Private Passions

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.

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 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.

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 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' 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 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.

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 GreenwoodA Loftus Production for BBC Radio 3.

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 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 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.

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 3Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus Production for BBC Radio 3First broadcast in August 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, 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 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.

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 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 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.

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.

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.

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 GreenwoodA Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

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.

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 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.

"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'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.

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 GreenwoodA Loftus Production for BBC Radio 3

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 GreenwoodA Loftus Production for BBC Radio 3.

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 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 3Produced by Elizabeth Burke.

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.

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 GreenwoodA Loftus Production for BBC Radio 3.

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 BurkeA Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

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 GreenwoodA Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

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 GreenwoodA Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

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'.

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.

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.

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 GreenwoodPart of Radio 3's Breaking Free series of programmes exploring Martin Luther's Revolution.

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 GreenwoodA Loftus Production for BBC Radio 3To hear previous episodes of Private Passions, please visit http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/r3pp/all.

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 BurkeA Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.To hear previous episodes of Private Passions, please visit http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/r3pp/all.

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 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 BurkeA Loftus Production for BBC Radio 3To hear previous episodes of Private Passions, please visit http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/r3pp/all.

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.

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 BurkeA 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 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.

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 GreenwoodA 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, 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.

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 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.