Desert Island Discs: Archive 1986-1991

The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is television cook Keith Floyd. Renowned for his garrulous charm as much as for his culinary expertise, he'll be describing the chronicle of failure that dogged him through spells in the Army, as a cub reporter, as an antiques dealer and as a restaurateur. He'll also be talking to Sue Lawley about his passion for good food, music and the elusive nature of romantic happiness.

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

Favourite track: Hey Jude by The Beatles

Last August the world rejoiced at the liberation of a man who, to all intents and purposes, had vanished from its face more than four years previously. A pale and gaunt Brian Keenan emerged from a captivity of appalling deprivation and isolation after being kidnapped in Beirut by Islamic extremists.

This week on Desert Island Discs, he will be talking to Sue Lawley about those lost years, when, often blindfolded, chained and alone, he relived his life, conjuring up forgotten sights and sounds through imagined magical music, or by singing half-remembered lines from songs with John McCarthy when they were allowed to share their captivity.

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

Favourite track: Dweller On The Threshold by Van Morrison

The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is one of the great European artists of today - Eduardo Paolozzi. One of his positions is Her Majesty's Sculptor In-ordinary for Scotland - a post rather like the Poet Laureate for Sculpture, but with no duties attached to it. But such eminence in the artistic world is in stark contrast to Sir Eduardo's humble beginnings as the son of Italian immigrants who had an ice-cream shop in Edinburgh. He'll be talking to Sue Lawley about his boyhood, when he was sent to Fascist youth camps in Italy for three months at a time, and the subsequent imprisonment and vilification which fell upon him and his family at the outbreak of war in 1940. He'll also be contemplating his years at the Slade and his flight to the artistic freedom of the Paris of Giacometti, Leger and Picasso.

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

Favourite track: L'Enfant Et Les Sortileges by Maurice Ravel

The castaway in this week's Desert Island Discs rejoices in the title of the Baroness Trumpington of Sandwich in the County of Kent.

A tireless campaigner on myriad issues, she brings to her work a commodity which is often in short supply in political life - a healthy sense of humour. Among other things, she'll be talking to Sue Lawley about her career, during which she has risen from being Mayor of Cambridge to Under-Secretary of State at the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food - all without taking a single exam.

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

Favourite track: I'll Follow My Secret Heart by Noel Coward

The castaway in this week's Desert Island Discs is the black American singer Elisabeth Welch, who, in a career spanning 60 years, made famous such songs as Love For Sale, Soloman and Stormy Weather. Her first big break came in 1931 in the Broadway show The New Yorkers. The show made her a star and also gave her the lasting friendship of Irving Berlin and Cole Porter. Having been the toast of London, Paris and New York in pre-war years, her music still appeals across the generations.

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

Favourite track: Just One Of Those Things by Frank Sinatra

The castaway in this week's Desert Island Discs is the Baroness Castle of Blackburn - better known to most people as Barbara Castle. For 34 years she served as the Labour member for the constituency of Blackburn, and she rose to high office in the Wilson governments of the 1960s and 1970s. As the first woman Transport Minister, she introduced, amidst great controversy, the breathalyser and the motorway speed limit. She was also at the centre of legislation over equal pay for women. Then, 10 years ago, she opted out of domestic politics and into the European cauldron.

Now retired from that too, and recently having celebrated her 80th birthday, she'll be looking back over her long and passionate political career, and forward to making her mark on the House of Lords.

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

Favourite track: I Have A Dream Speech by Martin Luther King

The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is a man who, among many other achievements, gave his name to a famous report in the 1970s on the future of broadcasting - Lord Annan. He'll be talking to Sue Lawley about his long and distinguished career which has ranged through the Cabinet War Office, King's College Cambridge, The Royal Opera House and London University - as well as recalling many friends and acquaintances from his university days, from EM Forster to the notorious Guy Burgess.

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

Favourite track: 7th Symphony Final Movement by Ludwig van Beethoven

The castaway in this week's Desert Island Discs is the General Director of the South Bank, Nicholas Snowman. Very much a man of the arts, and a determined apostle of all things new, he founded the University Opera Society when he was at Cambridge and the London Sinfonietta when he left. He then moved to Paris, where he was appointed Artistic Director of the Pompidou Centre.

His latest post at the South Bank has attracted considerable controversy, with one critic describing his concert programme as "seriously unattractive". He'll be discussing his vision of the South Bank's musical future with Sue Lawley and talking about his achievement of establishing, for the first time, a resident orchestra in Britain's largest arts centre.

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

Favourite track: String Quintet No 4 In G Minor by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

The castaway in this week's Desert Island Discs is comedian Ernie Wise. Since Eric Morecambe's death six years ago, Ernie has had to carve out a show business career on his own, and he'll be talking to Sue Lawley about life as Wise without Morecambe, as well as looking back on the highs and lows of a partnership of nearly fifty years, during which time Morecambe and Wise sang, danced and joked their way to the top of the tree.

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

Favourite track: Bring Me Sunshine by Morecombe And Wise

The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is one of the most colourful and controversial members of Britain's trade union movement. He is the former General-Secretary of The Association of Scientific, Technical and Managerial Staffs - Clive Jenkins. Now retired, he'll be talking to Sue Lawley about a career which has encompassed disappointment but also considerable triumph, as well as looking back on his Methodist working-class upbringing in South Wales, and the path he trod from there to a position where he wielded extensive power and influence in the tough world of industrial relations.

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

Book: Look Homeward Angel by Thomas Wolfe