Private Passions

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, working with Stanton Williams and Julian Harrap Architects, 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 multi-disciplinary 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

Richard Stokes has been passionate about song since he was a teenager – although, as he readily admits, he’s not a great singer. Instead, he’s become one of the world’s leading authorities on German art songs – or lieder – and has also co-written books on English, French and Spanish songs.
His work as a translator includes the complete Bach cantatas and the complete songs of Hugo Wolf, as well as operas by Wagner and Berg. He also collaborated with the pianist Alfred Brendel on translations of his poetry. Since 2006 he’s coached young singers at the Royal Academy of Music in London, where he’s Professor of Lieder.
His choices include music by Bach, Mahler and Stravinsky.
Presenter Michael Berkeley
Producer Graham Rogers