Desert Island Discs: Archive 2000-2005

Sue Lawley's guest this week is Robert McCrum. The author of six highly acclaimed novels and literary editor of the Observer, he describes how he woke up one morning, at the age of 42, to a raging headache and partial paralysis. He had suffered a stroke and it was to take him more than a year to recover. Later, he was to write a memoir about that process which became not only a guide to other sufferers, but also a love story dedicated to his wife.

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

Favourite track: Prelude - Cello Suite No 3 by Johann Sebastian Bach

Sue Lawley's guest this week is Sheila Hancock. She first became a household name in the 1960s in the BBC sitcom The Rag Trade. Since then she has starred in everything from Carry On films to Chekhov. One of our most versatile actresses, she's been a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, sung in West End musicals and directed at the National. Twelve years ago she developed cancer, an experience which naturally made her re-assess her life. Today, she says, she's calmer, more secure and more able to cherish herself.

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

Favourite track: String Quartet No.8 - Opening by Dmitri Shostakovich

Sue Lawley's guest this week is Michael Holroyd. A respected biographer, as a boy, he sought refuge from an unhappy home in Maidenhead Public Library. It was there he discovered the work of Hugh Kingsmill who was to become his first biographical subject. And it was then that he "discovered the attraction," as he says, "of stepping from my own life into other people's". Since then he has devoted seven years to writing the life of Augustus John, and 17 to the biography of George Bernard Shaw.

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

Favourite track: Last movement of String Quartet - No16 in F Opus 135 by Ludwig van Beethoven

This week the castaway on Desert Island Discs is Professor Stuart Hall. Nearly 10 years after he came to England from Jamaica in 1951, he helped found the first Centre of Cultural Studies in Birmingham, with the academic Richard Hoggart. It was, he says, a reaction to how fast Britain was changing after the war, including the break up of the class structure and the growing impact of TV and the mass media. Now retired, he's still concerned by the question of British identity. 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: I Waited For You by Gil Fuller

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

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

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

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

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