Desert Island Discs

Sir Cliff Richard

20 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Sir Cliff Richard makes a second trip to the island he first visited 60 years ago, when he had just turned 20, but had already topped the UK charts th...

Minette Batters

13 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Minette Batters is the first woman to become President of the National Farmers' Union, representing 47,000 members. She was first elected to the post ...

Professor Sir Jeremy Farrar

06 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Professor Sir Jeremy Farrar is Director of the Wellcome Trust, a global charitable foundation which funds scientific research. He is a member of Sage,...

Helen Oxenbury

29 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Helen Oxenbury is an illustrator of children’s books whose work has featured in many very popular titles for younger readers including the award-win...

Arsène Wenger, former football manager

22 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Arsène Wenger was the manager of Arsenal FC for 22 years, becoming the longest-serving and most successful manager in the club’s history. He was bo...

Sir Keir Starmer, Leader of the Opposition

15 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Sir Keir Starmer is the leader of the Labour Party, and the leader of the opposition.Named after Keir Hardie, a founding father of the Labour party, h...

David Mitchell, novelist

13 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

David Mitchell has published eight novels, two of which – number9dream and Cloud Atlas – have been shortlisted for the Booker Prize. He has also t...

Hilary McGrady, Director General of the National Trust

01 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Hilary McGrady is Director General of the National Trust.She was born in Lisburn, Northern Ireland, in 1966, where her father was a builder while her ...

Chris Boardman, cyclist

25 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Chris Boardman is an Olympic cyclist, businessman and the Cycling and Walking Commissioner for Greater Manchester. Both his parents were keen competi...

Professor Averil Mansfield, retired surgeon

18 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Averil Mansfield is a retired vascular surgeon and was the first female Professor of Surgery in the UK when she was appointed in 1993.She was born in ...

Baroness Floella Benjamin, DBE

15 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Baroness Floella Benjamin DBE is a Trinidadian-British broadcaster, writer and politician. She became a familiar face to millions of viewers through h...

Samantha Morton, actor

04 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Samantha Morton is an actor and director. She has appeared in films directed by Woody Allen and Steven Spielberg, and is also known for her work on in...

Yusuf Cat Stevens, musician

27 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Yusuf Cat Stevens is a singer-songwriter who first enjoyed success more than 50 years ago. He was born Steven Demetre Georgiou in July 1948. His Gree...

Bernardine Evaristo, writer

20 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Bernardine Evaristo won the Booker Prize in 2019 for her novel, Girl, Woman, Other. She is Professor of Creative Writing at Brunel University London.B...

Your Desert Island Discs

11 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Listeners choose the music that has been special to them during the weeks of lockdown. With Jane Moss, Hugh Mullally, Ailish Douglas, Professor Jason...

Maria Balshaw, Director of Tate

10 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Maria Balshaw is the Director of Tate, overseeing four major art galleries: Tate Britain, Tate Liverpool, Tate Modern and Tate St Ives.Maria was born ...

Steve Backshall, explorer

02 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Steve Backshall is an explorer, naturalist and broadcaster. His BAFTA-winning programmes bring viewers of every generation closer to nature – from...

Sharon Horgan, writer, actor, producer

26 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Sharon Horgan is a writer, actor and producer best known for co-writing and co-starring in the Channel 4 series Catastrophe with US comedian Rob Delan...

Annie Nightingale, DJ

19 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Annie Nightingale was BBC Radio 1’s first female presenter and is its longest-serving DJ, celebrating her 50th anniversary at the station this year....

Jens Stoltenberg, Secretary General of NATO

12 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Jens Stoltenberg is the Secretary General of NATO and a former Prime Minister of Norway. Although he was born into a political family in Norway, he gr...

Helen Fielding, author

05 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Helen Fielding, writer and journalist, is best known for creating Bridget Jones, who first appeared in a newspaper column in the Independent in 1995, ...

Helen McCrory, actress

28 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Helen McCrory shares the eight tracks, book and luxury she would want to take with her if cast away to a desert island. Helen McCrory OBE is one of th...

Mark Johnston, racehorse trainer

21 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Racehorse trainer Mark Johnston is a lynchpin of British flat racing. In August 2018 - when 20-1 shot Poet's Society, ridden by Frankie Dettori, stre...

Joe Wicks, fitness trainer and author

14 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Joe Wicks, professionally known as The Body Coach, is a fitness and nutrition coach. Since the lockdown, he has been running daily free virtual PE les...

Martin Lewis, financial campaigner

07 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Martin Lewis is a financial journalist, campaigner and broadcaster. His high-profile campaigns on bank charges, student finance, and mental health and...

Professor Dame Elizabeth Anionwu, former nurse

31 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Elizabeth Anionwu is a retired nurse, campaigner and Emeritus Professor of Nursing at the University of West London. A fellow of the Royal College of ...

Charles Hazlewood, conductor

24 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Charles Hazlewood is a conductor and the founder of Paraorchestra, the world's first professional ensemble of disabled musicians. Once described as th...

Sinead Burke, disability rights activist and teacher

17 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Sinead Burke is a disability rights activist and teacher. She has combined her love of education and style to campaign for more representation of dive...

Simon Armitage, Poet Laureate

10 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Simon Armitage was appointed Poet Laureate in 2019. His poems celebrate the everyday and the ordinary with wit and affection. But beyond the wood ch...

Brian Cox, actor

29 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Brian Cox CBE is a Scottish actor whose career spans almost 60 years, from his early days sweeping the stage at his local theatre in Dundee to his cur...

Dame Helena Morrissey, financier and campaigner

22 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Dame Helena Morrissey is a former City fund manager and chief executive of a major investment company, who has also campaigned to boost the number of ...

Daniel Radcliffe, actor

15 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Daniel Radcliffe reached a global audience in the title role of the hugely successful Harry Potter films. He has also appeared on Broadway and in the ...

Chris Riddell, illustrator, author and political cartoonist

08 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Chris Riddell is an illustrator, author of children’s books and a political cartoonist. From 2015 to 2017, he was the Children’s Laureate, and he ...

Dorothy Byrne, journalist

01 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Dorothy Byrne is the head of News and Current Affairs at Channel 4, and has worked in journalism for more than four decades. In 2018 she received the ...

Melanie C

23 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Melanie Chisholm - known as Melanie C - is a singer and songwriter who found global fame as one fifth of the Spice Girls, the most commercially succes...

Ian Wright, former footballer and broadcaster

16 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Ian Wright is a former professional footballer and now a football pundit on TV and radio. He began his career at Crystal Palace before moving to Arsen...

Zoe Ball, broadcaster

09 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Zoe Ball is a radio and television presenter. She became the first woman to present the BBC Radio 1 Breakfast Show in 1997, and then the first woman t...

Sonita Alleyne, Master of Jesus College, Cambridge

02 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Sonita Alleyne is the Master of Jesus College, Cambridge, the first woman to hold the post and - more significantly - the first black master of any Ox...

Anne Enright, writer

26 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Anne Enright won the Booker Prize for her fourth novel, The Gathering, in 2007, and was appointed the inaugural Laureate for Irish Fiction in 2015. S...

Dame Sue Campbell, Director Women's Football at the FA

19 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Dame Sue Campbell is the Director of Women’s Football at the Football Association. The women’s game has become increasingly popular recently and ...

Michael Lewis, writer

12 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Michael Lewis is a best-selling non-fiction writer and journalist. He initially worked for an investment bank, and his experiences of Wall Street exce...

Rupert Everett, actor

09 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Rupert Everett is an actor, writer and director whose breakthrough came in 1981 when he was cast as a gay schoolboy in Another Country, Julian Mitchel...

Stephen Merchant, writer, comedian and actor

22 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Stephen Merchant first came to fame with the TV sitcom The Office, which he co-wrote and co-directed with Ricky Gervais. He continued to work with Ger...

Heidi Thomas, screenwriter

15 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Heidi Thomas is a screenwriter and playwright best known for Call the Midwife. The BBC TV series, which began in 2012, was originally a six part adap...

Professor Russell Foster, professor of circadian neuroscience

08 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Professor Russell Foster is head of the Sleep and Circadian Neuroscience Institute at the University of Oxford, professor of circadian neuroscience an...

Asif Kapadia, film director

01 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Asif Kapadia is an Academy Award-winning film director, renowned for his documentaries about the musician Amy Winehouse, the Brazilian motor racing st...

Isabella Tree, writer and conservationist

24 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Isabella Tree is a conservationist and writer of the award-winning book Wilding: the Return of Nature to a British Farm, which tells the story of rewi...

Stephen Graham, actor

17 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Stephen Graham is an actor, whose credits include key roles in films including This is England and The Irishman, and in TV dramas such as Boardwalk Em...

Lauren Laverne picks some of her favourite episodes

13 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Hear stories & track choices from castaways including Len Goodman, Maya Angelou and Stephen Hawking.

Kimberley Motley, lawyer

10 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Kimberley Motley is an American attorney and the first foreign lawyer to practise in Afghanistan.Born in 1975 to an African-American father and a Nort...

Russell T Davies, screenwriter

03 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Russell T Davies is one of the U.K.’s most successful television writers. He spent his teenage years learning his dramatic craft with the West Glam...

Wendell Pierce, actor

27 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Wendell Pierce is an American actor best known for his role as Bunk Moreland in the television series The Wire. Since the series ended in 2008, he has...

Dame Glenys Stacey, former Chief Inspector of Probation

20 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Dame Glenys Stacey has spent 40 years in public service, including high profile work as a regulator in key areas of national life. She has just stepp...

Baroness Arminka Helić

14 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Baroness Arminka Helić is credited with persuading William Hague, the former foreign secretary, and the actor and director Angelina Jolie to launch t...

Lin-Manuel Miranda, composer & lyricist

06 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Lin-Manuel Miranda is best known as the composer, lyricist and original star of the multi-award-winning Broadway musical, Hamilton. It won the 2016 Pu...

Sabrina Cohen-Hatton, firefighter

29 Sep 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Dr Sabrina Cohen-Hatton is the Chief Fire Officer for West Sussex Fire and Rescue Service. She is one of the most senior women in the Fire and Rescue...

Thom Yorke, musician

22 Sep 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Thom Yorke has been the front man of Radiohead, one of Britain’s most successful British bands, for 34 years. They have sold over 30 million albums ...

Jo Fairley, businesswoman

11 Aug 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Jo Fairley is a businesswoman and writer. She co-founded the Green & Black’s chocolate company with Craig Sams, her husband, and has launched se...

Sir Tim Waterstone, businessman

04 Aug 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Sir Tim Waterstone is the founder of the bookshop chain that bears his name. Born in May 1939, he was the youngest of three children. His father, who ...

Dame Sally Davies, chief medical officer, England

28 Jul 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Dame Sally Davies is the outgoing Chief Medical Officer for England. She will take up her next post as Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, later thi...

John Cooper Clarke, poet

21 Jul 2019

Contributed by Lukas

John Cooper Clarke first achieved fame with his poetry during the punk rock era of the late 1970s. Born in Salford in 1949 to Hilda and George, he suf...

Marcus Wareing, chef

14 Jul 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Marcus Wareing is a prize-winning chef, restaurateur, TV presenter and cookery book writer, who gained his first Michelin star at the age of just 26. ...

Sue Biggs, DG Royal Horticultural Society

07 Jul 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Sue Biggs is the Director General of the Royal Horticultural Society. She’s been at the helm of the RHS since 2010 and during that time, its member...

Jared Diamond, academic and author

30 Jun 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Jared Diamond is Professor of Geography at the University of California, Los Angeles, although his interests and expertise range far wider, from physi...

Emily Eavis

23 Jun 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Emily Eavis is co-organiser of the Glastonbury Festival. Together with her husband and her father, she masterminds the booking of bands and oversees t...

Nitin Sawhney, musician, producer, composer

16 Jun 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Nitin Sawhney is a composer, musician and producer working in the worlds of music, film, video games, dance and theatre. He has released 10 studio alb...

Professor Monica McWilliams, social scientist

09 Jun 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Professor Monica McWilliams is an academic, peace campaigner and former politician. In 1996, she was the co-founder of the Northern Ireland Women’s ...

Lubaina Himid, artist

02 Jun 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Lubaina Himid is a Turner Prize-winning artist, curator and Professor of Contemporary Art at the University of Central Lancashire. Lubaina was born i...

Derren Brown, illusionist

26 May 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Derren Brown, illusionist and mentalist, chooses the eight tracks, book and luxury he want to take with him if cast away to a desert island. BOOK CHOI...

Pat McGrath, makeup artist

19 May 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Pat McGrath is a renowned make-up artist. She works with the world’s top designers, photographers, editors and models, creating images for the pages...

Louis Theroux

12 May 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Louis Theroux is a television documentary maker. He has received two BAFTAs and a Royal Television Society Award for his work which includes the serie...

Martin Freeman, actor

31 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Martin Freeman is a multi-award winning actor, best known for his roles as the lovable Tim in BBC Two’s The Office and as Dr Watson to Benedict Cumb...

Jacqueline de Rojas, President of techUK

24 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Lauren Laverne’s castaway this week is Jacqueline de Rojas, the President of techUK, the body that represents 900 companies in the technology sector...

Marlon James, writer

17 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Marlon James is a writer who won the Man Booker Prize in 2015 for A Brief History of Seven Killings, a novel which centres on an attempt to assassinat...

Dame Esther Rantzen, broadcaster and campaigner

10 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Dame Esther Rantzen is best known as the presenter of the long-running TV series That’s Life, which began on BBC One in 1973. She was both presente...

Trevor Sorbie, hairdresser

03 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Trevor Sorbie is known as an innovative hairdresser and is the founder of the charity, MyNewHair. Born into a family of hairdressers – both his fath...

Margaret MacMillan, historian

24 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Professor Margaret MacMillan is a Canadian historian, author and broadcaster. In 2018 she delivered the Reith Lectures on BBC Radio 4, in which she e...

Ann Cleeves, writer

17 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Ann Cleeves is a crime writer best known for two series of novels, both of which have been adapted for television. Vera, for ITV, features her detecti...

Cressida Dick, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police

10 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Cressida Dick is Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police.She was born in 1960, the youngest child of two university professors. Her parents divorced w...

Bob Mortimer, comedian

03 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Bob Mortimer is a comedian best known for his work with his comedy partner Vic Reeves. For 30 years, he and Vic have appeared in numerous TV series to...

Wendy Cope, poet

27 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Wendy Cope is one of England’s most popular and widely-read contemporary poets. Wendy was born in Erith, Kent. Her father was 29 years older than he...

James Rebanks, shepherd and writer

20 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

James Rebanks is a shepherd and the best-selling author of The Shepherd’s Life. Born in Cumbria in 1974, he grew up venerating his grandfather, who ...

Ruth Jones, actor and writer

13 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Ruth Jones is an actor and writer. She co-created and starred in the award-winning TV comedy series Gavin and Stacey, and also wrote and took the tit...

Jeremy Deller, artist

06 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The Turner Prize-winning artist Jeremy Deller is perhaps best known for We’re Here Because We’re Here, a moving and powerful memorial to the Battl...

Alan Carr, comedian

23 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Alan Carr, comedian and chat show host, is known for his love of silliness, dressing up and camp daftness. His stand-up shows have filled arenas, and ...

Hella Pick, journalist

19 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

As one of the Guardian’s first female foreign correspondents, Hella Pick reported on events that shaped the world in the second half of the 20th cen...

Mariana Mazzucato, economist

16 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Professor Mariana Mazzucato is an economist, who focuses on value and innovation. Born in Italy, Mariana moved to America as a child, when her father...

Gary Barlow, singer-songwriter

09 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Gary Barlow, musician and Take That lead singer, has written more than a dozen chart-topping songs, and has received six Ivor Novello awards including...

Tom Kerridge, chef

02 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Tom Kerridge is a chef, restaurateur and TV presenter. Tom made his name with his Buckinghamshire pub The Hand and Flowers, which he opened with his w...

Kate Atkinson, novelist

25 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Kate Atkinson won the Whitbread Book of the Year Award for her 1995 debut novel Behind the Scenes at the Museum, and has won the Costa Novel Award twi...

Tracey Thorn, musican and writer

18 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Tracey Thorn, musician and writer, is best known as one half of the duo Everything but the Girl. Brought up in Brookmans Park, Hertfordshire, she boug...

Vanley Burke, photographer

04 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Vanley Burke is a Jamaican-born photographer often described as the Godfather of Black British Photography. His body of work is regarded as the greate...

Jacqueline Gold

28 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Jacqueline Gold is the CEO of the retail brands Ann Summers and Knickerbox. She joined the business at the age of 19 for work experience, and faced r...

Venki Ramakrishnan

21 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Venki Ramakrishnan is a Nobel Prize-winning molecular biologist. He is most renowned for his research into the atomic structure of the ribosome - a co...

Nile Rodgers

14 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Nile Rodgers is a Grammy-winning composer, musician, and producer. With his own band, Chic, he's been enticing people on to the dance floor since the ...

Thea Musgrave

07 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Composer Thea Musgrave celebrated her 90th birthday this year, an event marked by celebrations and concerts around the world, including the BBC Proms ...

Tom Daley

30 Sep 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Tom Daley started diving aged seven and by the age of 14 was representing Great Britain at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. He has won six British Champi...

Henry Marsh

23 Sep 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Henry Marsh is a neurosurgeon, who pioneered a technique of operating on the brain while the patient is under local anaesthetic. The procedure is now ...

Danielle de Niese

16 Sep 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Danielle de Niese is a soprano who has taken starring roles with leading opera companies around the world. She was born in Melbourne, Australia, to S...

Pam Ayres

05 Aug 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Pam Ayres is a poet and broadcaster.Pam was born in the Vale of the White Horse and retains her characteristic Berkshire burr. She is the youngest of ...