Private Passions

Charlie Phillips is a Jamaican-born photographer whose work has been exhibited across the world, and is part of the permanent collections of The Tate and the V&A. He's best known for his photographs of the area of London where he arrived to live as a boy: Notting Hill. His images are full of the atmosphere of Notting Hill in the late 50s and 60s: slum housing, market traders, churchgoers, children playing on the streets - and they're now valued as a unique record of the experience of that Windrush Generation. Later in the sixties, Charlie Phillips photographed the student protests in Paris, pop festivals and rock stars, while making a living as a paparazzo, chasing Elizabeth Taylor around. Simon Schama has described him as a "Visual Poet - chronicler, champion, witness of a gone world - one of Britain's great photo-journalists." But Charlie Phillips didn't set out to be a photographer; instead, he wanted to be an opera singer, and during his time as a paparazzo in Milan he achieved his ambition, singing f

Geoff Dyer is a writer who joyously defies categorisation. The winner of many literary prizes, and frequently described as one of the most original writers of his generation, he surprises at every turn with his blending of fiction and non-fiction, and with his subjects, which range through travel, film, sex, photography, war, romance - and music.The book that cemented his reputation, in 1991, was about jazz - with the memorable title But Beautiful. It's a series of fictional vignettes of musicians from the great age of American jazz, including Bud Powell, Chet Baker and Thelonious Monk. Geoff talks to Michael Berkeley about how his life-long passion for jazz has taken him on a musical journey from Miles Davis, to Keith Jarrett playing Bach, and Indian classical music - and he explains why Beethoven's Late Quartets appeal so strongly to a lover of jazz. Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Thérèse Oulton burst on to the scene in 1984, fresh out of art school, with a highly-praised solo exhibition, which was followed three years later by a nomination for the Turner Prize.From the very beginning she has challenged the orthodoxies of both abstract and figurative painting. And her recent highly detailed landscapes find beauty even in a damaged, fragile earth, evoking both familiarity and strangeness.Her work is highly prized by collectors and is in major public collections around the world, including the Tate and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.Thérèse talks to Michael Berkeley about her passion for Wagner, the physicality of music and painting, and the pleasure of listening to live music. Her music choices include Britten, Shostakovich, Wagner, Brecht and Mary Lou Williams - inspired by the time she spent waitressing at Ronnie Scott's as an art student.Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Helen Oyeyemi wrote her first novel The Icarus Girl, about a mixed race child and her imaginary friend, in secret, while she was still at school studying for her A levels. Four more novels have followed and, most recently, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours, a collection of short stories. She appeared on Granta's Best of Young British Novelists list in 2013. Helen's twisted fairy tales possess a heightened reality, blurring the everyday and the fantastic, making her readers question what is real and what is unreal. In her world it's not just narrators that can be unreliable - even geography and time are unstable. She talks to Michael Berkeley about the pleasures of storytelling, the power of fairy tales and her passion for her adopted city of Prague, reflected in music by the Czech composer Martinu. And she chooses music that sparks her imagination from Rimsky-Korsakov, Offenbach, Elgar, and a South Korean rock band.Produced by Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Paterson Joseph bunked off school when he was thirteen and spent the next two years going to the local library instead, reading his way from Agatha Christie through to Alexander Pushkin. It was a good training for someone who's become one of our most versatile and successful actors. Paterson Joseph is well known from numerous Shakespeare productions at the RSC and the Royal Exchange Manchester, and from Casualty and Dr Who. He achieved notoriety as the grotesque boss Alan Johnson in Peep Show. Paterson Joseph has recently been touring America with a show that he's written himself, about one of his heroes - the black 18th-century London grocer and composer Ignatius Sancho. He talks to Michael Berkeley about why Sancho has been unjustly neglected, and what he thinks about "colour-blind" casting. Music choices include Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin, Louis Armstrong, Bach, Charlie Mingus, Billie Holliday - and Ignatius Sancho. Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Lara Feigel made her name writing about the relationship between life, love, literature and history in London during the Second World War with her wonderfully titled and highly praised book The Love Charm of Bombs.Her latest, The Bitter Taste of Victory, returns to the 1940s and looks at British and American attempts to impose culture from abroad in the hope of 'civilising' post-war Germany. She talks to Michael Berkeley about what it was in her family history that drew her to writing about the Second World War, the perils of romanticizing it, and the emotional toll of engaging with such a distressing period of history. As well as Bach and Beethoven, Lara chooses music which reflects preoccupations and personalities in post-war Germany - Furtwängler's recording of Tristan und Isolde, a song from Marlene Dietrich, and music by Richard Strauss. Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Production for BBC Radio 3.

Grayson Perry burst into the public consciousness in 2003 when he accepted the Turner Prize with the words: 'It's about time a transvestite potter from Essex won the Turner.' Since then he's become celebrated for his beautiful, intricately decorated vases, which juxtapose images of innocence, obscenity and humour. He's worked across many other media as well - from tapestry to bronze, print-making to architecture, and the outrageously flamboyant frocks he wears when he goes out dressed as a woman are works of art in their own right.He chooses Tchaikovsky, Philip Glass, Marcello and Kathleen Ferrier and explores with Michael Berkeley the emotional power of music and memory; escaping an unhappy childhood; the fun of demystifying the art world; and the joys and perils of moving from rebel to national treasure. Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

As BBC Radio 3 celebrates 70 years of pioneering music and culture, Michael Berkeley travels to Sussex to meet Dame Joan Plowright for a special edition of Private Passions. Dame Joan's extraordinary six-decade career has taken her from the Royal Court Theatre to international movie stardom, via the West End, Broadway and the National Theatre. Along the way she has won a panoply of awards, including an Oscar nomination for The Enchanted April. In a moving and wide-ranging interview, Dame Joan shares memories of a life well-lived: from her childhood in Scunthorpe, to her work with figures such as Franco Zeffirelli, and the man who was to change the course of her life: Sir Laurence Olivier, whom she married in 1961. Looking back to the Third Programme, Private Passions has unearthed a clip of one of Dame Joan's signature performances, Margery Pinchwife from Wycherley's The Country Wife, broadcast in 1960. (Laurence Olivier himself was a leading member of the 'Third Programme Defence Society'.) Dame Joan reveals

A former Turner Prize-nominee, George Shaw is renowned for his highly detailed approach and suburban subject matter, and for his idiosyncratic medium - Humbrol enamel paint, typically used to colour model trains and aeroplanes.Armed with a sketchbook, the teenage Shaw made regular day trips from his home in a caravan on a Coventry council estate to the National Gallery in order to draw from works by artists he found inspiring. He's now back at the National Gallery with a major exhibition, My Back to Nature, the culmination of a two-year residency. He has developed into one of Britain's most inspiring contemporary painters, a close observer of nature, with the sharp eye of a Freud or Hockney.He talks to Michael about the music that inspires his life and work and chooses works by Schubert, Elgar, Purcell and Brian Eno.Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

On this, the 15th anniversary of 9/11, Michael Berkeley's guest is Daniel Libeskind, a world-renowned architect, known for concert halls, opera sets, museums, hotels and universities. In 2003 Libeskind won an international competition to produce an overarching vision for buildings which would stand on the site of the Twin Towers. That vision is now almost complete, and includes a memorial to those who were killed in the attacks. He's called his plan "a site of memory, a healing of New York". Daniel Libeskind had already made his reputation with buildings that symbolised and preserved tragic histories, such as the Jewish Museum in Berlin, and the German Military Museum in Dresden. In Private Passions, he talks to Michael Berkeley about the day he first visited the site and climbed down into the crater left in the earth. He says that experience changed his life - he began to hear the voices of the dead. He talks about how he decided this should be a "sacred site", and that the footprint of the twin towers shoul

Steve Silberman is an award-winning investigative reporter based in San Francisco; he writes for The New Yorker, Nature, Wired and Time Magazine. He has spent ten years researching the untold history of autism for his book "Neurotribes: The Legacy of Autism and How to Think Smarter About People Who Think Differently". Published last year, it won the biggest British prize for a non-fiction book, the Samuel Johnson prize, as well as many American awards. The book sets out to answer a deceptively simple question: why is so little understood about autism, 70 years after it was first discovered? Since writing it, Silberman has become an ally to thousands of people with autism who haven't had a voice, and for what's become known as "neurodiversity".In Private Passions, Steve Silberman talks to Michael Berkeley about his time listening to people with autism, trying to understand the world from their point of view. He discusses the connection between autism and eccentricity, and between autism and musical ability. He

Michael Berkeley welcomes the Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, as his Private Passions. The first woman, the first Scot, and the first openly gay person to hold the post, she was appointed in 2009, having won many awards for her poetry collections since taking first prize in the National Poetry Competition in 1983. Most recently, 'Rapture' (2005) won the TS Eliot Prize, and her latest collection, 'The Bees', won the 2011 Costa Book Award for Poetry.Born into a Roman Catholic family in the Gorbals, a poor area of Glasgow, Carol Ann developed a passionate love of literature at school, and for a decade from the age of 16 she lived with the Liverpool poet Adrian Henri. She had two plays performed at the Liverpool Playhouse and received an honours degree in phoilosophy from the University of Liverpool. In 1996 she was appointed a lecturer in poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University and later became creative director of its Writing School. She was appointed Poet Laureate in 2009. Her work as laureate includes po

Michael Berkeley welcomes the actor, playwright and director Steven Berkoff, renowned for the visceral quality of his plays such as East, West, Decadence, Greek, Sink the Belgrano, Scumbags, Ritual in Blood and Messiah. He has also adapted and directed for the stage Kafka's Metamorphosis and The Trial, the Greek tragedy Agamemnon, and Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher. His plays, adaptations and his one-man show have toured widely abroad, from the Far East to the USA.As an actor, Steven has appeared in films ranging from A Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon, Octopussy and Beverly Hills Cop to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. On TV he has been seen in The Professionals, Star Trek and Jonathan Creek, among others. He has published a variety of books on the theatre, and an autobiography, Free Association.His eclectic musical choices range from music for the stage - Milhaud's ballet La création du monde, Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet, Britten's opera A Midsummer Night's Dream and incidental music to Brecht's Mother

Michael Berkeley's guest on Private Passions this week is the best-selling children's author Judith Kerr. Now 89, Judith was born into a distinguished pre-war German Jewish intellectual family: her father, Alfred Kerr, was a well known journalist and critic, and her mother, Julia, a composer. The family fled from Berlin in 1933 after Hitler's rise to power, and lived in Switzerland and Paris before reaching London in 1936. In the 1950s Judith met and married Nigel Kneale, author of the famous BBC TV science fiction series Quatermass. Their son Matthew Kneale has followed in his parents' footsteps, becoming an acclaimed novelist, while their daughter Tacy is an artist.Judith is both a writer and an illustrator, best known for her children's books, including the much-loved Mog series (about a cat), 'The Tiger Who Came to Tea' and the novel for young adults 'When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit', which is based on her own experiences as a child refugee, and won the 1974 Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis.Judith's musical c

Michael Berkeley's guest this week is the filmmaker, writer and playwright Mike Leigh, who began his career in the theatre and with TV dramas such as 'Abigail's Party' and 'Nuts in May', and went to to produce a string of original, award-winning films including 'Life is Sweet', 'Career Girls', the Gilbert and Sullivan biopic 'Topsy Turvy', 'Naked', 'Secrets and Lies', 'Happy Go Lucky', 'Vera Drake', and most recently, 'Another Year'. Many of his films involve an element of improvisation, and Mike Leigh has launched the careers of an impressive array of distinguished British actors, including Alison Steadman. Brenda Blethyn, David Thewlis, Sally Hawkins, Liz Smith and Jane Horrocks. His play 'Ecstasy' is currently enjoying a West End revival.Mike Leigh's choices begin with two extracts by Gilbert and Sullivan. He starts with a comic duet from 'Ruddigore' (I once was a very abandoned person)l, and goes on to 'The World is but a broken toy' from 'Princess Ida', which he loves for its sentimental charm. Mike Leig

Michael Berkeley's guests is Jasper Conran, one of Britain's best-known fashion designers. In 1978, Conran began producing women's clothing, and has since concentrated on such diverse fields as home furnishings, crystal and china, as well as designing costumes and sets for ballets, plays and opera.His musical choices encompass singers such as Kathleen Ferrier, Ella Fitzgerald, Bessie Smith and Cat Stevens, as well as works by Mozart, Schubert, Chopin, and his favourite composer, Handel.M Berkeley: The Wakeful Poet (Music from Chaucer) (pub OUP) Beaux-Arts Brass Quintet BBQ BBQ 003, Tr 10 Duration: 25sTrad: Blow the Wind Southerly Kathleen Ferrier (contralto) Kathleen Ferrier DECCA 417 192-2, Tr 3 Duration: 2m20sSchubert: Impromptu No 4 in A flat, D899 Melvyn Tan (fortepiano) Schubert EMI CDC 7 49102-2, Tr 4 Duration: 6m48s Elizabeth Welch: Stormy Weather (Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler) LP Elizabeth Welch WORLD RECORDS SH 233 S1 B6 Duration: 3m23sHandel: Where'er you Walk (Semele - Act 2, Sc 3) Anthony Rolfe-J

Michael Berkeley's guest on Private Passions is the novelist and short story writer Michele Roberts. The child of a French mother and English father, she was brought up and still divides her time between the two countries. She studied English at Oxford University, worked for the British Council, and then became a writer. She is currently Emeritus Professor of Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia.She is the author of twelve highly acclaimed novels, including 'Daughters of the House' (1992), which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the W H Smith Literary Award; 'Flesh and Blood' (1994), 'The Looking Glass' (2000), 'Reader, I Married Him' (2005), and her latest novel, 'Ignorance' (2012), a war-time novel set in France. She has also published a memoir, 'Paper Houses', dealing with the themes that inform her novels - love, feminist ideals and the legacy of her Catholic upbringing; and a collection of short stories of sex and love, entitled 'Mud' (2010).Music has always played an important pa

Michael Berkeley's guest is the historian, biographer and critic Lucy Hughes-Hallett, whose books include a cultural history of the ancient Egyptian queen Cleopatra and a story of heroism told through eight famous lives from Achilles and Odysseus to Francis Drake and Garibaldi. Her latest book, The Pike, deals with the controversial life of the Italian poet and occasional politician Gabriele d'Annunzio, who evolved from romantic idealist to radical right-wing revolutionary, culminating in his dramatic attempt to seize political power in the Croatian city of Fiume (now Rijeka). Through his ideological journey, Lucy Hughes-Hallett examines the political turbulence of early 20th-century Europe and the rise of fascism.Lucy's musical enthusiasms range from Byzantine chant through operas by Monteverdi, Handel and Verdi to The Rolling Stones, and an extract from Debussy's Le martyre de Saint Sébastien.

George Steiner discusses his personal music choices with Michael Berkeley in 2002 - drawn from the archive to mark 20 years of Private Passions.

Marina Lewycka, a post-war baby born to Ukrainian parents in a German refugee camp, has lived in England since she was one. Her parents settled in a village near Pontefract, and she has lived in south Yorkshire for much of her life. She read English and Philosophy at Keele University, enrolled for a PhD at Kings College, London, and then spent many years as an unpublished writer, before finally achieving huge success, at the age of 58, with the novel 'A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian'. Her two subsequent novels, 'Two Caravans' and 'We Are All Made of Glue', also deal with aspects of immigrant life, treated with wry humour and great poignancy.Her musical passions, as revealed to Michael Berkeley, begin with two classics of the Baroque repertoire, Bach's First Brandenburg Concerto, and the aria 'I know that my Redeemer liveth', from Handel's Messiah. The Sibelius Violin Concerto was as great favourite of her father, who died recently; while Marina herself has attempted to play her next choice, Mozart's