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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

30:52

John Harvey

Private Passions ·

2014/11/16

Crime writer John Harvey has no shortage of fans. His prize-winning books have sold over a million copies and have been translated and published all over the world. His Nottingham detective Charlie Resnick is now so well known – after 12 novels, two television adaptations and four radio plays – that he seems like a real person: a brooding solitary sensitive man who has a passion for ... listening to jazz. And this is where the fans come in. Because for years now they have been sending Harvey

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31:31

Roger Law

Private Passions ·

2014/11/09

Roger Law was the evil genius behind the mocking caricature puppets of Spitting Image, the award-winning TV series, which ran for over 12 years. No politician escaped: John Major was entirely grey and in underpants; Mrs Thatcher cross-dressed and chomped cigars; Tony Blair's grin was as wide as a shark's. When the show ended, in 1996, Law transported himself to Australia where he bought paint and brushes and - in his words - 'began chasing rainbows'. From there, a growing passion for ceramics took

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41:30

Kathryn Tickell

Private Passions ·

2014/11/02

Michael Berkeley's guest is the Northumbrian musician Kathryn Tickell. Kathryn Tickell is rooted in the remote hill farms of Northumbria; her grandparents were shepherds, and she grew up playing the Northumbrian pipes and fiddle at village dances. By the age of just 16, she was the official piper to the Lord Mayor of Newcastle and had released her first album. 19 more albums have followed. She was the first folk performer at the BBC Proms, was named Musician of the Year at the 2013 Radio 2 Folk

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31:27

Kika Markham

Private Passions ·

2014/10/26

Michael Berkeley's guest is the actor Kika Markham, widow of Corin Redgrave.'Actors by their nature are curious, fickle, insecure people: flirts. They should not live together.' So says Kika Markham; but she didn't follow her own advice; instead she fell in love with the actor Corin Redgrave - they were together for 33 years until his death in 2010. Kika's own career began in the 1960s; she made her name in a series of television films, directed by Ken Loach, Dennis Potter, and then, for the cinema,

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31:21

David Lan

Private Passions ·

2014/10/19

David Lan is a huge force in theatre in Britain, indeed internationally. But how he got there is surprising. Brought up in Cape Town, he began his career as an anthropologist, living for two years in a remote area of Zimbabwe in order to study spirit magic. He went on to become a playwright and documentary director, and he's written the libretto for two operas. One critic recently described Lan as a 'Diaghilev-like figure' because of his flair for bringing artists together. As Artistic Director of

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37:23

Roy Foster

Private Passions ·

2014/10/12

As the first incumbent of the only chair in Irish History in Britain, at Oxford, Roy Foster has devoted his career to bringing Irish history to the forefront of British minds. Unafraid to challenge cherished myths about the past, his scholarship has transformed historical writing. He has also written the only authorised life of W. B. Yeats, a two-volume labour of love that took him 18 years. And his new book Vivid Faces: The Revolutionary Generation in Ireland, 1890-1923 pulls into focus the quarter

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34:04

Charles Spencer

Private Passions ·

2014/09/28

Charles Spencer, the 9th Earl Spencer, is probably best known as the younger brother of Diana, Princess of Wales, and is remembered above all for the moving eulogy he gave at Diana's funeral. But he's also had a successful career as a television reporter and presenter, and since Diana's death has turned to history; his latest book is a study of regicide, with the title 'Killers of the King'. The King in question is Charles I, and the book follows the fortunes of those who were responsible for his

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29:02

Sir Timothy Gowers

Private Passions ·

2014/09/21

Timothy Gowers is the son of a composer, the brother of a violinist, and a keen jazz pianist. But that's not how he makes a living. In fact, Sir Timothy Gowers is one the country's most distinguished mathematicians. He's a Fellow of the Royal Society, was awarded the prestigious Fields medal, and was knighted two years ago for services to mathematics. In Private Passions, he talks to Michael Berkeley about his musical upbringing, and early dreams of becoming a composer. He confesses that it's hard

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33:37

Sophie Hannah

Private Passions ·

2014/09/07

Sophie Hannah is a prize-winning poet, whose work is studied in schools and universities across the country, and the author of nine dark psychological thrillers. Alongside the thrillers - one a year - she's edited an anthology of poems about sex, composed love lyrics for contemporary composers, and has been writer in residence at Trinity College Cambridge. Her latest project is to write a new Poirot mystery; she was chosen by the Christie Estate to fill in one of the great detective's missing years

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34:31

Mark Miodownik

Private Passions ·

2014/08/31

From concrete to chocolate and teacups to tennis racquets, it's the everyday stuff of life that fascinates Mark Miodownik. He's Professor of Materials and Society at University College London where he is also Director of the Institute of Making, a research hub for scientists, designers, engineers, artists, architects - and musicians. A passionate communicator about the vital role of science in society, he's written a bestselling book Stuff Matters; he's the scientist in residence on Dara O'Briain's

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33:43

Helen Ghosh

Private Passions ·

2014/08/24

National Trust Director General Helen Ghosh takes Michael Berkeley on a tour of Leith Hill Place, now a National Trust property but once the childhood home of Ralph Vaughan Williams.She chooses his Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, as well as music by Britten, Mozart and Schubert. And her choice of Ravel reveals the alternative career she almost had - as a ballet dancer.

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35:34

Miles Jupp

Private Passions ·

2014/08/10

Miles Jupp burst onto the comedy scene when he won the 'So You Think You're Funny' contest at the Edinburgh Festival at the age of just twenty-one. He'd already, as an undergraduate, won the part of Archie the Inventor in the hugely popular children's television show Balamory, but he eventually tired of wearing a pink kilt. Since then he has established himself on the comedy circuit, and on radio and television in panel shows including Have I Got News for You, and comedies such as The Thick of It

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29:27

Stephen Grosz

Private Passions ·

2014/08/03

Stephen Grosz waited until he was 60 to publish his first book, 'The Examined Life'. It was a huge overnight success - a bestseller here in Britain and translated into more than 20 languages across the world. It's a distillation of the lifetime he has spent as a psychoanalyst, tens of thousands of hours listening to people in hospitals, forensic clinics and in private practice. It reads like a collection of short stories, full of vignettes of memorable characters: the man who faked his own death,

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32:50

Phyllida Law

Private Passions ·

2014/07/27

Phyllida Law burst onto the stage in the mid 1950s and since then her career has spanned everything from the first British production of The Crucible, to musicals such as La Cage aux Folles and television including Dixon of Dock Green and Rumpole, not to mention a list of films as long as your arm, The Time Machine and The Winter Guest being just two.Alongside all that she's somehow managed to fit in bringing up her two highly successful daughters Emma and Sophie Thompson, both of whom have followed

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38:34

Richard Holmes

Private Passions ·

2014/07/13

Biographer Richard Holmes shares his musical passions with Michael Berkeley, and his fascination with opium dreams, telescopes and balloons.Best known for his biographies of the Romantics - most notably Shelley and Coleridge - Richard Holmes has won just about every literary prize going.In recent years he has moved towards the history of science with his book The Age of Wonder, which was hailed widely as 'the non-fiction book of the year'.And his most recent book, Falling Upwards, all about the

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31:53

Music in the Great War: John Keane

Private Passions ·

2014/06/29

As part of Radio 3's 'Music in the Great War' season, Michael Berkeley's guest is John Keane, who was appointed the official British War Artist during the first Gulf War. The job involved travelling with the British forces - a task he approached with enthusiasm, but also considerable apprehension. The paintings that came out of that conflict are now part of the permanent collection at the Imperial War Museum, along with an array of paintings from The First World War by artists including Paul Nash

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33:45

Eva Schloss

Private Passions ·

2014/06/15

Holocaust survivor Eva Schloss shares her extraordinary life story with Michael Berkeley and reveals the music that has brought her comfort, that conjures memories, and that brings her joy.Eva Schloss was born into a happy middle-class Jewish family in Vienna in 1929, but her childhood came to an abrupt end when she was nine and had to flee with her parents and older brother to escape the Nazis.Before going into hiding in Amsterdam Eva's family befriended Anne Frank's family, and after the war, the

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31:07

Nitin Sawhney

Private Passions ·

2014/06/08

Nitin Sawhney is a multi award-winning musician, producer and composer. With nine studio albums to his credit, he has collaborated with the likes of Paul McCartney, Joss Stone, Sting and Nelson Mandela, and has composed over 40 film and television scores, including for the BBC series Human Planet. In his own work he combines the musical traditions of East and West, and composes for a wide variety of different art forms. He has collaborated with the legendary theatre company Complicite, the dancer

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40:30

Irving Finkel

Private Passions ·

2014/06/01

Assyriologist Irving Finkel talks to Michael Berkeley about his passion for clay tablets, chamber music, and Jimi Hendrix.Irving Finkel is one of the world's leading experts in the world's oldest, and most impenetrable, system of writing - cuneiform.Because the scribes of Ancient Mesopotamia imprinted cuneiform with a stylus into clay tablets, lots of it has survived, and indeed Irving Finkel has spent the past 45 years delighting in the company of more than 130,000 cuneiform tablets at the British

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35:05

Emma Bridgewater

Private Passions ·

2014/05/18

Nearly 30 years ago Emma Bridgewater, a young English graduate, went shopping for a cup and saucer for her mother's birthday present. She couldn't find anything she liked - so she designed one herself, and enjoyed the process so much that she installed a kiln in her London flat. That small kiln has grown into a company with an annual turnover of 11 million pounds - and has revitalised the old potteries industry of Stoke-on-Trent. Her teapots and mugs covered in polka dots, hens, dogs and birds have

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