Main content

Francesca Simon

Michael Berkeley’s guest is the Horrid Henry author, Francesca Simon. With Yiddish and Breton folk songs, Bach and Tchaikovsky.

Anyone who’s spent any time with children in the last thirty years will know Horrid Henry and his brother, Perfect Peter. They’re the creations of Francesca Simon, and they’ve appeared in 25 books, been translated into 31 languages and sold 25 million copies. They seem to embody archetypes: the chaotic, naughty brother who’s always in trouble, and the neat well-behaved sibling who’s always anxious to please the parents.

In Private Passions, Francesca Simon tells Michael Berkeley that her own emotional memories of childhood are extraordinarily vivid. She was brought up living on the beach in Malibu, where her father Mayo Simon was a screenwriter, but then moved around to Paris and New York and London. It all sounds glamorous, but actually, she says, it was hard. They moved so often that she always felt like an outsider. Francesca chooses music that reflects the very diverse influences of her early life: Yiddish and Breton folk songs, and Jascha Haifetz playing the Bach Double Violin Concerto. She also chooses music by the young British composer Gavin Higgins, for whom she’s written a libretto for his new work The Faerie Bride, and by E. J. Moeran, a composer she thinks should be much better known.

A Loftus Media production for ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Radio 3
Produced by Elizabeth Burke

Available now

38 minutes

Last on

Sun 12 Jun 2022 12:00

Music Played

  • Theodore Bikel

    Kum aher du Filosof

  • Johann Sebastian Bach

    Concerto in D minor for 2 violins and strings (1st mvt: Vivace)

    Performer: Jascha Heifetz. Orchestra: RCA Victor Chamber Orchestra. Conductor: Franz Waxman.
  • Alan Stivell

    Jenovefa

  • Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

    Eugene Onegin (Act 1 sc.3: Onegin's aria)

    Singer: Dmitri Hvorostovsky. Singer: Olga Guryakova. Orchestra: Orchester der Wiener Staatsoper. Conductor: Kirill Petrenko.
  • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

    Le Nozze di Figaro (Sull'aria...)

    Singer: Barbara Bonney. Singer: Arleen Augér. Orchestra: Drottningholm Court Theatre Orchestra. Conductor: Arnold Östman.
  • Ernest John Moeran

    String Quartet in A minor (1st mvt: Allegro)

    Ensemble: Maggini Quartet.
  • Gavin Higgins

    Ekstasis (3: We turn to the gods...)

    Performer: David Cohen. Performer: Sara Roberts. Ensemble: Piatti Quartet.

Broadcast

  • Sun 12 Jun 2022 12:00

What makes Boogie-woogie piano legend Jools Holland tick?

What makes Boogie-woogie piano legend Jools Holland tick?

For Private Passions, Jools Holland revealed his piano history to Michael Berkeley.

11 things we learned from Harry Enfield’s Private Passions

11 things we learned from Harry Enfield’s Private Passions

Harry doesn't usually give interviews – but he couldn't say no to Michael Berkeley.

Archive Unlocked: Two Decades of Private Passions

Michael Berkeley introduces memorable interviews from Private Passions' archives.

Podcast