Book description
'For seventy years now Desert Island Discs has managed that
rare feat - to be both enduring and relevant. By casting away the
biggest names of the day in science, business, politics, showbiz,
sport and the arts, it presents a cross-sectional snapshot of the
times in which we live. As the decades have passed, the programme has
kept pace; never frozen in time yet always, somehow, comfortingly the
same.' Kirsty Young
BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs celebrates its seventieth
birthday in 2012. Since the programme's deviser Roy Plomley
interviewed comedian Vic Oliver in January 1942, nearly 3,000
distinguished people from all walks of life have been stranded on the
mythical island, accompanied by only eight records, one book and a luxury.
Here the story of one of BBC Radio 4's favourite programmes is
chronicled through a special selection of castaways.
Roy Plomley, inventor of the programme as well as its presenter for
over forty years, quizzes the young Cliff Richard about 'these rather
frenzied movements' the 1960s pop sensation makes on the stage. Robert
Maxwell tells Plomley's successor Michael Parkinson that 'I will have
left the world a slightly better place by having lived in it.' Diana
Mosley assures Sue Lawley that Adolf Hitler was 'extraordinarily
fascinating' and had mesmeric blue eyes. And Johnny Vegas tugs Kirsty
Young's heart-strings with his account of a childhood so impoverished
that family pets were fair game: 'My dad had always claimed that
rabbits were livestock, but we'd never eaten one before.'
Desert Island Discs is much more than a radio programme. It
is a unique and enduringly popular take on our lives and times - and
this extensively illustrated book tells in rich detail the colourful
and absorbing story of an extraordinary institution.
Kirsty Young's broadcasting career began in 1989, newsreading
and presenting for BBC Radio Scotland, before moving into TV news,
presenting for ITN and Channel 5. She became presenter of BBC 1's
Crimewatch in 2008, is a regular guest presenter of Have I
Got News For You and has presented BBC Radio 4's Desert
Island Discs since 2006.
Sean Magee is a publisher, editor and author. He has worked
on books with, among many others, Sir Clement Freud, Michael Mansfield
QC, David Blunkett, Rolf Harris, Michael Foot, Richard Dunwoody and
Sir Peter O'Sullevan, all of whom have been Desert Island Discs castaways.
