Kirsty Young's castaway this week is Aung San Suu Kyi. The programme was recorded on location in Naypyitaw, Burma in December 2012.

Now Leader of Burma's opposition party, she has dedicated her life to fighting for human rights and democracy in her homeland. A figure of world renown, she is known in Burma as simply "The Lady" and her integrity, determination and grace have provided a beacon of hope to a nation oppressed and exploited by decades of brutal military dictatorship. President Obama says she is an "icon of democracy" and Desmond Tutu calls her "a remarkable woman ... ready to work for the healing of her motherland".

Her renown has come at significant personal sacrifice: she endured nearly 20 years of house arrest and persecution, exiled from her children and apart from her British husband who died from cancer in 1999. She says "It takes courage to feel the truth, to feel one's conscience because once you do, you must engage your fundamental purpose for being alive. You can't just expect to sit idly by and have freedom handed to you."

Producer: Cathy Drysdale

Both the on-demand and the download audio of this programme are an extended edition of the original broadcast.

TV producer Beryl Vertue is Kirsty Young's castaway on Desert Island Discs.

In the famously fickle world of telly where last year's hero is this year's zero she has stood the test of time. Indeed in TV circles the noun "vertuosity" is defined as "the ability to make enormously successful sitcoms for British television and then sell the formats to the American market".

The cast list of her working life is a who's who of quality broadcasting and includes Jack Lemmon, Galton & Simpson, Frankie Howerd, Jack Nicholson and most recently Benedict Cumberbatch.

She started out typing Goon Show scripts in the mid 50s, accidentally became an agent, and as a producer she has risen to the very top of her industry, with hits including the rock musical Tommy, the sit-com Men Behaving Badly and the drama series Sherlock.

She says "it's terribly important not to know too many rules. If you know rules and obstacles you spend a lot of time dealing with them. If you don't know there's a rule you just do it."

Producer: Alison Hughes.

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is Martin Carthy.

A highly influential figure in the world of traditional music, about fifty years ago he was at the forefront of the English folk revival - inspiring not just his fellow countrymen, but Bob Dylan and Paul Simon too.

Now he's part of a folk dynasty. His wife is the celebrated singer Norma Waterson and their daughter Eliza is as renowned for her fiddle playing, as she is her voice.

Martin, on the other hand, was brought up in an atmosphere that encouraged him to rise above his station - there was music in his Anglo-Irish background, but it wasn't encouraged and rarely if ever talked about.

He says, "In my opinion there is no such thing as bad music. There may be bad players or bad singers but I don't like the idea of inferior music".

The producer was Isabel Sargent.

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is Sir Howard Stringer. Now Chairman of the Board and formerly CEO of Sony, he was surely the only Chief Executive who was a decorated Vietnam vet as he knelt before the Queen to be knighted. It gives you something of an idea of the breadth and height of his achievements.

Born in Cardiff he went to 11 different schools before his 16th birthday and it clearly gave him restless feet. In the mid-sixties he headed to America where his first job was answering phones for the Ed Sullivan Show. He loved TV and it felt the same about him. He's won a raft of Emmys for his productions and worked with all the big beasts of the broadcasting jungle including Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather and David Letterman.

He has spent the last few years commuting between New York, Tokyo, London and Hollywood - the first and so far only westerner to run the Japanese giant Sony.

He says - "I think I'm a bit prone to new adventures. The same damned impulse that got me in trouble by sending me to America in the first place compels me to take challenges when offered them."

Producer: Cathy Drysdale.

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the designer and businesswoman, Anya Hindmarch.

Given her first handbag by her mother at 16, she knew that her future lay in fashion. At 18 she went to Florence to immerse herself in Italian style, and ended up deep in the world of Florentine leather, getting samples made up of a duffel bag she'd spotted. An initial run of 500 bags sold out. Fast forward 25 years and her eponymous fashion business is globally successful with her designs much sought after.

She's also known for her conscience and designed a canvas tote called "I'm not a plastic bag" as part of an environmental campaign to highlight our over use of plastic bags.

She combines all this with a hectic family life. She met and subsequently married a widower 12 years her senior when she was 25. He had 3 children aged under 5 and they've added a further two to the clan.

She says her life is like "juggling and dancing while having one arm and one eye at the same time".

Producer: Alison Hughes.

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is Dawn French.

Her career started back when dungarees were considered a legitimate fashion choice and she's built her reputation on borderline surreal skits and glowingly warm characterisations.

Brought up in a forces family she had to move schools a lot and found making people laugh helped to make them her friends. Since then it's made her a household name and she may be moments away from becoming a 'national treasure'.

Double act partner, sit-com star, sketch show performer, writer, actor, Dawn has made us laugh for years. So does she ever feel overwhelmed by people's expectations? She says "I tell myself that I'm the sort of person who can open a one-woman play in the West End, so I do .... I am the sort of person who writes a book - so I do".

Producer: Cathy Drysdale.

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the nun, writer and broadcaster Sister Wendy Beckett.

For over 40 years she's lived the life of a hermit, rising every day at midnight to spend seven hours praying. Her home is a caravan in the grounds of a Carmelite Monastery where she spends her days in silence - speaking only once a day to the nun charged with delivering her daily food rations of skimmed milk, cold cooked vegetables and two rice crackers.

Her self-imposed isolation has only been broken by the - frankly rather unlikely - occurrence of a television career. She is the nun who knows about art and her passionate and pithy critiques of the world's great works and hidden treasures have won her many devoted fans.

With decades of solitude and prayer under her belt she seems, unlike nearly every other guest, to be perfectly cut out for a stretch alone on a desert island.

She says "It's my apostolic duty to talk about art. If you don't know about God, art is the only thing that can set you free".

Producer: Christine Pawlowsky.

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government Eric Pickles. After flirting with Communism in his teens he joined the Conservative party and enjoyed a heady rise through local politics, heading up Bradford City Council in the 1990s. He tells Kirsty about his early life above a shop in Keighley, how Mrs Thatcher got him an interview to be a candidate for MP, and how a prolonged hug from David Cameron softened the blow of a disastrous appearance on Question Time.

Producer: Alison Hughes.

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is Dustin Hoffman.

In spite of his Aunt Pearl telling him he wasn't good looking enough to be an actor for the past forty-five years he's been crafting landmark movie performances. He is that rare and apparently contradictory thing - a character actor and a superstar.

The Graduate, Midnight Cowboy, Lenny, All The President's Men, Marathon Man, Kramer v Kramer, Tootsie, Rain Man, Wag The Dog, and Last Chance Harvey are just a handful of the movies that contribute to an unparalleled body of work: he is the only actor in history to have top billing in three films that won Best Picture Oscars.

Now in his mid-70s he is making his directorial debut.

He says "I'm always fighting to break through... I'm trying to show you the part of me that wants to love, wants to kill, that wants to find my way out, that feels there is no way out."

Producer: Cathy Drysdale.

Kirsty Young's castaway is the artist and author, Edmund de Waal. His ceramics are on display in many of the world's major museums. They're delicate pots in shades of white and cream, informed he says by a great deal of thinking about literature.

His written work has also won him several awards; his book "The Hare With Amber Eyes" traces the rich and dramatic story of his family's Russian Jewish heritage and the diaspora in Odessa, Paris, Vienna, and Tokyo.

He says, "I make pots and I write. I'm not one of those people who by mistake became a potter or by mistake is a writer - they are both completely entwined."

Producer: Isabel Sargent.