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Desert Island Discs — Personal Journals
Desert Island Discs

Eight tracks, a book and a luxury: what would you take to a desert island? Guests share the soundtrack of their lives.

Copyright: © (C) BBC 2023

Latest Episodes:

Simon Callow Feb 06, 2000

Show notes

Sue Lawley's guest this week is Simon Callow. He impressed the theatre world when he played Mozart in Amadeus, and won our hearts as the genial Scot, Gareth, in Four Weddings and a Funeral. Like many actors, he learned his trade in rep. It's a good place to make mistakes, he says, recalling how he fell twenty foot through a trap door during 'A Christmas Carol'.

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

Favourite track: String Quintet in C Major - Adagio by Franz Schubert Book: Dictionary Luxury: Nose hair trimmer

Peter Melchett Jan 30, 2000

Show notes

Sue Lawley's guest this week is Peter Melchett. The executive director of Greenpeace, he has recently hit the headlines for his active opposition to genetically modified crops. Once a pillar of the establishment, Lord Melchett was a rising politician in Jim Callaghan's Labour government before he became interested in green issues. He did though shock his colleagues in the Northern Ireland office, when he admitted listening to the pop group The Boomtown Rats.

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

Favourite track: Special Live Recording of 'PEACE' by Eurythmics Book: Field guide to his imaginary Island Luxury: Snorkel and mask

Neil Jordan Jan 23, 2000

Show notes

Sue Lawley's guest this week is Neil Jordan. As a child he would cycle past Bram Stoker's house on his way to school, one of the reasons, perhaps, that he went on to direct the film Interview with a Vampire. His other movies include Mona Lisa and The Butcher Boy; the story of a little Irish lad who talks to the Virgin Mary which has echoes in his own Irish Catholic childhood.

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

Favourite track: Round Midnight by Thelonious Monk Book: A la Recherche du Temps Perdu by Marcel Proust Luxury: Typewriter

Ian McEwan Jan 16, 2000

Show notes

This week the castaway on Desert Island Discs is Ian McEwan.

A Booker Prize winner, he was once dubbed 'Ian Macabre' because of the dark nature of his stories. His first novel The Cement Garden told a horrifying tale of family life. Later, The Comfort of Strangers described how a chance encounter can end in murder. He does though admit to his writing becoming gentler in recent years. In conversation with Sue Lawley, he talks about his life and work and chooses eight records to take to the mythical island.

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

Favourite track: Aria from Goldberg Variations by Johann Sebastian Bach Book: Ulysses by James Joyce Luxury: Italian leather hand-stitched hiking boots

Dr Jane Goodall Jan 09, 2000

Show notes

Sue Lawley's guest this week is Dr. Jane Goodall. She had no formal scientific qualifications when she first went to Africa to study the Gombe chimpanzees. But it was this lack of preconceptions which made her so successful as a naturalist. Watching chimps use sticks to extract termites from their mounds she realised that she was about to smash the assumption that only humans used tools. Now, forty years after she first stepped into the bush, she describes how she has halted her patient study of the chimpanzees to fight for their survival.

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

Favourite track: Under the Milk Wood by Richard Burton Book: The Lord of the Rings by J R R Tolkien Luxury: Pencil and paper

Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber Dec 31, 1999

Show notes

Sue Lawley's guest this week is Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber. His musicals dominate London's West End, including Cats, Phantom of the Opera and Starlight Express. He traces a career which began more than 30 years ago when he teamed up with Tim Rice to write Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.

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

Favourite track: Some Enchanted Evening by Rossano Brazzi Book: England's Thousand Best Churches by Simon Jenkins Luxury: Herb garden

Michael Crawford Dec 24, 1999

Show notes

Sue Lawley's guest this week is Michael Crawford. Renowned for his attention to detail, he has always performed his own stunts - whether roller-skating under moving lorries in Some Mothers Do Have 'Em, or walking the tightrope in the musical Barnum. A consumate professional, he admits to escaping from his hospital bed, where he was recovering from exhaustion, so the show could go on!

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

Favourite track: Gloria from Mass in B Minor by Johann Sebastian Bach Book: The complete book of self-sufficiency by John Seymour Luxury: Pen and paper

Michael Nyman Dec 19, 1999

Show notes

Sue Lawley's guest this week is Michael Nyman. Said to be the best-selling classical composer in Britain, as a child visiting the opera or concert hall his imagination would be caught by a particularly pleasing sequence of notes. Later, he was to use these as inspiration for his own compositions. A Purcell manuscript inspired his music for the The Draughtsman's Contract. Scottish folk songs the soundtrack to The Piano.

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

Favourite track: Farewell (Das Lied von der Erde (the song of the Earth)) by Gustav Mahler Book: Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne Luxury: A toilet

Oz Clarke Dec 12, 1999

Show notes

Sue Lawley's guest this week is Oz Clarke. As a wine expert, he has sipped, slurped and spat his way through thousands of vintages from around the world. Renowned for his enthusiasm for trying new flavours and varieties, his earliest memory is of drinking his mother's damson wine when he was just three years old. And it didn't put him off.

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

Favourite track: Thanks for the Memory by The Mitford Girls Original London Stage Cast Book: French Provincial Cookery by Elizabeth David Luxury: His memory

Sir Richard Sykes Dec 05, 1999

Show notes

Sue Lawley's guest this week is Sir Richard Sykes. The chairman of Glaxo Welcome, as a boy he was not a natural scholar, until he went to work at the pathology laboratory of his local hospital. Understanding the application of science led him to become a research scientist at Glaxo Welcome. He describes how later the Board Room lured him away from the lab, and how he came to mastermind one of the most audacious take-overs in the city.

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

Favourite track: Second Movement from Cello Concerto in B Minor by Antonin Dvořák Book: The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin Luxury: Telescope

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