Private Passions

Sigrid Rausing is a writer, publisher and philanthropist. She’s the co-founder of Portobello books, the owner of Granta books, and the editor of Granta literary magazine, a role she says she hugely enjoys. It’s impossible though to talk about her own achievements without mentioning her Swedish family background: her grandfather founded the packaging company Tetra Pak, and his brilliant idea for the invention of waxed cardboard cartons for milk and fruit juice brought him great wealth - and has allowed his grand-daughter to found one of the biggest philanthropic organizations in this country. But the family has been marked by great tragedy too: in 2012, Sigrid’s sister-in-law Eva died of a drugs overdose and her brother, who was also an addict, was arrested for possession of drugs, and for keeping his wife’s body at home with him.In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Sigrid talks about the terrible effect of drug addiction on her family, and the guilt she and everyone around her feels about what happened. She

Michael Berkeley talks to the actor Clarke Peters about his passion for breaking down barriers between musical traditions. Best known for his television roles as Detective Lester Freeman in The Wire and Albert Lambreaux in Treme, Clarke has also appeared in films such as Notting Hill, Mona Lisa and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. And he has a rich career in music too – from busking in France in his youth to working as a backing singer for David Essex and for Joan Armatrading – if you listen carefully you can hear him on her iconic song Love and Affection. And he’s appeared in Chicago, Chess, and Porgy and Bess to name but a few musicals. In 1990 he created the award winning revue Five Guys Named Moe, based on the music of Louis Jordan. Clarke’s choices of music reflect the trans-Atlantic nature of his life: a piece written in France by the New Orleans composer Gottschalk, which he heard when filming Treme; music by Ravel and by Debussy; and Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, which always takes him stra

This week’s Private Passions is pretty crowded, with Kirsty Wark, Fiona Bruce, Emily Thornberry and Theresa May all putting in appearances - in the person of Jan Ravens, from the award-winning Radio 4 show Dead Ringers. Jan’s career has been a series of firsts – she was, in 1979, the first female president of the Cambridge Footlights, and the show she directed in Edinburgh went on to win the first ever Perrier Award. She was one of the first women to appear with Jasper Carrott and on Spitting Image, and last year she made her solo Edinburgh debut with her show Difficult Woman.Jan tells Michael how her difficult childhood was transformed by writing and performing at Cambridge, about the battles she’s fought to have women equally represented on comedy shows and discusses the frequently negative perception of women in positions of power.And she demonstrates just how she got inside the voice of Theresa May. Jan’s passion isn’t just for female speaking voices but for singing voices too, and she’s chosen to hear fo

Actor and theatre director Daniel Evans shares with Michael Berkeley his passions for musical theatre, opera and the piano. Daniel Evans grew up in the Rhondda Valley and won praise and prizes at Eisteddfods as a teenager. Since then his career has been something of a high-wire act: balancing performing versus directing and theatre management, stage versus screen, popular musicals versus edgy new dramas.He first made his name twenty years ago as an actor, in Peter Pan at the National Theatre and then as an outstanding interpreter of Sondheim, twice winning Oliviers for Best Actor in a Musical. He’s also well known for his roles in television and film, from Spooks and Dr Who to Great Expectations.And then in 2009 Daniel Evans was appointed Artistic Director of Sheffield Theatres and he’s now at Chichester Festival Theatre. His stage production of The Full Monty went into the West End and continues to be on tour nationwide, and Flowers for Mrs Harris - a new musical about the life of a post-war char lady being

David Rieff has admitted ruefully that he’s made a career out of telling people what they don’t want to hear: whether it’s the politics of the global food crisis in his book “The Reproach of Hunger”, or the failure of the West to prevent the terrible bloodbath of Bosnia in his provocatively-titled “Slaughterhouse: Bosnia and the failure of the West”. As a war correspondent, Rieff has worked in the Balkans, in Rwanda and the Congo, in Israel-Palestine, in Afghanistan and Iraq. He’s not afraid to tackle the big issues: immigration, exile, American imperialism. There are thirteen books in all, including a memoir about his mother, the American writer Susan Sontag. In Private Passions, David talks to Michael Berkeley about being “Susan Sontag’s son”, and whether that label has at times been a burden. He’s her only child and Sontag was only 19 when he was born. He reflects on the privilege and yet strangeness of his New York upbringing, and how he has used that background “to make a living being a critic of everyth

Rebecca Stott grew up in a community where the following things were forbidden: newspapers, television, cinema, radio, pets, universities, wristwatches, cameras, holidays – and music. Her family belonged to one of the most reclusive sects in Protestant History, the “Exclusive Brethren”, which has 45,000 followers worldwide. How and why she left the Brethren is the gripping story told in her memoir, “In the Days of Rain”, which won a Costa Prize in 2017. Before that there were two historical novels; two books about Darwin; and a body of academic work about 19th century writers. Rebecca Stott is currently Professor of literature and creative writing at the University of East Anglia. It’s a remarkable career for someone who grew up not being allowed to read freely, or even to enter a library. In Private Passions Rebecca Stott tells the story of how her family escaped from the sect, and how the outside world flooded in, in all its technicolour. The discovery of music was particularly exciting, and she has never f

Michael Berkeley’s guest on the centenary of Armistice Day is the historian Margaret MacMillan.In this year’s Reith Lectures, Margaret Macmillan delivered a powerful series of lectures exploring war and society, and our complex feelings towards those who fight. She is Emeritus Professor of International History at the University of Oxford, and Professor of History at the University of Toronto in her native Canada.But she wasn’t always as well known as she is now; her book Peacemakers, about the Paris Conference at the end of the First World War, was rejected by a string of publishers – before winning the 2002 Samuel Johnson Prize and catapulting her into the public eye in her late fifties.Many more best-selling and prize-winning books have followed, including Nixon in China, The Uses and Abuses of History, and The War That Ended Peace, about the long build-up to the First World War.In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Margaret Macmillan reflects on how our perception of the First World War has changed in th

It’s the size and shape of a cauliflower, and weighs about 3 lbs. And yet the average human brain has so many intricate and complex connections that if you counted one connection every second it would take you more than three million years.Professor Anil Seth has devoted his career to trying to understand the brain, puzzling over the mystery of consciousness itself. He’s Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience at the Sackler Centre at the University of Sussex, and the author of a popular book, “The 30-second Brain”. In Private Passions, he muses on how our consciousness of the world, and of ourselves, is “one of the big central mysteries of life”. And it’s a mystery we face every day – when we fall asleep and when we wake up. In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Anil Seth explores the concept of free will (he doesn’t believe in it); why music evokes such strong memories; and how meditation changes the structure of the brain. Music choices include Chopin, Bach, Nina Simone, and an ancient Hind

As part of Radio 3’s celebration of forests this autumn, Michael Berkeley’s guest is the American novelist Richard Powers. His latest novel, The Overstory, is his twelfth, and it’s a monumental work which was entirely inspired by trees. It all started when Powers was teaching in California, and visited the giant redwoods there. That encounter amounted he says to “a religious conversion”. He realised he’d been blind to these amazing creatures all his life. So, to make up for lost time, in his new Booker long-listed novel he gives trees a voice: "A woman sits on the ground, leaning against a pine. Its bark presses hard against her back, as hard as life. Its needles scent the air and a force hums in the heart of the wood. Her ears tune down to the lowest frequencies. The tree is saying things, in words before words."Inspired by his passion for trees, Richard Powers has now moved to live in the forests of the Smoky Mountains which run along the border between North Carolina and Tennessee. "In 15 to 20 minutes, I

Big Issue founder John Bird talks to Michael Berkeley about the role music played in transforming his life. For two weeks in 1970 John Bird worked in the Houses of Parliament washing dishes; in 2015 he returned as a life peer. To say he didn’t have a great start in life is something of an understatement. Born in 1946 in a Notting Hill slum, he was five when his family was made homeless and at seven he was taken into care. Much of his teens was spent in reform school, he slept rough, and he went to prison several times for stealing. But John Bird turned his life around and has devoted it to fighting for social justice and particularly for homeless people, founding the Big Issue in 1991 with Gordon Roddick. Nearly thirty years on, and with over 200 million copies sold, it’s become a multi-million pound social investment enterprise, and has helped 92,000 vendors earn nearly £120 million pounds. John tells Michael about the music that cut through his chaotic childhood, and we hear Brahms’ Academic Festival Overtu

Ed Vulliamy has worked all around the world as a journalist; he’s best-known for his prize-winning coverage of the war in Bosnia, on television and in The Guardian. The war crimes he reported on led to his becoming a witness in the trial of the Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, and he was the first journalist since the Nuremberg trials to testify at an international war crimes tribunal. He went on to cover the 9/11 attacks in New York, and more recently the drug wars on the US/Mexico border. Ed Vulliamy is also the son of the much-loved children’s author Shirley Hughes, something that often eclipses all his other achievements, and he was immortalised as a teenager in her books. Music has been crucial to him all through his career, and in conversation with Michael Berkeley he reveals that his very first job was as an extra in a production of Aida.He talks movingly about his experience in Bosnia, about the psychological after-effects of being so near the horror of war, and about why he wishes he’d been a ca

Bel Mooney describes her pleasures as: watching for kingfishers, riding pillion on a motorbike, and dancing to a 1962 Wurlitzer. That entertaining list reflects something of her enjoyment of a life which has brought many challenges as well as pleasures. Bel Mooney started out as a writer almost 50 years ago, and in 1976 was one of the first journalists to speak from personal experience about the terrible loss of having a stillborn baby; that article led to the founding of the first national stillbirth society. She’s a novelist, children’s writer and broadcaster, and the advice columnist for the Daily Mail, a job she says is more worthwhile than any other she’s done.In Private Passions, Bel Mooney talks very openly about the ups and downs of a life which has brought about many transformations, about how her stillbirth changed her, and about finding happiness again after the ending of her marriage to Jonathan Dimbleby. Music plays a central role, and her choices include sacred music by Mozart and Pergolesi, Bee

Michael Berkeley’s guest is Bella Hardy, a passionate interpreter of traditional songs who has also blossomed into an accomplished songwriter, drawing on the Peak District, where she grew up, as well as influences from as far away as Nashville and China.Despite being only in her early thirties Bella has nine acclaimed solo albums to her name. She was part of the first - and highly memorable - Folk Prom in the Albert Hall in 2008 and she’s held the title of BBC Radio 2 Folk Singer of the Year.Bella talks to Michael about her passion for storytelling, which is reflected in her love of opera as well as traditional songs – we hear both an aria from Maria Callas and an unaccompanied folk song by Oxfordshire glover Freda Palmer, recorded in the 1950s. She talks about learning to play music by ear; her teenage years playing festivals in a folk band; and the challenges and satisfactions of running her own record label – and raising money to produce her albums through internet crowd funding.A contemporary carol by Phi

Steve Punt is well known thanks to the popular Radio 4 Friday night comedy, The Now Show - with fellow-host Hugh Dennis, he’s been mocking politicians and celebrities for an astonishing twenty years now. He also presents The Third Degree, the Radio 4 quiz which pits undergraduates against professors. But behind the scenes he’s been busy writing for a whole host of other shows, such as Mock the Week and The Mary Whitehouse Experience, for comedians Jasper Carrott and Rory Bremner; he even used to write for the puppets on Spitting Image. He says “Weirdly, I think people are more inclined to believe comedians than they are politicians.” In Private Passions, Steve talk to Michael Berkeley about how it all began: when he was bad at games at school, and forced to play the clown. He reminisces about his first job, in a music shop in Croydon, which he describes as being so rich in comic material that it was a bit like a sitcom – all of life was there. He talks about how audiences have changed thanks to social media,

At first glance chocolate brownies, puff pastry and Battenberg cake don’t seem to have a great deal in common with theoretical maths, but Eugenia Cheng has harnessed her love of cooking in order to tackle the fear of maths so many of us share – and has published a book about it called How to Bake Pi.Her mission is to rid the world of "maths phobia", and to this end she gave up her secure job teaching at Sheffield University to open up the world of maths to students from other disciplines as Scientist in Residence at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, which also gives her the opportunity to pursue her own research in Category Theory - the purest form of maths. And she’s a highly accomplished pianist, performing in concert halls around the world, as well as founding Liederstube - a popular venue for lieder and art song in Chicago which has hosted performers such as Gerald Finley and Richard Wiegold.Eugenia explains to Michael how chocolate brownies and pure maths are related; how she prefers to work in

Michael Berkeley's guest is the best-selling author, illustrator, and Children's Laureate Lauren Child.I Will Not Ever Never Eat a Tomato; I Am Too Absolutely Small for School; I Am Not Sleepy and Will Not Go to Bed - these are just three of Lauren Child's bestselling, funny and touching picture books for young children. Her big-eyed characters such as Charlie and Lola, and Hubert Horatio Bartle Bobton-Trent, capture the way children negotiate the small but significant challenges of family life, school and growing up. And they're illustrated with Lauren's trademark collages of her drawings and paintings, magazine cuttings, fabrics and photographs. But she writes for older children too - novels featuring the feisty Clarice Bean and, most recently, Ruby Redfort, who has to juggle her mundane life at school with being a top international secret agent and expert code-breaker. The winner of numerous awards, including the Kate Greenaway Medal and multiple Smarties Prizes, Lauren Child has been Britain's Children's

Ahead of this week's first test against India, Michael Berkeley's guest is cricket commentator Henry Blofeld.Henry was a very promising young cricketer, but his prospects of a first-class career were ended by a near-fatal accident at the age of seventeen. He eventually found his way to cricket journalism and ultimately to Test Match Special, where he was a mainstay for nearly fifty years, illuminating each match with his forensic knowledge of the game, as well as entertaining listeners with sightings of snoozing policemen, passing buses, and pigeons on the outfield.But last year Henry Blofeld declared his long innings in the commentary box closed. At his final test at Lords he was given the great honour of ringing the bell for the start of play, which he did attired in one of his signature colourful outfits - an orange shirt, yellow trousers and shoes, a pale green jacket and a yellow patterned bow tie.In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Henry Blofeld reveals how his accident changed the course of his life

Audrey Niffenegger had a huge worldwide success with her first novel, The Time-Traveller's Wife, which sold eight million copies in thirty-six languages. It was made into a film, of which, she says, the least said the better. But that commercial success bought her creative freedom - and what she's done with it is intriguing. After a second novel, about the ghosts in Highgate Cemetery, Audrey Niffenegger has gone back to her first love of art, combining story-telling with comic-book-style illustrations. Her latest graphic novel, "Bizarre Romance", features thirteen stories: about angels, monsters, fairies, cats, and - in her words - "oddballs in love". In Private Passions Audrey Niffenegger tells Michael Berkeley about her own improbable long-distance romance with artist Eddie Campbell, who now illustrates her books. Her eclectic music list goes back to the twelfth century, with music by Hildegard von Bingen, and forward to Philip Glass, Radiohead, and the American experimental composer Pauline Oliveros, who r

Paco Peña first started playing the guitar at the age of six; it was his older brother's guitar, and since there were nine children in the family, all living in two rooms in a crowded house in Córdoba, he had a ready-made audience right from the beginning. He made his first professional appearance at the age of twelve, and toured through Spain before moving to London in the 1960s, where he found himself sharing concerts with Jimi Hendrix. Over the last fifty years, he's established a world-wide reputation as a pre-eminent master of flamenco guitar. He's a composer, too, of both a requiem and a mass in flamenco style. In Private Passions, Paco Peña takes us back to the Spain of his childhood; this was only a few years after the end of the Spanish Civil War, and he describes the country he was born into as "fragile and tortured". He talks too about making a living as a musician on the Costa Brava, where he met his wife, and about what it was like to arrive in London in the 1960s, a time when flamenco guitar was

The actor Adjoa Andoh talks to Michael Berkeley about her passion for theatre, opera, and the music that reflects both her English and African heritage.Whether you're a regular at the National Theatre or Old Vic, prefer your entertainment on the big screen, or like to curl up on the sofa in front of Dr Who or Casualty (or - even - with the radio), you'll be familiar with the work of Adjoa Andoh. The daughter of a history teacher and of an exiled Ghanaian journalist, she was heading for a career in the law before making a dramatic switch to acting, and has scarcely been out of work since. Her recent theatre work includes playing the exiled Black Panther leader in Assata Taught Me at The Gate, and Casca in Nicholas Hytner's highly acclaimed production of Julius Caesar at the Bridge Theatre.She chooses music by Vaughan Williams, Rimsky-Korsakov, Bernstein, Puccini, Britten, and the African musician Dade Krama - music which reflects joyous moments in her life but also the challenges she's faced: growing up mixed