Private Passions

Phyllida Law burst onto the stage in the mid 1950s and since then her career has spanned everything from the first British production of The Crucible, to musicals such as La Cage aux Folles and television including Dixon of Dock Green and Rumpole, not to mention a list of films as long as your arm, The Time Machine and The Winter Guest being just two.Alongside all that she's somehow managed to fit in bringing up her two highly successful daughters Emma and Sophie Thompson, both of whom have followed in her footsteps. Recently she's turned her hand to writing, and she talks to Michael Berkeley about her moving and funny memoirs of the years she spent looking after her mother and mother-in-law in their old age.Her music choices include Glenn Gould playing Bach, Schubert's Fantasia in F Minor and a joyous Malinese song introduced to her by her grandson which always gets her up and dancing.First broadcast 27/07/2014.

Biographer Richard Holmes shares his musical passions with Michael Berkeley, and his fascination with opium dreams, telescopes and balloons.Best known for his biographies of the Romantics - most notably Shelley and Coleridge - Richard Holmes has won just about every literary prize going.In recent years he has moved towards the history of science with his book The Age of Wonder, which was hailed widely as 'the non-fiction book of the year'.And his most recent book, Falling Upwards, all about the daring and frequently terrifying adventures of the pioneers of hot air ballooning, is just coming out in paperback.Richard's musical choices range from 13th century Gregorian chant and French pastoral songs to Bernstein by way of composer and astronomer William Herschel.Producer: Jane GreenwoodA Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

As part of Radio 3's 'Music in the Great War' season, Michael Berkeley's guest is John Keane, who was appointed the official British War Artist during the first Gulf War. The job involved travelling with the British forces - a task he approached with enthusiasm, but also considerable apprehension. The paintings that came out of that conflict are now part of the permanent collection at the Imperial War Museum, along with an array of paintings from The First World War by artists including Paul Nash and Christopher R. W Nevinson.John talks to Michael about the role of the war artist and how it has changed since The First World War. He describes his experience of working on conflict zones, not just in The Middle East, but in Northern Ireland, Nicaragua and Angola too. What is it that a war artist can communicate that we can't see in photographs? His music choices include Bach, Beethoven and Britten, and the famous rendition of Star Spangled Banner by Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock in 1969, which uses amplifier feedba

Holocaust survivor Eva Schloss shares her extraordinary life story with Michael Berkeley and reveals the music that has brought her comfort, that conjures memories, and that brings her joy.Eva Schloss was born into a happy middle-class Jewish family in Vienna in 1929, but her childhood came to an abrupt end when she was nine and had to flee with her parents and older brother to escape the Nazis.Before going into hiding in Amsterdam Eva's family befriended Anne Frank's family, and after the war, the Frank legacy was to play a large part in her life - Eva's mother married Otto Frank and Eva and her mother worked tirelessly to promote Anne Frank's legacy through her diary.Like the Franks, Eva's family was betrayed, and she and her mother were captured by the Gestapo on her 15th birthday and transported to the Birkenau concentration camp. They were two of only a few prisoners still alive when the camp was liberated in January 1945. Her beloved brother and father did not survive the neighbouring camp of Auschwitz.

Nitin Sawhney is a multi award-winning musician, producer and composer. With nine studio albums to his credit, he has collaborated with the likes of Paul McCartney, Joss Stone, Sting and Nelson Mandela, and has composed over 40 film and television scores, including for the BBC series Human Planet. In his own work he combines the musical traditions of East and West, and composes for a wide variety of different art forms. He has collaborated with the legendary theatre company Complicite, the dancer and choreographer Akram Khan and more recently has written scores for video games. His passion for diversity is reflected in his musical choices which include Ravi Shankar's Kafi Holi, flamenco guitarist Paco de Lucia's Guajiras de Lucia and Debussy's ground-breaking Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune. As well as being a composer, Nitin is a virtuoso performer on both guitar and piano and we hear the pieces he practises every morning, including Chopin's Fantaisie Impromptu and Bach's Keyboard Concerto No.1 in D minor.

Assyriologist Irving Finkel talks to Michael Berkeley about his passion for clay tablets, chamber music, and Jimi Hendrix.Irving Finkel is one of the world's leading experts in the world's oldest, and most impenetrable, system of writing - cuneiform.Because the scribes of Ancient Mesopotamia imprinted cuneiform with a stylus into clay tablets, lots of it has survived, and indeed Irving Finkel has spent the past 45 years delighting in the company of more than 130,000 cuneiform tablets at the British Museum. But one day a member of the public brought in a clay tablet which changed his life - it was a 4000-year-old blueprint for Noah's Ark - a thousand years older than the story in the Bible.Irving is also passionate about music - particularly old recordings - and his choices include string quartets by Schubert and Dvorak, 1930s blues and a blast of Jimi Hendrix.Producer: Jane Greenwood.

Nearly 30 years ago Emma Bridgewater, a young English graduate, went shopping for a cup and saucer for her mother's birthday present. She couldn't find anything she liked - so she designed one herself, and enjoyed the process so much that she installed a kiln in her London flat. That small kiln has grown into a company with an annual turnover of 11 million pounds - and has revitalised the old potteries industry of Stoke-on-Trent. Her teapots and mugs covered in polka dots, hens, dogs and birds have become a staple of the middle class kitchen, symbols of cosiness and comfort.In Private Passions, Emma Bridgewater talks to Michael Berkeley about our yearning for home - all the more intense as working lives become overwhelmingly demanding. She reveals the tragedy at the heart of her life - her mother's riding accident, which left her gravely brain-damaged but still alive, for 22 years. Under the pressure of that sorrow, Emma Bridgewater describes how work became a marvellous escape. She chooses music to remind he

Lady Hale is a trailblazer. 30 years ago, she was the first woman to be appointed to the Law Commission (and the youngest person there); 10 years ago, she was the first female judge to be appointed to the Appellate Committee of the House of Lords (as Baroness Hale of Richmond) and there hasn't been another woman appointed since. Last year she was appointed as the Deputy President of the Supreme Court. Where she is still the only woman! Her judgments have changed family and equality law in this country; and despite her eminent role she remains outspoken about domestic violence, women in prison, and the rights of children.In Private Passions, she talks about her upbringing in Yorkshire, one of three daughters ? and about being in such a minority when she began to study law. Lady Hale chooses music which connects with her professional life: operas about crime, punishment and injustice (Beethoven's Fidelio and Britten's Billy Budd). She talks about how she'd like to change the law on divorce, and why she loves Mo

Writer and broadcaster Jonathan Meades's fascination with architecture began on a school trip to Marsh Court in Stockbridge, Hampshire - designed by that great architect of English Country Houses Edwin Lutyens. Subsequently, in a broadcasting career which spans 40 years, he has written and performed in more than 50 television shows on a wide range of topographical subjects: from shacks to garden cities, to buildings associated with vertigo; from beer and pigs, to the architecture of Hitler and Stalin. He was also a food critic for 15 years, winning the coveted Glenfiddich Award in 1999, and has written three novels and a memoir: "Encyclopedia of Myself". His latest television series, "Bunkers, Brutalism and Bloody-mindedness", was screened on BBC 4 in February.He now lives in the iconic Corbusier building, Cité Radieuse in Marseille - and his musical choices reflect his adopted country's love of chanson: French singer / songwriter Barbara's "Ma Plus Belle Histoire d'Amour" features, as does Jacques Brel's Mij

For this special Easter edition of Private Passions, Michael Berkeley is given a backstage tour of the National Gallery by its Director, the distinguished art historian Nicholas Penny. For this programme he selects paintings on an Easter theme of death and rebirth, with music which accompanies and illuminates them. The painters include his great passion, Titian, with a visit to the Gallery's Restoration Lab, where a painting of the Resurrection is being brought back to life. Nicholas Penny talks about the way in which such paintings change their meaning over time, and about what to look for when we try to read 14th-century depictions of the Crucifixion. His musical choices include Rossini's Stabat Mater, Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos, Handel's Messiah, Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream, William Walton's Façade, a reading of James Joyce's story 'The Dead' - and the sound of English blackbirds singing in spring.

Charlotte Mendelson's novels are in danger of making you laugh out loud: the absurdities of family life, the excruciating embarrassment of being young, or clumsy, or not quite English enough. There are four prize-winning novels thus far, and the latest, Almost English - which has been longlisted both for the Booker Prize and for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction - comes out in paperback this spring.In this edition of Private Passions, Charlotte Mendelson talks entertainingly about embarrassment - her own embarrassment, and why she inflicts it on her fictional characters. Embarrassment, she claims, is the most under-reported emotion - because we just can't bear to think about it. She explores too the legacy of her Eastern European family, and the feeling of never being English, of never fitting in, and how that fuels her writing. And she reveals why her music teacher gave up trying to teach her the piano and settled for the can-can instead.Charlotte Mendelson's music choices include Bach, Schubert, Chopin,

There's a huge revival in British craftsmanship going on at the moment, with a new generation keen to learn how to make beautiful things. For 40 years now, Theo Fennell has been one of the country's most distinctive and witty jewellers. His intricate and beautifully crafted designs take you into a strange dream-world: miniature skulls with jewelled snakes twisting from their eyes; bees cast in gold; dragonflies trailing amethysts; salamanders studded with diamonds. Perhaps not surprising that his jewellery has decorated rock stars such as Elton John, Lady Gaga and Freddie Mercury.In Private Passions, Theo Fennell reveals the music that inspires him when he's working - dreaming up those strange and beautiful new creatures. Music is what helps him, he says, when confronted by a blank sheet of paper. He also reveals that as a young art student he worked as a busker, and even bought a one-man band. He discusses the erotic power of jewellery, with a vivid story from his own experience. And during the recording, he

Craig Brown has been described by The Sunday Times as "our greatest living satirist". He invented the conservative Spectator columnist Wallace Arnold, and Bel Littlejohn, the long-standing Guardian columnist who many Guardian readers took to be real. Brown is a kind of satirical ventriloquist: impersonating the voices of politicians and celebrities, mocking them week after week in Private Eye and The Daily Mail, mimicking thousands of different voices. This year he celebrates his 25th anniversary of parodying the rich and the famous on Private Eye.In this edition of Private Passions Craig Brown talks to Michael Berkeley about how he does it ? and why he does it. Does he find the whole world ridiculous? Brown reveals that before embarking on a parody he has to feel the creative germ of irritation, which he then attempts to transform into comedy. Parody, as he reveals, is a delightfully libel-free method of pricking the bubble of self-obsession in celebrity culture.For Private Passions, Brown reveals the music

John Finnemore is one of our most successful comedy writers and performers. A star turn in Miranda as the doting husband Chris, he writes and stars in the award-winning Radio 4 sitcom Cabin Pressure, and he's made two series of the Radio 4 sketch show Souvenir Programme. He regularly appears on The Now Show, The Unbelievable Truth and The News Quiz. And apart from his own shows, he also writes for other comedians such as Mitchell and Webb.John reveals to Michael Berkeley his secret of comedy inspiration, his love of performing, and his struggle with insomnia. His choices include Beethoven, Flanders and Swann, and Chopin: the music that means most to him, the music that makes him laugh - and the music that helps him sleep.Producer: Jane Greenwood.

If you should happen to be walking through the House of Commons, and hear loud Wagner blasting out along those corridors of power ? you know you're heading for the office of Kwasi Kwarteng. He's been there since 2010, when he was elected MP for Spelthorne in Surrey. Before going into Parliament, he'd already established a reputation as a historian; his new book 'War and Gold' comes out later this spring, following 'Ghosts of Empire', a fascinating study of the legacy of the British Empire around the world. All this and he's not yet 40.In Private Passions, he talks to Michael Berkeley about his own background: his parents came here from Ghana as students in the 1960s, and he says that thanks to them, 'the British Empire has always been with me'. His music choices include Wagner (naturally), Gilbert and Sullivan, Chopin, Schubert, Haydn, and Smokey Robinson ? he discovered Motown on an unforgettable American jukebox. He also includes a vintage recording of John Gielgud reading Shelley's 'Ozymandias', a poem whi

When Joan Armatrading's mother bought a piano 'as a piece of furniture' little did she know what she was starting. The fourteen-year-old Joan taught herself to play it, then to play the guitar too and twelve years later she burst onto the music scene with her hit song Love and Affection. In a career spanning forty years, she has made 20 acclaimed studio albums as well as undertaking an international touring schedule which makes me feel tired just thinking about it. She's received three Grammy and two Brit Award nominations, she's the winner of the Ivor Novello Award, and she's the first female UK artist ever to debut at number 1 in the American Billboard Blues chart. And to cap it all, she has an MBE for services to music.In this programme Joan shares her love of classical music with Michael Berkeley and chooses pieces by Beethoven, Vivaldi, Tavener and Bach. She talks about her childhood as the daughter of immigrant parents in Birmingham, discusses how she managed to study for a degree while on the road, and

Michael Horovitz is one of the last surviving Beatniks, 'the big daddy of the British Beat Movement'. In the 1950s, he founded a ground-breaking magazine which was the first to publish new work by Samuel Becket and William Burroughs, including passages from Naked Lunch which had been banned for obscenity in America. At 78 he's still performing his poems in pubs, and still playing his 'anglosaxophone', a kind of exuberant kazoo.In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Horovitz talks about the poetic revolution that began in the 50s, and about his friendship with Stan Tracey, who died recently. He tells the story of how his family were forced to flee Nazi Germany in the 1930s, where his father was a lawyer.His music choices include Beethoven, Mendelsohn and Stan Tracey, as well as a rare Charlie Parker jazz improvisation from 1945 (which includes one of the few recordings of Charlie Parker's voice). He includes too a moving recording of his wife, the poet Frances Horovitz, reading a poem she wrote when she was dy

Michael Sheen is famous for playing real people on screen - from Tony Blair and Kenneth Williams to Brian Clough and David Frost. And it was playing another real person - but this time on stage - that formed a turning point in his relationship with classical music. This person was Mozart, in the play Amadeus, and Michael has chosen part of Mozart's Requiem, used in that production.His other choices include music by Lisa Gerrard and Arvo Pärt and Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds starring Richard Burton, who shares a home town with Michael. He tells Michael Berkeley about his recent return home to Port Talbot to work for three years on a marathon staging of The Passion, which lasted for 72 hours and involved a cast of 1000, mostly local, people.

Lewis Wolpert is a distinguished scientist -and a familiar lanky figure on his bicycle, cycling through the Bloomsbury traffic to University College London where he is Emeritus Professor of Biology.His scientific research has been into the early development of the embryo, but he's a man with many other interests ? he's written books about depression, and recently a book about getting old ? and he's currently bravely embarking on a book about the biological differences between the brains of men and women.He talks to Michael Berkeley about the happiness he feels in his eighties, and about his early life, and his decision to leave South Africa where he was brought up to be a 'nice Jewish boy'. His choices are wide-ranging: from Noel Coward and Frank Sinatra to a late Beethoven Quartet and Wagner.Producer: Elizabeth Burke.

Writer Pat Barker is fascinated by the First World War; for twenty years now, her award-winning novels have returned again and again to the trauma and grief and erotic intensity of wartime. Her novels draw on the experiences of real people: Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen, and in particular the army doctor W.H. Rivers, a pioneering psychiatrist who treated victims of shell shock. As this centenary year opens, with all its commemorations of the First World War, Pat Barker talks about why and how we should remember War - and about the power of fiction to tell historical truth.She reveals that her fascination with war began as a child; she was brought up by her grandparents, and her grandfather had a bayonet wound which she saw every time he washed at the kitchen sink. 'Through my grandfather and my stepfather, I have a direct link through to the world before the war - for me it's not simply reading history.' Pat Barker herself was a war baby - born in 1943 after her mother, a Wren, had a one-night stand with a