大象传媒

Memory, desire, madness: these are the themes that fascinate Lisa Appignanesi and that she鈥檚 explored over the last forty years in novels, in memoirs, and in prize-winning books such as 鈥淢ad, Bad and Sad鈥�, a history of women and mind doctors. Lisa Appignanesi is the Chair of the Royal Society of Literature and a former President of English PEN, an organisation which campaigns for free speech. She鈥檚 written about cabaret, about Proust and fin-de-siecle Paris, about Simone de Beauvoir, about Freud, and about her own troubled search for identity.

In Private Passions she tells Michael Berkeley about her childhood in Poland, where she was born El偶bieta Borensztejn, and about the way identities in her family were always shifting, 鈥渁lways there for the making鈥�. She reflects on the power of the dead to haunt us, expressed by Monteverdi in his opera Orfeo, and admires the strength of singers Bessie Smith and Lotte Lenya, alongside music choices such as Mozart's 鈥橳he Marriage of Figaro鈥�, Laurie Anderson, and Prokofiev鈥檚 鈥楶eter and the Wolf鈥�.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke
A Loftus Production for 大象传媒 Radio 3