Desert Island Discs: 70 Years of Castaways

The legendary BBC radio program Desert Island Discs celebrated 70 glorious years in 2012. Since the program'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 only
by eight records, one book, and a luxury. This beautifully illustrated landmark book tells the absorbing story of Britain's favorite radio program in all its rich and intriguing detail through an exclusive selection of just 100 castaways, the crème de la crème of the great and the good. Over the years each has been interviewed by one of just three further eminent successors to Plomley: Michael Parkinson, Sue Lawley, or today's presenter, Kirsty Young. Discover how Diana Mosley caused outrage by fondly remembering Hitler’s magnetic charm and disputing the scale of the Holocaust, how soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf famously chose seven of her own recordings, Roy Plomley interviewed the wrong Alistair McLean, Terry Pratchett took the Chrysler Building in New York as his luxury, while Julian Clary took a prosthetic arm and Cathy Burke her laminated surfboard of James Caan. Not simply the history of a radio program, this is a record of our lives and society over the last 70 years. It is the one book you will want to take with you (alongside the Bible and the Complete Works of Shakespeare) when cast away on your own desert island.