Desert Island Discs: Archive 1996-2000

Sue Lawley's castaway this week has murdered 75 people, and although he wants to retire, his fans are begging him for just one more. He's the creator of Inspector Morse, Colin Dexter. A Classics teacher before he began to write, it was a profession he immensely enjoyed until deafness forced him to quit. His other great loves are shared by his fictional hero, Morse. Both live for Wagner, crosswords and beer.[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs] Favourite track: Immolation Scene from Act 5 of Gotterdammerung by Richard Wagner Book: The collected works by A E Houseman Luxury: Manicure set

Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the QC Helena Kennedy. In 1992 she published a book which drew attention to the way English law discriminates against women. She called it Eve was Framed. It began a debate into how we view defendants and victims and how our judges are trained. Born into a working-class family living on the south side of Glasgow, she recently entered the House of Lords. She says her father, a newspaper packer and an active trade unionist, would have been 'amused but proud'.[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs] Favourite track: Cello Suite No 1 in G Minor by Johann Sebastian Bach Book: Aeneid by Virgil Luxury: Goose down duvet

Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the British bass John Tomlinson. He is most famous as Wotan - ruler of the gods in Wagner's Ring Cycle. In fact, it's a role he has made so much his own that the composer's grandson says it could almost have been written with him in mind. Growing up in a Methodist family music was a natural part of life, yet he studied to be an engineer until the urge to sing became too powerful to ignore.[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs] Favourite track: Concerto For Violin And Strings In D Minor Largo by Johann Sebastian Bach Book: Flora and Fauna of a Tropical Desert Island Luxury: A box of lenses

Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the artist and illustrator Paul Hogarth. He has portrayed A Year in Provence for Peter Mayle, depicted Doris Lessing's Africa and captured Majorca with Robert Graves.Born into a working-class family, his parents disapproved of his two great loves - travel and drawing. In the face of their opposition, he won a scholarship to art school where he was drawn into radical politics, becoming a communist and abandoning both art and family to fight in Spain. A popular figure with writers, he could match Brendan Behan drink for drink, and survived a 30-year working relationship with Graham Greene. Now 80, he says he still has the urge to travel, and continues to draw on his rich and varied life. [Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs] Favourite track: Far Horizons by Glyn Boyd Harte Book: Times Atlas of World History Luxury: Solar-powered Apple Mac

Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the scientist Professor Heinz Wolff. He came to public attention when he presented the television programme The Great Egg Race, in which he challenged people to conquer engineering problems with a rubber band, a pencil and a pickled onion. In the 1970s while designing aids for disabled people, he devised the phrase 'Tools for Living' to describe his work. After all, as he points out, we all use tools to cope with our environment, whether as an astronaut, a diver or an elderly person. It was his father who encouraged his enthusiasm for invention, sharing his Sunday afternoons experimenting with his chemistry set, or organising talks from physicists who had to hide their surprise at assessing the ideas of a six-year-old child. In the 80s he founded the Institute for Bioengineering at Brunel University. There he continued his inventions devising for example, a box for experimenting in outer space, a voice machine for people who can't speak and a safety system for deep-sea diver

Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the politician and Transport Minister Glenda Jackson. Politics is her third job. At 16, she left school to work in Boots. But it was as an actor that she reached the pinnacle of her profession, becoming an international star and winning Oscars for her roles in Women in Love and A Touch of Class. On television, she was the formidable Elizabeth R, but won our hearts as Cleopatra in Morecambe & Wise. Despite her vast acting experience, she admits that when she came to make her maiden speech in the House of Commons she had the worst attack of stage fright in her long career.[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs] Favourite track: War Requiem Libera Me by Benjamin Britten Book: The History and Creation of a Japanese Sand Garden Luxury: A bath

This is an archive edition of Desert Island Discs. What follows is what was said about the programme at the time:Sue Lawley's castaway this week has celebrated more than 50 years as a professional performer - he's the comedian and singer Harry Secombe.At 76, he can still hit the cruel Cs, although these days he turns puce with the effort. He can still make an audience laugh itself silly and numbers Prince Charles among his many fans. He's most definitely the best raspberry-blower in the business. Today he recalls the early days of The Goon Show with Spike Milligan, Peter Sellers and Michael Bentine. He remembers the nights spent in review alongside those Windmill girls dressed only in beads - "and most of those were sweat". And he describes how presenting Highway and Songs of Praise has left him feeling humble.[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs] Favourite track: Fantasia On Greensleeves by Ralph Vaughan Williams Book: The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dic

Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the Chairman of Northern Foods, Chris Haskins. Until recently he was something of a curiosity - a big businessman who was also a lifelong supporter of Labour and enthusiastically pro-Europe. It was the Aldermaston marches in the late 1950s which influenced his political beliefs. Sent to report on them for the Irish Times, he was soon swept along by the protesters' enthusiasm and sense of purpose.It was then too he learnt his organisational skills. When put in charge of sorting out accommodation for thousands of extra marchers, he fled to the pub. By the time he returned they had gone. Problem solved. He joined Northern Foods after falling in love with the owners' daughter. At that time, it was a small company providing milk for doorstep deliveries. Today, it's one of Britain's biggest food companies.[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs] Favourite track: Symphony No 9 In D Minor Adagio by Ludwig van Beethoven Book: The co

Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the artist Paula Rego. Born in Portugal, she was an only child, and spent her days sitting with the maids as they told tales around the kitchen table. Now she makes up stories about the people she knows and weaves them into her pictures. Like those early fairytales, her portraits always have a touch of danger about them. If you look the devil in the face, she says, face your fears and paint them - then they lose the power to scare you.[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs] Favourite track: Da Me O Braco Anda Dai by Blanc/Barbosa Book: Tender Is The Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald Luxury: Pencil and paper

Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the television presenter Loyd Grossman. His career has allowed him to peer through the keyholes of the rich and famous and comment on their homes. He once described Tony Blackburn's house as like that of a maiden aunt in Eastbourne. It's a formula which has lasted 14 years. Although he was well into his 20s before he learnt to cook, some 20 million viewers watch him as he deliberates, cogitates and digests the culinary efforts of his would-be masterchefs. As a boy his dream was to be a rock star or a historian. In the end, he gave up both, forsaking his study of the gin-drinking experiences of 18th-century Londoners and forgoing his evenings spent dodging beer cans thrown on stage. He turned instead to journalism and Harpers & Queen. It was by accident that he was picked out to present for the new fledgling television station, TVAM, but by the time they realised their mistake his TV career was launched.[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition

Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the theatre producer Thelma Holt. Famed for introducing some of the best international productions to this country, she persuaded Dustin Hoffman to London's West End, brought Ingmar Bergman's Hamlet to the South Bank and premiered the work of the Japanese director Ninagawa in Britain.[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs] Favourite track: Lazy Bones by Paul Robeson Book: Utopia by Thomas Moore Luxury: Rosary beads

Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the playwright and film director Anthony Minghella. He grew up on the Isle of Wight in a close-knit family of Italian descent, and says that he has never felt truly English. It is not surprising therefore that his most successful film explores questions of identity and nationality. That film, The English Patient, won nine Oscars. It is, he admits, unashamedly moving, since for him the purpose of fiction is to "exercise the emotional muscle". Music, too, plays an important part in his life. He listens to music as he writes and the structure of many of his plays and film scripts are influenced by it. [Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs] Favourite track: Mache Dich, Mein Herze, Rein by Johann Sebastian Bach Book: Collected Piano Works by Bach Luxury: Piano

Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the broadcaster and popular historian, John Julius Norwich. Closely associated with Venice, he talks about his love for the city and his battle to protect it from the rising waters of the Mediterranean. It's a passion he learnt from his parents - the diplomat and politician Duff Cooper and the beautiful socialite Lady Diana. As a boy he grew up surrounded by his mother's friends - artists and writers like Jean Cocteau and Noel Coward. Evelyn Waugh, too, frequently visited. But he was someone who his mother adored and his father barely tolerated.[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs] Favourite track: Bassoon Concerto in B by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Book: The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon Luxury: Laptop Computer

Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the naturalist and writer Richard Mabey. A romantic at heart, he regrets that so much written about nature these days concentrates on the scientific. Unlike past writers like WH Hudson or Gilbert White, he says we rarely confess our feelings and emotions about the countryside. What interests him is our relationship with nature; how we name our streets and houses after flowers, why children still whack conkers, and the reasons we bring holly and mistletoe into our homes at Christmas. He himself has a special relationship with the nightingale - he describes how, in times of distress and depression, he can always find comfort in its song.[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs] Favourite track: La Delaissado (The Abandoned) by Joseph Canteloube Book: The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame Luxury: Guitar

Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the composer and performer Richard Rodney Bennett. A versatile musician, he is equally at home playing jazz, writing film scores or composing for the concert hall. He wants to give performers music which they want to play, so he has written percussion pieces for Evelyn Glennie and saxophone sonatas for John Harle and Stan Getz. "Nobody," he says, "needs another violin concerto from anybody". His film scores include Murder on the Orient Express, Far From the Madding Crowd and Four Weddings and a Funeral, but he confesses to having most fun when he's just singing jazz.[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs] Favourite track: Violin Concerto by William Walton Book: The Atlantic book of British and American Poetry by Edith Sitwell Luxury: 6mm 36 inch circular knitting needle with a point at each end

Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the novelist Rose Tremain. She began writing as a child soon after her father left home. It became a kind of therapy for her and she explains it's something she still turns to, especially in moments of crisis. Recognised for her ability to get right inside the minds of her characters, she offers the reader a view of the world through their eyes. In her book Sacred Country, we become a little girl who believes she's really a boy. In Restoration, we live the life of a 17th-century man. As a writer, she wants her work to feel dangerous, and so after extensive research she likes to forget it; keeping some facts and making others up. It's like playing a game with the reader, she says, a challenge to guess which is fact and which is merely fiction.[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs] Favourite track: Dance Me To The End Of Love by Leonard Cohen Book: A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking Luxury: Word processor

Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the musician and presenter Jools Holland. He first shot into the public eye when he made what he still calls "a bit of a verbal slip", and used a four-letter word on the teenage music show The Tube. These days he hosts a late night television programme, where he plays alongside such musical greats as Eric Clapton, Oasis and Tony Bennett. His own musical performance has evolved and expanded from the days when he and a mate would tour the pubs for a few pounds, a drink and a lot of adoration. In the 1970s he found success with his punk group, Squeeze. And he now fronts his own, 12-man rhythm and blues orchestra. A long way from where he began as a small boy, playing boogie woogie on his grandmother's pianola.[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs] Favourite track: (We're Gonna) Jump For Joy by Big Joe Turner Book: Four Books of Architecture by Andrea Palladio Luxury: Piano

Sue Lawley's castaway this week has been the voice of racing for half a century. Due to retire in November 1997, Peter O'Sullevan calculates that he has commentated on some 14,000 races. After calling his last Grand National earlier this year he perhaps breathed a sigh of relief, because even after 50 broadcasts he admits to still finding the responsibility nerve-wracking. Horses have always been his life. He owns them, bets on them, writes about them and campaigns for their welfare, with the same enthusiasm that he had as a young boy riding with his grandparents' groom, Truelove.[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs] Favourite track: Piano Concerto 5 in E Flat Major by Ludwig van Beethoven Book: Ends and Means by Aldous Huxley Luxury: Bottle Of Calvados

The castaway on Desert Island Discs this week is the filmmaker and director Mike Leigh. He first came to public attention on a dark and stormy evening when 16 million people tuned to BBC1 to watch his film Abigail's Party. It was also the night that ITV was blacked out by a strike, there was a highbrow documentary on BBC2, and Channel 4 didn't exist. His recent films Secrets and Lies and Naked won top awards at Cannes, building on the recognition he received for his earlier, more gentle portrait of working-class life - Life is Sweet. He explains to Sue Lawley how his early films were inspired by the work of Harold Pinter, Samuel Beckett and Francois Truffaut. [Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs] Favourite track: Clarinet Concerto in A Clarinet Concerto in A Major K622 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Book: One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez Luxury: Lavatory and lavatory paper

Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the editor and publisher, Ursula Owen. Twenty-five years ago she helped create Virago - the feminist publishing house which promotes women writers. A huge success, it became the focus of much attention when she and her colleague, Carmen Callil, fell out in what became a very public row. Recently, she has revamped the magazine Index on Censorship, which debates the issues surrounding freedom of speech and publishes the work of persecuted writers. The daughter of a Jewish family who fled to Britain from Nazi Germany, she was a quiet, reserved and conformist child. Her friends, she says, still wonder how she grew up to be such an outspoken, strong-minded and opinionated woman.[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs] Favourite track: Der Rosenkavalier The Trio From Act Three by Richard Strauss Book: The collected works by Anton Chekhov Luxury: Family photo album