Meg Rosoff waited until she was 45 to write her first novel, How I Live Now, the story of a passionate love affair between young teenage cousins, set against the background of apocalyptic war. It changed her life, selling a million copies and becoming a film starring Saoirse Ronan. She gave up a series of unfulfilling jobs in advertising and reinvented herself as a writer. Over the last 16 years she’s published eight more novels, as well as eight books for younger readers, including four about McTavish the rescue dog. She’s won numerous awards, including the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award - half a million Pounds, the biggest prize in children’s literature. In Private Passions, she talks to Michael Berkeley about the ways in which she’s reinvented her life over the years. First, there was the decision to come to England from New York and begin a new life here; then, after the tragic early death of her sister, there was the decision to become a writer. It didn’t begin well; she decided to write a book about ponies aimed at teenaged girls, but no publisher would touch it – it was far too sexy. Finding her voice as a writer took a while, and has led Meg Rosoff to think about “voice” in relation to musicians and composers too. Music choices include Bach’s B Minor Mass; “London Calling” by the Clash; Brahms’s Second Piano Concerto, and Ravel’s String Quartet in F Major. A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke

Over the last 40 years, Valentina Harris has done more than anyone else to convince the British public that there is a lot more to Italian food than pizza and Spaghetti Bolognese. Her television series and her more-than-50 books have brought her passion for Italian food, wine and culture to a huge audience. She tells Michael Berkeley about her childhood in Tuscany, choosing a romantic song by Georgio Gabor for her aristocratic Italian mother and Stravinsky for her father, who taught her to speak English without a trace of an accent. We hear music from the great gourmet Pavarotti, and a celebration of Italian food by Rossini.Valentina describes her horror of tinned spaghetti on toast when she arrived in England in the 1970s, and shares her tips for using up Christmas leftovers, Italian-style. Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

John Cleese has been making us laugh for more than 50 years. Back in the 1970s, he became a comedy legend in Monty Python and in Fawlty Towers, and he now has a second generation of fans, discovering for themselves his unique combination of surreal humour, verbal pyrotechnics and farce. So much so that even now, as he enters his eighties, John Cleese is recognised in the street all across the world. With almost six million Twitter followers, his is still a powerful voice, mocking those in power and generally trying to stir things up a bit. This programme was recorded while John was in Britain for a couple of weeks, over from LA to work on the script for the musical version of A Fish Called Wanda. In conversation with Michael Berkeley, he looks back on his childhood in Weston-super-Mare and the physical awkwardness that made him stand out from an early age – “six feet of chewed string”, as one of his teachers remarked. He remembers his fateful early decision not to be a lawyer but to try comedy instead. And he shares what he’s learned about the strange unconscious process of creativity. Music choices include Tchaikovsky, Scott Joplin and John Williams, as well as comedy sketches by Peter Cook and Dudley Moore – and John's favourite sketch from his own career, a double-act with Rowan Atkinson, “Beekeeping”. Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

In a warm and frank interview, Hayley Mills talks to Michael Berkeley about the joys and difficulties of growing up in Hollywood as a child star and about the music that reminds her of her family. Hayley Mills was described by Walt Disney as ‘the greatest movie find in 25 years’. After winning a Bafta at the age of just 12 in the British crime thriller Tiger Bay alongside her father, John Mills, she was signed up by Disney for a six-movie deal which included The Parent Trap, In Search of the Castaways and Pollyanna - for which she won an Oscar in 1961. In a career spanning more than six decades, Hayley Mills has gone on to work all over the world in films, television and on stage, and she has just published a memoir of her early life called Forever Young.She tells Michael why she was unable to collect her Oscar, and about the agonies her parents suffered trying to decide whether or not she should sign with Disney and the pressures of juggling a double life between Hollywood and a chilly English boarding school. And she talks frankly about suffering from bulimia as a teenager, the problem of her mother’s drinking, and how her life changed forever at the age of 21, when she had to hand over almost all her childhood earnings to the Inland Revenue. A proud mother of two sons and grandmother of five, Hayley Mills chooses music by Tchaikovsky, by Mendelssohn and by Bach, which reminds her of her sister, the actor Juliet Mills; of her mother, the screenwriter Mary Hayley Bell; and of her partner, the actor Firdous Bamji. Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Iain Sinclair describes himself as an urban prophet: in book after book, he has walked through London, recording the graffiti, the rubbish, the electric-green scum of a canal, the things you glimpse out of the corner of your eye and perhaps would rather not see. He brings to these pilgrimages many rich layers of reading about the city, interpreting what he sees through the eyes of past writers, particularly William Blake. In fact, he seems always to be walking with ghosts. It’s very hard to categorise his work, which is a rich blend of history, geography, travelogue, poetry, photography, literary criticism – sometimes all within a single book. Among dozens of publications over fifty years, he is probably best known for his walk around the M25, which became a film and a book, “London Orbital”. But in 2019, just before Covid, he embarked on an even more daring journey, to Peru. In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Iain Sinclair talks about the journeys, which have shaped his life, and about how music has inspired those wanderings. Music choices include Stravinsky’s setting of the Dylan Thomas poem “Do not go gentle into that good night”; Mahler’s Eighth Symphony; a song by Britten originally intended for the song-cycle Les Illuminations; and the singing of the Bakaya People from the Central African Republic. Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Nick Lane is a scientist who peers down microscopes at incredibly small cells in order to ask really big questions. How did life on Earth begin? Why is life the way it is? Why do we have sex? Why do we die?He is Professor of Evolutionary Biochemistry at University College London and the Co-Director of UCL’s Centre for Life’s Origins and Evolution. He is also the award-winning author of five books, and his next – Transformer: The Deep Chemistry of Life and Death – is due out in May.Nick Lane tells Michael Berkeley about his youthful ambition to be a violinist and how he funded his biochemistry studies by busking on the streets of London. He explains how his passion for the music of Janacek helped win him a place to study for his PhD, and how he unwound each evening to the sound of the early-twentieth-century American folk and blues musician Lead Belly.Nick Lane still plays the fiddle with his band in pubs and now also busks with his teenage son. He chooses folk music inspired by Handel; Bach played by his hero, the violinist Nathan Milstein; and music by Peter Maxwell Davies that brings back an unforgettable jamming session in a pub in Orkney.Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

In a special edition of Private Passions for COP26, Michael Berkeley talks to Dr Tamsin Edwards about her career as a climate scientist and her lifelong passion for music. As a child, Tamsin wanted to be a concert pianist and she went on to play the clarinet, saxophone and double bass, and to sing in choirs. Music is still a vital part of her life but now she is one of our leading climate scientists, at King’s College London, studying the uncertainties of climate model predictions, particularly in relation to rising sea levels. In 2018 she joined the author team for the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN body responsible for assessing the science related to climate change. Instantly recognizable with her trademark cropped blue hair, she is a passionate science communicator, blogging, writing for newspapers and frequently appearing on radio and television. Tamsin tells Michael how performing music helped her to develop the confidence to speak about science to governments, corporations and the public. We hear part of a Beethoven sonata that brings back memories of the terror she felt playing it for her Grade 8 Piano exam. She chooses music by Liszt for her mother, a concert pianist, and we hear her late father playing the trumpet with his New Orleans jazz band. And Tamsin talks movingly about her debilitating treatment for bowel cancer, paying tribute to the love and support of her partner, the television presenter Dallas Campbell, with piano music by Philip Glass.Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

In this special programme for Radio 3’s Twilight Season, Michael Berkeley’s guest is the sleep scientist Professor Matthew Walker.So many of us have trouble sleeping, and are longing to find the secret of a good night’s rest, that when Matthew Walker goes to parties he is more likely to tell people he is a dolphin trainer than the world’s leading expert on sleep science. Otherwise, he says, ‘for me the evening is over’.Matthew began his career in Britain, training as a doctor, but he is now Professor of Neuroscience and Psychology at the University of Berkeley, California and the founder and director of the Centre for Sleep Science. He is the author of more than 100 scientific papers and his best-selling book Why We Sleep has been translated into over 40 languages. Matthew tells Michael about the ‘global sleep crisis’, the sleep deficit that is costing individuals their health and economies billions. He explains why it is so important to get at least seven hours of sleep a night and the dangers to our physical and mental health if we regularly get even an hour less than that. And he describes the joys of sleeping and dreaming, and the magic they work on our creativity, memory and wellbeing. Matthew has chosen music with a restful, sleep-inducing tempo and rhythm by Debussy, Chopin, Handel and Purcell, as well as a track that transports him back to his home town of Liverpool. And he tells Michael about the most important scientific conversation of his career – with a pianist. Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Diplomat, Soldier, Explorer, Politician, Academic – Rory Stewart defies easy labels. By his own admission, his identity is complicated: he describes himself as “a Scot, born in Hong Kong and brought up in Malaysia”. After Eton, he went on to Oxford and to the Diplomatic Service, but then abandoned this conventional career path and spent two years walking across Afghanistan and Iran. He became a deputy governor in Iraq after the 2003 invasion, and then ten years later entered British politics as a Tory MP, serving under both Cameron and May, and finally making a bold bid to become Party Leader and Prime Minister. When Boris Johnson won the election in 2019 he resigned, and threw his hat into the ring to become the new London mayor. After that contest was delayed by Covid, he left politics, and indeed left the country; he now teaches international relations and politics at Yale University. In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Rory Stewart reveals that he feels nothing but relief at leaving politics behind. He looks back at the years he spent in Afghanistan and wonders how much of that work will survive, and he explains why he’s now moving with his young family to Jordan. Music choices take him back to his father, who often sang to him, and to his travels in the Borders and in Iran. He talks too about his search for religious belief, a yearning expressed by a Bach cantata; and why above all we must continue to hope – not despair – about the future. A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke

Mark Solms is a neuroscientist who has spent his whole career investigating the mysteries of consciousness. His research throws light on some of the most difficult questions of all: how does the mind connect to the body? Why does it feel like something to be you? Born in Namibia and educated in South Africa, he came to Britain in his late twenties to avoid military service under the apartheid regime. He made his name with research into what happens in the brain when we’re dreaming; then he startled his scientific colleagues by training as a psychoanalyst, something which, he says, “put me at odds with the rest of my field”. He’s now very unusual in holding eminent positions within both psychoanalysis and scientific research. He’s the author of six books – his latest is "The Hidden Spring" – and he divides his time between London and Cape Town, where he also pursues his other career... as a winemaker. In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Mark Solms reveals the traumatic childhood event which made him determined to become a doctor, when his brother jumped off a roof and suffered a major brain injury. He discusses the latest research on dreams, and how working with brain-damaged people can teach us about the nature of consciousness. And he tells the story of how he tried to rescue his family vineyard from the wider historical trauma of the apartheid past. Mark chooses music which he hopes will illuminate the nature of consciousness itself: Beethoven’s Tempest Sonata, Bach, Ligeti, Chopin, and Talking Heads.