Private Passions

In the world of dance, Carlos Acosta is a superstar. He grew up in a poor part of Havana, where he was the 11th child in his family, and began his training at the National Ballet School of Cuba. At the age of just 18, he became the youngest principal dancer at the English National Ballet. After gaining further international experience, he joined the Royal Ballet in 1998 and made it his home for nearly two decades, dancing almost every major classical role. He’s now Director of Birmingham Royal Ballet, where he’s fostered some unexpected collaborations, including a ballet danced to the music of local heavy rock legends Black Sabbath as well as productions of classics such as Swan Lake and the Nutcracker. And this summer, he returns to the stage of the Royal Ballet in London with a programme called Myths and Modern Masters. Carlos' music choices include works by Prokofiev, Khachaturian, Massenet and Ennio Morricone.

Leslie Cavendish left school at the age of 15 years, without any artistic qualifications, and decided to become a hairdresser. Within three years, his clients included Terence Stamp, Keith Moon, the Bee Gees, Jane Asher – and the Beatles. He began by cutting Paul McCartney’s hair - and soon became part of the band’s inner circle. He attended Beatles recording sessions and joined them on their Magical Mystery Tour. They even invited him to open a salon at their Apple Tailoring boutique on the Kings Road in Chelsea. Leslie's music includes Tchaikovsky, Mendelssohn and Beethoven.

Thirty-five years ago, during the Gulf War, the face of the RAF navigator John Nichol appeared on news bulletins around the world. His Tornado jet had been shot down over Iraq, and he was captured, tortured and paraded on Iraqi television. Together with the pilot John Peters, he wrote about these experiences in their best-selling book Tornado Down. Since then, he's written many more books about military history, on topics ranging from the Spitfire to the Unknown Warrior. His most recent book, Blitz, focuses on the effects of German bombing, not just on London, but in Glasgow, Cardiff, Manchester and his native north east. John's music includes Chopin, Aaron Copland, Arthur Sullivan and Elgar.

Ruth Ozeki won the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2022 with her novel The Book of Form and Emptiness. The judges called it a ’complete joy to read.’ She’s also a film-maker and a Zen Buddhist priest, and her books draw on her Japanese-American heritage. They also convey her deep concern for our environment, taking on topics such as industrial agriculture, ocean pollution and mass consumerism. Her most recent book, The Typing Lady and Other Fictions, is her first collection of short stories – and the Typing Lady of the title has more than a little in common with Ruth herself. Ruth Ozeki's music includes Albeniz, Praetorius, Prokofiev and Benny Goodman.

Jeremy Vine is one of the most familiar voices and faces in British broadcasting. He's presented his Radio 2 lunchtime show since 2003, and its mixture of music and news reaches 6 million listeners every week. Their personal stories and opinions are a vital part of the programme. Jeremy also presents a weekday show on Channel 5, and since joining the BBC almost 40 years ago, he's been our correspondent in Africa and appeared on everything from Newsnight to Strictly Come Dancing. He also writes crime fiction, drawing on his work behind the microphone. His books Murder on Line One and most recently Turn the Dial for Death feature the radio presenter Edward Temmis turning his hand to detective work. Jeremy's music includes Morricone, Mussorgsky and Holst.

Like many writers, Sofka Zinovieff draws on her own history in her books – and her family tree offers plenty of inspiration. Her paternal grandmother was born into Russian high society, fled to England after the 1917 revolution and became a Communist. Sofka wrote her biography. Her maternal grandmother married the eccentric aristocrat Robert Heber-Percy, and for a time shared a house with his lover, the artist and composer Lord Berners. Sofka has also charted her story. Her father Peter was a composer and co-founder of Britain's first synthesiser manufacturer, making instruments used by the likes of Pink Floyd and David Bowie. He banned his many children from attending his funeral – a decision which inspired her most recent book, a novel called Stealing Dad. Sofka's music includes Bach, Monteverdi, Theodorakis and Mozart.

The writer Simon Barnes has two very public passions - sport and the natural world. He wrote about both for The Times for 30 years, covering seven Olympic Games and six World Cup finals, while also delivering columns on short-eared owls, mountain hares and “the organ-pipe contact call of lions." His books include reflections on the meaning and the soul of sport, and numerous titles about birds, including the best-selling How to Be a Bad Birdwatcher, in which he says: ‘Birdwatching is a state of being, not an activity. It is not a matter of organic trainspotting. It is about life and it is about living.’ This way of seeing also informs his most recent book How to Fly – which examines not only birds, but butterflies, bees, bats and the deep human fascination with flight. Simon's musical choices include Beethoven, Scarlatti, Monteverdi and Messiaen.

Margaret Busby is a publisher and editor who's helped change our literary landscape. She's been lauded by the writer Zadie Smith as the cheerleader, instigator, organiser, defender and celebrator of black arts, something she's done for nearly 60 years. She started young - she was just 23 years old when she co-founded the publishers Allison and Busby with Clive Allison in 1967. Free from the usual industry rules and with little money or experience, they began with five shilling poetry paperbacks and went on to champion new work as well as established writers from all backgrounds. Margaret's drive to showcase often overlooked or neglected talent led to two groundbreaking anthologies of women writers, Daughters of Africa and New Daughters of Africa. Margaret's music includes Bach and Chevalier de Saint-Georges, along with jazz greats Duke Ellington and Miles Davis. Radio 3 is celebrating the centenary of Miles Davis' birth in the coming week across numerous programmes including Composer of the Week, Round Midnight and The Essay.

The historian Michael Wood has shared his enthusiasms and expertise with television viewers and readers around the world for almost five decades. He’s brought us complex individuals such as Alexander the Great, pivotal conflicts such as the Trojan War, and national histories, including the Story of India, the Story of China and a people’s history of Britain. And here on Radio 3, he’s one of the distinguished historians joining Gillian Moore for Key Changes, a year-long series charting one thousand years of musical history, on air on Saturdays and on BBC Sounds. Michael's musical choices include Monteverdi, Bach, Messiaen and Chopin.

James Aldred is an Emmy award-winning documentary wildlife cameraman and filmmaker who has collaborated with David Attenborough on projects such Planet Earth, The Life of Mammals and Our Planet. He often finds himself suspended from ropes or on platforms high up in the rainforest canopy, capturing shots of rarely-seen animals and birds, including orangutans, gibbons and eagles. He recalled some of his treetop adventures - and the many dangers he’s faced - in his first book, The Man Who Climbs Trees. His second, Goshawk Summer, detailed his experience of filming a family of goshawks in the New Forest during lockdown. It went on to win the Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing. His most recent book, A Wagon in the Woods, returns to the New Forest and is about his painstaking restoration of an old horse-drawn wagon he once played in as a child. James picks music by Borodin, Wagner, Mahler, Bach and John Barry.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu has dedicated her career to studying nanoparticles, finding ways to carry medicines to parts of the body that are notoriously hard to reach, such as the back of the eye and the brain, while causing fewer side-effects. She’s Professor of Pharmaceutical Nanoscience at University College London, President of Wolfson College Cambridge and was appointed a DBE in the King’s New Years Honours List last year. She’s also written a book called Chain Reaction: the Wondrous Chemistry of Everyday Life, in which she blends explanations of the science that surrounds us with moments of personal memoir. Ijeoma's music list includes Mozart, Vivaldi, Bach and Johann Strauss. Presenter Michael Berkeley Producer Clare Walker

Dietmar Mueller-Elmau is the owner of Schloss Elmau, a resort hotel in the Bavarian Alps, 60 miles from Munich. It was set up in 1916 by his grandfather, the philosopher and writer Johannes Müller. He wanted people to take “a holiday from the ego” and to enjoy classical concerts. Over the decades, it hosted performances by the likes of Benjamin Britten, Yehudi Menuhin and Alfred Brendel. Dietmar continues that tradition, with musicians such as Yuja Wang and the Kanneh-Masons, along with jazz concerts, events with writers and philosophers, and the G7 leaders conference – twice. Dietmar's music choices include Mendelssohn, Beethoven, Liszt and Chopin.

The American writer Rachel Eliza Griffiths creates poetry that resonates with music: she writes about her mother cleaning the house while ‘Pavarotti trembled across the terse sunlight of every room.’ As well as poetry, she’s written a novel, and her most recent book is a memoir called The Flower Bearers. It deals with loss, including the sudden death of her closest friend. She received the news on what should have been the happiest of days – her marriage to the writer Salman Rushdie. And less than a year later, she found herself beside his hospital bed after the knife attack which nearly claimed his life. But this is no misery memoir – there is the joy of finding her voice as a young poet in New York in the 90s, the strength she gains from the writers who have paved the way, and the music that travels with her. Eliza's music choices include music by Schumann, Bach, Puccini and Nina Simone.

Francis Spufford is an award-winning writer who loves to inhabit different worlds and vividly bring them to life: Golden Hill, which won the Costa First Novel Award, takes place in Manhattan in 1746, Light Perpetual begins in a Woolworths in South London in 1944 and Francis’s latest novel ‘Nonesuch’ is a historical fantasy set during the Blitz. But it wasn’t until he was 52 that Francis felt confident enough to write works of fiction, before that his books covered a wide variety of topics from polar expeditions to the economic optimism of post-Stalin Russia to an exploration of the role religion has played in his life. He became an atheist in his teens but turned back to the church after a 20 year hiatus. When not penning his own work, Francis encourages other budding authors as Professor of Creative Writing at Goldsmiths, University of London. His music choices include works by Byrd, Satie, Mozart and Ravel.

Sir Ian Blatchford has been the Director of the Science Museum in London for more than 15 years – the longest serving director in its history. He also oversees the National Railway Museum in York, the National Science and Media Museum in Bradford, the Science and Industry Museum in Manchester, Locomotion in County Durham, and the Science and Innovation Park in Wiltshire - all enjoyed by more than four million visitors last year. He was the first in his family to go to university and his early career was in banking, but his passion was for culture. He combined the two as Finance Director at the V+A, before crossing the road to lead the Science Museum. It’s currently a very challenging time for anyone running a museum, with hard questions about funding, sponsorship and exhibition content. His musical choices include Elgar, Monteverdi, Wagner and Sarah Vaughan. Producer: Katy Hickman

The American writer George Saunders won the 2017 Booker Prize with his first novel, Lincoln in the Bardo. It’s a moving exploration of the grief of President Lincoln as he mourns his 11-year-old son Willie – and it’s voiced by the weird and wonderful spirits trapped in the cemetery. George was 58 when the novel was published. In the decades before that, he won renown and awards as a master of the short story. He’s also won legions of followers for his close analysis of the form. Most recently he’s published a second novel, Vigil, in which spirits return – this time to the deathbed of an oil tycoon. His musical choices include John Adams, William Grant Still, Caroline Shaw and Dvorak. Producer: Katy Hickman

The writer and film-maker Penny Woolcock can’t be pigeonholed: she’s worked as a director at the Metropolitan Opera in New York and made a film about warring drug gangs on the streets of Birmingham. A passion for storytelling has driven her career, along with a rebellious streak, perhaps because she’s something of an outsider and never went to university or film school. She often uses non-professional actors in her work, including a staging of Bach’s St Matthew Passion with people who had experienced homelessness. And after completing her movie about rival gangs in Birmingham, she found herself helping to broker a peace deal between two of the actual gang leaders. Her musical choices include Shostakovich, Britten, Bach and Sibelius. Producer: Katy Hickman

Peter Hamlyn is the founder and president of the Brain and Spine Foundation, after working as a neurosurgeon for 40 years. He is perhaps best-known for saving the life of the boxer Michael Watson, who suffered a severe brain injury during a title fight in 1991 and was in a coma for 40 days. Peter performed seven brain operations and became a pioneer in the field of sports medicine, campaigning for better care for athletes. He is now fascinated by how Artificial Intelligence might transform the diagnosis and care of neurological patients. Peter's music includes Hildegard of Bingen, Berlioz, Handel and Prokofiev.

Asif Khan is a world-renowned architect and designer whose work inspired a recent headline – ‘is there anything Asif Khan can’t transform?’. His current projects include the re-invention of the former Smithfield meat market into the new London Museum, and the extensive renewal of the Barbican Centre. Further afield, in Kazakhstan, he’s turned a vast former Soviet cinema into a new cultural centre. He opened his own studio in 2007, and has designed exhibitions, temporary pavilions and installations around the world. He views architecture as a multidisciplinary field, bringing together design, science and art. His musical choices include Chopin, Shostakovich, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Brian Eno. Producer: Katy Hickman

Philippa Gregory has been called the ‘Queen of Historical Fiction’. The English royal court has inspired many of her best-selling titles, and she’s written sixteen novels about the Plantagenets and Tudors. One of them – The Other Boleyn Girl – became a BBC TV drama and a Hollywood movie starring Scarlett Johansson and Natalie Portman. This success probably surprised her A level teachers: she says she found history ‘insanely boring’ at school, but her passion was fired at university. She’s also written non-fiction, notably seeking the stories of what she calls ‘normal women’ over 900 years. More recently she’s returned to the Tudors, with a novel called Boleyn Traitor, focussing on the intrigue surrounding Anne’s sister-in-law, Jane. Her music choices include Mozart, Philip Glass, Scott Joplin and the Mazurka from Coppelia by Leo Delibes. Producer: Katy Hickman