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PODCAST

Private Passions

Guests from all walks of life discuss their musical passions and talk about the influence music has had on their lives.

music personal journals

All Episodes

50:22

Daniel Katz

Private Passions ·

2025/07/06

Daniel Katz is a renowned art dealer, collector and gallery owner who has very much beaten his own path through the tangled forests of the art world. Although he left school at the age of 14, his energetic curiosity brought him early success, making a profit of £15 on the first bronze he bought, and discovering something quite unexpected inside a grandfather clock. Danny is an expert on European sculpture, but has also branched out into new fields, including antiquities, Old Masters, Impressionist

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50:32

Jay Griffiths

Private Passions ·

2025/06/29

Jay Griffiths first wanted to be a writer – an entity she believed to be a “god-like” creature - when she was just four years old and already captivated by words. And she’s fulfilled that early ambition. Her books include Wild, the product of seven years’ work, travelling to wildernesses including the Amazon rainforest, the Canadian Arctic and the Australian outback. She has also written very honestly about her experience of bipolar disorder in her book Tristimania: a Diary of Manic Depression

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49:52

Gabriel Zuchtriegel

Private Passions ·

2025/06/22

Gabriel Zuchtriegel is the director of Pompeii, one of the world’s most important ancient historical sites. It sits at the base of Mount Vesuvius, the still active volcano which erupted in 79AD and buried the city under volcanic ash and pumice, preserving a unique snapshot of life there nearly 2000 years ago.Gabriel grew up in Germany, where ruins and ancient myths first sparked his interest in our ancient past, and led him to study archaeology. Prior to Pompeii he oversaw Paestum, a site about 60

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51:15

Suzanne Vega

Private Passions ·

2025/06/15

The American singer songwriter Suzanne Vega released her first studio album almost exactly 40 years ago – and it soon found an audience, particularly here in the UK where it sold more than 300, 000 copies. Listeners responded to her understated, acoustic sound and thoughtful lyrics, in songs such as Marlene on the Wall and Luka. Another of her songs, Tom’s Diner, took on a life of its own. It’s been sampled by dozens of artists and one remix became a global hit.Suzanne recently released her tenth

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52:23

Hilary Cottam

Private Passions ·

2025/06/08

Hilary Cottam is a writer, innovator and social entrepreneur who wants to find solutions for some of the most intractable problems of our time - from the design of prisons to how we provide care for the elderly and might end long-term unemployment.In her book Radical Help, she argued that we need to re-invent the Welfare State to match the challenges of the 21st century. In her most recent book, The Work We Need, she focuses on how we could re-imagine work in a way that benefits everyone, in a

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53:11

Adam Buxton

Private Passions ·

2025/05/25

The comedian, writer and podcaster Adam Buxton first burst onto our TV screens 30 years ago. He and his friend Joe Cornish created The Adam and Joe Show, which featured pranks, songs and re-enactments of famous films like Titanic and Trainspotting using their childhood stuffed toys. Along with work on radio and film, an eye for the weird and wonderful quirks of music videos, and a multi-award winning interview podcast, he has also written two memoirs. The first, Ramble Book, included a very

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52:40

Philip Hoare

Private Passions ·

2025/05/18

Philip Hoare is an award-winning writer whose books often describe the lure of the sea, the strange and beautiful creatures that live in it and the inspiration artists have found in its murky depths. His book Leviathan won the Samuel Johnson Prize: it drew on his lifelong obsession with whales, which began with the gigantic skeletons in the Natural History Museum and continued with his own encounters with them at sea. His most recent book, William Blake and the Sea Monsters of Love, traces Blake’s

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48:54

Emma Rice

Private Passions ·

2025/05/11

The theatre director Emma Rice is renowned for her bold stagings of much-loved films and books including Brief Encounter, Wuthering Heights and the Red Shoes. For twenty years she worked as an actor, director, and eventually artistic director of Kneehigh, an international touring company based in Cornwall, known for its energetic productions with an inventive use of music and puppetry. In 2016, Emma became artistic director of Shakespeare’s Globe, the reconstructed Elizabethan theatre on the south

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50:07

Jonathan Sumption

Private Passions ·

2025/05/04

Jonathan Sumption, Lord Sumption, isn’t afraid of hard work or an intellectual challenge. He’s combined a high-profile legal career with a passion for medieval history, and his books include a five volume, 4000 page account of the Hundred Years War, widely described as ‘monumental.’ For much of his career he was a very successful barrister working on commercial law, constitutional law and human rights cases, with clients ranging from the British government to Roman Abramovich. Then in 2012 he made

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46:51

Colum McCann

Private Passions ·

2025/04/27

The writer Colum McCann isn’t afraid to take on big subjects – and his ambition has delivered a shelf full of awards, from both sides of the Atlantic. He grew up in Dublin but moved to the United States in the mid-1980s and now lives in New York. That city is the setting for his international bestseller Let the Great World Spin, in which Philippe Petit’s tightrope walk between the Twin Towers in 1974 plays a key role. He’s also written a novel about both sides of the conflict between Israel and the

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48:44

Romola Garai

Private Passions ·

2025/04/20

Romola Garai won her first professional acting roles as a teenager, and since then, her career has taken her in a wide range of dramatic directions. Most recently, she won a 2025 Olivier Award for her role in The Years, a sometimes shocking play based on a novel by Nobel Prize winner Annie Ernaux – and she was competing against herself, with a nomination in the same category for her part in Giant, a play about Roald Dahl.Her previous stage work includes playing Cordelia opposite Ian McKellen’s King

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48:52

Terry Gilliam

Private Passions ·

2025/04/13

Terry Gilliam is one of the world’s most imaginative and original directors. He first made his mark more than 50 years ago, with the animated opening sequence of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, when a giant foot stomped on the titles with a burst of flatulence. That spirit of mischief, fun and creative adventure has informed many of his films: they include Time Bandits, Brazil, The Fisher King and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, working with stars such as Matt Damon, Uma Thurman, Brad Pitt and

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49:11

Monica Feria-Tinta

Private Passions ·

2025/04/06

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. More recently she has found herself pleading for rivers, oceans, cloud forests and endangered species. As

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46:59

Boulez at 100: Gerard McBurney

Private Passions ·

2025/03/30

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 scores he has rescued from oblivion with completions and orchestrations include the music-hall show

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48:36

Bob Crowley

Private Passions ·

2025/03/23

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 evoking the foggy London skyline for Mary Poppins and couture dresses and the River Seine for An American

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46:50

Dr Sian Williams

Private Passions ·

2025/03/09

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 extraordinary events. In 2012, she started to train as a psychologist and was awarded a doctorate in

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48:31

Daniel Levitin

Private Passions ·

2025/02/23

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 psychology. He’s now Professor Emeritus at McGill University and has written several best-sellers investigating

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49:25

Ursula Jones

Private Passions ·

2025/02/09

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 was one of the founders of the Lucerne Festival, so famous musicians, including the likes of Richard

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46:30

Professor Anthony Kessel

Private Passions ·

2025/02/02

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-winning series of detective novels for young adults called Don’t Doubt the Rainbow – the most recent is

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48:35

Sir Paul Collier

Private Passions ·

2025/01/12

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. He received a knighthood in 2014 for his work on Africa. His most recent book is called Left Behind

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