Private Passions

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.
She has recently written a memoir, The Man Who Gave Me a Biscuit, about growing up in a British enclave in Argentina.
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