Private Passions - Tracy Chevalier

Michael Berkeley's guest is the best-selling novelist Tracy Chevalier, whose 'Girl with a Pearl Earring', inspired by Vermeer's enigmatic painting, has sold 4 million copies worldwide and was made into a film starring Colin Firth and Scarlett Johanssen. Her novels so far have been historically based, and include 'The Lady and the Unicorn', inspired by a famous set of medieval tapestries in the Cluny Museum in Paris. Her latest book, 'Remarkable Creatures', tells the story of two early 19th-century female fossil-hunters whose remarkable discoveries pre-dated Darwin and upset the establishment status quo. Tracy Chevalier , who grew up in Washington DC and was educated at Oberlin College, Ohio, and then at the University of East Anglia, has lived in London for over 20 years. She played the clarinet as a child, and her music choices begin with two extracts from symphonies featuring a clarinet solo - Schubert's 'Unfinished' and Dvorak's 'From the New World' - as well as Brahms's Second Clarinet Sonata. Her choices also include two much-loved piano pieces, Schubert's Impromptu in G flat major played by Canadian pianist Paul Berkowitz and Schumann's 'Of Strange Lands and People', played by Alfred Brendel; as well as the Prologue to Leonard Bernstein's masterpiece 'West Side Story'; a piece of plainchant from a medieval part-book found in the Spanish monastery of Montserrat, which inspired Tracy Chevalier while she was writing 'The Lady and the Unicorn', and 'Once in a Lifetime' by Talking Heads.