Private Passions

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Kate Bingham Feb 20, 2022

Show notes

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

Show notes

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

Show notes

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

Show notes

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

Show notes

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

Show notes

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

Show notes

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

Show notes

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

Show notes

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

Show notes

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

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