This summer will see what will be a sad day in Test cricket history: Dickie Bird, who has umpired 65 Test matches, 92 one-day internationals and three world cup finals, will be umpiring his last Test match at Lords.

This week in Desert Island Discs, he will be talking to Sue Lawley about his church-going childhood in Barnsley, and his anxieties about punctuality - arriving as he has done at least four hours before time at Buckingham Palace, Chequers and The Oval.

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

Favourite track: The Way We Were by Barbra Streisand

Nearly 14 years ago, the young Simon Weston set off to serve with his regiment in the Falklands War. On 8th June 1982 in Bluff Cove, his ship was bombed, most of his friends were killed, but he survived.

This week on Desert Island Discs, he'll be talking to Sue Lawley about that shattering moment, his subsequent rehabilitation and how his disfigurement has affected his life.

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

Favourite track: What a Wonderful World by Louis Armstrong

The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is someone who has unexpectedly encountered professional acclaim late in her life.

Singer Kyra Vayne could well be described as one of opera's forgotten voices - until this year when, thanks to the release of some previously-unknown recordings which had lived under her bed in Shepherd's Bush for 30 years, her voice reached a large new audience of admirers. She'll be talking to Sue Lawley about her reaction to the ecstatic reception given to her first CD, how she lived a life of obscurity working in a bank after she abandoned her career and about her life in pre-revolution Russia, where she and her family nearly starved to death before fleeing to England.

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

Favourite track: Symphony No 9 Final Movement by Ludwig van Beethoven

The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is the Chairman of the National Westminster Bank Lord Alexander.

He'll be talking to Sue Lawley about how he began his career as a jobbing barrister, doing all manner of work on the western circuit where he earned a reputation which took him to the top of his profession. Among many others, he won cases for Jeffrey Archer and Kerry Packer, and lost one for Ken Livingstone's GLC. In the 1980s he moved to the City as Chairman of the Takeover Panel and then, to his surprise, he was invited to become Chairman of the National Westminster Bank. Tipped by those who know him well to become the next Lord Chancellor if the Conservatives stay in power, he'll be discussing his past, present and future and contemplating castaway life.

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

Favourite track: Do You Hear The People Sing? by Claude-Michel Schonberg

The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is the Shadow Chancellor Gordon Brown. He'll be talking to Sue Lawley about how he was an early 'fast-track' pupil - going to Edinburgh University at 16 - their youngest student for 50 years, about the reasons behind his standing aside in favour of Tony Blair in the contest for the Labour leadership, and about his childhood as one of three sons of a Scottish minister.

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

Favourite track: Suite No. 3 in D major by Johann Sebastian Bach

The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is a surgeon and a painter.

Sir Roy Calne - Professor of Surgery at Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge - will be talking to Sue Lawley about his early conviction that transplant surgery was a viable way of treating kidney and liver disease, about his struggles to have his ideas accepted and about the paintings he has done of his patients - many of which have been the subject of several public exhibitions.

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

Favourite track: Symphony No 9 From The New World (Opus 95) by Antonin Dvořák

The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is Professor George Steiner. One of the most prominent intellectuals of our time, he'll be talking to Sue Lawley about how the English academic establishment has taken decades to accept him despite his early popularity as a Cambridge lecturer, and about the problem of reconciling the love of beauty with great acts of evil.

When asked to select just one record to take to the island, Professor George said that for him, it was all or nothing.

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

Book: 500 year ahead calendar and appointment book

The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is one of the country's best-known novelists.

Author of I'm the King of the Castle, Strange Meeting and The Woman in Black, among many other books, Susan Hill will be talking to Sue Lawley about the inspiration for her recent and highly-acclaimed sequel to Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca; about the loneliness which characterised her childhood and about the relationship between tragedy in her own life and the way she writes about it in her novels.

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

Favourite track: Tom Bowling by Benjamin Britten

The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is one of the world's outstanding photojournalists, Eve Arnold. The first American woman member of the famous photographic co-operative, Magnum, she'll be talking about how her passion for photography began with the present of a camera, and how, since then, she has travelled the world in search of arresting pictures, living with hippy communes and with the black power movement, as well as photographing some of the great movie stars, including Paul Newman, Joan Crawford and Marilyn Monroe, with whom she had a close friendship for 10 years.

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

Favourite track: Flute Concerto No 1 in D Major Op 44R Op 44 by Antonio Vivaldi

The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is the writer Julian Barnes. Since his first novel - Metroland - was published when he was 34, he has written another eight and won four literary prizes - most famously perhaps for Flaubert's Parrot.

He'll be talking to Sue Lawley about his passion for Flaubert, his love for Leicester City, his notions of love and his fear of death.

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

Favourite track: Requiem Dies Irae (from Requiem) by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart