Desert Island Discs

Kirsty Young's castaway is the architectural critic and writer Charles Jencks. Born in America, for the past four decades he has lived and worked in Britain - where his designs are as likely to be found in sculptural landscapes as buildings. Perhaps his most significant legacy, though, is the work he did with his late wife, Maggie Keswick. They worked together to design Maggie's Centres - a series...

Kirsty Young's castaway is the comedian John Bishop. Growing up on a Merseyside council estate, his early ambition was to play football for Liverpool - otherwise, he thought he might find a way out by winning the Pools or joining a band. The youngest of four children, his family were, he says, the kind that filled factory floors rather than lecture halls. Now a hugely popular stand-up comedian, it...

Kirsty Young's castaway is the Egyptian writer and commentator Ahdaf Soueif. She was the first Muslim woman to be shortlisted for the Booker Prize and, from an early age, her life has been divided between Egypt and Britain. She was among the crowds in Tahrir Square last year, witnessing the uprising at first hand, and describing events for the world's media. She says: "Every once in a while there...

Kirsty Young's castaway is the campaigner Doreen Lawrence. The life she thought was hers ended when her son Stephen was murdered by a group of young white men on a street in London in 1993. In the years since, her campaigning has resulted in a shift in public attitudes, laws being changed and policing methods overhauled. She set up a charity in her son's memory and has been awarded an OBE for serv...

Kirsty Young's castaway is Margaret Rhodes. As the first cousin to the Queen, she has a unique insight into the life of the royal family. She used to spend her summer holidays at Balmoral with the Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret while, during the war, she worked for MI6 and lodged at Buckingham Palace. She attended the Queen's wedding and coronation and, in later life, worked as an assistant to...

Kirsty Young's castaway is the agony aunt and writer Denise Robertson. She is, she says, one of life's survivors -- yet she seems to have had more than her fair share of tragedy; she's been widowed twice, dealt with financial hardship and lost a child to cancer. She's written dozens of novels and for more than forty years been an agony aunt on local radio, papers and television. She says: "There h...

Kirsty Young's castaway is the novelist, historian and biographer, Peter Ackroyd. As a child he used to walk the streets of London with his grandmother - an experience that, he believes, fostered his own love for the city. He was appointed literary editor of The Spectator when he was just 23 and has gone on to write dozens of books since. He has written a biography of London, as well as books abou...

Kirsty Young's castaway is Baroness Sheila Hollins. An Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry, she has specialised in the health and welfare of people with learning disabilities; advising on policy and influencing attitudes. She started off as a GP, turning to psychiatry after finding a huge proportion of her patients were suffering from emotional and social problems. One of her four children has a lear...

Kirsty Young's castaway is the composer and performer Tim Minchin. As a comic and musician he has sold out London's O2 Arena and won legions of fans. He wrote the songs for the Royal Shakespeare Company's musical Matilda - the production of Roald Dahl's children's story has been a smash hit on the West End, won seven Olivier awards and is due to transfer to Broadway next year. He says: "I'm not a...

Kirsty Young's castaway is the jazz pianist and singer Jamie Cullum. His interview was recorded in front of an audience at St George's in Bristol and launched Radio 4's More Than Words Festival. Despite failing his grade four piano exam and, by his own admission, barely being able to read music, Jamie Cullum has become hugely popular. He is particularly celebrated for his live shows and in this ve...

Kirsty Young's castaway is the broadcaster Anna Ford. One of the first high profile women in news, she worked for Granada, ITV and the BBC before retiring after more than thirty years on our screens. One of her professional pairings was presenting the News at 10 with Reginald Bosanquet, she remembers how he would try to unsettle her during broadcasts: "I adored Reggie, he would land either obscene...

Kirsty Young's castaway is the American comedian Jackie Mason. His one-man shows have been pulling in audiences for more than fifty years. Like his father, grandfather and great-grandfather before him, he trained initially as a rabbi - and quickly acquired a reputation for being very funny. "The people who heard my sermons kept saying to me; 'Rabbi, why aren't you a comedian?' I said to myself, ma...

Kirsty Young's castaway is the renowned voice coach Patsy Rodenburg. Her work at the National Theatre and the RSC has spanned decades and her students include Dame Judi Dench, Sir Ian McKellen, Dame Maggie Smith and Daniel Day Lewis. But her work takes her away from the stage too - she has coached politicians and helped offenders in prison. She says: "I did some work on Hamlet in a top security pr...

Kirsty Young's castaway is the former rugby player and commentator Brian Moore. As a player he was ferociously competitive, he says his approach to the game was almost pathological and it earned him the nickname 'the pitbull'. By the time he retired, he'd earned dozens of England caps and played in three grand slams. But he discovered the obsessive determination he'd shown as a player was not so u...

Kirsty Young's castaway is the former Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott. In this frank interview, he describes life in the highly political home where he grew up, the impact that failing the school 11+ exam had on him and the gradual kindling of his own ambitions. He speaks of his debt to his wife Pauline and how for many years of their marriage he underestimated her. He describes, too, the infe...

James Corden, actor and writer of Gavin & Stacey, is Kirsty Young's castaway is the actor and writer . As a child he longed to act - he found early success in Alan Bennett's play The History Boys and became a household name for the TV show he devised and co-wrote, Gavin and Stacey. These days he's starring in the West End in the comedy One Man, Two Guvnors. It is due to transfer to Broadway in...

Denise Lewis, Olympic gold medallist, is Kirsty Young's castaway. Her discipline was the heptathlon and it was at the 2000 Sydney Olympics that she leapt, threw, sprinted and hurdled her way on to the winner's podium. An only child of a single mother, she says her mum had always had ambition for her - and was there to witness her success. She said: "Her face said it all, there were tears in her ey...

Kirsty Young's castaway for the 70th anniversary edition of Desert Island Discs is Sir David Attenborough. He has seen more of the world than anyone else who has ever lived - he's visited the north and south poles and witnessed most of the life in-between - from the birds in the canopies of tropical rainforests to giant earthworms in Australia. But despite his extraordinary travels, there is one p...

Kirsty Young's castaway is the author Vikram Seth. His novel A Suitable Boy was nearly a decade in the writing, but it was a huge and immediate hit and won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize. He is now working on a follow-up novel called A Suitable Girl. He's due to finish work on it in 2013 - 20 years after the original work was published. The pace of work, he admits, is slow: "The sound of deadline...

Kirsty Young's castaway is the writer and historian Paul Johnson. He writes, he says, out of a desire to 'put things right' and more than fifty books and thousands of articles have flowed from his pen. His opinions have provoked, offended and enraged plenty of people over the years and sweeping works about modernity, morality, art and philosophy, sit alongside fiercely opinionated biographies and...

Kirsty Young's castaway is the director of the Royal Ballet, Dame Monica Mason. Her working life has been dedicated to dance. When she joined the Royal Ballet at fifteen she was the youngest dancer to be admitted to the company and, during her career, its legendary choreographer Kenneth MacMillan created five roles for her. She became director ten years ago and is due to step down this summer. She...

Kirsty Young's castaway is the broadcaster Sir Terry Wogan. His career has spanned more than five decades and includes the chat show Wogan, the Eurovision Song Contest, the quiz Blankety Blank and for many years being the host of Radio 2's breakfast show. He says: "You have to create a kind of little club - you are not talking to an audience, you are talking to one person - and they are only half...

Kirsty Young's castaway is the scientist Professor Brian Cox. In the press he's been called 'the pin-up professor' and his enormously popular TV series have been credited with creating the 'Brian Cox effect' - a surge in the number of would-be scientists applying to university. As a teenager he decided he wanted to be a rock star; he toured the world as a member of the band Dare and performed on T...

Kirsty Young's castaway is the creator of Downton Abbey, Julian Fellowes. He won an Oscar for his screenplay for Gosford Park and went on to write other feature films including The Young Victoria and Vanity Fair. Downton Abbey, which he created and writes, has been an enormous TV success with a huge audience. "Of course" he says, "if I had a clear understanding of why it had done so well, I would...

Kirsty Young's castaway is the journalist and former editor Eve Pollard. She was groomed for success by Rupert Murdoch, but made an editor by Robert Maxwell. Her career has spanned glossy magazines and tabloid journalism, breakfast television, biographies and novels. When she first worked on Fleet Street, she says, women were such a rarity that the male reporters didn't know what to make of her. "...