The BBC Radio 4 programme Desert Island Discs invites castaways to choose eight pieces of music, a book (in addition to the Bible – or a religious text appropriate to that person's beliefs – and the Complete Works of Shakespeare) and a luxury item that they would take to an imaginary desert island, where they will be marooned indefinitely. The rules state that the chosen luxury item must not be anything animate or indeed anything that enables the castaway to escape from the island, for instance a radio set, sailing yacht or aeroplane. The choices of book and luxury can sometimes give insight into the guest's life, and the choices of guests are listed here.
Very rarely, programmes will be repeated in place of new shows as a tribute to former guests who have recently died – for example Radio 4 repeated Humphrey Lyttelton's show, originally aired on 5 November 2006, on 15 June 2008. Desert Island Discs takes two short breaks, in April and August/September. BBC Radio 4 broadcasts new programmes for approximately 42 weeks each year on Sunday mornings, usually with a repeat transmission five days later. On Remembrance Sunday (in November) the programme is not broadcast but that week's programme gets a single airing in the Friday repeat slot.
From mid-2011 selected episodes have been re-broadcast on BBC Radio 4 Extra and also on BBC6 Music. The episodes on BBC Radio 4 Extra have included some 60-minute versions of the show; many of these open with additional lead-in and lead-outs from presenter Kirsty Young, often featuring sections of other interview footage or recordings featuring the guest of the episode in question. Some, but not all, of these extended versions, also feature extended in-programme material not used on the original broadcast. Episodes repeated on BBC6 are those concerning musicians and figures in the music industry.
- 1942–1946: List of Desert Island Discs episodes (1942–1946)
- 1951–1960: List of Desert Island Discs episodes (1951–1960)
- 1961–1970: List of Desert Island Discs episodes (1961–1970)
- 1971–1980: List of Desert Island Discs episodes (1971–1980)
- 1981–1990: List of Desert Island Discs episodes (1981–1990)
- 1991–2000: List of Desert Island Discs episodes (1991–2000)
- 2001–2010: List of Desert Island Discs episodes (2001–2010)
- 2011–present: List of Desert Island Discs episodes (2011-present)
Famous quotes containing the words list of, list, desert, island and/or episodes:
“Religious literature has eminent examples, and if we run over our private list of poets, critics, philanthropists and philosophers, we shall find them infected with this dropsy and elephantiasis, which we ought to have tapped.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“All is possible,
Who so list believe;
Trust therefore first, and after preve,
As men wed ladies by license and leave,
All is possible.”
—Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503?–1542)
“The skylines lit up at dead of night, the air- conditioning systems cooling empty hotels in the desert and artificial light in the middle of the day all have something both demented and admirable about them. The mindless luxury of a rich civilization, and yet of a civilization perhaps as scared to see the lights go out as was the hunter in his primitive night.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
“Your kind doesn’t just kill men. You murder their spirits, you strangle their last breath of hope and freedom, so that you, the chosen few, can rule your slaves in ease and luxury. You’re a sadist just like the others, Heiser, with no resource but violence and no feeling but fear, the kind you’re feeling now. You’re drowning, Heiser, drowning in the ocean of blood around this barren little island you call the New Order.”
—Curtis Siodmak (1902–1988)
“Twenty or thirty years ago, in the army, we had a lot of obscure adventures, and years later we tell them at parties, and suddenly we realize that those two very difficult years of our lives have become lumped together into a few episodes that have lodged in our memory in a standardized form, and are always told in a standardized way, in the same words. But in fact that lump of memories has nothing whatsoever to do with our experience of those two years in the army and what it has made of us.”
—Václav Havel (b. 1936)