Private Passions

Dame Rachel de Souza is the Children’s Commissioner for England. She’s the fourth person to take on this role, which was established in 2004 to promote and protect the rights of all children. Before becoming the Commissioner in 2021, she worked as a teacher and headteacher, and was credited with improving failing schools in less than privileged areas. In her current post, she’s said that her priority is to listen to children, to hear about their lives and champion their voices – and she’s focused on big and difficult questions, including mental health, online safety and the strip-searching of children by the police. Rachel's music includes Handel, Tippett, Messiaen and Beethoven.

Daniel Katz is a renowned art dealer, collector and gallery owner who has very much beaten his own path through the tangled forests of the art world. Although he left school at the age of 14, his energetic curiosity brought him early success, making a profit of £15 on the first bronze he bought, and discovering something quite unexpected inside a grandfather clock. Danny is an expert on European sculpture, but has also branched out into new fields, including antiquities, Old Masters, Impressionist paintings and Modern British Art. He’s worked closely with museums, exhibitions and libraries around the world. Danny's choices include Schubert, Debussy, Sibelius and Bernstein.

Jay Griffiths first wanted to be a writer – an entity she believed to be a “god-like” creature - when she was just four years old and already captivated by words. And she’s fulfilled that early ambition. Her books include Wild, the product of seven years’ work, travelling to wildernesses including the Amazon rainforest, the Canadian Arctic and the Australian outback. She has also written very honestly about her experience of bipolar disorder in her book Tristimania: a Diary of Manic Depression. More recently, she’s reflected on the deep connections we have to animals and their ability to alleviate fear and trauma, under the title How Animals Heal Us. Jay's music selections include Sibelius, Rodrigo, Vivaldi and Debussy.

Gabriel Zuchtriegel is the director of Pompeii, one of the world’s most important ancient historical sites. It sits at the base of Mount Vesuvius, the still active volcano which erupted in 79AD and buried the city under volcanic ash and pumice, preserving a unique snapshot of life there nearly 2000 years ago.Gabriel grew up in Germany, where ruins and ancient myths first sparked his interest in our ancient past, and led him to study archaeology. Prior to Pompeii he oversaw Paestum, a site about 60 miles south of Vesuvius, celebrated for its three ancient Greek temples, dating back to about 500 BC. More recently, he has written a book called The Buried City: Unearthing the Real Pompeii - and new finds continue to be unearthed, as around a third of the site is still buried.Gabriel's music choices include Schubert, Mozart, Vivaldi and Bach.

The American singer songwriter Suzanne Vega released her first studio album almost exactly 40 years ago – and it soon found an audience, particularly here in the UK where it sold more than 300, 000 copies. Listeners responded to her understated, acoustic sound and thoughtful lyrics, in songs such as Marlene on the Wall and Luka. Another of her songs, Tom’s Diner, took on a life of its own. It’s been sampled by dozens of artists and one remix became a global hit.Suzanne recently released her tenth studio album, Flying with Angels, and will be embarking on a major tour with dates in England and Scotland later this year. Her mix of music includes Bartok, Rachmaninov, Philip Glass and Debussy. Producer: Clare Walker

Hilary Cottam is a writer, innovator and social entrepreneur who wants to find solutions for some of the most intractable problems of our time - from the design of prisons to how we provide care for the elderly and might end long-term unemployment. In her book Radical Help, she argued that we need to re-invent the Welfare State to match the challenges of the 21st century. In her most recent book, The Work We Need, she focuses on how we could re-imagine work in a way that benefits everyone, in a world facing immense technological change and ecological crisis. Hilary's choices include Pergolesi, Chopin, Schubert and Satie.

The comedian, writer and podcaster Adam Buxton first burst onto our TV screens 30 years ago. He and his friend Joe Cornish created The Adam and Joe Show, which featured pranks, songs and re-enactments of famous films like Titanic and Trainspotting using their childhood stuffed toys. Along with work on radio and film, an eye for the weird and wonderful quirks of music videos, and a multi-award winning interview podcast, he has also written two memoirs. The first, Ramble Book, included a very poignant account of his father’s final months, when he lived with Adam and his family until his death at the age of 91. More recently, his book I Love You Byeee! includes reflections on losing his mother – as he says, ‘to death – we didn’t get separated in a shop.’ And both books include plenty of musings on growing up and his many personal obsessions. Adam's musical choices include Ravel, Grieg and Thelonious Monk.

Philip Hoare is an award-winning writer whose books often describe the lure of the sea, the strange and beautiful creatures that live in it and the inspiration artists have found in its murky depths. His book Leviathan won the Samuel Johnson Prize: it drew on his lifelong obsession with whales, which began with the gigantic skeletons in the Natural History Museum and continued with his own encounters with them at sea. His most recent book, William Blake and the Sea Monsters of Love, traces Blake’s enduring influence on numerous poets, writers, film-makers and musicians. He’s also written about Noel Coward, the British socialite Stephen Tennant and the Netley Military Hospital on Spike Island, near Southampton. His musical choices including Prokofiev, Britten and Copland. Producer Clare Walker

The theatre director Emma Rice is renowned for her bold stagings of much-loved films and books including Brief Encounter, Wuthering Heights and the Red Shoes. For twenty years she worked as an actor, director, and eventually artistic director of Kneehigh, an international touring company based in Cornwall, known for its energetic productions with an inventive use of music and puppetry. In 2016, Emma became artistic director of Shakespeare’s Globe, the reconstructed Elizabethan theatre on the south bank of the Thames - although her tenure there ended after two years following disagreements with the board. She has since founded her own touring theatre company, Wise Children, whose recent productions include The Buddha of Suburbia and Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest. Emma's musical passions include Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov, Mozart and Bach.

Jonathan Sumption, Lord Sumption, isn’t afraid of hard work or an intellectual challenge. He’s combined a high-profile legal career with a passion for medieval history, and his books include a five volume, 4000 page account of the Hundred Years War, widely described as ‘monumental.’ For much of his career he was a very successful barrister working on commercial law, constitutional law and human rights cases, with clients ranging from the British government to Roman Abramovich. Then in 2012 he made history when he was appointed to the Supreme Court, the highest court in the land, without ever having served as a full time judge. In 2019, he gave the Reith Lectures, under the title Law and the Decline of Politics, examining how the courts are taking on more of the role of making law. It’s a topic he follows up in his most recent book, The Challenges of Democracy and the Rule of Law. Jonathan's musical choices include Berlioz, Schumann, Britten and Mozart.