Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the record producer, Robin Millar. One of the UK's most successful record producers with over 160 gold, silver and platinum discs, he has over forty-four number one records to his credit. His 1984 production of Sade's debut album, 'Diamond Life', was named one of the best ten albums of the last thirty years at the 2010 Brit Awards. He experienced problems with his eyesight from birth, especially in the dark, and had tunnel vision. Aged 16, a diagnosis of reti...
Mar 15, 2015•35 min
Kirsty Young's guest this week is Bryan Stevenson. An American lawyer, he is the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, a private, not-for-profit organisation working on death penalty cases, cases of children sentenced as adults, prison and sentencing reform, and issues of race and poverty. His great grandparents were slaves and he himself went to a segregated school in southern Delaware. Although from a poor African American background he made it to Harvard Law School. ...
Mar 08, 2015•37 min
Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the psychotherapist, Julia Samuel. Counsellor for Paediatrics at London's St Mary's hospital, Paddington, she works with parents whose children have died and children who've experienced loss themselves. She is a Vice President of the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy, an Honorary Fellow of Imperial College and Founder Patron of The Child Bereavement Trust - now Child Bereavement UK. One of five children, she was born into the banking line o...
Mar 01, 2015•36 min
Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the tenor, Jonas Kaufmann. Frequently referred to as one of the greatest singers of his generation, both his parents fled East Germany for Munich between the end of the war and the Berlin wall being erected. Jonas was brought up singing in choirs, playing the piano and listening to a range of classical music. When he was seven, he was enthralled by seeing his first opera - Madam Butterfly. He studied Maths at university, but soon changed to music and quickly ...
Feb 22, 2015•37 min
Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the actor, Mark Rylance. Born in Kent and brought up in America where his father was a teacher, Mark played Hamlet for the first time while he was still at school. Since then he has become particularly well known for his acclaimed and award-winning Shakespearean stage roles. He won an Olivier and a Tony award for his portrayal of Johnny 'Rooster' Byron in Jez Butterworth's 'Jerusalem' onstage in both Britain and the United States. He has also appeared in a nu...
Feb 15, 2015•38 min
Kirsty Young's guest this week is the garden designer, Dan Pearson. His style is governed by a desire to create a sense of place and he is drawn to wild plants and gardens. Aged just five he discovered this passion, while building roof gardens for his collection of trolls and spent the summer watching the plant and animal life in a pond created by his father. He gave up A' levels in favour of apprenticeships at RHS Wisley and the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew and then spent several years working ...
Feb 08, 2015•36 min
Kirsty Young's castaway is Angie Hobbs, Professor of the Public Understanding of Philosophy at the University of Sheffield - a role which has brought her to the attention of a large audience. Brought up in Surrey, she was the youngest of three children. Her older sister died when Angie was just 11 years old. To begin with, she did not flourish at school, but went on to earn a place at Cambridge where she gained a first class degree in Classics and subsequently a doctorate. A career in academia h...
Feb 01, 2015•36 min
Kirsty Young's castaway is the Director of London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Professor Peter Piot. As a microbiologist he is known for his research into viruses and into the public health aspects of sexually transmitted diseases, and, more recently, on the politics of AIDS and global health. Born in Leuven in Belgium, he studied medicine and in 1976, as a young researcher at the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp, he was sent a blood sample of a Belgian nun living in what wa...
Jan 25, 2015•36 min
Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the campaigner, Dame Julia Cleverdon. As head of the charity, Business in the Community, she fine-tuned to perfection the art of persuasion. A phone call from her and many of the big beasts of the business world - the "pinstripes" she calls them - stride from their boardrooms intent on giving something back to society. Her energies and endeavours have powered countless corporate social responsibility programmes. In a life dedicated to public service, she has ...
Jan 18, 2015•36 min
Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the business woman, Jo Malone. If her name automatically conjures the citrusy scents of lime, basil and mandarin or spicy notes of amber and lavender then you're doubtless one of the customers who flock into the eponymous stores to buy the products that have made her a household name. Aged nine, she would grind sandlewood and strain juniper at the kitchen table. 17 years later fashionable London flocked to her little salon in Chelsea to be massaged with oils ...
Jan 11, 2015•34 min
Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the scientist, Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell, who is best known for her work in the field of neuroscience and stroke research. She is now President and Vice-Chancellor of Manchester University. She claims that her decision to enrol at Queen Elizabeth College in London in the '70s was made not on the basis of their superior teaching on the function of living systems, but rather the institution's proximity to Kensington High Street. Anyway, she gained a first c...
Jan 04, 2015•37 min
Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the actor Ray Winstone. Nil By Mouth, Sexy Beast, Vincent, The Sweeney - he's probably best known for totally authentic tough-guy, geezer-parts. But his work has more range and nuance, encompassing roles as varied as Henry VIII, Magwich in Great Expectations and the lead in Beowulf. Beyond the screen the man himself almost seems to come from a bygone era, when a fellow worth his salt always wore a dapper three piece suit and was handy with his fists. In his y...
Dec 28, 2014•33 min
Kirsty Young's castaway for Christmas week is The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Reverend Justin Welby. Ordained as a priest in 1993, 19 years later he was appointed to lead the Anglican communion of over 77 million people spread across 167 countries. Hardly a front runner when the job vacancy came up he said that it would be "a joke" and "perfectly absurd" if he were appointed. His faith has brought him high office but when he 'found God' at university, it gave him something a good deal mor...
Dec 21, 2014•39 min
From Paul McCartney to Wham! Comedian Sarah Millican shares her castaway choices with Kirsty Young. Her every woman yet no-holds-barred style of comedy has brought her sell-out tours and several of her own highly successful TV series. Revelling in normality and drawing on the difficult, intimate and ofter extruciating moments of being human, she dares to say what most of us are thinking, only she's much funnier. A Geordie, born in South Shields, her dad was an engineer down the mines and her mum...
Dec 14, 2014•35 min
Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the Chief Executive of the Guide Association, Julie Bentley - or, more accurately, Girlguiding. The name change is surely a clue to the evolving nature of an organisation determined to be relevant and useful to girls in the 21st century. Indeed being relevant and useful is how Julie Bentley has spent her entire working life. From her early efforts at an HIV charity to running the Family Planning Association she says her passion lies with helping young people ...
Dec 07, 2014•34 min
Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the actor, Damian Lewis. As part of the wave of British talent that's crashed onto America's shores in recent years his impact has made a deep impression on the creative landscape. His role as Sergeant Brodie in Homeland saw him win both an Emmy and Golden Globe and along with Band of Brothers, The Forsyte Saga and a long list of other credits, he now ranks as one of our most well recognised and highly regarded performers. Things didn't always look so peachy:...
Nov 30, 2014•35 min
Kirsty Young's castaway is the Right Honourable Theresa May MP - the longest serving Home Secretary in fifty years. For those who think her political lineage seems directly descended from the Iron Lady, Theresa May's metal has certainly been stress-tested in the past few weeks. She's apologised twice in parliament for having failed to appoint a suitable head to lead the historical child abuse inquiry; a minister in her department resigned, claiming working with her had been like "walking through...
Nov 23, 2014•39 min
Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the poet John Agard. His work is studied widely in British schools. He was the BBC's first poet in residence and along with WH Auden and Philip Larkin, he's a recipient of The Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry. Born in Guyana he arrived here in the mid-1970s already playing with words like some people play with musical notes. If his style is often satirical, his subjects provide wincing realism - examining the scars of slavery or the historical myopia of a shared...
Nov 16, 2014•34 min
Kirsty Young's guest is former Royal Navy test pilot Captain Eric 'Winkle' Brown - the programme's 3000th edition. The Fleet Air Arm's most decorated pilot, his life reads like a handbook in beating the odds. Landing on a flight deck is acknowledged as one of the most difficult things a pilot can do. Eric Brown has held the world record for the most flight deck landings - 2,407 - for over 65 years. He was one of only two men on his ship, HMS Audacity, to survive a German U-boat bombing. In a lon...
Nov 14, 2014•36 min
Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the fashion designer, Professor Wendy Dagworthy. During her time as Head of Fashion at both Central St Martins and The Royal College of Art she has taught students who've gone on to great success - Stella McCartney, Erdem and Antonio Berardi among them. Her skill lies partly in understanding the significance of a well cut pattern or a nicely turned seam, but also the warp and weft of a notoriously fickle industry. At just 23, she was the toast of the catwalks...
Nov 02, 2014•34 min
Kirsty Young's guest is filmmaker and criminologist, Roger Graef. Pioneering in his chosen subjects and style, for the past fifty years he has shone a spotlight on hitherto hidden areas of society and influenced the entire genre of modern day documentary making. His films on key institutions like the Police have not just helped change attitudes but policy too. A New Yorker and Harvard graduate, he first came to Britain to study Shakespeare: his London debut as a theatre director was a Tennessee ...
Oct 26, 2014•38 min
Kirsty Young interviews the composer Debbie Wiseman. Her work is wide ranging, but her talents are most often employed in crafting lyrical, melodic scores for film and TV. Her credits include Land Girls, Judge John Deed, Haunted and Father Brown. Now a visiting Professor at the Royal College of Music, her unlikely introduction to the piano came at the age of 8 when she found a bashed up old instrument sitting in the corner of a hotel dining room. Producer: Isabel Sargent.
Oct 19, 2014•38 min
Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the historian, gardener and diarist Sir Roy Strong. He stormed the establishment in the 1960s - a proto-meritocrat, in possession of a sharp mind, fizzing ambition and a brown velvet frock coat. An avowedly unhappy and clever child he turned first to history and then art for stimulation and solace, setting down a template for a working life that would lead him to be the youngest ever director of the National Portrait Gallery and, later, to run the The Victori...
Oct 12, 2014•38 min
Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the writer Sally Wainwright. TV is her chosen medium and Last Tango In Halifax, Happy Valley or Scott & Bailey are watched by millions of viewers. Her ear for dialogue and talent for story-telling place her among the cream of small screen dramatists: she majors in whip-smart phrasing and plot lines that twist the innards with their tension, but never strain plausibility. Her passion for every day drama was honed at her mother's knee: in the 60's and 70's ...
Oct 05, 2014•37 min
Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the conductor, Marin Alsop. Music Director of both The Baltimore Symphony and The Sao Paulo State Symphony Orchestra, she is a maestro with a mission: music, she believes, is a powerful vehicle for social change. She had the good fortune to be brought up in "a household that exuded possibility" and was filled with music - both her parents played professionally. She took up the piano aged two, swapped to the violin at 6 and then aged 9, saw Leonard Bernstein a...
Sep 28, 2014•38 min
Kirsty Young's castaway is the artist and director Steve McQueen. These days his talents are well recognized - his art has won The Turner Prize and his most recent movie, "12 Years A Slave" scooped an Academy Award, a Bafta and a Golden Globe. He wasn't always as lauded: at school in West London he was "shoved to one side" in the belief that the best he could hope for was to earn a living as a manual labourer. Instead he portrays the extremes of what human beings put themselves and others throug...
Sep 21, 2014•38 min
The writer Malcolm Gladwell is interviewed by Kirsty Young for Desert Island Discs. Always concise, frequently counterintuitive and unexpectedly beguiling, his work orders the world in a way that gives fresh insights into human behaviour. He believes that a knowledge of people's backgrounds is necessary to understanding their success; his own achievements may presumably then be attributed, not just to his keen mind and polished prose, but also to his parents - an English mathematician and a Jama...
Aug 10, 2014•37 min
Guy Garvey, musician and frontman of Elbow, is interviewed by Kirsty Young for Desert island Discs. Front man of the group "Elbow" his voice and lyrics have helped the band win pretty much every music prize going ... headlining Glastonbury too, and playing at the closing ceremony of the London Olympics. Yet his image is that of an everyday, low key, unassuming bloke ... except that he isn't, he's penning and performing songs filled with intimacy, optimism and lyricism, that strike a chord with m...
Aug 03, 2014•37 min
Fellow of both the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Royal Society, Dame Wendy fought long and hard to prove that her type of web science was highly significant and here to stay. If algebraic topology and open hypermedia systems really aren't your thing, Dame Wendy is also in demand as a brilliant communicator on, what can seem to outsiders to be, impenetrable topics. Her parents were from humble beginnings and it was clear from the get-go that their first born had a budding flair for numbers...
Jul 27, 2014•35 min
Doug Allan is Kirsty's castaway this week. He's spent thirty-five years capturing unique footage of animals in some of the most remote and least hospitable places on earth. If you've watched fuzzy little polar bear cubs frolic in the frozen wilderness or slick killer whales eerily circling their prey, the spellbinding footage is his. David Attenborough, a long- time collaborator describes his work, simply, as "extraordinary". A trained biologist he first made a living diving into the icy rivers ...
Jul 20, 2014•37 min
