Private Passions

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 B

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 G

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. (

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 Greenw

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

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

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 Ro

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. W

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 hea

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 y

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 ht

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

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

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 htt

From concrete to chocolate and teacups to tennis racquets, it's the everyday stuff of life that fascinates Mark Miodownik. He's Professor of Materials and Society at University College London where he is also Director of the Institute of Making, a research hub for scientists, designers, engineers, artists, architects - and musicians. A passionate communicator about the vital role of science in society, he's written a bestselling book Stuff Matters; he's the scientist in residence on Dara O'Briain's Science Club on BBC2; and he's listed by The Times as one of the 100 most influential scientists in the UK.Mark is fascinated by how materials influence the way music sounds, and talks to Michael Berkeley about brass bands, tuning forks and how love can bloom over playing the saw. His musical choices include Bach, film music by Morricone, Scott Joplin and a little known piece for brass band by Holst.

National Trust Director General Helen Ghosh takes Michael Berkeley on a tour of Leith Hill Place, now a National Trust property but once the childhood home of Ralph Vaughan Williams.She chooses his Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, as well as music by Britten, Mozart and Schubert. And her choice of Ravel reveals the alternative career she almost had - as a ballet dancer.

Miles Jupp burst onto the comedy scene when he won the 'So You Think You're Funny' contest at the Edinburgh Festival at the age of just twenty-one. He'd already, as an undergraduate, won the part of Archie the Inventor in the hugely popular children's television show Balamory, but he eventually tired of wearing a pink kilt. Since then he has established himself on the comedy circuit, and on radio and television in panel shows including Have I Got News for You, and comedies such as The Thick of It and Rev, where he plays Nigel, the disapproving lay reader, who thinks he should be running the church. He is usually to be found sending himself up as a tweedy, middle class young fogey. As he joked on a chatshow: "I'm privileged. Not just to be here but in general."Miles talks to Michael Berkeley about the joys of cricket, the pleasures of belting out a good tune and the legacy of an intensely musical childhood, reflected in his choices of music by Geoffrey Burgon, Chopin and Verdi.Produced by Jane Greenwood. A Lof

Stephen Grosz waited until he was 60 to publish his first book, 'The Examined Life'. It was a huge overnight success - a bestseller here in Britain and translated into more than 20 languages across the world. It's a distillation of the lifetime he has spent as a psychoanalyst, tens of thousands of hours listening to people in hospitals, forensic clinics and in private practice. It reads like a collection of short stories, full of vignettes of memorable characters: the man who faked his own death, the pathological liar, the lovesick middle-aged woman who meets a man at a party - and turns up at his house the next week with a removals van to move in with him.In Private Passions, in conversation with Michael Berkeley, Stephen Grosz tells his own story: his childhood in Chicago, the son of immigrants who ran a grocery store; student days in radical Berkeley; and now, settled in Britain, how he's facing the challenges of fatherhood and ageing. Music has played an important part right from the beginning, and Grosz