The castaway on this week's Desert Island Discs is novelist and travel writer Colin Thubron. Author of books on the Middle East, China and Russia, he will be divulging to Sue Lawley some of the delights and dangers of his many experiences, as well as sharing his passion for music.

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

Favourite track: Love Duet (from Creation) by Franz Joseph Haydn

This week's Desert Island Discs castaway is playwright Alan Plater. He has been writing plays for radio, television, theatre and cinema since the early 1960s, having served his apprenticeship on Z-Cars in the days of live television drama. Since then, he has been associated with major television adaptions like The Barchester Chronicles and Fortunes of War.

He'll be talking to Sue Lawley about his work, as well as recalling his childhood in the north of England in the 1930s and 1940s - an idyllic time for him despite the inconveniences of the Depression and the Blitz.

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

Favourite track: Fine & Mellow by Billie Holiday

This week's Desert Island Discs castaway is veteran actor Jack Lemmon. With nearly 50 films to his name, including comedy classics like The Odd Couple and Some Like It Hot, as well as more serious films like Missing and The China Syndrome, he's also an accomplished jazz pianist, and he'll be talking to Sue Lawley about his passion for music and the vital part it has played in his life.

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

Favourite track: Rhapsody in Blue by George Gershwin

The castaway in this week's Desert Island Discs is a woman of many passions - passions for places, people and the past. She is photographer Lucinda Lambton, and she'll be sharing her love of the unusual and the beautiful with Sue Lawley.

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

Favourite track: Quartet (from Act 2 of Fidelio) by Ludwig van Beethoven

This week's Desert Island Discs will be a form of tribute to the pianist John Ogdon, who died last month.

In the programme, you can hear about his early musical life and his enormous success on the international music scene - a success which was cut short by a devastating nervous breakdown which brought his career to a halt. During his conversation with Sue Lawley, he talked about that illness, his eventual recovery and subsequent return to the concert platform and recording studios.

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

Favourite track: Symphony No 1 in B Minor 1st Movement by William Walton

The castaway in this week's Desert Island Discs is one of Britain's leading writers, Penelope Lively. Author of eight novels, two of which were shortlisted for the Booker Prize and one which won her the prize in 1987, Moon Tiger, she'll be talking to Sue Lawley about her early childhood in Egypt, her philistine English boarding school and the sources of inspiration for her characters and books.

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

Favourite track: Ruhe Sanft, Mein Holdes Leben (from Zaide) by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

The castaway on this week's Desert Island Discs is one of the legendary figures of the British rock music scene - guitarist Eric Clapton. Once known, blasphemously, as 'God', with prolific graffiti announcing 'Eric Clapton is God', he played with, among others, the Yardbirds, Cream and Blind Faith. Dealing successfully with years of alcohol and drug-related problems, he's still one of rock's superstars, and he'll be talking to Sue Lawley about his passion for music and his life of turmoil.

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

Favourite track: Purple Rain by Prince

As part of Radio 4's commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the outbreak of the Second World War, the castaway in this week's Desert Island Discs will be Dame Vera Lynn.

She'll be talking to Sue Lawley about her own wartime experiences - as the now-legendary 'forces sweetheart' she performed in front of servicemen as far away as Burma, and as close to home as London's Regent's Park, and since then she has been constantly in demand all over the world for her singing and her songs, reviving as they do wartime memories both happy and sad.

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

Favourite track: Room 504 by Vera Lynn

This week's castaway is Sir Thomas Armstrong, formerly Principal of the Royal Academy of Music, and now 91 years old. He'll be talking to Sue Lawley about his many years of teaching and performing music, judging music competitions and carrying out the almost impossible task of choosing just eight records to take to the mythical island from a lifetime filled with music from an early age.

Favourite track: Brigg Fair by Frederick Delius

This week's Desert Island Discs castaway is something of a show business all-rounder - the moving spirit behind BBC TV's That Was the Week That Was, director of the musical Side by Side by Sondheim and currently presenter of Radio 4's Loose Ends. He is, of course, Ned Sherrin, and he'll be talking to Sue Lawley about his idyllic childhood as a Somerset farmer's son, and the many different turns his life has subsequently taken.

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

Favourite track: As Time Goes By by Elisabeth Welch