Deborah Levy was born in South Africa; when she was five, her father was arrested as a member of the ANC and spent four years in jail. The family left for England, arriving when Deborah was nine, in 1968. Unsurprisingly her work as a writer is concerned with themes of identity, exile, dislocation. Beginning as a poet and a playwright – her plays were staged by the RSC – she then turned to novels, and there are now seven in all, of which the last three have been nominated for the Booker Prize. The latest is ‘The Man Who Saw Everything’.Deborah talks with Michael Berkeley about the music that means most to her. Many of the pieces she loves are to do with saying farewell: Lotte Lenya saying ‘goodbye’ in Brecht and Weill’s Alabama Song; Orpheus pining for Euridice in Kathleen Ferrier’s legendary recording of Gluck’s ‘Che Faro?’; sisters wishing their lovers safe travel as, purportedly, they depart for war, in the trio from Mozart’s Cosi Fan Tutte. Deborah talks openly about her memories of her father’s imprisonment and of his return home; about the enormous transition in her life when, aged fifty, her marriage ended; and about how she found a room of her own in which to write, renting a friend’s garden shed and working to the noise of apples dropping onto the roof. Also among her music is Beethoven’s Pathetique Sonata (‘the silences are as important as the notes’); a song by Leonard Cohen; and a translucent setting of a Verlaine poem, ‘La Lune Blanche’, composed by Billy Cowie and sung by identical twins. Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3

Lord Stirrup, former Chief of the Defence Staff, talks to Michael Berkeley about his passion for music from Renaissance motets to twenty-first-century opera. Jock Stirrup was lucky to survive when a bird hit one of the engines of his Jaguar jet in 1983. With the cockpit glass obscured and one engine on fire, he chose not to eject from the plane, but to try to land it to save the life of his student pilot. For this he was awarded the Air Force Cross.This calm under pressure served him well as he rose through the ranks of the RAF, commanding forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and becoming Chief of the Defence Staff – the head of all the UK’s armed forces – until his retirement in 2011. A member of the Order of the Garter, he now sits as a cross-bencher in the House of Lords and has spoken critically about the regime in Russia and equipment shortages for troops in Iraq. He talks to Michael about the pressures of commanding forces, dealing with casualties, and speaking out on behalf of the men and women in the armed forces. Less well known is Jock Stirrup’s lifelong love of classical music. Now he’s retired he spends as much time as he can listening to music live, and he’s chosen pieces that span five centuries and many genres – a motet by Josquin Des Prez, music by Bach and by Mendelssohn, part of George Benjamin’s 2012 opera Written on Skin, and music from Die Walküre, illustrating the passion he’s had for Wagner from his schooldays. Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3

It’s hard to sum up the extraordinary reach of Siri Hustvedt’s work. On the one hand, there are popular novels such as What I Loved and The Summer Without Men, which became international best-sellers and were translated into thirty languages. But underpinning her six novels there’s an impressive body of philosophical exploration – about Freud, neurophysiology, painting. Then there’s her own art work: Siri Hustvedt illustrates many of her own books. She has published a volume of poetry, and she’s also a lecturer in Psychiatry at Cornell Medical College. She lives in New York with her husband, the writer Paul Auster. In Private Passions, Siri Hustvedt admits that she enjoys being hard to pin down, because much of her work is about identity and how it shifts across a lifetime. She reflects on her own youth in New York, where she was so poor that she ate by cruising bars during “Happy Hour” and eating the free snacks. She reveals too that she has neurological episodes where she loses consciousness, sees auras, and sometimes visions and voices. She admires the visionary composer Hildegard of Bingen, and also composer Meredith Monk, who is pushing the human voice to the limit in "Scared Song". Other choices include Mozart’s Don Giovanni, John Cage’s Sonata V, Webern’s Six Pieces for Orchestra, and Berlioz’s Les Nuits d’Ete. Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3

David Cannadine describes himself as “staggeringly lucky”: he found what he wanted to do early in life, and it has rewarded him richly. He is one of our most distinguished historians; his period is the 19th and early 20th century, and he’s written more than twenty books, on Churchill, on class, on the aristocracy - among many others. He’s the editor of the Dictionary of National Biography and the President of the British Academy, and a frequent broadcaster on Radio 4. He was knighted for services to scholarship in 2009. But perhaps the most surprising thing about David Cannadine is that although he was born in Birmingham and his historical research focuses on Britain, he himself lives in America; he’s spent ten years at Columbia University and is currently Professor of History at Princeton.In Private Passions he reflects on how his trans-Atlantic life changes his perspective, and enables him to see both Britain and the US as foreign countries. Although he’s now at the heart of the British establishment, he confesses that he’s always felt an outsider. His childhood in Birmingham was far from privileged, although the grand 19th-century buildings that surrounded him gave him a sense of Victorian grandeur, and his schoolteachers inspired him to aim high. They also inspired his passion for classical music, and many of the choices relate to his childhood and to his years at Cambridge and Yale. David's music includes Haydn’s Creation, Purcell’s King Arthur, Walton’s First Symphony, and Sullivan’s Iolanthe, in a performance of which, somewhat improbably, Sir David sang in the girls’ chorus. A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke

James Ellroy has been dubbed the ‘demon dog of American crime fiction’, a label he relishes. His crime novels, fifteen to date, are international best-sellers; the world they depict is Los Angeles at its wildest and darkest, cops and criminals as violent as each other. Ellroy’s own life has been dominated by crime; his mother was murdered when he was ten, and Ellroy himself got involved in petty theft and, as a young man, spent time in jail. In Private Passions, James Ellroy reflects on a turbulent life, and how he honed his story-telling skills in a cell with five other criminals. He reveals how much he owes to classical music – and particularly to Beethoven. He has a bust of Beethoven on his desk as he writes, and speaks to him every day. Sometimes Beethoven answers back. James talks too about his other heroes: Mahler, Shostakovich, Bruckner and Wagner, and his admiration for their monumental works. The choices have a strong romantic streak, perhaps surprising in a writer whose world is so violent and dark. But in conversation with Michael Berkeley, James Ellroy reveals himself as never before. A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke

Earlier this year, when Hannah Sullivan won the biggest prize in the poetry world, the TS Eliot Prize, the chair of the judges announced: “A star is born. Where has she come from?” Such a prestigious prize is a rare honour, as the book, Three Poems, was Hannah Sullivan’s first published collection. Up until then, she’d established a successful academic career, studying at Cambridge, teaching at Harvard and for the last seven years at New College Oxford, where she’s an Associate Professor of English. In Private Passions, Hannah Sullivan talks to Michael Berkeley about the time in New York which inspired her prize-winning poems, and why she wanted to capture what it’s like to be alone and vulnerable in a strange city. She reads from a new poem about Grenfell Tower, which will be published next year. And she reveals a passion for Nina Simone. Other music choices include Strauss’s “Der Rosenkavalier”, the Dvorak Cello Concerto, the Schubert String Quintet, and a setting of a poem by Thomas Campion so perfect she wishes she’d written it: “What is love but mourning?”A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke

At the age of 27, Peter Piot’s life was changed by the arrival of a special package from Africa. He was working as a researcher in a microbiology lab in Antwerp, Belgium; and, in September 1976, the lab was alerted that a package was on its way from Zaire: samples of blood from an epidemic that was stirring along the river Congo. Several Belgian nuns had already died of a strange new disease. The disease – which Peter Piot and his team identified, and named – was Ebola, and he went on to play a leading role in helping to contain the epidemic. He then led research into the worldwide epidemic which followed, the new disease of AIDS, becoming President of the International Aids society. Peter Piot has held prominent positions in the United Nations and in the World Health Organisation and has been ennobled both in Belgium and in Britain, where in 2016 he was made an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George. It’s a career which has taken him all over the world, and though Peter Piot is now the director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in London, he still travels a great deal. His musical choices reflect that, with music from Africa, including a piece performed for him on his 60th birthday by the 'king of Rumba Rock', Papa Wemba. He includes, too, a rarely heard viol piece by the Flemish composer Leonora Duarte, which he discovered when he was studying in Antwerp. With the horrifying return of Ebola, Peter Piot reflects on a career which has been spent very close to the dead and dying. And he chooses music which helps him make sense of the tragedies he has witnessed first-hand: Kathleen Ferrier singing Gluck’s heart-breaking aria “Che Faro”. Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3

As the 50th anniversary of the moon landings approaches, James Burke talks to Michael Berkeley about the music that brings back memories of the heady days when, new to science broadcasting, he was chosen by the BBC to lead the coverage of the Apollo Missions and the moment the first human stepped onto the Moon. James Burke has the rare gift of making complex ideas comprehensible to a wide audience – and providing a great deal of entertainment along the way. He began his BBC career on Tomorrow’s World, and his series Connections, which offered a new perspective on the history of science and technology, was a television landmark. James is the author of more than a dozen books, and his series about his long-running project The Knowledge Web was broadcast recently on Radio 4. The surprising thing about James Burke is that he studied Middle English at university and got into science broadcasting quite by accident while working in Italy. He tells Michael how it happened and plays a Neapolitan song which reminds him of the years he spent there as a young man. He chooses music that reminds him of his musical childhood – Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet which he played at school, and a piece by Handel which he sang. His lifelong love of playing the guitar is reflected in music by Albeniz, and James makes some truly startling predictions about how technology is about to utterly transform our lives. Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3

Sarah Langford is a barrister; in her words, her job is “to represent the mad and the bad, the broken and the hopeful” – telling their stories in court. After thirteen years of practice, she decided to tell their stories in a book, too. In Your Defence was published last year and has had a huge impact. In it she tells the stories of eleven people she represented in both the criminal and family courts: harrowing stories of mothers whose babies are taken away at birth, teenagers caught up in addiction, a wife who’s abused, a boy whose parents fight over him for years. In Private Passions, she talks to Michael Berkeley about why she felt it was important to get these people’s stories into the public domain, at a time when the criminal justice system in Britain is facing overwhelming pressure. One of the challenges of the job is to decompress, after the emotions of a day fighting a case in court, and this is where listening to music is crucial. “When I was coming home on the train from court, I would often find myself wrestling with emotions about all that had happened that day. I had Bach’s cello suites on my phone playlist and would listen over and over whilst writing my attendance note and closing the case, both literally and mentally. The music helped me remove myself from the carriage and also gave me a way to feel contemplative about what had gone on.” Other choices include Lutoslawski, Messiaen, Paul Dukas, Benjamin Clementine, and choral music by Morten Lauridsen. Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3

In the early 1990s Harry Enfield went from being a part-time milkman to one of our biggest comedy stars, and many of the characters he created have become embedded in our national psyche - Loadsamoney, Kevin the Teenager, Tim Nice-But-Dim, Wayne and Waynetta Slob, Stavros and Smashie and Nicey, to name just a few. He started out on Spitting Image and Saturday Night Live, and his television shows in the 1990s reinvigorated British sketch comedy, gaining him more than 13 million viewers a week. Films, documentaries, and more comedy series have followed, as well as a hugely successful theatre show with his comedy partner of nearly 30 years, Paul Whitehouse.Harry tells Michael Berkeley about how his journey from punk to opera - his great musical passion - developed when he was living in a council flat in his twenties and borrowing a record a week from the library. We hear parts of two Verdi operas that inspired the theme tunes for his first two television series. He reveals why he’s chosen the aria Largo al Factotum from The Barber of Seville in tribute to Paul Whitehouse and we hear a moving performance by John Tomlinson as Boris Godunov. Music by Elgar and by Schubert brings back memories of Harry's time at university and he talks movingly about family life and his relationship with his father Edward, who enjoyed a late-flowering career as a journalist and broadcaster. And he quotes a less than flattering entry about his grandparents from Virginia Woolf’s diary. Harry doesn’t usually do interviews so it’s a real pleasure to hear him talking about his life through the music he loves.Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3