George McGavin, entomologist and broadcaster

Adeel Akhtar is an award-winning actor whose breakthrough role came in 2010 when he starred in Chris Morris’s black comedy Four Lions. He won his first BAFTA for Best Actor in 2017 for his role in the BBC drama Murdered by My Father. His second, for Best Supporting Actor, came in ...  Show more

Jojo Moyes, writer, shares the eight tracks, book and luxury item she would take with her if cast away to a desert island. With Lauren Laverne. 

Matthew Bannister on

Professor David Vaughan OBE, who was a leading expert on the effects of climate change on glaciers in the Antarctic.

Burt Bacharach (pictured), who wrote scores of hit songs including 'I Say A Little Prayer', 'Do You Know The Way To San José' a ...

Jimmy Carr joins Richard Coles and Nikki Bedi. After deciding to pursue a comedy career in his mid-twenties Jimmy has now toured the world as a stand up and is a household name thanks to programmes such as Channel 4’s 8 out of 10 Cats. Jimmy talks about the power of laughter a ...

The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is the writer Umberto Eco. His best-selling novel The Name of the Rose propelled him from the relative obscurity of his post as Professor of Semiotics at Bologna University to worldwide fame at the age of 50.He'll be talking to Sue La ...  Show more

Matthew Bannister on

The children’s author and illustrator Eric Carle, best known for creating The Very Hungry Caterpillar which has sold fifty-five million copies.

Helen Murray Free, the American chemist who developed revolutionary simple tests for diabetes and ot ...