Private Passions

As part of Radio 3's Britten Centenary weekend, Michael Berkeley travels to Aldeburgh beach to meet the artist Maggi Hambling at her controversial memorial to Britten in the form of two giant interlocking scallop shells.Michael also visits her nearby studio to see her paintings inspired by the Suffolk sea and to talk about the effect of Britten's music on her painting and sculpture.She tells Michael about her fascination with drawing and painting people she's loved after they've died; the importance of drawing; and her love of feeling rooted in Suffolk.Maggi's music choices include music from Peter Grimes and the War Requiem, as well as Schubert, a song by her friend George Melly and some surprising music which sums up how she relaxes in the rare moments when she's not working.

Martin Gayford has a passion for painting and music, and has spent his career writing about artists - Constable, Van Gogh, David Hockney, Lucian Freud - and thinking about the connection between art and music. His new biography of Michelangelo is published in this month, and in this edition of Private Passions he explores the musical worlds of some of our greatest painters. He begins with the choir that Michelangelo heard as he lay high up on the scaffolding, painting the Sistine Ceiling - there were complaints he banged around too much, interfering with the music.Martin Gayford then moves on to talk about the painter Constable as a musician (he was a flautist) and to tell the story of Van Gogh's attempt to learn the piano - in order to experience synaesthesia, and paint the music he played in bright colours.Apart from his biographies of great artists, Martin Gayford is famous because his portrait was painted by Lucian Freud ('Man in a Blue Scarf'), a process that took 18 months. During that time they visited jazz clubs together, and the programme includes some of Freud's favourite music. There's also a food theme running through the programme - Gayford is a keen cook - and the programme ends with one of Toulouse Lautrec's favourite recipes, designed to be bright orange. As always Michael Berkeley's programme is perfect timing for cooking Sunday Lunch.Music choices include: Debussy, Duke Ellington, Haydn, Arcadelt, Thelonius Monk, Stravinsky's 'Rake's Progress' and Billie Holliday.

It was a band called The Commitments that first brought Roddy Doyle fame 25 years ago - not a real group of musicians, but a comic novel about a group of Dublin teenagers who get together and form a soul band. The book and its sequels became successful films. Roddy Doyle gave up his job as a teacher and has gone on to write nine more novels set in Dublin, where he grew up and still lives.One of them, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, won the Booker Prize and is a memorable tour de force told entirely in the voice of a ten-year-old Dublin boy. Roddy Doyle has also written for children, for the theatre and the cinema, and now, after 25 years, he's back where he started - he's turned The Commitments into a musical which has just opened in London's West End.Roddy's music choices range from the richness of Pergolesi and Mozart to the sparse modernism of Steve Reich and Brian Eno, with a touching love song to end the programme.He talks to Michael Berkeley about music while you work, the pleasures of Dublin dialogue, and the joy of taking up the trumpet in middle age.First broadcast November 2013.

Private Passions makes its first visit to Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival of ideas. Michael Berkeley talks to Chris Mullin, former MP, thriller writer and one of the sharpest political diarists of our age. He's certainly a free thinker: in three volumes of political diaries he's given us a devastating and very funny account of the workings of Westminster, from his vantage point as Labour MP for Sunderland South.Chris Mullin retired in 2010 after 23 years in Parliament; Michael asks him whether he was too free-thinking to get to the top â€" or perhaps his sense of humour was the problem. But there's more to Chris Mullin than his political career, as this programme reveals. He looks back to perhaps the greatest achievement of his life, when he campaigned successfully for the release of the Birmingham Six in the 1980s - innocent men imprisoned as a result of a miscarriage of justice. He talks too about his friendship with the Dalai Lama and how his travels in the Far East have given him a different perspective, and about finding love and raising a family later in life.Chris Mullin's musical choices include Handel's 'Messiah', sung by the Parliament Choir; a Chopin Nocturne; Tibetan, Vietnamese and African music and Mozart's C Minor Mass. He also includes music by Northumbrian musician Kathryn Tickell, celebrating his deep love of the North East and the rich life he has lived there.BBC Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival takes place at Sage Gateshead 25-27 October and is broadcast for three weeks on Radio 3 from Friday 25 October.

Michael Berkeley's guest is the actor Rory Kinnear.Rory Kinnear is in danger of becoming a national treasure. Audiences across the world know him thanks to two Bond movies, where he plays M15 officer Bill Tanner. He was the journalist in the TV thriller Southcliffe, he was Denis Thatcher in the Margaret Thatcher TV biopic, he's the straight man to Count Arthur Strong... And he's established a reputation as one of our finest Shakespearean actors - his performance as Hamlet at the National Theatre was screened across the UK as part of the National's 50th anniversary celebrations. This summer he played an unforgettably chilling Iago to Adrian Lester's Othello, again at the National. And he's just turned playwright - his first play, The Herd, directed by Howard Davies, has opened in London.He's a difficult actor to pin down. But in conversation with Michael Berkeley he reveals the man behind the theatrical mask. He talks movingly about his father, the actor Roy Kinnear, who was killed during a film stunt, and how he kept sane after the accident by playing the piano. Rory still plays in rehearsal rooms across the world, grabbing his chance at the piano while the other actors eat lunch. He reveals too that music is the key to his relationship with his sister, who was born with profound disabilities; Rory composes music for her, and plays songs as a way of communicating with her. He works increasingly with musicians, at the Proms last year, and in recordings. And, be warned, every morning he walks across London listening to music on his huge headphones - and singing along at the top of his voice.Music choices include Mark Padmore singing Bach, Haydn's Trumpet Concerto, a Beethoven violin sonata, Erroll Garner, and Big Rock Candy Mountain.First broadcast 13/10/2013.

Greg Doran is one of those lucky people who seem to have found his perfect place in life. From the age of 13, when his mother first took him to the theatre in Stratford, Shakespeare's been his passion; as a boy he dedicated himself to seeing every single Shakespeare play - sometimes managing to watch three Macbeths in a day.So - what better job than Artistic Director of our great national Shakespeare company, a role he took on 18 months ago. His production of Richard II with David Tennant in the lead opens on 10 October, and he's directing Henry IV next year with his partner Anthony Sher playing Falstaff.Doran doesn't come from a theatrical background - his father ran a nuclear power station. But his passion for music began early, thanks to a concert in the local village hall in Lancashire. A friend of his mother's, Mrs Sidebottom, got up on stage and sang 'Blow the Wind Southerly'. And young Greg was hooked. That haunting folk song begins his choice of music - sung in this case by Kathleen Ferrier. Other choices include Duke Ellington, a song by Cervantes, and a Vivaldi Concerto which changed Doran's life when he heard it in Paris. It was a low point - a love affair had ended, his ambition to be an actor was foundering. And the music spoke to him, and gave him a new direction.In Private Passions, he talks to Michael Berkeley about his passion for Shakespeare, and about his relationship with Antony Sher. Its foundations are a shared life in theatre, but also a love of food: when Anthony's depressed, Greg cooks for him the comfort food he ate as a child in South Africa. He's even learned how to make a special lamb stew - and he gives us the recipe: "I believe there is a Jewish saying that food is love. For me, tomato bredie is an expression of love."First broadcast in October 2013.

Beeban Kidron is a rare and very unpredictable film-maker. A woman in a man's world, she's made highly successful dramas such as the BAFTA-winning Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, and the blockbusting rom-com Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason. But she also makes documentaries which come straight from her heart: films about sex workers in New York, the women of Greenham Common, the sculptor Antony Gormley, and a highly-acclaimed film about girls sold into religious prostitution in India. And her latest film In Real Life is a documentary about teenagers and the internet.She talks to Michael Berkeley about the power of music in films, the pleasures of building relationships with composers, the joy of telling stories, and the sheer determination needed to make the films she feels so passionately about.Her choices include music from her film Swept from the Sea and her BAFTA-winning television series Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit; the music of her childhood; the piece which changed her ideas about love; and the scariest film music ever written.Producer: Jane Greenwood. A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

It's quite possible that Philip French has seen more films than anyone else on the planet. Obsessed with cinema since the age of four, he has been reviewing films for the Observer for the past fifty years, as well as writing for many other papers and publishing several critically acclaimed books about cinema.He talks to Michael Berkeley about the role of the composer in the cinema, his late flowering love of Beethoven string quartets, his lifelong delight in the singing of Ruth Etting; and his greatest film music memories.His music choices are all associated with film ? from Disney's Fantasia; through The Ride of the Valkyries used so memorably in Apocalypse Now; to Miles Davis and avant garde composer Harry Partch.Philip French sees at least nine films a week ? that's getting on for 20,000 over his career. Michael Berkeley asks him, how important is music in making a film stick in the mind?Producer: Jane Greenwood. A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Angie Hobbs is no ordinary philosopher. Her job takes her to places as varied as cathedrals, airforce bases and merchant banks, as well as frequently to our radio and TV screens. As our first ever Professor of the Public Understanding of Philosophy, based at Sheffield University, she's determined to ensure that philosophy doesn't remain exclusively in the hands of academics - she wants it to inspire us all to explore the big questions in our lives.Angie talks to Michael Berkeley about music in Greek philosophy, and about music as solace, as well as a celebration of life and the memory of people and places she has loved. Her choices include a Beethoven movement she considers to be the most beautiful music ever written, a Latin carol and an unusual arrangement of Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez, as well as music by Bach, Vaughan Williams and Emmylou Harris.Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Gillian Lynne is best known as the choreographer of Cats and Phantom of the Opera, among other West End hits. She received a lifetime Olivier Award earlier this year. But her career began more than seven decades ago, when she was spotted as a dancer by Ninette de Valois. She danced during the War, with doodlebugs falling around her and just two pianos in the pit - no orchestras, as all the men were away fighting. She danced in the first night at Covent Garden after the War, when audiences dusted off their evening clothes. She then moved into movies, playing a gypsy temptress in The Master of Ballantrae opposite Errol Flynn. The sexual chemistry wasn't confined to the screen - she and Flynn had an affair, though his drink problem meant 'He wasn't a great lover. At the end of the day, he couldn't... But he was a beautiful man.'As she developed as a choreographer, Gillian Lynne worked with the leading composers of the day, including Sir Michael Tippett. In fact she asked him to make changes in his Ritual Dances (from The Midsummer Marriage) so it would become a bit clearer what on earth was going on. 'I said to Colin Davis, I don't know what this is about. But I think it's about orgasms. He said, "Quite right, dear girl. Quite right!"'Now 87, Lynne talks frankly about her career, and people she has worked with, like Frederick Ashton and Dudley Moore. She is still working - 'If I didn't I'd keel over' - and thanks to her daily workout, she is still enviably fit. She tells the story of finding love for the first time when she was in her 50s - with a man 27 years younger than herself. She's naughty, irreverent, and fun; this is also priceless social history.Music choices include Fauré, Walton, Vaughan Williams, Tippett and Errol Garner.First broadcast in September 2013.