Private Passions on Radio 3.

Described as The Thinking Person’s Desert Island Discs, this wonderful programme this week celebrates its twentieth anniversary. The guests are usually highbrow, highly intelligent luminaries from the arts. I’ve seldom heard of any of either them or the pieces of music they choose. But that’s the reason I love it. Without this programme, I’d never have discovered some fascinating people and some magnificent music. It was on Private Passions that I first heard this sublime little piece of Elgar. I can’t remember whose private passion it was but it immediately became one of mine. Though now, of course, I’ve made that passion public.