Desert Island Discs

The surgeon David Nott was cast away by Kirsty Young in 2016 shortly after returning from war-torn Syria. He spoke to Kirsty about his experiences of working in a warzone for the first time back in the early 90s...Read more

The actor Dame Judi Dench has been cast away to the desert island three times, most recently in 2015. She spoke to Kirsty Young about her first performances in an amateur dramatic group which included her parent...Read more

The singer Adele was cast away by Lauren Laverne in 2022. In 2008, she released her debut album, 19, and the following year she won the first of many Grammys. Her next three albums, 21, 25 and 30, consolidated h...Read more

In 2015, the forensic anthropologist, Professor Dame Sue Black, was cast away by Kirsty Young. Brought up on the west coast of Scotland and in Inverness, she fell in love with biology at secondary school and rea...Read more

The poet Lemm Sissay was cast away by Kirsty Young in 2015. As a poet, writer and playwright, much of his work tells the story of his search for his birth parents. Born to a young Ethiopian woman who wanted him...Read more

The former footballer Jill Scott was cast away by Lauren Laverne in 2023. Jill was part of the Lionesses’ winning team at the Euros 2022. When Jill was starting out in her career, the women players had to...Read more

In 2023, the comedian and writer Adrian Edmondson was cast away by Lauren Laverne. Adrian met his comedy partner, the late Rik Mayall, at university. They bonded over their shared interests in double acts, viole...Read more

After completing her PhD, Dr Fox took up a post-doctoral fellowship at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Centre in Maryland. In 2010, she became the project scientist for the Parker Solar Probe, humanity’s first mission to...Read more

As a singer and songwriter, George sold more than 100 million records, won two Grammy awards and notched up countless number one hits. He told Kirsty about how an accident played a pivotal role in his love for m...Read more

Davina is best known as the host of popular TV shows such as Big Brother, Long Lost Family and Streetmate. She spoke to Kirsty about how she struggled with drugs in her teenage years. You can find the full...Read more

Before his career in broadcasting, Ade was an international wheelchair basketball player who won a gold medal at the 2005 Paralympic World Cup. He spoke to Kirsty about a fashion faux pas he made on his first da...Read more

Ruth is perhaps best known as Nessa from Gavin and Stacey, the show she co-created with James Corden. She told Lauren about her early career struggles and how she got her foot on the acting ladder. You can...Read more

The Oscar-winning actor Tom Hanks was cast away by Kirsty Young in 2016. Tom’s parents split up when he was five, and he went to live with his father. By the age of 10 he'd lived in 10 different houses in five d...Read more

In 2013 the Scottish writer Val McDermid was cast away by Kirsty Young. Crime fiction is Val's chosen genre, and the millions of novels she sells examine and dissect the darkest recesses of human behaviour. Val...Read more

The activist Malala Yousafzai was cast away by Lauren Laverne in 2021. Malala was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize when she was 17, becoming the youngest winner in its history. She spoke to Lauren about why equal a...Read more

In 2016 the novelist Jilly Cooper was cast away by Kirsty Young. Jilly is perhaps best known as the author of Rivals but her writing career also spans newspaper columns, non-fiction books on class, marriage and...Read more

The former footballer and pundit Ian Wright was cast away by Lauren Laverne in 2020. Born to Jamaican parents in south-east London, Ian grew up with his mother and stepfather. His biological father had left the...Read more

Maggie Alphonsi is a broadcaster and former rugby player. She was part of the England team which took home the 2014 Women’s Rugby World Cup and by the time she retired she’d won 74 caps for her country. Maggie...Read more

Professor Dame Carol Robinson is a scientist who was the first female professor of Chemistry at both Cambridge and Oxford Universities. She has been awarded scientific prizes from all over the world for her pioneerin...Read more

Harry Hill is a comedian, writer and broadcaster best known for presenting popular television shows including You’ve Been Framed, Junior Bake Off and the multi award-winning TV Burp. He was born Matthew Hall in...Read more

Monica Dolan is a BAFTA and Olivier award winning actor. She is equally at home playing a wrongfully accused postmistress in Mr Bates Vs the Post Office as she is playing the serial killer Rosemary West. Alongside...Read more

Gustavo Dudamel is a Venezuelan conductor, violinist and composer. He is known for bringing humour and joy to the podium. He is currently director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Simon Bolivar Symphony Orch...Read more

Ash Atalla is a television producer whose first hit was the BBC sitcom The Office, starring Ricky Gervais. He followed it up with the IT Crowd, People Just Do Nothing, Big Boys and Stath Lets Flats. His haul of awards...Read more

Carol Klein is a gardener, broadcaster and longtime contributor to BBC Gardeners’ World. She is a six time Chelsea Flower Show gold medal winner, a certified RHS Horticultural Hero and was awarded the RHS Victoria M...Read more

Sir Gregory Doran is the former artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company. He spent a total of thirty five years with the RSC directing fifty productions in the UK and abroad. He’s been called “one of the...Read more

Norma Percy is a documentary film-maker. She has been making programmes for over three decades and her productions have featured a range of political leaders from Tony Blair and Bill Clinton to Mikhail Gorbachev and...Read more

Lord Alf Dubs is a Labour peer and former MP. He came to the UK from Prague in 1939 on one of the Kindertransport trains organised by Sir Nicholas Winton which rescued mostly Jewish children from Nazi-occupied Czecho...Read more

Professor Lucy Easthope is an adviser on disaster recovery and planning. She’s an expert in planning for and reacting to major incidents: natural disaster, terrorist attacks, pandemics and fires, and is the vi...Read more

Romesh Ranganathan is a comedian and BAFTA-winning broadcaster who has been a fixture on British television screens for the past decade. In addition to his TV shows and stand-up tours he presents the Weakest Link on...Read more

Abdulrazak Gurnah is emeritus Professor of Post-Colonial Literatures at the University of Kent and the 2021 Nobel Prize winner in Literature. Born in Zanzibar in 1948, the second of six children, Abdulrazak g...Read more

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu is Professor of Pharmaceutical Nanoscience at University College London and President of Wolfson College, University of Cambridge. She has devoted her career to harnessing the pote...Read more

Actor Danny Dyer became a household name when he joined the cast of EastEnders as Mick Carter, landlord of the Queen Victoria pub. He recently stole the show from some stiff competition playing Freddie Jones in the te...Read more

Jack Thorne, screenwriter and playwright, shares the eight tracks, book and luxury item he would want with him if cast away on a desert island. With Lauren Laverne....Read more

Sue Lawley talks to the actor Dame Joan Plowright in a programme first broadcast in 2006. Dame Joan died in January at the age of 95....Read more

Kirsty Young interviews writer Colm Toibin in a programme first heard in 2016....Read more

Lauren Laverne talks to crossbench peer Dame Louise Casey in a programme from 2021....Read more

Kirsty Young talks to actor Warwick Davis, in a programme first heard in 2016....Read more

Lindsey Hilsum is a multi-award-winning journalist who has been a foreign correspondent for the past four decades. She has been Channel 4’s international editor for the past 22 years and has reported on every continen...Read more

Donna Ockenden is a former clinical midwife who led the Ockenden Review which revealed, at the time, the biggest maternity scandal in NHS history. Published in 2022, the review highlighted serious failings in materni...Read more

Professor Carl Jones is a conservation biologist who is best known for saving the Mauritius kestrel from extinction. He is the scientific director of Mauritian Wildlife Foundation, chief scientist at Durrell Wildlife...Read more

Cyndi Lauper is a multi-award winning singer and songwriter. She has sold more than fifty million records, won an Emmy for acting and her musical Kinky Boots earned her a Tony and an Oliver award. Born in 195...Read more

William Boyd is the author of eighteen novels, five short story collections and numerous screenplays. His first published novel, A Good Man in Africa, was inspired by his childhood in West Africa. He is well known fo...Read more

Sir Jony Ive is a designer who is best known for his pioneering work at Apple alongside his friend and colleague, the late Steve Jobs. Jony’s creative vision is behind some of the company’s seminal products which hav...Read more

Wilhelmina – Mina – Smallman is an activist who campaigns for the safety of women and girls and police reform. She is a former teacher and priest who was the first woman of colour to be an archdeacon in the Church of...Read more

Stephen Mangan is an award winning actor who is also a presenter and writer. His prolific career includes comedic roles in TV hits Green Wing; Episodes and Adrian Mole. He also plays the much loved Nathan in BBC dr...Read more

Nemone Lethbridge is a barrister who was called to the bar in 1956. One of very few female barristers working at the time, she encountered misogyny and was one of the trailblazers for women working in the legal profe...Read more

Nick Cave is a singer and writer who, with his band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, has released emotionally intense and provocative music since the mid-Eighties. He is also a novelist, composer and has written film scr...Read more

Harriet Wistrich is one of the country’s most prominent human rights lawyers. In 2016 she founded the Centre for Women’s Justice and over the course of her career, she has won landmark victories in very difficult leg...Read more

Laurie Anderson is an artist and performer who came to fame in the UK with her 1981 hit O Superman. Her work spans music, film and multimedia projects which interrogate our relationship with technology and tell stori...Read more

Mark-Anthony Turnage is a composer of contemporary classical music. Once called “Britain’s hippest composer”, he has been in a rock band, got drunk with Francis Bacon, and tackled anything from drug abuse to football...Read more

Marianela Núñez is a Principal dancer of the Royal Ballet and Opera. Born in Argentina in 1982, Marianela knew she wanted to be a ballet dancer from the age of five and joined the Teatro Colón Ballet School in Buenos...Read more

Gareth Southgate OBE is the most successful England men’s football manger in the modern game. He holds the record as the man who has represented England in more games than anyone else, with 102 games as men's...Read more

Cher has been a global star for over six decades. Her career has spanned music, television and film and throughout that time her outfits have made flamboyant fashion statements. She was born Cherilyn Sarkisian...Read more

Former cricketer Ebony Rainford-Brent is the first Black woman to play for England and she was part of the team which won the Women’s Cricket World Cup in 2009. Today she is a broadcaster and cricket commentator for C...Read more

Mark Steel is a writer, comedian and radio presenter. His performing career began as a poet in the alternative comedy scene in the early eighties at the Comedy Store. A regular presenter on Radio 4, he bega...Read more

Lauren Laverne talks to Ian Wright in an episode first broadcast in 2020. Ian Wright is a former professional footballer and now a football pundit on TV and radio. He began his career at Crystal Palace before mo...Read more

Steven Knight CBE is a screenwriter, producer, and director for film and television. He is best known for creating the TV series Peaky Blinders but he has also turned his hand to feature films, novels, comedy and e...Read more

Mark Knopfler OBE is one of the UK’s most successful rock musicians and composers. He co-founded the band Dire Straits and their album Brothers in Arms is one of the bestselling albums of all time with 30 million c...Read more

Sarah Raven is one of Britain’s best known gardeners. Since her debut book, The Cutting Garden in 1996 she has written for national newspapers and magazines and shared her gardening knowledge as a broadcaster....Read more

The writer David Nicholls is best known for his 2009 novel One Day which has sold 6 million copies, been made into a film and a Netflix series which reached the top 10 in 89 countries. He’s written six novels and his...Read more

Errollyn Wallen is one of the world’s most performed living composers. Her work, which includes 22 operas, orchestral, chamber and vocal works, was played at the opening ceremony of the Paralympic Games in 2012 and a...Read more

Rob Delaney is a comedian, writer and actor who is best known for the television series Catastrophe, which he co-wrote and co-starred in alongside Sharon Horgan. He has also appeared in Hollywood blockbusters includin...Read more

Professor Patricia Wiltshire is a forensic ecologist who specialises in palynology – the study of pollen. Her expertise has led her to work with every police force in Britain and helped solve some of the country’s mo...Read more

Anthony Joshua MBE is a British heavyweight boxer, Olympic gold medallist and two-time former unified world heavyweight champion. Anthony was born in 1989 and grew up in Watford. When he was 11, he moved with h...Read more

Clive Myrie is an award-winning journalist and news presenter who is one of the BBC’s most experienced foreign correspondents. In 2021 he took over from John Humphrys as Question Master of the quiz show Mastermind and...Read more

Shirine Khoury-Haq is the chief executive officer of the Co-op Group – the first female chief executive in its 180-year history and the first from an ethnic minority background. Shirine was born in Beirut to a P...Read more

The Australian actor Rebel Wilson became an international star with a breakthrough part in the 2011 Hollywood comedy Bridesmaids, opposite Kristen Wiig and Melissa McCarthy. She followed this up playing Fat Amy in the...Read more

The Irish writer John Boyne is best known for his 2006 novel The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, which became a literary phenomenon, selling more than 11 million copies around the world. It was translated into 60 language...Read more

Dame Sarah Storey is Great Britain’s most successful Paralympian, winning 17 gold, eight silver and three bronze medals. She was just 14 when she took two weeks off school to compete as a swimmer in the 1992 Barcelona...Read more

Greg Davies is a familiar face on television as the host of Taskmaster, the BAFTA-winning game show, and he has achieved sell out national arena tours as a stand-up. His on-screen breakthrough came in 2008 when he pl...Read more

Tim Spector is Professor of Genetic Epidemiology and Head of the Department of Twin Research at King’s College London. He was one of the co-founders of the ZOE Covid Symptom study, which for which he was awarded an...Read more

Professor Alice Roberts is one of the most popular science communicators in Britain today. As the presenter of the BBC archaeology programme Digging for Britain, she reveals the underground mysteries of our collective...Read more

Jenny Sealey has been the artistic director of Graeae Theatre Company since 1997: Graeae is a deaf and disabled-led company and a leader and innovator in accessible theatre. Jenny has directed opera as well as plays,...Read more

James Graham is an award-winning dramatist whose plays include This House, Ink and Dear England starring Joseph Fiennes as the England football manager Gareth Southgate. His acclaimed television productions include Sh...Read more

The Honourable Lady Rita Rae is a lawyer and judge, and the current Rector of the University of Glasgow. Early in her career she was a rare woman in the heavily male-dominated legal world. She went on to work on many...Read more

Sandy Powell won her first Academy Award for dressing Joseph Fiennes and Gwyneth Paltrow in Shakespeare in Love, and has since won two more Oscars - along with a further dozen nominations - and three BAFTAs. Her credi...Read more

Clive Oppenheimer is a volcanologist, filmmaker and Professor of Volcanology at the University of Cambridge. His research has taken him on expeditions across the world, from Antarctica, where he discovered the camp of...Read more

Cillian Murphy has received global acclaim for his performance in the title role of Christopher Nolan’s epic film Oppenheimer. He has been nominated for an Oscar, which follows the best actor award he picked up at thi...Read more

Val Wilmer has photographed and interviewed many of the most significant musicians of the post-war years, including Duke Ellington, Muddy Waters, Miles Davis, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin and many more. </...Read more

Jamie Dornan is an actor who first came to the attention of television audiences in 2013 when he played serial killer Paul Spector in the BBC series the Fall. Two years later he starred alongside Dakota Johnson in th...Read more

Sheku Kanneh-Mason is a cellist who came to international attention when he performed at the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle in 2018. Still only 24, he has performed at a series of high profile locations inc...Read more

The Rt Revd Dr Guli Francis-Dehqani is the Bishop of Chelmsford. She also sits in Parliament as a Lord Spiritual and last year she played a prominent role in the Coronation, administering Holy Communion to the King a...Read more

Graham William Nash is a musician, singer, songwriter and photographer. He had his first musical success as a member of the UK band The Hollies before his move to America when he sang as part of Crosby, Stills and...Read more

Delia Smith CH CBE is one of Britain’s most popular and successful cookery writers and broadcasters. Her first book, How to Cheat at Cooking, was published in 1971 and she presented her first television seri...Read more

Greta Gerwig is the director of the feature film Barbie - the first woman in cinematic history to have the sole director’s credit for a billion dollar blockbuster. Her previous films include Lady Bird, inspired in pa...Read more

Shirley Ballas is the head judge on Strictly Come Dancing, the BBC’s Saturday night entertainment show, which regularly attracts an audience of many millions. Known as the Queen of Latin dancing, she joined the show i...Read more

Marina Abramović is an artist renowned for performances and feats of endurance, in which her body is pushed to its limits. She has moved, scandalised and delighted audiences for half a century, and is now celebrated...Read more

Dr Nicky Fox is only the second woman to hold the post of Head of Science at NASA since the agency was founded in 1958. She has responsibility for around a hundred missions which are investigating the mysteries of out...Read more

Pia Sinha is the Director of the Prison Reform Trust and a former prison governor. She was awarded the St Martin’s Award for Prison Governance for her role in turning around HMP Liverpool, which was widely described...Read more

Peter White is an award-winning broadcaster. In 2024 he will celebrate 50 years presenting Radio 4’s In Touch, the programme for blind and visually impaired people. He is also one of the presenters of the network’s...Read more

Lea Salonga was just 18 when she became an international theatre star, taking a leading role in the world premiere production of the musical Miss Saigon in 1989. Her performance - first in London, then on Broadway - w...Read more

Professor Dame Lesley Regan is the Government’s first Women’s Health Ambassador for England. She is one of the main drivers behind the upcoming Women’s Health Strategy which aims to tackle the gender health gap and i...Read more

Patrick Grant is a designer, clothing entrepreneur and a judge on the BBC TV programme The Great British Sewing Bee. Patrick was born in Edinburgh in 1972. His interest in clothes and in making things was evi...Read more

Dame Donna Langley is chairman and chief content officer for the NBC Universal Studio Group, the first British woman in history to run a major Hollywood film studio. She green lit Christopher Nolan’s latest film Oppen...Read more

Greg Jackson is the founder and CEO of Octopus Energy. The company is the UK’s second largest domestic energy provider with over five million customers and is one of Europe’s leading investors in renewables. G...Read more

Katherine Ryan is a Canadian comedian and writer. Her edgy and provocative routines have led to sell-out tours, comedy specials on television and her sitcom series The Duchess. Based on her experience at the time, t...Read more

Lucinda Russell is a Scottish racehorse trainer. Her stables in Kinross have sent out almost 900 winners, including two Grand National champions. She is one of only two Scottish trainers and four women to have celebra...Read more

Adrian Edmondson first shot to national fame in 1982, playing the studded punk Vyvyan in the TV sitcom The Young Ones, set in a seedy student flat. The cast largely came from the developing alternative comedy scene, a...Read more

Shirley Collins first enjoyed success as one of the leading figures in the British folk revival of the 1960s. She initially performed with her sister, Dolly Collins, and also collaborated with other folk luminaries to...Read more

Toto Wolff is CEO and Team Principal of the Mercedes Formula 1 motor racing team. He has led the team to an unprecedented seven consecutive drivers’ championships – six with Lewis Hamilton - and eight consecutive cons...Read more

Simon Woolley, Lord Woolley of Woodford, is principal of Homerton College at Cambridge University. He is the first black man to head an Oxbridge college. He is a co-founder of Operation Black Vote, which campaigns fo...Read more

Jill Scott is the second most capped England footballer ever, playing for her country 161 times. Before her retirement last year, she played in ten major international tournaments and was part of the England team who...Read more

Peter Doig is one of Britain’s most successful living artists. His paintings have been exhibited at major galleries around the world, winning wide critical acclaim and selling for tens of millions of pounds at auction...Read more

Stanley Tucci is an actor, director and writer who is known for his roles in a broad range of feature films including the Devil Wears Prada, Julie and Julia and the Hunger Games. More recently he has whetted the appe...Read more

Kate Mosse OBE is a British novelist and broadcaster. She is the author of ten novels and short story collections, including The Joubert Family Chronicles and the best-selling Languedoc Trilogy. She has also written f...Read more

Adam Kay is a writer whose memoir This is Going to Hurt; Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor won the Book of the Year prize at the National Book Awards and has sold over three million copies. It was adapted for televis...Read more

Claudia Rankine is a poet, essayist and playwright. She is best known for her book Citizen: An American Lyric which combines short stories about everyday injustices experienced by people of colour with poems telling...Read more

Jeremy Bowen is the BBC’s award-winning international editor. He has been reporting from the world’s conflict zones, including Iraq, Bosnia, the Middle East and Ukraine, for more than 30 years. Jeremy was born...Read more

Ronnie O’Sullivan OBE is currently ranked the number one snooker player in the world, and is widely regarded as one of the finest players in the history of the sport. He has won the Masters a record seven time...Read more

Professor Sharon Peacock is professor of public health and microbiology at Cambridge University. In March 2020 she set up the COVID-19 Genomics UK (COG-UK) Consortium to map the genetic sequence of the virus as it sp...Read more

Simon Pegg is an actor and screenwriter who became a household name after appearing in two of Hollywood’s most successful film franchises – Mission: Impossible and Star Trek. He also won many fans for co-creating the...Read more

Professor Peter Hennessy is one of the UK’s leading contemporary historians. He has written acclaimed and important books about politics, the civil service, the intelligence agencies and the British constitution on w...Read more

Dara Ó Briain has toured the world as a stand-up comedian, and hosted the BBC’s satirical series Mock the Week for 17 years. A science graduate with a love of astronomy, he co-presented the BBC series Stargazing Live...Read more

Liz Carr is most widely known for her role as the forensic examiner Clarissa Mullery in the long-running BBC TV drama Silent Witness. She appeared in more than 70 episodes, from 2013 until 2020. Last year she won the...Read more

Amanda Blanc is the group CEO of the insurance company Aviva. She is one of a handful of women at the top of FTSE 100 companies and has spoken out against the sexism and misogyny many – including herself - have encoun...Read more

Robert Webb first reached a wide audience as the co-star of Channel 4’s longest running sitcom, the BAFTA-award winning Peep Show. With his long-standing comedy partner David Mitchell, he also created That Mitchell an...Read more

In 2022 Sonia Boyce became the first Black British woman to represent Britain at the Venice Biennale exhibition. She also took home the coveted Golden Lion Award for her installation Feeling Her Way, which combined v...Read more

Jenny Beavan has won three Oscars for her costumes for the films Room with a View, Mad Max: Fury Road and Cruella, and has received nine further Academy Award nominations. She was born in London, and her parent...Read more

David Sedaris is a writer whose humorous stories and wry takes on everyday encounters have led to 13 bestselling books and many radio programmes including Meet David Sedaris on BBC Radio 4. His work is based on his o...Read more

Corinne Le Quéré is the Royal Society Research Professor of Climate Change Science at the University of East Anglia where she studies the way marine ecosystems respond to climate change. She uses computer simulators...Read more

Michael Pollan’s award-winning writing about plants, nature and food combines anthropology and philosophy with culture, health and natural history. Time Magazine has named him one of the 100 most influential people i...Read more

Gabby Logan presents a range of popular BBC sports programmes and hosts high-profile sporting events including the Olympics, Premiership football and the World Cup. Gabby was born in Leeds and her father Terry...Read more

Lesley Manville made her debut on the West End stage as a teenager in 1972, and since then has taken on a wide range of roles on stage and screen, including an Oscar-nominated performance in the film Phantom Thread. <...Read more

Sir Malcolm Walker is the chairman and co-founder of the frozen food supermarket chain Iceland. He was brought up in Grange Moor, West Yorkshire. He was just 14 when his father died, and he helped his mother ru...Read more

Kirsty Young was the award-winning presenter of Desert Island Discs between 2006 and 2018, interviewing 496 castaways. Her TV work includes BAFTA-winning coverage of events marking the centenary of World War One, and...Read more

Cate Blanchett is arguably the most celebrated Australian actor ever, winning two Academy Awards, three BAFTAs, three Golden Globes and dozens of other honours around the world. She grew up in Melbourne, and al...Read more

Edward Enninful is the editor-in-chief of British Vogue and the editorial director of Vogue in Europe. Edward was born in the port city of Takoradi in Ghana in 1972. His father was a major in the Ghanaian army a...Read more

Baz Luhrmann is an Australian director whose debut film, Strictly Ballroom, became one of Australia’s most successful releases, and also inspired the title of the BBC’s popular Saturday night dance show. He went on to...Read more

Barry Hearn is a promoter who has been at the forefront of some of the biggest snooker, boxing and darts events in the last 40 years. He played a central role in turning snooker into a television phenomenon, and as a...Read more

Steven Spielberg is the most successful director of his generation and the highest-grossing director of all time: his films have taken more than $10 billion worldwide. From Jaws to E.T. and Jurassic Park to Schindler...Read more

Professor Jean Golding is an epidemiologist who is best known for founding the Children of the Nineties study - more formally known as the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children. The most detailed project of...Read more

Richard E Grant was born in Swaziland, now Eswatini, one of the smallest countries in Africa, and took his first steps as an actor as a teenager in the local amateur theatre company. He studied Drama and English...Read more

Professor Angela Gallop is a forensic scientist who has helped solve some of the most notorious violent crimes in recent British history including the killings of Stephen Lawrence, Damilola Taylor and Rachel Nickell.<...Read more

Rick Rubin is a multiple Grammy-winning record producer who has worked with a wide range of artists including Adele, the Beastie Boys and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. He also reinvigorated the career of Johnny Cash in...Read more

Maxine Peake is an actor and writer who first came to public attention in 1998 as Twinkle in the Victoria Wood sitcom Dinnerladies. She went on to play Veronica in Paul Abbott’s series Shameless and later became know...Read more

Kevin Sinfield OBE is one of the most decorated players in the history of English rugby league. He captained Leeds Rhinos and the England team, and was runner-up in the BBC Sports Personality of the Year poll in 2015....Read more

Dr Waheed Arian is a radiologist who set up a charity called Arian Teleheal in 2015. The charity enables volunteer doctors in the west to advise colleagues in conflict zones using smartphone technology. The charity h...Read more

Jay Blades is a furniture restorer who is best known for presenting the Repair Shop on BBC One. The programme, which attracts many millions of viewers, brings old and damaged family treasures back to life and has bee...Read more

Sue Barker is a television presenter and former professional tennis player. She presented the BBC’s Wimbledon coverage for nearly three decades, before stepping down this year, when she received a standing ovation. </...Read more

The American singer and songwriter John Legend has won two Emmys, 12 Grammys, an Oscar and a Tony award – making him one of only 16 living artists to have won all four honours. One of his songs, All of Me, written for...Read more

Clare Smyth is a highly acclaimed chef and is the first British woman to win the coveted three Michelin stars for her work. She opened her London restaurant, Core, in 2017, and before that she ran Restaurant Gordon Ra...Read more

Kate Moss came to fame in the 1990s, and her distinctive look went on to embody the era of Cool Britannia. She has appeared on the cover of hundreds of magazines and starred in campaigns for many of the top fashion h...Read more

Kate Ewart-Biggs is the deputy chief executive of the British Council, which aims to build connections between the UK and countries worldwide, through education programmes, language learning and cultural activities. <...Read more

Andrew Ramroop is a Savile Row tailor, whose international client list has included film stars and royalty. Andrew grew up in a remote village in Trinidad and sewed his first garment at the age of nine, creating...Read more

Adele is a singer and songwriter who has achieved record-breaking sales and global recognition for her four albums which document her life from the age of 19 onwards. Her cache of awards includes 15 Grammys and nine B...Read more

Bono is a singer, songwriter and the frontman of U2, one of the most recognisable and successful bands in music history. They have sold over 170 million albums, won 22 Grammys – more than any other band – and two Gold...Read more

Rita Tushingham first won international acclaim as a teenager, playing Jo in the film A Taste of Honey. Her performance in this 1961 kitchen sink drama earned her a BAFTA, a Golden Globe and the Best Actress award at...Read more

Frances O’Grady is the General Secretary of the Trades Union Congress (TUC), the UK's umbrella group for unions, representing millions of workers. She is the first woman in the 154 year history of the TUC to hold this...Read more

Jon Ronson is a writer and broadcaster whose award-winning podcast and Radio 4 series Things Fell Apart investigated the stories behind today’s culture wars. His television programmes and books – from Them: Adventures...Read more

David Harewood is a British actor and presenter who found global fame playing the CIA director David Estes in the acclaimed TV drama series Homeland. He was the first black actor to play Othello at the National theatr...Read more

Ellie Simmonds has competed at four Paralympic Games, winning five gold medals and breaking world records on the way. She first came to national attention at the age of 13, when she won two golds at the Beijing 2008 P...Read more

Bradley Walsh is a familiar face to many millions of TV viewers, as the host of quiz shows including The Chase and Blankety-Blank, and as an actor in dramas such as Doctor Who and The Larkins. Bradley was born i...Read more

Fiona Hill is a foreign affairs specialist who advised Presidents George W Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump. She came to wider public attention in 2019 when she testified against President Trump during his first i...Read more

Lauren shares handpicked gems from the Desert Island Discs back-catalogue with Radio 1 presenter Vick Hope, including Bob Mortimer, Maya Angelou, Joe Wicks, Sophia Loren, Tom Hanks, Dame Pat McGrath and Sinéad Burke.<...Read more

Winnie Byanyima is a human rights advocate and executive director of Unaids, the joint UN Programme which was set up to eradicate Aids as a threat to public health by 2030. Winnie was born in the village of Ruti...Read more

Alan Cumming's wide-ranging career on stage includes playing Hamlet, starring opposite Daniel Radcliffe in Samuel Beckett’s Endgame and – perhaps most notably - taking the role of the Emcee in the musical Cabaret in L...Read more

Robert Plant is a singer and songwriter who was Led Zeppelin’s frontman from the band’s inception in 1968 until it disbanded in 1980. Led Zeppelin sold hundreds of millions of albums and in their heyday acquired a re...Read more

Oti Mabuse is a dancer, choreographer and TV talent show judge. She has enjoyed great success on the BBC show Strictly Come Dancing and is one of only two professional dancers to win the glitterball trophy twice. <...Read more

Professor Nick Webborn has chaired the British Paralympic Association since 2017. He is a world-leading expert on Paralympic sports medicine and the most widely-published author on the subject. He has attended 11 Para...Read more

Anne Tyler is a novelist and short story writer. Her 23 novels include the Accidental Tourist, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Breathing Lessons. Anne was born in Minneapolis,...Read more

Leslie Caron is an award-winning actress and dancer who starred in some of the most memorable films of Hollywood’s golden age including An American in Paris and Gigi. Leslie was first cast away on Desert Island Discs...Read more

Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter specialises in medical statistics. He is the Chair of the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication at Cambridge University, and one of the most frequently cited experts in h...Read more

Lyse Doucet is the BBC’s award-winning chief international correspondent, reporting from a range of postings including in Kabul, Islamabad, Tehran and Jerusalem for nearly 40 years. Lyse was born in Bathhurst,...Read more

John Caudwell is a businessman and philanthropist who founded the mobile phone company Phones 4U in 1996. It became the UK’s largest independent mobile phone retailer and made him one of Britain’s most successful busi...Read more

Deborah Levy is a writer whose novels Swimming Home and Hot Milk were both shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Last year she published the final instalment of her ‘living autobiography’ trilogy of memoirs, and her earl...Read more

Simon Reeve is a broadcaster and writer best known for his TV documentaries which combine travel and adventure with investigations into the challenges faced by the places he visits. His journeys have taken him a...Read more

Richard Osman is a broadcaster, TV producer and writer who co-presents the quiz show Pointless on BBC One. His first novel, The Thursday Murder Club, was a publishing phenomenon, selling more than a million copies, an...Read more

Dame Prue Leith is a broadcaster, writer, former restaurateur and a judge on the television show the Great British Bake Off. Prue was born in Cape Town, South Africa, during the era of Apartheid. After leaving...Read more

Jack Thorne is a writer who has enjoyed great success with his scripts for the stage, cinema and television, winning five BAFTA awards for his TV work. His theatre credits include the international hit play Har...Read more

Helen Macdonald is a writer and naturalist who is best known as the author of H is for Hawk which won the 2014 Samuel Johnson Prize and the Costa Book Award, and topped the sales charts. The book chronicles her experi...Read more

Neil Gaiman is a writer whose list of titles spans many forms from novels, including American Gods, to children’s stories such as Coraline and the comic book the Sandman. Neil grew up in East Grinstead and afte...Read more

Carl Hester is a dressage rider who has competed in six Olympic Games, winning a team gold at London 2012. Carl grew up on Sark in the Channel Islands, where cars are banned and horses are part of the island’s...Read more

Dame Jo da Silva is a structural engineer and disaster relief specialist. Her humanitarian work has taken her from Sri Lanka in the wake of the Tsunami to Pakistan and Haiti to help with their post-earthquake recover...Read more

Joanne Harris is a writer who is best known for her novel Chocolat, which was made into an Oscar-nominated feature film starring Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp. The daughter of an English father and French mot...Read more

Peter Schmeichel is widely regarded as one of the greatest goalkeepers in the modern game. In 1999, he captained Manchester United in one of the most astonishing comebacks in football, as United won the Champions Lea...Read more

Michael Sandel is a political philosopher and professor of government theory at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He has also presented the BBC Radio 4 series The Public Philosopher and The Global Philo...Read more

Deborah Meaden is a businesswoman and entrepreneur. She’s been one of the investment ‘Dragons’ in the BBC TV series since 2006. Destined to be a successful entrepreneur, Deborah Meaden launched her first bu...Read more

The mezzo-soprano Dame Sarah Connolly has sung at the most prestigious venues around the world, including the Royal Opera House, London and the Metropolitan Opera in New York, as well as Glyndebourne, Vienna and Bayre...Read more

Tom Ilube is an entrepreneur, known for his successful start-up companies, and a philanthropist. He recently took up the post of chairman of the Rugby Football Union. He was born in 1963 to a Nigerian father an...Read more

Tracey Ullman was the first woman to be offered her own television sketch show – both in Britain and America – and has starred in film and television dramas alongside Meryl Streep, Cate Blanchett and Hugh Grant. The E...Read more

Brenda Hale, Baroness Hale of Richmond, is a former judge who served as the first female president of the Supreme Court. In 2019 she announced the court’s judgement that the prorogation of Parliament was ‘unlawful,...Read more

Michael Holding is a cricket commentator and former West Indies bowler. He’s widely regarded as one of the greatest fast bowlers in the history of international cricket. In July 2020 when rain stopped play during the...Read more

Nazir Afzal is a solicitor and the former chief crown prosecutor for north-west England. Among his notable cases, he brought the Rochdale sex grooming gangs to trial in 2012. Nazir’s parents arrived in the UK fr...Read more

Robert Macfarlane is a writer whose books about the natural world, including The Wild Places and The Old Ways, have won many prizes and taken root in the best-seller charts. He was born into a family of enthusi...Read more

Dame Jessica Ennis-Hill is an Olympic gold medallist and three-time world champion heptathlete, and is one of the most successful women in British sporting history. She was the face of Team GB during the 2012 London...Read more

Professor Noel Fitzpatrick is a veterinary surgeon who presents the television series The Supervet. He has pushed the boundaries of treatment available to animals and has developed ground breaking surgery including f...Read more

Paul Costelloe is a fashion designer who recently celebrated his 36th year showing at London Fashion Week, making him the event’s longest-standing designer. Paul was born in Dublin where his father ran a success...Read more

Margaret Busby is a publisher and editor who was the chair of the Booker Prize jury in 2020. She has spent a life time in the literary world and was the youngest person and first black woman to set up a publishi...Read more

Richard Wilson is an actor and director who became a household name when he played the part of Victor Meldrew in the BBC sitcom One Foot in the Grave. Richard was born in Greenock in Scotland in 1936. As a chi...Read more

Yo-Yo Ma is a cellist and one of the world's most high-profile classical musicians. He has performed for eight US Presidents, appeared in concert halls across the globe and reached new audiences through film soundtrac...Read more

Heather Hallett, Baroness Hallett of Rye, is a former judge and a cross-bench peer. Called to the Bar in 1972, Heather practised family, civil and criminal law, eventually specialising in criminal law. In 1989...Read more

Amanda Khozi Mukwashi is the chief executive of Christian Aid, leading development and humanitarian work in Africa, Asia and the Middle East, Latin America and the Caribbean. Amanda was born in Twickenham and gr...Read more

Alexei Sayle is a comedian and writer, who began his career just over 40 years ago at the small Comedy Store venue in London, which proved a launch-pad for a new generation of comic stars. Alexei was born in Li...Read more

Brian Greene is a theoretical physicist, mathematician and writer, whose area of research is string theory. His books and broadcasts distil the complexities of science for a general audience, leading one critic to say...Read more

Billie Piper is an Olivier Award winning actor and former pop star. She was born in Swindon in September 1982, and her parents nurtured her interests in dance and drama from a young age. After a winning a...Read more

Professor Sir Simon Wessely is the first ever psychiatrist to be awarded a Regius professorship – an honour bestowed by the Queen. He is professor of psychological medicine at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology a...Read more

Maggie O’Farrell has written eight novels, a memoir and a children’s book. In 2020 her novel Hamnet won the Women’s Prize for Fiction, and was also named Waterstones Book of the Year. Maggie was born in Northern...Read more

Baroness Casey of Blackstock is a former civil servant specialising in social welfare, who has worked under five prime ministers. She has taken on some of UK society’s most difficult issues, including homelessness, a...Read more

Mark Strong has appeared in more than 60 films, along with numerous TV dramas and plays. His career took off after he won a leading role in the landmark 1996 BBC series Our Friends in the North, and since then...Read more

Claire Horton is the former chief executive of Battersea Dogs and Cats Home, and is currently director general of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. She joined Battersea in 2010 during its landmark 150th ye...Read more