Private Passions

The barrister Monica Feria-Tinta has been described as one of the “most daring, innovative and creative lawyers” in the UK for her work in defending our natural world. She was born in Peru and was the first Latin American lawyer to be called to the Bar of England and Wales. She began by representing indigenous peoples, from Latin America and the Pacific, setting ground-breaking legal precedents. M...

As part of Radio 3's Boulez at 100 day celebrating the centenary of composer and conductor Pierre Boulez, Michael Berkeley's guest is someone who knew Boulez well - composer and musicologist Gerard McBurney. McBurney is most closely associated with the music of Russian composers – particularly Shostakovich – as a result of having lived and studied in Russia in the 1980s. Notable Shostakovich score...

The set and costume designer Bob Crowley says he creates ‘other worlds’. The stage is where his imagination runs riot, at the National Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company the Royal Opera House, the West End, Broadway and beyond. He’s won numerous Olivier and Tony awards for memorable designs such as the brightly lit revolving horses for Carousel, magical black and white tissue paper drawings ev...

Dr Sian Williams was a familiar face and voice on BBC Breakfast, television news, and Radio 4 for many years, and she’s now a presenter on Radio 3 Unwind on BBC Sounds. There she hosts a three hour programme every morning, sharing a restorative selection of music with the aim of supporting your well-being. She also presents Life Changing on Radio 4, interviewing people who have lived through extra...

Daniel Levitin is a psychologist and neuroscientist who is fascinated by the way our brains respond to music. He first worked as a musician, playing in bands, and then became a record producer and engineer. He’s worked with some of best-known names in the world, including Stevie Wonder, Joni Mitchell, Paul Simon, Sting and The Grateful Dead. In his 30s he went back to university to study psycholog...

Ursula Jones is “nothing short of a musical icon” – at least according to the Royal Philharmonic Society, who made her an honorary member last year at the age of 92. She has devoted her life to music, and has long championed the work of young performers – she gave Daniel Barenboim his first break as a conductor in London, when he was just 23. Ursula was born in Lucerne in 1932, where her father wa...

Professor Anthony Kessel has a double life – or at least two very different roles. As the National Deputy Medical Director of NHS England, he’s one of the senior leaders responsible for improving the quality of our health services and patient care. He’s an international authority on public health and played a key role in the NHS’s response to the Covid pandemic. He’s also a writer, with a prize-wi...

Raymond Blanc is one of the finest chefs in the world and he is completely self-taught. He grew up in post-war France in Besancon in the Comte region of eastern France between Burgundy and the Jura Mountains with his four brothers and sisters. Raymond’s mother – Maman Blanc - was his culinary inspiration. She would whip up delicious fresh, seasonal, local dishes, which became his guiding principal...

The economist Sir Paul Collier has spent much of his career thinking about some of the biggest challenges we face around the world – and then trying to find solutions for them. He’s focused on low-income countries, particularly in Africa, looking at why they haven’t benefitted from the forces of globalisation. He’s examined the causes and the consequences of civil war, and the role of foreign aid....

Miranda Hart burst into our living rooms in 2009 with her semi-autobiographical, multi-award winning TV sit-com Miranda. Her irrepressible physical comedy and willingness to make fun of herself quickly endeared her to audiences, as she battled through socially awkward situations - particularly dating. She also had to deal with her overbearing mother, while popularising phrases like “Such Fun”, “Ke...

In the hot, dry summer of 1976, Mary Joy Langdon made a very bold decision: she joined the fire service. She was the first woman in the UK to work as a professional operational fire-fighter. Then, after eight years, she changed course - and became a nun. In 1989, as Sister Mary Joy Langdon, she founded the Wormwood Scrubs Pony Centre, introducing inner-city children and young people with disabilit...

Michael Berkeley shares festive music choices from Private Passions over the years. We’ll hear how Handel can evoke memories of roast potatoes in the oven on Christmas day; we’ll spend time by the fire in a remote Irish castle, take a seasonal trip to the ballet, and share heart-warming singing from a variety of traditions. His guests include Chris Addison, Nina Stibbe, Brian Moore, David Mitchell...

The actor, comedian and writer Nick Mohammed hasn’t followed an obvious career path. His youthful obsessions included performing magic and playing the violin, followed by a first-class degree in geophysics. He even began a PhD in seismology – before his love of comedy took him in a very different direction. He’s ended up on the red carpet at the Emmys, thanks to his role as Nate the football coach...

Lola Young, Baroness Young of Hornsey, grew up in care, and when she left school, she worked first for the gas board, then as a social worker and as an actor on stage and television. The idea that she would one day sit in the House of Lords never crossed her mind. When she was in her early 30s she decided to study for a degree. That led to a PhD, academic posts and eventually a Professorship in Cu...

Rupert Everett left school at 16 to train as an actor and first shot to wider fame in 1984 as a dashing public schoolboy in the film Another Country. Since then his career has been defiantly unpredictable: he’s starred in Hollywood films, taken leading roles on stage in the West End and on Broadway, and directed, written and played the lead in a passion project about Oscar Wilde’s final years. He’...

Dame Maggie Aderin-Pocock readily admits that her childhood television viewing played a vital role in her eventual choice of career: she loved Star Trek and The Clangers - the animated children’s show featuring little whistling mice living on a moon-like planet. Along with coverage of the Apollo missions, they helped to inspire a journey which led her to become one of the UK’s leading space expert...

Bryan Ferry has been a very familiar voice for more than 50 years, as the co-founder of Roxy Music and as a solo artist and songwriter. When Roxy Music first appeared on Top of the Pops in 1972, millions of viewers suddenly saw something new: an extravagantly dressed band, featuring an early synthesizer, an oboe, and Bryan leading from an upright piano, wearing a sparkling black and green jacket....

Brian Cox has enjoyed a prolific career in theatre, film and television over the last 60 years. Born in Dundee, he was obsessed by film from an early age and when he left school he worked behind the scenes at Dundee Rep theatre. He soon fell in love with the life he saw there and moved to London to train as an actor. Over the years he’s never been afraid to take on difficult, unlikeable characters...

The American writer Garth Greenwell won widespread acclaim for his first novel, What Belongs to You, including the British Book Award for the Debut of the Year in 2016. This success would have surprised his high-school teachers in Kentucky. As a teenager, he failed English and decided to follow a very different path: he turned to singing and eventually trained as an opera singer. Studying music le...

Sarah Ogilvie is a lexicographer and a proud and self-confessed word nerd: languages are her passion and are at the heart of her writing and scholarship. She worked as an editor at the Oxford English Dictionary and went on to write a book about the thousands of volunteers around the world who submitted words for its first edition. She has researched endangered languages in Australia, North America...

The costume designer Jenny Beavan has won three Academy Awards for three very different films: the elegant Merchant Ivory drama Room with a View; the post-apocalyptic Mad Max: Fury Road; and most recently the Disney film Cruella, for which she created a huge, vibrant parade of 1970s-inspired fashion. She’s received a further nine Oscar nominations across her 40 year career. She found just the righ...

Lucian Msamati has played leading roles on our most famous stages: Salieri in Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus at the National Theatre, Iago in Othello at the Royal Shakespeare Company and Estragon opposite Ben Whishaw in Waiting for Godot at the Theatre Royal Haymarket in London. He started out performing – in his words – ‘for farmers sitting on beer crates in rural Africa, with tables for a stage’. And w...

Jay Rayner has his dream job: he loves writing and he loves food, and for the past 25 years he’s been the restaurant critic for the Observer. Jay is also familiar as a broadcaster, appearing as a judge on Masterchef, and hosting The Kitchen Cabinet on Radio 4. His recent book, Nights Out At Home, provides recipes to enable readers to create some of his favourite restaurant dishes in their own kitc...

Ann Cleeves is one of Britain’s most successful and prolific crime writers, reaching millions of readers around the world. She’s reached millions of television viewers too, with series including Vera and Shetland, adapted from her books. She has written on average a book a year for almost four decades, but success was anything but instant. She was 32 when her first title was published, and she onl...

Artist and printmaker Norman Ackroyd was born in Leeds in 1938. He fell in love with the landscape of the Yorkshire Dales, riding around on his bicycle as a young boy and studied art despite his father believing it was a waste of time. He is now one of Britain's most acclaimed contemporary printmakers, with works in collections around the world including the Tate, Rijksmuseum and MoMA. Norman has...