by the BBC to lead the coverage of the Apollo Missions and the moment the first human stepped onto the Moon.

James Burke has the rare gift of making complex ideas comprehensible to a wide audience – and providing a great deal of entertainment along the way. He began his BBC career on Tomorrow’s World, and his series Connections, which offered a new perspective on the history of science and technology, was a television landmark. James is the author of more than a dozen books, and his series about his long-running project The Knowledge Web was broadcast recently on Radio 4.

The surprising thing about James Burke is that he studied Middle English at university and got into science broadcasting quite by accident while working in Italy. He tells Michael how it happened and plays a Neapolitan song which reminds him of the years he spent there as a young man. He chooses music that reminds him of his musical childhood – Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet which he played at school, and a piece by Handel which he sang. His lifelong love of playing the guitar is reflected in music by Albeniz, and James makes some truly startling predictions about how technology is about to utterly transform our lives.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3

Sarah Langford Jul 07, 2019

Sarah Langford is a barrister; in her words, her job is “to represent the mad and the bad, the broken and the hopeful” – telling their stories in court. After thirteen years of practice, she decided to tell their stories in a book, too. In Your Defence was published last year and has had a huge impact. In it she tells the stories of eleven people she represented in both the criminal and family courts: harrowing stories of mothers whose babies are taken away at birth, teenagers caught up in addiction, a wife who’s abused, a boy whose parents fight over him for years. In Private Passions, she talks to Michael Berkeley about why she felt it was important to get these people’s stories into the public domain, at a time when the criminal justice system in Britain is facing overwhelming pressure.

One of the challenges of the job is to decompress, after the emotions of a day fighting a case in court, and this is where listening to music is crucial. “When I was coming home on the train from court, I would often find myself wrestling with emotions about all that had happened that day. I had Bach’s cello suites on my phone playlist and would listen over and over whilst writing my attendance note and closing the case, both literally and mentally. The music helped me remove myself from the carriage and also gave me a way to feel contemplative about what had gone on.” Other choices include Lutoslawski, Messiaen, Paul Dukas, Benjamin Clementine, and choral music by Morten Lauridsen.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3

Harry Enfield Jul 04, 2019

In the early 1990s Harry Enfield went from being a part-time milkman to one of our biggest comedy stars, and many of the characters he created have become embedded in our national psyche - Loadsamoney, Kevin the Teenager, Tim Nice-But-Dim, Wayne and Waynetta Slob, Stavros and Smashie and Nicey, to name just a few. He started out on Spitting Image and Saturday Night Live, and his television shows in the 1990s reinvigorated British sketch comedy, gaining him more than 13 million viewers a week. Films, documentaries, and more comedy series have followed, as well as a hugely successful theatre show with his comedy partner of nearly 30 years, Paul Whitehouse.

Harry tells Michael Berkeley about how his journey from punk to opera - his great musical passion - developed when he was living in a council flat in his twenties and borrowing a record a week from the library. We hear parts of two Verdi operas that inspired the theme tunes for his first two television series.

He reveals why he’s chosen the aria Largo al Factotum from The Barber of Seville in tribute to Paul Whitehouse and we hear a moving performance by John Tomlinson as Boris Godunov.

Music by Elgar and by Schubert brings back memories of Harry's time at university and he talks movingly about family life and his relationship with his father Edward, who enjoyed a late-flowering career as a journalist and broadcaster. And he quotes a less than flattering entry about his grandparents from Virginia Woolf’s diary. Harry doesn’t usually do interviews so it’s a real pleasure to hear him talking about his life through the music he loves.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3

June Spencer Jun 16, 2019

June Spencer can walk down the street unrecognised, but as soon as she starts to speak, she’s known instantly by millions. That’s because, since the very first episode in 1950, she’s played Peggy in The Archers – that’s more than 68 years. The only remaining member of the original cast, she’s been honoured with both an OBE and a CBE.

As part of the celebrations for her 100th birthday she talks to Michael Berkeley about her life-long love of music. A keen pianist, she had to leave school at 14 to look after her sick mother, but persisted with music and acting classes and forged a successful career on stage and in radio.

June tells Michael why she thinks The Archers has such enduring appeal and why it’s so important for the series to have topical and challenging story lines. For many years her character Peggy struggled with her husband Jack Woolley’s Alzheimer’s - a disease which sadly claimed the life of June’s own husband.

June chooses music by Vivaldi which reminds her of her late son David, a talented ballet dancer; pieces by Rossini and by Bruch which recall her Mediterranean holiday home; and music by Mendelssohn and by Rachmaninov which reminds her of the early days of her acting career.

These pieces illuminate a moving conversation between June and Michael about the realities of old age and the pleasure of memory.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Lucasta Miller Jun 09, 2019

Lucasta Miller is a writer fascinated by the Romantic, and the dark excesses of the Gothic. Her latest subject is a poet, Letitia Landon, whose life was scandalous and whose sudden death is like a scene from a detective novel. In her day, Landon was an icon, hailed as a “female Byron” – and a favourite of the Brontë sisters, who were the subject of Lucasta Miller’s previous book. Both biographies were years in the making, partly because they involved such meticulous research, partly because Lucasta Miller was at the same time writing journalism, editing books, teaching English to refugees, bringing up children and generally holding together a household, the other half of which is the singer Ian Bostridge. In Private Passions, Lucasta Miller talks to Michael Berkeley about her lasting obsession with the gothic, and about the dark secrets concealed in Letitia Landon’s life. The theme of dark secrets takes her to the first German Romantic opera, Weber’s Der Freischütz, and the terrifying Wolf’s Glen. She discusses too what biographers can bring to our understanding of music and chooses a song by Clara Schumann, written just as she was on the point of marriage to Robert. And in relation to her own husband, Lucasta talks honestly about how difficult the life of a professional musician is, both for them and for their family at home. Does husband Ian Bostridge make it onto the playlist? As she says, she felt she was damned if she chose him, damned if she didn’t. So she does include him in the end, singing a lyrical song by Hans-Werner Henze which was written for Bostridge. Other musical choices include Maria Callas singing from Bellini’s Norma, and the Bach cello suites played by Stephen Isserlis.

A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke

Robert Icke Jun 02, 2019

At thirty-two, Robert Icke is already one of this country’s leading theatre directors. He’s best-known for his modern adaptations of classic texts; his version of the Greek tragedy the Oresteia won him an Olivier in 2016 for Best Director, and both the Critics Circle and the Evening Standard Theatre Awards. He wrote a seventy-minute prequel to the Aeschylus play himself, so there’s no shortage of ambition; and playfulness too – in Mary Stuart, which starred Juliet Stevenson and Lia Williams, a coin was tossed each night to decide which of them would play Elizabeth I and which Mary Stuart. He’s about to leave the Almeida after six years. His first production as a freelance director in Europe is with Ivo van Hove, in his International Theatre Amsterdam.

Robert Icke has a lot to say about the state of theatre in this country, which he thinks is in big trouble. He’s particularly concerned about young people trying to enter the profession, when wages are so low and it’s so expensive to live in London, where most work is being made. Tickets have become so expensive that it’s simply impossible for young people to go to the theatre and see what’s being done. Rob’s musical tastes span 12th-century polyphony to 1960s pop music. And he includes a Chopin piece which he is struggling with himself on the piano, helped by his boyhood piano teacher Mrs White in Middlesborough, who now comes to all his shows.

A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3. Produced by Elizabeth Burke.

Jess Robinson May 19, 2019

The actress and comedian Jess Robinson tells Michael Berkeley how her training as a classical singer informs her impressions of a vast range of singers, including Kate Bush, Bjork, Lady Gaga, Billie Holiday and Julie Andrews.

A regular on Radio 4’s The Now Show, Dead Ringers, and 15 Minute Musicals, Jess made her name starring on stage in Little Voice and playing Joan Collins’ daughter in Full Circle. Her musical impressions propelled her to the semi finals of Britain’s Got Talent in 2017 and she’s currently on tour with her show No Filter.

Jess chooses songs by Samuel Barber and Debussy that were favourites from her classical singing lessons, and pieces that remind her of the rich musical heritage of her family, including a 20th-century organ prelude that she plays in her local church as a double act with her mother – her mother plays the keyboards but Jess plays the pedals, as her mother’s legs are too short to reach them! And we hear Jess’s grandmother singing a traditional Yiddish song, recorded after she arrived in Britain on one of the very last Kindertransports in 1939.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3

Barbara Hosking May 13, 2019

Barbara Hosking was born above her father’s dairy in Penzance, back in the 1920s, and ended up in the corridors of power serving two British prime ministers. Two years ago, at the age of 90, she decided to come out as gay, which, she says, is the best thing she’s ever done.

Barbara Hosking talks to Michael Berkeley about moving from Cornwall to a new world in London after the War, meeting Eastern European emigres and discovering lesbian clubs where women could dance together openly. All sorts of women were there, from the posh to the very poor, from “respectable” women to prostitutes. Despite her early Labour party affiliation, she found herself working for Edward Heath, whom she admired greatly, and who she persuaded not to wear a terrible old cardigan when he was conducting with the London Symphony Orchestra. She talks too about finding happiness late in life with her partner Margaret.

Music choices include Edward Heath conducting Elgar, Strauss’s opera Ariadne Auf Naxos, Schubert’s Winterreise, and Britten’s Billy Budd. And a love song in Yiddish, a language she taught herself and which she loves.

Producer: Elizabeth Burke A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3

David Wilson Apr 28, 2019

David Wilson has spent his life working with violent men – particularly those who have committed murder and serial murder. Currently Emeritus Professor of Criminology at Birmingham City University and a campaigner for penal reform, he spent much of his career working in a series of prisons and young offender institutions, dealing with some of our most notorious murderers - including Dennis Nilsen.

He has made memorable television programmes including the award-winning 'Interview with a Murderer'. And he’s written sixteen books, the latest being My Life With Murderers: Behind Bars with the World’s Most Violent Men.

David tells Michael Berkeley about the huge challenges of becoming Britain’s youngest prison governor at the age of 29, his many encounters with the serial killer Dennis Nilsen, and his pioneering approach to rehabilitating violent offenders.

He chooses a song from the jazz trumpeter and singer Chet Baker – sadly no stranger to prison himself – and music by Bernstein and Copland that reminds him of his time as a student in America.

He talks movingly about family love and music being vital to coping with a career spent dealing with violence and murder. With the exception of Schubert’s Death and the Maiden quartet, all of David’s music is about love rather than death, including Sibelius’ Andante Festivo, chosen for his daughter, and music from the film Love Actually for his wife.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3

Roger Kneebone Apr 14, 2019

The surgeon Roger Kneebone tells Michael Berkeley how his work with tailors, lacemakers, Formula One teams, and musicians has transformed his understanding of medicine.

Roger Kneebone began his career as a trauma surgeon in Soweto, operating on victims of stabbings and shootings, before working in a war zone in Namibia in the 1980s. Then he was a GP in Wiltshire for fifteen years before joining Imperial College London, where he is Professor of Surgical Education and Engagement Science.

So with that impressive medical background it comes as something of a surprise to discover that he spends a lot of his professional life these days hanging out with craftspeople, engineers and musicians.

He says: ‘When I started to think about surgery not only as an application of scientific knowledge but as a form of performance and craftsmanship, it made a lot of sense to find out what other performers and other craftsmen were doing and see what the connections were between their worlds and mine, rather than looking at the differences. It’s a whole new area of exploration and research.’

As a child Roger rebuilt a piano with his father and they formed a close bond over their mutual love of baroque music: Roger chooses Rachel Podger playing Bach’s Double Violin Concerto, and Handel’s 'As Steals the Morn'.

Later he built a harpsichord from a kit when on call as a GP and we hear his harpsichord teacher Sophie Yates playing Couperin.

And Roger chooses jazz from the American saxophonist Charles Lloyd, which leads him to consider the parallels between musical improvisation and the improvisation so often necessary during surgery.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3

Jo Brand Apr 07, 2019

The comedian Jo Brand tells Michael Berkeley about the important role classical music plays in her life.

Jo Brand has enjoyed a pretty unusual career path - from psychiatric nurse to The Great British Bake Off. On the way she’s taken in radical stand-up comedy – under the moniker The Sea Monster – invented a new genre of Bafta-winning sitcom drawing on the black humour of nurses and social workers, and has made numerous appearances on panel shows from QI and Have I Got New For You to Question Time.

Jo talks movingly about the music in her childhood – learning the piano and violin, bell ringing in her local church and listening to music with her father, who suffered from depression. She chooses Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in his memory.

Music runs through Jo’s family, and her teenage daughters are keen singers. We hear Carmina Burana, which one of them has performed, as well as part of Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony, which reminds her of her rural childhood with her two brothers.

And she tells Michael that coping with drunk hecklers in rough comedy clubs was as nothing compared to the paralysing fear she felt when she had to perform Bach’s Toccata on the organ of the Royal Albert Hall for a television programme:

‘There were 8,000 people there. It was absolutely terrifying. I’d never actually realized what that expression "your blood running cold" really meant, but two minutes before I walked up and sat down at the organ, my hands were completely freezing and I thought they wouldn’t work.’

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3

Uta Frith Mar 31, 2019

For forty years, Uta Frith has dedicated her life to understanding the enigma of autism; she was one of the first neuroscientists to recognise autism as a condition of the brain, rather than the result of cold parenting. She works at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London, alongside her husband, Chris Frith, who’s a specialist in mapping the brain through neuro-imaging. Elected to the Royal Society in 2005, she’s passionate about encouraging more women into careers in science.

When Professor Frith first published her influential research into autism in the 1980s, she says it evoked “strong emotional reactions”, and autism remains controversial today, as it is increasingly viewed not as a disability, but as simply a different way of seeing the world. In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Uta Frith talks about the little boy she met very early on in her research who inspired her, and about why autism is so fascinating – because of what it reveals about the mystery of human communication.

Music choices include works by Smetana, Hildegard von Bingen and Beethoven, a Berlin cabaret song from the 1920s, and a work by Professor Frith's great female role model, Clara Schumann.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3

Mark Morris Mar 17, 2019

Over the last 40 years, Mark Morris has established a reputation as the most musical of choreographers. Inspired by both baroque and twentieth-century music, he’s most famously choreographed Purcell’s “Dido and Aeneas” – he danced both Dido and the sorceress himself - and his witty version of The Nutcracker, “The Hard Nut”, has been so popular that it’s been staged every year for almost 30 years. Mark Morris has worked in opera too, directing and choreographing productions for the Metropolitan Opera, the English National Opera and The Royal Opera, among others. He tours extensively but home is the Mark Morris Dance Center in Brooklyn, which runs outreach programmes into the local New York community. He’s received numerous awards, including the Leonard Bernstein Award for the Elevation of Music in Society.

In a humorous and revealing interview, Mark Morris looks back on his childhood in Seattle and his childhood passion for music and dance. It wasn’t very socially acceptable for a boy to become a dancer: “If you were in dance, you were a sissy. But I also was a sissy so what’s the problem?” He talks too about losing many friends to AIDS, and fearing that his own time was limited, a pressure that created a manic burst of creative energy.

Music choices include Germaine Tailleferre, a French composer from the twenties whom he believes is unjustly neglected; Scarlatti; Handel; Lou Harrison; and Erik Satie.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3

Greta Scacchi Mar 10, 2019

From Hollywood to European art house cinema, from Shakespeare to contemporary drama, Greta Scacchi is one of our most versatile actors.

She talks to Michael Berkeley about the film that made her name in 1983 – Heat and Dust – and chooses music from the soundtrack featuring Zakir Hussain.

She reveals how her musical training as a child – learning ballet, piano and singing - has been invaluable when she’s been called on to play and sing on film. She particularly loved the character she played in Jefferson in Paris, the eighteenth-century Anglo-Italian artist and musician Maria Cosway, and explains how difficult it was to pretend the play the harp on screen. We hear some of Maria Cosway’s music from that film.

Greta chooses music by Satie which reminds her of her mother’s ballet school when she was a child. Her mother is still dancing at 87! And we hear one of Canteloube’s Chants d’Auvergne, and a Handel aria which illustrate Greta’s passion for the theatre; she chooses pieces which remind her of the places she loves – Sussex, Italy and Australia. We get an insight into her passion for jazz with music from Jimmy Guiffre and Fats Waller.

And Greta speaks out about the importance of actors campaigning for causes they believe in – she’s passionate about the environment and even posed naked with a cod to draw attention to unsustainable fishing.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3

Rachel Parris Mar 03, 2019

The comedian Rachel Parris talks to Michael Berkeley about her musical passions and how her life as a classical musician led to her career in comedy. Her hugely versatile career includes improvised comedy shows, stand-up, musical comedy and appearances on Radio 4’s The Now Show. She’s caused quite a stir with her hilarious turns as a faux-naïve reporter on BBC2’s satirical news show The Mash Report.

During her teens Rachel thought she would have a career as a classical musician –– she has a Music degree from Oxford, she’s an accomplished singer, and an excellent pianist; indeed, until recently she was a piano teacher.

Rachel talks to Michael about how she moved from music to comedy via drama school and how music still has a central place in her life. Her choices of pieces reflect the breadth of her musical passions, from a recording of Tallis in which she sings, to Bernstein and the American Songbook. She loves music that tells a story, particularly Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade, and music that makes her laugh, like Tom Lehrer’s songs. Rachel talks movingly about depression and her work with The Samaritans, and we hear music by Debussy which she finds a comfort in difficult times.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3

Julian Baggini Feb 24, 2019

Michael Berkeley talks to the philosopher Julian Baggini about the pleasures of serendipity, transience, philosophy and music.

The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten, Do They Think You’re Stupid? and What’s It All About? are just three of the eye-catchingly titled books by Julian Baggini. He’s written 19 books in all, is the founding editor of The Philosophers’ Magazine, writes for newspapers, magazines and think tanks, and appears on radio and television. His latest book is How the World Thinks: A Global History of Philosophy.

Julian has been described as a philosopher’s philosopher, but he also has a mission to liberate philosophy from its ivory tower and bring it to the general reader. The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten – his collection of 100 brief thought experiments – has been described as ‘mental fun-sized treats’ and ‘the Sudoku of moral philosophy’.

Julian tells Michael about the joy he’s felt discovering pieces of music by Brahms, Ravel and Dvorak through chance encounters, and how he’s come to love music written for a video game by Jessica Curry when he met her on University Challenge.

He believes that both music and philosophy can help us appreciate beauty, come to terms with the transience of existence, and accept that life can be bitter and sweet at the same time.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3

Preti Taneja Feb 10, 2019

Michael Berkeley talks to the writer Preti Taneja about her wide-ranging love of music, from Indian gazals and ragas to Vivaldi and Shostakovich.

Preti Taneja’s debut novel We That Are Young won last year’s Desmond Elliott prize and huge critical acclaim, after being rejected as ‘commercially unviable’ by multiple publishers in both London and Delhi.

It’s a reworking of King Lear, set in contemporary India, and tells the story of a battle for power within a rich and turbulent Delhi family.

Before she found success as a novelist Preti worked as a journalist, as a human rights campaigner, and as a teacher of writing in places as diverse as universities, prisons, youth charities and refugee camps - and she chooses a song by Ilham al Madfai that reminds her of working in Jordan with minority communities who had fled the war in Iraq.

Preti talks about the music that reminds her of childhood holidays in Delhi, how she uses music in her writing, and why King Lear resonates so clearly in the India of today.

A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3, produced by Jane Greenwood.

Oliver Ford Davies Feb 03, 2019

When he started out on an acting career, Oliver Ford Davies was given some extremely discouraging advice by his first director, who said: “You’ll be OK when you’re forty, and even better when you’re fifty!” Davies was only twenty-seven at the time so that was a bit off-putting, to say the least; but in fact that advice was clairvoyant. His big breakthrough did indeed come at the age of fifty, in 1990, when he was given the lead in David Hare’s Racing Demon at the National Theatre, for which he won an Olivier Award. Since then he’s played Lear at the Almeida, and Star Wars fans will know him as Sio Bibble (the governer of Naboo); he also appears as Cressen in the very popular Game of Thrones. Among numerous Shakespeare roles over the last 40 years at the RSC, he’s just finished playing Pandarus in Troilus and Cressida, a production which was shown in cinemas across the country.

Looking back over a very varied and successful career, Oliver Ford Davies reflects on the ups and downs of a career which has been risky, and challenging, and richly enjoyable. He talks too about why big American films love English actors: because they can deliver unintelligible dialogue, and because they’re cheap. And he pays tribute to a great actor reading great poetry, in his choice of Paul Scofield reading T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets. Other choices include Haydn, Stravinsky, Elgar, Vaughan Williams, and Mozart’s ‘The Marriage of Figaro’.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3

Lisa Appignanesi Jan 27, 2019

Memory, desire, madness: these are the themes that fascinate Lisa Appignanesi and that she’s explored over the last forty years in novels, in memoirs, and in prize-winning books such as “Mad, Bad and Sad”, a history of women and mind doctors. Lisa Appignanesi is the Chair of the Royal Society of Literature and a former President of English PEN, an organisation which campaigns for free speech. She’s written about cabaret, about Proust and fin-de-siecle Paris, about Simone de Beauvoir, about Freud, and about her own troubled search for identity.

In Private Passions she tells Michael Berkeley about her childhood in Poland, where she was born Elżbieta Borensztejn, and about the way identities in her family were always shifting, “always there for the making”. She reflects on the power of the dead to haunt us, expressed by Monteverdi in his opera Orfeo, and admires the strength of singers Bessie Smith and Lotte Lenya, alongside music choices such as Mozart's ’The Marriage of Figaro’, Laurie Anderson, and Prokofiev’s ‘Peter and the Wolf’.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus Production for BBC Radio 3

Tim Firth Jan 20, 2019

Tim Firth is the man behind the show that captured the nation’s heart: Calendar Girls, the true story about a Women’s Institute who produced a naked calendar. It’s been a film, a play, and is now a musical.

He’s also responsible for the hugely successful film Kinky Boots, as well as multi-award winning TV shows, films and more musicals including Neville’s Island, The Flint Street Nativity, Preston Front, and most recently The Band, a collaboration with his long-time friend Gary Barlow and Take That.

But surprisingly there are no songs from musical theatre in Tim’s choices for Private Passions. Instead he shares with Michael Berkeley his love of Baroque, with music from Bach and from Albinoni (first heard on his honeymoon), and he chooses music by Delius and by Copland that resonates with the folk music he loved as a child.

Tim talks movingly about the emotional impact of music in his life, whether it’s writing the perfect song for a show or being spellbound by hearing Gorecki for the first time in a forest in the Lake District.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3

Sigrid Rausing Jan 13, 2019

Sigrid Rausing is a writer, publisher and philanthropist. She’s the co-founder of Portobello books, the owner of Granta books, and the editor of Granta literary magazine, a role she says she hugely enjoys. It’s impossible though to talk about her own achievements without mentioning her Swedish family background: her grandfather founded the packaging company Tetra Pak, and his brilliant idea for the invention of waxed cardboard cartons for milk and fruit juice brought him great wealth - and has allowed his grand-daughter to found one of the biggest philanthropic organizations in this country. But the family has been marked by great tragedy too: in 2012, Sigrid’s sister-in-law Eva died of a drugs overdose and her brother, who was also an addict, was arrested for possession of drugs, and for keeping his wife’s body at home with him.

In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Sigrid talks about the terrible effect of drug addiction on her family, and the guilt she and everyone around her feels about what happened. She looks back on her early career as an anthropologist, and reflects on the pleasures and challenges of editing a literary magazine. Music choices include Mozart’s clarinet concerto, Brahms’s Handel Variations, Liszt’s transcription of Schubert, and Ella Fitzgerald singing “Anything Goes”.

A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke

Clarke Peters Jan 06, 2019

Michael Berkeley talks to the actor Clarke Peters about his passion for breaking down barriers between musical traditions.

Best known for his television roles as Detective Lester Freeman in The Wire and Albert Lambreaux in Treme, Clarke has also appeared in films such as Notting Hill, Mona Lisa and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.

And he has a rich career in music too – from busking in France in his youth to working as a backing singer for David Essex and for Joan Armatrading – if you listen carefully you can hear him on her iconic song Love and Affection. And he’s appeared in Chicago, Chess, and Porgy and Bess to name but a few musicals. In 1990 he created the award winning revue Five Guys Named Moe, based on the music of Louis Jordan.

Clarke’s choices of music reflect the trans-Atlantic nature of his life: a piece written in France by the New Orleans composer Gottschalk, which he heard when filming Treme; music by Ravel and by Debussy; and Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, which always takes him straight back to his birthplace, New York. And his final piece – Nat King Cole playing Rachmaninoff - illustrates perfectly his desire to open people’s ears to the cultural breadth of classical music.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3

Jan Ravens Dec 23, 2018

This week’s Private Passions is pretty crowded, with Kirsty Wark, Fiona Bruce, Emily Thornberry and Theresa May all putting in appearances - in the person of Jan Ravens, from the award-winning Radio 4 show Dead Ringers.

Jan’s career has been a series of firsts – she was, in 1979, the first female president of the Cambridge Footlights, and the show she directed in Edinburgh went on to win the first ever Perrier Award. She was one of the first women to appear with Jasper Carrott and on Spitting Image, and last year she made her solo Edinburgh debut with her show Difficult Woman.

Jan tells Michael how her difficult childhood was transformed by writing and performing at Cambridge, about the battles she’s fought to have women equally represented on comedy shows and discusses the frequently negative perception of women in positions of power.

And she demonstrates just how she got inside the voice of Theresa May.

Jan’s passion isn’t just for female speaking voices but for singing voices too, and she’s chosen to hear four women singers: Maria Callas, Kathleen Ferrier, Jessye Norman and Barbara Cook.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3

Daniel Evans Dec 16, 2018

Actor and theatre director Daniel Evans shares with Michael Berkeley his passions for musical theatre, opera and the piano.

Daniel Evans grew up in the Rhondda Valley and won praise and prizes at Eisteddfods as a teenager. Since then his career has been something of a high-wire act: balancing performing versus directing and theatre management, stage versus screen, popular musicals versus edgy new dramas.

He first made his name twenty years ago as an actor, in Peter Pan at the National Theatre and then as an outstanding interpreter of Sondheim, twice winning Oliviers for Best Actor in a Musical. He’s also well known for his roles in television and film, from Spooks and Dr Who to Great Expectations.

And then in 2009 Daniel Evans was appointed Artistic Director of Sheffield Theatres and he’s now at Chichester Festival Theatre. His stage production of The Full Monty went into the West End and continues to be on tour nationwide, and Flowers for Mrs Harris - a new musical about the life of a post-war char lady being transformed by the sight of a Christian Dior dress – won three UK Theatre Awards.

Daniel tells Michael about meeting Sondheim whilst performing in New York, about his passion for singing, and about the importance of the tradition of the actor-manager in British theatre.

He chooses music by Sondheim and Bernstein that reflects his passion for musical theatre, and he shares his love of opera with music by Britten and Donizetti.

And we hear Bryn Terfel sing a Welsh folk song which takes Daniel back to the valleys and Eisteddfods of his childhood.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3

David Rieff Dec 02, 2018

David Rieff has admitted ruefully that he’s made a career out of telling people what they don’t want to hear: whether it’s the politics of the global food crisis in his book “The Reproach of Hunger”, or the failure of the West to prevent the terrible bloodbath of Bosnia in his provocatively-titled “Slaughterhouse: Bosnia and the failure of the West”. As a war correspondent, Rieff has worked in the Balkans, in Rwanda and the Congo, in Israel-Palestine, in Afghanistan and Iraq. He’s not afraid to tackle the big issues: immigration, exile, American imperialism. There are thirteen books in all, including a memoir about his mother, the American writer Susan Sontag.

In Private Passions, David talks to Michael Berkeley about being “Susan Sontag’s son”, and whether that label has at times been a burden. He’s her only child and Sontag was only 19 when he was born. He reflects on the privilege and yet strangeness of his New York upbringing, and how he has used that background “to make a living being a critic of everything. That’s an immense privilege.”

David Rieff is a passionate fan of Early music, and his choices include the 16th-century composer Orlando di Lassus, and Alfred Deller singing Purcell. Other choices include Bach’s moving cantata “Ich Habe Genug”, Shostakovich, Beethoven, and Bluegrass.

A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke

Rebecca Stott Nov 25, 2018

Rebecca Stott grew up in a community where the following things were forbidden: newspapers, television, cinema, radio, pets, universities, wristwatches, cameras, holidays – and music. Her family belonged to one of the most reclusive sects in Protestant History, the “Exclusive Brethren”, which has 45,000 followers worldwide. How and why she left the Brethren is the gripping story told in her memoir, “In the Days of Rain”, which won a Costa Prize in 2017. Before that there were two historical novels; two books about Darwin; and a body of academic work about 19th century writers. Rebecca Stott is currently Professor of literature and creative writing at the University of East Anglia. It’s a remarkable career for someone who grew up not being allowed to read freely, or even to enter a library.

In Private Passions Rebecca Stott tells the story of how her family escaped from the sect, and how the outside world flooded in, in all its technicolour. The discovery of music was particularly exciting, and she has never forgotten the impact of Rachmaninov and of Mozart. She reveals that after she wrote about the sect, she gathered hundreds of thousands of pages of testimony from other former members, telling stories of scandal and suffering. And she reflects on the lifelong influence of growing up in a religious sect that believed the world would end any minute, and everyone on earth would literally disappear into the air.

Music choices include Pergolesi’s “Stabat Mater”, Klezmer music, Mozart’s Piano Concerto no 21, Rachmaninov, Paul Simon, and Leonard Cohen. A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke

Margaret MacMillan Nov 11, 2018

Michael Berkeley’s guest on the centenary of Armistice Day is the historian Margaret MacMillan.

In this year’s Reith Lectures, Margaret Macmillan delivered a powerful series of lectures exploring war and society, and our complex feelings towards those who fight. She is Emeritus Professor of International History at the University of Oxford, and Professor of History at the University of Toronto in her native Canada.

But she wasn’t always as well known as she is now; her book Peacemakers, about the Paris Conference at the end of the First World War, was rejected by a string of publishers – before winning the 2002 Samuel Johnson Prize and catapulting her into the public eye in her late fifties.

Many more best-selling and prize-winning books have followed, including Nixon in China, The Uses and Abuses of History, and The War That Ended Peace, about the long build-up to the First World War.

In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Margaret Macmillan reflects on how our perception of the First World War has changed in the last hundred years, and sounds a note of warning as she perceives worrying parallels between the years leading up to that conflict and the state of the world today.

Both her grandfathers fought in the First World War and she chooses music which reflects her Welsh and Scottish heritage, as she argues for the importance of personal stories within the big picture of history.

She and Michael Berkeley explore the paradox that great works of literature, art, and music are created out of the horror of war, and she chooses music from both World Wars by Ravel, by Strauss and by Tippett; all of whom, in different ways, bring beauty out of appalling suffering and destruction.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3

Anil Seth Nov 04, 2018

It’s the size and shape of a cauliflower, and weighs about 3 lbs. And yet the average human brain has so many intricate and complex connections that if you counted one connection every second it would take you more than three million years.

Professor Anil Seth has devoted his career to trying to understand the brain, puzzling over the mystery of consciousness itself. He’s Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience at the Sackler Centre at the University of Sussex, and the author of a popular book, “The 30-second Brain”. In Private Passions, he muses on how our consciousness of the world, and of ourselves, is “one of the big central mysteries of life”. And it’s a mystery we face every day – when we fall asleep and when we wake up. In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Anil Seth explores the concept of free will (he doesn’t believe in it); why music evokes such strong memories; and how meditation changes the structure of the brain.

Music choices include Chopin, Bach, Nina Simone, and an ancient Hindi mantra.

A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke

Richard Powers Oct 21, 2018

As part of Radio 3’s celebration of forests this autumn, Michael Berkeley’s guest is the American novelist Richard Powers. His latest novel, The Overstory, is his twelfth, and it’s a monumental work which was entirely inspired by trees.

It all started when Powers was teaching in California, and visited the giant redwoods there. That encounter amounted he says to “a religious conversion”. He realised he’d been blind to these amazing creatures all his life. So, to make up for lost time, in his new Booker long-listed novel he gives trees a voice:

"A woman sits on the ground, leaning against a pine. Its bark presses hard against her back, as hard as life. Its needles scent the air and a force hums in the heart of the wood. Her ears tune down to the lowest frequencies. The tree is saying things, in words before words."

Inspired by his passion for trees, Richard Powers has now moved to live in the forests of the Smoky Mountains which run along the border between North Carolina and Tennessee.

"In 15 to 20 minutes, I can be up and walking in these forests that are recovering from a century-and-a-half of logging and see the way that nature persists and transforms and perseveres."

On a brief trip to London, he looks back over a thirty-year writing career in which each novel is more audacious than the last. But one theme runs through all his writing: the power of music, and Powers plays the cello, guitar, clarinet and saxophone. His music choices include Dowland’s “Time Stands Still”, Bartok’s String Quartet No. 4, Bach’s Cantata BWV 100, and Charles Ives’ Concord Sonata.

A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke

John Bird Oct 14, 2018

Big Issue founder John Bird talks to Michael Berkeley about the role music played in transforming his life.

For two weeks in 1970 John Bird worked in the Houses of Parliament washing dishes; in 2015 he returned as a life peer.

To say he didn’t have a great start in life is something of an understatement. Born in 1946 in a Notting Hill slum, he was five when his family was made homeless and at seven he was taken into care. Much of his teens was spent in reform school, he slept rough, and he went to prison several times for stealing.

But John Bird turned his life around and has devoted it to fighting for social justice and particularly for homeless people, founding the Big Issue in 1991 with Gordon Roddick. Nearly thirty years on, and with over 200 million copies sold, it’s become a multi-million pound social investment enterprise, and has helped 92,000 vendors earn nearly £120 million pounds.

John tells Michael about the music that cut through his chaotic childhood, and we hear Brahms’ Academic Festival Overture, played to John's class by a beleaguered music teacher and which John has never forgotten.

Passionate about making classical music accessible to all and breaking down notions of elitism in music, John chooses works by Grieg, Tchaikovsky, Weber, Wagner and Steve Reich, music he has discovered on his extraordinary journey from reform school and prison to the House of Lords.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3

Ed Vulliamy Oct 07, 2018

Ed Vulliamy has worked all around the world as a journalist; he’s best-known for his prize-winning coverage of the war in Bosnia, on television and in The Guardian. The war crimes he reported on led to his becoming a witness in the trial of the Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, and he was the first journalist since the Nuremberg trials to testify at an international war crimes tribunal. He went on to cover the 9/11 attacks in New York, and more recently the drug wars on the US/Mexico border.

Ed Vulliamy is also the son of the much-loved children’s author Shirley Hughes, something that often eclipses all his other achievements, and he was immortalised as a teenager in her books. Music has been crucial to him all through his career, and in conversation with Michael Berkeley he reveals that his very first job was as an extra in a production of Aida.

He talks movingly about his experience in Bosnia, about the psychological after-effects of being so near the horror of war, and about why he wishes he’d been a cartoonist instead.

Music choices include Verdi, Schubert, Shostakovich, Joan Baez, Mozart’s “Marriage of Figaro”, and the Bosnian singer Amira Medunjanin.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3

Bel Mooney Sep 30, 2018

Bel Mooney describes her pleasures as: watching for kingfishers, riding pillion on a motorbike, and dancing to a 1962 Wurlitzer. That entertaining list reflects something of her enjoyment of a life which has brought many challenges as well as pleasures. Bel Mooney started out as a writer almost 50 years ago, and in 1976 was one of the first journalists to speak from personal experience about the terrible loss of having a stillborn baby; that article led to the founding of the first national stillbirth society. She’s a novelist, children’s writer and broadcaster, and the advice columnist for the Daily Mail, a job she says is more worthwhile than any other she’s done.

In Private Passions, Bel Mooney talks very openly about the ups and downs of a life which has brought about many transformations, about how her stillbirth changed her, and about finding happiness again after the ending of her marriage to Jonathan Dimbleby. Music plays a central role, and her choices include sacred music by Mozart and Pergolesi, Beethoven’s String Quartet in F major, Nigel Kennedy playing unaccompanied Bach, and jazz poetry from Christopher Logue.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3

Bella Hardy Sep 16, 2018

Michael Berkeley’s guest is Bella Hardy, a passionate interpreter of traditional songs who has also blossomed into an accomplished songwriter, drawing on the Peak District, where she grew up, as well as influences from as far away as Nashville and China.

Despite being only in her early thirties Bella has nine acclaimed solo albums to her name. She was part of the first - and highly memorable - Folk Prom in the Albert Hall in 2008 and she’s held the title of BBC Radio 2 Folk Singer of the Year.

Bella talks to Michael about her passion for storytelling, which is reflected in her love of opera as well as traditional songs – we hear both an aria from Maria Callas and an unaccompanied folk song by Oxfordshire glover Freda Palmer, recorded in the 1950s.

She talks about learning to play music by ear; her teenage years playing festivals in a folk band; and the challenges and satisfactions of running her own record label – and raising money to produce her albums through internet crowd funding.

A contemporary carol by Philip Stopford illustrates Bella's love of community singing, and her many inspirations are reflected in her choice of music played on instruments as diverse as the English accordion and a form of Chinese lute called the pipa.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3

Steve Punt Sep 09, 2018

Steve Punt is well known thanks to the popular Radio 4 Friday night comedy, The Now Show - with fellow-host Hugh Dennis, he’s been mocking politicians and celebrities for an astonishing twenty years now. He also presents The Third Degree, the Radio 4 quiz which pits undergraduates against professors. But behind the scenes he’s been busy writing for a whole host of other shows, such as Mock the Week and The Mary Whitehouse Experience, for comedians Jasper Carrott and Rory Bremner; he even used to write for the puppets on Spitting Image. He says “Weirdly, I think people are more inclined to believe comedians than they are politicians.”

In Private Passions, Steve talk to Michael Berkeley about how it all began: when he was bad at games at school, and forced to play the clown. He reminisces about his first job, in a music shop in Croydon, which he describes as being so rich in comic material that it was a bit like a sitcom – all of life was there. He talks about how audiences have changed thanks to social media, and why he worries that mocking politicians may just be a way of feeding their gigantic egos.

Music choices include Sibelius’s Violin Concerto, piano music by Debussy and by Scott Joplin, Shostakovich’s Jazz Suite, Dave Brubeck, and a comic masterpiece by Dudley Moore, “Bedazzled”.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3

Eugenia Cheng Sep 02, 2018

At first glance chocolate brownies, puff pastry and Battenberg cake don’t seem to have a great deal in common with theoretical maths, but Eugenia Cheng has harnessed her love of cooking in order to tackle the fear of maths so many of us share – and has published a book about it called How to Bake Pi.

Her mission is to rid the world of "maths phobia", and to this end she gave up her secure job teaching at Sheffield University to open up the world of maths to students from other disciplines as Scientist in Residence at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, which also gives her the opportunity to pursue her own research in Category Theory - the purest form of maths.

And she’s a highly accomplished pianist, performing in concert halls around the world, as well as founding Liederstube - a popular venue for lieder and art song in Chicago which has hosted performers such as Gerald Finley and Richard Wiegold.

Eugenia explains to Michael how chocolate brownies and pure maths are related; how she prefers to work in cafes and bars with pen and paper rather than on a computer, and how her intensely emotional response to music is a release from the intensely ordered world of pure mathematics. And they dismantle stereotypes about Chinese ‘tiger mothers’, girls and maths, and the idea that people who are good at maths are automatically good at music.

Eugenia chooses music from Bach’s Matthew Passion, Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto – which she herself has played – and from Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony and Janacek’s opera The Makropulos Case, which take her on an emotional and philosophical journey towards a reconciliation with mortality.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3

Lauren Child Aug 05, 2018

Michael Berkeley's guest is the best-selling author, illustrator, and Children's Laureate Lauren Child.

I Will Not Ever Never Eat a Tomato; I Am Too Absolutely Small for School; I Am Not Sleepy and Will Not Go to Bed - these are just three of Lauren Child's bestselling, funny and touching picture books for young children. Her big-eyed characters such as Charlie and Lola, and Hubert Horatio Bartle Bobton-Trent, capture the way children negotiate the small but significant challenges of family life, school and growing up. And they're illustrated with Lauren's trademark collages of her drawings and paintings, magazine cuttings, fabrics and photographs.

But she writes for older children too - novels featuring the feisty Clarice Bean and, most recently, Ruby Redfort, who has to juggle her mundane life at school with being a top international secret agent and expert code-breaker.

The winner of numerous awards, including the Kate Greenaway Medal and multiple Smarties Prizes, Lauren Child has been Britain's Children's Laureate since 2017.

In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Lauren talks about the struggle she faced in her twenties to find direction in life, the challenge and joy of adopting her daughter from Mongolia, and why she can't work unless she's feeling melancholy. She chooses a Mongolian long song for her daughter; music by Satie that conjures up her own childhood; and music by Puccini and Vivaldi used in films that had a huge impact on the development of her imagination.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Henry Blofeld Jul 29, 2018

Ahead of this week's first test against India, Michael Berkeley's guest is cricket commentator Henry Blofeld.

Henry was a very promising young cricketer, but his prospects of a first-class career were ended by a near-fatal accident at the age of seventeen. He eventually found his way to cricket journalism and ultimately to Test Match Special, where he was a mainstay for nearly fifty years, illuminating each match with his forensic knowledge of the game, as well as entertaining listeners with sightings of snoozing policemen, passing buses, and pigeons on the outfield.

But last year Henry Blofeld declared his long innings in the commentary box closed. At his final test at Lords he was given the great honour of ringing the bell for the start of play, which he did attired in one of his signature colourful outfits - an orange shirt, yellow trousers and shoes, a pale green jacket and a yellow patterned bow tie.

In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Henry Blofeld reveals how his accident changed the course of his life, and discusses the difficult decision to retire from broadcasting, and the joy of finding love later in life. He chooses music from Mozart and Puccini which reflects his life-long love of opera; music from Gilbert and Sullivan which reminds him of his Norfolk childhood; a Schubert symphony; and music from Ravi Shankar that recalls the time he almost played for England against India.

Audrey Niffenegger Jul 22, 2018

Audrey Niffenegger had a huge worldwide success with her first novel, The Time-Traveller's Wife, which sold eight million copies in thirty-six languages. It was made into a film, of which, she says, the least said the better. But that commercial success bought her creative freedom - and what she's done with it is intriguing. After a second novel, about the ghosts in Highgate Cemetery, Audrey Niffenegger has gone back to her first love of art, combining story-telling with comic-book-style illustrations. Her latest graphic novel, "Bizarre Romance", features thirteen stories: about angels, monsters, fairies, cats, and - in her words - "oddballs in love".

In Private Passions Audrey Niffenegger tells Michael Berkeley about her own improbable long-distance romance with artist Eddie Campbell, who now illustrates her books. Her eclectic music list goes back to the twelfth century, with music by Hildegard von Bingen, and forward to Philip Glass, Radiohead, and the American experimental composer Pauline Oliveros, who recorded music fourteen feet down in an underground cistern. In fact, so great is Audrey Niffenegger's love of minimalism that she confesses she was even once seduced into listening, for some time, to the low mesmeric thrumming she heard in a foreign hotel room - before she realised it was not the radio but the the hotel heating system.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Paco Peña Jul 15, 2018

Paco Peña first started playing the guitar at the age of six; it was his older brother's guitar, and since there were nine children in the family, all living in two rooms in a crowded house in Córdoba, he had a ready-made audience right from the beginning. He made his first professional appearance at the age of twelve, and toured through Spain before moving to London in the 1960s, where he found himself sharing concerts with Jimi Hendrix. Over the last fifty years, he's established a world-wide reputation as a pre-eminent master of flamenco guitar. He's a composer, too, of both a requiem and a mass in flamenco style.

In Private Passions, Paco Peña takes us back to the Spain of his childhood; this was only a few years after the end of the Spanish Civil War, and he describes the country he was born into as "fragile and tortured". He talks too about making a living as a musician on the Costa Brava, where he met his wife, and about what it was like to arrive in London in the 1960s, a time when flamenco guitar was relatively unknown.

Music choices include Mozart, Beethoven, de Falla - the Argentinian composer Eduardo Falú - and Bach, the composer Peña always listens to before going on stage to perform. He includes too the track he regards as flamenco at its quintessential best, by singer Camarón de la Isla and guitarist Paco de Lucía. And he gives away a few trade secrets about how to master passionate flamenco strumming - it involves painting your fingernails with glue.

A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke.

Adjoa Andoh Jul 08, 2018

The actor Adjoa Andoh talks to Michael Berkeley about her passion for theatre, opera, and the music that reflects both her English and African heritage.

Whether you're a regular at the National Theatre or Old Vic, prefer your entertainment on the big screen, or like to curl up on the sofa in front of Dr Who or Casualty (or - even - with the radio), you'll be familiar with the work of Adjoa Andoh.

The daughter of a history teacher and of an exiled Ghanaian journalist, she was heading for a career in the law before making a dramatic switch to acting, and has scarcely been out of work since. Her recent theatre work includes playing the exiled Black Panther leader in Assata Taught Me at The Gate, and Casca in Nicholas Hytner's highly acclaimed production of Julius Caesar at the Bridge Theatre.

She chooses music by Vaughan Williams, Rimsky-Korsakov, Bernstein, Puccini, Britten, and the African musician Dade Krama - music which reflects joyous moments in her life but also the challenges she's faced: growing up mixed race in rural England in the 60s and 70s, forging a career as an actor without a drama school training, and speaking up about being the mother of a transgender child.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Kim Moore Jun 24, 2018

Kim Moore won the prestigious Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize this year for her first poetry collection, "The Art of Falling", and is still only in her thirties. The judges described her prize-winning collection as "thrilling: language at its most irresistible and essential". But however thrilling, poets need to make a living, and Kim Moore's day job has been as a trumpet teacher, in Cumbria where she lives. She's also conducted brass bands.

In Private Passions, Kim Moore explores her musical passion for brass, from Handel's Messiah through to Britten's Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings, taking in the Grimethorpe Colliery Band on the way. She tells Michael Berkeley how she started writing, and about her sequence of poems exploring a dark and abusive relationship. She reflects too on the influence of her father's job as a scaffolder, and how a fear of falling and images of falling haunt her work. And there are some true confessions about what it's like to play the trumpet in a bandstand with one dog and the drunk who slept there the night before.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Miranda Krestovnikoff Jun 17, 2018

As part of Radio 3's week in the forest, Michael Berkeley talks to wildlife presenter, President of the RSPB and accomplished musician Miranda Krestovnikoff.

She's dived with sharks, shown viewers how to eat roadkill, and searched for mammoth bones in the North Sea. The co-presenter of ten series of Coast, Miranda's also a regular on The One Show and Radio 4's Costing the Earth. As well as the RSPB she's involved in numerous other environmental and wildlife charities. She tells Michael about staying up all night waiting for pine martens in a Scottish forest, and a frightening experience diving with sharks.

But she's also a talented musician - a flautist, pianist, and singer who plays with the New Bristol Sinfonia and sings in choirs in the city. We hear a recording of Miranda singing a Duruflé motet with the Bristol University Singers and from other composers whose music she has performed - Holst, Vaughan Williams, and Rachmaninoff, whose All Night Vigil was played at her wedding. And we hear a piece that combines her love of music and birds - Martinů's Sonata for Flute and Piano - the piece that inspired her as a young flautist and which also features the song of a nightjar.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3

In midsummer week, Radio 3 enters one of the most potent sources of the human imagination. 'Into the Forest' explores the enchantment, escape and magical danger of the forest in summer, with slow radio moments featuring the sounds of the forest, allowing time out from today's often frenetic world.

Richard Smith Jun 10, 2018

Dr Richard Smith heads an organisation called Patients Know Best, and having been editor of the British Medical Journal for most of his career, he now enjoys stirring things up in a provocative weekly blog there. Among his targets: the sinister power of drug companies - and the not unrelated tendency of doctors to over-treat illnesses like cancer. When he's not stirring things up at home, Richard Smith is in Bangladesh, working for a charity trying to prevent the terrible human loss caused by infected drinking water. He has also worked as a television doctor and at one point answered readers' letters for Women's Realm.

In Private Passions, Richard Smith tells Michael Berkeley about his strong belief that doctors and patients collude to hide the truth about disease and death, and explains why he gives a talk called provocatively: "Death: the Upside". He reveals too how music has sustained him at crisis points in his life.

Choices include Bach's cello suites, the Stan Tracey Quartet, Shostakovich, Messiaen, Haydn, Deborah Pritchard, and sacred music by the medieval composer Hermannus Contractus.

Peter Florence May 27, 2018

The Hay Festival began in 1988 with 250 people in a field in mid Wales. Thirty years later, the crowd has swelled to more than quarter of a million - 265,000 people are expected to turn up this year over ten days - and it's still in a field in mid-Wales. But the Hay Festival has also grown into an international brand, with spin-offs across the world in Colombia, Peru, Mexico and Segovia.

The Festival founder, Peter Florence, has been running it all that time; he started it with his parents - his father was a theatre manager for Sam Wanamaker. Legend has it - and Peter confirms this - that it was partly funded by winnings from a poker game. In Private Passions, he looks back over the lessons of the last thirty years, and reveals how he has grappled with censorship when staging festivals in Hungary and Mexico.

Peter Florence's music list reflects a passion for Bach and Mahler, and for the oud player Anouar Brahem. He chooses Handel's Sarabande, made famous by the film Barry Lyndon, and Sarah Vaughan singing "The Man I Love", which he describes as the sexiest song in the world.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Elisabeth Luard May 20, 2018

Michael Berkeley talks to the food writer, artist and journalist Elisabeth Luard about her favourite music and the memories it conjures up of the joys and tragedies of family life.

The winner of the Guild of Food Writers Award for Lifetime Achievement, she has written more than twenty cookbooks, including European Peasant Cookery, Flavours of Andalucía, and A Cook's Year in a Welsh Farmhouse. And her compelling series of memoirs documents the joys and appalling tragedy she's experienced as a mother; the delight she found in living abroad with her young children; and the ups and downs of her long marriage. The latest is Squirrel Pie: Adventures in Food Across the Globe.

Elisabeth tells Michael about her childhood growing up in embassies in South America and her return to school in England and a very special choir master. She chooses flamenco music that reminds her of her life in rural pre-tourism Andalucia bringing up her four young children.

We hear Elisabeth's friend Christopher Logue reading from his poem War Music, and music by Mozart and Beethoven - and we hear a song which was special to Elisabeth's daughter Francesca, who died in her twenties.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Lubaina Himid May 06, 2018

For Lubaina Himid, winning the Turner Prize is recognition for thirty-five years of work as a painter, curator and installation artist. Her work is witty, vibrantly coloured, and provocative; in her most famous work, "Naming the Money", she filled galleries with more than a hundred huge and very beautiful cut-outs of African figures from the past - the forgotten black servants and musicians who were brought back by their slave-masters to live in Britain in the 18th century.

Lubaina Himid herself was born in Zanzibar, Tanzania, but came here as a baby, first to Blackpool and then to London. She now lives in Preston, where she's Professor of Contemporary Art at the University of Central Lancashire. She was awarded an MBE for services to black women's art. She says "My work is a mixture of humour, celebration, optimism and fury. I want to challenge the order of things."

In Private Passions, she talks about how winning the Turner Prize has changed her perspective, and about how she creates a musical soundtrack to her installations. She pays tribute to her aunt, who played the violin and brought music into the house, and talks honestly about how difficult it was to make a living as a young artist. Musical choices include Bellini, Bruch, Janacek, and Nina Simone.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Anne Sebba Apr 22, 2018

Michael Berkeley's guest is Anne Sebba, the best-selling biographer of iconic women including Wallis Simpson, Winston Churchill's mother Jennie, Laura Ashley, and Mother Teresa.

Her most recent book tells the stories of the women of Paris in the 1940s. She follows the lives of housewives, Resistance fighters, shop girls, prostitutes and celebrities, all the time examining the big, small - and often impossible - choices people have to make in wartime. And we hear part of an operetta composed by one of these women, imprisoned by the Nazis at Ravensbruck.

Anne tells Michael about her controversial biography of Wallis Simpson in which she claims that we should have more understanding of her situation and more admiration for her as a person - and she argues that Wallis married Edward with great reluctance.

We hear Artur Rubinstein playing Rachmaninov, which brings back memories for Anne of interviewing him when she was a young journalist, and she chooses music by Mendelssohn, Chopin, and Verdi. A passionate advocate for the celebration of women's lives and talents, Anne chooses performances by Robyn Archer, Maria Callas and Margaret Fingerhut.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Phyllida Barlow Apr 08, 2018

The artist Phyllida Barlow shares her passion for music that reflects her sculpture, in its defiance of convention and delight in surprise.

For years Phyllida Barlow was so desperate for people to see her sculptures that she would leave them on the street or in disused factories; or she would install them in friends' houses, using pianos and ironing boards as plinths.

Initially overlooked by museums and galleries, she was in her sixties when she found widespread recognition - in the last decade she's been invited to exhibit all over the world, and has became a Royal Academician, a CBE, and the recipient of numerous awards. Her 2014 exhibition at Tate Britain was unforgettable - she filled the cavernous Duveen Galleries with huge, gravity-defying pieces made out of timber and scrap materials which appeared to be about to topple over or to be on the point of collapse. And in 2017 she received the ultimate accolade of representing Great Britain at the Venice Biennale.

She talks to Michael Berkeley about finding success in later life, how she juggled life as a teacher, artist and mother of five, and the challenges of constructing monumental installations. She chooses music by Birtwistle, Wagner, Janacek, Webern, and Messiaen, pieces which reflect her fascination with size, scale, texture and unexpected beauty.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Richard Coles Apr 01, 2018

In a revealing and entertaining programme for Easter Day, the Reverend Richard Coles talks to Michael Berkeley about his double life as a celebrity priest and his enduring passion for classical music.

The only vicar to have had a number one hit and to have danced the paso doble dressed as Flash Gordon in front of 10 million television viewers, Richard Coles is also the presenter of Radio 4's Saturday Live and the author of several books including a devastatingly honest autobiography in which he describes how he swapped the sex-and-drugs fuelled world of pop stardom for the life of a parish priest.

Richard talks to Michael about how he balances being a celebrity - appearing on shows such as Strictly Come Dancing, Celebrity Masterchef and Have I Got News For You - with the day to day normalities of being a vicar in rural Northamptonshire. He reveals how Mozart helped his recovery from depression as a teenager, looks back on the risks he took as a hedonistic pop star with The Communards in the 1980s, and talks frankly about the difficulties of being gay in the Church of England.

Classical music has always been at the centre of Richard's life from his days as a teenage pianist and chorister, and he continues to discover new passions such as Janacek and Wagner. He chooses choral music which reminds him of studying theology at King's College London, jazz in memory of his racy grandfather, and the Monks of Solesmes singing from the Gradual Mass of Easter.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Xavier Bray Mar 25, 2018

Xavier Bray is a renowned specialist in 17th- and 18th-century art, and he's been director for a year now of the Wallace Collection, that rich collection of rococo painting, china, and armour, housed in a grand mansion in Marylebone that remains something of a well-kept secret. Bray would like to change that, opening up the gallery to a wider public and to music of all kinds. He himself would have loved to be an opera singer, and he has sung in choirs all his life. His party piece is a demonstration of Mongolian throat singing, which he taught himself after going to a concert as a student. He gives Michael Berkeley a demonstration, and discusses, more seriously, the connection between the visual arts and music. He reveals his other musical passions: for Marin Marais, flamenco, Bizet, Messiaen, and for the Italian tenor Beniamino Gigli.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Gwyneth Glyn Mar 18, 2018

The poet and singer-songwriter Gwyneth Glyn talks to Michael Berkeley about the music she loves from Wales and around the world.

Gwyneth has been described as a poet among singers and a singer among poets. She's also a television script writer, a playwright and a children's author, having won the Crown at the Urdd Eisteddfod aged 18, and going on to be appointed Wales' National Poet Laureate for Children in 2006, the year she also won Best Female Artist in the Radio Cymru Rock and Pop Awards. Brought up in a Welsh speaking household, she's a passionate advocate of the language both within Wales and internationally.

Gwyneth talks to Michael about writing a libretto for the first ever Welsh language opera, growing up in a rural Welsh-speaking community, and the pleasures and challenges of passing the language on to the next generation.

She chooses music from her collaboration with Indian ghazal singer Tauseef Akhtar, as well as music by Tippett, Welsh folk hero Meredydd Evans, Rimsky Korsakov and Tchaikovsky.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Richard Flanagan Mar 11, 2018

Richard Flanagan first came to worldwide attention in 2001 with one of the most original titles ever: "Gould's Book of Fish, a Novel in Twelve Fish". It was his third novel, the story of a 19th-century forger sentenced to hard labour off the coast of Van Diemen's Land. Van Diemen's Land, or Tasmania as it's now called, is where Flanagan was brought up, and still lives and writes, publishing every few years a novel that is extraordinarily thought-provoking and original - and very different from all the books before.

His last novel, The Narrow Road to the Deep North, about the Death Railway in Burma, won the Booker Prize. Four years on, his new novel First Person is the story of a conman, and it's based on an extraordinary experience of his own. Flanagan dreamed of being a writer but was working as a builder's labourer when he suddenly got a commission: to write the life story of a notorious conman who was facing jail. They spent three weeks together shut up in a publisher's office, and it was frightening to be incarcerated with such a violent murderer. After three weeks the man shot himself, but for Flanagan that trauma was just the beginning of the story - he then had to recreate the criminal's life on the page, making it all up.

Flanagan talks to Michael Berkeley about a life lived on the edge, in the wild beauty of Tasmania, and about his admiration for those who live outside the cultural mainstream, often lone voices of dissent. His music choices reflect this: the Polish Australian composer Cezary Skubiszewski, Arvo Part, John Field, Von Westoff, and Jane Birkin.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Katherine Grainger Mar 04, 2018

In a special edition to mark International Women's Day next week, Michael Berkeley talks to Britain's most decorated female Olympic athlete, the rower Dame Katherine Grainger.

Katherine won a silver medal in Rio in 2016 - at the age of 40. It was her fifth medal from five consecutive Olympic Games, including a gold in the double sculls at London 2012. On her return from Rio, she was voted the Olympians' Olympian by her fellow Team GB athletes. The holder of six World Champion titles, she has an MBE and a CBE, was made a dame in 2017 New Year's Honours list, and, since last summer, has been the Chair of UK Sport.

On top of her huge sporting achievements, Katherine has a PhD in Criminal Law and is Chancellor of Oxford Brookes University.

Katherine tells Michael how music has helped her to cope with the pressure of competing at the highest level, and how music has been an important part of her life since her Scottish childhood. She chooses a Mozart aria to remind her of her grandparents in Aberdeen, and Rachmaninov for her rowing partner Cath Bishop, who is a talented pianist.

In celebration of International Women's Day, all but one of her choices - which include Elgar, Chopin and Bach - are performed or conducted by female musicians.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Bishi Feb 18, 2018

Singer, multi-instrumentalist, electronic sitar player, performer and DJ, Bishi has performed with everyone from Yoko Ono, Pulp, Goldfrapp, the LSO, and the Kronos Quartet. A glamorous and extravagantly costumed presence on stage, she's influenced by both Eastern and Western classical music as well as electronic dance, glam rock and folk music.

Michael Berkeley talks to her about growing up with the music of her mother, Susmita Bhattacharya, a celebrated Indian classical singer who knew Ravi Shankar. Bishi has her own take on the sitar, which she plays like an electric guitar.

A talented chorister and pianist as a child, she could have chosen a career in Western classical music, but instead has brought it to bear on her own panoramic musical style.

She chooses music from Ravi Shankar's collaboration with Philip Glass, iconic film soundtracks she's used in her work as a DJ, a song she's sung from a Bulgarian choir and pieces from major influences Mica Levi and Meredith Monk.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Bernard Cornwell Feb 11, 2018

Bernard Cornwell is now one of the world's most popular writers of historical fiction. He's famous for his Sharpe series, about a British soldier during the Napoleonic wars, and for his Last Kingdom books, set in 9th-century Britain. Both have become successful television adaptations, with a third season of The Last Kingdom being filmed for Netflix at the moment. The numbers are pretty staggering: 57 books published, worldwide sales of 35 million.

But Bernard Cornwell owes his existence as a writer to a very happy accident. It was 1978, he was in an office in Edinburgh, the lift doors opened, and out stepped a blonde. In his own words, he "fell disastrously in love". But Judy, the woman who stepped out of the lift, was American, and, when he moved to America to live with her, he couldn't get a green card. Unemployed, he decided to write a novel. And so the Sharpe series was born.

In Private Passions, Bernard Cornwell reveals his extraordinary childhood among a religious sect called the "Peculiar People". He was adopted, and he tells the story of his search for his birth parents. When he found his mother, her shelves were full of his books. The music he loves now is very much influenced by his lifelong rebellion against this ascetic religious upbringing: he loves Requiems and Catholic liturgical settings. Music choices include Faure's Requiem, Mozart's Requiem, Allegri's Miserere, and songs from Shakespeare.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Frances Barber Feb 04, 2018

Michael Berkeley talks to the actress Frances Barber about the music and friendships that have inspired her throughout her career. From Cleopatra at the Globe Theatre to the evil Madame Kovarian in Dr Who, from Peter Greenaway to Inspector Morse, and from Chekhov at the Royal Shakespeare Company to playing a seductive barrister in TV's Silk, Frances Barber is one of our most versatile actors. From the moment she won the Olivier Award for the Most Promising Newcomer, her hugely diverse career has spanned theatre, television and film - and every genre from comedy, sci-fi, kitchen sink drama, to theatrical classics and Hollywood.

Frances tells Michael how she discovered classical music by working her way through the records in her local library when she was setting out on her acting career; she chooses Chopin to remind her of that time.

In a funny and revealing interview, Frances talks about the music that's been part of her work, including Michael Nyman's soundtrack to A Zed and Two Noughts and songs by Brecht and the Pet Shop Boys. And she chooses music that reminds her of people she's loved, including Schubert for her close friend Alan Rickman.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough Jan 28, 2018

Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough is steeped in Viking lore. She travels through the icy landscapes of the Far North in the footsteps of those Norse "far travellers" who have left us their wonderful poetic stories of kings and trolls and dragons. She's an Associate Professor at Durham University and an AHRC Radio 3 New Generation Thinker, and her fieldwork has taken her pretty much everywhere the Vikings went: through Greenland, Norway, Iceland, Sweden, and Orkney. Recently she went to stay on the Arctic island of Svalbard, where in 24-hour darkness she encountered a family of polar bears.

Eleanor Barraclough's music list full of snow and ice - glittering, shimmering music - from the Norwegian composer Frode Fjellheim and Sibelius's 5th Symphony, through Eriks Esenvalds' "Northern Lights", to Martin Carthy, singing "Lady Franklin's Lament". She ends with music by Geoffrey Burgon that will resonate with anyone growing up at the end of the last century: the theme tune to the BBC dramatization of Narnia.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Alistair Spalding Jan 21, 2018

Alistair Spalding talks about dance with the zeal of the convert. Although he's headed Sadler's Wells since 2004, commissioning new work from leading international choreographers - Akram Khan, Mark Morris, Matthew Bourne, Pina Bausch - he doesn't come from a dance background. He left school at sixteen, and worked in a solicitor's office, aiming to be a lawyer. He then studied linguistics and philosophy and became a primary school teacher. And so, how did he end up becoming Artistic Director and Chief Executive of Sadler's Wells in London, the top British venue for international dance?

In Private Passions, Alistair Spalding reveals his route to an unlikely career, beginning with the first dance performance he ever saw: John Cage was in the pit, blowing on a conch shell. He explains his vision of drawing in the best contemporary composers to write for dance, and of widening the repertoire to include older dancers. He discusses too his innovative and highly popular dance afternoons for the over-65s.

Music choices include Debussy, Bach, Thomas Adès, Monteverdi, Nick Cave and Joni Mitchell.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Helen Czerski Jan 14, 2018

The physicist and broadcaster Helen Czerski talks to Michael Berkeley about her favourite music, inspired by her Polish heritage and her fascination with technology and exploration.

Having gained a wonderfully titled PhD in Experimental and Explosive Physics from Cambridge in 2006, Helen worked in the US and Canada, and is now a Research Fellow at University College London where she specialises in the relationship between waves, weather and climate.

But apart from her academic research and teaching she has another mission - to make physics accessible to us all. She does this by exploring the connections between the way the world works and our everyday experiences - for example weather patterns can be seen in microcosm when you stir milk into your tea. Hence the title of her highly successful book - Storm in a Teacup.

She writes regularly for the Guardian, and has made numerous radio and television programmes about colour, bubbles, the sun, the weather - and the science behind sound and music. Her latest is a three part television series about temperature.

She chooses music by Strauss which reminds her of her Polish heritage; music by Dvorak which evokes the long sea voyages she undertakes for her research into ocean bubbles; music by Verdi which celebrates her fascination with technology and industry. And she gives the definitive, scientific answer to that most vital of questions: what's the best shape for a champagne glass?

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Alfred Brendel Dec 31, 2017

Alfred Brendel is one of the great musicians of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. He's renowned for his masterly interpretations of the works of Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, Brahms, Liszt and Beethoven; in fact he was the first performer to record the complete solo piano works of Beethoven.

Alfred Brendel gave his first public recital in Graz at the age of only 17, in 1948, and went on performing around the world for more than sixty years. Since his retirement in 2008 he has relished the chance to teach young musicians, and to spend more time going to exhibitions, reading and writing; he has published six volumes of essays and two collections of his own poetry.

In Private Passions he talks to Michael Berkeley about the composers and musicians he admires, and looks back at his early life. It wasn't a musical childhood; the family had no record player, but his mother used to sing cabaret songs. And later, as a teenager, his father managed a hotel and he discovered a stack of LPs, all operettas. The War made an unforgettable impression. Alfred Brendel reveals too what drew him to live in Britain: the musical culture here, the Third Programme, the Proms, and the flourishing choral tradition. He chooses one of Gesualdo's madrigals, which for a long time was thought too difficult to sing. We also hear Liszt, Schubert, Bach, Zelenka, Beethoven, and Bizet's Carmen. At the end of the programme, he talks honestly about his recent deafness, and how it has affected his love of music. He gets no pleasure from playing the piano, he says, but still loves the violin; and he dreams of music all the time, and plays it continually in his head.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Bach compilation Dec 24, 2017

Many Private Passions guests over the years have revealed their passion for Bach. But for some, the great composer has really transformed their lives.

The great primatologist Jane Goodall, for instance, describes how she reached such a dark time in her life that she considered giving up altogether. Four of her workers had been kidnapped in Africa, in the chimpanzee sanctuary she'd established. The money for her research had come to an end. At crisis point, she went into Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, and heard Bach's famous Toccata and Fugue in D minor being played on the organ. Bach gave her hope, and transformed her vision of the world so that she could carry on. "It helped me to understand that I was a small person in a big world. And the world was very beautiful. It caused me to think about the meaning of our lives, and what am amazing thing it is that this little creature can encompass so much. So I came out a different person."

"Bach deals with death, but also with transcendence..." - so says architect Daniel Libeskind who reveals how Bach sustained him when he was building the memorial to 9/11 in New York. Alan Bennett describes first hearing the St Matthew Passion in Leeds Parish Church when he was growing up, while Vivienne Westwood discovered Bach's Passions only recently: "I don't believe in God, but the beauty, the hypnotic rhythm lifts you." And tenor Mark Padmore talks about singing the Evangelist in Bach's Passions, how he never tires of the music, and how there's always something more to discover. As Joan Armatrading says at the end of the programme: " This guy Bach - how IS that humanly possible?"

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Jane Birkin Dec 17, 2017

Jane Birkin came to fame in the swinging 60s, thanks to her wild beauty and daring appearances in avant-garde films such as Blow-up, and thanks also to her tempestuous relationship with Serge Gainsbourg. In 1969 their song "Je t'aime" was banned by the BBC and the rest is history; it became the biggest-selling foreign language record ever. Since then, Jane Birkin has appeared in more than fifty films, been awarded the OBE for services to Anglo-French relations and released thirteen albums.

In Private Passions, she remembers Paris in the 1960s, and above all, her beloved Serge Gainsbourg; she describes the night they met in vivid cinematic detail. She talks too about her marriage to the film composer John Barry and chooses music he wrote for the funeral of her daughter. She talks perceptively about getting older, and the strange freedom age brings.

Music choices include Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring; Allegri's Miserere; John Barry's music for The Lion in Winter; Mahler's 10th Symphony, and Bernstein's West Side Story.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Michael Frayn Dec 10, 2017

The playwright and novelist Michael Frayn shares his musical passions with Michael Berkeley.

Michael Frayn is an acute observer of the absurdities and pain of the human condition, and his writing career has spanned journalism, novels, philosophy, Russian translation, and plays both philosophical and farcical. Noises Off, his 1982 farce about a farce, has become one of the twentieth century's best loved and most successful plays and is frequently described as the funniest farce ever written. Equally praised have been his philosophical plays such as Copenhagen and Democracy.

He tells Michael about his childhood in Surrey, which partly inspired his award-winning novel Spies, his time in the army learning Russian, and the pain and pleasure of farce - the most technically demanding of all literary forms.

And he shares his lifelong love of classical music, choosing pieces by Beethoven, Prokofiev, Mozart, Mahler, and Brahms - and a piece by his late mother-in-law Muriel Herbert.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Susan Richards Dec 03, 2017

Susan Richards, writer and commentator on contemporary Russia, talks to Michael Berkeley about her fascination with the country and her passion for 20th-century Russian music.

Susan's first book, Epics of Everyday Life, was about the euphoric period after the collapse of communism. She travelled all over Russia to try to find out how ordinary people were coping with the discovery that they'd been so comprehensively lied to for so long. Her second book, sixteen years in the writing, was Lost and Found in Russia, and it described the collective nervous breakdown that took place after that. Both books are a testimony to her fascination with the lives of ordinary Russians - and a celebration of friendship. They also include hair-raising encounters with the KGB and the Mafia.

A Founding Editor of OpenDemocracy, set up in 2001 to encourage democratic debate around the world, Susan is also the co-founder, with her husband the television producer Roger Graef, of Bookaid, which has sent more than a million books to Russian public libraries.

Susan's music takes us on a journey from pre-revolutionary Russia to the early 21st century, with pieces by Scriabin, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Stravinsky, and the contemporary composer Sofia Gubaidulina. And we hear music inspired by a Siberian forest, and a singer Susan first met during a hair-raising encounter with the mafia.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

John Surman Nov 19, 2017

As part of Radio 3's coverage of the London Jazz Festival, Michael Berkeley talks to the saxophonist and bass clarinettist John Surman, who over a career of dizzying versatility that spans more than fifty years, has shown us just how many different ways jazz can be made. Surman's hundreds of recordings include solos with synthesizers, saxophone trios, trios with voice and drums, with brass bands and big bands. He has made albums with church choirs, duos with church organs and with drums, as well as composing music for saxophone and string quartet.

He has worked with most of the jazz greats of the last half century, including Ronnie Scott, Alexis Korner and Gil Evans, and more unusually for a jazz musician he's worked at the Paris Opera, with the Trans4mation Quartet, and on modern reinterpretations of the songs of John Dowland. He's been the recipient of numerous awards including the 2017 Ivor Novello Jazz Award.

In Private Passions, John Surman tells Michael how his love for music began in his childhood in Devon, when he was a talented boy treble. He chooses Bach's St Matthew Passion, which he first heard in a Plymouth church, and Beethoven's "Pathétique" sonata (No 8, in C minor), which his father would play on the piano. Surman's love of jazz is entwined with his love of classical music, and among his musical passions Duke Ellington and Miles Davis go hand-in-hand with Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra and the voice of Kathleen Ferrier. Happily based in Norway for the last decade, Surman has chosen a music list to help him through the long dark Scandinavian winters.

A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Jane Greenwood.

Simon Sebag Montefiore Nov 12, 2017

Simon Sebag Montefiore is a prizewinning writer whose books return again and again to Russia. His latest novel is Red Sky at Noon, the last of his Moscow Trilogy, following Sashenka and One Night in Winter. His most recent history, The Romanovs 1613-1918, tells the story of twenty tsars and tsarinas, some touched by genius, some by madness. It's a world of unlimited power and ruthless empire-building, overshadowed by palace conspiracy, family rivalries, sexual decadence and wild extravagance. Montefiore is also author of the epic history books Catherine the Great and Potemkin; Young Stalin; and Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar.

In Private Passions, Simon Sebag Montefiore tells the story of how his grandparents fled the Russian Revolution, buying tickets to New York. Instead, they were cheated, and landed in Ireland on the coast of Cork. In Ireland they had to flee persecution again - and relocated to Newcastle. He talks too about what he saw first-hand as a war correspondent during the fall of the Soviet Union. He explores the similarities between Putin, Stalin, and the Tsars who came before them. And he reflects on what "Russian Culture" means in a country with such a turbulent history.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus production by BBC Radio 3.

Ronan Bennett Nov 05, 2017

Ronan Bennett is a novelist and screenwriter whose latest drama series on the BBC, "Gunpowder", dramatizes the story of Guy Fawkes from the point of view of the Catholics, who were persecuted in England at the time. All through his substantial body of work Ronan Bennett has explored the roots of violence and terrorism, something he knows about from personal experience, having grown up as a Catholic in Northern Ireland in the 1970s. He was imprisoned twice as a young man, accused of IRA terrorist offences, but was acquitted both times, not before spending a total of almost three years in prison, sometimes in solitary confinement.

After he came out of prison for the second time, Ronan Bennett made the decision to study history at King's College London, and went on to do a PhD on crime and law enforcement in 17th-century England. In Private Passions he talks about how studying history is a way of trying to make sense of his own painful experience. He looks back on his childhood and chooses Berlioz's opera "The Trojans" for his mother; he includes, too, choices for his own children, who have widened his musical tastes, with Chopin and the grime artist Kano. He talks movingly about the death of his wife, the journalist Georgina Henry, and about the music which he listened to as she died - and which then gave him hope.

Musical choices include Thomas Tallis, the Chieftains, Jessye Norman singing from Strauss's "Four Last Songs", and Bon Iver.

A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke.

Vesna Goldsworthy Oct 29, 2017

Thirty years ago, Vesna Goldsworthy fell in love with a young Englishman she met at a summer school in Bulgaria; she moved to England to be with him, much to the disapproval of her parents, arriving in London in 1986. Since then, she's established a reputation as a writer of great wit and originality: with her memoir, Chernobyl Strawberries; with her poetry; and in 2015 with her first novel, Gorsky, which became a best-seller and which was serialized on Radio 4. Vesna Goldsworthy is also a Professor of Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia.

In Private Passions, Vesna Goldsworthy talks to Michael Berkeley about being brought up in Belgrade during the Communist regime. The popular idea is of an era which was grey and philistine - but in fact there was a huge amount of classical music around. And when she moved to England, her friends and family were horrified. They asked, "How could you move to a country where there is no music"? She reveals why she started writing a memoir of her Serbian childhood: because her doctors told her she was dying of cancer, and she wanted to leave a record for her son. Happily, the cancer was cured, but it taught her a lifelong lesson: not to take life too seriously.

Vesna Goldsworthy's music choices include the Romanian-Serbian composer Ion Iovanovici; an Orthodox address to the Virgin by Divna Ljubojevic; the Sephardic song, "Adio Querida", by Yasmin Levy; and a popular Russian song from the Second World War. She ends with Purcell, a composer she discovered only after she moved to a country "with no music".

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Allan Corduner Oct 22, 2017

Allan Corduner is an astonishingly versatile actor, equally at home in the West End, on Broadway, in television series such as Homeland, or in films like Yentl, Florence Foster Jenkins, and Mike Leigh's Topsy-Turvy, in which he played the composer Sir Arthur Sullivan, perfect casting for an actor who is also an accomplished pianist.

He talks to Michael Berkeley about his favourite music, with pieces by Scriabin, Sibelius, and Bruch that reflect his Russian, Finnish and Jewish heritage. And Allan chooses piano music by Schubert, which he loved playing as a child, and his favourite recording of Bach's Goldberg Variations, with Glenn Gould.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Sir Simon Wessely Oct 15, 2017

As part of Radio 3's Why Music? The Key to Memory weekend, Michael Berkeley talks to the psychiatrist Sir Simon Wessely.

Professor Sir Simon Wessely is one of our most eminent psychiatrists: until recently the President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, he is the current president of the Royal Society of Medicine, and Regis Chair of Psychiatry at King's College London. An interest in unexplained symptoms and syndromes has led to many years of research in areas such as Chronic Fatigue and Gulf War Syndrome.

Simon talks to Michael about the powerful relationship between music and memory, his decision to study medicine rather than history, and how playing the flute once got him out of a tricky situation at Tel Aviv airport.

He chooses violin music by Brahms and Dvorak for his parents, shares his love of opera with music by Puccini and Mozart, and tells Michael about his other passion - musical theatre.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Hildegard Bechtler Oct 08, 2017

As part of the BBC's opera season, designer Hildegard Bechtler talks to Michael Berkeley about her favourite music and some of the twenty-seven operas she has worked on all over the world.

Hildegard is one of our most prolific and successful theatre and opera designers. Born in Germany, she moved to Britain aged eighteen, and very quickly established herself first in film, then in theatre and opera. Her style combines wit and invention to deliver minimalist style with maximum impact.

She has designed for every major theatre and opera company including the Royal Opera, ENO, Glyndebourne, and the Royal National Theatre. And the international nature of her work is typified by one of her most recent productions - Thomas Adès's new opera The Exterminating Angel - staged in Salzburg, Copenhagen, Covent Garden, and the Metropolitan Opera in New York.

Hildegard chooses music from two operas she has worked on, The Ring Cycle and The Damnation of Faust; a Burns song which reminds her of her love of Scotland and her husband, the actor Bill Paterson; and a piece by her namesake, Hildegard of Bingen.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Maurice Riordan Oct 01, 2017

Maurice Riordan is a poet much preoccupied with time - how time suddenly stands still, or speeds up, or loops you back in dreams to childhood - in his case, to the countryside of County Cork where he grew up. It's a theme he's explored in four prize-winning collections of verse, alongside translations and a series of anthologies - including an anthology of very early Irish poetry, scribbled by Irish monks in the margins of Latin texts. In his day job, he's professor of poetry at Sheffield Hallam University and was until recently editor of Poetry Review.

In Private Passions, Maurice Riordan talks to Michael Berkeley about his childhood in the "horse-drawn, candle-lit" Irish countryside and the music which inspires him, beginning with the Gregorian Chant he heard as a young altar boy. We hear the haunting unaccompanied voice of the traditional Irish singer Darach Ó Cathain, and of the Traveller and banjo player Margaret Barry. Other choices include Debussy, Piazzola and Samuel Barber. Ian Bostridge sings an aria from Monteverdi's Orfeo, begging the boatman Charon to carry him to the underworld: a metaphor, Riordan believes, for what poets do. They take you, he claims, deep down into the underworld of the unconscious. To illustrate this, he reads "The January Birds", a poem about hearing birds singing in a local cemetery:

The birds in Nunhead Cemetery begin Before I've flicked a switch, turned on the gas. There must be some advantage to the light I tell myself, viewing my slackened chin Mirrored in the rain-dark window glass, While from the graveyard's trees, the birds begin...

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Stephen Poliakoff Sep 24, 2017

Stephen Poliakoff made his mark as a playwright very early; he began writing plays as a schoolboy and got first review in The Times when he was only seventeen. At the age of twenty-four he became writer in residence at the National Theatre and he's also written for the RSC. But it's as a television scriptwriter and director that Poliakoff is now best-known, with series such as "Shooting the Past", "Dancing on the Edge" and recently, "Close to the Enemy". Some of our very greatest actors - Maggie Smith, Lindsey Duncan, Timothy Spall - have queued up to work with him time and again. There have been nineteen television dramas and films to date, broadcast over the last forty years, and though they all have different settings, there's a strong atmosphere in common. Filmed in strange dream-like locations - old train carriages, empty country houses, abandoned ballrooms - they explore how the past haunts the present. And in particular, family secrets.

Poliakoff claims that every family has at least three good stories in it; and his certainly has more than its fair share. In Private Passions he tells Michael Berkeley about how his father witnessed the Russian Revolution as a boy, and reflects on the influence of Russian culture on his childhood. He talks too about the importance of trying to observe life with the fresh curiosity of a child, and how his films capture a child's-eye view.

Music choices include Mozart's Concerto for Flute and Harp; Bach's Cantata "O Jesu Christ, mein Lebens Licht"; Haydn's Symphony No 49 and Michael Tippett's Concerto for Double String Orchestra.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Sebastian Barry Sep 10, 2017

Sebastian Barry's great-grand-father was a traditional Irish musician, who played on the wooden flute and piccolo. His mother was an actress at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin; his aunt Mary O'Hara had a huge career as a singer and harpist with her own series on the BBC. Little surprise then that Sebastian Barry's writing is musical in the widest sense; full of the rich music of everyday speech. It's an impressive body of work: fourteen plays, two volumes of poetry, and nine novels. Two of his novels, "The Secret Scripture" and the latest, "Days Without End", have won the coveted Costa Book of the Year prize. When he thanked the judges earlier this year, Barry declared: "You have made me crazy happy from the top of my head to my toes in a way that is a little bit improper at sixty-one."

In Private Passions, Sebastian Barry talks to Michael Berkeley about the "gaps" in Irish history he has explored in his books: areas which are touchy, taboo, and perhaps deliberately forgotten now, such as the fate of those who were Catholic, but loyal to Britain. He reveals too that his latest novel, a love story between two young soldiers, was inspired by his son coming out as gay.

Music choices include Bruch's Violin Concerto; Handel's "Judas Maccabaeus"; Alfred Deller singing "Three Ravens"; Bach's Cello Suites; and his aunt Mary O'Hara singing a song written by Sebastian Barry's own mother.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Michael Craig-Martin Aug 27, 2017

Michael Craig-Martin is one of our most influential artists, celebrated for his huge black and white wall drawings and intensely coloured paintings of everyday objects, as well as his installations, sculpture, and computer-generated works. A pioneering conceptualist, he's always provoking questions about what we understand to be art.

Born in Dublin in 1941, Michael Craig-Martin grew up in the United States but returned to Britain in the 1960s where he's lived and worked ever since. He's had numerous solo exhibitions and his work is in national collections worldwide.

He is Emeritus Professor of Fine Art at Goldsmiths, having taught there for over four decades, and he's been nicknamed 'the godfather of the Young British Artists', who include Damien Hirst, Gary Hume and Sarah Lucas.

He received a CBE in 2001 and was knighted in 2016.

Michael Craig-Martin talks to Michael Berkeley about the parallels between his art and the music he loves, including Satie, Bach, the Dutch composer Simeon ten Holt, and he reveals his long-standing passion for opera.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Vivien Duffield Aug 13, 2017

Dame Vivien Duffield is one of our leading philanthropists, and her passion for the arts - and particularly opera - is reflected in her giving. Her Foundation, the Clore Duffield Foundation, has supported the Royal Opera House, the Tate, the Royal Ballet, the British Museum, the Natural History Museum, Dulwich Picture Gallery, the Southbank Centre and The National Children's Museum. It all amounts to more than 200 million pounds over the last fifty years. In 2008 the Prince of Wales presented her with one of the first medals for arts philanthropy.

In Private Passions Dame Vivien talks to Michael Berkeley about why it's important to give money to the arts in this country, and about the legacy of her extraordinary family. Her father, the businessman Sir Charles Clore, was brought up poor in East London - but ended up a millionaire property developer and owner of Selfridges. Despite his own success, he was determined that his daughter should never go into the business, a job not at all suitable for a woman. But he did take her to concerts and the opera, and ignited Dame Vivien's passion for the arts.

Dame Vivien's choices capture key performances she's been lucky enough to see: Edif Piaf, for instance, on the Paris stage, "tiny, in a little black slip dress, virtually carried on to the stage." She saw Callas too, and Placido Domingo, in a disastrous first night at the Royal Opera House when he kept sliding down the vertiginous slate set. Other music choices include Richard Strauss's Alpine Symphony; Wagner's Parsifal; and Ravel's Kaddisch sung by Jessye Norman.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Nick Davies Aug 06, 2017

Nick Davies is an expert in the art of deception - as practised by the cuckoo. He has spent his career studying that deceiving, murderous bird, and living in woods and wild gardens, even up in a mountain hut in the Pyrenees. He's a hugely influential scientist: since the late 1970s he's really helped define the field in behavioural ecology, and he's Professor of Behavioural Ecology at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of Pembroke College. But really, as he tells Michael Berkeley, he's happier not sitting in a library, but roaming the fens.

In Private Passions, Nick Davies reveals what he's learned about bird behaviour, and how birds use song to compete and, sometimes, collaborate to sing duets. He explains how some birds sing in poetry, some in prose; and why the blackbird in your back garden is a better songster than the nightingale. Music choices reflect his passion for the beauty of the natural world: Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony, for instance, Vaughan Williams's Lark Ascending, and songs by Herbert Howells and Samuel Barber about the transformative power of nature. We also hear the song of larks, nightingales, blackbirds, pink-footed geese - and the croaking of natterjack toads.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Shirley Hughes Jul 16, 2017

A chance to hear a programme recorded in 2017 with Michael Berkeley talking to the children's author Shirley Hughes, who died in February this year. On her ninetieth birthday, Shirley Hughes, the creator of many of our best-loved and most enduring children's books, talked to Michael Berkeley about her musical passions.

In a career spanning nearly 70 years, Shirley wrote as many books and illustrated nearly two hundred. She was the first winner of the Book Trust Lifetime Achievement Award, twice won the Kate Greenaway Medal, and was awarded a CBE for services to literature. Her picture books have an enduring appeal with their sympathetic but unsentimental depiction of the small dramas and joys of family life.

Shirley Hughes chose music by Scriabin, Mozart, Beethoven and The Beatles - who reminded her of her roots in Liverpool and share her love of storytelling.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Dan Pearson Jul 09, 2017

Dan Pearson discovered his passion for gardens very young, building landscapes for his toy trolls out of stones. He's now one of our most influential landscape designers, with work ranging from private gardens around the world - including Chatsworth - to the 600-acre Tokachi Forest Garden in northern Japan, and gardens in Manchester and London for the Cancer charity Maggie's. He's written five books, presented several television series, and exhibited at Chelsea six times, winning awards each time - last time, for Best in Show. He's known for his painterly naturalistic planting, or to put it more simply, he likes to create landscapes which look wild, and ancient. He says, "the way I garden is to let things go almost to the brink of being lost".

In Private Passions, Dan Pearson talks to Michael Berkeley about his love of wild plants, and the influence of a very neglected garden of a house he lived in as a child. He reveals how his gardens for cancer patients and his encounters with the people he's met there have changed his sense of what a garden means. He talks too about the way in which music inspires his landscape designs; he loves music which creates a sense of wide open space. Choices include Estonian composer Arvo Pärt; 12th-century polyphony; Spanish guitar music; the Bulgarian Trio Bulgarka and Moondog.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Lindsey Davis Jul 02, 2017

Lindsey Davis is best known for her series of historical crime stories about a laid-back amateur sleuth called Marcus Didius Falco. Set against the turmoil of the 1st-century Roman Empire, the books are witty, gritty and hugely entertaining. She's also written stand-alone novels about Ancient Rome, and about the English Civil War.

The recipient of many awards, including the Crime Writers' Association Diamond Dagger for Lifetime Achievement, Lindsey writes a book a year, but has still found time to be the Chair of the Society of Authors and Honorary President of the Classical Association. Lindsey talks to Michael Berkeley about her introduction to music as a schoolgirl in Birmingham, her passion for symphonic music and her decision to introduce a new, feisty female protagonist to succeed her beloved Falco.

Her music includes works by Schubert, Tchaikovsky and Dvorak and - appropriately - Berlioz's Roman Carnival Overture.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Canada 150: Madeleine Thien Jun 25, 2017

As part of Canada 150, a week of programmes marking the 150th anniversary of the founding of the nation, Michael Berkeley talks to Canadian novelist Madeleine Thien.

Born in Vancouver, she is the daughter of Malaysian-Chinese immigrants to Canada and her writing explores the history of the Asian diaspora. She is the author a short story collection 'Simple Recipes' and the novels 'Certainty', 'Dogs at the Perimeter' and 'Do Not Say We Have Nothing' -about musicians studying Western classical music at the Shanghai Conservatory in the 1960s and about the legacy of the 1989 Tiananmen demonstrations. It was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won the Scotiabank Giller Prize 2016 and the Governor General's Award 2016. Her books and stories have been translated into 23 languages.

Madeleine talks to Michael about the history of Western of classical music in China and its suppression during the Cultural Revolution. Countless instruments were destroyed, including more than 500 pianos at the Shanghai Conservatory. The bravery of its director, He Luting, a Debussy scholar, in resisting the Red Guards was an inspiration to her as she wrote the book and she chooses a piece of his music.

She tells Michael how her love of music was reborn as she listened to Bach whilst writing Do Not Say We Have Nothing, and we hear Bach's music played by the Chinese pianist Zhu Xiao Mei. She also chooses music from fellow Canadians Glenn Gould and Leonard Cohen.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3

CANADA 150: a week of programmes from across Canada, marking the 150th anniversary of the founding of the nation and exploring the range and diversity of Canadian music and arts.

Patsy Rodenburg Jun 18, 2017

Michael Berkeley talks to Patsy Rodenburg, the most highly acclaimed voice teacher of her generation, about the music she loves.

Patsy Rodenburg has worked with pretty much every actor you can name, including Judi Dench, Ian McKellen and Daniel Day Lewis. They all testify to the huge impact she has had on their careers and performances.

Among the many companies she's worked with all over the world are the Royal National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company, and she continues to teach drama students, as she has done for more than 20 years, at the Guildhall School of Music and the Michael Howard Studios in New York.

Patsy tells Michael about her passion for helping everyone - actors, singers, children, business leaders and even prisoners - find their own natural, strong voice, a frequently moving and liberating experience.

Among her choices is music by Sibelius, Strauss, Bach and Philip Glass.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Production for BBc Radio 3.

Nishat Khan Jun 12, 2017

Nishat Khan is one of India's finest musicians; born into a dynasty of famous sitar players, he first went on stage with his father and uncle when he was only seven. Since that first appearance in Calcutta in the 1970s, he has performed worldwide, collaborated with all kinds of musicians, from Philip Glass to Gregorian choirs to Django Bates, and composed both for the BBC Proms and for Bollywood films. He's here in Britain to appear at the Aldeburgh Festival this June, fresh from recording the soundtrack to a Bollywood movie.

In Private Passions he talks to Michael Berkeley about the musical family he grew up in - he started playing the sitar before he could even walk. He explores too the spiritual meaning of music within this tradition and its power to reveal the voice of God. And he shares his excitement at discovering Western classical music, still very much a minority taste in India.

Nishat Khan's choices include Bach's B Minor Mass; Bruckner's 8th Symphony; Mozart, Manuel de Falla; Britten's "Sea Interludes"; and sitar music played by his father and uncle.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus Production for BBC Radio 3.

Ivo van Hove Jun 04, 2017

Michael Berkeley talks to the award-winning theatre director Ivo van Hove about his musical passions.

The director of Amsterdam's prestigious Toneelgroep theatre, Ivo works all over the world, notably with the New York Theatre Workshop and at the Barbican in London. Equally at home with Sophocles, Shakespeare and contemporary American drama, he won huge acclaim for his stripped-back production of Tony Kushner's Angels in America, and his recent A View From The Bridge with the Young Vic won, among many other awards, two Oliviers and two Tonys.

Ivo talks to Michael Berkeley about working with David Bowie on his musical Lazarus; about the close working and personal relationship with his partner, the designer Jan Versweyveld; and the dramatic decision he made to leave law school at the age of 20 to pursue a life in theatre.

His musical choices reflect the emotional intensity and sparse aesthetic of his directing style, with pieces by Brad Mehldau, Webern and Ligeti, as well as songs by Rufus Wainwright and Joni Mitchell.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Bettany Hughes May 21, 2017

Bettany Hughes talks to Michael Berkeley about the music that's shaped her family life, and the music she's come to love during her travels as a historian.

Bettany has more than 50 radio and television documentaries to her name, many about ancient history and she's also a prolific writer, a Research Fellow at King's College London and has been honoured with numerous awards including the Norton Medlicott Medal for History and the Fem 21 International Journalism Award for her 'exceptional contribution to the international coverage of the place of women in societies past and present'.

She's the author of three bestselling books, the latest of which is 'Istanbul', a decade in the making and over 800 pages long, which brings to life 3000 years of action-packed history in that great city.

She talks to Michael about the importance of visiting the places she writes about and the joy of discovering music such as shepherds' calls in Greece and gypsy music in Istanbul. Bettany's interest in women's history is reflected in music by a 9th-century female Byzantine composer, and Purcell's Dido and Aeneas. And she tells a touching musical story which shaped the history of her own family.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Jane Goodall May 14, 2017

Jane Goodall was only twenty-four when in she went to live among the chimpanzees of Gombe National Park in Tanzania, and she went on to spend more than 55 years there. She has done more than anyone else to transform our understanding of chimpanzees - and beyond that, her work has raised questions about how we treat these highly intelligent primates, and indeed about the rights of all animals. Now in her early eighties, she's on an extraordinary mission travelling round the world to protect chimpanzees from extinction.

During a rare stay in Britain, Jane Goodall talks to Michael Berkeley about her life and ground-breaking discoveries. She reveals that the chimpanzees she lived with also had a darker side, and were sometimes violent, stamping on her. She remembers difficult times after the kidnapping of some of her workers, and the death of her second husband - and how music sustained her, and transformed her view of the world.

Music choices include Beethoven, Bach, Schubert, Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto and Richard Burton reading the Dylan Thomas classic "Under Milk Wood'. She also introduces some very excited chimpanzee speech, and speculates about what kind of music chimpanzees enjoy.

Gabriele Finaldi May 07, 2017

Gabriele Finaldi, the Director of the National Gallery, talks to Michael Berkeley about his artistic and musical passions.

When Gabriele Finaldi took up his post as Director of the National Gallery in the summer of 2015, one of the first things he did was to install a piano in the corner of his office.

He grew up in a musical household in Catford in South East London, the son of a Neapolitan father and half-Polish, half-English mother. Early in his career he was a curator at the National Gallery, specialising in Italian and Spanish paintings and he was involved in major and memorable shows such as Seeing Salvation and Discovering the Italian Baroque. In 2002 he was appointed Deputy Director of the Prado in Madrid, where he worked until his return to the National Gallery. Gabriele takes Michael on a musical and artistic journey though Britain, Italy, France and Spain and chooses music by Ravel, Messiaen, Puccini and Britten, as well as a 17th-century Neapolitan serenade and a spine-tingling piece of flamenco.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

AL Kennedy Apr 23, 2017

It's not easy starting out to make a living as a writer, and A.L. Kennedy began with one of the most challenging jobs ever: as a puppeteer and clown, chasing children around a field in Fife with a loud horn. Thankfully it didn't take long before she left the day job behind and established her reputation as one of our most original voices, the author of 17 books - novels, short story collections, non-fiction - and talks and plays for stage, radio and television. She's also, on and off, a stand-up comedian - so that early training as a clown wasn't wasted.

In Private Passions she tells Michael Berkeley about growing up in Dundee, and discovering that she could escape on the overnight bus to Stratford and the theatre, which made everything in life more bearable, more alive. Glenn Gould is one of Kennedy's heroes, and we hear him playing Bach; but we also hear Gould's speaking voice in a radio documentary about the Canadian North. Other choices include the Venetian baroque composer Franceso Cavalli, and Josquin des Prez. We hear John Adams too, with a yearning love aria, and a commemoration of Auschwitz composed by the New York Jewish composer Osvaldo Golijov. There's Gaelic folk music to end, re-interpreted by a group of contemporary Scottish singers. So, a wonderfully eclectic list of choices, and - we clear up the mystery of her name, and find out why Alison Louise Kennedy became "A.L. Kennedy".

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Mark Padmore Apr 16, 2017

Over the last 20 years Mark Padmore has established a reputation as one of Britain's most outstanding tenors. His performances combine emotional power with intellectual rigour; and he's not afraid to take risks by appearing in challenging new productions. He travels the world performing repertoire that includes Schubert lieder, Handel and Harrison Birtwistle, and many leading contemporary composers have written pieces especially for his voice. What makes Mark Padmore especially fitting as an Easter guest for Private Passions is his mastery of the role of the Evangelist in Bach's St Matthew and St John Passions.

In Private Passions he talks to Michael Berkeley about why there is always something new to discover in Bach's Passions, and reflects on the extraordinary fact that Bach himself only heard the St John Passion four times. He reveals - and sings - his favourite, haunting lines of Schubert. He introduces us too to other composers whose work excites him; we hear songs by John Cage and Ryan Wigglesworth and an exuberant percussion piece by the Serbian composer Nebojsa Zivkovic. And Padmore confesses that if he hadn't been a singer, he would have liked to be ... a thatcher.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Thomas Ostermeier Apr 02, 2017

Michael Berkeley talks to the director Thomas Ostermeier about his musical passions.

Thomas is the outstanding German theatre director of his generation, known for his gritty realism, and for working with a close and consistent ensemble of actors. He's been a champion of young British playwrights such as Sarah Kane and Mark Ravenhill, as well as a radical interpreter of the classics.

In 1999 - at the age of only 32 - Thomas was made Director at Berlin's prestigious Schaubühne Theatre, and his productions are staged and celebrated world-wide. He was awarded a Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 2011 Venice Biennale.

In London he's developed a close and productive relationship with The Barbican.

No one who has seen it will ever forget his celebrated production of Hamlet, a truly visceral experience, with blood, drunkenness and actors rolling around in - and even eating - the soil that covered the stage.

Thomas chooses music by 20th-century composers including Shostakovich, Bartok, John Adams, and John Cage and he talks to Michael about his passion for Shakespeare, how he chooses music for his productions, and how difficult it is to get his actors to keep their clothes on.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Juliet Nicolson Mar 19, 2017

Juliet Nicolson's childhood was dominated by secrets. She spent a lot of time - she now confesses - listening at doors, picking up the telephone and holding her breath so that nobody knew she was there. At one point she even cut a hole in her bedroom floor to spy on her mother. It was certainly a family where there were all sorts of complicated things going on. Juliet's grandmother was Vita Sackville-West; her grandfather Harold Nicolson; and her father, the publisher and writer Nigel Nicolson. Juliet Nicolson herself is the author of two works of history, one about living in the Shadow of the First World War, and the other, a study of the summer of 1911, "The Perfect Summer". She's also written a novel about the abdication of Edward VIII and most recently, a memoir, "A House Full of Daughters".

In Private Passions, Juliet Nicolson talks to Michael Berkeley about how her childhood was actually the perfect training for a historian. She reflects on time, and her method as a historian of freezing time, focussing on a single summer for instance. She remembers her grandmother Vita, and discusses her brave decision to be honest about her alcoholism, and how giving up drinking gave her a new sense of clarity, and a second chance at life.

Music choices include Bach, Beethoven, Handel, Dory Previn, Gershwin, and Joe Dassin. Produced by Elizabeth Burke. A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Vesna Goldsworthy Mar 05, 2017

Thirty years ago, Vesna Goldsworthy fell in love with a young Englishman she met at a summer school in Bulgaria; she moved to England to be with him, much to the disapproval of her parents, arriving in London in 1986. Since then, she's established a reputation as a writer of great wit and originality: with her memoir, Chernobyl Strawberries; with her poetry; and in 2015 with her first novel, Gorsky, which became a best-seller and which was serialized on Radio 4. Vesna Goldsworthy is also a Professor of Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia.

In Private Passions, Vesna Goldsworthy talks to Michael Berkeley about being brought up in Belgrade during the Communist regime. The popular idea is of an era which was grey and philistine - but in fact there was a huge amount of classical music around. And when she moved to England, her friends and family were horrified. They asked, "How could you move to a country where there is no music"? She reveals why she started writing a memoir of her Serbian childhood: because her doctors told her she was dying of cancer, and she wanted to leave a record for her son. Happily, the cancer was cured, but it taught her a lifelong lesson: not to take life too seriously.

Vesna Goldsworthy's music choices include the Romanian-Serbian composer Ion Iovanovici; an Orthodox address to the Virgin by Divna Ljubojevic; the Sephardic song, "Adio Querida", by Yasmin Levy; and a popular Russian song from the Second World War. She ends with Purcell, a composer she discovered only after she moved to a country "with no music".

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Petina Gappah Feb 19, 2017

Petina Gappah grew up in Zimbabwe during segregation, when black girls were not thought worthy of education. Despite this, she became a lawyer and was awarded law degrees from the University of Zimbabwe and then Cambridge, and Graz University in Austria. Moving to Geneva, she fought high-profile international cases. But all the time she had a secret life: she woke at 4am every morning to write. Petina Gappah's first short story was published online when she was 37 - and now, only 8 years later, there are two short-story collections, a novel, "The Book of Memory", several translations, with another novel in the pipeline. From the start there has been a sense of a new voice arriving - Gappah's first book won the Guardian First Book Award. Her stories are set in Zimbabwe, and they're about crime and punishment, love and family, in a deeply corrupt and divided society.

In Private Passions, Petina Gappah talks to Michael Berkeley about her childhood and the experiences which gave her such determination and drive. She discusses her determination to translate George Orwell into her first language, Shona, and what "Animal Farm" says to readers in Zimbabwe. She explores too her ambiguous relationship with her homeland, and what she feels about being called "the voice of Zimbabwe". Music choices include Verdi, Bob Dylan, Mahler's Piano Quartet in A Minor, and the Bhundu Boys.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Peter Robinson Feb 12, 2017

Crime-writer Peter Robinson tops the best-seller lists year after year, across the world; in fact his detective, DI Banks, is probably even better known than he is. DI Banks is a straight-talking Yorkshire-man with dodgy dress sense and a frustrated love life, and he's been solving murders in Yorkshire for some twenty years now. There are now twenty-three Banks novels, and several series on television with Stephen Tompkinson in the title role. So DI Banks is hugely popular, and central to his character is that he constantly listens to music - in the car, at home, in pubs. There's a memorable line where Robinson says of his detective - "He did his best thinking when he was listening to music and drinking wine." This, Robinson reveals, is autobiographical.

In Private Passions, Peter Robinson talks to Michael Berkeley about how music inspires his best thinking and writing, and why he's on a mission to get all his readers listening to the music he loves. He even creates online playlists of the music his detective listens to - including some of the music he chooses in Private Passions. Choices include Poulenc's Sextet for Piano and Wind, Beethoven's String Quartet in C sharp minor, Takemitsu, Miles Davis, and one of Schubert's last piano sonatas. Perhaps it's no surprise that he's drawn to last works - as a crime writer, his books begin with murder. Robinson confesses though that he regrets the increasing violence of the genre, and thinks the TV adaptations of his work go too far. And he reveals why Yorkshire is always the best place to hide a body.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Sarah Lucas Feb 05, 2017

Sarah Lucas burst onto the art scene in the early 1990s, one of the wildest and most provocative of the Young British Artists. Her work was challenging, bawdy, revolutionary: her first solo show in 1992 was called "Penis Nailed to a Board". She challenged macho culture with sculptures such as "Two Fried Eggs and a Kebab" in which she constructed a naked female body - from a table, two eggs, and a kebab. Lucas makes sculptures from worn-out furniture, stuffed tights, fruit (particularly bananas), and cigarettes - she's a passionate smoker. In 2015 she represented Britain at the Venice Biennale, and the centrepiece with a massive yellow sculpture named after the footballer Maradona - part man, part maypole, with dangling breasts and a nine-foot phallus.

In Private Passions, Sarah Lucas looks back on the wild days of the 90s, and her upbringing in North London "a childhood completely without ambition". She talks about leaving school at 16, becoming pregnant, but then deciding not to keep the baby; and how that decision enabled her to know clearly what she wanted to do with her life. She reflects on how the central relationships in her life lead to artistic collaboration - with her partner, the composer Julian Simmons, and with her girlfriends, whose lower bodies she cast in plaster. And Sarah Lucas reveals that the wild London party girl is now happiest in Suffolk, living at the end of a country lane, and listening to Benjamin Britten. How seriously are we supposed to take her work? "Just because you're funny doesn't mean you can't be serious too."

Sarah Lucas's music choices include Purcell's King Arthur; songs by Benjamin Britten and Ivor Gurney; and music by her partner Julian Simmons.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Stephanie Flanders Jan 29, 2017

Stephanie Flanders is familiar to most of us from the years she spent as the BBC's Economics Editor, untangling graphs and statistics and treasury policies with great clarity and cheerful common sense. She left the BBC in 2013 and is now chief market strategist for Britain and Europe at JP Morgan Asset Management. But she's also the daughter of the late Michael Flanders, of Flanders and Swann, the writer of so many memorable comic songs - like "Mud, Mud, Glorious Mud".

Michael Flanders died when Stephanie was only six, but she remembers the pleasure of pushing him around in the wheelchair he used after catching polio as a student. And because she didn't know him for long, she has spent time researching his life, combing through boxes in the garage, and re-discovering her father through his music.

Music choices include some of her father's favourite songs, including a little-known song about gluttony which is a protest against the cruelty of foie gras. She includes too Glenn Gould's recording of a Haydn Piano Sonata which kept her going through long nights in Washington when she was writing speeches for Bill Clinton. The speeches were about impending financial crisis and, as an economist, Stephanie has weathered many financial crises, able to unpick the deepest workings of both the Treasury and the City and explain them to a mass audience. She is not afraid to shake up the status quo: an unmarried mother, she challenged David Cameron on tax breaks for married women, and her blog speaks out about "the over-mathematization of economics at the expense of common sense".

The programme ends with a preview of a new recording of Donald Swann's "Bilbo's Last Song", setting words by Tolkien.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Philippe Sands Jan 15, 2017

Philippe Sands is a human rights lawyer who recently won the biggest non-fiction prize in the UK, the £30,000 Baillie Gifford Prize, for his book "East West Street: On the Origins of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity". It's the story of two leading lawyers fighting for justice after the Second World War in the Nuremberg trials - and a third man, Hitler's lawyer, who was personally responsible for the murder of millions. It's a detective story too, in which Sands tries to discover the identity of the mysterious "Miss Tilney" who rescued his mother Ruth as a baby, and managed to smuggle her out of Vienna to safety in London in 1939. In Private Passions, Philippe Sands talks to Michael Berkeley about the strange gaps in his family history, the secrets which impelled him to begin a seven year quest. He reveals the music that kept him going, songs he listened to daily, and how Bach's St Matthew Passion, which he's always loved, became intensely troubling for him to listen to when he discovered that Hitler's lawyer also adored it.

Music choices include Mahler's 9th Symphony; Keith Jarrett; Bach's St Matthew Passion; Rachmaninoff; kora music from Senegal; and the Leonard Cohen song with Sands' favourite line: "There is a crack in everything - that's how the light gets in.".

Archbishop John Sentamu Dec 25, 2016

Dr John Sentamu, Archbishop of York, is a special guest for Christmas Day.

In Private Passions, he talks to Michael Berkeley about being the middle child of thirteen children, in Uganda. His father had a small gramophone and they all learned to sing Handel's Messiah with great gusto. John Sentamu practised as a lawyer and was a judge in the country's High Court by the age of 25, but when Idi Amin came to power the rule of law collapsed. Sentamu was imprisoned and tortured; "it was not so much a prison as a killing field". He heard his friends being shot. He talks movingly about how his Christian faith never wavered during his imprisonment and miraculous escape. He came to Britain in 1974 and trained as a priest, spending most of his career in some of the most deprived areas of London. Dr Sentamu became Bishop for Stepney and then Bishop for Birmingham; he was appointed Archbishop of York in 2005. Poverty and social inequality has always been at the heart of his Christian mission; he strongly believes he has a political role and a duty to speak out in a divided society. He talks too about his involvement in the campaign against knife crime in Birmingham, and being taken blindfolded to visit gang leaders. Dr Sentamu was Adviser to the Stephen Lawrence Judicial Inquiry and he chaired the Damilola Taylor Murder Review.

Archbishop Sentamu reveals the music which has sustained him through an extraordinary and challenging life: Elgar's Cello Concerto, for instance: the Archbishop played the Jacqueline du Pre recording on the hour every hour from 6am to 6pm at York Minster for a week as part of a Vigil of prayers for peace. He introduces music from his local church in Uganda; and the choir of York Minster singing the Archbishop's favourite carol: "Hark the Herald Angels Sing".

The programme ends with Ralph Vaughan Williams' Fantasia on Christmas Carols, as John Sentamu reflects on the great pleasures of Christmas - including his love of cooking. If all else fails, his children say, he could always open a restaurant. And his signature dish would be - brussels sprouts

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Edward Watson Dec 18, 2016

Royal Ballet Principal Edward Watson talks to Michael Berkeley about his life in dance and shares the music that has inspired him both professionally and personally.

Known for his dramatic flair and astonishing dedication and stamina, he has become one of the Royal Ballet's best-known dancers, and has consistently championed new repertoire, working closely with many contemporary choreographers.

Ed talks about his passion for creating new roles and his extraordinary creative partnership with Wayne McGregor, illustrated by music from Max Richter's Infra.

His other music choices reflect the diversity of his career in dance - pieces by Schoenberg and Liszt from Macmillan ballets, and songs from Martha Wainwright, Bev Lee Harding and Concha Buika.

And no ballet dancer's Christmas is complete without revisiting The Nutcracker.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Production for BBC Radio 3.

Chris Hadfield Dec 04, 2016

Chris Hadfield has described going into space as 'strapping yourself on top of what is essentially a large bomb'. He is one of the world's most respected astronauts, and his career has included Space Shuttle flights and helping to build the Mir Space Station, as well as serving as Director of NASA's operations in Russia and as Commander of the International Space Station during his final five-month mission. If that wasn't enough he's also a bestselling author and an accomplished musician - indeed he plays in an all-astronaut band. His cover of David Bowie's Space Oddity - which he recorded while orbiting the earth on the Space Station at over 17,000 miles an hour - has had more than 33 million Internet hits.

Chris talks to Michael Berkeley about his route to the stars, about overcoming fear and extreme danger - and the difficulties of playing a guitar in zero gravity. He chooses music by Strauss, Rossini and Hans Zimmer, which he associates with particular space missions. He talks about his admiration for William Herschel, the eighteenth-century astronomer and composer. And an astronaut's Private Passions would not be complete without music from Holst's Planets Suite.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Charlie Phillips Nov 20, 2016

Charlie Phillips is a Jamaican-born photographer whose work has been exhibited across the world, and is part of the permanent collections of The Tate and the V&A. He's best known for his photographs of the area of London where he arrived to live as a boy: Notting Hill. His images are full of the atmosphere of Notting Hill in the late 50s and 60s: slum housing, market traders, churchgoers, children playing on the streets - and they're now valued as a unique record of the experience of that Windrush Generation. Later in the sixties, Charlie Phillips photographed the student protests in Paris, pop festivals and rock stars, while making a living as a paparazzo, chasing Elizabeth Taylor around. Simon Schama has described him as a "Visual Poet - chronicler, champion, witness of a gone world - one of Britain's great photo-journalists."

But Charlie Phillips didn't set out to be a photographer; instead, he wanted to be an opera singer, and during his time as a paparazzo in Milan he achieved his ambition, singing from the stage of La Scala in Verdi's Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves.

In Private Passions Charlie Phillips talks about his passion for opera, and about the racism he encountered when he first arrived in Britain. And although Charlie Phillips has now left West London, he goes back to Notting Hill almost every day - he can't afford to live there any more, but it's where he feels most at home.

Musical Choices include Verdi, Puccini, Dave Brubeck, and a rarely-performed opera by the African-American composer Scott Joplin, about the importance of education in the black community. Phillips also loves hymns and chooses "How Great Thou Art", a rousing evangelical hymn he has planned for his own funeral.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus Production for BBC Radio 3.

Geoff Dyer Nov 13, 2016

Geoff Dyer is a writer who joyously defies categorisation. The winner of many literary prizes, and frequently described as one of the most original writers of his generation, he surprises at every turn with his blending of fiction and non-fiction, and with his subjects, which range through travel, film, sex, photography, war, romance - and music.

The book that cemented his reputation, in 1991, was about jazz - with the memorable title But Beautiful. It's a series of fictional vignettes of musicians from the great age of American jazz, including Bud Powell, Chet Baker and Thelonious Monk.

Geoff talks to Michael Berkeley about how his life-long passion for jazz has taken him on a musical journey from Miles Davis, to Keith Jarrett playing Bach, and Indian classical music - and he explains why Beethoven's Late Quartets appeal so strongly to a lover of jazz.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Therese Oulton Nov 06, 2016

Thérèse Oulton burst on to the scene in 1984, fresh out of art school, with a highly-praised solo exhibition, which was followed three years later by a nomination for the Turner Prize.

From the very beginning she has challenged the orthodoxies of both abstract and figurative painting. And her recent highly detailed landscapes find beauty even in a damaged, fragile earth, evoking both familiarity and strangeness.

Her work is highly prized by collectors and is in major public collections around the world, including the Tate and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Thérèse talks to Michael Berkeley about her passion for Wagner, the physicality of music and painting, and the pleasure of listening to live music. Her music choices include Britten, Shostakovich, Wagner, Brecht and Mary Lou Williams - inspired by the time she spent waitressing at Ronnie Scott's as an art student.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Helen Oyeyemi Oct 23, 2016

Helen Oyeyemi wrote her first novel The Icarus Girl, about a mixed race child and her imaginary friend, in secret, while she was still at school studying for her A levels. Four more novels have followed and, most recently, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours, a collection of short stories. She appeared on Granta's Best of Young British Novelists list in 2013.

Helen's twisted fairy tales possess a heightened reality, blurring the everyday and the fantastic, making her readers question what is real and what is unreal. In her world it's not just narrators that can be unreliable - even geography and time are unstable.

She talks to Michael Berkeley about the pleasures of storytelling, the power of fairy tales and her passion for her adopted city of Prague, reflected in music by the Czech composer Martinu. And she chooses music that sparks her imagination from Rimsky-Korsakov, Offenbach, Elgar, and a South Korean rock band.

Produced by Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Paterson Joseph Oct 16, 2016

Paterson Joseph bunked off school when he was thirteen and spent the next two years going to the local library instead, reading his way from Agatha Christie through to Alexander Pushkin. It was a good training for someone who's become one of our most versatile and successful actors. Paterson Joseph is well known from numerous Shakespeare productions at the RSC and the Royal Exchange Manchester, and from Casualty and Dr Who. He achieved notoriety as the grotesque boss Alan Johnson in Peep Show. Paterson Joseph has recently been touring America with a show that he's written himself, about one of his heroes - the black 18th-century London grocer and composer Ignatius Sancho.

He talks to Michael Berkeley about why Sancho has been unjustly neglected, and what he thinks about "colour-blind" casting.

Music choices include Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin, Louis Armstrong, Bach, Charlie Mingus, Billie Holliday - and Ignatius Sancho.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Lara Feigel Oct 09, 2016

Lara Feigel made her name writing about the relationship between life, love, literature and history in London during the Second World War with her wonderfully titled and highly praised book The Love Charm of Bombs.

Her latest, The Bitter Taste of Victory, returns to the 1940s and looks at British and American attempts to impose culture from abroad in the hope of 'civilising' post-war Germany.

She talks to Michael Berkeley about what it was in her family history that drew her to writing about the Second World War, the perils of romanticizing it, and the emotional toll of engaging with such a distressing period of history.

As well as Bach and Beethoven, Lara chooses music which reflects preoccupations and personalities in post-war Germany - Furtwängler's recording of Tristan und Isolde, a song from Marlene Dietrich, and music by Richard Strauss.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Production for BBC Radio 3.

Grayson Perry Oct 02, 2016

Grayson Perry burst into the public consciousness in 2003 when he accepted the Turner Prize with the words: 'It's about time a transvestite potter from Essex won the Turner.' Since then he's become celebrated for his beautiful, intricately decorated vases, which juxtapose images of innocence, obscenity and humour. He's worked across many other media as well - from tapestry to bronze, print-making to architecture, and the outrageously flamboyant frocks he wears when he goes out dressed as a woman are works of art in their own right.

He chooses Tchaikovsky, Philip Glass, Marcello and Kathleen Ferrier and explores with Michael Berkeley the emotional power of music and memory; escaping an unhappy childhood; the fun of demystifying the art world; and the joys and perils of moving from rebel to national treasure.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Sound Frontiers: Dame Joan Plowright Sep 25, 2016

As BBC Radio 3 celebrates 70 years of pioneering music and culture, Michael Berkeley travels to Sussex to meet Dame Joan Plowright for a special edition of Private Passions.

Dame Joan's extraordinary six-decade career has taken her from the Royal Court Theatre to international movie stardom, via the West End, Broadway and the National Theatre. Along the way she has won a panoply of awards, including an Oscar nomination for The Enchanted April. In a moving and wide-ranging interview, Dame Joan shares memories of a life well-lived: from her childhood in Scunthorpe, to her work with figures such as Franco Zeffirelli, and the man who was to change the course of her life: Sir Laurence Olivier, whom she married in 1961.

Looking back to the Third Programme, Private Passions has unearthed a clip of one of Dame Joan's signature performances, Margery Pinchwife from Wycherley's The Country Wife, broadcast in 1960. (Laurence Olivier himself was a leading member of the 'Third Programme Defence Society'.) Dame Joan reveals her love of music, with her since childhood, and now especially important since she lost her sight a few years ago. Many of her choices are associated with special friendships in her life. Where better to start than with 'Nimrod' from Elgar's Enigma Variations, a series of musical sketches depicting some of the composer's closest friends? Other music includes Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, and William Walton's Cello Concerto. We also hear Olivier's electric (and highly musical) delivery of the St Crispin's Day speech, before Dame Joan herself recites, from memory, a Shakespeare sonnet: 'Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments...'.

A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Jane Greenwood and Oliver Soden.

George Shaw Sep 18, 2016

A former Turner Prize-nominee, George Shaw is renowned for his highly detailed approach and suburban subject matter, and for his idiosyncratic medium - Humbrol enamel paint, typically used to colour model trains and aeroplanes.

Armed with a sketchbook, the teenage Shaw made regular day trips from his home in a caravan on a Coventry council estate to the National Gallery in order to draw from works by artists he found inspiring.

He's now back at the National Gallery with a major exhibition, My Back to Nature, the culmination of a two-year residency. He has developed into one of Britain's most inspiring contemporary painters, a close observer of nature, with the sharp eye of a Freud or Hockney.

He talks to Michael about the music that inspires his life and work and chooses works by Schubert, Elgar, Purcell and Brian Eno.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Daniel Libeskind Sep 11, 2016

On this, the 15th anniversary of 9/11, Michael Berkeley's guest is Daniel Libeskind, a world-renowned architect, known for concert halls, opera sets, museums, hotels and universities.

In 2003 Libeskind won an international competition to produce an overarching vision for buildings which would stand on the site of the Twin Towers. That vision is now almost complete, and includes a memorial to those who were killed in the attacks. He's called his plan "a site of memory, a healing of New York". Daniel Libeskind had already made his reputation with buildings that symbolised and preserved tragic histories, such as the Jewish Museum in Berlin, and the German Military Museum in Dresden.

In Private Passions, he talks to Michael Berkeley about the day he first visited the site and climbed down into the crater left in the earth. He says that experience changed his life - he began to hear the voices of the dead. He talks about how he decided this should be a "sacred site", and that the footprint of the twin towers should never be built on. He reveals his concept of a light memorial to the dead, created by using shafts of light filtered through the spaces between skyscrapers. The sun strikes the ground at exactly the same times as the planes hit the towers.

Daniel Libeskind is extraordinarily musical; in fact, a gifted accordionist, he was something of a musical prodigy. He decided to follow architecture instead, but is still inspired by music. His music choices include Renée Fleming singing "Amazing Grace", Perotin; the contemporary Finnish composer Saariaho, and Mark Padmore singing Bach's Cantata for the 16th Sunday after Trinity - so the right cantata for 11 September 2016.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Steve Silberman Aug 28, 2016

Steve Silberman is an award-winning investigative reporter based in San Francisco; he writes for The New Yorker, Nature, Wired and Time Magazine. He has spent ten years researching the untold history of autism for his book "Neurotribes: The Legacy of Autism and How to Think Smarter About People Who Think Differently". Published last year, it won the biggest British prize for a non-fiction book, the Samuel Johnson prize, as well as many American awards.

The book sets out to answer a deceptively simple question: why is so little understood about autism, 70 years after it was first discovered? Since writing it, Silberman has become an ally to thousands of people with autism who haven't had a voice, and for what's become known as "neurodiversity".

In Private Passions, Steve Silberman talks to Michael Berkeley about his time listening to people with autism, trying to understand the world from their point of view. He discusses the connection between autism and eccentricity, and between autism and musical ability. He reveals too his own sense of being an outsider, growing up gay, and reminisces about years spent working as an assistant to the poet Allen Ginsberg.

Steve Silberman's music choices are fascinating and unconventional, ranging from the 13th century to Steve Reich. He includes music by the contemporary American composer Lou Harrison, who was wonderfully eccentric - he built an American version of a gamelan out of hubcaps! Other music choices include Bill Evans with "Peace Piece" and "Timeless" by Oregon.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Carol Ann Duffy Aug 24, 2016

Michael Berkeley welcomes the Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, as his Private Passions. The first woman, the first Scot, and the first openly gay person to hold the post, she was appointed in 2009, having won many awards for her poetry collections since taking first prize in the National Poetry Competition in 1983. Most recently, 'Rapture' (2005) won the TS Eliot Prize, and her latest collection, 'The Bees', won the 2011 Costa Book Award for Poetry.

Born into a Roman Catholic family in the Gorbals, a poor area of Glasgow, Carol Ann developed a passionate love of literature at school, and for a decade from the age of 16 she lived with the Liverpool poet Adrian Henri. She had two plays performed at the Liverpool Playhouse and received an honours degree in phoilosophy from the University of Liverpool. In 1996 she was appointed a lecturer in poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University and later became creative director of its Writing School. She was appointed Poet Laureate in 2009. Her work as laureate includes poems on the MPs' expenses scandal, the deaths of the last British servicemen who fought in World War I, David Beckham's tendon injury, and the wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton. Her poems, which explore everyday experience and a rich fantasy life, are on the school curriculum in the UK.

A keen music-lover, Carol Ann Duffy learnt the piano as a child. Her choices include Chopin's E major Etude Op.10 No.3, which her mother loved to hear her playing; extracts from Mozart's 'Marriage of Figaro' and and Christy Moore singing a song with words by W B Yeats. This edition, first broadcast in June 2012, is part of Radio 3's celebration of British music - Private Passions' guests this month are four poets from across the UK.

Steven Berkoff Aug 24, 2016

Michael Berkeley welcomes the actor, playwright and director Steven Berkoff, renowned for the visceral quality of his plays such as East, West, Decadence, Greek, Sink the Belgrano, Scumbags, Ritual in Blood and Messiah. He has also adapted and directed for the stage Kafka's Metamorphosis and The Trial, the Greek tragedy Agamemnon, and Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher. His plays, adaptations and his one-man show have toured widely abroad, from the Far East to the USA.

As an actor, Steven has appeared in films ranging from A Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon, Octopussy and Beverly Hills Cop to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. On TV he has been seen in The Professionals, Star Trek and Jonathan Creek, among others. He has published a variety of books on the theatre, and an autobiography, Free Association.

His eclectic musical choices range from music for the stage - Milhaud's ballet La création du monde, Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet, Britten's opera A Midsummer Night's Dream and incidental music to Brecht's Mother Courage - to music that reflects his love of travel - Buddhist chant and an unusual Monkey Dance from Bali. There's also Ivo Pogorelich playing the second movement of Beethoven's Piano Sonata No.32 in C minor, Op.111, and Chet Baker with the Rogers and Hart classic My Funny Valentine.

First broadcast in April 2012.

Judith Kerr Aug 24, 2016

Michael Berkeley's guest on Private Passions this week is the best-selling children's author Judith Kerr. Now 89, Judith was born into a distinguished pre-war German Jewish intellectual family: her father, Alfred Kerr, was a well known journalist and critic, and her mother, Julia, a composer. The family fled from Berlin in 1933 after Hitler's rise to power, and lived in Switzerland and Paris before reaching London in 1936. In the 1950s Judith met and married Nigel Kneale, author of the famous BBC TV science fiction series Quatermass. Their son Matthew Kneale has followed in his parents' footsteps, becoming an acclaimed novelist, while their daughter Tacy is an artist.

Judith is both a writer and an illustrator, best known for her children's books, including the much-loved Mog series (about a cat), 'The Tiger Who Came to Tea' and the novel for young adults 'When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit', which is based on her own experiences as a child refugee, and won the 1974 Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis.

Judith's musical choices include a fragment of an opera about Einstein written by her parents; an excerpt from the final scene of Mozart's opera Don Giovanni; the Jewish Memorial Prayer El Malei Rachamim performed at the 2001 International Holocaust Memorial Day in London; Beethoven's Seventh Symphony, which was a favourite of her father, and was played at his funeral; part of 'Mars' from Holst's The Planets, which served as the theme music for Quatermass; The Dance of the Knights from Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet, which was a favourite of her husband's, and finally her own personal favourite, the Kyrie from Mozart's Mass in C minor, K427.

Sound of Cinema: Mike Leigh Aug 24, 2016

Michael Berkeley's guest this week is the filmmaker, writer and playwright Mike Leigh, who began his career in the theatre and with TV dramas such as 'Abigail's Party' and 'Nuts in May', and went to to produce a string of original, award-winning films including 'Life is Sweet', 'Career Girls', the Gilbert and Sullivan biopic 'Topsy Turvy', 'Naked', 'Secrets and Lies', 'Happy Go Lucky', 'Vera Drake', and most recently, 'Another Year'. Many of his films involve an element of improvisation, and Mike Leigh has launched the careers of an impressive array of distinguished British actors, including Alison Steadman. Brenda Blethyn, David Thewlis, Sally Hawkins, Liz Smith and Jane Horrocks. His play 'Ecstasy' is currently enjoying a West End revival.

Mike Leigh's choices begin with two extracts by Gilbert and Sullivan. He starts with a comic duet from 'Ruddigore' (I once was a very abandoned person)l, and goes on to 'The World is but a broken toy' from 'Princess Ida', which he loves for its sentimental charm. Mike Leigh sees Mozart's 'Cosi fan tutte' as essentially a comic opera, and has selected the gorgeous trio 'Soave sia il vento' from Act I. Then comes another facet of comic opera - the Doll's Song from Act II of Offenbach's 'The Tales of Hoffmann', which he used as the background to the brothel scene in 'Topsy Turvy'. There's also the original 1928 recording of the Ballad of Mack the Knife from Weill/Brecht's 'Threepenny Opera', an extract from a film score by Shostakovich, Jeanne Moreau singing 'Le Tourbillon de la vie' from Truffaut's famous film 'Jules et Jim'; 'Blue in Green' from Miles Davis' 'Kind of Blue', and finally the Rondo from Beethoven's Violin Concerto (Mike Leigh used Beethoven to great effect in 'Abigail's Party').

Jasper Conran Aug 24, 2016

Michael Berkeley's guests is Jasper Conran, one of Britain's best-known fashion designers. In 1978, Conran began producing women's clothing, and has since concentrated on such diverse fields as home furnishings, crystal and china, as well as designing costumes and sets for ballets, plays and opera.

His musical choices encompass singers such as Kathleen Ferrier, Ella Fitzgerald, Bessie Smith and Cat Stevens, as well as works by Mozart, Schubert, Chopin, and his favourite composer, Handel.

M Berkeley: The Wakeful Poet (Music from Chaucer) (pub OUP) Beaux-Arts Brass Quintet BBQ BBQ 003, Tr 10 Duration: 25s

Trad: Blow the Wind Southerly Kathleen Ferrier (contralto) Kathleen Ferrier DECCA 417 192-2, Tr 3 Duration: 2m20s

Schubert: Impromptu No 4 in A flat, D899 Melvyn Tan (fortepiano) Schubert EMI CDC 7 49102-2, Tr 4 Duration: 6m48s

Elizabeth Welch: Stormy Weather (Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler) LP Elizabeth Welch WORLD RECORDS SH 233 S1 B6 Duration: 3m23s

Handel: Where'er you Walk (Semele - Act 2, Sc 3) Anthony Rolfe-Johson (tenor) English Baroque Soloists John Eliot Gardiner (conductor) Handel Semele ERATO 4509-99759-2 CD1, Tr 2 Duration: 4m58s

Bessie Smith: You Gotta Give Me Some (Spencer Williams) Clarence Williams (piano) Eddie Lang (guitar) Bessie Smith BBC BBCCD602 8 Duration: 2m45s

Mozart: Laudate Dominum (Vesperae solennes de Confessore, K339) Carolyn Samson (soprano) Choir of the King's Consort The King's Consort Robert King (conductor) Mozart HYPERION CDA 67560, Tr 5 Duration: 4m16s

Ella Fitzgerald: Undecided (Charles Shavers and Sid Robin) Chick Webb and his orchestra CDR The Very Best of Ella Fitzgerald STARDUST B001GIILLA, Tr 1 Duration: 3m17s

Chopin: Waltz in G flat, Op 70 No 1 Dinu Lipatti (piano) Chopin EMI 566904-2, Tr 6 Duration: 1m53s

Handel: Comfort Ye My People (Messiah) Mark Padmore (tenor) The Sixteen Harry Christophers (conductor) Handel Messiah CORO COR 1606-2 CD1, Tr 2 Duration: 3m11s

Cat Stevens: Morning has broken (words Eleanor Farjeon; music arr Cat Stevens) Teaser and the Firecat ISLAND IMCD269, Tr 7 Duration: 3m16s.

Michele Roberts Aug 24, 2016

Michael Berkeley's guest on Private Passions is the novelist and short story writer Michele Roberts. The child of a French mother and English father, she was brought up and still divides her time between the two countries. She studied English at Oxford University, worked for the British Council, and then became a writer. She is currently Emeritus Professor of Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia.

She is the author of twelve highly acclaimed novels, including 'Daughters of the House' (1992), which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the W H Smith Literary Award; 'Flesh and Blood' (1994), 'The Looking Glass' (2000), 'Reader, I Married Him' (2005), and her latest novel, 'Ignorance' (2012), a war-time novel set in France. She has also published a memoir, 'Paper Houses', dealing with the themes that inform her novels - love, feminist ideals and the legacy of her Catholic upbringing; and a collection of short stories of sex and love, entitled 'Mud' (2010).

Music has always played an important part in Michele Roberts's life, and her choices begin with Bach's Magnificat and continue with an aria from Handel's cantata 'Donna, che in ciel di tanta luce splendi', in praise of the Virgin Mary. Michele says she wanted to be a nun as a teenager, and became fascinated by female mystics and saints, including Hildegard of Bingen. She loves Kathleen Ferrier's voice, singing Handel's 'O Thou that tellest good tidings to Zion', which she finds very comforting. She also appreciates the voices of Alfred Deller, Jacques Brel and Bob Dylan, as well as an Italian women partisans' song, Bella Ciao, which appeals to her republican sympathies, and the Portuguese fado singer Mariza. Her choices end as they began, with Bach.

Lucy Hughes-Hallett Aug 24, 2016

Michael Berkeley's guest is the historian, biographer and critic Lucy Hughes-Hallett, whose books include a cultural history of the ancient Egyptian queen Cleopatra and a story of heroism told through eight famous lives from Achilles and Odysseus to Francis Drake and Garibaldi. Her latest book, The Pike, deals with the controversial life of the Italian poet and occasional politician Gabriele d'Annunzio, who evolved from romantic idealist to radical right-wing revolutionary, culminating in his dramatic attempt to seize political power in the Croatian city of Fiume (now Rijeka). Through his ideological journey, Lucy Hughes-Hallett examines the political turbulence of early 20th-century Europe and the rise of fascism.

Lucy's musical enthusiasms range from Byzantine chant through operas by Monteverdi, Handel and Verdi to The Rolling Stones, and an extract from Debussy's Le martyre de Saint Sébastien.

Private Passions: George Steiner Aug 24, 2016

George Steiner discusses his personal music choices with Michael Berkeley in 2002 - drawn from the archive to mark 20 years of Private Passions.

Marina Lewycka Aug 24, 2016

Marina Lewycka, a post-war baby born to Ukrainian parents in a German refugee camp, has lived in England since she was one. Her parents settled in a village near Pontefract, and she has lived in south Yorkshire for much of her life. She read English and Philosophy at Keele University, enrolled for a PhD at Kings College, London, and then spent many years as an unpublished writer, before finally achieving huge success, at the age of 58, with the novel 'A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian'. Her two subsequent novels, 'Two Caravans' and 'We Are All Made of Glue', also deal with aspects of immigrant life, treated with wry humour and great poignancy.

Her musical passions, as revealed to Michael Berkeley, begin with two classics of the Baroque repertoire, Bach's First Brandenburg Concerto, and the aria 'I know that my Redeemer liveth', from Handel's Messiah. The Sibelius Violin Concerto was as great favourite of her father, who died recently; while Marina herself has attempted to play her next choice, Mozart's Piano Sonata in F, K332. She loves music that tells a story, and has chosen the March to the Scaffold from Berlioz's 'Symphonie fantastique', for its narrative energy. She says that all writers aspire to the ability to draw joy out of sadness, which Mozart does to consummate effect in the Countess's aria 'Dove sono' from 'The Marriage of Figaro'. Marina's own origins are referenced in the traditional Ukrainian folksong 'The Black Raven', while her deep love of nature is reflected.

Sam Taylor-Wood Aug 24, 2016

Michael Berkeley meets Turner Prize-nominated conceptual artist and film-maker Sam Taylor-Wood, whose latest work, Nowhere Boy, documents the early life of John Lennon. Much of her work has been inspired by music, from opera to Bach, and her choices range from the opening of Gluck's opera Orfeo ed Euridice, the Kyrie from Mozart's Requiem and the opening of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony to an Indian raga and Nina Simone singing Wild Is the Wind as well as film scores by Ry Cooder and Michael Nyman.

Sig: M Berkeley: The Wakeful Poet (Music from Chaucer) Beaux Arts Brass Quintet (Berkeley/OUP) Duration: 0m26s

Mozart: Introitus (Requiem in D Minor, KV626) Marie McLaughlin (soprano) Bavarian Radio Chorus and Symphony Orchestra Leonard Bernstein (conductor) DG 431 041-2 Tr 1 Duration: 6m39s

Ravi Shankar: Prabhati Ravi Shankar (sitar) Yehudi Menuhin (violin) Alla Rakha (tabla) (Shankar, based on Raga Gunkali) Menuhin meets Shankar EMI CDC7490702 Tr 1 Duration: 4m06s

Gluck: Ah ! Se intorno a quest'urna funesta (Orfeo ed Euridice) Orfeo ...... Bernarda Fink (mezzo-soprano) Rias-Kammerchor Freiburger Barockorchester Rene Jacobs (conductor) HARMONIA MUNDI HMC90174243, CD 1 Tr 2 Duration: 3m18s

John Lennon: Love Lennon/Lenono Music/BMG Muic Publishing Ltd The John Lennon Collection PARLAPHONE CDP7915162 Tr 7 Duration: 3m19s

Beethoven: Symphony No 9 in D minor Op 125 (1st mvt - excerpt) Staatskapelle Berlin Daniel Barenboim (conductor) ERATO 4509 94353-2 Tr 1 Duration: 5m25s

Ry Cooder: Paris, Texas (Paris, Texas - film sountrack) Ry Cooder, Jim Dickinson, David Lindley (Cooder/Tonopah and Tidewater Music Co BMI) Original Film Soundtrack WARNER 9252702 Tr 1 Duration: 2m56s

Nina Simone: Wild Is the Wind Nina Simone (piano/voice) Rudy Stevenson (guitar) Lisle Atkinson (bass) Bobby Hamilton (drums) (D Tiomkin, N Washington arr Nina Simone, Famous Music Corp) Work Song (The 60's vol 3) MERCURY 8385452 Tr 8 Duration: 6m58s

Michael Nyman: The Heart Asks Pleasure First (The Piano - film soundtrack) Michael Nyman (piano) Nyman/Chester Music Ltd The Piano VENTURE CDVE919 Tr 4 Duration: 1m33s.

Anoushka Shankar Aug 24, 2016

Michael Berkeley's guest today is the sitar player and composer Anoushka Shankar, one of the stars of world music today. She studied exclusively with her father, the great Indian sitar player Ravi Shankar, made her debut at age 13 in New Delhi, and released her first solo recording in 1998. In 2001 her third album, Live at Carnegie Hall, was nominated for a Grammy award. In 2002 she appeared at the Royal Albert Hall in a tribute concert to the late George Harrison, conducting a new piece by her father which featured Eric Clapton on solo guitar. Until 2005 she was primarily a solo performer of Indian classical music, but in that year she branched out with her fourth album, Rise, a fusion of East and West employing both acoustic and electric instrumentation, on which she appeared as composer, arranger and producer. It won her another Grammy nomination. She toured extensively in the wake of the new album, forming the Anoushka Shankar Project to present her new non-classical ensemble works to a live audience, and in 2007 released another album, Breathing Under Water, in collaboration with the Indian-American producer Karsh Kale It features guest appearances by her father and her half-sister, Norah Jones. She now applies her expertise as a fine Indian classical musician to working with top-quality musicians from a range of traditions to create innovative music that appeals to a wide audience. She has just released her next album, Traveller.

Her eclectic choices for Private Passions include piano pieces by Debussy and Erik Satie; the Andantino from Faure's Piano Trio, Op.120; a piece by Ali Farka Toure and Toumani Diabate, a collaboration which she particularly admires; a raga played by her father; a flamenco piece, and Nick Cave's song 'Into My Arms'.

Private Passions: John Peel Aug 24, 2016

Broadcaster, John Peel discusses his personal music choices with Michael Berkeley in 1996 - drawn from the archive to mark 20 years of Private Passions.

Private Passions: Sir Isaiah Berlin Aug 24, 2016

Philosopher, Isaiah Berlin discusses his personal music choices with Michael Berkeley in 1996 - drawn from the archive to mark 20 years of Private Passions.

Anna Pavord Aug 21, 2016

Michael Berkeley's guest is Anna Pavord, the distinguished writer about gardens and landscape. Her best-known book is The Tulip, a biography of the bulb that created a mania in the 17th century, but she's written extensively about plants, and places, and spent years as gardening columnist of the Independent. Her latest book "Landskipping: painters, ploughmen and places", is an exploration of how, through the ages, we have responded to the land.

The programme is recorded on location in the landscape of west Dorset where Anna Pavord has lived, and gardened, for much of her life. She talks about what this landscape means to her, and why it is that we respond to certain kinds of natural beauty. She discusses her scholarly research into landscape mania in the 18th century, and tells moving personal stories too, such as the time she refused morphine after an operation for cancer, discovering that a mask of sweet peas was more effective - and much more pleasurable.

Walking round her garden, Anna Pavord reflects on the therapeutic value - and marvelous madness - of a life spent gardening.

Music choices include the Welsh Hymn Cwm Rhondda; the poet R.S.Thomas reading his own work; Bach's Wedding Cantata; two pieces by Schubert; Elgar's Cello Concerto - and a 1929 recording by Cleo Gibson: "I've got Ford engine movements in my hips".

Stephen Hugh-Jones Aug 14, 2016

Stephen Hugh-Jones is a fellow of King's College Cambridge and has spent 45 years researching - and living among - the Amazonian Indians who live on the Equator, in South-Eastern Colombia. They are still one of the most remote peoples on earth, and when Dr Hugh-Jones and his wife Christine first went to live there, in the late 1960s, this was a people, and a culture, completely untouched by modern life. This was partly because people were afraid of them; they had a reputation for being dangerous and cannibalistic.

In fact, Dr Hugh-Jones discovered that really they were a pacific people, with a very sophisticated set of religious beliefs. And music is a key part of their religious ceremonies. For Private Passions, Stephen Hugh-Jones brings along musical instruments that he has brought back from Colombia, and recordings he has made of music there.

He chooses, too, music which he took with him to listen to when he was living so far from home, particularly Bach - who caused a surprising reaction in the Amazon. Other choices include Purcell, Alfred Brendel playing Schubert, Beethoven's String Quartet No 15 in A minor, and Cuban music played by an African band.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Janine di Giovanni Aug 07, 2016

Janine di Giovanni has spent more than two decades reporting from some of the most dangerous places on earth: Sarajevo, Sierra Leone, Rwanda, Iraq, and Syria. She's the Middle East Editor of Newsweek, and writes for the New York Times, as well as for glossy magazines - winning numerous prizes, including two Amnesty International Media Awards. She's also written seven books - including most recently "Dispatches from Syria: The Morning They Came for Us", a moving account of the horror, and boredom, of war:

War means endless waiting, endless boredom. There is no electricity, so no television. You can't read. You can't see friends. You grow depressed but there is no treatment for it and it makes no sense to complain-everyone is as badly off as you. It's hard to fall in love, or rather, hard to stay in love.

When she's not travelling, Janine di Giovanni lives in Paris, with her 12-year-old son. For Private Passions, Michael Berkeley met her earlier this summer on her brief visit to the Hay-on-Wye festival. In a moving interview, di Giovanni reveals how she deals with danger, and her deep belief in her Guardian Angel. The youngest of a large Italian-American family, Janine di Giovanni's sister died as a child; she talks about being brought up in the shadow of that death, feeling that she and her brother were lost, like Hansel and Gretel in the fairytale. She reflects too on love, and particularly her love for her son, and how they both cope with her journeys to the front line.

Janine di Giovannni's music choices include Humperdinck's opera "Hansel and Gretel"; Glenn Gould playing Bach's "Goldberg Variations"; Schubert's Trio Op 100 (which she says captures the horror and pity of war); Mozart's Clarinet Concerto; and Jimi Hendrix's "Little Wing".

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Timberlake Wertenbaker Jul 24, 2016

Timberlake Wertenbaker is one of our leading playwrights, adapters and translators. Her parents were American, but she was brought up in Basque country in France and has spent much of her life in Greece. Not surprising, then, that her major theme is exile, displacement, flight. She's best known for her play about convicts in 18th century Australia, "Our Country's Good", which was first staged in the late 1980s and which was revived recently at the National Theatre. It has become a set text in schools, and in fact Wertenbaker's own daughter had to study it (refusing all help from her playwright mother).

Timberlake Wertenbaker is well known to Radio 4 listeners as the adapter of the recent "War and Peace"; and her new work is a dramatization of "My Brilliant Friend" by the cult Italian writer Elena Ferrante, which will be broadcast as the Classic Serial on 31 July.

In Private Passions, Timberlake Wertenbaker talks about her childhood in Basque country, and how that sense of being part of a political minority has influenced her life. She chooses music by Ravel which was inspired by a Basque dance, and a protest song by the Basque musician Mikel Leboa. She talks about the moving experience of seeing her work performed in prisons and chooses the prisoners' chorus from "Fidelio". And she reflects on how little has changed in the theatre since she began writing in terms of how few women playwrights ever get their work on stage.

With Schubert, Beethoven, Nina Simone, Ravel, Leboa, and a moving work by the Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus Production for BBC Radio 3.

Alexandre Desplat Jul 17, 2016

Alexandre Desplat is one of the world's leading composers of film music, with more than 120 scores to his name. His big breakthrough came in 2007 with Girl With A Pearl Earring, and since then he's been nominated for innumerable awards, including eight Oscars. 2015 was a particularly interesting year as Alexandre was Oscar-nominated for two films, with The Grand Budapest Hotel beating The Imitation Game on the night.

Alexandre talks to Michael Berkeley about the pressures of writing up to ten film scores a year, the complex relationship between director and composer, and his craving for silence.

His choices of music reflect his diverse musical influences - Boulez, Haydn, Miles Davis, Janacek, and his mother's Greek heritage which is often reflected in his film scores.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Julia Donaldson Jul 10, 2016

Julia Donaldson began her working life busking and writing songs, and when one of her songs became a children’s book, her phenomenally successful career as an author was born. She’s been the biggest selling author in Britain for the last six years. This will come as no surprise to anyone who has anything to do with young children, who adore her vibrant and funny rhyming picture books - which include A Squash and a Squeeze, The Snail and the Whale, and the tale of that much-loved monster, The Gruffalo.

Julia talks to Michael Berkeley about the origins of The Gruffalo – which has sold an astonishing 10 million copies – and the secret of writing for children. She remembers her student days busking with her husband-to-be in Paris and how much they enjoy singing and performing her stories together today. Julia’s music choices reflect her intensely musical background - her father’s cello playing, her mother’s love of lieder, and her own piano playing in pieces by Schubert, Haydn and Handel. Her love of storytelling is reflected in songs by Georges Brassens and Flanders and Swann.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3

Glenda Jackson Jun 26, 2016

For three decades Glenda Jackson was one of our most acclaimed actors, winning BAFTAs, Golden Globes and Emmys, and two Oscars - for Women in Love and for A Touch of Class. And alongside her film career were ground-breaking stage performances for directors such as Peter Brook and Peter Hall, and a television career which included an astonishing portrayal of Elizabeth I - a performance few of us will forget.

But in 1992 she gave it all up to become the Labour MP for Hampstead and Highgate, eventually becoming a Junior Transport Minister. She stepped down as an MP last year, two days before her 79th birthday, and now, after a 24-year gap, she's back on stage this autumn playing King Lear at the Old Vic.

Glenda talks to Michael Berkeley about researching Elizabeth I, arguing with Ken Russell about Shostakovich, and how she turned down tickets to the Proms, prefering to listen on the radio at home.

Her love of 20th-century music shines through with pieces by Stravinsky, Vaughan Williams, John Adams, Steve Reich and Stevie Wonder.

Producer: Jane Greenwood

A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Andrew Solomon Jun 19, 2016

Andrew Solomon is Professor of Clinical Psychology at Columbia Medical Centre in New York, and a writer with a wide-ranging interest in families. He spent ten years talking to parents who faced extraordinary challenges, because their children had turned out so very different from them: either through disabilities, or because they were musical prodigies - or because they had committed serious crimes. The resulting book, "Far From the Tree - Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity" has won many awards, and millions of people have watched Solomon's TED talks. Solomon first made an impact with another prize-winning book, about depression, "The Noonday Demon", a moving account of his own illness.

In Private Passions, Andrew Solomon talks to Michael Berkeley about how both books are grounded in his own experience; he had a hard time growing up, and being accepted by his parents - and his peers - as gay. He reveals that at one point he was so depressed that he couldn't get out of bed, and thought he'd had a stroke. It was his father's love and care which saved him. He talks too about how he met his husband, and became a father himself - albeit as part of a marvellously complex and unconventional family.

Music choices include Mozart's "The Marriage of Figaro"; Strauss's "Der Rosenkavalier"; Bryn Terfel singing Vaughan Williams's "Songs of Travel"; Rachmaninov's 3rd Piano Concerto, and love songs by Reynaldo Hahn, Strauss and Britten.

John Sutherland Jun 13, 2016

The scholar and critic John Sutherland talks to Michael Berkeley about his passions for film, music, and Victorian literature.

An unsuccessful career at school and a backbreaking job laying railway tracks were an unlikely start in life for the future Lord Northcliffe Professor Emeritus of Modern English Literature at University College London.

John Sutherland is hugely respected for his academic work on Victorian literature, but his infectious passion for books has led him to write for a popular audience too - he is a regular contributor to the Guardian and other papers, and his many books include Can Jane Eyre Be Happy?, How to Read a Novel, and most recently an entertaining quiz book: How Good is Your Grammar?

He talks to Michael about his difficult childhood, the later devastating effects of alcoholism, and the books and music that he's loved throughout his life - including Vaughan Williams, Britten and Mahler.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Production for BBC Radio 3.

Tanita Tikaram Jun 05, 2016

Tanita Tikaram became an overnight success when she was only a teenager; her debut album "Ancient Heart" sold four million copies in the late 80s and gave her hit singles like 'Twist in My Sobriety'. Since then she's gone on to release eight more albums, with some rather interesting silences in between - when she almost gave up on music altogether. In 2016 she toured Europe with her ninth album, 'Closer to the People'.

In Private Passions, Tanita Tikaram talks to Michael Berkeley about the effect of that massive early success, and about going to live in Italy to escape the rock music world. It was a wilderness moment, when she wasn't even sure she should be a musician. At this point, in her 30s, she began to discover classical music, through the work of legendary performers like pianists Rosalyn Tureck and Clara Haskil. She talks about how Bach opened up a new musical world to her, and how listening to classical music - and taking classical singing lessons - helps her find her "groove" when she is composing her own songs.

With Bach, Vivaldi, Ravel, Mozart's Piano Concerto No.23, Canteloube's Songs of the Auvergne, and Duke Ellington.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke

A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3.

Jane Goodall May 22, 2016

Jane Goodall was only twenty-four when in she went to live among the chimpanzees of Gombe National Park in Tanzania, and she went on to spend more than 55 years there. She has done more than anyone else to transform our understanding of chimpanzees - and beyond that, her work has raised questions about how we treat these highly intelligent primates, and indeed about the rights of all animals. Now in her early eighties, she's on an extraordinary mission travelling round the world to protect chimpanzees from extinction.

During a rare stay in Britain, Jane Goodall talks to Michael Berkeley about her life and ground-breaking discoveries. She reveals that the chimpanzees she lived with also had a darker side, and were sometimes violent, stamping on her. She remembers difficult times after the kidnapping of some of her workers, and the death of her second husband - and how music sustained her, and transformed her view of the world.

Music choices include Beethoven, Bach, Schubert, Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto and Richard Burton reading the Dylan Thomas classic 'Under Milk Wood'. She also introduces some very excited chimpanzee speech, and speculates about what kind of music chimpanzees enjoy.

Rose Tremain May 15, 2016

Rose Tremain is one of our finest writers, and her bestselling books - both novels and short stories - are garlanded with prizes. She defies categorisation and is equally at home with historical and contemporary fiction: she has created characters as diverse as Merivel, the physician turned fool at the court of Charles II; a 19th-century gold miner in New Zealand; and a transsexual growing up in rural Suffolk.

Rose talks to Michael Berkeley about her latest novel, The Gustav Sonata, the story of a long and loving relationship between someone who is profoundly musical and somebody who isn't. She chooses music which inspired the story and which features in it: by Schubert, Beethoven and Mahler, as well as music she loved as a teenager and as a student in Paris.

And Rose remembers her inspirational piano teacher, Joyce Hatto, whose career ended in disappointment and scandal many years later.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3.

Roger Allam May 01, 2016

Roger Allam is an actor equally at home with Shakespeare, musical theatre, detective shows, and comedy on both radio and television. From the Globe Theatre to Game of Thrones, through Endeavour, The Thick of It and Cabin Pressure, to the RSC and the West End, he refuses to be typecast.

He talks to Michael Berkeley about his lifelong passion for music and why he became an actor rather than an opera singer. And he explains how he overcame his initial reservations about the Globe Theatre to play Falstaff there (a performance that won him the Olivier Award for Best Actor).

Roger’s musical passions are predominately 20th century, with music by Britten, Messiaen and Ravel, but he also chooses Bach, Schubert and a mesmerising piece of medieval music.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media Production for BBC Radio 3

Jonathan Bate Apr 24, 2016

Sir Jonathan Bate is one of the leading Shakespeare scholars of our time. He's also a biographer, broadcaster and critic, and a passionate advocate of the importance of the humanities in education. Provost of Worcester College and Professor of English Literature at Oxford University, he is the author of many influential books on Shakespeare and the joint editor of the RSC Shakespeare: Complete Works. And he's turned playwright himself, with the one-man play Being Shakespeare, written for Simon Callow. He's also written extensively about English literature in the 400 years since Shakespeare's death, and last year, in a blaze of publicity, he published a controversial biography of Ted Hughes.

Jonathan takes us on a journey through 300 years of music inspired by Shakespeare, including works by Linley, Mozart, Berlioz, Wagner, Strauss - and Taylor Swift. And we hear Shakespeare performed by Alex Jennings, Simon Russell Beale, and Claire Danes.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3.

Melly Still Apr 10, 2016

Melly Still is a theatre and opera director whose work has been described as inventive, ambitious and magical. She stages the unstageable - mermaids, angels animals, underwater realms - putting whole worlds of myth and magic into the theatre or opera house.

She came to fame 10 years ago with Coram Boy at the National - the play about Handel, his Messiah and the Foundling Hospital. Since then she's directed at the Proms and Glyndebourne, and her new production of Cymbeline for the RSC opens later this month.

And music is central to her private life too, with two pianists and a DJ in her family.

She chooses music by Dvorak, Janacek and Wagner associated with her theatre and opera productions, jazz performed by her partner, and tantalizing music performed on instruments made of ice.

Producer: Jane Greenwood

A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3.

Sunil Khilnani Mar 29, 2016

Professor Sunil Khilnani is the Director of the India Institute at King's College London and the presenter of Radio 4's epic history of India: 'Incarnations: India in 50 Lives.' His books include an accompaniment to the series and the acclaimed The Idea of India.

He talks to Michael Berkeley about his musical passions, which reflect a life lived all over the world, and chooses music by Mozart, Berg and Beethoven, as well as a ghazal from 13th century India; a piece of southern Indian classical music played on the saxophone; and a joyful piece of African music from his childhood.

Running through his music are the ideas of compression and the perfection of the miniature - themes that emerge time and time again in the cultural history of India in the lives of poets, musicians and miniature painters.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3.

Melanie Reid Mar 27, 2016

For Easter Sunday, Michael Berkeley's guest is Melanie Reid, who writes a weekly column in The Times about her life as a tetraplegic. Six years ago, on Good Friday 2010, she was out cross-country riding in the Scottish countryside near her home in Stirlingshire. The horse refused a jump and she was thrown off - flipping her body. She broke her neck and back. Since then Melanie Reid has been paralysed from the armpits down.

When you're well and young, or young at heart, and busy devouring life, working, playing, laughing, eating, drinking, you assume you're in control. Things change though when the world topples from its axis and your glorious certitude that tomorrow will be as good as today is exposed as pitiful complacency.

In Private Passions, Melanie Reid talks about adjusting to life after her accident, 'a painful rebirth'. Although music has been important to her since childhood, after the accident she found that for several years she could not listen to it - the emotional effect was unbearable. Now, though, she finds music inspiring and sustaining. Her choices include Jacqueline du Pré playing Bach's 1st Cello Suite; Beethoven's 'Emperor' Concerto; Gustav Holst's 'Planets' Suite, Nielsen's Violin Concerto, and Strauss's 'Four Last Songs'.

In an inspiring conclusion to the programme, Melanie Reid talks about the happiness she has re-found recently, and the way her life has slowed down so that she can appreciate the beauty of nature, and the changing seasons. And she pays tribute to her loving husband and son, who both play the bagpipes - a cue to play a very untraditional take on the pipes from the Red Hot Chilli Pipers.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3.

Martha Lane Fox Mar 06, 2016

To mark International Women's Day, Michael Berkeley's guest is Martha Lane Fox. At the age of only 25 she co-founded Lastminute.com, which floated at the peak of the dot-com bubble and was sold seven years later for £577m. Since then, Lane Fox was appointed, at 40, the youngest female member of the House of Lords (she's a cross-bencher) and the Chancellor of the Open University. She's also championed digital inclusivity and has recently founded Doteveryone. Voted one of the most powerful women in Britain by Woman's Hour, she has a mission to make the internet industry more open to other women - as she says:

'The "internet industry" is only 30 years old. Yet what is supposed to be a democratising force is built on a platform of profound gender imbalance. Women occupy just 17 per cent of tech jobs in the UK. The people building the internet, the services we all use, are overwhelmingly men. We have a national digital skills crisis. There are 600,000 vacancies in the sector, forecast to rise to 1m by 2020. If we do not understand why, and try to rectify it, we are missing out on half the talent pool.'

In Private Passions, Martha Lane Fox talks to Michael Berkeley about how and why, as the daughter of an Oxford don and gardening writer, she came to be a pioneer of the internet industry. She reveals her passion for karaoke. And she talks about the effect on her life of a car accident in Morocco. Music choices include Beethoven's Fidelio, Chopin's Nocturnes, Verdi's La Traviata, Scott Joplin, Ella Fitzgerald and Judy Garland's 'Get Happy' - a personal anthem.

Katharine Whitehorn Feb 21, 2016

A chance to hear Michael Berkeley talk to the veteran journalist, Katharine Whitehorn, who died in January 2021 at the age 92. In this programme from 2016, Katherine Whitehorn talks about the music she loved all her life. She’s often quoted as saying: ‘Find out what you like doing best and get someone to pay you for it.’ Katharine explains that she had quite a few false starts along the way - running away from school, failing as an architecture student, dabbling in modelling - until she found her true vocation of journalism and began a career that has spanned Picture Post, the Observer and Saga Magazine. She was also known to millions as the author of Cooking in a Bedsitter, first published in 1961 and still the bible of student cookery. Her music choices include Finlandia, invoking memories of another - happy - false start; a piece of Chopin played by her father; Mozart and Beethoven symphonies; and one of the few songs she and her much-loved husband Gavin Lyall both enjoyed. Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Robert Harris Feb 07, 2016

Robert Harris made his name with Fatherland, a thriller which imagined what life would have been like in Britain had Hitler won the War. It sold over three million copies, was translated round the world, and became the first of three films inspired by his books. He went on to write thrillers about the Enigma Code, the financial crash, the Dreyfus Affair, and the destruction of Pompeii. And Ghost, a memorable book and film about a ghost-writer to a politician who closely resembles Tony Blair. Robert Harris's most recent book is Dictator and it completes a trilogy about the Roman politician and philosopher Cicero, a project which has preoccupied him for 12 years.

In Private Passions, he talks to Michael Berkeley about the underlying theme running through his work: what really interests him is power, and the rise and fall of political fortunes. He looks back on the extraordinary overnight success of Fatherland, and its less than enthusiastic reception in Germany. Robert Harris reveals, too, the importance of music when he is researching a new novel, and shares his excitement at the discovery of composers of the Spanish Baroque. Other music choices include Bach, Beethoven, John Barry, and Amy Winehouse. And a rousing extract from a speech which he believes to be the best piece of political rhetoric ever delivered - we hear why.

A Loftus Media Production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke.

Shirley Collins Jan 31, 2016

Shirley Collins talks to Michael Berkeley about her musical passions and her sixty-year career in folk music. Much praised for her clear, unaffected singing voice, she has won worldwide acclaim as a pivotal figure in the English folk revival of the 1960s and 70s, not only as a performer, but also as a curator, a saviour of a rich tradition of music which might otherwise have been lost. She tells Michael about her Sussex childhood, her passion for Baroque music, and the pleasure she?s finding in singing again after a gap of more than thirty years. And we hear Shirley singing with her late sister and collaborator Dolly. Her musical choices include Handel, Boyce, Praetorius and two moving field recordings she helped to make - songs from Mississippi Fred McDowell and a gypsy child in 1960s Sussex. Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus Production for BBC Radio 3

First broadcast in January 2016.

Baaba Maal Jan 24, 2016

As a prelude to the Folk Connections weekend on Radio 3, Michael Berkeley's guest is the world music singer and instrumentalist Baaba Maal. He performs at Glastonbury and Womad, and fills venues like the Royal Festival Hall and the Royal Albert Hall - no surprise there, as Baaba Maal is an international superstar, with 11 albums so far, fusing music from his African roots in Senegal with rock and pop, and collaborating with musicians like Brian Eno. What's surprising, though, is the electrifying effect he has on his audience in places like the Festival Hall - he gets them all up and out of their seats and dancing.

In Private Passions, Baaba Maal tells Michael Berkeley why he has a mission to get everybody on their feet, and how he wants to use his music to change minds and challenge political leaders. He remembers his childhood on the edge of the Sahara Desert, and the songs he learnt from his parents. And he reveals the shock - and excitement - of discovering classical music for the first time, and falling in love with Mozart and Beethoven. Other music choices include Fela Kuti, the Ensemble of Mali, and Miles Davis.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke

A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3.

Gerald Barry Jan 03, 2016

For New Year New Music, Michael Berkeley's guest is the Irish composer Gerald Barry. We tend to think of 'New Music' as something deadly serious and even agonised; Gerald Barry utterly confounds that stereotype. His latest opera, which will be staged at the Barbican this March, transforms The Importance of Being Earnest - with Lady Bracknell sung by a bass in a business suit, and Gwendolyn and Cecily throwing dinner plates at each other. It's Barry's fifth opera; his first, The Intelligence Park from 1990, told the story of an 18th century composer who fell in love with a castrato. As well as the operas there are scores of instrumental pieces, piano concertos and choral works. They have wonderful titles: Humiliated and Insulted; The Destruction of Sodom - a piece for 8 horns and 2 wind machines.

In Private Passions, Gerald Barry talks to Michael Berkeley about his childhood in a small village in the West of Ireland. It wasn't a musical household, but as a young boy he heard Clara Butt singing Handel on the radio and that was an awakening for him, 'a visitation'. From then on, he knew he wanted to be a composer, though he didn't even know the word. At the age of 14, he won a medal for composition - by taking a Mozart piano sonata and cutting it up, sticking it together again in random order. Barry went on to study with Stockhausen and the Argentinian composer Mauricio Kagel, and he talks about his struggle to make a living as a church organist in Cologne: he was fired, first for being Catholic, then for being late for 7.30am Mass. He gives a moving account of his mother dying, just as his first opera was performed. And he reflects on the woeful blandness of singing voices in the musical world now, compared with the countertenors and castrati of the past.

Gerald Barry's marvellously idiosyncratic choices include Mozart, Alfred Deller, Clara Butt, William Byrd, a hymn setting by Stainer, and Oscar Wilde's letter from Reading Gaol, De Profundis, set by the contemporary composer Rzewski. He ends with a hilarious recording of the Red Army Choir singing 'It's a Long Way to Tipperary'.

A Loftus Production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke.

Chilly Gonzales Dec 27, 2015

Canadian pianist Chilly Gonzales is on a mission - to get us all playing. His piano books and online pop music masterclasses attract hundreds of thousands of hits. Classically trained, he has one of the least orthodox careers in recent music: he made his name in rap, electronica and pop, becoming a successful songwriter and producer for the likes of the rapper Drake and the band Daft Punk. More recently he has been composing for piano and now for strings as well. He has a mission to break down the barrier between art and entertainment, and above all, a simple, overriding passion for music.

His stage shows - both in concert halls and in less conventional places such as old Cold-War German bunkers - are pretty dazzling affairs, and he appears dressed like a matinee idol in a silk robe and slippers.

Chilly chooses music by Mahler, Michael Nyman and Scarlatti, and songs from Fauré, Dionne Warwick and Drake.

He talks to Michael about musical genius, the art of rapping, and above all the endless possibilities and joy he finds in the piano.

Produced by Jane Greenwood A Loftus Production for BBC Radio 3.

Alan Bennett Dec 20, 2015

Michael Berkeley's guest this week is Alan Bennett. We know him as the much-loved playwright and diarist who's been entertaining and moving us as a writer and performer since Beyond the Fringe in 1960. But there's one aspect of Alan Bennett that's less well-known: the central importance of music in his life, including the extraordinary fact that he once wrote a libretto for William Walton. (Sadly, Lady Walton was not impressed, and shoved it firmly to the bottom of her handbag.)

In a moving and funny programme, Alan Bennett remembers the music that filled his childhood: his father was a gifted violinist, and his aunts played the piano for silent movies. As a teenager, new worlds were opened up by concerts in Leeds Town Hall, where Bennett sat in the cheapest seats behind the musicians, 'like sitting behind the elephants at the circus'. And then came fame, and Hollywood: 'Elizabeth Taylor actually sat on my knee at one point. It was not a pleasant experience'. In a touching conclusion to the programme, Alan Bennett listens to Elgar's Dream of Gerontius and is stirred to think about the boy he used to be, and what that boy might say to him now.

Music choices include a 1939 recording of 'I can give you the starlight' by Ivor Novello; a waltz by Franz Lehar; Brahms's Second Piano Concerto; Bach's St Matthew Passion; Walton's First Symphony; Elgar's Dream of Gerontius; and Ella Fitzgerald singing 'Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered'. This last song inspired The History Boys when Alan Bennett heard it on Private Passions in 2001.

This special programme includes three bonus tracks available online: Alan Bennett chooses two further pieces of music, and talks about the music he hates and never wants to hear again.

Produced by the Loftus Media Private Passions team (Elizabeth Burke, Jane Greenwood, Oliver Soden and Jon Calver).

Akram Khan Dec 13, 2015

Akram Khan is hardly ever still; an international star, he spins around the world with his dance company - just this last month he's been performing in Santa Barbara, Corby, Moscow, Seattle, Spain, Austria... Born in London, the son of a Bangladeshi restaurant owner, Khan was talent-spotted at the age of 13 by director Peter Brook, who cast him in the RSC production of the Mahabharata - which led to his first international tour on stage. Now just into his forties, Akram Khan has won numerous international dance awards, including the Olivier. In 2012 he choreographed and danced in the opening ceremony of the London Olympics. He's collaborated with prima ballerina Sylvie Guillem, with sculptor Anthony Gormley, and worked with the National Ballet of China. And he's choreographed for Kylie Minogue. He says 'The reason I dance - is because of music!'

In Private Passions, Akram Khan tells Michael Berkeley about his childhood, when his aunties would gather and sing till 3am, and require the exhausted young Akram to accompany them on the tabla drums. He reveals why he decided to become a dancer, not a musician. And he talks frankly about trying to be a good father to his two young children now, and how they have transformed his life. Musical choices include Mussorgsky, Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, performance poetry by Kate Tempest, and a Flamenco protest song from the Spanish Civil War.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Northern Lights: Sara Wheeler Dec 06, 2015

As part of Radio 3's Northern Lights season, Michael Berkeley's guest is the award-winning writer on the Polar Regions, Sara Wheeler.

Sara Wheeler spent years resisting the magnetic North. She established her reputation with books about the South Pole, where the American Government appointed her writer-in-residence: she is the only person to have slept on Captain Scott's bunk, apart from that great Antarctic explorer of course. Her book about the Antarctic became an international best-seller, and she went on to write a biography of another Antarctic explorer, Apsley Cherry-Garrard. So it was not till middle age that she realized she couldn't resist the pull of the North Pole. Her book 'The Magnetic North' draws on journeys through Russia, Canada and Greenland, staying with the people who live within the Arctic Circle. She says 'The Antarctic, with its purity and beauty, symbolizes what the earth could be; the Arctic, which is peopled and polluted, symbolizes what the earth actually is. I was desperately trying to avoid the Arctic, but I realized as the years went by that for all its problems it was too important a part of the contemporary world for a writer to ignore.'

For Private Passions, Sara Wheeler has compiled a playlist of music inspired by the sounds of the Arctic: the calls of Arctic birds, the sound of ice cracking. She includes rare archive of music made by indigenous peoples in Greenland, recorded in igloos there at the beginning of the 20th century, but very similar to the music she heard herself when travelling a few years ago. Composers include Prokofiev, Tippett, Vaughan Williams and Einojuhani Rautavaara, whose 'Cantus Arcticus' captures the sound of Arctic birds.

Christopher Ricks Nov 29, 2015

Michael Berkeley's guest is the distinguished scholar Sir Christopher Ricks, who was described by W.H. Auden as 'the kind of critic every poet dreams of finding.' He has championed the work of new poets including Seamus Heaney and Christopher Hill, and in book after book over 50 years he has thrown new light on the great poets of the past: Milton, Keats, Tennyson, T.S. Eliot. He has been the Oxford Professor of Poetry, and Professor of English at Cambridge; he is now Professor of the Humanities at Boston University. Outside the university, he's probably best known for two driving passions - for T.S. Eliot and (more controversially) for Bob Dylan. His new edition of Eliot's poems comes out this month: it's been several years in the making, and is the first complete edition of Eliot's poetry ever published.

For Private Passions, he has compiled a fascinating playlist of music, including musical settings of great poetry, and some Bob Dylan naturally. And there's an overall theme - it's a meditation on youth and age. Composers include Holst, Beethoven, Haydn, Vaughan Williams, Benjamin Britten, and Prince Albert.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus Production for BBC Radio 3.

Christina Lamb Nov 22, 2015

Christina Lamb is one of Britain's leading foreign correspondents. As a young journalist barely into her twenties, she went to live with the Afghan Mujahidin fighting the Russians; her dispatches saw her named Young Journalist of the Year in the British Press Awards in 1988. Since then she has travelled by canoe through the Amazon rainforest, reported undercover from Zimbabwe, infiltrated a crime syndicate in Brazil, and survived an ambush by the Taliban. She has won Foreign Correspondent of the Year five times as well as the Prix Bayeux, Europe's most prestigious award for war correspondents. She's currently Chief Foreign Correspondent for the Sunday Times, and the author of several best-selling books, including a new book about her time in Afghanistan, 'Farewell Kabul'. During this last year she has been reporting on the refugee crisis in Europe, from detention camps in Libya and rescue ships in the Mediterranean.

It's an extraordinary career, and it all started completely by chance when she was a young intern - with a surprise wedding invitation from Benazir Bhutto.

In Private Passions, Christina Lamb talks to Michael Berkeley about the pressures and pleasures of her working life, and vividly describes encounters with critical danger. She was on the bus with Benazir Bhutto when a bomb exploded, killing more than a hundred people. She chooses music which transports her back to the countries she has lived in: tabla music she first heard in a bazaar in Pakistan, and drumming she danced to in the Rio Carnival. She has recently discovered the music of Clara Schumann, and Tchaikovsky's The Seasons in a brand-new recording by Lang Lang. And Maria Callas singing in Tosca is a must - it's the soundtrack for the first time she met her Portuguese husband.

A Loftus Production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke.

Free Thinking: Sugata Mitra Nov 08, 2015

As part of Radio 3's Free Thinking weekend, Michael Berkeley talks to Sugata Mitra, who has started a revolution in education. He believes schools as we know them are obsolete; that exams shut down the brain; that children learn best when left alone, with computers, and that the best teachers are not education professionals, but grannies, who simply say 'Wow! That's amazing! How did you do that?' Sugata Mitra is the Professor of Educational Technology at Newcastle University. In 2013 he was awarded the million dollar TED Prize to help build a School in the Cloud, a creative online space where children from all over the world can gather to answer 'big questions'. Though Sugata Mitra now lives in Gateshead, he was brought up in Delhi, and his work with children in the slums there was the inspiration for the Oscar-winning film Slumdog Millionaire. In Private Passions, he tells Michael Berkeley about the ground-breaking experiment in Delhi which has become famous as the 'hole in the wall' - he fixed a computer into the wall of a slum, and watched what happened. Within months, children who had never seen a computer before were browsing, painting, and downloading electronic keyboards and drums to make music. Teachers, he discovered, were obsolete. This was a particular personal challenge, as he was a teacher himself at the time! Tearing up the rule book, Professor Mitra developed a radical new model of how to teach children, using computers. He talks in Private Passions about how to release children's creativity - but also how to safeguard them from the darker side of the internet. His music choices fuse East and West, with collaborations between Yehudi Menuhin and Ravi Shankar; the love poetry of Tagore; Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade; and a canon by Bach which can be played forwards and backwards.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus Production for BBC Radio 3.

Kim Brandstrup Nov 01, 2015

Kim Brandstrup is one of the leading choreographers of his generation. He talks to Michael Berkeley about his passion for telling stories through music and dance. Born in Denmark, he originally trained in contemporary dance, but he now also works extensively in ballet, as well as film, theatre and opera, for companies including The Royal Ballet, the Royal Danish Ballet, the Metropolitan Opera, Glyndebourne and Rambert Dance - and his new piece for them is just opening at Sadler's Wells.

He chooses music from that piece, Schoenberg's Verklarte Nacht, and film scores by Prokofiev and Miles Davis, reflecting his days as a student of film in Copenhagen. He tells Michael how film has influenced his choreography and informed his narrative style.

His other music choices include Bach, and a wonderful, rousing gospel song he remembers from his childhood.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Production for BBC Radio 3.

Owen Sheers Oct 25, 2015

Owen Sheers' career as a poet began aged 10, when he won a competition at Abergavenny Show for a poem in which he found a rhyme for "orange" - a mountain in the Brecon Beacons called the Blorenge. He says: "I won 50p and thought, 'there's money in this poetry game'. I've since been proved wrong."

He persisted with the poetry, publishing his first volume fresh out of university, and rapidly becoming one of Britain's most successful poets, as well as writing prolifically for theatre, television and radio and enjoying great success as a novelist - his latest book I Saw a Man was published earlier this year.

Owen Sheers is a writer who likes to get away from his desk, and he tells Michael about his delight at being Artist in Residence at the Welsh Rugby Union, and about his collaboration with composer Mark Bowden, which took him to Cern's Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland.

He has chosen music from Haydn's Creation, one of Bach's Celllo Suites (which features in his first novel), music by Keith Jarrett and a favourite Welsh folk song.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Production for BBC Radio 3.

David Tang Oct 11, 2015

David Tang arrived in Britain from Hong Kong aged 13 and not speaking a word of English. Since then he has thoroughly embraced Britishness, and the British have thoroughly embraced him, culminating in a knighthood and a prime place in the Queen's Jubilee flotilla.

His business interests range from fashion through clubs and restaurants, cigars, oil exploration and now his lifestyle store aimed at the new Chinese middle class called Tang Tang Tang Tang (sung to the opening of Beethoven's Fifth!)

Tirelessly sociable and keenly philanthropic, he also finds time to be the agony uncle for the Financial Times, answering such painful dilemmas as the etiquette of airport frisking, and when it might be acceptable to not wear socks.

One of Sir David's greatest passions is music, and he is a highly accomplished pianist, having started to learn at sixteen. Very soon he was playing Brahms, Debussy and Messiaen, composers he's chosen for this programme.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Production for BBC Radio 3.

Athene Donald Oct 04, 2015

Dame Athene Donald is one of our leading physicists, and an outstanding role model and campaigner for women in science. She is Master of Churchill College, Professor of Experimental Physics at the University of Cambridge, and as the new head of the British Science Association, she has already made waves suggesting that girls should be given Meccano in preference to Barbie dolls to encourage them into science.

It's physics with a clear practical end - the physics of the everyday - which is her passion. Her expertise lies in developing techniques to study 'soft' materials: the way paint particles stick together, or what happens to things when you cook them, or more recently, the generic way protein molecules stick together, which, for some very specific proteins, is the process which underlies Alzheimer's disease. A life-long promoter of women in science, she is a recipient of the L'Oreal-UNESCO Award for Women in Science in Europe and writes a popular and entertaining blog about science, women, the wider world, and sometimes music too.

A talented viola player, she considered a career in music as a teenager, and her choice of music reflects her continued love of the instrument: Bach's 6th Brandenburg Concerto, Janacek's Second String Quartet, known as 'Intimate Letters', and Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante for violin and viola which she played with her husband, a mathematician - and violinist.

Keen to promote women in music as well as women in science, she's also chosen music by the French composer Lili Boulanger.

Producer: Jane Greenwood

A Loftus Production for BBC Radio 3.

Why Music? Weekend: Frank Wilczek Sep 29, 2015

As part of Radio 3's Why Music? weekend, Michael Berkeley talks to the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Frank Wilczek. Frank Wilczek was brought up in Queens, New York, the son of a radio repairman. By the time he was a teenager it was clear that he was a mathematical prodigy. By the time he was 21, he was doing the ground-breaking research which won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2004. He's currently Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and he has a great mission to explain his work to a general public. He's intrigued by questions which have as much to do with philosophy as mathematics; his latest book explores beauty, including the beauty of art and music. Why are we so drawn to harmony? Is there in fact a 'music of the spheres' all around us, which we're not able to hear but which particle physics can detect? In Private Passions, Professor Wilczek talks to Michael Berkeley about the 'deep geometry' of the world, and how this beautiful symmetry is revealed in music. He describes vividly the excitement of the scientific research which brought him the Nobel Prize: sleepless nights, skipped meals, too many cigarettes - and then the ideas which came to him while he was lying in the bathtub. A true Eureka! moment. Frank Wilczek is a keen piano player and accordionist, and plays drums in a rock band. His music choices include Bach, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Mozart, Queen, and Gilbert and Sullivan's opera - for which he has written some alternative comical lyrics celebrating the Hadron Collider.

Amitav Ghosh Sep 13, 2015

Amitav Ghosh is a writer with a worldwide reach. Born in Calcutta, educated in Delhi, Oxford and Alexandria, he lives now between New York and Goa; his books have sold over 3 million copies, and have been translated into 33 languages. His books have won awards in Canada, Italy, France and Burma, but his greatest readership is in India and he has been awarded the Padma Shri, one of India's highest honours, by the President of India. His new novel Flood of Fire is his tenth, and completes his Ibis trilogy; the setting is the First Opium War in 1839, and it follows a cast of characters from India, China and Britain, as they are caught up in that war.

In Private Passions he talks to Michael Berkeley about his childhood by the water in Bengal, and how the presence of the sea has influenced his writing. He admits that there is some truth in the charge that he is in essence a Bengali writer, writing in English.

Amitav Ghosh chooses a highly original playlist reflecting the very different cultures which have been his creative influences. He includes a haunting Bengali boat song, a Hindu dance, and songs from China and Mauritius. He unearths a fascinating historical curiosity: perhaps the first ever example of East-West fusion, a version of 'Hindoo airs' adapted in the 18th century for English amateur musicians nostalgic for their days in India. And he celebrates the music of global connectedness, with a collaboration between Philip Glass and Ravi Shankar. Finally he muses on the notion of 'home', and where he would live if he could only choose one place.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus Production for BBC Radio 3.

Val McDermid Sep 06, 2015

Val McDermid is one of the biggest names in crime writing. Her novels - 30 so far - have sold over 10 million copies worldwide and have been translated into 30 languages. But in Private Passions she reveals that what she really wanted to be early on was a singer. As a teenager she played the guitar and sang in folk clubs, though hampered by the fact that she never managed to learn to read music, though she tried both as a child and an adult. But she still sings, with the poet Jackie Kay and with other friends.

In Private Passions, Val McDermid talks about the creative inspiration she finds in music, and how listening to music can cure writer's block. She chooses music connected with the sea - Vaughan Williams's Sea Symphony. Having been brought up by the sea on the East Coast of Scotland, she has never been able to be happy away from the sea. She includes the piece of Villa Lobos which opened up classical music to her, and a Robert Burns song which her father used to sing. Other choices include Bruch, Kurt Weill, Janacek, Mozart's Requiem and Philip Glass.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus Production for BBC Radio 3.

Jancis Robinson Aug 30, 2015

In her forty-year career writing and broadcasting about wine, Jancis Robinson has probably done more than anyone else to make wine an accessible and joyous part of our lives, and to strip away a great deal of the pretensions that used to surround it. But she's also one of our leading scholars of wine, and the fourth edition of the book she describes as her 'fourth child', a mammoth updating of her nearly 1000-page-long Oxford Companion to Wine, is about to be published next month. She talks to Michael Berkeley about her love of opera, the excitement of tasting for the Queen, and the great pleasures of wine and music. Her choices include music by Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Handel and a sweet English folk song. Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Production for BBC Radio 3

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus Production for BBC Radio 3

First broadcast in August 2015.

Virginia Ironside Aug 16, 2015

Agony aunt, novelist and stand-up Virginia Ironside talks to Michael Berkeley about her favourite music, the Swinging Sixties, ukuleles, and growing old disgracefully.

Virginia has worked for pretty much every British national newspaper, and currently answers readers' dilemmas in the Independent as well as writing a monthly column for the Oldie and a series of books - full of warmth and humour - about the perils and joys of getting older.

And she's playing the Edinburgh Festival with her one woman show Growing Old Disgracefully.

Her favourite music includes Schubert, Strauss, Paul McCartney, and the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain, of which her son is a member.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Production for BBC Radio 3.

Faramerz Dabhoiwala Aug 09, 2015

Faramerz Dabhoiwala, who is Professor of History at Exeter College, Oxford, has proved that what people got up to in the past is a serious and neglected subject of historical enquiry. His book The Origins of Sex explores what he describes as 'the First Sexual Revolution' - a transformation of attitudes to sex which happened in Britain in the 18th century and which gives us the template for how we think about sex today. He argues that during the 18th century older, punitive attitudes to sex began to give way to new ideas of pleasure.

In Private Passions he talks to Michael Berkeley about his upbringing in permissive Amsterdam, and about why discovering his Indian grandparents' love-letters inspired him as a historian. His music choices reflect his love for the 18th century, with Purcell's Dido and Aeneas, and two pieces by Bach: his Double Violin Concerto and the Cantata Wachet Auf. The programme also includes Schubert's Piano Sonata in A Major played by Alfred Brendel, Philip Glass's music for Cocteau's film Beauty and the Beast, and an angry political protest song by Nina Simone which played a key part in the American civil rights movement. He includes, too, an interpretation of 16th-century plainsong by the Norwegian jazz saxophonist Jan Garbarek, a creative interpretation of the past which echoes the excitement he finds in his work as a historian.

John Lahr Aug 02, 2015

John Lahr talks to Michael Berkeley about his passion for the American Songbook, his award-winning biographies of Tennessee Williams and Joe Orton, and his father, the actor Bert Lahr, who was the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz.

Described by the playwright Edward Albee as 'the greatest drama critic of my generation', John was for 22 years chief critic and profile writer for the New Yorker.

Then, in 2002, John Lahr the drama critic became John Lahr the dramatist - and the first drama critic ever to win a Tony Award when he wrote actress Elaine Stritch's one-woman show, Elaine Stritch at Liberty.

He chooses music from that show, a song sung by his father, a Theolonious Monk track which reminds him of his wife Connie Booth, and he ends with the joy of Mozart's Jupiter Symphony.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Production for BBC Radio 3.

Mona Siddiqui Jul 20, 2015

Muslim theologian Mona Siddiqui talks to Michael Berkeley about her passion for piano music, how she came to love classical music through the cinema, and the sometimes controversial role of music in Islam.

Mona Siddiqui was born in Karachi, but she moved to Britain with her family at the age of four and was brought up in Huddersfield. She's now Professor of Islamic and Interreligious Studies at Edinburgh University. She's a distinguished scholar, but above all she's a communicator, with a regular slot on Thought for the Day. Her latest book, My Way: A Muslim Woman's Journey, is a moving account of how her faith has shaped her life.

She's a leading voice for moderate Islam, unafraid to address the complex and controversial issues facing the Muslim community. Her choices include piano music by Liszt and Tchaikovsky, an aria from Madame Butterfly, music from Schindler's List, and a ghazal song from Pakistan sung by Mehdi Hassan.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Henry Marsh Jul 12, 2015

Henry Marsh is one of the country's leading neurosurgeons: as a senior consultant at St George's University Hospital in South London, he has pioneered brain surgery for more than 30 years.

These are delicate, microscopic operations to deal with tumours and aneurisms where the least slip can be catastrophic: comparable, he says, to bomb disposal work. Henry Marsh's account of his career, 'Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery', has become a best-seller.

In Private Passions, he talks about how his work has given him a heightened awareness of the unpredictability of life, and about the role of music in dealing with stress. He discusses the use of music during operations themselves; he used to listen to music, but after one operation went badly wrong, now feels it is inappropriate. And he gives a neuroscientist's perspective on falling in love. Music choices include Bach's St Matthew Passion, Mozart's Magic Flute, Scarlatti, Bartok, Prokofiev, Beethoven, and African music which reminds him of time spent teaching in Ghana.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke. A Loftus Production for BBC Radio 3.

Rachel Nicholson Jun 28, 2015

Rachel Nicholson has an extraordinary artistic background: her mother was Barbara Hepworth, her father Ben Nicholson. Yet despite, perhaps because of, the burden of that parentage, she herself did not begin to paint until she was in her forties. Now in her early eighties, she's established a reputation as a painter of rhythmically beautiful landscapes and still lifes; her work influenced perhaps by her father's sense of space and colour, but very much her own.

She paints every day in an attic studio in North London; for Private Passions she invited Michael Berkeley to her studio and gave a rare interview, revealing the central role music has played for her, right from earliest childhood. Rachel Nicholson has synaesthesia, which means that when she listens to music, she sees colours; so music provides inspiration when she's stuck, or searching for a new colour palette. She remembers sitting on the stairs listening to the music drifting from her mother's studio, but it was no ordinary childhood: Rachel was a triplet, and the babies were sent to a nursing college to be looked after as infants. Only later did she return home with a nanny from the college, and then she was sent away again to school. She was so excited when she first heard Bach's B Minor Mass at Dartington Hall School that she spent all her pocket money going to every performance. Other music choices include Haydn, Scarlatti, Handel, Schubert, Mozart, John Adams, and Priaulx Rainier - a composer who was a close friend of Barbara Hepworth's, and whom Rachel Nicholson remembers well.

A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke.

Alison Goldfrapp Jun 21, 2015

As part of the BBC's Classical Voice season, Michael Berkeley's guest is singer Alison Goldfrapp.

Alison Goldfrapp burst onto the music scene fifteen years ago, as lead singer in the duo Goldfrapp with the debut album Felt Mountain. Rock critics reached for adjectives such as 'lush', 'symphonic', 'epic'. Since Felt Mountain there have been five more hit albums, moving across pop, dance, electronic music - but each featuring the same extraordinary voice. Alongside the six gold albums, Goldfrapp also composed the soundtrack for the John Lennon film, Nowhere Boy, and the music for the recent Medea, starring Helen McCrory, at the National Theatre.

In Private Passions, Alison Goldfrapp talks to Michael Berkeley about finding her voice, and about the childhood that inspired her. Her father ('a closet hippy') used to take all six children out into the Hampshire woods, and make them sit still and listen, for hours; when there was a full moon he would drive them to the sea, for a night swim. The first time Goldfrapp heard her own voice soar was as a schoolgirl at the Alton Convent School in Hampshire, and encouraged by the nuns, she sang higher and higher until she felt a kind of 'buzzing' in her head: an unforgettable experience.

Goldfrapp chooses music which features a choir of extraordinary women's voices, the Bulgarian State Radio female choir, and Jessye Norman singing Fruhling from Strauss's Four Last Songs. She also chooses Atmospheres by Gyorgy Ligeti - music she finds very frightening - and celebrates both Mahler, and Ennio Morricone's film music, especially his score to an erotic thriller from 1969, Dirty Angels. And she reveals the music her partner Lisa Gunning sends her to listen to when they're apart.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus Production for BBC Radio 3.

Jung Chang Jun 14, 2015

It's impossible to imagine what it must have been like to live in a society where Western Classical music was forbidden on pain of severe punishment, or where playing a musical instrument was something that could only be done in utter secrecy. But that was the situation in China during the Cultural Revolution, when Jung Chang was a teenager. She is now an internationally acclaimed writer; but she began her working life as a peasant, a 'barefoot doctor', a steelworker and an electrician, before becoming a university lecturer. She left China for Britain in 1978 and obtained a PhD in Linguistics from the University of York - the first person from the People's Republic of China to receive a doctorate from a British university.

She shot to fame with her book Wild Swans, which tells the story of her own life and the lives of her mother and grandmother, set against the turmoil of 20th-century China. It has sold more than ten million copies but is still banned in China. And she followed it with biographies of Mao, co-written with her husband, and of the Empress Dowager Cixi - an extraordinarily powerful woman in the last years of Imperial China.

Jung Chang talks to Michael Berkeley about the joy of finding grass in Hyde Park after Mao had banned it in China; the horrors of foot-binding; her mother's extraordinary testimony of the Cultural Revolution, which led to Wild Swans; and her hopes that one day people will be free to read her books in China.

And above all she shares the joy she finds in music: both Chinese music and the Western music she's embraced with delight since moving to Britain. Her choices include Handel, Mozart, Billie Holiday and music played on the zither and the san xian.

A Loftus Production for BBC Radio 3 Producer: Jane Greenwood.

Christopher Le Brun Jun 07, 2015

The President of the Royal Academy of Arts, Christopher Le Brun, gives Michael Berkeley a tour of this year's Summer Exhibition and shares his musical and artistic passions.

The RA Summer Exhibition is the largest open submission exhibition in the world, and Christopher shares the excitement in the days running up to the opening as 1000 pictures - selected from 10,000 - are hung in the brightly-painted galleries.

An acclaimed painter, sculptor and print-maker Christopher Le Brun has work in public and private collections around the world. He is passionate about the music of the late 19th and 20th centuries, and his work has frequently been inspired by music. He takes Michael to the RA library to show him a series of etchings inspired by Wagner, and we hear music by William Walton that has also stimulated his work.

Christopher's other choices include music by Schoenberg, Poulenc and Django Reinhardt, and he shares the nasty surprise he once gave his mother when she sat down at the piano to play a Grieg nocturne.

Producer: Jane Greenwood

A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Alan Moses May 31, 2015

Sir Alan Moses is a distinguished lawyer who sat as a judge for almost 20 years, latterly in the Court of Appeal. He resigned last autumn to become the first Chairman of the new Press Standards Organisation, IPSO, the successor to the Press Complaints Commission. It's a challenging, and indeed highly controversial role. Alongside this he has spent 6 years as Chairman of Spitalfields Music, and is a dedicated concert goer, and a member of the Parliament Choir.

In Private Passions, Sir Alan curates a playlist of great choral works: Bach, Monteverdi, Schubert, Donizetti, and a Handel oratorio, Saul. He introduces a little-known work by Birtwistle which was written for his wife, Dinah, and he chooses a French chanson by Brassens in tribute to his mother, a French teacher.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke. A Loftus Production for BBC Radio 3.

Iqbal Khan May 17, 2015

Michael Berkeley's guest is the opera and theatre director Iqbal Khan.

He has brought to the stage everything from Madame Butterfly and Sondheim's Into the Woods to an RSC production of Much Ado About Nothing set in modern India.

In Private Passions, Khan explores his favourite operas, with extracts from Verdi, Mozart, and Wagner, and chooses other music which inspires him, from Mahler's 2nd Symphony and Britten's War Requiem, to an extraordinary percussive piece by Nitin Sawhney. He plays, too, a historic recording of Paul Scofield as King Lear. And he talks movingly about his childhood and difficult teenage years, growing up in Birmingham, after his father died and the family was left penniless. Khan was inspired by his older brother, who encouraged him to aim for the highest academic honours, and read to him at night by candlelight - to make the books more exciting. Dracula was a particular favourite.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Tim Rice May 03, 2015

Tim Rice has written the lyrics for some of the most successful musicals of our generation: Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat ... Jesus Christ Superstar ... Evita ... For 45 years he has been creating hit songs, collaborating first and famously with Andrew Lloyd Webber, then with Abba, Elton John, Freddy Mercury and Madonna. He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, thanks to the success of his songs in Disney movies The Lion King, Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast. A three-time Oscar winner, he has been knighted for services to music.

In Private Passions, he talks to Michael Berkeley about the process of lyric-writing, about why it's an extraordinary experience to work with Elton John, and about what it is that makes a successful song lyric. He also reveals that his early ambition was to be a pop star, and that he started out as a singer - in fact, he recorded a single.

Music choices include a satirical operetta by Offenbach, Mendelssohn's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Vaughan Williams's London Symphony, The Swan of Tuonela by Sibelius, Malcolm Arnold's Peterloo Overture and Britten's arrangement of the folk song The Plough Boy. And Tim Rice ends by revealing which is his favourite musical of all - music his father introduced him to as a boy: My Fair Lady.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke

A Loftus Production for BBC Radio 3.

20th Anniversary Programme Apr 19, 2015

"As a composer I've always been intrigued by the way people who are not professional musicians talk about music and how they tend to reveal things about themselves when they do. And so twenty years ago, when Radio 3 was looking for a new programme in which a huge variety of people talked about their passion for music, I felt very excited about the possibilities. Over twenty years we've had a wonderful selection of guests. One unforgettable guest was the philosopher Isaiah Berlin, and I was astonished by his childhood memory: of actually watching the Russian Revolution at the age of 8 on a balcony in St Petersburg. He revealed that for him Bach was like 'daily bread', and chose the 5th Brandenburg Concerto.

"Music connects us with what really matters, beyond the daily busyness of our lives; through music we plunge beneath the surface, and often find ourselves at earliest childhood memories. So, for instance, the poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy remembers the unexpected arrival at home of a piano, and how she learned to play Chopin to placate her mother when they'd had a row.

"Music often gives us an unparalleled insight into the creative process. I was very fortunate to spend quite a bit of time with the artist David Hockney, both in his studio in London and in Los Angeles, and he gave a fascinating interview back in 1995 about his approach to designing for opera, and his passion for Wagner. One of the most memorable conversations over the last 20 years was with the neurologist Oliver Sacks. We talked about something which has always intrigued me, why we enjoy particularly sad music, and the link between music and depression. He reveals how a Schubert song helped him after the death of his mother.

"But sometimes guests have surprised me with music choices that are - well weird. We don't censor them though..."

Other speakers in the programme include: John Peel; Dame Edna Everage; Maggi Hambling; Sam Taylor-Johnson; Anoushka Shankar; George Steiner; Marina Lewycka, and Joan Armatrading. With Bach, Chopin, Wagner, Bruch, Russian folk music, Tavener, Edith Piaf, and the Coronation Street Theme tune.

To mark the 20th anniversary of Private Passions, there will a be collection of new podcasts available.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus Production for BBC Radio 3.

Jane Hawking Apr 12, 2015

Jane Hawking's personal life is very much in the public eye at the moment, thanks to the success of the film 'The Theory of Everything'. It tells the story of her love affair and then marriage to the physicist Stephen Hawking, and movingly reveals the way she cared for him, and their children, as his illness increased, until the sad disintegration of their marriage. Both Stephen and Jane Hawking have given the film their approval - indeed, in Jane's case, it's very much based on her autobiography, 'Travelling to Infinity'.

In Private Passions Jane Hawking talks to Michael Berkeley about the crucial role of music in her life, and about how listening to music and singing sustained her during twenty-five years caring for Stephen. She reveals that it was through music that she met her second husband, Jonathan Hellyer Jones.

Other music choices include Mozart's Clarinet Concerto, Schubert's 'The Trout', the Scherzo from Beethoven's 7th Symphony, music from Swan Lake by Tchaikovsky, Brahms' German Requiem, and Chopin's second piano concerto.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus Production for BBC Radio 3.

Lucy Winkett Apr 05, 2015

Michael Berkeley talks to the Reverend Lucy Winkett, the Rector of St James’s Church, Piccadilly, and formerly Canon Precentor of St Paul’s Cathedral, about her lifelong passion for music.

A classically trained soprano, she won a choral scholarship to Cambridge and subsequently studied at the Royal College of Music but gave up a career as a singer for the priesthood. The first woman to sing the Eucharist at St Paul’s Cathedral, she tells Michael about the opposition she faced from traditionalist members of the church, how she faced up to it, and the joy of being in charge of music at the Cathedral.

Lucy chooses music she’s sung, music that inspires her, and some - rather surprising - music that helps her prepare for Easter Day. Her choices include Gibbons, Messiaen, Rachmaninov, Bach, and a wonderful piece of early jazz from ‘Sister’ Winona Carr.

Producer: Jane Greenwood

A Loftus Production for BBC Radio 3

Sarah Hall Mar 29, 2015

A husband and wife go for a walk in the woods; full of energy, the wife starts to walk on the tips of her toes - suddenly she takes off, across the forest. Startled, the husband calls out to her - but too late. She has transformed herself into a fox. If that unsettling story sounds familiar, it's because it won the BBC National Short story award in 2013; you might have heard Mrs Fox read on Radio 4.

Its author, Sarah Hall, was already an accomplished novelist. She was born in Cumbria in 1974, and her first novel, Haweswater, won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Novel, among other prizes. The awards have come thick and fast for every book since. She's been shortlisted and longlisted for the Booker Prize, with The Electric Michelangelo and How to Paint a Dead Man, and her 2007 novel, The Carhullan Army, was listed as one of The Times' 100 Best Books of the Decade.

Sarah's latest novel, The Wolf Border, about a plan to reintroduce wolves to the north of England, is published this month.

Sarah's music choices include Puccini, the Welsh lullaby Suo Gan, Dvorak's Song to the Moon, and others that reflect her love of bluegrass and film music.

Producer: Jane Greenwood

A Loftus Production for BBC Radio 3.

Robert Cohan Mar 22, 2015

Robert Cohan is the founding father of contemporary dance in Britain. Born in Brooklyn in 1925, he was first struck by the power of dance whilst on leave from serving in France during the Second World War, when he was taken to see a ballet at Sadler's Wells. Back in New York in 1946, a single modern dance class at the Martha Graham studio convinced him of his vocation. He worked with Graham for almost two decades before moving to London in the late sixties, to found what became the London Contemporary Dance Theatre. Cohan defined the style of British contemporary dance with his breadth of vision, challenging physical style and inspirational teaching. And virtually all the major figures in 20th-century choreography have been influenced by Cohan - Siobhan Davies and Richard Alston to name just two.

Ahead of his 90th birthday celebrations at The Place, Robert Cohan talks to Michael Berkeley about the music that's inspired him during his extraordinary career. He movingly recalls his time on active duty in France, including the time when a can of ham and eggs saved his life by deflecting shrapnel. He reveals the sometimes tempestuous reality of working with Martha Graham, and shares his plans for his tenth decade in dance.

He shares his love for Elgar, Vivaldi and Prokofiev, but also celebrates the music of less well known composers Barry Guy, Alan Hovhaness, Jon Keliehor, and Eleanor Alberga.

Produced by Jane Greenwood.

A Loftus Production for BBC Radio 3.

Andy McNab Mar 15, 2015

Andy McNab is very lucky to be alive today; in fact from the beginning his life has been characterised by exceptional risk and danger. As a baby, he was found abandoned in a Harrods carrier bag on the steps of Guy's Hospital. By the time he was a teenager, he was in trouble with the police. Joining the army at 16, he served in the SAS, and in 1991, during the First Iraq war, he led a secret mission to infiltrate behind enemy lines. It was a disaster: he was captured, and tortured savagely. Three of his fellow soldiers didn't survive.

Andy McNab's account of his captivity and eventual escape, Bravo Two Zero, became a world-wide best-seller and launched him on a career as a writer. Since then there have been more than 30 thrillers, with sales totalling 32 million. So the baby who was left in a carrier bag is not just a survivor, he's hugely successful.

In Private Passions Andy McNab reveals the central place of music in his life, and particularly his passion for opera. Opera, he says, is the only thing that makes him cry: he chooses Wagner, Verdi and Puccini. McNab reveals too his love of the calm reflective music of Gregorian chant, which he first heard sung by the Benedictine monks of Belmont Abbey, when he was training for the SAS in Herefordshire. He talks movingly about his imprisonment and torture, and about how the particular sounds of that time are burned into his memory: the jangle of keys, the rattle of doors. To escape those dark memories, he chooses one of the most joyful pieces of music ever written: Handel's Messiah.

A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3

Produced by Elizabeth Burke.

Anna Meredith Mar 08, 2015

Michael Berkeley's guest is Anna Meredith - one of Britain's leading composers coming up from the younger generation. She is hard to label as she composes and performs both acoustic and electronic music, and her work has been performed everywhere from the Last Night of the Proms to flashmob events in the M6 services. She studied at York University and the Royal College of Music, and alongside numerous awards, she's been Composer in Residence with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and a judge for BBC Young Musician of the Year. She was recently commissioned as part of the BBC Ten Pieces initiative to write a piece which will be played to primary school children across the country, to introduce them to classical music.

In Private Passions she talks to Michael Berkeley about the music which inspires her, and explains why composers now still have a lot to learn from 16th century madrigals. She celebrates Sibelius and his extraordinary 5th symphony, and Holst's music for wind band, unfashionable though it may be. She introduces work by a new generation of composers too: Emily Hall, Richard Ayres and Owen Pallet. And she reveals why she goes into schools to inspire teenage girls by playing Bjork, and reflects on what it means to be a woman composer now:

My music tends to be quite bombastic, and I've heard people say "It doesn't sound very female", or "What's a nice girl like you doing writing music like that?" When I'm doing electronic music I do all the computer stuff myself and sometimes there's an assumption that there must be a guy somewhere behind the scenes working all the software magic...

A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke.

Ben Okri Feb 22, 2015

Writer Ben Okri chooses his favourite music and talks to Michael Berkeley about the power of stories and their central place in human life.

The author of the Booker Prize-winning The Famished Road, he has written many other acclaimed novels - the latest being The Age of Magic - and he's also published collections of poetry, short stories and essays.

A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, Ben Okri has been awarded an OBE as well as numerous international prizes, including the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Africa and the Crystal Award from the World Economic Forum. His choices of music include Wagner, Beethoven, Miles Davis, Pachelbel's Canon, and one of his poems set to music by Paul Simon's son Harper.

Producer: Jane Greenwood

A Loftus Production for BBC Radio 3.

Nicky Clayton Feb 08, 2015

Nicky Clayton is a Fellow of the Royal Society and Professor of Comparative Cognition at Cambridge, and she's done more than any other scientist to transform the way we think about animal intelligence, and particularly the intelligence of birds. She's spent her career observing rooks and jays and other members of the corvid family, watching them as they play tricks on each other, and sing and dance together.

Her work has challenged the assumption that only humans have the intelligence to plan for the future and reminisce about the past, that only humans can understand the minds of others. She says that she's spent most of her life wondering what it would be like to be a bird: 'to fly, to see colours in the ultraviolet, and to sing as beautifully as they do'. Alongside her scientific research, Nicky Clayton has a passion for tango, and has collaborated with Ballet Rambert as a scientist in residence.

In Private Passions she talks to Michael Berkeley about the creative inspiration she finds in music. Her musical choices include Ravel, Janacek and Bruckner, and Astor Piazzolla's Tango for an Angel; as well as Messiaen's Catalogue of the Birds, and the call of a reed warbler.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke

A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Henrietta Bowden-Jones Jan 25, 2015

Henrietta Bowden-Jones has spent the last three decades studying the mind.

Born in Italy to an English father and an Italian mother, she has dedicated her career to helping people overcome addictions - both in the lab as a researcher in neuroscience, and as a psychiatrist treating everyone from homeless drug addicts to city traders with gambling problems.

She shares with Michael Berkeley musical memories of growing up in Milan with an opera-loving nanny; the shock of being sent to an English boarding school as a teenager; her love of art as well as science; and how her pioneering work on addiction has helped thousands of people rebuild their lives.

Her music choices include Mozart, Dvorak and Reynaldo Hahn's charming Venetian songs.

Producer: Jane Greenwood

A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Paul Cartledge Jan 18, 2015

If you want to know how to wield a Spartan spear, or whether Athens really was the cradle of democracy - or indeed what ancient Greek music might have sounded like, Paul Cartledge is the man to go to.

He has probably done more than anyone else in the past three decades to advance knowledge of ancient Greek culture - both in academic circles and in the public arena. He was until very recently the first A G Leventis Professor of Greek Culture at Cambridge, a chair founded to study a thousand years of Greek cultural achievements and to highlight their lasting influence on society today.

Paul talks to Michael Berkeley about why ancient history is relevant to us today; why the myths of the classical world have been such an enduring inspiration for composers; why democracy would work better without political parties; and the pitfalls of being a historical advisor to Hollywood.

And Paul shares with Michael his passion for music that stretches back to his childhood, including Brahms, Bach, Rossini, Stravinsky - and Bob Dylan.

Producer: Jane Greenwood

A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Kate Gross Jan 08, 2015

On Private Passions Michael Berkeley's guest is the charity CEO and cancer blogger, Kate Gross, who sadly died on Christmas morning, at the age of only 36.

Michael Berkeley writes:

'Kate Gross was an unforgettable guest on Private Passions: so bright and charismatic, full of life and curiosity about the world, despite being gravely ill when we met last autumn. And indeed, all through her life she was the kind of person everybody envied. Hugely successful in her career, by only 27, she had risen so quickly up through the civil service that she was briefing Tony Blair before Prime Minister's Questions; by 29 she had left the civil service to set up Blair's African Charity, the Africa Governance Initiative, managing an annual budget of 5 million pounds. But then her life fell apart. On the plane back from America, she collapsed, and went straight to hospital when she landed. It was then that she was diagnosed with Stage 4 bowel cancer: a terminal diagnosis.

This was how in 2012 Kate Gross the CEO turned into Kate Gross the cancer blogger. Her blog - which became a book, Late Fragments, published by William Collins - chronicled her life in and out of hospital over the last two years. It's very moving, but also sharp and funny. Sadly she died before the book was published. But her family are happy for this programme to be broadcast; Kate knew it would be her memorial.'

In Private Passions, Kate talks about the music which has sustained her: Schubert's final Piano Sonata; Mozart's 'The Magic Flute'; Bernstein's 'West Side Story', Dvorak's 'Songs my Mother Taught Me' and Ralph Fiennes reading T.S.Eliot's 'Four Quartets'.

Roger Moore Dec 28, 2014

James Bond, Simon Templar... Michael Berkeley's guest today can only be Roger Moore. He played Bond for twelve years, in seven films, more than any other actor. And before that he was a much-loved figure throughout the 1960s as The Saint. In fact he's rarely been off the big and small screens since he began his acting career in 1945, working as an extra alongside his idol Stewart Granger in Caesar and Cleopatra.

What's less well known about Roger is his passion for music. He counts many musicians among his friends and has chosen music performed by two of them - Julian Rachlin and Janine Jansen, who reflect his passion for strings. His other great love is opera, and he entertains us with stories about music from his heroine Joan Sutherland, as well as La Traviata, a piece of music connected with one of his earlier film roles.

And he shares the secret of how, after 86 years of mostly star-studded living, he?s managed to keep his feet on the ground.

Producer: Jane Greenwood.

Vivienne Westwood Dec 21, 2014

Dame Vivienne Westwood needs little introduction; her name and her brand are known across the world. Indeed, in the Far East she's made it into the top ten most recognised global brands, with Coca Cola and Disney. Her fame rests not just on her fashion designs, daring and sexy and original as they are: because Vivienne Westwood is also the co-creator, with Malcolm McLaren, of punk - that revolution of music and fashion that changed Britain back in the mid-70s.

What is less well known is her passion for classical music, and for going to concerts - 'it's brilliant, it's only £10, much cheaper than going out to a discotheque'. In Private Passions, she talks to Michael Berkeley about the music which has inspired her creations, and about creating costumes for the opera. She describes the hardship of her early days as a designer, when she was so short of money that she lived in a caravan with her two small sons. She remembers the heady days of punk, and marching up and down King's Road dressed entirely in rubber. ('Rubberwear for the office' was the concept, and it was very comfortable, she claims.) She tells the story of how she met her husband Andreas, who now designs with her, thanks to a cow. And why there is nothing more attractive than a man in a suit. Especially when he's bending over.

Her music choices include the climactic orgy from Ravel's Daphnis and Chloe; ballet music by Stravinsky and Milhaud; Bach's St John Passion; Handel's Alcina; Larry Williams; and Musorgsky's Pictures at An Exhibition: 'If there are any punks out there - just listen to this - it will blow your mind!'

Produced by Elizabeth Burke.

Breaking Free - Martin Luther's Revolution: Eamon Duffy Dec 14, 2014

Professor of the History of Christianity at Cambridge, Eamon Duffy has changed for ever the way we view the Reformation. His books, including The Stripping of the Altars and The Voices of Morebath, have revealed a picture of late medieval Catholicism as a strong and vital tradition, and have shown that the Reformation, for most ordinary people, represented a violent disruption to a flourishing religious system.

Eamon talks about his passion for medieval, Tudor and seventeenth-century music and history, the state of Catholic church music today and the pleasures of playing chamber music.

His choices of music include countertenor Alfred Deller singing Purcell, the Beaux Arts Trio playing Haydn and Janet Baker singing Elgar.

Eamon's final piece of music is a wonderfully evocative Arab Christian chant for Palm Sunday, sung by a nun from the Melkite order.

Producer: Jane Greenwood

Part of Radio 3's Breaking Free series of programmes exploring Martin Luther's Revolution.

Jill Paton Walsh Dec 07, 2014

Jill Paton Walsh lives with the ghost of Lord Peter Wimsey - having taken on the mantle of Dorothy L Sayers and continuing, to great acclaim, her hugely successful detective stories.

But before Lord Peter Wimsey she was already a highly esteemed writer, and her prolific output spans nearly fifty years of children's books and literary fiction. But despite this her medieval philosophical novel, Knowledge of Angels, was turned down by British publishers, so she and her husband published the book themselves, and it went on to be a bestseller - and was shortlisted for the 1994 Booker Prize.

The winner of many other literary prizes, including the Whitbread and the Smarties Prize, she was awarded a CBE in 1996 for services to literature.

Jill talks to Michael Berkeley about what it's like to take on the voice of another author, her love of children's fiction, and how music has sustained her through very sad and difficult times. Her music choices include Bizet, Copland, Britten, Mozart and Haydn.

Producer: Jane Greenwood

A Loftus Production for BBC Radio 3

To hear previous episodes of Private Passions, please visit http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/r3pp/all.

Anthony Green Nov 30, 2014

Anthony Green, senior Royal Academician, is one of the UK's most eminent and best-loved figurative painters. His career as an artist has now spanned fifty years, and his brightly coloured, irregularly-shaped paintings and sculptures are exhibited across the world, in galleries including the Royal Academy, the Scottish National Gallery, and the Met in New York. Many of them explore autobiographical themes; in painting after painting he's recorded family life, at home, in bed, making love to his wife even.

In Private Passions, Anthony Green looks back on his life as an artist; he explains the crucial importance of meeting his wife back when they were both students at the Slade - through her, he found his identity as a painter. He talks about watching fashions come and go in art, and explains why he is determined to explore religious subjects in his work, even though he knows it puts him outside the mainstream. And he confesses to being an incorrigible optimist, who loves this life, and fully expects to enjoy the next.

Music choices include Charles Trenet, Bach, Wagner, Noel Coward, Beethoven's Emperor Piano Concerto, and Eric Idle - 'for the coffee breaks in the studio'.

Producer: Elizabeth Burke

A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

To hear previous episodes of Private Passions, please visit http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/r3pp/all.

John Harvey Nov 16, 2014

Crime writer John Harvey has no shortage of fans. His prize-winning books have sold over a million copies and have been translated and published all over the world. His Nottingham detective Charlie Resnick is now so well known – after 12 novels, two television adaptations and four radio plays – that he seems like a real person: a brooding solitary sensitive man who has a passion for ... listening to jazz. And this is where the fans come in. Because for years now they have been sending Harvey compilation tapes of the kind of jazz tracks that they think Resnick would enjoy. So no surprise to discover that his creator John Harvey has a lifelong love of jazz, conceived during a misspent youth in London jazz clubs.

As part of the jazz season across Radio 2 and 3, with highlights from the London Jazz Festival, John Harvey chooses his favourite jazz tracks. The playlist includes early Billie Holliday, Thelonius Monk, James P. Johnson and Chet Baker. Harvey, who’s a fine poet as well as a crime writer, reads a moving poem about Chet Baker’s mysterious death. Other music choices include Shostakovich, Mendelssohn’s ‘Hebrides Overture’, and a Tango for corrugated iron by Jocelyn Pook.

Harvey reveals that he dislikes how crime fiction has changed during the 25 years he’s been writing it: ‘There almost seems to be a competition who can have the most disgusting things in their books, and what awful things you can do particularly to female victims.’ And he talks about his decision to retire his detective Resnick, leaving him sitting on a park bench, ‘hankering after a fresh helping of Thelonius Monk`.

Producer: Elizabeth Burke

Roger Law Nov 09, 2014

Roger Law was the evil genius behind the mocking caricature puppets of Spitting Image, the award-winning TV series, which ran for over 12 years. No politician escaped: John Major was entirely grey and in underpants; Mrs Thatcher cross-dressed and chomped cigars; Tony Blair's grin was as wide as a shark's. When the show ended, in 1996, Law transported himself to Australia where he bought paint and brushes and - in his words - 'began chasing rainbows'. From there, a growing passion for ceramics took him to China, and for the last 15 years he has been completely immersed in making huge and beautiful ceramic pots, decorated with underwater plants and sea creatures.

In Private Passions, he talks to Michael Berkeley about the creative rebirth he experienced in Australia - where, unlike Britain, there was the freedom to fail. He looks back on Spitting Image and the period when it ended, when he was 'burnt out by alcohol and success'. And he discusses anger and revenge as motivations, and why there is something in Roger Law that Roger himself can't wait to escape.

Music includes Mahler's 5th Symphony, Kurt Weill's Threepenny Opera, Beethoven's Violin Concerto, a song by American satirist Terry Allen, and a pop song Roger Law bought in a Chinese market. He loves it (it's very catchy) without knowing what on earth it is. Private Passions had the sleeve translated - It turns out to be a test CD for a car hi-fi system.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke

A Loftus Production for BBC Radio 3

To hear previous episodes of Private Passions, please visit http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/r3pp/all.

Kathryn Tickell Nov 02, 2014

Michael Berkeley's guest is the Northumbrian musician Kathryn Tickell. Kathryn Tickell is rooted in the remote hill farms of Northumbria; her grandparents were shepherds, and she grew up playing the Northumbrian pipes and fiddle at village dances. By the age of just 16, she was the official piper to the Lord Mayor of Newcastle and had released her first album. 19 more albums have followed. She was the first folk performer at the BBC Proms, was named Musician of the Year at the 2013 Radio 2 Folk Awards (not for the first time) and holds the Queen's Medal for Music. She's done more than any other musician to preserve the rich musical heritage of the North East of England. In a programme recorded at Sage Gateshead during the 2014 Free Thinking Festival, she talks to Michael Berkeley about how she started visiting old musicians, when she was only nine, taking her tape recorder to capture voices and tunes. This was an oral tradition, so recording the tunes was a way of learning them - they weren't written down. What did the musicians think of this young girl turning up to record them? Most of them, she reflects wryly, were related to her anyway. Kathryn Tickell's lifelong enthusiasm for musical discovery leads to a marvellously eclectic playlist for the programme. She introduces Percy Grainger music for theremin, the Brazilian composer Chiquinha Gonzaga, the Armenian folk-song collector Komitas Vardabet, and John Cage's Sonata No 5 for 'prepared' piano. Plus a comic song from the Tyneside singer Owen Brannigan and a poem in Northumbrian dialect which she warns listeners not even to bother trying to decipher?

Producer: Elizabeth Burke A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

To hear previous episodes of Private Passions, please visit http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/r3pp/all.

Kika Markham Oct 26, 2014

Michael Berkeley's guest is the actor Kika Markham, widow of Corin Redgrave.

'Actors by their nature are curious, fickle, insecure people: flirts. They should not live together.' So says Kika Markham; but she didn't follow her own advice; instead she fell in love with the actor Corin Redgrave - they were together for 33 years until his death in 2010.

Kika's own career began in the 1960s; she made her name in a series of television films, directed by Ken Loach, Dennis Potter, and then, for the cinema, by Francois Truffaut. Now in her early seventies, Kika Markham is still on television, playing the mother of Mr Selfridge in the successful ITV period drama.

In 'Private Passions' she talks to Michael Berkeley about the central role of music in her life. She remembers working with Francois Truffaut, and falling in love with him - against all advice. She chooses music by the French composer who wrote soundtracks for many of Truffaut's films, Georges Delerue.

But it's her marriage to Corin Redgrave that forms the heart of the programme. She talks movingly about living with Corin during the final years of his life, after he suffered a brain injury and lost a great deal of memory. There were huge challenges for them both. And one of the losses, at first, was music - he could not bear to listen. But there came a moment when Kika sat at the piano, and Corin responded to her playing.

Her choices include Beethoven's 'Spring' Violin Sonata, in which she used to accompany her father, the actor David Markham; a song from 'Guys and Dolls'; and the love duet from Handel's 'Rodelinda'.

Producer: Elizabeth Burke

A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

To hear previous episodes of Private Passions, please visit http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/r3pp/all.

David Lan Oct 19, 2014

David Lan is a huge force in theatre in Britain, indeed internationally. But how he got there is surprising. Brought up in Cape Town, he began his career as an anthropologist, living for two years in a remote area of Zimbabwe in order to study spirit magic. He went on to become a playwright and documentary director, and he's written the libretto for two operas. One critic recently described Lan as a 'Diaghilev-like figure' because of his flair for bringing artists together. As Artistic Director of the Young Vic, he led the £12.5m theatre rebuild - and has over the last 14 years established a reputation both for spotting new talent, and for persuading directors from all over the world to come to London to direct wildly inventive productions. His latest role, announced this year, is Consulting Artistic Director for the New York Arts Centre, which is still being built, on the site of the 9/11 attacks.

In Private Passions, David Lan talks about his upbringing in South Africa, and how he learnt to love music as a young boy in his grandmother's shop, which sold bicycles - and piles of old 78s. He describes his time as an anthropologist in Zimbabwe, living in a remote and dangerous part of the country just after the war of independence. And he pays tribute to the relationship at the heart of his life, with distinguished playwright Nicholas Wright, whom Lan met when he was only 17.

Music includes Beethoven, Shostakovich, Paul Simon, Nina Simone, a Bach Prelude played by jazz pianist Keith Jarrett, and the overture to Mozart's Magic Flute - played on marimbas.

To hear previous episodes of Private Passions, please visit http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/r3pp/all

A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3. Produced by Elizabeth Burke.

Roy Foster Oct 12, 2014

As the first incumbent of the only chair in Irish History in Britain, at Oxford, Roy Foster has devoted his career to bringing Irish history to the forefront of British minds. Unafraid to challenge cherished myths about the past, his scholarship has transformed historical writing.

He has also written the only authorised life of W. B. Yeats, a two-volume labour of love that took him 18 years. And his new book Vivid Faces: The Revolutionary Generation in Ireland, 1890-1923 pulls into focus the quarter century leading up to the Irish revolution, by tracing the lives of the men and women at the radical heart of Irish political and cultural life.

Michael and Roy discuss Yeats, Joyce, and the pleasures of eating, drinking and sharing music with friends. Roy's music includes an aria from one of his favourite operas, and Irish music from singers John McCormack, Harry Plunket Greene and Ann Murray.

Producer: Jane Greenwood

A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

To hear previous episodes of Private Passions, please visit http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/r3pp/all.

Charles Spencer Sep 28, 2014

Charles Spencer, the 9th Earl Spencer, is probably best known as the younger brother of Diana, Princess of Wales, and is remembered above all for the moving eulogy he gave at Diana's funeral. But he's also had a successful career as a television reporter and presenter, and since Diana's death has turned to history; his latest book is a study of regicide, with the title 'Killers of the King'. The King in question is Charles I, and the book follows the fortunes of those who were responsible for his execution. According to Earl Spencer, they deserve to be remembered with 'respect and gratitude'.

In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Earl Spencer talks about his life, and about his growing passion for history. He chooses music to recall his very challenging childhood, talking movingly about travelling back and forth on the train between his mother and father, with his older sister Diana. 'I remember in the eulogy to Diana I did talk about not only the train journeys but her looking after me. She had a very strong maternal streak and she was very loving, and I used to be terrified of the dark and she used to say it used to break her heart to hear me crying down the corridor. And I think she was a very reassuring female presence in my early life.'

Musical choices include Beethoven, Sibelius's Finlandia, Fauré's Requiem, Mozart's The Magic Flute and Edith Piaf's La Vie en Rose. One surprising choice is the news archive of Martin Luther King's death, and Robert F Kennedy's moving speech after the assassination. Wisdom, says Kennedy, comes through suffering.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke. A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3. To hear previous episodes of Private Passions, please visit http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/r3pp/all.

Sir Timothy Gowers Sep 21, 2014

Timothy Gowers is the son of a composer, the brother of a violinist, and a keen jazz pianist. But that's not how he makes a living. In fact, Sir Timothy Gowers is one the country's most distinguished mathematicians. He's a Fellow of the Royal Society, was awarded the prestigious Fields medal, and was knighted two years ago for services to mathematics. In Private Passions, he talks to Michael Berkeley about his musical upbringing, and early dreams of becoming a composer. He confesses that it's hard to spend your life doing something which so few people round you understand - which is even difficult to talk about to your wife at home. He reveals how he used mathematical calculations of risk when faced with a life-or-death decision of his own: whether to go ahead with a risky heart operation. And he talks about how he's brought mathematicians together, so that they've been able collectively to solve problems which have defeated them for decades - using a blog which he created: http://gowers.wordpress.com. Music includes Bach's St Matthew Passion, a Tudor anthem by Robert Parsons, Michael Tippett's 3rd Piano Sonata, Ravel, Oscar Peterson, and an organ toccata composed by his father, Patrick Gowers, and played by his son Richard, who is 19.

Sophie Hannah Sep 07, 2014

Sophie Hannah is a prize-winning poet, whose work is studied in schools and universities across the country, and the author of nine dark psychological thrillers. Alongside the thrillers - one a year - she's edited an anthology of poems about sex, composed love lyrics for contemporary composers, and has been writer in residence at Trinity College Cambridge. Her latest project is to write a new Poirot mystery; she was chosen by the Christie Estate to fill in one of the great detective's missing years. Her Poirot mystery is published in early September. In Private Passions, she talks to Michael Berkeley about her fascination with crime, especially crimes of passion. She talks about being in love as a pathological state of mind, and she chooses songs which celebrate and dissect this peculiar state: from Schumann and Schubert, through Carmen, to Bob Dylan, Emmylou Harris, and Edith Piaf.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke. A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3. To hear previous episodes of Private Passions, please visit http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/r3pp/all.

Mark Miodownik Aug 31, 2014

From concrete to chocolate and teacups to tennis racquets, it's the everyday stuff of life that fascinates Mark Miodownik. He's Professor of Materials and Society at University College London where he is also Director of the Institute of Making, a research hub for scientists, designers, engineers, artists, architects - and musicians. A passionate communicator about the vital role of science in society, he's written a bestselling book Stuff Matters; he's the scientist in residence on Dara O'Briain's Science Club on BBC2; and he's listed by The Times as one of the 100 most influential scientists in the UK.

Mark is fascinated by how materials influence the way music sounds, and talks to Michael Berkeley about brass bands, tuning forks and how love can bloom over playing the saw. His musical choices include Bach, film music by Morricone, Scott Joplin and a little known piece for brass band by Holst.

Helen Ghosh Aug 24, 2014

National Trust Director General Helen Ghosh takes Michael Berkeley on a tour of Leith Hill Place, now a National Trust property but once the childhood home of Ralph Vaughan Williams.

She chooses his Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, as well as music by Britten, Mozart and Schubert. And her choice of Ravel reveals the alternative career she almost had - as a ballet dancer.

Miles Jupp Aug 10, 2014

Miles Jupp burst onto the comedy scene when he won the 'So You Think You're Funny' contest at the Edinburgh Festival at the age of just twenty-one. He'd already, as an undergraduate, won the part of Archie the Inventor in the hugely popular children's television show Balamory, but he eventually tired of wearing a pink kilt. Since then he has established himself on the comedy circuit, and on radio and television in panel shows including Have I Got News for You, and comedies such as The Thick of It and Rev, where he plays Nigel, the disapproving lay reader, who thinks he should be running the church. He is usually to be found sending himself up as a tweedy, middle class young fogey. As he joked on a chatshow: "I'm privileged. Not just to be here but in general."

Miles talks to Michael Berkeley about the joys of cricket, the pleasures of belting out a good tune and the legacy of an intensely musical childhood, reflected in his choices of music by Geoffrey Burgon, Chopin and Verdi.

Produced by Jane Greenwood. A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

To hear previous episodes of Private Passions, please visit http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/r3pp/all.

Stephen Grosz Aug 03, 2014

Stephen Grosz waited until he was 60 to publish his first book, 'The Examined Life'. It was a huge overnight success - a bestseller here in Britain and translated into more than 20 languages across the world. It's a distillation of the lifetime he has spent as a psychoanalyst, tens of thousands of hours listening to people in hospitals, forensic clinics and in private practice. It reads like a collection of short stories, full of vignettes of memorable characters: the man who faked his own death, the pathological liar, the lovesick middle-aged woman who meets a man at a party - and turns up at his house the next week with a removals van to move in with him.

In Private Passions, in conversation with Michael Berkeley, Stephen Grosz tells his own story: his childhood in Chicago, the son of immigrants who ran a grocery store; student days in radical Berkeley; and now, settled in Britain, how he's facing the challenges of fatherhood and ageing. Music has played an important part right from the beginning, and Grosz admits that his choice of music is very psychologically revealing.

His musical choices include Scarlatti, Aaron Copland, Brahms's 3rd Symphony, gospel singer Bessie Jones, Schubert's Piano Sonata no 20, Bob Dylan - and a hilarious Alberta Hunter song about sex, My Handy Man Ain't Handy No More.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke. A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

First broadcast 03/08/2014

To hear previous episodes of Private Passions, please visit http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/r3pp/all.

Phyllida Law Jul 27, 2014

Phyllida Law burst onto the stage in the mid 1950s and since then her career has spanned everything from the first British production of The Crucible, to musicals such as La Cage aux Folles and television including Dixon of Dock Green and Rumpole, not to mention a list of films as long as your arm, The Time Machine and The Winter Guest being just two.

Alongside all that she's somehow managed to fit in bringing up her two highly successful daughters Emma and Sophie Thompson, both of whom have followed in her footsteps. Recently she's turned her hand to writing, and she talks to Michael Berkeley about her moving and funny memoirs of the years she spent looking after her mother and mother-in-law in their old age.

Her music choices include Glenn Gould playing Bach, Schubert's Fantasia in F Minor and a joyous Malinese song introduced to her by her grandson which always gets her up and dancing.

First broadcast 27/07/2014.

Richard Holmes Jul 13, 2014

Biographer Richard Holmes shares his musical passions with Michael Berkeley, and his fascination with opium dreams, telescopes and balloons.

Best known for his biographies of the Romantics - most notably Shelley and Coleridge - Richard Holmes has won just about every literary prize going.

In recent years he has moved towards the history of science with his book The Age of Wonder, which was hailed widely as 'the non-fiction book of the year'.

And his most recent book, Falling Upwards, all about the daring and frequently terrifying adventures of the pioneers of hot air ballooning, is just coming out in paperback.

Richard's musical choices range from 13th century Gregorian chant and French pastoral songs to Bernstein by way of composer and astronomer William Herschel.

Producer: Jane Greenwood

A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Music in the Great War: John Keane Jun 29, 2014

As part of Radio 3's 'Music in the Great War' season, Michael Berkeley's guest is John Keane, who was appointed the official British War Artist during the first Gulf War. The job involved travelling with the British forces - a task he approached with enthusiasm, but also considerable apprehension. The paintings that came out of that conflict are now part of the permanent collection at the Imperial War Museum, along with an array of paintings from The First World War by artists including Paul Nash and Christopher R. W Nevinson.

John talks to Michael about the role of the war artist and how it has changed since The First World War. He describes his experience of working on conflict zones, not just in The Middle East, but in Northern Ireland, Nicaragua and Angola too. What is it that a war artist can communicate that we can't see in photographs? His music choices include Bach, Beethoven and Britten, and the famous rendition of Star Spangled Banner by Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock in 1969, which uses amplifier feedback to convey the sounds of war. John also chooses 'the music they'll play in heaven', which for him is Dance IX from Philip Glass's In The Upper Room.

Producer: Jo Coombs

A Loftus Production for BBC Radio 3.

Eva Schloss Jun 15, 2014

Holocaust survivor Eva Schloss shares her extraordinary life story with Michael Berkeley and reveals the music that has brought her comfort, that conjures memories, and that brings her joy.

Eva Schloss was born into a happy middle-class Jewish family in Vienna in 1929, but her childhood came to an abrupt end when she was nine and had to flee with her parents and older brother to escape the Nazis.

Before going into hiding in Amsterdam Eva's family befriended Anne Frank's family, and after the war, the Frank legacy was to play a large part in her life - Eva's mother married Otto Frank and Eva and her mother worked tirelessly to promote Anne Frank's legacy through her diary.

Like the Franks, Eva's family was betrayed, and she and her mother were captured by the Gestapo on her 15th birthday and transported to the Birkenau concentration camp. They were two of only a few prisoners still alive when the camp was liberated in January 1945. Her beloved brother and father did not survive the neighbouring camp of Auschwitz.

Somehow Eva learned to live alongside the memories of those terrible years and after the war rebuilt her life in England. Now in her 80s she tours the world spreading her message of reconciliation and hope, and in 2012 she received an MBE for her work with the Anne Frank Trust and other Holocaust charities.

Eva's choices of music include Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Strauss, who take her back to her happy Viennese childhood, as well as music by Mahler through which she recalls the pain of her teenage years.

Produced by Jane Greenwood.

A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Nitin Sawhney Jun 08, 2014

Nitin Sawhney is a multi award-winning musician, producer and composer. With nine studio albums to his credit, he has collaborated with the likes of Paul McCartney, Joss Stone, Sting and Nelson Mandela, and has composed over 40 film and television scores, including for the BBC series Human Planet. In his own work he combines the musical traditions of East and West, and composes for a wide variety of different art forms. He has collaborated with the legendary theatre company Complicite, the dancer and choreographer Akram Khan and more recently has written scores for video games. His passion for diversity is reflected in his musical choices which include Ravi Shankar's Kafi Holi, flamenco guitarist Paco de Lucia's Guajiras de Lucia and Debussy's ground-breaking Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune. As well as being a composer, Nitin is a virtuoso performer on both guitar and piano and we hear the pieces he practises every morning, including Chopin's Fantaisie Impromptu and Bach's Keyboard Concerto No.1 in D minor. This year Nitin Sawhney turns 50 and after a period of personal loss, including the death of Ravi Shankar, he discusses the impact this has had on his life and work.

Producer: Hilary Dunn.

Irving Finkel Jun 01, 2014

Assyriologist Irving Finkel talks to Michael Berkeley about his passion for clay tablets, chamber music, and Jimi Hendrix.

Irving Finkel is one of the world's leading experts in the world's oldest, and most impenetrable, system of writing - cuneiform.

Because the scribes of Ancient Mesopotamia imprinted cuneiform with a stylus into clay tablets, lots of it has survived, and indeed Irving Finkel has spent the past 45 years delighting in the company of more than 130,000 cuneiform tablets at the British Museum. But one day a member of the public brought in a clay tablet which changed his life - it was a 4000-year-old blueprint for Noah's Ark - a thousand years older than the story in the Bible.

Irving is also passionate about music - particularly old recordings - and his choices include string quartets by Schubert and Dvorak, 1930s blues and a blast of Jimi Hendrix.

Producer: Jane Greenwood.

Emma Bridgewater May 18, 2014

Nearly 30 years ago Emma Bridgewater, a young English graduate, went shopping for a cup and saucer for her mother's birthday present. She couldn't find anything she liked - so she designed one herself, and enjoyed the process so much that she installed a kiln in her London flat. That small kiln has grown into a company with an annual turnover of 11 million pounds - and has revitalised the old potteries industry of Stoke-on-Trent. Her teapots and mugs covered in polka dots, hens, dogs and birds have become a staple of the middle class kitchen, symbols of cosiness and comfort.

In Private Passions, Emma Bridgewater talks to Michael Berkeley about our yearning for home - all the more intense as working lives become overwhelmingly demanding. She reveals the tragedy at the heart of her life - her mother's riding accident, which left her gravely brain-damaged but still alive, for 22 years. Under the pressure of that sorrow, Emma Bridgewater describes how work became a marvellous escape. She chooses music to remind her of her mother, and which consoled her after her mother's death last Christmas. She talks too about the adventure of setting up her business in Stoke-on-Trent, bringing derelict factories back to life - but missing her four children as she spent hour upon hour on the road.

Her music choices include Pergolesi, Purcell, Kurt Weill, Boccherini, a carol by Benjamin Britten - and the UK Theme Tune, which used to start the day on Radio 4 as she was getting up early to begin work.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke. A Loftus production, for BBC Radio 3.

Lady Brenda Hale May 11, 2014

Lady Hale is a trailblazer. 30 years ago, she was the first woman to be appointed to the Law Commission (and the youngest person there); 10 years ago, she was the first female judge to be appointed to the Appellate Committee of the House of Lords (as Baroness Hale of Richmond) and there hasn't been another woman appointed since. Last year she was appointed as the Deputy President of the Supreme Court. Where she is still the only woman! Her judgments have changed family and equality law in this country; and despite her eminent role she remains outspoken about domestic violence, women in prison, and the rights of children.

In Private Passions, she talks about her upbringing in Yorkshire, one of three daughters ? and about being in such a minority when she began to study law. Lady Hale chooses music which connects with her professional life: operas about crime, punishment and injustice (Beethoven's Fidelio and Britten's Billy Budd). She talks about how she'd like to change the law on divorce, and why she loves Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro. She discusses the conflict between reason and emotion in her work, and reveals that she is haunted by certain cases from the past. And she reflects on the way her judicial role has revealed the worst ? but also the best ? of human nature. Finally, during this season of exam stress, she reveals her revision tip: march up and down the room, reciting the textbook and listening to Strauss.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke, for Loftus.

First broadcast 11/05/2014.

Jonathan Meades Apr 27, 2014

Writer and broadcaster Jonathan Meades's fascination with architecture began on a school trip to Marsh Court in Stockbridge, Hampshire - designed by that great architect of English Country Houses Edwin Lutyens. Subsequently, in a broadcasting career which spans 40 years, he has written and performed in more than 50 television shows on a wide range of topographical subjects: from shacks to garden cities, to buildings associated with vertigo; from beer and pigs, to the architecture of Hitler and Stalin. He was also a food critic for 15 years, winning the coveted Glenfiddich Award in 1999, and has written three novels and a memoir: "Encyclopedia of Myself". His latest television series, "Bunkers, Brutalism and Bloody-mindedness", was screened on BBC 4 in February.

He now lives in the iconic Corbusier building, Cité Radieuse in Marseille - and his musical choices reflect his adopted country's love of chanson: French singer / songwriter Barbara's "Ma Plus Belle Histoire d'Amour" features, as does Jacques Brel's Mijn Vlakke Land. Film was not only Jonathan Meades's chosen career; his love of cinema also provided him with a rich musical education. Among his musical choices are Hans Werner Henze's soundtrack to the Alain Resnais film Muriel, and The Aquarium, from Saint-Saëns's Carnival of the Animals, which Terence Malick used in his ground breaking film Days of Heaven.

Nicholas Penny Apr 20, 2014

For this special Easter edition of Private Passions, Michael Berkeley is given a backstage tour of the National Gallery by its Director, the distinguished art historian Nicholas Penny. For this programme he selects paintings on an Easter theme of death and rebirth, with music which accompanies and illuminates them. The painters include his great passion, Titian, with a visit to the Gallery's Restoration Lab, where a painting of the Resurrection is being brought back to life. Nicholas Penny talks about the way in which such paintings change their meaning over time, and about what to look for when we try to read 14th-century depictions of the Crucifixion. His musical choices include Rossini's Stabat Mater, Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos, Handel's Messiah, Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream, William Walton's Façade, a reading of James Joyce's story 'The Dead' - and the sound of English blackbirds singing in spring.

Charlotte Mendelson Apr 13, 2014

Charlotte Mendelson's novels are in danger of making you laugh out loud: the absurdities of family life, the excruciating embarrassment of being young, or clumsy, or not quite English enough. There are four prize-winning novels thus far, and the latest, Almost English - which has been longlisted both for the Booker Prize and for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction - comes out in paperback this spring.

In this edition of Private Passions, Charlotte Mendelson talks entertainingly about embarrassment - her own embarrassment, and why she inflicts it on her fictional characters. Embarrassment, she claims, is the most under-reported emotion - because we just can't bear to think about it. She explores too the legacy of her Eastern European family, and the feeling of never being English, of never fitting in, and how that fuels her writing. And she reveals why her music teacher gave up trying to teach her the piano and settled for the can-can instead.

Charlotte Mendelson's music choices include Bach, Schubert, Chopin, the country singer Gillian Welch, and Ella Fitzgerald singing Cole Porter's 'Always True to You in my Fashion' - a song which she claims has the best lyrics in the world.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke for Loftus.

Theo Fennell Mar 30, 2014

There's a huge revival in British craftsmanship going on at the moment, with a new generation keen to learn how to make beautiful things. For 40 years now, Theo Fennell has been one of the country's most distinctive and witty jewellers. His intricate and beautifully crafted designs take you into a strange dream-world: miniature skulls with jewelled snakes twisting from their eyes; bees cast in gold; dragonflies trailing amethysts; salamanders studded with diamonds. Perhaps not surprising that his jewellery has decorated rock stars such as Elton John, Lady Gaga and Freddie Mercury.

In Private Passions, Theo Fennell reveals the music that inspires him when he's working - dreaming up those strange and beautiful new creatures. Music is what helps him, he says, when confronted by a blank sheet of paper. He also reveals that as a young art student he worked as a busker, and even bought a one-man band. He discusses the erotic power of jewellery, with a vivid story from his own experience. And during the recording, he sketches continuously, and has agreed to put some of his drawings on the Private Passions webpage.

Theo Fennell's choices include Dvorak's Cello Concerto, Offenbach's opera 'The Tales of Hoffmann', Yehudi Menuhin playing Saint-Saëns's Violin Concerto No. 3 in B minor, and a Charles Trenet song from 1937. And his great patron, Elton John.

A Loftus production produced by Elizabeth Burke.

Craig Brown at Southbank Centre Mar 23, 2014

Craig Brown has been described by The Sunday Times as "our greatest living satirist". He invented the conservative Spectator columnist Wallace Arnold, and Bel Littlejohn, the long-standing Guardian columnist who many Guardian readers took to be real. Brown is a kind of satirical ventriloquist: impersonating the voices of politicians and celebrities, mocking them week after week in Private Eye and The Daily Mail, mimicking thousands of different voices. This year he celebrates his 25th anniversary of parodying the rich and the famous on Private Eye.

In this edition of Private Passions Craig Brown talks to Michael Berkeley about how he does it ? and why he does it. Does he find the whole world ridiculous? Brown reveals that before embarking on a parody he has to feel the creative germ of irritation, which he then attempts to transform into comedy. Parody, as he reveals, is a delightfully libel-free method of pricking the bubble of self-obsession in celebrity culture.

For Private Passions, Brown reveals the music he finds inspiring, moving and funny. Some of his choices are surprising: gospel songs, for instance, are top of his list. He celebrates the Irish composer John Field, and enjoys both Satie and a plangent lament from Kathleen Ferrier. But he also chooses humorous pieces: Kenneth Williams reading Edward Lear, and Harry Belafonte singing 'There's a Hole in my Bucket'. He talks about living in a musical family; his wife, son and daughter are all gifted musicians, while he can't sing in tune, and has no sense of rhythm at all.

The programme is recorded with an audience at the Radio 3 pop-up studio at Royal Festival Hall, as part of Radio 3's residency at London's Southbank Centre.

John Finnemore Mar 09, 2014

John Finnemore is one of our most successful comedy writers and performers. A star turn in Miranda as the doting husband Chris, he writes and stars in the award-winning Radio 4 sitcom Cabin Pressure, and he's made two series of the Radio 4 sketch show Souvenir Programme. He regularly appears on The Now Show, The Unbelievable Truth and The News Quiz. And apart from his own shows, he also writes for other comedians such as Mitchell and Webb.

John reveals to Michael Berkeley his secret of comedy inspiration, his love of performing, and his struggle with insomnia. His choices include Beethoven, Flanders and Swann, and Chopin: the music that means most to him, the music that makes him laugh - and the music that helps him sleep.

Producer: Jane Greenwood.

Kwasi Kwarteng Feb 23, 2014

If you should happen to be walking through the House of Commons, and hear loud Wagner blasting out along those corridors of power ? you know you're heading for the office of Kwasi Kwarteng. He's been there since 2010, when he was elected MP for Spelthorne in Surrey. Before going into Parliament, he'd already established a reputation as a historian; his new book 'War and Gold' comes out later this spring, following 'Ghosts of Empire', a fascinating study of the legacy of the British Empire around the world. All this and he's not yet 40.

In Private Passions, he talks to Michael Berkeley about his own background: his parents came here from Ghana as students in the 1960s, and he says that thanks to them, 'the British Empire has always been with me'. His music choices include Wagner (naturally), Gilbert and Sullivan, Chopin, Schubert, Haydn, and Smokey Robinson ? he discovered Motown on an unforgettable American jukebox. He also includes a vintage recording of John Gielgud reading Shelley's 'Ozymandias', a poem which is a salutary warning for a politician about the transience of power. And he reveals that his ambition is to own a piano; he even chooses the ragtime piece he wants to play ? Scott Joplin's Elite Syncopations.

Joan Armatrading Feb 16, 2014

When Joan Armatrading's mother bought a piano 'as a piece of furniture' little did she know what she was starting. The fourteen-year-old Joan taught herself to play it, then to play the guitar too and twelve years later she burst onto the music scene with her hit song Love and Affection. In a career spanning forty years, she has made 20 acclaimed studio albums as well as undertaking an international touring schedule which makes me feel tired just thinking about it. She's received three Grammy and two Brit Award nominations, she's the winner of the Ivor Novello Award, and she's the first female UK artist ever to debut at number 1 in the American Billboard Blues chart. And to cap it all, she has an MBE for services to music.

In this programme Joan shares her love of classical music with Michael Berkeley and chooses pieces by Beethoven, Vivaldi, Tavener and Bach. She talks about her childhood as the daughter of immigrant parents in Birmingham, discusses how she managed to study for a degree while on the road, and reveals whether this year's tour really will be her last.

First broadcast in February 2014.

Michael Horovitz Feb 09, 2014

Michael Horovitz is one of the last surviving Beatniks, 'the big daddy of the British Beat Movement'. In the 1950s, he founded a ground-breaking magazine which was the first to publish new work by Samuel Becket and William Burroughs, including passages from Naked Lunch which had been banned for obscenity in America. At 78 he's still performing his poems in pubs, and still playing his 'anglosaxophone', a kind of exuberant kazoo.

In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Horovitz talks about the poetic revolution that began in the 50s, and about his friendship with Stan Tracey, who died recently. He tells the story of how his family were forced to flee Nazi Germany in the 1930s, where his father was a lawyer.

His music choices include Beethoven, Mendelsohn and Stan Tracey, as well as a rare Charlie Parker jazz improvisation from 1945 (which includes one of the few recordings of Charlie Parker's voice). He includes too a moving recording of his wife, the poet Frances Horovitz, reading a poem she wrote when she was dying, and a recent 'jazz poem' of his own, where Horovitz plays alongside Damon Albarn and Paul Weller. Plus a few blasts on his 'anglosaxophone'...

Michael Sheen Jan 26, 2014

Michael Sheen is famous for playing real people on screen - from Tony Blair and Kenneth Williams to Brian Clough and David Frost. And it was playing another real person - but this time on stage - that formed a turning point in his relationship with classical music. This person was Mozart, in the play Amadeus, and Michael has chosen part of Mozart's Requiem, used in that production.

His other choices include music by Lisa Gerrard and Arvo Pärt and Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds starring Richard Burton, who shares a home town with Michael. He tells Michael Berkeley about his recent return home to Port Talbot to work for three years on a marathon staging of The Passion, which lasted for 72 hours and involved a cast of 1000, mostly local, people.

Lewis Wolpert Jan 19, 2014

Lewis Wolpert is a distinguished scientist -and a familiar lanky figure on his bicycle, cycling through the Bloomsbury traffic to University College London where he is Emeritus Professor of Biology.

His scientific research has been into the early development of the embryo, but he's a man with many other interests ? he's written books about depression, and recently a book about getting old ? and he's currently bravely embarking on a book about the biological differences between the brains of men and women.

He talks to Michael Berkeley about the happiness he feels in his eighties, and about his early life, and his decision to leave South Africa where he was brought up to be a 'nice Jewish boy'. His choices are wide-ranging: from Noel Coward and Frank Sinatra to a late Beethoven Quartet and Wagner.

Producer: Elizabeth Burke.

Music in the Great War: Pat Barker Jan 05, 2014

Writer Pat Barker is fascinated by the First World War; for twenty years now, her award-winning novels have returned again and again to the trauma and grief and erotic intensity of wartime. Her novels draw on the experiences of real people: Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen, and in particular the army doctor W.H. Rivers, a pioneering psychiatrist who treated victims of shell shock. As this centenary year opens, with all its commemorations of the First World War, Pat Barker talks about why and how we should remember War - and about the power of fiction to tell historical truth.

She reveals that her fascination with war began as a child; she was brought up by her grandparents, and her grandfather had a bayonet wound which she saw every time he washed at the kitchen sink. 'Through my grandfather and my stepfather, I have a direct link through to the world before the war - for me it's not simply reading history.' Pat Barker herself was a war baby - born in 1943 after her mother, a Wren, had a one-night stand with a man in the RAF. She never traced her father, and that central mystery in her life, 'half my identity missing', was part of what drove her to write. She talks about the stigma her mother faced as an unmarried mother, and in a moving section of the interview she wishes she could speak to her mother now to tell her 'It doesn't matter'.

Pat Barker's music choices include her grandfather's favourite music hall song - his party piece as a boy in the 1890s; Anton Lesser reading two poems by Wilfred Owen, and Benjamin Britten's setting of Wilfred Owen in his 'Nocturne'; Butterworth's 'The Banks of Green Willow'; original cast recordings from Joan Littlewood's 'Oh What a Lovely War'; and Elgar's Cello Concerto, in the famous recording by Jacqueline du Pré.

First broadcast 05/01/2014.

Hugh Masekela Dec 29, 2013

Hugh Masekela is a jazz legend. Brought up in South Africa during Apartheid, he left the country at 21, and spent the next 30 years in exile, releasing album after album - 43 to date - and performing alongside all the other great musicians of our era: Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Stevie Wonder, The Who ... He's still making music and touring the world at 74, and Private Passions was lucky enough to catch him on a visit to London.

He talks to Michael Berkeley about his passion for performing, which began when Bishop Trevor Huddleston gave him money to go to buy his first trumpet. Masekela describes vividly the musical culture he grew up in: the townships were awash with music, he says, and there was a competing cacophony of sound. As a child he began piano lessons at four, begging his father to play records before he had the strength to turn the handle of the gramophone. Music took over and he says he's been 'bewitched' ever since. He tells the moving story of how as a teenager he played truant from school and instead spent his days playing with other musicians in recording studios; his father found out and beat him severely, and Hugh ran away from home. But a few weeks later his father visited the studio and heard him play the trumpet. Realising that this was his future, his father forgave him and welcomed him back into the family.

Masekela also talks about his relationship with Nelson Mandela, and how Mandela smuggled a letter out of prison to him, inspiring his anthem (and worldwide hit) 'Bring Him Back Home'. He reveals the disillusionment he feels about South Africa now, and reflects on what would have happened had he stayed there - 'I would have died very young'.

Hugh Masekela's choices include Louis Armstrong, Frank Sinatra, J S Bach, Billie Holliday and Ravel.

First broadcast in December 2013.

Justin Welby Dec 22, 2013

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, talks to Michael Berkeley about his favourite music and the meaning of Christmas. His choices include Christmas music from Bach and Britten, and music Justin Welby loves from the late medieval period.

He talks to Michael about his career in the oil industry, his relatively late ordination, and his meteoric rise to the top of the Anglican Church, and the music that has accompanied him on that journey.

Michael asks him how he finds time for prayer and contemplation amid the pressure of heading the Anglican community, and what role music plays in his relationship with God. And he asks how he plans to spend his first Christmas as Archbishop.

Tom Hooper Dec 08, 2013

Somehow Tom Hooper has cracked the secret of making films which audiences really love. Whether you count Oscars and Baftas or box office takings he is, at 41, right up there as one of Britain's top film directors. The King's Speech won him four Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director, and earlier this year his film of Les Miserables won three more Oscars. The box office takings for Les Mis stand at an eyewatering 441.8 million dollars - it's been a hit across the globe, with reports of audiences crying their eyes out in cinemas from Sydney to Japan.

Tom Hooper doesn't often give personal interviews, but in Private Passions he talks to Michael Berkeley about his childhood, and about the anxieties and influences which have made him such a successful film director. He reveals that The King's Speech is in fact autobiographical: Tom's mother is Australian and his father is English, and growing up he was very aware that it was his mother's task - and his - to release his father from a particular kind of English inhibition and shyness. Tom Hooper decided to be a film director at 12; he talks entertainingly about his first film, about a runaway dog, and about singing in school musicals, where he discovered a passion for stage lighting, hanging high up above the school auditorium. He loves kit: camera lenses, microphones - he describes the excitement of finding the original microphones used by George V during his wartime broadcasts, and how he used them to record Beethoven for the soundtrack of The King's Speech. He explains too why he made the very brave decision to have all the actors in Les Miserables sing live for the camera.

Music choices include Beethoven, Handel, The Beggar's Opera, Janacek, and the Damned.

Laura Mvula Dec 01, 2013

Laura Mvula is more than just a pop star; before she had a best-selling album and industry awards she studied composition at the Birmingham Conservatoire. In an in-depth interview in Private Passions, she reveals how she went from classical music student to chart-topping singer.

In this warm and funny interview, Mvula talks to Michael Berkeley about her musical upbringing and about how church music, piano and violin lessons and performances for her aunt's a cappella group, Black Voices, initially went hand in hand with a crippling stage fright. At ten, she was so scared of performing that she howled on stage when the applause started and had to be rescued by her parents. She also talks about how as a student she began going to hear English choral music, but she had an ulterior motive: she fancied one of her fellow-students, a classical baritone, so she went to see him every time she could. It worked, they're now married; and she fell in love with choral composers like Eric Whitacre at the same time. And Laura reveals how at first she didn't quite at appreciate her big break from producer Steve Brown (she was too busy eating a banana).

Following her appearance at this summer's Urban Prom, Laura Mvula explains why she doesn't believe in separating music into genres and why she remains a passionate listener to - and advocate for - classical music.

In this programme she reveals how she still finds inspiration in classical composers for her own work. She plays a piece of Debussy and talks about how it inspired one of her own songs, 'Make Me Lovely'; she also chooses Elgar, Michael Tippett, William Walton, and 'Lush and Bluesy', a string piece by her teacher at the Conservatoire, Joe Cutler. Other musical choices include William Walton, Nina Simone and Miles Davis.

Private Passions: Maggi Hambling Nov 24, 2013

As part of Radio 3's Britten Centenary weekend, Michael Berkeley travels to Aldeburgh beach to meet the artist Maggi Hambling at her controversial memorial to Britten in the form of two giant interlocking scallop shells.

Michael also visits her nearby studio to see her paintings inspired by the Suffolk sea and to talk about the effect of Britten's music on her painting and sculpture.

She tells Michael about her fascination with drawing and painting people she's loved after they've died; the importance of drawing; and her love of feeling rooted in Suffolk.

Maggi's music choices include music from Peter Grimes and the War Requiem, as well as Schubert, a song by her friend George Melly and some surprising music which sums up how she relaxes in the rare moments when she's not working.

Martin Gayford Nov 10, 2013

Martin Gayford has a passion for painting and music, and has spent his career writing about artists - Constable, Van Gogh, David Hockney, Lucian Freud - and thinking about the connection between art and music. His new biography of Michelangelo is published in this month, and in this edition of Private Passions he explores the musical worlds of some of our greatest painters. He begins with the choir that Michelangelo heard as he lay high up on the scaffolding, painting the Sistine Ceiling - there were complaints he banged around too much, interfering with the music.

Martin Gayford then moves on to talk about the painter Constable as a musician (he was a flautist) and to tell the story of Van Gogh's attempt to learn the piano - in order to experience synaesthesia, and paint the music he played in bright colours.

Apart from his biographies of great artists, Martin Gayford is famous because his portrait was painted by Lucian Freud ('Man in a Blue Scarf'), a process that took 18 months. During that time they visited jazz clubs together, and the programme includes some of Freud's favourite music. There's also a food theme running through the programme - Gayford is a keen cook - and the programme ends with one of Toulouse Lautrec's favourite recipes, designed to be bright orange. As always Michael Berkeley's programme is perfect timing for cooking Sunday Lunch.

Music choices include: Debussy, Duke Ellington, Haydn, Arcadelt, Thelonius Monk, Stravinsky's 'Rake's Progress' and Billie Holliday.

Roddy Doyle Nov 03, 2013

It was a band called The Commitments that first brought Roddy Doyle fame 25 years ago - not a real group of musicians, but a comic novel about a group of Dublin teenagers who get together and form a soul band. The book and its sequels became successful films. Roddy Doyle gave up his job as a teacher and has gone on to write nine more novels set in Dublin, where he grew up and still lives.

One of them, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, won the Booker Prize and is a memorable tour de force told entirely in the voice of a ten-year-old Dublin boy. Roddy Doyle has also written for children, for the theatre and the cinema, and now, after 25 years, he's back where he started - he's turned The Commitments into a musical which has just opened in London's West End.

Roddy's music choices range from the richness of Pergolesi and Mozart to the sparse modernism of Steve Reich and Brian Eno, with a touching love song to end the programme.

He talks to Michael Berkeley about music while you work, the pleasures of Dublin dialogue, and the joy of taking up the trumpet in middle age.

First broadcast November 2013.

Free Thinking: Chris Mullin Oct 27, 2013

Private Passions makes its first visit to Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival of ideas. Michael Berkeley talks to Chris Mullin, former MP, thriller writer and one of the sharpest political diarists of our age. He's certainly a free thinker: in three volumes of political diaries he's given us a devastating and very funny account of the workings of Westminster, from his vantage point as Labour MP for Sunderland South.

Chris Mullin retired in 2010 after 23 years in Parliament; Michael asks him whether he was too free-thinking to get to the top â€" or perhaps his sense of humour was the problem. But there's more to Chris Mullin than his political career, as this programme reveals. He looks back to perhaps the greatest achievement of his life, when he campaigned successfully for the release of the Birmingham Six in the 1980s - innocent men imprisoned as a result of a miscarriage of justice. He talks too about his friendship with the Dalai Lama and how his travels in the Far East have given him a different perspective, and about finding love and raising a family later in life.

Chris Mullin's musical choices include Handel's 'Messiah', sung by the Parliament Choir; a Chopin Nocturne; Tibetan, Vietnamese and African music and Mozart's C Minor Mass. He also includes music by Northumbrian musician Kathryn Tickell, celebrating his deep love of the North East and the rich life he has lived there.

BBC Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival takes place at Sage Gateshead 25-27 October and is broadcast for three weeks on Radio 3 from Friday 25 October.

Rory Kinnear Oct 13, 2013

Michael Berkeley's guest is the actor Rory Kinnear.

Rory Kinnear is in danger of becoming a national treasure. Audiences across the world know him thanks to two Bond movies, where he plays M15 officer Bill Tanner. He was the journalist in the TV thriller Southcliffe, he was Denis Thatcher in the Margaret Thatcher TV biopic, he's the straight man to Count Arthur Strong... And he's established a reputation as one of our finest Shakespearean actors - his performance as Hamlet at the National Theatre was screened across the UK as part of the National's 50th anniversary celebrations. This summer he played an unforgettably chilling Iago to Adrian Lester's Othello, again at the National. And he's just turned playwright - his first play, The Herd, directed by Howard Davies, has opened in London.

He's a difficult actor to pin down. But in conversation with Michael Berkeley he reveals the man behind the theatrical mask. He talks movingly about his father, the actor Roy Kinnear, who was killed during a film stunt, and how he kept sane after the accident by playing the piano. Rory still plays in rehearsal rooms across the world, grabbing his chance at the piano while the other actors eat lunch. He reveals too that music is the key to his relationship with his sister, who was born with profound disabilities; Rory composes music for her, and plays songs as a way of communicating with her. He works increasingly with musicians, at the Proms last year, and in recordings. And, be warned, every morning he walks across London listening to music on his huge headphones - and singing along at the top of his voice.

Music choices include Mark Padmore singing Bach, Haydn's Trumpet Concerto, a Beethoven violin sonata, Erroll Garner, and Big Rock Candy Mountain.

First broadcast 13/10/2013.

Greg Doran Oct 06, 2013

Greg Doran is one of those lucky people who seem to have found his perfect place in life. From the age of 13, when his mother first took him to the theatre in Stratford, Shakespeare's been his passion; as a boy he dedicated himself to seeing every single Shakespeare play - sometimes managing to watch three Macbeths in a day.

So - what better job than Artistic Director of our great national Shakespeare company, a role he took on 18 months ago. His production of Richard II with David Tennant in the lead opens on 10 October, and he's directing Henry IV next year with his partner Anthony Sher playing Falstaff.

Doran doesn't come from a theatrical background - his father ran a nuclear power station. But his passion for music began early, thanks to a concert in the local village hall in Lancashire. A friend of his mother's, Mrs Sidebottom, got up on stage and sang 'Blow the Wind Southerly'. And young Greg was hooked. That haunting folk song begins his choice of music - sung in this case by Kathleen Ferrier. Other choices include Duke Ellington, a song by Cervantes, and a Vivaldi Concerto which changed Doran's life when he heard it in Paris. It was a low point - a love affair had ended, his ambition to be an actor was foundering. And the music spoke to him, and gave him a new direction.

In Private Passions, he talks to Michael Berkeley about his passion for Shakespeare, and about his relationship with Antony Sher. Its foundations are a shared life in theatre, but also a love of food: when Anthony's depressed, Greg cooks for him the comfort food he ate as a child in South Africa. He's even learned how to make a special lamb stew - and he gives us the recipe: "I believe there is a Jewish saying that food is love. For me, tomato bredie is an expression of love."

First broadcast in October 2013.

Sound of Cinema: Beeban Kidron Sep 29, 2013

Beeban Kidron is a rare and very unpredictable film-maker. A woman in a man's world, she's made highly successful dramas such as the BAFTA-winning Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, and the blockbusting rom-com Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason. But she also makes documentaries which come straight from her heart: films about sex workers in New York, the women of Greenham Common, the sculptor Antony Gormley, and a highly-acclaimed film about girls sold into religious prostitution in India. And her latest film In Real Life is a documentary about teenagers and the internet.

She talks to Michael Berkeley about the power of music in films, the pleasures of building relationships with composers, the joy of telling stories, and the sheer determination needed to make the films she feels so passionately about.

Her choices include music from her film Swept from the Sea and her BAFTA-winning television series Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit; the music of her childhood; the piece which changed her ideas about love; and the scariest film music ever written.

Producer: Jane Greenwood. A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Sound of Cinema: Philip French Sep 15, 2013

It's quite possible that Philip French has seen more films than anyone else on the planet. Obsessed with cinema since the age of four, he has been reviewing films for the Observer for the past fifty years, as well as writing for many other papers and publishing several critically acclaimed books about cinema.

He talks to Michael Berkeley about the role of the composer in the cinema, his late flowering love of Beethoven string quartets, his lifelong delight in the singing of Ruth Etting; and his greatest film music memories.

His music choices are all associated with film ? from Disney's Fantasia; through The Ride of the Valkyries used so memorably in Apocalypse Now; to Miles Davis and avant garde composer Harry Partch.

Philip French sees at least nine films a week ? that's getting on for 20,000 over his career. Michael Berkeley asks him, how important is music in making a film stick in the mind?

Producer: Jane Greenwood. A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Angie Hobbs Sep 08, 2013

Angie Hobbs is no ordinary philosopher. Her job takes her to places as varied as cathedrals, airforce bases and merchant banks, as well as frequently to our radio and TV screens. As our first ever Professor of the Public Understanding of Philosophy, based at Sheffield University, she's determined to ensure that philosophy doesn't remain exclusively in the hands of academics - she wants it to inspire us all to explore the big questions in our lives.

Angie talks to Michael Berkeley about music in Greek philosophy, and about music as solace, as well as a celebration of life and the memory of people and places she has loved. Her choices include a Beethoven movement she considers to be the most beautiful music ever written, a Latin carol and an unusual arrangement of Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez, as well as music by Bach, Vaughan Williams and Emmylou Harris.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Gillian Lynne Sep 01, 2013

Gillian Lynne is best known as the choreographer of Cats and Phantom of the Opera, among other West End hits. She received a lifetime Olivier Award earlier this year. But her career began more than seven decades ago, when she was spotted as a dancer by Ninette de Valois. She danced during the War, with doodlebugs falling around her and just two pianos in the pit - no orchestras, as all the men were away fighting. She danced in the first night at Covent Garden after the War, when audiences dusted off their evening clothes. She then moved into movies, playing a gypsy temptress in The Master of Ballantrae opposite Errol Flynn. The sexual chemistry wasn't confined to the screen - she and Flynn had an affair, though his drink problem meant 'He wasn't a great lover. At the end of the day, he couldn't... But he was a beautiful man.'

As she developed as a choreographer, Gillian Lynne worked with the leading composers of the day, including Sir Michael Tippett. In fact she asked him to make changes in his Ritual Dances (from The Midsummer Marriage) so it would become a bit clearer what on earth was going on. 'I said to Colin Davis, I don't know what this is about. But I think it's about orgasms. He said, "Quite right, dear girl. Quite right!"'

Now 87, Lynne talks frankly about her career, and people she has worked with, like Frederick Ashton and Dudley Moore. She is still working - 'If I didn't I'd keel over' - and thanks to her daily workout, she is still enviably fit. She tells the story of finding love for the first time when she was in her 50s - with a man 27 years younger than herself. She's naughty, irreverent, and fun; this is also priceless social history.

Music choices include Fauré, Walton, Vaughan Williams, Tippett and Errol Garner.

First broadcast in September 2013.

Sally Davies Aug 18, 2013

The Chief Medical Officer, Sally Davies, is on our TV screens almost every week as the authority we appeal to in every health scare: horsemeat in burgers, antibiotic resistance, three-parent babies. She is clearly a person of tremendous power and influence, in charge of the National Institute of Health Research with a budget of £1 billion ? voted by Woman's Hour recently one of the top ten most powerful women in the UK.

Sally Davies talks to Michael Berkeley about her private life. She tells him about the death of her second husband from leukaemia less than a year after they were married, and how this has changed her as a doctor. (She scandalised her medical colleagues on a hospital ward round by putting her arms around a dying patient.) She discusses the breakdown of her first marriage, as well as the happiness she has found with her third husband and daughters.

She also reveals that she believes drugs are a medical issue rather than a criminal one.

Sally Davies is humorous, and fun ? she admits she loves wine, for instance. She is deeply musical ? she played in the Midlands Youth Orchestra as a girl and turns to music to relieve stress.

Music includes: Mozart, Brahms, Wagner, Vaughan Williams, Rossini's Stabat Mater, Beethoven's Fidelio - and Queen.

Adam Nicolson Aug 11, 2013

Adam Nicolson has the privilege, and the burden, of an extraordinary inheritance: Sissinghurst, that quintessentially English house and garden created by his grandparents Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackville-West. In his own right, he's the author of a series of highly esteemed history books and television series, about the making of the King James Bible, about the English gentry, and most recently about 17th-century writers. But it's that Sissinghurst connection which fascinates us all: growing up with bohemian writers and artists, there must have been music going on there all the time? Not at all - Adam reveals that his family were musical philistines. His father hated music because it moved him, and made him emotional ? so for an Englishman of that generation and class it was deeply suspect. It's only in middle age that Adam is discovering music, and he admits cheerfully that his musical taste is 'dreadful'. He also talks about walking 6000 miles round Europe, about his love for the Hebrides, and about his disastrous 'open' marriage. Adam and his wife had a deal ? they were allowed to have two affairs a year, as long as they were abroad. This too was the legacy of Sissinghurst, and a father who urged him to have as many affairs as possible. What followed was predictable, and messy, but with a happy ending - as Adam's choice of music reveals.

A light-hearted programme, which includes music by Mozart, Mendelssohn, Eric Whitacre, Prokofiev, Roberta Flack, and a reading by Alec Guinness of T.S.Eliot's 'Little Gidding'.

Jocelyn Bell Burnell Aug 04, 2013

The astrophysicist Jocelyn Bell Burnell changed the way we see the universe. At the age of only 24, as a Phd student, she discovered a totally new kind of star, a pulsar. Her older male colleagues got the Nobel Prize for the discovery ? her name being unfairly, and in the view of many scientists, outrageously, left off. But many honours have followed, and Jocelyn Bell Burnell is currently Visiting Professor of Astrophysics at Oxford University.

In Private Passions she talks to Michael Berkeley about the sexism she's fought all her life as a woman in science: the jeering and catcalls she encountered in lectures at Glasgow university, and the fight as a young girl to be allowed to study science at all. She reflects on what it was like to be denied the Nobel Prize so unfairly ? and why she doesn't feel bitterness. She evokes the exhilaration of scientific discovery, and talks too about the darker times in her life, when she had a very sick child and her marriage failed. Her musical passions include Haydn, Verdi, Smetana, Sibelius, Rachmaninov and Arvo Pärt.

Chief Rabbi, Lord Sacks Jul 21, 2013

Lord Sacks ends his twenty-year tenure as Britain's Chief Rabbi this coming autumn. At his retirement dinner (24 June) Prince Charles described him as "a light unto this nation" and praised him for promoting the principle of tolerance, expressing mounting anxiety at the apparent rise in anti-Semitism, along with other poisonous and debilitating forms of intolerance. In this programme, Lord Sacks looks back at his life and career, and talks to Michael Berkeley about both the joyous and the sad music which has accompanied him during his time as Chief Rabbi. From the moment his father took the young Jonathan (as a reluctant teenager) to a concert at the Albert Hall he has been passionate about the power of music. But he has also been concerned about the lack of music written for the Jewish people. Composers from Mendelssohn and Mahler to Irving Berlin and George Gershwin have composed for other faiths and other peoples. He feels this is part of the reason why Jewish music needs invigorating - it needs an injection of joyousness. He also talks about composers whose music he feels augurs the nineteenth- and twentieth- century tragedies suffered by the Jewish people, as well as the music which he feels represents the possibility of national and religious reconciliation.

His choices include Mahler, Beethoven, Stravinsky, Simon and Garfunkel and Bach. He is a thoughtful but also an ebullient speaker who loves jokes.

Robert Macfarlane Jul 14, 2013

Robert Macfarlane is a writer and scholar who has spent years exploring the wild spaces of the world. In this location edition of Private Passions, he takes Michael Berkeley to an uninhabited island off the coast of Suffolk, Orfordness. It was a place used for military testing right up to the 1950s, and it's littered with abandoned rusty machinery and ruined observation towers; the wind scrapes across the debris and makes a kind of unearthly music. It's the perfect setting, then, to listen to music about wild spaces and bird calls: Mussorgsky's Night on a Bare Mountain and Messiaen's Abime des Oiseaux among them. Robert Macfarlane talks about feeling that he is walking with ghosts, particularly the ghost of poet Edward Thomas who died in the First World War. He introduces the music that Thomas listened to at the Front, Chopin's Berceuse (or Lullaby). The programme also includes a rare recording made in the 1950s on a rock far out into the Atlantic, of a group of Hebridean islanders singing psalms. Macfarlane is a Cambridge scholar and award-winning writer, as well as a climber, walker, and wild swimmer. He is extraordinarily eloquent when he introduces this atmospheric selection of music.

First broadcast in July 2013.

Ruth Rogers Jul 07, 2013

Ruth Rogers has become one of our most celebrated cooks and best-selling food writers since she and her friend the late Rose Gray opened a modest cafe in West London more than twenty five years ago. Their modest ambition was to make the River Cafe the best Italian restaurant in the world. Since then Ruth Rogers has been instrumental in changing the way we think about Italian food in Britain.

Ruth reveals how her musical passions bring together her love of Italy, food, family, and the human voice. Her choices of music include the joyous ode to wine from Don Giovanni; a contemporary opera chosen for her husband, the architect Richard Rogers; a moving piano tribute to her late son; and a Bob Dylan song which recalls the time, growing up in Woodstock, when she turned down his invitation to watch him rehearse.

Rufus Wainwright Jun 30, 2013

Canadian-American singer-songwriter Rufus Wainwright can justifiably be described as a member of folk royalty. The son of Loudon Wainwright 3rd and the late Kate McGarrigle, he is also the nephew of Anna McGarrigle and brother of Martha Wainwright, all accomplished musicians in their own right. He describes about how he spent the first few weeks of his life sleeping in a guitar-case, sang with his family from an early age, and depended on them during the difficult periods of his life. His teenage years and his twenties heralded difficulties coming to terms with his sexuality and with drug addiction, but he continued to perform and write music throughout the hard times. Now married to artistic director Jorn Wiesbrodt, he is also a father of Lorca, whose mother is the daughter of Leonard Cohen. Obsessed with Verdi, he has composed his own opera, set Shakespeare sonnets to music and composed for the ballet.

His choices include Verdi, Massenet, Messiaen, Nina Simone, Kurt Weill, Manuel de Falla, Berlioz and Judy Garland.

Paul Muldoon Jun 23, 2013

As part of British music season on Radio 3, poets from across the country talk about their musical passions with Michael Berkeley.

Paul Muldoon, born and raised in Northern Ireland, is one of our most distinguished poets, having won the Pulitzer, TS Eliot and Irish Times Prizes. In this programme he celebrates his Northern Irish roots in music and poetry, and discusses his fascination with the place where popular and serious music meet.

For five years he was professor of poetry at Oxford, and he now teaches at Princeton University in the USA, where he is writing libretti and goes to as many rock gigs as possible.

Paul's choices include Lou Reed singing Kurt Weill, music from Stravinsky, Mark-Anthony Turnage and Irish composer Donnacha Dennehy, and a Metallica song played on four cellos.

Sean O'Brien Jun 09, 2013

As part of the British music season on Radio 3, poets from across the UK reveal their favourite music.

Sean O'Brien is a perfect choice for Private Passions because his poems capture the musical soundscapes of the north-east of England where he lives: the cries of gulls, the wash of the sea, the rumble of trains. In fact he's obsessed by trains, and for O'Brien, like many other poets, journeys by train are an inspiration and a form of meditation. So one of his choices is Steve Reich's hypnotic work Different Trains, in which the composer mixes fragments of train whistles and announcements. Sean O'Brien's other choices include Little Feat, Schubert, Vaughan Williams, Debussy's La Mer, and Prokofiev's film music for Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky, a film he first saw when skiving off games as a 16-year-old. He used to be a drummer in a rock band and likes to listen to everything very loud, so Miles Davies is the perfect soundtrack to Sunday mornings ... Michael Berkeley's guest Sean O'Brien reveals his Private Passions.

Gwyneth Lewis Jun 02, 2013

As part of British music season on Radio 3, poets from across the country reveal the music which inspires them. Welsh poet Gwyneth Lewis has the unusual distinction of having written the largest poem in the world, and it's about music. The words are six feet tall, inscribed over the entrance to the Millennium Centre in Cardiff, the music venue designed by Zaha Hadid: 'In these stones horizons sing'. Gwyneth has a passion for opera and the human voice, a passion which began early when her father played his favourite operas on every car journey - the whole family would sing along. As a child she sang in her school choir, singing opera in Welsh. Gwyneth talks very movingly about the depression she has suffered throughout her life; it was music - and particularly a Brahms choral work (the Alto Rhapsody) which she says 'saved my life'. She reads a poem inspired by listening to opera singers, The Voice. And although she is Welsh through and through and she was for a time National Poet of Wales - she reveals that she doesn't have much time for Welsh music. Choices include Verdi, Poulenc, Brahms, Mozart, Bach, a French chanson - and one haunting Welsh folk song.

Producer Elizabeth Burke First broadcast 02/06/2013.

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