Private Passions

The American writer Rachel Eliza Griffiths creates poetry that resonates with music: she writes about her mother cleaning the house while ‘Pavarotti trembled across the terse sunlight of every room.’ As well as poetry, she’s written a novel, and her most recent book is a memoir called The Flower Bearers. It deals with loss, including the sudden death of her closest friend. She received the news on what should have been the happiest of days – her marriage to the writer Salman Rushdie. And less than a year later, she found herself beside his hospital bed after the knife attack which nearly claimed his life. But this is no misery memoir – there is the joy of finding her voice as a young poet in New York in the 90s, the strength she gains from the writers who have paved the way, and the music that travels with her. Eliza's music choices include music by Schumann, Bach, Puccini and Nina Simone.

Francis Spufford is an award-winning writer who loves to inhabit different worlds and vividly bring them to life: Golden Hill, which won the Costa First Novel Award, takes place in Manhattan in 1746, Light Perpetual begins in a Woolworths in South London in 1944 and Francis’s latest novel ‘Nonesuch’ is a historical fantasy set during the Blitz. But it wasn’t until he was 52 that Francis felt confident enough to write works of fiction, before that his books covered a wide variety of topics from polar expeditions to the economic optimism of post-Stalin Russia to an exploration of the role religion has played in his life. He became an atheist in his teens but turned back to the church after a 20 year hiatus. When not penning his own work, Francis encourages other budding authors as Professor of Creative Writing at Goldsmiths, University of London. His music choices include works by Byrd, Satie, Mozart and Ravel.

Sir Ian Blatchford has been the Director of the Science Museum in London for more than 15 years – the longest serving director in its history. He also oversees the National Railway Museum in York, the National Science and Media Museum in Bradford, the Science and Industry Museum in Manchester, Locomotion in County Durham, and the Science and Innovation Park in Wiltshire - all enjoyed by more than four million visitors last year. He was the first in his family to go to university and his early career was in banking, but his passion was for culture. He combined the two as Finance Director at the V+A, before crossing the road to lead the Science Museum. It’s currently a very challenging time for anyone running a museum, with hard questions about funding, sponsorship and exhibition content. His musical choices include Elgar, Monteverdi, Wagner and Sarah Vaughan. Producer: Katy Hickman

The American writer George Saunders won the 2017 Booker Prize with his first novel, Lincoln in the Bardo. It’s a moving exploration of the grief of President Lincoln as he mourns his 11-year-old son Willie – and it’s voiced by the weird and wonderful spirits trapped in the cemetery. George was 58 when the novel was published. In the decades before that, he won renown and awards as a master of the short story. He’s also won legions of followers for his close analysis of the form. Most recently he’s published a second novel, Vigil, in which spirits return – this time to the deathbed of an oil tycoon. His musical choices include John Adams, William Grant Still, Caroline Shaw and Dvorak. Producer: Katy Hickman

The writer and film-maker Penny Woolcock can’t be pigeonholed: she’s worked as a director at the Metropolitan Opera in New York and made a film about warring drug gangs on the streets of Birmingham. A passion for storytelling has driven her career, along with a rebellious streak, perhaps because she’s something of an outsider and never went to university or film school. She often uses non-professional actors in her work, including a staging of Bach’s St Matthew Passion with people who had experienced homelessness. And after completing her movie about rival gangs in Birmingham, she found herself helping to broker a peace deal between two of the actual gang leaders. Her musical choices include Shostakovich, Britten, Bach and Sibelius. Producer: Katy Hickman

Peter Hamlyn is the founder and president of the Brain and Spine Foundation, after working as a neurosurgeon for 40 years. He is perhaps best-known for saving the life of the boxer Michael Watson, who suffered a severe brain injury during a title fight in 1991 and was in a coma for 40 days. Peter performed seven brain operations and became a pioneer in the field of sports medicine, campaigning for better care for athletes. He is now fascinated by how Artificial Intelligence might transform the diagnosis and care of neurological patients. Peter's music includes Hildegard of Bingen, Berlioz, Handel and Prokofiev.

Asif Khan is a world-renowned architect and designer whose work inspired a recent headline – ‘is there anything Asif Khan can’t transform?’. His current projects include the re-invention of the former Smithfield meat market into the new London Museum, and the extensive renewal of the Barbican Centre. Further afield, in Kazakhstan, he’s turned a vast former Soviet cinema into a new cultural centre. He opened his own studio in 2007, and has designed exhibitions, temporary pavilions and installations around the world. He views architecture as a multidisciplinary field, bringing together design, science and art. His musical choices include Chopin, Shostakovich, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Brian Eno. Producer: Katy Hickman

Philippa Gregory has been called the ‘Queen of Historical Fiction’. The English royal court has inspired many of her best-selling titles, and she’s written sixteen novels about the Plantagenets and Tudors. One of them – The Other Boleyn Girl – became a BBC TV drama and a Hollywood movie starring Scarlett Johansson and Natalie Portman. This success probably surprised her A level teachers: she says she found history ‘insanely boring’ at school, but her passion was fired at university. She’s also written non-fiction, notably seeking the stories of what she calls ‘normal women’ over 900 years. More recently she’s returned to the Tudors, with a novel called Boleyn Traitor, focussing on the intrigue surrounding Anne’s sister-in-law, Jane. Her music choices include Mozart, Philip Glass, Scott Joplin and the Mazurka from Coppelia by Leo Delibes. Producer: Katy Hickman

Richard Stokes has been passionate about song since he was a teenager – although, as he readily admits, he’s not a great singer. Instead, he’s become one of the world’s leading authorities on German art songs – or lieder – and has also co-written books on English, French and Spanish songs. His work as a translator includes the complete Bach cantatas and the complete songs of Hugo Wolf, as well as operas by Wagner and Berg. He also collaborated with the pianist Alfred Brendel on translations of his poetry. Since 2006 he’s coached young singers at the Royal Academy of Music in London, where he’s Professor of Lieder. His choices include music by Bach, Mahler and Stravinsky. Presenter Michael Berkeley Producer Graham Rogers

The botanist Dr Sandra Knapp is a senior researcher at the Natural History Museum - but that title doesn’t convey the sheer adventure of her work. She’s a kind of Indiana Jones of the plant world, travelling to remote regions of Central and Southern America and beyond. Her speciality is the Solanum genus, which includes potatoes, tomatoes and aubergines – and she has found and named more than a hundred new varieties. The rainforests, where she has worked for more than 40 years, are a long way from the dry rural deserts of New Mexico, where she was born. Her music choices include works by Mozart, Brahms, Hindemith and Holst, as well as music inspired by the biodata of some of her beloved plants. Presenter Michael Berkeley Producer Katy Hickman

Paul Chahidi is an actor whose versatility shines through in prize-winning performances from Shakespeare to satire. He delighted West End and Broadway audiences as Maria in Twelfth Night and won acclaim from filmgoers as the hapless Nikolai Bulganin in The Death of Stalin. On TV, he’s played a well-meaning vicar in the BAFTA-winning This Country, an archangel in Good Omens, and he’s currently a spook in the BBC thriller The Night Manager. Such shape-shifting came early: Paul was born Ghiv Khatib-Chahidi in Iran before moving as a child to the Oxford countryside. He studied Arabic and Persian at university with an eye to becoming a foreign correspondent, before the lure of Shakespeare and Sondheim won him over. His choices include music from Iran, as well as Vaughan Williams, Chopin, Beethoven and Palestrina. Presenter Michael Berkeley Producer Katy Hickman

Michael Berkeley's guest is actor and TV presenter Peter Purves. Purves has been involved in two of TV’s longest-running and best-loved institutions - he was one of the earliest companions to travel in the TARDIS with Doctor Who (1965-66), and for ten and a half years from 1967 to 1978, alongside John Noakes, Valerie Singleton and Leslie Judd, he presented Blue Peter – entertaining the nation’s children with demonstrations in everything from competitive swimming to scaling the Fourth Road Bridge. A dog lover, he has also presented TV coverage of dog show Crufts for many years. Purves's musical passions include Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Elgar and Sondheim, alongside tracks by Louis Armstrong and Count Basie - both of whom he remembers seeing perform live in concert. Presenter: Michael Berkeley Producer: Graham Rogers

Vanessa Williams is musical theatre royalty. She’s worked with Stephen Sondheim on Broadway and is currently commanding the London stage as the fearsome fashion editor Miranda Priestly in the musical The Devil Wears Prada. She’s also topped the American pop charts, starred in Hollywood movies with the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger, and played key roles in prize winning TV series including Ugly Betty. And before all that she was crowned Miss America 1984 - the first Black American to take the title – although she was later forced to relinquish it in controversial circumstances. Her choices include music from her homeland by Samuel Barber, Jennifer Higdon, Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein, as well as works by Bach and Delius. Presenter Michael Berkeley Producer Katy Hickman

The best-selling writer Alison Weir knows precisely what sparked her interest in history: at the age of 14 she read what she calls a ‘really trashy novel’ about Katherine of Aragon – and a lifelong passion began. Since then she has written 38 books, selling more than three million copies around the world. Her non-fiction titles include biographies of Eleanor of Aquitaine, Isabella of France, Mary Queen of Scots and Elizabeth of York. She has also written many historical novels – including a book about each of Henry VIII’s six wives. In her most recent novel, The Cardinal, she focuses on the rise and fall of Thomas Wolsey, who enjoyed a prominent and powerful role in the court of Henry VIII. Alison's music choices include Bach, Beethoven, Ravel and Purcell.

Michael Berkeley’s guest is the poet Pam Ayres, who shares the music that matters most to her, including some seasonal favourites. It’s now 50 years since Pam first won a vast national audience on the TV talent show Opportunity Knocks, with poems including her much-loved wintry verse 'Sling another chair leg on the fire, Mother!' Her musical choices include Rachmaninov, Elgar and Johnny Mathis.

The Canadian crime fiction writer Louise Penny has sold more than 18 million books around the world – and she was a late starter: she was 45 when her first book appeared, after working for two decades as a broadcaster and journalist. Success as a fiction writer came quickly: her first novel Still Life won numerous awards, and introduced Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, who works in rural Quebec. Louise has just published her 20th book featuring Gamache: in The Black Wolf, he’s taking on a powerful conspiracy attempting to make Canada the 51st state in a fight over natural resources. Louise's music includes works by Beethoven, Michael Nyman, Bach and Neil Young. Presenter Michael Berkeley Producer Clare Walker

Lea Ypi, a professor of political theory at the London School of Economics, grew up in Albania under communism, when it was the last Stalinist outpost in Europe. She was 10 years old when the Berlin Wall fell, and a year later she saw the collapse of communism in Albania. Statues of Stalin and Enver Hoxha, the country’s leader for 40 years, were toppled. Democratic elections followed - but so did civil unrest. Lea wrote about these turbulent years in her book Free, which won prizes and widespread acclaim: 'essential - just as much for Britons as Albanians' according to one critic. She has delved further into her family history, looking into the past of her grandmother, in her book Indignity. Lea's musical choices include Beethoven, Wagner, Dizdari and Bach.

Hugh Bonneville is one of the most familiar faces on British TV and film. You might know him as the Earl of Grantham from Downton Abbey, or the long-suffering Mr Brown in the Paddington films, or the baffled Ian Fletcher in the London Olympics sitcom Twenty Twelve and its BBC-centred sequel W1A. Hugh was captivated by acting from an early age, staging his own plays at home and even making the tickets to sell to his family. More recently he’s has branched out into writing, with a memoir Playing Under the Piano and a children’s book Rory Sparkes and the Elephant in the Room, which is inspired by some of the events of his childhood. Hugh's selection of music includes works by Beethoven, Strauss, Elgar and Faure. Presenter: Michael Berkeley Producer: Clare Walker

Annabel Croft first picked up a tennis racquet at the age of nine. Within six years, she’d become the youngest British player to compete in the Wimbledon main draw for almost a century. At the age of 17, she won the junior championships at both Wimbledon and the Australian Open, and at 18 she was the British number one. Then – aged 21 – she retired from tennis and moved into broadcasting. She was soon back at the world’s major tennis tournaments, this time as a commentator and reporter. In 2023 her competitive spirit found a new outlet: she took part in Strictly Come Dancing on BBC One and came fourth. Her musical choices include works by Pachelbel, Handel, John Rutter and Prokofiev. Presenter Michael Berkeley Producer Clare Walker

The Right Honourable Sir Keir Starmer is the seventh Labour Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Prior to his political career, he was a barrister and served as Director of Public Prosecutions. He was elected as a Member of Parliament in 2015 and became Labour leader in 2020. A former Guildhall School of Music scholar, Sir Keir Starmer is a flautist but also played piano, recorder, and violin in his youth. He shares his love of music including works by Beethoven, Mozart, Shostakovich and Brahms. Presenter: Michael Berkeley Producer: Clare Walker