Desert Island Discs

Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the widely respected children's author and the current Children's Laureate Michael Morpurgo. He styles himself as a 'story-teller/writer' and the themes he explores are the relationships between young and old, children and animals and children's experiences of loneliness and self-reliance. He was initially planning on a career in the military and trained at Sandhurst, but a change of direction led him to study English at university and become a teacher and then, when he was aware his class were bored with a book he was reading to them, started telling them his own stories. Together with his wife, Clare, he set up the charity Farms for City Children in Devon to give inner-city children the opportunity to experience life on a farm, working with animals and being close to nature. The charity now has three farms and they have been visited by more than 30,000 children. He is the third Children's Laureate and says he is devoted to giving children a love of books and reading. His own works include War Horse, Kensuke's Kingdom, Why the Wales Came and, most recently, Private Peaceful. [Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]Favourite track: Spem In Alium by Thomas Tallis Book: The Rattlebag: An Anthology of Poetry by Ted Hughes Luxury: Waterslide

Angela Gheorghiu is one of the world's foremost sopranos, beautiful, a good actress and with a voice that critics say is close to perfect, she has been hailed as the next Maria Callas. She is the daughter of a Romanian train driver and says she knew she wanted to be a singer almost as soon as she could walk. Theatre, music and the arts were a form of escaping the drudgery of everyday life and, as a career, offered a rare means of escape from the most austere of the communist regimes. She was trained through the communist regime's rigorous schooling system, graduating with a first-class honours degree from the Bucharest Music Academy in 1990. The fall of the Ceaucescu regime meant that as an artist she could travel and develop an international career. Her international debut was at Covent Garden in 1992 in Don Giovanni. Later the same year she was Mimi in La Boheme. It was her first performance with the celebrated tenor Roberto Alagna. They've now been together for nine years and their performances together have resulted in operas that had fallen from favour being staged once again.[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]Favourite track: Ciocarlia - the Lark by Gheorghe Zamfir Book: A book to learn good English Luxury: A cup of jasmine tea

Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the artist Jack Vettriano. Jack Vettriano is the painter of Britain's most popular work of art. More than a million prints and posters have been sold of his work The Singing Butler since the original was bought for just over £4,500 in 1991. It shows a glamorous couple dancing on the beach while a maid and butler hold umbrellas over their heads to shield them from the rain. The original is due to go under the hammer, once again, in April and this time is expected to fetch hundreds of thousands of pounds. Vettriano has enjoyed painting since he was in his 20s after a girlfriend gave him a set of watercolours. But he did not devote himself full time to art until the late 1980s when he was nearly 40. Since then, his rise has been meteoric and the public have clamoured both for his romantic, nostalgic views of a world gone by and for his far darker works that depict the sexual tensions between men and women. [Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]Favourite track: Like A Rolling Stone by Bob Dylan Book: SUMO by Helmut Newton Luxury: Triptych, May - June 1973 by Francis Bacon

This week Sue's castaway is a man who's made a success of two entirely different careers. Ralph Kohn is a Jewish businessman who has won the Queen's Export Award for his work in the pharmaceutical industry and he's also a renowned Baritone singer .Originally born into a privileged family in Leipzig, Germany, his family moved to Amsterdam in response to the anti-Semitic laws passed in Hitler's Germany in the 1930s. The Kohns finally settled in Manchester and Ralph excelled at school, eventually choosing to study pharmaceuticals at university, encouraged by the major drug developments of the 1950s. As a doctoral student, he met Alexander Fleming and went on to work with two Nobel prize winners in Italy. It was in Rome that Ralph's love of singing flourished; learning under the renowed teacher Manlio Marcantoni, who introduced him to the great Opera tenor Gigli. In the 1960s and 1970s Ralph worked for numerous major pharmaceutical companies including Smith Kline French and Robapharm before setting up his own company Advisory Services Clinical Ltd in 1969. In music he's appeared at the Wigmore Hall, The Queen Elizabeth and Albert Halls and John Smith Square as well as producing twelve CDs.[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]Favourite track: The Sinfonia from Christmas Oratorio by Johann Sebastian Bach Book: The complete works by Bach Luxury: A magic flute

This week Sue's castaway is the award winning actor Bill Nighy. Originally from Caterham in Surrey, he left school at 15 without any qualifications and ended up working at his local employment office. He hoped to become an author and began work on The Field magazine as a messenger boy, but then ran away to Paris at seventeen to write a novel. This venture failed and he ended up begging on the streets before returning to Britain and the Guildford School of Drama and Dance.His first film role was as a delivery boy in Joan Collins' steamy film The Bitch. He's featured in numerous stage, TV, and radio dramas including the acclaimed Men's Room in 1991 and, more recently, in State of Play, where he played a newspaper editor. His career has been described by some critics as a slow burn rather than a beacon, although he's now widely recognised as achieving the acclaim he deserves. In February he won Best Supporting Actor at the Baftas for his role as Billy Mack, a washed up singer in the film Love Actually.[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]Favourite track: Winter by The Rolling Stones Book: 1st edition of 49 Stories by Ernest Hemingway Luxury: Boxed set of blues harps (harmonicas) and instruction book

Sue Lawley's castaway this week is a businessman who brought authentic Indian foods to our supermarkets - Sir Gulam Noon. An instinctive businessman, he was brought up in a complex family situation with a step-brother and sister who were also his half-siblings and a cousin who assumed a paternal role after his own father died. They were not well off, but they had managed until their father's death when Gulam was seven. After that, it was a struggle and as a young teenager Gulam would spend the evenings working in his family's two sweetshops in Bombay. He had an entrepreneurial eye and saw business opportunities to improve and expand. After a brief holiday in Engand he announced to his family that he wanted to expand into this country too. He built a confectionary business here and, seeing the huge public appetite for Indian food in restaurants, started manufacturing it for the supermarket shelves. After a disastrous fire at his factory in 1994, he built up his business again and now makes more than a quarter of a million curries a day. His biggest seller, not surprisingly, is chicken tikka masala. Gulam Noon was given an MBE for services to the food industry in 1994, and in 2002 was knighted.[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]Favourite track: Nat Bhairav by Shivkumar Sharma, Hariprasad Chaurasia, Brijbushan Kabra Book: Long Walk To Freedom by Nelson Mandela Luxury: Videos of cricket matches

This week Sue's castaway is Judith Kerr - a writer and illustrator known to generations of children both for her charming Mog picture-books and for her careful rendering of the life of a Jewish child fleeing Nazi Germany. Judith Kerr escaped with her family on the day the Nazis were elected. The following day, police turned up at the doorstep in a belated attempt to confiscate their passports. The Kerr family moved across Europe, trying to support themselves and escape from the nearing threat, until they eventually settled in England in 1936. The family stayed in London throughout the war; surviving the Blitz and in fear of invasion. Judith Kerr wrote an autobiographical trilogy about her experiences and the books - in particular When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit - have been used ever since as a way of explaining to children the horrors of the Nazi threat. Today, they are set texts in many German schools.She was always a keen painter but had never thought it could be a career; it was only when she had two children who enjoyed the tales she told that she decided to try her hand at picture books. Her first book, The Tiger Who Came to Tea, was instantly successful when it was published in 1968 and has never been out of print. But it is probably her series of books about Mog the Cat that have won her most affection with children - over the past 30 years they have sold more than three million copies.[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]Favourite track: Kyrie - the Opening of Great Mass in C Minor by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Book: A big, beautiful coffee table book of pictures by impressionists Luxury: Pencils and thick paper to write and draw on

This week Sue Lawley's castaway is John Cale, a classically trained musician who went on to found one of the most influential bands of the 1960s, Velvet Underground. John Cale was brought up in a strict South Wales household. His maternal grandmother insisted that Welsh was the only language to be spoken in the house even though his father spoke only English. His childhood was solitary - he was an only child and his mother encouraged him to spend hours each day practising his piano playing, and he later took up the viola. He went on to have viola lessons at the Royal Academy of Music while also studying music at Goldsmiths' Teacher Training College in London. He was talent-spotted by Aaron Copland and awarded a musical scholarship to study in America, where he was part of the contemporary avant-garde music scene there, working with John Cage and LaMonte Young, until he met Lou Reed and the two formed Velvet Underground. Their first album, The Velvet Underground and Nico, remains their best known. Andy Warhol is credited as producer, it features Nico on vocals and the cover is the famous Warhol banana. He went on to produce some of the most influential artists of the time and has made New York his home - although Wales continues to exert some draw over him. He continues to write music and tour.[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]Favourite track: She Belongs To Me by Bob Dylan Book: Repetition by Alain Robbe-Grillet Luxury: Express coffee machine with coffee beans

This week Sue Lawley's castaway is one of France's best known exports - the singer Sacha Distel. Born into a loving family in 1930s Paris, his father was a Russian émigré who'd fled the Red Army in 1917 and walked to Paris where he eventually set up an electrical goods shop. His mother was a talented musician and she instilled a love of music in her son at a young age - especially the piano. The family was traumatised during the Second World War, when his mother, who was Jewish, was interred in a Nazi camp for 19 months. After the war they were reunited but Sacha has said the experience left him with a long lasting sense of insecurity. He continued playing the piano but was increasingly drawn to the guitar, encouraged by the uncle who was the successful jazz band leader Ray Ventura. He soon demonstrated enormous talent for the instrument and, after graduating from college, he was playing with the likes of Lionel Hampton, Stan Getz, Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davies. However it was his affair and engagement to Brigitte Bardot which catapaulted him to international fame. The liaison failed but he was to go on to become a household name, both in here and in France, with his distinct vocal style and image as a sex symbol. Now about to turn 71, Sacha is still touring and has just released a new CD. [Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]Favourite track: Come Rain or Come Shine by Frank Sinatra Book: The Alchemist: A Fable About Following Your Dream by Paulo Coelho Luxury: Grand piano

This week Sue Lawley's castaway is a nun and a pioneer of the hospice movement. Sister Frances Dominica says she had always felt she was born to be a nurse and as a child would line up her dolls and teddies in pretend hospital beds and tend to them. But a dramatic revelation during her early 20s diverted her and, to the horror of her family, she abandoned her career for a contemplative life. She took her life vows in 1972 and, in 1977, at the incredibly young age of 34, was elected to be the Mother Superior of her community. The following year she met a family with a sick child and offered to give her respite care. It was that relationship which gave Sister Frances the idea of starting a children's hospice and, in 1982, Helen House opened. It was the first children's hospice in the world. For the past four years she has been fundraising for another hospice - which she calls a Respice, a mixture of respite and hospice – Douglas House, which is geared up for the needs of adolescents and young adults. Like Helen House, it is named after a patient who made a particular mark on Frances, although he did not survive to see it opened.[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]Favourite track: Skye Boat Song by Elinor Bennett Book: The Earth from the Air by Yann Arthus-Bertrand Luxury: Chaise longue with a mosquito net attached