Private Passions Podcast
1) Michael Wood, historian
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 t...Show More
2) James Aldred, cameraman and writer
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 of...Show More
3) Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu, chemist
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 a...Show More
4) Dietmar Mueller-Elmau, entrepreneur
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...Show More
5) Rachel Eliza Griffiths, poet and novelist
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.’A...Show More
6) Francis Spufford, writer
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, ...Show More
7) Sir Ian Blatchford, Science Museum director
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...Show More
8) George Saunders, writer
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 W...Show More
9) Penny Woolcock, film director
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 ...Show More
10) Peter Hamlyn, neurosurgeon
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...Show More