Desert Island Discs: Archive: 2016-2018

BBC Radio 4•www.bbc.co.uk

Society & Culture

Personal Journals

Guests are invited to choose the eight records they would take to a desert island.

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Episodes

Bill Gates

Kirsty Young's castaway is Bill Gates. He sat at his first computer while still at school in Seattle, wrote his first computer programme aged just 13 and went on to co-found the company Microsoft, becoming one of the key figures of the technological revolution. In 2000, he and his wife, Melinda, launched the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation which has given to date over $34 billion to projects aimed at reducing health inequality around the world. Born into a professional family - his father was ...

Feb 04, 2016•36 min

Sigrid Rausing

Kirsty Young's castaway is the philanthropist and publisher Sigrid Rausing. Founder of one of the UK's largest philanthropic foundations, her trust has given away around £230m to human rights causes since it began. Brought up in Sweden, she is currently the publisher of Granta Books and the editor of Granta Magazine and her work spotting and developing new writers stems from her lifelong love of literature. As the granddaughter of Ruben Rausing, who founded food packaging company Tetra Pak, she ...

Jan 24, 2016•33 min

Sir Anthony Seldon

Kirsty Young's castaway is the educationalist and writer, Sir Anthony Seldon. Now Vice-Chancellor of Buckingham University, he was the Master of Wellington College. He has written, co-written and edited more than 30 books, including political biographies of Prime Ministers Churchill, Blair, Brown and Cameron. He had to take his 'A' levels twice before going on to read PPE at Oxford and doing a PhD at the LSE, before embarking on his teaching career. His first headmaster job was at Brighton Colle...

Jan 17, 2016•37 min

Alex Crawford

Kirsty Young's castaway is the Sky TV news correspondent Alex Crawford. She's won the Royal Television Society's Journalist of the Year award an unprecedented four times - reporting from the world's worst war zones and hot spots. Where most people would do anything to stay well away from trouble she seems drawn to danger , whether it's covering the Ebola crisis in Liberia, hunting for Rhino poachers in South Africa or being first on the scene as the drama of Libya's revolution unfolded. She spen...

Jan 10, 2016•33 min

Colm Toibin

Kirsty Young's castaway is the writer Colm Toibin. Best-known for his novels "Brooklyn" - now made into a film - "Nora Webster" and "The Master," he has been nominated for the Booker Prize three times. Born in 1955 in Enniscorthy, County Wexford, the second youngest of five children, Colm's life changed suddenly when his father died after a long illness when he was twelve. He says he has been dealing with the trauma which resulted in his writing ever since. After attending St Peter's College in ...

Jan 03, 2016•38 min

Patricia Greene

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is Patricia Greene. For nearly sixty years she has played the role of Jill in Radio 4's The Archers which celebrates its 65th anniversary on January 1st 2016. Over the decades the storylines have followed her character through one marriage, four children and since 2010, widowhood. Born in Derby in 1931, Paddy's love of acting began early on inspired by her father who was a keen amateur actor. As an only and independent child she was surrounded by the adult world...

Dec 27, 2015•36 min

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