Michael Berkeley

Born Michael Fitzhardinge Berkeley in 1948, he is universally known without the middle name. Actually, these days, he's probably better known as 'that nice man on the radio' (as he is a regular broadcaster on BBC Radio 3) or even as 'Baron Berkeley of Knighton', as he was made a Life Peer in 2013, thereby joining the same select band of enobled composers whose first member was Benjamin Britten -and whose godson Michael happens to be. (In point of fact, only two composers are members of that club: Britten and Berkeley. Andrew Lloyd Webber doesn't count, for obvious reasons; neither does Lord Berners, as he was a peer by birthright).

He is the eldest of the three sons of the composer Lennox Berkeley, so was immersed in a musical environment from an early age. He was a chorister at Westminster Cathedral. He studied composition, singing and piano at the Royal Academy of Music and went on to study composition with Richard Rodney Bennett: it was at this point, in his late twenties, that his first compositions were written.

His musical output has been varied: there are currently three operas, various oratorios and concertos and numerous significant choral and chamber works. They are all immensely listenable: no plinky-plonk modernist he. Being still very much alive, he obviously has his own website.