Private Passions

Writer and broadcaster Jonathan Meades's fascination with architecture began on a school trip to Marsh Court in Stockbridge, Hampshire - designed by that great architect of English Country Houses Edwin Lutyens. Subsequently, in a broadcasting career which spans 40 years, he has written and performed in more than 50 television shows on a wide range of topographical subjects: from shacks to garden cities, to buildings associated with vertigo; from beer and pigs, to the architecture of Hitler and Stalin. He was also a food critic for 15 years, winning the coveted Glenfiddich Award in 1999, and has written three novels and a memoir: "Encyclopedia of Myself". His latest television series, "Bunkers, Brutalism and Bloody-mindedness", was screened on BBC 4 in February.He now lives in the iconic Corbusier building, Cité Radieuse in Marseille - and his musical choices reflect his adopted country's love of chanson: French singer / songwriter Barbara's "Ma Plus Belle Histoire d'Amour" features, as does Jacques Brel's Mijn Vlakke Land. Film was not only Jonathan Meades's chosen career; his love of cinema also provided him with a rich musical education. Among his musical choices are Hans Werner Henze's soundtrack to the Alain Resnais film Muriel, and The Aquarium, from Saint-Saëns's Carnival of the Animals, which Terence Malick used in his ground breaking film Days of Heaven.

For this special Easter edition of Private Passions, Michael Berkeley is given a backstage tour of the National Gallery by its Director, the distinguished art historian Nicholas Penny. For this programme he selects paintings on an Easter theme of death and rebirth, with music which accompanies and illuminates them. The painters include his great passion, Titian, with a visit to the Gallery's Restoration Lab, where a painting of the Resurrection is being brought back to life. Nicholas Penny talks about the way in which such paintings change their meaning over time, and about what to look for when we try to read 14th-century depictions of the Crucifixion. His musical choices include Rossini's Stabat Mater, Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos, Handel's Messiah, Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream, William Walton's Façade, a reading of James Joyce's story 'The Dead' - and the sound of English blackbirds singing in spring.

Charlotte Mendelson's novels are in danger of making you laugh out loud: the absurdities of family life, the excruciating embarrassment of being young, or clumsy, or not quite English enough. There are four prize-winning novels thus far, and the latest, Almost English - which has been longlisted both for the Booker Prize and for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction - comes out in paperback this spring.In this edition of Private Passions, Charlotte Mendelson talks entertainingly about embarrassment - her own embarrassment, and why she inflicts it on her fictional characters. Embarrassment, she claims, is the most under-reported emotion - because we just can't bear to think about it. She explores too the legacy of her Eastern European family, and the feeling of never being English, of never fitting in, and how that fuels her writing. And she reveals why her music teacher gave up trying to teach her the piano and settled for the can-can instead.Charlotte Mendelson's music choices include Bach, Schubert, Chopin, the country singer Gillian Welch, and Ella Fitzgerald singing Cole Porter's 'Always True to You in my Fashion' - a song which she claims has the best lyrics in the world.Produced by Elizabeth Burke for Loftus.

There's a huge revival in British craftsmanship going on at the moment, with a new generation keen to learn how to make beautiful things. For 40 years now, Theo Fennell has been one of the country's most distinctive and witty jewellers. His intricate and beautifully crafted designs take you into a strange dream-world: miniature skulls with jewelled snakes twisting from their eyes; bees cast in gold; dragonflies trailing amethysts; salamanders studded with diamonds. Perhaps not surprising that his jewellery has decorated rock stars such as Elton John, Lady Gaga and Freddie Mercury.In Private Passions, Theo Fennell reveals the music that inspires him when he's working - dreaming up those strange and beautiful new creatures. Music is what helps him, he says, when confronted by a blank sheet of paper. He also reveals that as a young art student he worked as a busker, and even bought a one-man band. He discusses the erotic power of jewellery, with a vivid story from his own experience. And during the recording, he sketches continuously, and has agreed to put some of his drawings on the Private Passions webpage.Theo Fennell's choices include Dvorak's Cello Concerto, Offenbach's opera 'The Tales of Hoffmann', Yehudi Menuhin playing Saint-Saëns's Violin Concerto No. 3 in B minor, and a Charles Trenet song from 1937. And his great patron, Elton John.A Loftus production produced by Elizabeth Burke.

Craig Brown has been described by The Sunday Times as "our greatest living satirist". He invented the conservative Spectator columnist Wallace Arnold, and Bel Littlejohn, the long-standing Guardian columnist who many Guardian readers took to be real. Brown is a kind of satirical ventriloquist: impersonating the voices of politicians and celebrities, mocking them week after week in Private Eye and The Daily Mail, mimicking thousands of different voices. This year he celebrates his 25th anniversary of parodying the rich and the famous on Private Eye.In this edition of Private Passions Craig Brown talks to Michael Berkeley about how he does it ? and why he does it. Does he find the whole world ridiculous? Brown reveals that before embarking on a parody he has to feel the creative germ of irritation, which he then attempts to transform into comedy. Parody, as he reveals, is a delightfully libel-free method of pricking the bubble of self-obsession in celebrity culture.For Private Passions, Brown reveals the music he finds inspiring, moving and funny. Some of his choices are surprising: gospel songs, for instance, are top of his list. He celebrates the Irish composer John Field, and enjoys both Satie and a plangent lament from Kathleen Ferrier. But he also chooses humorous pieces: Kenneth Williams reading Edward Lear, and Harry Belafonte singing 'There's a Hole in my Bucket'. He talks about living in a musical family; his wife, son and daughter are all gifted musicians, while he can't sing in tune, and has no sense of rhythm at all.The programme is recorded with an audience at the Radio 3 pop-up studio at Royal Festival Hall, as part of Radio 3's residency at London's Southbank Centre.

John Finnemore is one of our most successful comedy writers and performers. A star turn in Miranda as the doting husband Chris, he writes and stars in the award-winning Radio 4 sitcom Cabin Pressure, and he's made two series of the Radio 4 sketch show Souvenir Programme. He regularly appears on The Now Show, The Unbelievable Truth and The News Quiz. And apart from his own shows, he also writes for other comedians such as Mitchell and Webb.John reveals to Michael Berkeley his secret of comedy inspiration, his love of performing, and his struggle with insomnia. His choices include Beethoven, Flanders and Swann, and Chopin: the music that means most to him, the music that makes him laugh - and the music that helps him sleep.Producer: Jane Greenwood.

If you should happen to be walking through the House of Commons, and hear loud Wagner blasting out along those corridors of power ? you know you're heading for the office of Kwasi Kwarteng. He's been there since 2010, when he was elected MP for Spelthorne in Surrey. Before going into Parliament, he'd already established a reputation as a historian; his new book 'War and Gold' comes out later this spring, following 'Ghosts of Empire', a fascinating study of the legacy of the British Empire around the world. All this and he's not yet 40.In Private Passions, he talks to Michael Berkeley about his own background: his parents came here from Ghana as students in the 1960s, and he says that thanks to them, 'the British Empire has always been with me'. His music choices include Wagner (naturally), Gilbert and Sullivan, Chopin, Schubert, Haydn, and Smokey Robinson ? he discovered Motown on an unforgettable American jukebox. He also includes a vintage recording of John Gielgud reading Shelley's 'Ozymandias', a poem which is a salutary warning for a politician about the transience of power. And he reveals that his ambition is to own a piano; he even chooses the ragtime piece he wants to play ? Scott Joplin's Elite Syncopations.

When Joan Armatrading's mother bought a piano 'as a piece of furniture' little did she know what she was starting. The fourteen-year-old Joan taught herself to play it, then to play the guitar too and twelve years later she burst onto the music scene with her hit song Love and Affection. In a career spanning forty years, she has made 20 acclaimed studio albums as well as undertaking an international touring schedule which makes me feel tired just thinking about it. She's received three Grammy and two Brit Award nominations, she's the winner of the Ivor Novello Award, and she's the first female UK artist ever to debut at number 1 in the American Billboard Blues chart. And to cap it all, she has an MBE for services to music.In this programme Joan shares her love of classical music with Michael Berkeley and chooses pieces by Beethoven, Vivaldi, Tavener and Bach. She talks about her childhood as the daughter of immigrant parents in Birmingham, discusses how she managed to study for a degree while on the road, and reveals whether this year's tour really will be her last.First broadcast in February 2014.

Michael Horovitz is one of the last surviving Beatniks, 'the big daddy of the British Beat Movement'. In the 1950s, he founded a ground-breaking magazine which was the first to publish new work by Samuel Becket and William Burroughs, including passages from Naked Lunch which had been banned for obscenity in America. At 78 he's still performing his poems in pubs, and still playing his 'anglosaxophone', a kind of exuberant kazoo.In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Horovitz talks about the poetic revolution that began in the 50s, and about his friendship with Stan Tracey, who died recently. He tells the story of how his family were forced to flee Nazi Germany in the 1930s, where his father was a lawyer.His music choices include Beethoven, Mendelsohn and Stan Tracey, as well as a rare Charlie Parker jazz improvisation from 1945 (which includes one of the few recordings of Charlie Parker's voice). He includes too a moving recording of his wife, the poet Frances Horovitz, reading a poem she wrote when she was dying, and a recent 'jazz poem' of his own, where Horovitz plays alongside Damon Albarn and Paul Weller. Plus a few blasts on his 'anglosaxophone'...

Michael Sheen is famous for playing real people on screen - from Tony Blair and Kenneth Williams to Brian Clough and David Frost. And it was playing another real person - but this time on stage - that formed a turning point in his relationship with classical music. This person was Mozart, in the play Amadeus, and Michael has chosen part of Mozart's Requiem, used in that production.His other choices include music by Lisa Gerrard and Arvo Pärt and Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds starring Richard Burton, who shares a home town with Michael. He tells Michael Berkeley about his recent return home to Port Talbot to work for three years on a marathon staging of The Passion, which lasted for 72 hours and involved a cast of 1000, mostly local, people.