Each BBC Radio 4 programme Desert Island Discs invites a castaway 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 between 2001 and 2010 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 spring and summer. 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.
| Date | Castaway | Book | Luxury | More info |
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| War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy | more | |||
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| The Earth from the Air by Yann Arthus-Bertrand | more | |||
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| Pencils and thick paper to write and draw on | more | |||
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| SUMO by Helmut Newton | Triptych, May - June, 1973 by Francis Bacon | more | ||
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| The Rattle Bag: An Anthology of Poetry edited by Seamus Heaney & Ted Hughes | Waterslide | more | ||
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| Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain | A piano | more | ||
| Mansfield Park by Jane Austen | more | |||
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| Yes Minister and Yes, Prime Minister videos | more | |||
| Vanity Fair by William Thackeray | more | |||
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| Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens | more | |||
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| Treasure Island and Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson | more | |||
| Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen | more | |||
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| Spotted dick with Lyon's golden syrup | more | |||
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| Ethics by Spinoza, translated by G. H. R. Parkinson | more | |||
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| Engelbert - What's In a Name: The Autobiography by Engelbert Humperdinck | more | |||
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| Date | Castaway | Book | Luxury | More info |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dirty Havana Trilogy by Pedro Juan Gutierrez | more | |||
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| Birthday Letters by Ted Hughes | more | |||
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| Microcosmographia Academica by Francis M. Cornford | more | |||
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| My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell | more | |||
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| Olive oil | more | |||
| Pensées by Blaise Pascal | Vermeer painting: The Piano Lesson | more | ||
| His mysterious object (an object found by his father that as yet no one can identify) | more | |||
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| Sombrero Fallout by Richard Brautigan | more | |||
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| "A book which is in my head about my brother" | more | |||
| Modelling clay and tools | more | |||
| Wild Reckoning: An Anthology Provoked by Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" edited by John Burnside and Maurice Riordan | more | |||
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| Derek Jarman's Garden by Derek Jarman | Howard Hodgkin's painting: Learning About Russian Music | more | ||
| Reading Lyrics: More Than 1,000 of the Century's Finest Lyrics by Robert Gottlieb and Robert Kimball | more | |||
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| Stop Thinking, Start Living by Richard Carlson | more | |||
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| Demian by Hermann Hesse | more | |||
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| Coffee | more | |||
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| Teach yourself mathematics illustrated by voluptuous women | more | |||
| Date | Castaway | Book | Luxury | More info |
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| Vanity Fair by William Thackeray | more | |||
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| Vanity Fair by William Thackeray | more | |||
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| Rizla liquorice papers | more | |||
| The complete works of Milton | Continuous supply of very cold & dry white wine | more | ||
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| Ink, pen, paper and correction fluid | more | |||
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| Ethics by Spinoza | more | |||
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| How Britain made the Modern World by Niall Ferguson | more | |||
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| Family photograph albums | more | |||
| Other Men's Flowers: An Anthology of Poetry by Lord Wavell | more | |||
| Rembrandt's Hendrickje Bathing | more | |||
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| In Search of Lost Time by Proust | more | |||
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| Hollywood Wives by Jackie Collins | more | |||
| Captain Slaughterboard Drops Anchor by Mervyn Peake | more | |||
| Remembrance of Things Past by Proust | more | |||
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| Jamie's Dinners: The Essential Family Cookbook by Jamie Oliver | more | |||
| Le Morte d'Arthur by Thomas Malory | more | |||
| Being and Nothingness by Jean-Paul Sartre | more | |||
| On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen by Harold McGee | more | |||
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| Reach for the Sky: The Story of Douglas Bader by Paul Brickhill | more | |||
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| Remembrance of Things Past by Proust | more | |||
| War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy | more | |||
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| Date | Castaway | Book | Luxury | More info |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Desert Islands by Walter de la Mare | more | |||
| Ulysses by James Joyce | more | |||
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| Being and Time by Martin Heidegger | more | |||
| The History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell | more | |||
| Video camera and film | more | |||
| Complete works of Dylan Thomas | more | |||
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| Lessons in Ndebele by James Pelling and Pamela Pelling | more | |||
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| Book on medieval history (Cambridge Press) | Daily Araucaria crossword | more | ||
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| Collected plays of George Bernard Shaw | more | |||
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| Great Expectations by Charles Dickens | more | |||
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| Collected works of Thomas Hardy | more | |||
| Untold Stories by Alan Bennett | more | |||
| Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela | more | |||
| Oxford Anthology of English Poetry | more | |||
| First Love by Ivan Turgenev | more | |||
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| Collected works of Anthony Trollope | more | |||
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| Absolute Beginners by Colin MacInnes | more | |||
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| Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen | more | |||
| Date | Castaway | Book | Luxury | More info |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes | more | |||
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| Case books of John Hunter | more | |||
| Encyclopædia Britannica | more | |||
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| Cloudy Bay Sauvignon blanc | more | |||
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| Tenor saxophone | more | |||
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| Collected works of Somerset Maugham | more | |||
| Austerlitz by W G Sebald | A ‘magic’ pudding and a drink | more | ||
| Yes Minister | Pencil and paper | more | ||
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| His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman | more | |||
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| Odyssey by Homer | more | |||
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| Teach yourself piano tuning | more | |||
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| Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens | more | |||
| Vanity Fair by Thackeray | more | |||
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| Divine Comedy by Dante in Italian with English translation | more | |||
| War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy | more | |||
| To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee | more | |||
| Selected Stories by Alice Munro | more | |||
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| Larousse Gastronomique | Notebook and pens | more | ||
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