In this special programme for the Queen’s platinum jubilee, Michael Berkeley’s guest is the author and former lady-in-waiting to Princess Margaret, Anne Glenconner, who tells Michael about her long life as a friend of the royal family, her marriage to the outrageous Colin Tennant, and how she survived unimaginable family tragedy. At 11.15am on June 2nd 1953, Lady Anne Coke stood at the door of Westminster Abbey, dressed in a gorgeous embroidered white satin gown. She was 20, one of six maids of honour about to pick up the Queen’s 21-foot-long velvet train and follow her up the aisle at the start of the Coronation. What followed that momentous day for Lady Anne Coke, who became Lady Glenconner, was a life of continued service to the royal family, as well as running enormous houses, having five children, hosting glamorous parties, and travelling the world. Then at the age of 87 she published her bestselling memoir Lady in Waiting, followed by two novels. Her new book Whatever Next? will be published in the autumn. Anne Glenconner tells Michael about the exciting days leading up to the coronation and her emotions as Elgar’s Nimrod was played at the very start of the service. She reminisces about playing on Holkham beach as a child with the Queen and Princess Margaret, and plays music that helped her through the terrible events that engulfed her three sons in the 1980s.And she also talks frankly, and with great humour, about life with Colin Tennant, later Lord Glenconner: the temper tantrums which got him banned from airlines, the ruined trips to the opera, the excruciating first evening of their honeymoon, and the final, awful twist in the tale of their marriage.Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media Production for BBC Radio 3

In a wide-ranging and engaging interview, musician Jarvis Cocker tells Michael Berkeley about the role classical music plays in his life and relationships.Fortunately for the world of music Jarvis Cocker abandoned his early ambition to be an astronaut and instead, at the age of 14, had the idea of forming a band called Pulp during an Economics lesson at school in Sheffield. Some 15 years later, Pulp was one of the most successful bands in the world, with a string of witty, emotionally raw, and musically inventive hits rooted in the details of real life. Since then, he has become a much-loved radio presenter with the long-running "Jarvis Cocker’s Sunday Service" on BBC Six Music, and "Wireless Nights" on Radio 4. Amongst numerous other projects he has formed a new band, JARV IS…, and he has just published a memoir of his childhood and the early years of Pulp called Good Pop, Bad Pop.Jarvis describes how, during a long period of convalescence after an accident, he transformed the way he wrote songs, realizing that the details of everyday life around him in Sheffield provided a goldmine of material. He tells Michael how he coped with fame when it eventually arrived in his thirties, and how he has never conquered his stage fright. Jarvis chooses music by Schubert, Max Richter, Rachmaninoff, Eric Satie and Delius, all guaranteed to give him the ‘tingle’ factor. He talks about the power of particular vinyl records to bring back memories of his teenage years in Sheffield and of his son as he was growing up in Paris. And he talks movingly about the role Richter’s music played in his relationship with his dying father who had been absent for most of Jarvis’s life.Producer: Jane Greenwood

The science writer and broadcaster Dr Kat Arney shares with Michael Berkeley her passion for the harp and her revelatory new research into the causes of cancer.Gone are the days when cancer could not be mentioned but was “the Big C”. It is just as well, since about half of us will develop cancer during our lifetime. And as the treatments and drugs improve all the time, so does our knowledge of what causes it. Kat Arney’s latest, award-winning, book, Rebel Cell: "Cancer, Evolution and the Science of Life", explains the revelatory new breakthroughs happening in labs around the world.After a PhD in Genetics at Cambridge University, Kat Arney worked for ten years as Science Communications Manager at Cancer Research UK. And then she left that job to go freelance - writing books and newspaper articles about science, broadcasting and podcasting including a recent Radio 4 series, Ingenious, about how individual genes shape our lives.But as well as science Kat Arney has another passion, for music, and particularly the harp, which she has played since she was a teenager both as a classical instrument and in bands. She chooses music by the harpist Ruth Wall; Arnold Bax’s Harp Quintet; and we hear Kat herself playing with the Ethiopian musician Mulatu Astatke and the Heliocentrics.And she lets Michael into the secret of how to fit a harp into the back of an Austin Metro.Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

As we’ve watched the war in Ukraine unfold, we’ve seen huge crowds of people queuing at the border, dragging small suitcases, carrying babies and children, leaving their homeland behind. Dr Waheed Arian knows what it’s like to be forced to leave your home, suddenly, and under fire; he’s a refugee from an earlier war, the Soviet-Afghan War, which lasted for almost ten years and claimed the lives of as many as two million Afghan civilians. Five million people are estimated to have left the country as refugees, and Waheed Arian was one of them. In 1988, at the age of five, he escaped on horseback from Afghanistan to Pakistan, arriving at a refugee camp on the North-West frontier. In the camp he almost died from malnutrition, malaria and TB. But – just in time - he managed to get medical treatment, and the doctor who treated him inspired an ambition to be a doctor himself. Dr Waheed Arian is now an A and E doctor in the NHS and he has founded a pioneering medical charity, Arian Teleheal. He has received many awards for his work, and has written about his life in a vivid memoir, “In the Wars”.In a moving conversation with Michael Berkeley, Waheed describes the dangerous journey that brought him to Britain, where he was at first imprisoned in Feltham Young Offenders Institution. He reveals how he fulfilled his early ambition to become a doctor, despite having had almost no schooling. And he chooses music which takes him back to childhood, watching Bollywood films with his family, and to his early years in Britain, when he was befriended by an old woman who played Schubert to him. Other choices include music by Charlie Chaplin, and a song by Ahmad Wali, who like Waheed fled Afghanistan. Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus Media Production for BBC Radio 3.

The fashion designer and artist Osman Yousefzada tells Michael Berkeley about his childhood in a strictly religious Pashtun community in Birmingham. Osman Yousefzada shot to fame when Beyoncé wore one of his designs to the 2013 Grammy Awards. Lady Gaga, Thandiwe Newton and Taylor Swift are among his many other celebrity clients. He is also an acclaimed artist, curator and film-maker, and the creator of one of the world’s largest ever pieces of public art: the ‘wrapping’ of the Selfridges building in Birmingham in geometric patterns inspired by Islamic art. Educated at the School of Oriental and African Studies, Central St Martins and Cambridge University, Osman grew up in a community described by the Daily Mail as ‘the Jihadi capital of Britain’. His newly published memoir, The Go Between, is a fascinating account of his childhood and his first steps into the outside world while navigating both racism and family expectations.He tells Michael Berkeley about his beloved mother, a talented seamstress who inspired him as a designer: she was married at 14, had her first child at 15 and lived most of her life in Birmingham, but remained illiterate and never learned to speak English. She hardly ever left the house. Osman’s sisters were taken out of school at the age of 11 and also shut away inside the family home. Osman chooses music inspired by the Sufi tradition of Islamic mysticism by Abida Parveen and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, and a song by the Grammy-winning Pakistani-American Arooj Aftab, as well as pieces by Philip Glass and by the Canadian composer and cellist Zoe Keating. Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Looking ahead to International Women’s Day, this is a second chance to hear Michael Berkeley’s interview with the trailblazing surgeon Dame Clare Marx, who sadly died in November 2022; the programme is repeated by kind permission of her husband, Andrew. Clare Marx was the first woman to become President of the Royal College of Surgeons of England in 2014, and the first woman to become the Chair of the General Medical Council five years later. Clare Marx had to overcome significant prejudice to reach the top of her field but in 2007 she received a CBE and in 2018 a DBE for services to medicine. But then came the blow of a terminal diagnosis of incurable pancreatic cancer. With characteristic courage and grace, she announced her resignation from the General Medical Council.When she came into the studio, Clare Marx had only eight months to live, but no one would have guessed she was ill. She was calm, elegant, composed. But she knew that this would be her last broadcast interview, a message to her colleagues, her family, indeed to everyone listening. Her music choices include Britten’s Sea Interludes, Verdi’s Requiem, and Mozart’s trio “Soave sia il vento”, a message to all who are about to sail away across the sea. “May the winds be gentle, may the waves be calm.”Michael Berkeley began by asking Clare about that moving public letter of resignation, in which she said: “Since receiving this news, I've been reminded once again of the importance and power of kindness in everything we do as doctors.” Pancreatic Cancer UK www.pancreaticcancer.org.ukInformation and support: Cancer https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/1KkkxvD0G1w4l294QCrQZbh/information-and-support-cancerProduced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

For Easter Day, Private Passions celebrates Spring and the music of birdsong with one of the world’s leading experts on birds, Professor Tim Birkhead.An award-winning scientist, author and university lecturer, Tim Birkhead is Emeritus Professor of Zoology at the University of Sheffield, and the author of many books that communicate his life-long passion, including “What it’s like to be a bird” and most recently “Birds and Us”, a 12,000-year history of our relationship with birds, from cave art to conservation.His choices include music that Mozart taught to a starling, and the old Catalan “Song of the Birds”, played by Pablo Casals. There will also be the music of birdsong itself, from the Dawn Chorus to the song of the bullfinch, which Tim Birkhead regards as the ultimate songbird. The programme includes the famous recording of Beatrice Harrison playing her cello to a nightingale with the nightingale answering back. Tim Birkhead explores the story of the recording and considers the enduring impact of Beatrice’s duet.A correction: Since we broadcast this programme, new evidence has been brought to light. We’ve now learned that the recording initially believed to be the original 1924 broadcast of Beatrice Harrison and the nightingale, as labelled by the BBC Archives and the National Sound Archive, is instead likely to be a commercial recording released in 1927 by HMV. The labelling has now been corrected to ensure this mix up won’t happen again. Suggestions that the song of the nightingale in 1924 may have been sung by a siffleur are not new but probably impossible to verify since it seems likely that the original 1924 broadcast was never recorded, as the recording technology did not exist at the time. Claims about the real bird being replaced in 1924 by a professional bird imitator, Madame Saberon, are based on written testimony to the BBC from relatives of Madame Saberon, as well as accounts from Madame Saberon herself. There continues to be competing accounts of this extraordinary musical event as well as huge public interest; this demonstrates just how important the story of Beatrice and the nightingale is in the history of broadcasting.Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Michael Berkeley’s guest is the architect, author and broadcaster Francesco da Mosto. With his shock of white hair, boundless energy and unmistakable accent, Francesco da Mosto is for many of us the quintessential Venetian.His distant ancestors were some of the first settlers to colonise the swampy islands that were to become Venice, fleeing Attila the Hun in the 5th century, and since then the da Mosto family has been at the forefront of Venetian public life.One of the team of architects who restored the opera house in Venice after a devastating fire in 1996, Francesco shot to fame with his BBC television series exploring Venice, Italy and the Mediterranean. And with his English wife Jane, he’s at the heart of the campaign to find a sustainable future for this most beautiful and vulnerable city. Francesco tells Michael about the joys and travails of living in Venice, and about his life in a crumbling palazzo just off the Grand Canal, shared by his parents, his children and more than twenty other Venetian families. And he tells Michael how to cook his favourite Sunday lunch dish.His music choices are a celebration of Italy, with arias from operas by Puccini and by Verdi; a much loved song by Mina Mazzini; music by Ennio Morricone, Alessandro Marcello, and the most famous Venetian composer of them all: Vivaldi. Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3.

Richard Holloway, former Bishop of Edinburgh, talks to Michael Berkeley about faith, doubt, compassion and the powerful emotions stirred up by his favourite music. In 1948, at the age of just 14, Richard Holloway left his home in a small town near Glasgow to train for the priesthood at an Anglican monastery in Nottinghamshire. Nearly four decades later, after working in some of Scotland’s most deprived inner-city parishes, he was appointed Bishop of Edinburgh and Primus of the Church of Scotland. But in 2000 he resigned, unable any longer to reconcile his religious doubts, and his views, especially on gay rights, with church orthodoxy. As he’s navigated his unusual spiritual journey he’s remained an honest, compassionate voice, cutting through dogma and unafraid to engage with uncertainty and celebrate our humanity. Richard Holloway has presented many radio series and has written 33 books, the latest being Stories We Tell Ourselves: Making Meaning in a Meaningless Universe, an exploration of how we can try to make sense of our fleeting lives in a post-religious world.For Richard Holloway, listening to music is a deeply emotional experience; he chooses pieces by Rachmaninov, Elgar and Brahms, and a psalm and a hymn that bring back powerful memories of life in the seminary as a teenager. And Robert Burns’ Ca’ the Yowes reminds him of the joy of singing with his family around the kitchen table. Producer: Jane GreenwoodA Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Misan Harriman didn’t become a photographer till five years ago, when his wife gave him a camera for his fortieth birthday. Since then he’s become world-famous, photographing celebrities such as Tom Cruise, Cate Blanchett, and Meghan Markle – his was the romantic black-and-white photograph of Harry and Meghan announcing her pregnancy last year. Alongside these high-profile celebrity commissions, he’s also become a photographer known for documenting Extinction Rebellion, anti-Trump protests, and the Black Lives Matter movement. In 2020 he became the first black person in the 104-year history of British Vogue to shoot the cover of its prestigious September issue; last year he became the Chair of the Southbank Centre, the renowned arts complex in London.In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Misan talks about his journey to become a photographer, from early childhood in Nigeria to his time at an English boarding school. He reveals his “superpower” of dyslexia, and how he’s found a new way of shooting portraits in lockdown: “remote photography”.Misan Harriman is a passionate film buff, and all his music choices come from movies that have made a profound impression on him, from the soundtrack to “Ghost” which he saw as a boy, to William Walton’s score for “Henry V” and the moving Dunkirk scene in “Atonement”. A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke