Private Passions

Kim Moore won the prestigious Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize this year for her first poetry collection, "The Art of Falling", and is still only in her thirties. The judges described her prize-winning collection as "thrilling: language at its most irresistible and essential". But however thrilling, poets need to make a living, and Kim Moore's day job has been as a trumpet teacher, in Cumbria where she lives. She's also conducted brass bands. In Private Passions, Kim Moore explores her musical passion for brass, from Handel's Messiah through to Britten's Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings, taking in the Grimethorpe Colliery Band on the way. She tells Michael Berkeley how she started writing, and about her sequence of poems exploring a dark and abusive relationship. She reflects too on the influence of her father's job as a scaffolder, and how a fear of falling and images of falling haunt her work. And there are some true confessions about what it's like to play the trumpet in a bandstand with one dog and the

As part of Radio 3's week in the forest, Michael Berkeley talks to wildlife presenter, President of the RSPB and accomplished musician Miranda Krestovnikoff.She's dived with sharks, shown viewers how to eat roadkill, and searched for mammoth bones in the North Sea. The co-presenter of ten series of Coast, Miranda's also a regular on The One Show and Radio 4's Costing the Earth. As well as the RSPB she's involved in numerous other environmental and wildlife charities. She tells Michael about staying up all night waiting for pine martens in a Scottish forest, and a frightening experience diving with sharks. But she's also a talented musician - a flautist, pianist, and singer who plays with the New Bristol Sinfonia and sings in choirs in the city. We hear a recording of Miranda singing a Duruflé motet with the Bristol University Singers and from other composers whose music she has performed - Holst, Vaughan Williams, and Rachmaninoff, whose All Night Vigil was played at her wedding. And we hear a piece that comb

Dr Richard Smith heads an organisation called Patients Know Best, and having been editor of the British Medical Journal for most of his career, he now enjoys stirring things up in a provocative weekly blog there. Among his targets: the sinister power of drug companies - and the not unrelated tendency of doctors to over-treat illnesses like cancer. When he's not stirring things up at home, Richard Smith is in Bangladesh, working for a charity trying to prevent the terrible human loss caused by infected drinking water. He has also worked as a television doctor and at one point answered readers' letters for Women's Realm.In Private Passions, Richard Smith tells Michael Berkeley about his strong belief that doctors and patients collude to hide the truth about disease and death, and explains why he gives a talk called provocatively: "Death: the Upside". He reveals too how music has sustained him at crisis points in his life. Choices include Bach's cello suites, the Stan Tracey Quartet, Shostakovich, Messiaen, Hayd

The Hay Festival began in 1988 with 250 people in a field in mid Wales. Thirty years later, the crowd has swelled to more than quarter of a million - 265,000 people are expected to turn up this year over ten days - and it's still in a field in mid-Wales. But the Hay Festival has also grown into an international brand, with spin-offs across the world in Colombia, Peru, Mexico and Segovia.The Festival founder, Peter Florence, has been running it all that time; he started it with his parents - his father was a theatre manager for Sam Wanamaker. Legend has it - and Peter confirms this - that it was partly funded by winnings from a poker game. In Private Passions, he looks back over the lessons of the last thirty years, and reveals how he has grappled with censorship when staging festivals in Hungary and Mexico. Peter Florence's music list reflects a passion for Bach and Mahler, and for the oud player Anouar Brahem. He chooses Handel's Sarabande, made famous by the film Barry Lyndon, and Sarah Vaughan singing "The

Michael Berkeley talks to the food writer, artist and journalist Elisabeth Luard about her favourite music and the memories it conjures up of the joys and tragedies of family life. The winner of the Guild of Food Writers Award for Lifetime Achievement, she has written more than twenty cookbooks, including European Peasant Cookery, Flavours of Andalucía, and A Cook's Year in a Welsh Farmhouse. And her compelling series of memoirs documents the joys and appalling tragedy she's experienced as a mother; the delight she found in living abroad with her young children; and the ups and downs of her long marriage. The latest is Squirrel Pie: Adventures in Food Across the Globe.Elisabeth tells Michael about her childhood growing up in embassies in South America and her return to school in England and a very special choir master. She chooses flamenco music that reminds her of her life in rural pre-tourism Andalucia bringing up her four young children.We hear Elisabeth's friend Christopher Logue reading from his poem War

For Lubaina Himid, winning the Turner Prize is recognition for thirty-five years of work as a painter, curator and installation artist. Her work is witty, vibrantly coloured, and provocative; in her most famous work, "Naming the Money", she filled galleries with more than a hundred huge and very beautiful cut-outs of African figures from the past - the forgotten black servants and musicians who were brought back by their slave-masters to live in Britain in the 18th century. Lubaina Himid herself was born in Zanzibar, Tanzania, but came here as a baby, first to Blackpool and then to London. She now lives in Preston, where she's Professor of Contemporary Art at the University of Central Lancashire. She was awarded an MBE for services to black women's art. She says "My work is a mixture of humour, celebration, optimism and fury. I want to challenge the order of things."In Private Passions, she talks about how winning the Turner Prize has changed her perspective, and about how she creates a musical soundtrack to

Michael Berkeley's guest is Anne Sebba, the best-selling biographer of iconic women including Wallis Simpson, Winston Churchill's mother Jennie, Laura Ashley, and Mother Teresa.Her most recent book tells the stories of the women of Paris in the 1940s. She follows the lives of housewives, Resistance fighters, shop girls, prostitutes and celebrities, all the time examining the big, small - and often impossible - choices people have to make in wartime. And we hear part of an operetta composed by one of these women, imprisoned by the Nazis at Ravensbruck.Anne tells Michael about her controversial biography of Wallis Simpson in which she claims that we should have more understanding of her situation and more admiration for her as a person - and she argues that Wallis married Edward with great reluctance.We hear Artur Rubinstein playing Rachmaninov, which brings back memories for Anne of interviewing him when she was a young journalist, and she chooses music by Mendelssohn, Chopin, and Verdi. A passionate advocate

The artist Phyllida Barlow shares her passion for music that reflects her sculpture, in its defiance of convention and delight in surprise. For years Phyllida Barlow was so desperate for people to see her sculptures that she would leave them on the street or in disused factories; or she would install them in friends' houses, using pianos and ironing boards as plinths.Initially overlooked by museums and galleries, she was in her sixties when she found widespread recognition - in the last decade she's been invited to exhibit all over the world, and has became a Royal Academician, a CBE, and the recipient of numerous awards. Her 2014 exhibition at Tate Britain was unforgettable - she filled the cavernous Duveen Galleries with huge, gravity-defying pieces made out of timber and scrap materials which appeared to be about to topple over or to be on the point of collapse. And in 2017 she received the ultimate accolade of representing Great Britain at the Venice Biennale.She talks to Michael Berkeley about finding su

In a revealing and entertaining programme for Easter Day, the Reverend Richard Coles talks to Michael Berkeley about his double life as a celebrity priest and his enduring passion for classical music. The only vicar to have had a number one hit and to have danced the paso doble dressed as Flash Gordon in front of 10 million television viewers, Richard Coles is also the presenter of Radio 4's Saturday Live and the author of several books including a devastatingly honest autobiography in which he describes how he swapped the sex-and-drugs fuelled world of pop stardom for the life of a parish priest. Richard talks to Michael about how he balances being a celebrity - appearing on shows such as Strictly Come Dancing, Celebrity Masterchef and Have I Got News For You - with the day to day normalities of being a vicar in rural Northamptonshire. He reveals how Mozart helped his recovery from depression as a teenager, looks back on the risks he took as a hedonistic pop star with The Communards in the 1980s, and talks f

Xavier Bray is a renowned specialist in 17th- and 18th-century art, and he's been director for a year now of the Wallace Collection, that rich collection of rococo painting, china, and armour, housed in a grand mansion in Marylebone that remains something of a well-kept secret. Bray would like to change that, opening up the gallery to a wider public and to music of all kinds. He himself would have loved to be an opera singer, and he has sung in choirs all his life. His party piece is a demonstration of Mongolian throat singing, which he taught himself after going to a concert as a student. He gives Michael Berkeley a demonstration, and discusses, more seriously, the connection between the visual arts and music. He reveals his other musical passions: for Marin Marais, flamenco, Bizet, Messiaen, and for the Italian tenor Beniamino Gigli. Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

The poet and singer-songwriter Gwyneth Glyn talks to Michael Berkeley about the music she loves from Wales and around the world. Gwyneth has been described as a poet among singers and a singer among poets. She's also a television script writer, a playwright and a children's author, having won the Crown at the Urdd Eisteddfod aged 18, and going on to be appointed Wales' National Poet Laureate for Children in 2006, the year she also won Best Female Artist in the Radio Cymru Rock and Pop Awards. Brought up in a Welsh speaking household, she's a passionate advocate of the language both within Wales and internationally.Gwyneth talks to Michael about writing a libretto for the first ever Welsh language opera, growing up in a rural Welsh-speaking community, and the pleasures and challenges of passing the language on to the next generation. She chooses music from her collaboration with Indian ghazal singer Tauseef Akhtar, as well as music by Tippett, Welsh folk hero Meredydd Evans, Rimsky Korsakov and Tchaikovsky. Pr

Richard Flanagan first came to worldwide attention in 2001 with one of the most original titles ever: "Gould's Book of Fish, a Novel in Twelve Fish". It was his third novel, the story of a 19th-century forger sentenced to hard labour off the coast of Van Diemen's Land. Van Diemen's Land, or Tasmania as it's now called, is where Flanagan was brought up, and still lives and writes, publishing every few years a novel that is extraordinarily thought-provoking and original - and very different from all the books before. His last novel, The Narrow Road to the Deep North, about the Death Railway in Burma, won the Booker Prize. Four years on, his new novel First Person is the story of a conman, and it's based on an extraordinary experience of his own. Flanagan dreamed of being a writer but was working as a builder's labourer when he suddenly got a commission: to write the life story of a notorious conman who was facing jail. They spent three weeks together shut up in a publisher's office, and it was frightening to be

In a special edition to mark International Women's Day next week, Michael Berkeley talks to Britain's most decorated female Olympic athlete, the rower Dame Katherine Grainger.Katherine won a silver medal in Rio in 2016 - at the age of 40. It was her fifth medal from five consecutive Olympic Games, including a gold in the double sculls at London 2012. On her return from Rio, she was voted the Olympians' Olympian by her fellow Team GB athletes. The holder of six World Champion titles, she has an MBE and a CBE, was made a dame in 2017 New Year's Honours list, and, since last summer, has been the Chair of UK Sport.On top of her huge sporting achievements, Katherine has a PhD in Criminal Law and is Chancellor of Oxford Brookes University. Katherine tells Michael how music has helped her to cope with the pressure of competing at the highest level, and how music has been an important part of her life since her Scottish childhood. She chooses a Mozart aria to remind her of her grandparents in Aberdeen, and Rachmanino

Singer, multi-instrumentalist, electronic sitar player, performer and DJ, Bishi has performed with everyone from Yoko Ono, Pulp, Goldfrapp, the LSO, and the Kronos Quartet. A glamorous and extravagantly costumed presence on stage, she's influenced by both Eastern and Western classical music as well as electronic dance, glam rock and folk music. Michael Berkeley talks to her about growing up with the music of her mother, Susmita Bhattacharya, a celebrated Indian classical singer who knew Ravi Shankar. Bishi has her own take on the sitar, which she plays like an electric guitar. A talented chorister and pianist as a child, she could have chosen a career in Western classical music, but instead has brought it to bear on her own panoramic musical style.She chooses music from Ravi Shankar's collaboration with Philip Glass, iconic film soundtracks she's used in her work as a DJ, a song she's sung from a Bulgarian choir and pieces from major influences Mica Levi and Meredith Monk.Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus pro

Bernard Cornwell is now one of the world's most popular writers of historical fiction. He's famous for his Sharpe series, about a British soldier during the Napoleonic wars, and for his Last Kingdom books, set in 9th-century Britain. Both have become successful television adaptations, with a third season of The Last Kingdom being filmed for Netflix at the moment. The numbers are pretty staggering: 57 books published, worldwide sales of 35 million. But Bernard Cornwell owes his existence as a writer to a very happy accident. It was 1978, he was in an office in Edinburgh, the lift doors opened, and out stepped a blonde. In his own words, he "fell disastrously in love". But Judy, the woman who stepped out of the lift, was American, and, when he moved to America to live with her, he couldn't get a green card. Unemployed, he decided to write a novel. And so the Sharpe series was born. In Private Passions, Bernard Cornwell reveals his extraordinary childhood among a religious sect called the "Peculiar People". He w

Michael Berkeley talks to the actress Frances Barber about the music and friendships that have inspired her throughout her career. From Cleopatra at the Globe Theatre to the evil Madame Kovarian in Dr Who, from Peter Greenaway to Inspector Morse, and from Chekhov at the Royal Shakespeare Company to playing a seductive barrister in TV's Silk, Frances Barber is one of our most versatile actors. From the moment she won the Olivier Award for the Most Promising Newcomer, her hugely diverse career has spanned theatre, television and film - and every genre from comedy, sci-fi, kitchen sink drama, to theatrical classics and Hollywood.Frances tells Michael how she discovered classical music by working her way through the records in her local library when she was setting out on her acting career; she chooses Chopin to remind her of that time.In a funny and revealing interview, Frances talks about the music that's been part of her work, including Michael Nyman's soundtrack to A Zed and Two Noughts and songs by Brecht an

Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough is steeped in Viking lore. She travels through the icy landscapes of the Far North in the footsteps of those Norse "far travellers" who have left us their wonderful poetic stories of kings and trolls and dragons. She's an Associate Professor at Durham University and an AHRC Radio 3 New Generation Thinker, and her fieldwork has taken her pretty much everywhere the Vikings went: through Greenland, Norway, Iceland, Sweden, and Orkney. Recently she went to stay on the Arctic island of Svalbard, where in 24-hour darkness she encountered a family of polar bears. Eleanor Barraclough's music list full of snow and ice - glittering, shimmering music - from the Norwegian composer Frode Fjellheim and Sibelius's 5th Symphony, through Eriks Esenvalds' "Northern Lights", to Martin Carthy, singing "Lady Franklin's Lament". She ends with music by Geoffrey Burgon that will resonate with anyone growing up at the end of the last century: the theme tune to the BBC dramatization of Narnia. Produced by

Alistair Spalding talks about dance with the zeal of the convert. Although he's headed Sadler's Wells since 2004, commissioning new work from leading international choreographers - Akram Khan, Mark Morris, Matthew Bourne, Pina Bausch - he doesn't come from a dance background. He left school at sixteen, and worked in a solicitor's office, aiming to be a lawyer. He then studied linguistics and philosophy and became a primary school teacher. And so, how did he end up becoming Artistic Director and Chief Executive of Sadler's Wells in London, the top British venue for international dance?In Private Passions, Alistair Spalding reveals his route to an unlikely career, beginning with the first dance performance he ever saw: John Cage was in the pit, blowing on a conch shell. He explains his vision of drawing in the best contemporary composers to write for dance, and of widening the repertoire to include older dancers. He discusses too his innovative and highly popular dance afternoons for the over-65s. Music choices

The physicist and broadcaster Helen Czerski talks to Michael Berkeley about her favourite music, inspired by her Polish heritage and her fascination with technology and exploration. Having gained a wonderfully titled PhD in Experimental and Explosive Physics from Cambridge in 2006, Helen worked in the US and Canada, and is now a Research Fellow at University College London where she specialises in the relationship between waves, weather and climate.But apart from her academic research and teaching she has another mission - to make physics accessible to us all. She does this by exploring the connections between the way the world works and our everyday experiences - for example weather patterns can be seen in microcosm when you stir milk into your tea. Hence the title of her highly successful book - Storm in a Teacup.She writes regularly for the Guardian, and has made numerous radio and television programmes about colour, bubbles, the sun, the weather - and the science behind sound and music. Her latest is a th

Alfred Brendel is one of the great musicians of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. He's renowned for his masterly interpretations of the works of Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, Brahms, Liszt and Beethoven; in fact he was the first performer to record the complete solo piano works of Beethoven.Alfred Brendel gave his first public recital in Graz at the age of only 17, in 1948, and went on performing around the world for more than sixty years. Since his retirement in 2008 he has relished the chance to teach young musicians, and to spend more time going to exhibitions, reading and writing; he has published six volumes of essays and two collections of his own poetry.In Private Passions he talks to Michael Berkeley about the composers and musicians he admires, and looks back at his early life. It wasn't a musical childhood; the family had no record player, but his mother used to sing cabaret songs. And later, as a teenager, his father managed a hotel and he discovered a stack of LPs, all operettas. The War made a