The castaway this week in Desert Island Discs is the writer and illustrator Kathleen Hale. Mainly renowned for that hero of children's literature - Orlando, the Marmalade Cat - and now 96 years old, she'll be talking to Sue Lawley about the excitement and glamour of her bohemian girlhood after the First World War. As secretary to the painter Augustus John, she lived a turbulent but fascinating life at the heart of artistic London. Marriage and motherhood introduced stability into her life, but b...
Oct 30, 1994•38 min
The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is Lynda La Plante - the creator of much-admired television series like Prime Suspect, Widows and Civvies. Also the author of five novels, she'll be talking to Sue Lawley about how she made the transition from acting in repertory for six years, as well as Brian Rix's Whitehall farces, to becoming one of television's most prolific and successful writers. [Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs] Favou...
Oct 23, 1994•37 min
The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is the Chairman of Glyndebourne, Sir George Christie. As Master of one of Europe's most distinguished opera houses, famous as a mainstay of the English social scene, as well as a centre of creativity and innovation, he has recently overseen its complete rebuilding. He'll be talking to Sue Lawley about the place in which he has spent his whole life and how he faces the prospect of retirement. [Taken from the original programme material for this archiv...
Oct 16, 1994•34 min
The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is the writer Jeanette Winterson. Her first book Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit was based on her Lancashire childhood where she grew up as the adopted daughter of evangelical parents. She'll be talking to Sue Lawley about her upbringing - in which her parents saw her as a child they could dedicate to God, about how she left home at 15 after falling in love with another woman and about how she finally managed to get herself into Oxford. Her first book...
Oct 09, 1994•37 min
The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is the poet and writer James Fenton. He'll be talking to Sue Lawley about his early life as a boy chorister, the death of his mother when he was just 10 and about his experiences as a foreign correspondent. It was in this capacity that he travelled with the Viet Cong when they captured Saigon, and fled from the Khmer Rouge when they entered Phnom Penh. He has also worked as a political and literary journalist and as a theatre critic. He'll be ruminat...
Oct 02, 1994•38 min
The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is a journalist and feminist. Mary Stott became Women's Editor of the Guardian newspaper in 1957 and under her editorship, the women's pages were transformed. Her commissioning of many distinguished writers as well as her encouragement to her readers themselves to write first-hand accounts of their experiences led to the foundation of many important women's organisations. Now 87, she'll be talking to Sue Lawley about her enduring support of feminist ...
Sep 25, 1994•38 min
The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is the composer John Tavener. He'll be talking to Sue Lawley about the varied inspirations for his music and about how he regards the work of composition as an act of prayer. His music has won the admiration of both serious musicians and the general public - last year his work for cello and strings, The Protecting Veil, held the number one place in the classical charts for several months. Now nearly 50, his was a precocious talent - one of his earlie...
Sep 18, 1994•38 min
The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is the novelist Joanna Trollope. She'll be talking to Sue Lawley about how she made the move from writing historical romances to contemporary novels like The Rector's Wife, A Village Affair and A Spanish Lover, which have turned her into one of the country's most successful writers. She'll also be describing how she dislikes her books being described as 'aga-sagas' and discussing how much the events of her characters' lives mirror her own experiences...
Sep 11, 1994•36 min
The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is Rabbi Hugo Gryn. He'll be talking to Sue Lawley about how his happy and secure childhood in Czechoslovakia was devastated by Nazism and how he survived two years in concentration camps. He'll also be discussing how his commitment to bettering relations between people of differing faiths is rooted in his experience of persecution during the Second World War. [Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs...
Jul 10, 1994•37 min
The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is the journalist and broadcaster Derek Jameson. He'll be talking to Sue Lawley about his early poverty-stricken years in an East End foster home and his discovery, at the age of eight, that one of the girls in the home he had thought of as his older sister was, in fact, his mother. He'll also be describing how an aptitude for reading and writing, the encouragement of a concerned teacher and his own determination led him into journalism, where he sta...
Jul 03, 1994•36 min
The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is the Director of the Promenade Concerts John Drummond. He'll be talking to Sue Lawley about his years at the BBC, starting as a general trainee, leaving it to become Director of the Edinburgh Festival and returning as Controller of Music and then Controller of Radio Three. He'll be discussing his passionate attachment to fine music and musicianship and his conviction that such music should not just be heard, but must be properly listened to. [Taken...
Jun 26, 1994•39 min
The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is the controversial art critic Brian Sewell. He'll be talking to Sue Lawley about how he did not go to school until he was 11, hated it when he got there, but managed, much against the wishes of the school, to teach himself history of art. He'll also be describing how he felt when his friend and mentor, Sir Anthony Blunt, the Keeper of the Queen's Pictures, was denounced as a spy in 1979. Sewell was thrust into the public eye as Blunt's protector. H...
Jun 19, 1994•37 min
The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is the actress Zoe Wanamaker. She'll be talking to Sue Lawley about the roles she has taken on in theatre and television - in Love Hurts, Prime Suspect and, more recently, in the West End hit Dead Funny. She'll also be describing how she has tried to cope with the death of her father - the distinguished actor Sam Wanamaker - at the end of last year. [Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs] Favourite...
Jun 12, 1994•34 min
The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is Milton Shulman. He'll be talking to Sue Lawley about how he came to Britain from Toronto as an Intelligence Officer during the Second World War, after which he wrote a book called Defeat in the West, which was based on interviews he conducted with defeated German officers. It was this book which brought him to the attention of Lord Beaverbrook, leading to his promotion from humble diarist on the London Evening Standard to its film critic. He then ...
Jun 05, 1994•38 min
The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is the jockey Peter Scudamore. The son of a jockey who had won the Grand National and the Cheltenham Gold Cup - Scu, as he is known throughout the racing fraternity - resisted all attempts to turn him into an estate agent, and followed in his father's footsteps. Having broken nearly every bone in his body, he retired in 1993 after a career which encompassed 1,678 National Hunt victories and the title of Champion Jockey a record eight times. He'll be ...
May 29, 1994•34 min
The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is the actress Britt Ekland. She'll be talking to Sue Lawley about her miraculous transformation from an overweight, buck-toothed ugly duckling with large ears to a beautiful peroxided teenager. She'll also be describing her turbulent marriage to Peter Sellers and her passionate affair with the rock star Rod Stewart. [Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs] Favourite track: Mother by John Lennon &am...
May 22, 1994•35 min
The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is the BBC's Chief News Correspondent Kate Adie. She'll be talking to Sue Lawley about the pleasures and perils of a job which has taken her to some of the world's most dangerous trouble spots. She'll also be describing how she felt when she was recently reunited with her natural mother after having been happily brought up by her adoptive family in Sunderland. [Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs...
May 15, 1994•38 min
The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is a man who has devoted his life to helping those who share his own disability - blindness. Sir John Wilson lost his sight at the age of 12 in an accident in his school chemistry laboratory. He'll be talking to Sue Lawley about how, undaunted, he went on to win a scholarship to Oxford, and then, at the age of 30, mortgaged his home and set up the Royal Commonwealth Society for the Blind. Since then, he has travelled an average of 50,000 miles a year...
May 08, 1994•38 min
The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is the American writer and broadcaster Garrison Keillor. He'll be talking to Sue Lawley about his childhood in the small town of Anoka in Minnesota, on which his stories in his bestseller, Lake Wobegon Days, were based. One of six children of Protestant fundamentalist parents, he'll be remembering his home life where story-telling was an intrinsic element, and in which alcohol, television, parties and socialising were all forbidden. [Taken from the o...
May 01, 1994•38 min
The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week has recently topped the polls as the country's most popular newscaster. He is ITN's Trevor McDonald, and he'll be talking to Sue Lawley about a West Indian childhood which was dominated by English influences, a career which started in Caribbean local radio and television and how he copes with his emotions when having to report on particularly gruelling news stories. [Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island...
Apr 24, 1994•36 min
The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is a musician who started his professional career as a clarinettist with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. However, when he was 26, Alan Hacker was permanently disabled by a thrombosis on his spinal column. He'll be talking to Sue Lawley about how, since then, although confined to a wheelchair, he has been determined to prove his disability is not a handicap but just a nuisance. He'll be describing how he has carved out a niche for himself as a cond...
Apr 17, 1994•38 min
The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is the poet Roger McGough. He'll be talking to Sue Lawley about his boyhood in Liverpool where he showed little aptitude for literature - it wasn't until he went to Hull University that he discovered his true vocation. It was one that was to take him, via a best-selling number one record, Lily the Pink, with the group The Scaffold, to become one of the country's most enduringly successful poets. [Taken from the original programme material for this ar...
Apr 10, 1994•36 min
The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is the explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes. Over the last 23 years, he has navigated the White Nile in a hovercraft, travelled around the world through both poles, discovered a lost city and, most recently, he nearly perished in Antarctica. He'll be talking to Sue Lawley about his unhappy schooldays at Eton, his thwarted ambition to emulate his father's military career and the problems he has had with his companions on expeditions. [Taken from the original ...
Apr 03, 1994•36 min
The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week owns the Daily Telegraph and The Spectator - amongst two or three hundred other newspapers and magazines the world over. He is Canadian-born tycoon Conrad Black, and he'll be talking to Sue Lawley about the notorious misbehaviour of his school days, the tuition his father gave him in the ways of corporate finance and how he views his powerful position in the British establishment. [Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition o...
Mar 27, 1994•37 min
The castaway in Desert Island Discs is the explorer Christina Dodwell. Born in West Africa, she spent her early years running wild in the Bush. When her family returned to Camberley and the restriction of English boarding schools, Christina reacted by being expelled from a large number of them. She later ran away from the restrictions of London life in search of adventure on the African subcontinent, and she'll be talking to Sue Lawley about her subsequent travels, the exhilaration of the lone v...
Mar 06, 1994•34 min
The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is as old as this century and is said to be the last survivor of the much written-about Bloomsbury set. She is Frances Partridge and she'll be talking to Sue Lawley about her colourful life, unconventional beliefs and friendships with such influential writers and philosophers of her time as Bertrand Russell, Wittgenstein, EM Forster, Lytton Strachey and Maynard Keynes. [Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Isl...
Feb 27, 1994•37 min
The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is the Chancellor of the Exchequer Kenneth Clarke. He'll be talking to Sue Lawley about his reputation as something of a bruiser, his childhood as the son of a Northamptonshire miner and about his aspirations to the top job in politics - a job which would crown a career which has encompassed six senior Cabinet posts in under 10 years. [Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs] Favourite track: Night I...
Feb 20, 1994•39 min
The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is the gardener Rosemary Verey. Passionate about planting and growing flowers and herbs as a child in the 1930s, it wasn't until the 1950s, with her four children away at school, that she began a serious study of horticulture. Completely self-taught, she has gone on to develop a career designing some of Britain's most beautiful gardens and numbers Prince Charles and Elton John amongst her clients. [Taken from the original programme material for this ...
Feb 13, 1994•35 min
The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is Douglas Adams, creator of the anarchic world conjured up by The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. He'll be talking to Sue Lawley about how, as a child, he found it difficult to communicate with the adult world, and didn't speak until he was four years old. But as his confidence grew, he set his sights on being a nuclear physicist - an ambition later replaced by a burning desire to be John Cleese in Monty Python's Flying Circus. In fact, he has bec...
Feb 06, 1994•36 min
The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is the founder of the Hospice Movement Dame Cicely Saunders. She'll be talking to Sue Lawley about her schooldays at Roedean, how she trained as a nurse and much later, as a doctor. When she was 29 she fell in love with a young patient dying of cancer, who bequeathed her a legacy of £500. Starting with that bequest, she raised enough money for a new kind of hospice dedicated to care for the dying. There are now 190 similar hospices throughout the cou...
Jan 30, 1994•38 min
