The quality of our own link to BBC Radio Three’s Private Passions with Paddy is not the best, but still quite acceptable. However, there is now a chance to hear a repeat of the programme this coming Sunday 31 July at midday BST on BBC Radio 3.

You can find details of the programme here. You should be able to hear on FM and digital radio; possibly satellite TV and of course over the internet if the BBC permits from your location. Thanks to Phyllis Willis for spotting this one. The programme blurb goes as follows:

Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor, travel writer and war hero, died in June at the age of 96. In 2005 he recorded an edition of Private Passions, in which he talked about the music he loved. This is another chance to hear that conversation with Michael Berkeley.

Patrick Leigh Fermor was born in London in 1915, the son of a distinguished geologist. He was brought up in England after his parents left for India, and attended The Kings School, Canterbury, from which he was expelled for holding hands with a local greengrocer’s daughter. At the age of 18 he set off to walk across Europe to Constantinople (now Istanbul), a journey which later inspired his two finest travel books, ‘A Time of Gifts’ (1977) and ‘Between the Woods and the Water’ (1986). After further travels in the Balkans, he fought in Crete and mainland Greece during World War II. His exploits with the Greek Resistance in Crete inspired his fellow-officer Captain Bill Stanley Moss’s book ‘Ill Met by Moonlight’, later adapted as a film, with Dirk Bogarde playing Leigh Fermor. He published his first travel book in 1950, and became widely regarded as Britain’s greatest living travel writer. He divided his time between his beloved Greece and Worcestershire, and was knighted in 2004.

Patrick Leigh Fermor loved music of all kinds, from Greek folksongs to Irving Berlin. His eclectic selection for Private Passions includes an extract from Mozart’s Don Giovanni and the finale of the Sinfonia concertante K364 for violin and viola; part of Schubert’s ‘Trout’ Quintet; part of the Tenebrae Responsories by Victoria; Debussy’s Gigues (from Images); Britten’s arrangement of The Salley Gardens, and Michael Berkeley’s own Variations on Greek Folk Songs for solo viola, inspired by Leigh Fermor’s own celebrated vocal renditions.

Related article:

Paddy interviewed on “Private Passions” for his 90th birthday in 2005