Private Passions

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 a

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 inte

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

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 favo

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

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 viv

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

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 Wei

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

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

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 tr

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 he

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

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