The writer Julia Blackburn talks to Michael Berkeley about how music helped her through her traumatic childhood and about the joy of late-flowering love.Julia Blackburn is the author of novels, poetry, plays and books about historical figures including Napoleon, Billie Holiday, Goya, and the Norfolk artist John Craske, as well as books about grief, her love of animals, and the natural world. She’s also published memoirs, including an astonishing book about her childhood, The Three of Us.Julia shares her love of Beethoven, Pergolesi, English folk song, music from central Africa, and the songs of Billie Holiday, which helped her through her a childhood marked by chaos and neglect. And she tells Michael Berkeley about the happiness she has found in bringing up her own children, and the delight she has found in love later in life. Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Stuart MacBride was born in Dumbarton and raised in Aberdeen; abandoning his studies to become an architect, he went to work on the oil rigs, scrubbing toilets. He then tried out careers as an actor, a web designer, and a computer programmer, all the while writing away after work – he wrote four novels before his first, Cold Granite, was published in 2005. Since then, he’s become one of our most successful and prolific crime writers, with twenty-four titles in all, sometimes labelled as “tartan noir”. His latest, about the hunt for a serial killer, is called No Less the Devil. Reviewers say things like “this isn’t a novel to read over dinner”, or “slick, gruesome and brutally intelligent.” Gruesome crime-writing apart, Stuart MacBride’s other notable achievements include winning Celebrity Mastermind (his subject was A.A. Milne) and coming first in the World Stovies Championship. In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Stuart MacBride reveals how his “very dull” childhood developed his imagination as a writer, and how he first discovered crime fiction in the Aberdeen public library. He went to the library every day, read under the covers at night, and borrowed new books the following morning, moving on from the Hardy Boys to Dashiell Hammett. For Stuart MacBride, music is essential; he listens continually when he works, and his latest novel was written entirely to the soundtrack of Wagner’s Ring. Alongside Wagner, choices include Beethoven, Purcell, Bruch and Holst. He also introduces music by the Australian composer Sean O’Boyle, a concerto for didgeridoo, which he loves because it’s so dark. Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

It’s hard to think of an artist with a more striking and ambitious range than William Kentridge; his work spans etching, drawing, collage, huge tapestries - as well as film, theatre, dance and opera. He was born in Johannesburg and brought up during the apartheid regime; his art is highly politically charged. His parents, both lawyers, were notable figures in the anti-apartheid movement – his father being Sir Sydney Kentridge, who represented Nelson Mandela. For forty years now William Kentridge has used his art to explore the legacy of colonialism, and the barbarity of war. He’s probably best known for his charcoal sketches, which become stop-go animations, preserving almost every change and rubbing-out. But he has a keen eye for the absurdity of life too, so we watch typewriters turn into trees, birds flying off the pages of dictionaries, or a film titled “Portrait of the artist as a coffee pot”. In conversation with Michael Berkeley, William Kentridge talks about the importance of music in his work, and brings a playlist that reflects a lifetime of listening. We hear a famous 1937 recording of a Monteverdi madrigal; Janet Baker singing one of the songs from “Les Nuits d’ete” by Berlioz; a duet from The Magic Flute; a rare recording of the American guitarist Elizabeth Cotten; and a collaboration between the Kronos Quartet and a trio of musicians from Mali. He looks back to his childhood in South Africa, and what it was like to grow up under the cruel system of apartheid; and he reveals how important early failures were in enabling him to see the way forward.A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke

Arifa Akbar tells Michael Berkeley about her nocturnal life as a theatre critic and her desire to tell the story of her sister's death from tuberculosis.Arifa Akbar almost never has a quiet night in; as chief theatre critic of the Guardian she is out reviewing a production almost every evening. She also sits on the boards of the Orwell Foundation and of English PEN, and judges prizes including the UK Theatre Awards and the Women’s Prize for Fiction. In conversation with Michael Berkeley, she discusses the book she wrote about the death of her older sister, Fauzia, from tuberculosis, in which she explores Fauzia’s troubled life and why the medical profession failed to diagnose her illness until it was too late. Arifa chooses music from Bollywood films which remind her of her childhood, which was split between a prosperous and lively extended family in Lahore and poverty and social isolation in London. And she reveals how, after the death of her sister, she began to explore the tubercular heroines of nineteenth-century opera. Initially repelled by the glamorization of these women dying awful deaths, she has now come to love the music of Verdi and Puccini.Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Ronnie Archer-Morgan, from The Antiques Roadshow, tells Michael Berkeley about his tumultuous life and the music that has accompanied it.Ronnie had a terrible start in life. His English father died in a car crash before he was born and his Sierra Leonean mother had severe mental health problems that made her violent and abusive. His childhood was spent in and out of the care system. He tells Michael Berkeley how a school trip to the Victoria & Albert Museum in London ignited his life-long fascination with antiques, and how he learned the tricks of the trade exploring junk shops and markets while doing a rich variety of other jobs – model-maker, DJ at Ronnie Scott’s, boutique manager and celebrity hairdresser. Eventually antiques took over from everything else: he became a consultant to Sotheby’s, opened a Knightsbridge gallery, and he delights in presiding over the ‘miscellaneous’ table on The Antiques Roadshow. For Ronnie, the importance of objects is in the stories they tell and their emotional significance – and music is the same. He chooses pieces to remind him of different times in his life: a Handel aria that takes him back to rare moments of peace in his childhood; jazz from Donald Byrd which he played at Ronnie Scott’s; pieces by Mozart and by Dvorak that sparked his passion for classical music; and a song by Marvin Gaye, who wandered one day into Ronnie’s hair salon and shared a beer with him. Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Jules Montague trained as a doctor in Dublin before moving to London and becoming a consultant neurologist, specialising in treating people with dementia. This led to her first book, "Lost and Found: Why losing our memories doesn’t mean losing ourselves". After fifteen years as a doctor, she has now left clinical practice to become an investigative journalist, focusing on some of the deeper questions raised by her medical work. Her second book is called The Imaginary Patient: How Diagnosis gets us Wrong. In conversation with Michael Berkeley, she explains that although most of us are relieved when our symptoms are explained by a medical label, diagnosis is not always a good thing. Her experience working as a doctor in Mozambique and in India has revealed how differently diseases may be diagnosed across different cultures. In some ways, she claims, a diagnosis of “spirit possession” may actually be more helpful to the patient than the label “PTSD”. She talks too about her work as a neurologist treating patients with brain damage and dementia, and how it’s led her to ask questions about how much of the “real” person remains when memory is lost. Jules’s parents are from the Assam region of India and took her back as a child to spend time there; her music choices include a New Year dance from Assam, as well as piano music by Beethoven, a heart-breaking scene from Puccini’s Madame Butterfly; and music by Stravinsky, which he finished soon after suffering a stroke.A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke

The Broadmoor psychiatrist and psychotherapist Dr Gwen Adshead shares her passion for choral music with Michael Berkeley.When people ask Gwen Adshead what she does for a living she sometimes tells them she is a florist, because she is unable to face another conversation about why she has devoted her life to working with ‘monsters’. Gwen has spent thirty years as a psychiatrist and as a pioneering forensic psychotherapist working at Broadmoor Hospital in Berkshire with some of society’s most violent, and vilified, offenders. The author of more than 100 academic books and papers, Gwen recently co-wrote a best-selling book, with her friend Eileen Horne, for a more general audience: The Devil You Know takes the reader into the therapy room at Broadmoor to try to understand people often labelled as ‘monstrous’, including serial killers, stalkers and child sex offenders. Gwen tells Michael about her work at Broadmoor, encouraging offenders to understand what drove them to violence, to face up to what they have done, and to try to find a future free of violence. She finds parallels in her work with music: the leader of a group therapy session has much in common with a conductor; and as a psychotherapist Gwen has to listen to her patients with the same concentration as when she is listening to fellow choir members.Gwen’s passion for choral music runs through the programme with pieces by Tallis, Gibbons, Lauridsen and Verdi, and a Maori song that conjures up her early childhood in New Zealand.Producer: Jane GreenwoodA Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Sometimes a musical work of art is so perfect, so magnificent, that it’s almost impossible to remember the work that’s gone on, behind the scenes, from the early drafts to the anxiety and relief of the first performance. That’s certainly true of a masterpiece such as Bach’s St Matthew Passion. But writer James Runcie wants us to think about what went on in Bach’s mind while he was creating that magnificent Passion, and he’s written both a play and a novel about it. The novel, his twelfth, is called The Great Passion and it was published earlier this year; it was also broadcast on Radio 4 just before Easter. James is an award-wining film-maker, playwright and artistic director who has worked at the BBC, the Bath Literary Festival and Southbank Centre. He’s also the author of the Grantchester detective novels, now filming their eighth series for television. The hero’s a young priest, who solves crimes while wrestling with problems of religious faith - and religion is something James Runcie knows all about, as his father was Archbishop of Canterbury.In conversation with Michael Berkeley, James Runcie talks about the influence of his father, and of his unconventional mother, who was a pianist and piano teacher; in their household, he says, religion was optional, but music was compulsory. He shares his passion for the works of Bach in three of his choices, including the Matthew Passion. And he talks movingly about the death of his wife, the drama director Marilyn Imrie, from Motor Neurone Disease. When she was no longer able to speak, he played her music. A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke

Katherine Rundell started writing for children at the age of only 21; in little more than a decade she’s become one of our leading children’s writers, with six books so far, including the award-winning Rooftoppers, the story of a girl who travels across the rooftops of Paris looking for her mother. Katherine herself is a roof climber and a tightrope walker. Born in 1987, she grew up in Zimbabwe and Brussels; after taking her undergraduate degree at Oxford, she was elected a Fellow of All Souls College where she wrote her PhD thesis on John Donne. Her book on that great metaphysical poet, Super-infinite: The Transformations of John Donne, was published earlier this year, to celebrate the 450th anniversary of the poet’s birth. Katherine Rundell tells Michael Berkeley that her books set out to explain to children that life does contain loss, and pain, and darkness, but that it is always possible to discover joy. Her own childhood was marked by the loss of her sister and she says it is no accident that she lost her sister when she herself was ten and that she writes for ten-year-olds now. She talks too about her love of tightrope-walking and roof-climbing, and about her passion for John Donne, choosing two musical settings of his work. Other music choices include Mozart, Bach, Strauss, Fauré and Miles Davis.Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Anyone who’s spent any time with children in the last thirty years will know Horrid Henry and his brother, Perfect Peter. They’re the creations of Francesca Simon, and they’ve appeared in 25 books, been translated into 31 languages and sold 25 million copies. They seem to embody archetypes: the chaotic, naughty brother who’s always in trouble, and the neat well-behaved sibling who’s always anxious to please the parents. In Private Passions, Francesca Simon tells Michael Berkeley that her own emotional memories of childhood are extraordinarily vivid. She was brought up living on the beach in Malibu, where her father Mayo Simon was a screenwriter, but then moved around to Paris and New York and London. It all sounds glamorous, but actually, she says, it was hard. They moved so often that she always felt like an outsider. Francesca chooses music that reflects the very diverse influences of her early life: Yiddish and Breton folk songs, and Jascha Haifetz playing the Bach Double Violin Concerto. She also chooses music by the young British composer Gavin Higgins, for whom she’s written a libretto for his new work The Faerie Bride, and by E. J. Moeran, a composer she thinks should be much better known.A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke