Private Passions

Nicky Clayton is a Fellow of the Royal Society and Professor of Comparative Cognition at Cambridge, and she's done more than any other scientist to transform the way we think about animal intelligence, and particularly the intelligence of birds. She's spent her career observing rooks and jays and other members of the corvid family, watching them as they play tricks on each other, and sing and dance together.Her work has challenged the assumption that only humans have the intelligence to plan for the future and reminisce about the past, that only humans can understand the minds of others. She says that she's spent most of her life wondering what it would be like to be a bird: 'to fly, to see colours in the ultraviolet, and to sing as beautifully as they do'. Alongside her scientific research, Nicky Clayton has a passion for tango, and has collaborated with Ballet Rambert as a scientist in residence.In Private Passions she talks to Michael Berkeley about the creative inspiration she finds in music. Her musical choices include Ravel, Janacek and Bruckner, and Astor Piazzolla's Tango for an Angel; as well as Messiaen's Catalogue of the Birds, and the call of a reed warbler.Produced by Elizabeth BurkeA Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Henrietta Bowden-Jones has spent the last three decades studying the mind.Born in Italy to an English father and an Italian mother, she has dedicated her career to helping people overcome addictions - both in the lab as a researcher in neuroscience, and as a psychiatrist treating everyone from homeless drug addicts to city traders with gambling problems.She shares with Michael Berkeley musical memories of growing up in Milan with an opera-loving nanny; the shock of being sent to an English boarding school as a teenager; her love of art as well as science; and how her pioneering work on addiction has helped thousands of people rebuild their lives. Her music choices include Mozart, Dvorak and Reynaldo Hahn's charming Venetian songs. Producer: Jane GreenwoodA Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

If you want to know how to wield a Spartan spear, or whether Athens really was the cradle of democracy - or indeed what ancient Greek music might have sounded like, Paul Cartledge is the man to go to. He has probably done more than anyone else in the past three decades to advance knowledge of ancient Greek culture - both in academic circles and in the public arena. He was until very recently the first A G Leventis Professor of Greek Culture at Cambridge, a chair founded to study a thousand years of Greek cultural achievements and to highlight their lasting influence on society today. Paul talks to Michael Berkeley about why ancient history is relevant to us today; why the myths of the classical world have been such an enduring inspiration for composers; why democracy would work better without political parties; and the pitfalls of being a historical advisor to Hollywood. And Paul shares with Michael his passion for music that stretches back to his childhood, including Brahms, Bach, Rossini, Stravinsky - and Bob Dylan. Producer: Jane GreenwoodA Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

On Private Passions Michael Berkeley's guest is the charity CEO and cancer blogger, Kate Gross, who sadly died on Christmas morning, at the age of only 36.Michael Berkeley writes:'Kate Gross was an unforgettable guest on Private Passions: so bright and charismatic, full of life and curiosity about the world, despite being gravely ill when we met last autumn. And indeed, all through her life she was the kind of person everybody envied. Hugely successful in her career, by only 27, she had risen so quickly up through the civil service that she was briefing Tony Blair before Prime Minister's Questions; by 29 she had left the civil service to set up Blair's African Charity, the Africa Governance Initiative, managing an annual budget of 5 million pounds. But then her life fell apart. On the plane back from America, she collapsed, and went straight to hospital when she landed. It was then that she was diagnosed with Stage 4 bowel cancer: a terminal diagnosis.This was how in 2012 Kate Gross the CEO turned into Kate Gross the cancer blogger. Her blog - which became a book, Late Fragments, published by William Collins - chronicled her life in and out of hospital over the last two years. It's very moving, but also sharp and funny. Sadly she died before the book was published. But her family are happy for this programme to be broadcast; Kate knew it would be her memorial.'In Private Passions, Kate talks about the music which has sustained her: Schubert's final Piano Sonata; Mozart's 'The Magic Flute'; Bernstein's 'West Side Story', Dvorak's 'Songs my Mother Taught Me' and Ralph Fiennes reading T.S.Eliot's 'Four Quartets'.

James Bond, Simon Templar... Michael Berkeley's guest today can only be Roger Moore. He played Bond for twelve years, in seven films, more than any other actor. And before that he was a much-loved figure throughout the 1960s as The Saint. In fact he's rarely been off the big and small screens since he began his acting career in 1945, working as an extra alongside his idol Stewart Granger in Caesar and Cleopatra.What's less well known about Roger is his passion for music. He counts many musicians among his friends and has chosen music performed by two of them - Julian Rachlin and Janine Jansen, who reflect his passion for strings. His other great love is opera, and he entertains us with stories about music from his heroine Joan Sutherland, as well as La Traviata, a piece of music connected with one of his earlier film roles. And he shares the secret of how, after 86 years of mostly star-studded living, he?s managed to keep his feet on the ground. Producer: Jane Greenwood.

Dame Vivienne Westwood needs little introduction; her name and her brand are known across the world. Indeed, in the Far East she's made it into the top ten most recognised global brands, with Coca Cola and Disney. Her fame rests not just on her fashion designs, daring and sexy and original as they are: because Vivienne Westwood is also the co-creator, with Malcolm McLaren, of punk - that revolution of music and fashion that changed Britain back in the mid-70s. What is less well known is her passion for classical music, and for going to concerts - 'it's brilliant, it's only £10, much cheaper than going out to a discotheque'. In Private Passions, she talks to Michael Berkeley about the music which has inspired her creations, and about creating costumes for the opera. She describes the hardship of her early days as a designer, when she was so short of money that she lived in a caravan with her two small sons. She remembers the heady days of punk, and marching up and down King's Road dressed entirely in rubber. ('Rubberwear for the office' was the concept, and it was very comfortable, she claims.) She tells the story of how she met her husband Andreas, who now designs with her, thanks to a cow. And why there is nothing more attractive than a man in a suit. Especially when he's bending over.Her music choices include the climactic orgy from Ravel's Daphnis and Chloe; ballet music by Stravinsky and Milhaud; Bach's St John Passion; Handel's Alcina; Larry Williams; and Musorgsky's Pictures at An Exhibition: 'If there are any punks out there - just listen to this - it will blow your mind!'Produced by Elizabeth Burke.

Professor of the History of Christianity at Cambridge, Eamon Duffy has changed for ever the way we view the Reformation. His books, including The Stripping of the Altars and The Voices of Morebath, have revealed a picture of late medieval Catholicism as a strong and vital tradition, and have shown that the Reformation, for most ordinary people, represented a violent disruption to a flourishing religious system. Eamon talks about his passion for medieval, Tudor and seventeenth-century music and history, the state of Catholic church music today and the pleasures of playing chamber music. His choices of music include countertenor Alfred Deller singing Purcell, the Beaux Arts Trio playing Haydn and Janet Baker singing Elgar. Eamon's final piece of music is a wonderfully evocative Arab Christian chant for Palm Sunday, sung by a nun from the Melkite order.Producer: Jane GreenwoodPart of Radio 3's Breaking Free series of programmes exploring Martin Luther's Revolution.

Jill Paton Walsh lives with the ghost of Lord Peter Wimsey - having taken on the mantle of Dorothy L Sayers and continuing, to great acclaim, her hugely successful detective stories. But before Lord Peter Wimsey she was already a highly esteemed writer, and her prolific output spans nearly fifty years of children's books and literary fiction. But despite this her medieval philosophical novel, Knowledge of Angels, was turned down by British publishers, so she and her husband published the book themselves, and it went on to be a bestseller - and was shortlisted for the 1994 Booker Prize. The winner of many other literary prizes, including the Whitbread and the Smarties Prize, she was awarded a CBE in 1996 for services to literature.Jill talks to Michael Berkeley about what it's like to take on the voice of another author, her love of children's fiction, and how music has sustained her through very sad and difficult times. Her music choices include Bizet, Copland, Britten, Mozart and Haydn. Producer: Jane GreenwoodA Loftus Production for BBC Radio 3To hear previous episodes of Private Passions, please visit http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/r3pp/all.

Anthony Green, senior Royal Academician, is one of the UK's most eminent and best-loved figurative painters. His career as an artist has now spanned fifty years, and his brightly coloured, irregularly-shaped paintings and sculptures are exhibited across the world, in galleries including the Royal Academy, the Scottish National Gallery, and the Met in New York. Many of them explore autobiographical themes; in painting after painting he's recorded family life, at home, in bed, making love to his wife even.In Private Passions, Anthony Green looks back on his life as an artist; he explains the crucial importance of meeting his wife back when they were both students at the Slade - through her, he found his identity as a painter. He talks about watching fashions come and go in art, and explains why he is determined to explore religious subjects in his work, even though he knows it puts him outside the mainstream. And he confesses to being an incorrigible optimist, who loves this life, and fully expects to enjoy the next. Music choices include Charles Trenet, Bach, Wagner, Noel Coward, Beethoven's Emperor Piano Concerto, and Eric Idle - 'for the coffee breaks in the studio'.Producer: Elizabeth BurkeA Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.To hear previous episodes of Private Passions, please visit http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/r3pp/all.

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 compilation tapes of the kind of jazz tracks that they think Resnick would enjoy. So no surprise to discover that his creator John Harvey has a lifelong love of jazz, conceived during a misspent youth in London jazz clubs.As part of the jazz season across Radio 2 and 3, with highlights from the London Jazz Festival, John Harvey chooses his favourite jazz tracks. The playlist includes early Billie Holliday, Thelonius Monk, James P. Johnson and Chet Baker. Harvey, who’s a fine poet as well as a crime writer, reads a moving poem about Chet Baker’s mysterious death. Other music choices include Shostakovich, Mendelssohn’s ‘Hebrides Overture’, and a Tango for corrugated iron by Jocelyn Pook.Harvey reveals that he dislikes how crime fiction has changed during the 25 years he’s been writing it: ‘There almost seems to be a competition who can have the most disgusting things in their books, and what awful things you can do particularly to female victims.’ And he talks about his decision to retire his detective Resnick, leaving him sitting on a park bench, ‘hankering after a fresh helping of Thelonius Monk`.Producer: Elizabeth Burke