Desert Island Discs: Archive 2005-2011

Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the actor Geoffrey Palmer. Best known for his roles in The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin, Butterflies and As Time Goes By, he had to wait a long time to become a household name and national treasure. Unsure what career to pursue after a spell in the army, he fell into acting because a girlfriend was involved in amateur dramatics. He worked in repertory theatre throughout the 60s and 70s and ended up working with John Osborne during the Royal Court's heyday in West of Suez, and later with Laurence Olivier. With a face "reminiscent of a bloodhound mourning a lost scent", Palmer has, by his own admission "cornered the market in playing dull, plodding men". Many of his characters live out lives characterised by petty worries, suburban frustration and missed opportunities, but he plays them brilliantly, and with a sympathy that elevates them to the status of unlikely heroes. Geoffrey's grumpy on-screen persona has also recently led to him doing the narration for the BBC TV ser

Sue Lawley's castaway this week is Dr David Starkey. Dr David Starkey forsook the ivory towers of academia to popularise history as a constitutional commentator in the press and as a broadcaster and writer. His approach to history is a personal one; he explains events through the lens of individual hopes, flaws and lusts and says historical influence can be seen in terms of who are "the movers and shakers and the bottom wipers" in the royal court. Their equivalent can be seen in government today, he says, through the unelected advisers who take their seat on the Downing Street sofa. Born into a working class, Quaker family in Kendal, David's formidable drive owes much to his mother's love and ambitions for her only child. David's feeling that history should not be the preserve of academics, but belongs to the public, set him on a path to a TV career, via Cambridge, the LSE, and his infamous performances on Radio 4's The Moral Maze which earned him the title of 'the rudest man in Britain'. Now, his programmes

Sue Lawley's castaway this week is Peter Maxwell Davies. He is one of Britain's greatest living composers. His career has seen him go from enfant terrible and champion of new music, writing pieces such as Worldes Blis and Eight Songs for a Mad King, to Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, Master of the Queen's Music. Peter Maxwell Davies was born in Salford, near Manchester, in 1934. Whilst studying at Manchester University and the Royal Manchester College of Music he formed the key friendships which were to influence his musical career - with Harrison Birtwhistle, Elgar Howarth, Alexander Goehr and John Ogdon. It was during the 60s that Peter composed some of his most influential works - including often cacophonous, expressionist pieces like Vesalii Icones, St. Thomas Wake and Worldes Blis. Music-theatre pieces like Eight Songs were groundbreaking in their use of drama, as well as music. He is fascinated by the mathematical structures and patterns that exist in nature - and tries to replicate them in his music. For mor

Sue Lawley's castaway this week is Dr Jonathan Miller. Jonathan Miller has been an influential and prolific force in British intellectual life since the 1960s. A writer, theatre and opera director and explainer of science to the public, he's had not one career, but several, and is seemingly capable of endlessly reinventing himself - as a scientist, a director, a television presenter, a writer, a film-maker and, more recently, a sculptor. Whilst still a medical student he received an invitation which changed the course of his life and career - to take part in a sketch show called Beyond the Fringe, which was to go to the Edinburgh Festival. Jonathan was never to return to science full-time, as invitations to direct began to come in. He went on to become a leading theatre and opera director, celebrated for productions which included Tosca, set in Mussolini's Italy, and a mobster Rigoletto. This career alone would be regarded by many as more than sufficient, but Jonathan Miller combined it with making films and

Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the artist Sam Taylor-Wood. She is known for her photography and short films, including 'David' - a film of the footballer David Beckham sleeping - and her 365-degree photograph that was wrapped around the Selfridges store in central London. She is one half of art's most glamorous couple - her husband is the art dealer Jay Jopling.Her route into art was scattered and uncertain. Although she knew she wanted to study art, she ended up taking a BTech in fashion before studying art at Goldsmiths. In 1997 she was awarded a prize as the most promising new artist at the Venice Biennale, but the same year saw the birth of her daughter and within months she was diagnosed with colon cancer. She fought it off only to find within a few years, that she was suffering from breast cancer. She emerged from illness with a major show at the Haywood Gallery - said to be the youngest person to be granted a retrospective there. She now says that her illness has given her a drive to keep working -

Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the former SAS soldier turned author Andy McNab. After being abandoned as a baby, he was adopted and was brought up in the Peckham area of South London. A life of minor crime followed until he joined the infantry with the Royal Green Jackets in 1976 progressing to the SAS. In the Gulf War, McNab commanded the Bravo Two Zero patrol, given the task of destroying underground communication links in Iraq and mobile Scud launchers. Three of the eight-man patrol were killed, one escaped and four were taken prisoner by the Iraqis and tortured over a six-week period. He's been awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal and the Military Medal and was the British Army's most highly decorated serving soldier when he left the SAS in 1993. His book Bravo Two Zero became a bestseller and this was followed by his autobiography Immediate Action. Since then, he's published seven novels about a former soldier who then works for British Intelligence.Elements of this programme may offend or upset s

Sue Lawley's castaway is the dancer Carlos Acosta. Carlos Acosta is one of the greatest ballet dancers of his generation. He is the first black principal dancer at Covent Garden. Tocororo, the show about his own life, that he wrote, choreographed and starred in, broke box office records at Sadlers Wells and in his homeland of Cuba he is a national hero. But his extraordinary success has followed an even more remarkable journey from the impoverished back streets of Havana. He was the youngest of 11 children and, as a boy, his only ambition was to be a footballer. At the age of nine, his father sent him to ballet school - inspired not by art, but by the promise of free school meals and the hope that his increasingly delinquent son would be brought into line by the strict regime. Carlos hated it, was bullied by his friends and was twice expelled. The first time, his father persuaded the school to take him back, the second, his father found another ballet school and secured Carlos a place there as a boarder. It w