The castaway on Desert Island Discs this week is the literary critic, Sir Frank Kermode. One of the most influential teachers of his age, he is credited with bringing the new literary theory of Structuralism to this country. Something, as he admits to Sue Lawley, he now profoundly regrets. He traces his life, "lived like tumbleweed in the wind", from a short-sighted, studious boy growing up on the Isle of Man to King Edward Professor of English Literature at Cambridge University.

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

Favourite track: Cantata BWV 106 The Actus Tragicus by Johann Sebastian Bach