Private Passions

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 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

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 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 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

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.

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 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 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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 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 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

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

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

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 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 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

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

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

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

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 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 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

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 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

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

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.

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 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 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.

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 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.

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 3In 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.