Private Passions

Wayne Sleep tells Michael Berkeley about the music that has inspired his career of nearly 60 years. Wayne Sleep is one of the most celebrated dancers of all time. He’s performed more than fifty leading roles for the Royal Ballet, and had roles created for him by choreographers including Frederick Ashton, Ninette de Valois and Rudolf Nureyev. Equally at home on the stage of the Royal Opera house, performing musical theatre in the West End, choreographing, directing or teaching, he’s known for his versatility, flawless technique, dramatic flair and humour. He made headlines around in the world in 1985 when he danced – to the total surprise of everyone there - with Diana, Princess of Wales, on the stage of the Royal Opera House. He tells Michael about the secrecy surrounding their rehearsals and the friendship between them that followed their performance. Wayne chooses the music that has shaped his long career including pieces by Mahler, Britten and Andrew Lloyd Webber. And, in a highly emotional moment, he hears for the first time since his childhood the voice of his adored mother on a record specially restored for this programme. Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

The novelist and journalist Susie Boyt tells Michael Berkeley about her lifelong passions for music, theatre and dancing. Whether she’s writing black comedies about dysfunctional families or about her intense love of Judy Garland, Susie Boyt is unafraid to address the big questions in all our lives. Her seven novels explore how we can best take care of people, how we can survive life’s inevitable traumas and how we might live alongside the loss of people we love. Susie chooses pieces by Mozart, Beethoven and Britten as well as music from the ballet Giselle that conjures up the fragility and vulnerability of childhood. Susie’s father was the painter Lucian Freud and we hear a song by the music hall star Gus Elen which recalls the many hours she sat for him in his studio sharing their love of song lyrics. Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

The historian Simon Thurley tells Michael Berkeley about his passion for ancient buildings and the music associated with them. At the age of seven, Simon Thurley dug up what turned out to be Roman remains in his back garden in Cambridgeshire, and a lifelong passion for history - and historic buildings - was ignited. He went on to work as Curator of Historic Royal Palaces and as the Director of the Museum of London. Then, in 2002, at the astonishingly young age of 39, he was appointed Chief Executive of English Heritage, a post he held for 13 years, during which time he was responsible for overseeing over 400 historic sites from Dover Castle to Stonehenge.He is the author of more than a dozen books about history and architecture and since 2021 he has chaired the National Heritage Memorial Fund, the fund of last resort to protect the nation’s most vulnerable heritage when other routes have failed. Simon tells Michael about the building mania of Henry VIII, how we can make old buildings sustainable to live in today, and what the future might hold for the Royal Palaces under King Charles III.He chooses music by Holst which reminds him of his religious childhood, an opera by Bellini which conjures up the English Civil War, and music by Purcell which reminds him of up Hampton Court, one of the buildings he loves most and which he helped to restore after a devastating fire. Producer: Jane GreenwoodA Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Kaffe Fassett’s textiles are unmistakable: in bright cerise and crimson and cobalt, his stripes and flowers burst onto the scene back in the seventies, and he’s been designing ever since. Brought up in a log cabin on the Californian coast, he’s lived for fifty years in Kilburn, north-west London, a house where every surface is painted or mosaicked or embroidered – and stuffed full of antique textiles and pots. In fact, it’s so full of stuff that his partner, Brandon, had to retreat to a white room of his own. But Kaffe would like us all to get sewing, or embroidering or knitting. He’s the author of numerous books which share his designs, and currently has an exhibition of his quilts at the Fashion and Textile Museum that will soon travel around Scotland.In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Kaffe reveals that he first left California for Britain as a young man after a chance meeting with Christopher Isherwood, who so beguiled him that he was determined to see Europe for himself. He talks about growing up gay at a time when it was still illegal, and how he never felt he fitted in – he was the boy at school wearing bright orange corduroy. He reveals that he bought some wool and then begged a woman opposite him on the train home to teach him to knit. Since then, he’s never looked back, and however busy he is, he makes time to knit and embroider, finding it a chance to meditate and recover. His music choices include Arvo Pärt, The Beatles and Schumann’s “Scenes from Childhood”.

Joanna Scanlan is one of our great comic actors; she’s best-known for “The Thick of It”, where she plays the obstructive civil servant Terri Coverley. But her range is much wider than comedy. She’s extraordinarily moving in “After Love”, Aleem Khan’s 2021 film about a widow who discovers her husband’s secret life – a performance so powerful that it dominates the whole film, and won her BAFTA’s lead actress award in 2022. Before that, she played Charles Dickens's long-suffering wife, Catherine, in “The Invisible Woman” – and appeared in “Girl with a Pearl Earring” and “Notes on a Scandal”, to name just a couple of her film roles. On television she’s familiar from “The Larkins”, “No Offence” and “Puppy Love” – a series she co-wrote. She also co-wrote “Getting On”, a blackly comic portrayal of life on an NHS ward, which has become a great deal more topical in the fourteen years since it was first broadcast. Born in Merseyside, Joanna Scanlan grew up in North Wales; she went to Cambridge to study history and law, and only got her first job as an actress when she was thirty-four, after having a breakdown.She tells Michael about how that breakdown became a turning point, thanks to a doctor who told her that she would be ill all her life unless she acted. She remembers her schooldays in Wales, when she sang in a choir five times a day, and her early career working for the Arts Council, where the power-mad clock-watchers she worked with became the inspiration for the character of Terri Coverley.A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke

Brought up in a comfortable suburb of Sheffield, Hugh Brody has spent his life travelling to the most inhospitable corners of the world. For more than ten years he lived among the peoples of the Arctic and sub-Arctic, learning their languages, discovering their ways of being in the world, and helping map their territories so they could claim land rights. He has also worked in isolated villages in the west of Ireland, in the southern Kalahari, on Skid Row in Edmonton, Canada, and in tribal communities in western India. He has explored these places over the last fifty-five years in a considerable body of work: more than a dozen films, dozens of essays, and ten books. The latest is a moving and beautifully written personal memoir, “Landscapes of Silence: from Childhood to the Arctic”. Married to the actress Juliet Stevenson, Hugh Brody now divides his time between Highgate, North London, and a house on the Suffolk coast, though he admits that he has never really “settled down”. Hugh Brody’s music choices include Beethoven, Sibelius, Stravinsky, Clara Schumann, and the music he heard every day when living with an Inuit family: Johnny Cash. Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

The author Diana Melly tells Michael Berkeley about her life lived on a rollercoaster: she has experienced passion, great friendships and celebrity but also depression, illness, heartbreak and the deaths of two of her children.Running through her life for 46 years was her enduring - but extremely complicated - marriage to the jazz musician and bon viveur George Melly, who died in 2007.She has written two novels, a searingly honest memoir, and has co-edited the letters of her friend Jean Rhys as well as campaigning for charities concerned with dementia and drug abuse. Diana Melly talks movingly about the deaths of her children and the happiness she and George found at the end of his life. And she describes her passion for trying new things late in life including ballroom dancing, philosophy and riding a tandem.But her greatest new passion, developed in her eighties, is for opera and she chooses her favourite arias by Puccini, Massenet, Mozart, Gluck and Verdi. And she reveals why, having been married to a jazzman for 46 years, there is no jazz on her music list.Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Todd Field began his career as a jazz musician and as an actor; he has appeared in over forty films, including Kubrick’s “Eyes Wide Shut” and Woody Allen’s “Radio Days”. He then went on to direct two full-length award-winning films, “In the Bedroom” - about grief and revenge in a close-knit family - and “Little Children”, starring Kate Winslet. Both were nominated for multiple Oscars. This week his third feature film “Tar” opens in Britain. Cate Blanchett stars as Lydia Tar, the conductor of a major German orchestra; the film is an exploration of the darker side of the classical music world, the power of the conductor, and of abusive power more generally – it’s also a celebration of some really wonderful music.In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Todd Field talks about how he started writing “Tar” by interviewing classical musicians, and particularly women working in the industry. He looks back on his “free-range” childhood in Oregon, and tells how his wife financed his ambition to become a film director by buying a truck, going round flea-markets, and starting an interior-design shop. He reveals the struggle to release his award-winning film “In the Bedroom” after Harvey Weinstein bought it and demanded more and more cuts. Field won the fight and retained the film he believed in, but it took six months and a fiendishly clever strategy invented by his friend Tom Cruise. Todd Field started out as a jazz musician in a big band, and his choices include two tracks by Sarah Vaughan, whom he met backstage at a concert in Oregon. Other choices include Mahler’s Symphony No 5; Elgar’s Cello Concerto; and Gorecki’s second string quartet, which played constantly in his head while making “Tar”. A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke

Rabbi, writer and broadcaster Jonathan Romain is minister of Maidenhead Synagogue and one of Britain's leading rabbis in Reform Judaism. He’s the author of twenty books – some scholarly and learned, and others which are very funny – revealing the ups and downs of his day-to-day work, in a way that will resonate with vicars, priests and religious leaders of any description. He’s become a kind of agony uncle, dispensing advice on love affairs, marriage, parenthood, and he’s written about all this in “Confessions of a Rabbi” and in his latest book, “The Naked Rabbi”. On the more serious side, he’s a prominent figure in the campaign for Assisted Dying, he was awarded an MBE for his work on inter-faith marriage, and he’s spent much of the last year working with Ukrainian refugees. In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Jonathan Romain talks about what he’s learned over the years as a rabbi about love and marriage, and why some of his views put him very much out on a limb. His playlist takes in Max Bruch, Leonard Cohen, Rimsky-Korsakov, and a tribute to his love of football. And he tells us his favourite Jewish joke. Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

The structural engineer and author Roma Agrawal tells Michael Berkeley about her passions for tall buildings, bridges, concrete and Indian classical dance. Roma Agrawal is a highly successful woman operating in what is still very much a man’s world. Her job is, essentially, to make sure that the buildings, bridges, roads and tunnels we use every day don’t collapse. She spent six years working out the incredibly complex structure of the spire and foundations of the Shard in London, the tallest building in western Europe. As well as engineering, Roma has another passion: she tells Michael about her lifelong love of the ancient Bharata Natyam form of Indian Classical Dance, and we hear the first piece of music she danced to as a child in Mumbai. She chooses songs by Abida Parveen, Anoushka Shankar and Nitin Sawhney as well as pieces by Tchaikovsky and by Carl Davis which drew her to Western music. Roma tells Michael about her campaign to encourage more women to become engineers, why she decided to speak out about the emotional and physical strain of IVF and how working on the Shard helped her overcome her fear of heights. Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3