Private Passions

Robert Macfarlane is a writer and scholar who has spent years exploring the wild spaces of the world. In this location edition of Private Passions, he takes Michael Berkeley to an uninhabited island off the coast of Suffolk, Orfordness. It was a place used for military testing right up to the 1950s, and it's littered with abandoned rusty machinery and ruined observation towers; the wind scrapes ac...

Ruth Rogers has become one of our most celebrated cooks and best-selling food writers since she and her friend the late Rose Gray opened a modest cafe in West London more than twenty five years ago. Their modest ambition was to make the River Cafe the best Italian restaurant in the world. Since then Ruth Rogers has been instrumental in changing the way we think about Italian food in Britain. Ruth...

Canadian-American singer-songwriter Rufus Wainwright can justifiably be described as a member of folk royalty. The son of Loudon Wainwright 3rd and the late Kate McGarrigle, he is also the nephew of Anna McGarrigle and brother of Martha Wainwright, all accomplished musicians in their own right. He describes about how he spent the first few weeks of his life sleeping in a guitar-case, sang with his...

As part of British music season on Radio 3, poets from across the country talk about their musical passions with Michael Berkeley. Paul Muldoon, born and raised in Northern Ireland, is one of our most distinguished poets, having won the Pulitzer, TS Eliot and Irish Times Prizes. In this programme he celebrates his Northern Irish roots in music and poetry, and discusses his fascination with the pla...

As part of the British music season on Radio 3, poets from across the UK reveal their favourite music. Sean O'Brien is a perfect choice for Private Passions because his poems capture the musical soundscapes of the north-east of England where he lives: the cries of gulls, the wash of the sea, the rumble of trains. In fact he's obsessed by trains, and for O'Brien, like many other poets, journeys by...

As part of British music season on Radio 3, poets from across the country reveal the music which inspires them. Welsh poet Gwyneth Lewis has the unusual distinction of having written the largest poem in the world, and it's about music. The words are six feet tall, inscribed over the entrance to the Millennium Centre in Cardiff, the music venue designed by Zaha Hadid: 'In these stones horizons sing...