The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is the writer Umberto Eco. His best-selling novel The Name of the Rose propelled him from the relative obscurity of his post as Professor of Semiotics at Bologna University to worldwide fame at the age of 50.

He'll be talking to Sue Lawley about how he deals with the demands of his celebrity status, his childhood in Mussolini's Italy and his other works - Foucault's Pendulum and The Island of the Day Before.

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

Favourite track: Goldberg Varations No 22 by Johann Sebastian Bach