Desert Island Discs

The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is the creator, writer and producer of two of British television's most enduring and influential series - Grange Hill and Brookside. Phil Redmond will be talking to Sue Lawley about his Liverpool roots and his rise from a poor working-class background to become one of the country's highest-paid television executives. He'll also be discussing how the pr...

The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is the actress Patricia Hodge. Currently in her prime as Miss Jean Brodie in the West End, she'll be talking to Sue Lawley about how John Mortimer selected her for her first prominent role as barrister Phyllida Trent in Rumpole of the Bailey. She went on to portray several aloof, beautiful women, but denies that she is by nature remote. She'll also be...

The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is the politician, historian and diarist Alan Clark. He'll be talking to Sue Lawley about the impact his alarmingly frank diaries - published in 1993 - made on his colleagues, friends and enemies. Also, on the island he'll be ruminating on love, pain, parents, political ambition and the many attractions of his island exile. [Taken from the original pro...

The castaway on Desert Island Discs this week is one of Britain's best-loved actors, David Jason. He will be talking to Sue Lawley about the rocky route from his first job as an electrician, through Bromley Rep, summer seasons and pantos, to the moment he was spotted for a television show called Do Not Adjust Your Set. Some success followed this, but it was when the BBC offered him the part of Del...

The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is one of the country's famous experts on gardens and garden design, Penelope Hobhouse. She will be talking to Sue Lawley about her childhood in Ulster, where she was brought up steeped in the politics of the province. From there, she went to Cambridge, married, and settled down to look after the garden of the beautiful house in Somerset which marriage...

The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is the writer Margaret Forster. Her second novel - Georgy Girl - was published in the 1960s and made into a popular film; another 20 books - both fiction and non-fiction - followed and her recent biography of Daphne du Maurier attracted much critical acclaim. She'll be talking to Sue Lawley about her early life in Carlisle, the stresses of working moth...

The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is the painter Sir Howard Hodgkin. He'll be talking to Sue Lawley about the hard road to recognition in this country - which he describes as being 'enemy territory' for painters. At 62, he has now achieved fame, fortune and to him a somewhat irksome knighthood. He'll be describing his problematic schoolboy years, his total commitment to art and what he...

The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is Glenys Kinnock. She'll be talking to Sue Lawley about her upbringing in Wales, her role during the years of Neil Kinnock's leadership of the Labour Party and her own reincarnation as a politician on the European stage as an MEP. [Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs] Favourite track: Was A Sunny...

The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is the composer and conductor Berthold Goldschmidt. Born in Hamburg 91 years ago, he enjoyed a brilliant early career working with many famous musicians in Germany and Russia. But he'll be telling Sue Lawley how, as a Jew, he was forced to flee the Nazis and take refuge in Britain. Sadly, the musical establishment of his adopted homeland found his musi...

The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is the Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, the Most Reverend Desmond Tutu. He'll be talking to Sue Lawley about his childhood and his first realisations that black children were treated very differently from their white counterparts, as well as his initial work as a teacher, which he gave up when he realised he was expected merely to train his black pupi...

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 lif...

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...

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...

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...

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....

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 wo...

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...

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 a...

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 Wo...

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...

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 a...

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 Pic...

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. [T...

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, lead...

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 encomp...