The least you can say of Michael Berkeley, the mellifluously voiced presenter of Private Passions (14 June), is that he does his homework.

Private Passions
BBC radio 3

The least you can say of Michael Berkeley, the mellifluously voiced presenter of Private Passions (14 June), is that he does his homework. Barely had his guest, The Tablet’s own Peter Stanford, seated himself at the microphone than he was assailed by a volley of data about his career, his publications, his interests, his early life, God, the Devil and, naturally enough, the Catholicism from which most of these affiliations stemmed.

A cradle Catholic, brought up in Liverpool, by a mother who had multiple sclerosis, Stanford noted of his continued attendance at Mass that “the important thing is that I’m still there”. As one who “felt the absence of women at the altar”, the first piece of music he selected was Hildegard of Bingen’s “Antiphon for the Angels”.

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