Professor Ralf Dahrendorf

The castaway in Desert Island Discs is a German politician who became an English academic. The Germany of Professor Ralf Dahrendorf's youth was that of the Third Reich but he, like his family, was fiercely opposed to the Nazi regime, and suffered imprisonment for his views. After the war, his career took him from Minister of Foreign Affairs under Willi Brandt, to the European Commission in Brussels, and then to London, where he was Director of the London School of Economics during a particularly turbulent era of its history.

He'll be talking to Sue Lawley about his academic and political career as well as his formative years in Germany; years which he believes shaped his subsequent stern and much-admired defence of libertarian principles.

[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]

Favourite track: Blueberry Hill by Louis Armstrong Book: A book of Greek poetry Luxury: Dice to test the luck of a ship rescuing him