Desert Island Discs: 70 Years of Castaways

Oct 5, 2024 12:33 PM

Author:Sean Magee,Kirsty Young

‘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.

Reviews

Fascinating... endless fun! Magee's book is the perfect present for any of the radio show's millions of fans

—— Helen Davies , The Sunday Times

A gem on practically every page... plenty of surprises

—— Craig Brown , Daily Mail

Magee finds that sometimes the lasting significance is in the detail.... [he] has given a real snapshot of history

—— Telegraph

magisterial, handsome and charmingly illustrated... full of touching moments

—— The Spectator

Captivating

—— Sainsbury's Magazine

Sean Magee reboots several classic interviews over the years... as well as writing a warm synopsis of each decade

—— The Oldie

a delightfully entertaining history of a British institution, and the perfect Christmas present even for the tone deaf

—— The Spectator

There is a Jumpin’ Jack Flash liveliness in Goodall’s approach

—— Iain Finlayson , The Times

Who better to demystify the origins of music and trace the evolution of this most universal of artistic disciplines?

—— Neil Norman , Express

The Story of Music is a lively zip through some 45 millennia … jumping back and forth between classical, folk and pop

—— Christopher Hart , Sunday Times

He starts right at the beginning, with 25,000-year-old bone flutes ... It's a huge brief, made huger by Goodall's alertness to new thinking in scholarly circles, and his fondness for interesting asides ... a racily written, learned and often shrewdly insightful book

—— Ivan Hewett , Daily Telegraph (Review)

A roller-coaster ride, which Goodall tells with verve... a racily written, learned and often shrewdly insightful book

—— Ivan Hewett , Daily Telegraph

An accessible guide to roughly 42,000 years of music in just over 300 pages … The Story of Music is a clever, engaging read

—— Stuart Kelly , Scotland on Sunday

Howard Goodall’s beautifully clear and compelling account is both a hymn to human endeavour and a groundbreaking map of man’s musical journey

—— Wiltshire News

Goodall's distinguisihing gift is his ability to explain the mechanics of music instead of gliding hastily over them. He is fearless in unknotting those medieval mysteries of oranum and isorhythms, as well as chords, triads, fugues, keys, equal temperament, atonality, dodecaphony and blues

—— Fiona Maddocks , Spectator

A clear and compelling account which is a hymn to human endeavor and a groundbreaking musical journey

—— Kirkham & Fylde

Fascinating – as well as illuminating on how music works

—— The Lady

At his best, Goodall has a facility for lively shorthand…

—— Adam Mars-Jones , Guardian

This ambitious and all embracing history of 40, 000 years of music will have you dancing in the aisles

—— Sally Morris , Daily Mail

[Rod] has warm good humour and a nice line in self-deprecation...He wears it well—and tells it even better.

—— Daily Mail

By some distance the most entertaining of last year’s...rock star memoirs.

—— Uncut Online

This book takes readers on an adventure, that is at times deeply moving, through the life of one of the UK's greatest singers.

—— Hello! online

Ruthlessly entertaining

—— telegraph.co.uk

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