Desert Island Discs

Lin-Manuel Miranda is best known as the composer, lyricist and original star of the multi-award-winning Broadway musical, Hamilton. It won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize in Drama, 11 Tony Awards and Grammy for Best Musical Theatre Album. The London production won seven Olivier Awards in 2018. Lin-Manuel was brought up in New York by his Puerto Rican parents, and his creativity and sensitivity to music began when he was a child: he performed in Gilbert and Sullivan’s Pirates of Penzance as a teenager and created films using his father’s camcorder. He attended the elite Hunter school for gifted children and spent his summer holidays in Puerto Rico with his extended family. His first musical, In the Heights, opened on Broadway in 2008, directed by his long-time collaborator, Thomas Kail. It received four Tony Awards including Best Score as well as a Grammy Award for its Original Broadway Cast Album. Among his TV and film acting credits are Fosse/Verdon, Curb Your Enthusiasm and Mary Poppins Returns, and he is currently filming the second series of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials for the BBC. He recently collaborated with J.J. Abrams on the song Dobra Doompa, for Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens and he contributed music, lyrics and vocals to several songs in the Disney animated feature film Moana. Lin-Manuel supported the relief efforts in Puerto Rico following Hurricane Maria in September 2017, performing Hamilton there and raising funds for arts and culture on the island. He co-founded the hip-hop improv group Freestyle Love Supreme in 2003 and they have just begun a debut run on Broadway. He lives in New York City with his wife, sons and dog.DISC ONE: Liza Minelli - Cabaret DISC TWO: The Decemberists - The Crane Wife Part 2 DISC THREE: Rubén Blades and Seis del Solar - El Padre Antonio y el Monaguillo Andrés DISC FOUR: The Pharcyde - Passin’ Me By DISC FIVE: Ali Dineen - What You Know DISC SIX: Regina Spektor - On the Radio DISC SEVEN: Gilberto Santa Rosa - Déjate Querer DISC EIGHT: Outkast - Rosa ParksBOOK CHOICE: Moby-Dick by Herman Melville LUXURY ITEM: Coffee CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: What You Know by Ali DineenPresenter: Lauren Laverne Producer: Cathy Drysdale

Dr Sabrina Cohen-Hatton is the Chief Fire Officer for West Sussex Fire and Rescue Service. She is one of the most senior women in the Fire and Rescue Service in the UK. After spending some time living on the streets as a teenager, her work as a firefighter began at the age of 18, after she had applied to 31 different fire services. During her career, her interest in psychology and fascination with how people make choices in stressful situations led to her studying for a degree, followed by a PhD. Her research into risk, decision-making under extreme pressure and human error has won awards and she has shared her findings with fire services in other countries. She is also an ambassador for The Big Issue magazine, in the wake of her own experiences of homelessness.DISC ONE: Alicia Keys - Girl on Fire DISC TWO: J Balvin and Willy William - Mi Gente DISC THREE: The Clash - Bankrobber DISC FOUR: IDLES - Samaritans DISC FIVE: Sex Pistols - Anarchy in the UK DISC SIX: Oasis - Don’t Look Back in Anger DISC SEVEN: Stereophonics - Local Boy in the Photograph DISC EIGHT: Toots and the Maytals - 54-46 Was My Number BOOK CHOICE: The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway LUXURY ITEM: A photo album CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Bankrobber by The ClashPresenter: Lauren Laverne Producer: Sarah Taylor

Thom Yorke has been the front man of Radiohead, one of Britain’s most successful British bands, for 34 years. They have sold over 30 million albums worldwide, and have won three Grammys and four Ivor Novello awards. Their debut studio album, Pablo Honey, was released in 1993, with their debut single, Creep, becoming a big international success. Thom decided on his career at the age of seven, when he lay on the floor between large speakers at a friend’s house and listened to Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody. He made his own electric guitar when he was 10, and wrote his first song at 11. At his secondary school he joined up with fellow pupils and they formed a band called On a Friday, as that was the only day they were allowed to rehearse. They all went their separate ways as university students, but then signed to Parlophone in 1991 and renamed themselves Radiohead. Thom has collaborated with artists including PJ Harvey and Björk and has composed for film and theatre. His first feature film soundtrack, Suspiria, was released last year. His first classical piece, Don’t Fear the Light, was premiered in Paris this year, and he has also been touring his latest solo album Anima. He is an activist on behalf of human rights, animal rights, environmental and anti-war causes. DISC ONE: Ravel - Le jardin féerique – the Labèque sisters DISC TWO: Scott Walker - It’s Raining Today DISC THREE: Talking Heads - Born Under Punches DISC FOUR: Squarepusher and Aphex Twin - Freeman Hardy & Willis Acid DISC FIVE: Neil Young - After the Gold Rush DISC SIX: REM – Talk about the Passion DISC SEVEN: Sidney Bechet - Blue Horizon DISC EIGHT: Nina Simone - Lilac WineBOOK CHOICE: Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind by Shunryu Suzuki LUXURY ITEM: A recording studio CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On) by Talking HeadsPresenter: Lauren Laverne Producer: Cathy Drysdale

Jo Fairley is a businesswoman and writer. She co-founded the Green & Black’s chocolate company with Craig Sams, her husband, and has launched several other successful ventures since then.Jo did not enjoy school, left at 16 with six O-levels and learned shorthand and typing at a secretarial college. She got a job with a magazine publisher and worked her way up through the features department to become the UK’s youngest magazine editor at the age of 23.Her move into chocolate came when she happened to try a couple of squares of a sample sitting on the desk of her future husband, Craig Sams, a health foods entrepreneur. Jo decided that it was the best she had ever tasted. She bought two tonnes of chocolate for £20,000, using all of the proceeds from the flat she had just sold. She and Craig launched Green & Black’s in 1991 and sold the company to Cadbury’s in 2005. BOOK CHOICE: Edible: An Illustrated Guide to the World's Food Plants by National Geographic LUXURY ITEM: Her own pillow CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: I Wanna Be Like You by Louis PrimaPresenter: Lauren Laverne Producer: Sarah Taylor

Sir Tim Waterstone is the founder of the bookshop chain that bears his name. Born in May 1939, he was the youngest of three children. His father, who worked for a tea company all his life, served in the Royal Army Service Corps during the war, and so was absent when Tim was very young. Their relationship was difficult throughout his childhood. Tim was educated at boarding schools from the age of six, when his parents went to India for two and a half years. After studying English at Cambridge and a stint working in India, he joined Allied Breweries, moving to WH Smith in 1973. Eight years later he was fired and at this point he decided to open his own bookshop.The first Waterstone’s opened its doors in 1982 when Tim was 43. A further 86 bookshops opened within a decade. In 1993, he sold the company to his former employer, WH Smith. Five years later, he bought it back again as part of a newly formed group, HMV Media, but just three years after that, in 2001, he resigned as chairman. Since then he’s made several unsuccessful attempts to buy back the company which changed hands most recently in 2018.He recently celebrated his 80th birthday and lives in London with his third wife, the television director Rosie Alison. BOOK CHOICE: Oxford Book of English Poetry LUXURY ITEM: A Photo of his wife CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: The Dream of Gerontius by Edward ElgarPresenter: Lauren Laverne Producer: Cathy Drysdale

Dame Sally Davies is the outgoing Chief Medical Officer for England. She will take up her next post as Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, later this year. She was born in Birmingham in 1949 to academic parents - her father was an Anglican priest and theologian, her mother a scientist. She studied medicine at Manchester University and after two 'brutalising' years spent learning the job on the wards, she welcomed the opportunity to move to Madrid as a diplomat’s wife. However, she decided that she did not enjoy being - in her words - 'an appendage', and so she returned to medicine in the UK, starting in paediatrics and then moving to haematology, specialising in Sickle Cell Disease. Her first marriage didn’t last and her second ended in tragedy when her husband died of leukaemia within months of the wedding.After joining her first research scheme committee in the late 1980s, Sally widened her remit. She became Chief Scientific Adviser to the Health Secretary and, in 2011, Chief Medical Officer for England. Her achievements include creating the National Institute for Health Research, a body to oversee the funding of research in the NHS, and working tirelessly to raise awareness of the dangers of anti-microbial resistance. Sally holds 24 honorary degrees and is about to return to academia, taking up her post as the first woman Master of Trinity College in October 2019. She is married to Willem with whom she has two grown-up daughters.BOOK CHOICE: On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen by Harold McGee LUXURY ITEM: Bubble bath CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: The Trumpet Shall Sound, from Handel's MessiahPresenter: Lauren Laverne Producer: Cathy Drysdale

John Cooper Clarke first achieved fame with his poetry during the punk rock era of the late 1970s. Born in Salford in 1949 to Hilda and George, he suffered from tuberculosis as a child and was sent to recuperate with a relative in Wales. He failed his 11 plus exam and was educated at a secondary modern school which he hated. However the one “rose in a garden of weeds” was his English teacher, Mr Malone, who instilled a love of poetry in John and his classmates. John had various odd jobs after leaving school at 15 and by his mid-20s, he was reciting his poetry in clubs around Manchester. His entry into the punk scene was helped, he says, by “already looking like a punk”, and despite some initially hostile receptions from audiences waiting for the Sex Pistols or the Buzzcocks, he acquired a cult status, going on to release five albums of his poetry set to music by former Joy Division producer Martin Hannett.By early 1980s, he was also in the grip of a heroin addiction which would see him write very little for over a decade. He cleaned up in the early 90s after marrying his second wife, Evie, and having a daughter, Stella. His star began to rise again in 2007 when one of his poems was used in an episode of The Sopranos and others were included on the GCSE syllabus, which led to collaborations with artists like Plan B and Alex Turner of the Arctic Monkeys.BOOK CHOICE: Against Nature by Joris-Karl Huysmans LUXURY ITEM: A boulder of opium twice the size of his head CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: How Great Thou Art by Elvis PresleyPresenter: Lauren Laverne Producer: Cathy Drysdale

Marcus Wareing is a prize-winning chef, restaurateur, TV presenter and cookery book writer, who gained his first Michelin star at the age of just 26. He grew up in Southport, and by the age of 11 was helping out in his family’s fruit and vegetable business, which dominated his father’s life. Marcus assumed he would join the business, but his father told him to take a catering course instead, as the family firm had no future. When Marcus was 18, he moved to London to work at the Savoy. He loved the experience of life in a high-pressure professional kitchen and was quickly promoted. In 1993 he joined Gordon Ramsay at Aubergine, creating one of the most celebrated London restaurants of the time. He went on to launch a number of Michelin star-winning restaurants, often working with Gordon Ramsay and his company, before a much-publicized falling-out. Marcus now runs a group of restaurants in London, founded with his wife Jane, and since 2014 he has appeared as a judge and mentor on the TV series MasterChef: The Professionals. BOOK CHOICE: A Bear Grylls Survival Guide LUXURY ITEM: A knife CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: How Deep is Your Love by The Bee GeesPresenter: Lauren Laverne Producer: Sarah Taylor

Sue Biggs is the Director General of the Royal Horticultural Society. She’s been at the helm of the RHS since 2010 and during that time, its membership has grown to more than half a million people. The RHS is also renowned for its spectacular flower shows and garden festivals around the country, including Chelsea, Hampton Court, Chatsworth House and Tatton Park. Sue has had a lifelong love of gardening since her mum gave her a packet of seeds on her seventh birthday. She has enjoyed two very successful careers. Before her tenure at the RHS, she worked in the travel industry for 25 years, identifying new destinations for holidaymakers. She was the first woman to be appointed to the board of Kuoni Travel. In her current role, she strongly believes that horticultural work and expertise do not receive the wider respect they deserve. She was made a CBE in 2017 for her services to the environment and ornamental horticulture industries.BOOK CHOICE: The Book of Joy LUXURY ITEM: A bed CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: The Lark Ascending by Ralph Vaughan Williams Presenter: Lauren Laverne Producer: Sarah Taylor

Jared Diamond is Professor of Geography at the University of California, Los Angeles, although his interests and expertise range far wider, from physiology to ornithology, history to ecology and from anthropology to evolutionary biology. His 1997 book, Guns, Germs and Steel, asked why Eurasian civilizations prospered and conquered others. It won a Pulitzer Prize and has sold more than a million copies around the world. He was born in Boston in 1937 to a physician father and a mother who was a teacher and a concert pianist. She taught him to read when he was three and he also learned to play the piano and developed a love of languages. Thinking his professional life would be in science, he decided to focus on the humanities at school, including Latin and Greek. After graduating from Harvard, he moved to England to pursue a PhD in physiology at Cambridge and became an expert on salt absorption in the gall bladder. He returned to the USA, and then his travels took him to New Guinea where he developed a passionate interest in ornithology and a lifelong love of the island which he’s continued to visit for the past 50 years.He has learned 12 languages, speaking several of them fluently, and has published six books and hundreds of articles. His most recent book, Upheaval, examines how nations cope with crisis and change. Jared lives in Los Angeles with his wife Marie, a clinical psychologist. They have grown-up twin sons.BOOK CHOICE: The Complete Works of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle LUXURY ITEM: Six cases of Scharzhofberger Kabinett, a Riesling wine from the Saar Basin CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Bach’s Cantata 50: "Nun ist das Heil"Presenter: Lauren Laverne Producer: Cathy Drysdale

Emily Eavis is co-organiser of the Glastonbury Festival. Together with her husband and her father, she masterminds the booking of bands and oversees the setting up of what is the largest greenfield festival in the world. The site itself becomes the size of Oxford town centre once it’s built and rigged, and when tickets for 2019 went on sale, they sold out within 36 minutes.Born in 1979, she was a small child when her parents, Jean and Michael, were inspired to make the Glastonbury Festival an annual event, although she wasn’t keen on the yearly invasion of the family farm. By her late teens, however, she had changed her views. She left Worthy Farm to study to be a teacher at Goldsmiths College in London but when, at the end of her first year, her mother was diagnosed with cancer, Emily left and went home to help look after her and to help her father run that year’s festival. Emily never went back to university. Motivated by a visit to Haiti to look at Oxfam projects, she spent a few years in London putting on charity gigs, before returning home to work with her father running the festival. She married her husband, Nick Dewey, manager of The Chemical Brothers in 2009. The couple have three children and live on Worthy Farm.BOOK CHOICE: The Shadow of the Sun by Ryszard Kapuscinski LUXURY: Carpenter’s tool set (so she can build her own veranda) CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go by Bob DylanPresenter: Lauren Laverne Producer: Cathy DrysdaleDISC ONE: Madame George - Van Morrison DISC TWO: Paranoid Android - Radiohead DISC THREE: You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go - Bob Dylan DISC FOUR: High Tide Or Low Tide - Bob Marley DISC FIVE: Landslide (Live at Warner Brothers Studios) - Fleetwood Mac DISC SIX: That's Life - Frank Sinatra DISC SEVEN: Winterlude - Guy Garvey & Peter Jobson DISC EIGHT: Crazy In Love – BeyoncéBOOK CHOICE: The Shadow of the Sun by Ryszard Kapuscinski LUXURY CHOICE: Carpenter’s tool set (so she can build her own veranda) CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go - Bob DylanProducer: Cathy DrysdaleDesert Island Discs was created by Roy PlomleyFirst broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2019.

Nitin Sawhney is a composer, musician and producer working in the worlds of music, film, video games, dance and theatre. He has released 10 studio albums, scored over 50 films and television programmes, and is known for his collaborations, with musicians and artists including Paul McCartney, Akram Khan, John Hurt and Andy Serkis. He was born in 1964 to parents who had emigrated from North India the previous year to work in the UK. His father was a chemical engineer while his mother taught English and later worked at the post office in their home town of Rochester. Nitin showed early musical promise when he took up the piano aged five, later also learning flamenco guitar, sitar and tabla. He was bullied at school at a time when the National Front was gaining traction and music became his sanctuary.After abandoning a law degree at Liverpool and completing an accountancy course in Hertfordshire, he became financial controller of a hotel, before leaving to become a full time musician. While at college, he met Sanjeev Bhaskar and formed a comedy duo with him which would become the radio and TV series, Goodness Gracious Me. His breakthrough came with his fourth album, released in 1999, entitled Beyond Skin, which was nominated for the Mercury Music Prize. Since then, his career has been in the ascendant: he has established himself as one of the most versatile composers for film, scoring pictures like Midnight’s Children and television programmes including the BBC’s Human Planet series. He received the Ivor Novello Lifetime Achievement Award in 2017.BOOK CHOICE: The Fabric of Reality by David Deutsch LUXURY ITEM: Desalinating bottle CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Mustt Mustt (the Massive Attack remix) by Nusrat Fateh Ali KhanPresenter: Lauren Laverne Producer: Cathy Drysdale

Professor Monica McWilliams is an academic, peace campaigner and former politician. In 1996, she was the co-founder of the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition political party and was elected to a seat at the Multi-Party Peace Negotiations, which led to the Belfast (Good Friday) Peace Agreement in 1998. She served as a member of the Northern Ireland Legislative Assembly from 1998-2003 and was the Chief Commissioner of the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission from 2005-2011. She continues her academic research into domestic violence and is Emeritus Professor in the Transitional Justice Institute at Ulster University. She also specialises in conflict resolution and working with women who are in conflict situations. Alongside her academic work and peace work she currently sits on the Independent Reporting Commission for Northern Ireland. BOOK CHOICE: Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing Volumes 4 and 5 (known as the Women’s anthology) LUXURY ITEM: A snorkel CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Il Postino by Luis Bacalov Presenter: Lauren Laverne Producer: Sarah Taylor

Lubaina Himid is a Turner Prize-winning artist, curator and Professor of Contemporary Art at the University of Central Lancashire. Lubaina was born in Zanzibar in 1954. Her mother was from Britain and her father was originally from the Comoros Islands. He died from malaria when Lubaina was just a few months old, and so she and her mother returned to England. She studied Theatre Design at the Wimbledon College of Art and began organising exhibitions of works by fellow black women artists in the early 1980s as part of the Black Art Movement.Her own work focuses on black identity, often shining a light on the slave trade and the contribution made by the people of the black diaspora. She was the first black woman to win the Turner Prize, and was also its oldest winner, at the age of 63. She was appointed an MBE in 2010 and a CBE in 2018. She lives and works in Preston. BOOK CHOICE: Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy LUXURY ITEM: An endless supply of self-ironing Japanese shirts CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Suzanne by Nina SimonePresenter: Lauren Laverne Producer: Cathy Drysdale

Derren Brown, illusionist and mentalist, chooses the eight tracks, book and luxury he want to take with him if cast away to a desert island. BOOK CHOICE: Collected works of Carl Jung LUXURY: Leica Camera CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Goldberg VariationsPresenter: Lauren Laverne Producer: Sarah Taylor

Pat McGrath is a renowned make-up artist. She works with the world’s top designers, photographers, editors and models, creating images for the pages of the world’s most glamorous magazines. She and her team also work at the most high-profile catwalk shows in Milan, London, New York and Paris. She born and brought up in Northampton by her mother, who had a passion for fashion and make-up, which she passed onto Pat. In the mid-1980s, as an art student, Pat was captivated by the London club scene – the Blitz club, Boy George, and Spandau Ballet. By day she took on a number of casual jobs, but her interest in make-up continued and her break came when she was asked to do the make-up for Caron Wheeler, a member of the band, Soul II Soul, on a tour of Japan. Her career took off and within just a few years she was working with John Galliano, Alexander McQueen, Dolce and Gabana, Louis Vuitton, Givenchy, Prada, Lanvin, Calvin Klein and Balenciaga.In addition to her work at the fashion shows and photographic shoots, in 2004 she became the global creative-design director for Procter and Gamble, where she was in charge of Max Factor and Cover Girl cosmetics. She was awarded an MBE for her services to the fashion and beauty industry in 2013 and in 2015 she launched her own cosmetics brand – Pat McGrath Labs. In 2017 she became beauty editor at large at British Vogue and won the Isabella Blow Award for Fashion Creator at the Fashion Awards. BOOK CHOICE: Andy Warhol: Polaroids - Richard B. Woodward LUXURY: Makeup CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: “La Vie en Rose" - Grace JonesPresenter: Lauren Laverne Producer: Cathy Drysdale

Louis Theroux is a television documentary maker. He has received two BAFTAs and a Royal Television Society Award for his work which includes the series Louis Theroux’s Weird Weekends and When Louis Met…Born in 1970, and brought up in south London, he is the son of the American writer Paul Theroux and the BBC World Service radio producer Anne Castle. He was privately educated at Westminster School and read History at Oxford, graduating with a first. He moved to the USA where he was introduced to the American documentary maker Michael Moore and started making segments on unusual subcultures for Moore’s show TV Nation. He was given his own series – Louis Theroux’s Weird Weekends – by the BBC in the late 1990s and, after three series, he went on to present two series of When Louis Met…, which included Neil and Christine Hamilton, Max Clifford, Chris Eubank and Jimmy Savile. Since then, he has made dozens of documentaries, many of them in the USA. In 2016, he revisited his encounters with Jimmy Savile in the wake of Savile’s death and the surfacing of allegations of child sexual abuse. The same year, his only feature-length film, My Scientology Movie, was released. His most recent documentaries dealt with sexual assault on American campuses, mothers with post-natal mental illness, and escorting.BOOK CHOICE: Remembrance of things Past – Marcel Proust LUXURY: 40,000 piece Jigsaw puzzle CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: “Heaven on their Minds” from the album Jesus Christ SuperstarPresenter: Lauren Laverne Producer: Cathy Drysdale

Martin Freeman is a multi-award winning actor, best known for his roles as the lovable Tim in BBC Two’s The Office and as Dr Watson to Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock Holmes. He also played Bilbo Baggins in Peter Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy, Lester Nygaard in the US drama series Fargo and Everett K Ross in the film Black Panther. Born in Hampshire in 1971, he grew up in Teddington in south-west London. The youngest of five children, he was just 10 when his father died of a heart attack. As a teenager, he played competitive squash, making the national squad, until he realised he lacked the necessary killer instinct required and switched to youth theatre. He studied at the Central School of Speech and Drama and left in his third year to work at the National Theatre, playing minor roles. He first reached a wider audience when he was cast as Tim in The Office, which was broadcast from 2001 to 2003 and became the first British sitcom to win a Golden Globe. More screen roles followed, including playing Arthur Dent in the film of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. In 2010 he first appeared as Dr Watson opposite Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock and went on to win both a BAFTA and an Emmy as Best Supporting Actor. He has continued to work in films, TV and on stage. He appeared in Sherlock with his ex-partner Amanda Abbington. They have two children.BOOK CHOICE: Animal Farm by George Orwell LUXURY: Tea-making Facilities CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Strawberry Fields Forever by The BeatlesPresenter: Lauren Laverne Producer: Cathy Drysdale

Lauren Laverne’s castaway this week is Jacqueline de Rojas, the President of techUK, the body that represents 900 companies in the technology sector. She is Chair of the Board of Digital Leaders, co-Chair of the Institute of Coding and sits on the government’s Digital Economy Council. She was born Jacqueline Yu in Kent to a Chinese father and British mother, and moved to Swindon when her mother left the marriage. Jacqueline did well at school, particularly in languages, and went on to take a degree in European Business Studies, spending the first year of her course in Southern Germany. She is fluent in German and French.She married after university and, despite dreams of becoming a BBC newsreader, she went to work for a tech recruitment company. After two years she moved to work for her largest client, the software company, Synon, using her German to manage the company’s distribution in Germany. She has stayed in the tech industry ever since, primarily working for blue chip software companies. She became Managing Director of Informix in 1999, and her last managing director role was a seven month stint at Sage in 2016. In 2013 Jacqueline joined the board of techUK, , becoming its President in 2015. A key focus of her tenure has been to make the case for greater diversity in an industry struggling fill the roles that it is creating, particularly in appointing women. She also works as a mentor for a number of organisations and has been an advisor to the Girl Guides since 2016, assisting them in helping to attract girls into STEM subjects. She was appointed a CBE in 2018 for services to international trade in the technology industry. BOOK CHOICE: Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier LUXURY: Saxophone CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Girl on Fire by Alicia KeysPresenter: Lauren Laverne Producer: Cathy Drysdale

Marlon James is a writer who won the Man Booker Prize in 2015 for A Brief History of Seven Killings, a novel which centres on an attempt to assassinate Bob Marley. Marlon was the first Jamaican to win the Prize. He was born in Kingston in 1970 and grew up in suburbia. His mother worked as a detective, and his father was lawyer, leading to a family joke that his mum locked criminals up and his dad got them out. As a self-confessed geek, Marlon did not enjoy his time at school, and even pretended that he was not related to his older brother, a fellow pupil, because he thought his lack of cool would embarrass his sibling. After studying English at the University of the West Indies, he worked in advertising as a copywriter. His first novel was rejected 78 times, and he thought he had destroyed every copy of it, until he met novelist Kaylie Jones at a writing workshop and she insisted on seeing it. She showed it to her publisher and his career was launched. The book, John Crow's Devil, was published in 2005. His fourth novel, Black Leopard, Red Wolf, the first of a fantasy trilogy, was published earlier this year.Marlon lives in the United States, where he teaches Creative Writing at Macalester College in Minnesota. BOOK CHOICE: Tom Jones by Henry Fielding LUXURY: A pressure cooker. CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: When Doves Cry by PrincePresenter: Lauren Laverne Producer: Sarah Taylor

Dame Esther Rantzen is best known as the presenter of the long-running TV series That’s Life, which began on BBC One in 1973. She was both presenter and producer of the programme, which was hugely successful, regularly reaching 20 million viewers. It featured consumer affairs, vox pops and light-hearted pieces about talking dogs and peculiarly shaped vegetables, along with serious investigations, including reports on the safety of children’s playgrounds and on child abuse. A special edition of That’s Life in 1986 led Esther to set up Childline, the charity which offers support and information for young people. That's Life ended after 21 years and Esther went on to present her own daytime talk show. A fan of reality TV, she’s appeared on Strictly Come Dancing, Celebrity First Dates, Celebrity Stars in their Eyes and I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here. It was while she was working on That’s Life that she met TV producer Desmond Wilcox. They later married and had three children. A few years after Desmond’s death, Esther wrote a newspaper article about how lonely she felt as a widow. The response inspired her to set up her second charity, Silverline, which offers friendship and advice to older, lonely people.She has received many TV awards over the years and was made a Dame in 2015 for her charity work. She stood unsuccessfully as an independent MP for Luton South in the General Election of 2010. Now 78, she is still very involved in her charity work and is a grandmother of five. BOOK CHOICE: Poem for the Day with a Foreword by Wendy Cope LUXURY: A bath – sometimes filled with hot water, sometimes cold water and sometimes champagne. CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: September Song by Frank SinatraPresenter: Lauren Laverne Producer: Cathy Drysdale

Trevor Sorbie is known as an innovative hairdresser and is the founder of the charity, MyNewHair. Born into a family of hairdressers – both his father and grandfather were barbers – he spent the first decade of his life in Scotland before the family relocated to Essex. His first ambition was to become an artist, but when he left school aged 15 with no qualifications after being bullied, his father suggested that he could help out at his barbershop. Within three months, Trevor was cutting hair and found that he loved it. Five years down the line, however, he decided to learn about cutting women’s hair and following his training, his first job was at a Vidal Sassoon salon. He would later go on to work at both John Frieda and Toni & Guy, before launching his own salon with his business partner in 1979. He invented several iconic haircuts of the era, including the Wedge and the Chop, and he came up with the technique of scrunch drying. His innovative styles won him the British Hairdresser of the Year award four times. In 2006, he set up his charity MyNewHair to teach hairdressers how to cut and style wigs after his sister-in-law lost her hair in the course of her cancer treatment. Since then, he has trained nearly a thousand hairdressers. He was the first hairdresser to be awarded an MBE by the Queen in 2004.BOOK CHOICE: All of Jeremy Clarkson’s books LUXURY: A bottle of wine CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: My Sweet Lord by George HarrisonPresenter: Lauren Laverne Producer: Cathy Drysdale

Professor Margaret MacMillan is a Canadian historian, author and broadcaster. In 2018 she delivered the Reith Lectures on BBC Radio 4, in which she examined the tangled history of war and society. She was born in Toronto in 1943, and her interest in history was kindled by the stories her parents told about when they were young and by the historical adventure novels she read as a child. After a long academic career in Canada, she found herself in the international spotlight in her late 50s. Her book Peacemakers, about the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, won the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize and many other awards, and became a best-seller. Margaret is the great-granddaughter of David Lloyd George, who attended the Paris Conference as the British Prime Minister.She has also written books about Nixon and Mao, about Europe’s path to World War One, and about personalities who have shaped history. She became the Warden of St Antony’s College, Oxford, in 2007, and retired from the role in 2017. In the 2018 Queen’s New Year’s Honours List, Professor MacMillan was appointed a Companion of Honour. She continues to research and write.BOOK CHOICE: À la Recherche du Temps Perdu by Proust LUXURY: A machine to help her learn to sing CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Mood Indigo by Duke EllingtonPresenter: Lauren Laverne Producer: Sarah Taylor

Ann Cleeves is a crime writer best known for two series of novels, both of which have been adapted for television. Vera, for ITV, features her detective Vera Stanhope, and Shetland, for the BBC, focuses on DI Jimmy Perez, who works for the Shetland police. Born in 1954, Ann grew up in Herefordshire and Devon. After secondary school she spent a year providing childcare for a family in London before reading English at the University of Sussex. She dropped out of her degree course, and by chance, was offered a job as assistant cook at the bird observatory in Fair Isle, despite not knowing how to cook, nor anything about birds. She met her husband Tim there, who came as a visiting bird watcher.They spent four years on the tiny tidal island of Hilbre off the Wirral peninsula, where Ann started to write. Her debut novel was published in 1986 and she has published a book a year since then. Her first Shetland novel, Raven Black, appeared in 2006 and won the Duncan Lawrie Dagger, at the time the richest crime-writing prize in the world. Her second breakthrough came when a TV producer picked up a second-hand copy of one her novels featuring her dishevelled detective Vera Stanhope and decided it would make perfect prime-time viewing. In October 2017, Ann received the Diamond Dagger from the Crime Writers’ Association, the highest honour in British crime writing, awarded by fellow crime authors. In 2018, she published the final of eight Shetland novels, and this autumn will see the publication of the first of a new Vera series set in Devon. Her husband Tim died in December 2017. Ann lives in Whitley Bay, with her two daughters and six grandchildren nearby.BOOK CHOICE: The Balkan Trilogy by Olivia Manning LUXURY: Pen and paper CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Suzanne by Leonard CohenPresenter Lauren Laverne Producer Cathy Drysdale

Cressida Dick is Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police.She was born in 1960, the youngest child of two university professors. Her parents divorced when she was still at primary school and she and her older siblings grew up in Oxford. Their father died when Cressida was just 11. She read Agriculture and Forest Sciences at Oxford University before spending a year in accountancy. She joined the Metropolitan Police in 1983 where her first beat was on the streets of Soho. After a decade in London, she transferred to Thames Valley Police where she worked her way up to become area commander in Oxford. In 2001 she completed a master’s degree in Criminology, re-joining the Met to head its diversity directorate and, from 2003, Operation Trident, the Met’s gun crime unit. It was in this capacity that she came to wider public attention when, in the wake of the 2005 London transport bombings, an innocent man was shot dead by police at Stockwell tube station. The Met was severely criticised in the aftermath of Jean Charles de Menezes’s death. Cressida Dick was the commander in charge of the operation, but a 2007 trial found that she bore no personal culpability. In 2011, she became Assistant Commissioner for Specialist Operations responsible for counter-terrorism work, but in 2015 she left the Met to work at the Foreign Office. In February 2017, she made her return to policing when she was the successful candidate in the search for a new Commissioner. She took up the post in April 2017 for a five-year term, the first woman and the first openly gay person to hold the job.BOOK CHOICE: The Complete works of Thomas Hardy LUXURY ITEM: Endless supply of floral scented soaps CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 17 in D minorPresenter: Lauren Laverne Producer: Cathy Drysdale

Bob Mortimer is a comedian best known for his work with his comedy partner Vic Reeves. For 30 years, he and Vic have appeared in numerous TV series together, including Vic Reeves’ Big Night Out, Shooting Stars and The Smell of Reeves and Mortimer. Bob first saw Vic performing in a south London pub: Vic was wearing a Bryan Ferry mask while trying to tap dance with wooden planks strapped to his feet. Bob found this hugely entertaining, and began to take part in Vic’s shows. Bob was born in 1959 in Middlesbrough, the youngest of four boys. His father died in a car crash when he was seven and Bob says he became his mother’s little helper – although he also set fire to their house after playing with fireworks. As a teenager he dreamed of a career as a footballer, but he ended up studying law at university, and worked as a solicitor in south London. In 2015 Bob underwent triple heart bypass surgery. After this – in a rare diversion from working with Vic – he accepted an invitation from fellow comedian Paul Whitehouse to get out of the house and go fishing, which led to a successful TV series, Mortimer and Whitehouse: Gone Fishing. BOOK CHOICE: My Secret History by Paul Theroux LUXURY ITEM: His own pillow CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Down to You by Joni MitchellPresenter: Lauren Laverne Producer: Sarah Taylor

Wendy Cope is one of England’s most popular and widely-read contemporary poets. Wendy was born in Erith, Kent. Her father was 29 years older than her mother and she was sent to boarding school at the age of seven. Although English was her favourite subject at school, in a bid to defy her English teacher’s expectations, she read history at Oxford. Following graduation she became a primary school teacher.After the death of her father in 1971, Wendy entered psychoanalysis in 1973 and turned to writing poetry. Having attended evening classes in creative writing, one of her poems was published in a collection which brought her to the attention of Faber and Faber. Her first volume of poetry, Making Cocoa For Kingsley Amis, was published in 1986, and became an instant success, and she gave up teaching to become a full time writer.She has since published four volumes of a poetry: Serious Concerns (1992), If I Don’t Know (2001), Family Values (2011) and Anecdotal Evidence (2018) as well as two volumes for children, Twiddling Your Thumbs (1988) and The River Girl (1991). In 2011, Wendy sold her entire personal archive to the British Library, which consisted of 15 boxes of manuscript, including several unpublished early works.Wendy lives in Ely and is married to fellow poet, Lachlan Mackinnon.BOOK CHOICE: Compleet Molesworth by Geoffrey Willans LUXURY ITEM: Pen and paper CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Bach’s Double Violin Concerto in D minor Presenter: Lauren Laverne Producer: Cathy Drysdale

James Rebanks is a shepherd and the best-selling author of The Shepherd’s Life. Born in Cumbria in 1974, he grew up venerating his grandfather, who taught him what he needed to know in order to take over the family farm from his father one day. He found school an irksome distraction, and left aged 15 with two GCSEs. It wasn’t until his early 20s, after he’d developed an interest in reading and had met his future wife Helen, that he decided to return to study at a local college in the evenings. Encouraged by a tutor, he applied for a place at Oxford University, and graduated with a double first in History. After university, he worked in a number of white-collar jobs, in order to boost his income while ensuring he could continue to work on the farm. He breeds two different types of sheep: Herdwicks, which are a native breed to his part of the world, and Swaledales, which he kept out of respect to his father who died in 2015, just before the publication of James’s first book. He began chronicling his life as a shepherd on Twitter in 2012 but is currently taking a break from tweeting. He and Helen have four children.BOOK CHOICE: The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway LUXURY: Pen and Paper CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: A New England by Kirsty MacCollPresenter: Lauren Laverne Producer: Cathy Drysdale

Ruth Jones is an actor and writer. She co-created and starred in the award-winning TV comedy series Gavin and Stacey, and also wrote and took the title role in the comedy drama Stella, which ran for six series. She grew up in Porthcawl, in South Wales, where the local secondary school nurtured her love of performance. She took to the stage in numerous school musicals, along with fellow pupil Rob Brydon. After studying drama at Warwick University, she struggled at first to find work as an actor. She briefly considered becoming a solicitor, before she won the role of a ninja turtle in Dick Whittington at the Porthcawl Pavilion and gained an Equity card. Her TV work ranges from costume dramas to comedies including Little Britain and Nighty Night. She developed the idea for Gavin and Stacey with James Corden when they were both filming the ITV series Fat Friends. The story of a boy from Billericay who falls for a girl from Barry, Gavin and Stacey began on BBC Three, with Ruth’s role as straight-talking, leather-wearing Nessa winning people’s hearts. She and James wrote every episode, and the finale, on BBC One, reached more than 10 million viewers.Last year Ruth published her first novel, Never Greener, which topped the bestseller lists, and she returned to the stage in the musical play The Nightingales. BOOK CHOICE: Halliwell's Film Guide LUXURY: The back catalogue of The Archers CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Smooth by Santana feat. Rob ThomasPresenter: Lauren Laverne Producer: Sarah Taylor

The Turner Prize-winning artist Jeremy Deller is perhaps best known for We’re Here Because We’re Here, a moving and powerful memorial to the Battle of the Somme, and The Battle of Orgreave – a re-enactment of the confrontation between police and pickets at the height of the miners’ strike.Deller doesn’t paint, draw or sculpt and his work encompasses film, photography and installations. At school his creative endeavours were not always appreciated, and at 13 he was asked to leave the art class. His lifelong love of history was ignited by childhood trips to museums with his father, and is evident in the subjects he addresses, from Stonehenge, which he re-created as a giant bouncy castle, to William Morris. He managed to meet Andy Warhol in London in 1986 and went to spend two formative weeks at Warhol’s New York City studio, the Factory. The experience crystallised in Deller the belief that art can come in many forms and that an artist can create their own world of ideas.His memorial to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the Peterloo Massacre will be unveiled in August 2019.BOOK CHOICE: An A to Z London Street Atlas LUXURY: A stretch of road over Hay Bluff between Hay-on-Wye and Abergavenny. CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Out of the Blue by Roxy Music.Presenter: Lauren Laverne Producer: Paula McGinley

Alan Carr, comedian and chat show host, is known for his love of silliness, dressing up and camp daftness. His stand-up shows have filled arenas, and on TV he co-hosted the Friday Night Project and then his own show - Chatty Man. Alan was born into a footballing family – his dad, Graham, was a professional player and then a manager. Alan first tried his hand at comedy while reading Theatre Studies at Middlesex University. After he graduated, he took on a range of jobs before his ability to make friends laugh with his stories of working in a call centre in Manchester led him to try stand-up at a local venue. In 2001 he won the City Life Best Newcomer of the Year and the BBC New Comedy Awards. His break into TV came after a spell as the warm-up man for the Jonathan Ross chat show. He has won many awards including Best Entertainment Show for Alan Carr: Chatty Man at the 2010 TV Choice Awards, the 2013 BAFTA for Best Entertainment Performance and 2013 British Comedy Award for Best Comedy Entertainment Personality. In 2015 he won the National Television Award for Best Chat Show Host.He and his long term partner Paul were married in January 2018 by Adele - who also organised the wedding, and paid for it. BOOK CHOICE: Argos Catalogue LUXURY: Foam roller CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Sister From Texas - Aretha FranklinPresenter: Lauren Laverne Producer: Cathy Drysdale

As one of the Guardian’s first female foreign correspondents, Hella Pick reported on events that shaped the world in the second half of the 20th century, from Martin Luther King's civil rights activism to Watergate, the Gdansk shipyard strikes to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Born in Vienna in 1929, she was raised by her mother who, in March 1939, put her on a Kindertransport train to Britain to escape the Nazis. Her mother was able to follow her to England a few months later and Hella spent her formative years in the Lake District. After reading Politics at London School of Economics, she worked as commercial editor of a London-based weekly publication called West Africa. After she left, she offered her services to The Guardian – and spent the next 35 years or so with the paper. While UN correspondent, she worked alongside Alistair Cooke in New York and subsequently held posts as European Integration correspondent, Washington correspondent, Eastern Europe correspondent, and diplomatic editor before retiring in the mid-1990s. Since leaving The Guardian, she has nurtured a new career as a writer, publishing a biography of Simon Wiesenthal and a book about Austria’s post-war history.BOOK: Scorn by Matthew Parris LUXURY: Recliner armchair FAVOURITE TRACK: Mozart's Marriage of FigaroPresenter: Lauren Laverne Producer: Cathy Drysdale

Professor Mariana Mazzucato is an economist, who focuses on value and innovation. Born in Italy, Mariana moved to America as a child, when her father accepted a post at Princeton University. She has lived in the UK for the last 20 years and is currently Professor in the Economics of Innovation and Public Value and the Director of the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose at University College London.She examined how government funding has enabled highly profitable inventions in the private sector in her 2013 book The Entrepreneurial State. She advises policymakers around the world on how to deliver sustainable growth, and has also taken a particular interest in pricing and profit in the pharmaceutical industry. Earlier this year she published The Value of Everything, in which she argued that we need to re-think our ideas about how wealth is created in the global economy. In 2013 she was named as one of the 'three most important thinkers about innovation' by the New Republic. BOOK CHOICE: Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar LUXURY: One of her mother's handmade quilts CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Round Midnight by Thelonious MonkPresenter Lauren Laverne Producer Sarah Taylor

Gary Barlow, musician and Take That lead singer, has written more than a dozen chart-topping songs, and has received six Ivor Novello awards including the award for Outstanding Contribution to British Music. Born in Cheshire in 1971, his interest in music was sparked at an early age by a child’s keyboard. At the age of 10, he saw Depeche Mode on Top of the Pops, prompting the desire to take to the stage himself. He wrote A Million Love Songs, which later became a Top 10 hit for Take That, in his bedroom when he was 15. By this time he was a regular performer in a Labour club just across the Welsh border, where he cut his teeth playing the organ and singing. By the time he was 18, he was so good at writing songs that he successfully auditioned for a place in the group which became Take That. They went on to be one of the most successful bands of all time, winning a devoted audience with tracks such as Back For Good, Everything Changes and Pray. When they broke up in early 1996, helplines were set up to assuage their fans’ feelings of loss and grief. In 2005, Take That reformed, with Robbie Williams rejoining them for a spell in 2010, and – in some form or other – the band has kept going and will tour again in 2019.Gary was put in charge of organising the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee concert and performed at the closing ceremony for the London Olympics in 2012. He was a judge on the X-Factor for three series and his talent show, Let It Shine, was broadcast on BBC One in 2017. Earlier this year he published a second autobiography.BOOK CHOICE: Recording the Beatles by by Kevin Ryan and Brian Kehew. LUXURY ITEM: Piano CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Nimrod by ElgarPresenter: Lauren Laverne Producer: Cathy Drysdale

Tom Kerridge is a chef, restaurateur and TV presenter. Tom made his name with his Buckinghamshire pub The Hand and Flowers, which he opened with his wife in 2005. It is the only British pub with two Michelin stars.Tom grew up near Gloucester. After his parents divorced when he was 11, his mother took two jobs to support the family, and Tom was often left to cook for himself and his younger brother. As a teenager, he worked as a TV actor, playing small roles in dramas such as Miss Marple. He entered his first professional kitchen at 18, and immediately fell in love with the world he found, with its constant pressures and rushes of adrenalin. He studied at catering college at the same time. As well as now running his own pubs and a London restaurant, Tom has presented numerous TV series and is the author of five best-selling cookbooks. More recently, he made headlines with his weight loss. He shed twelve stone after deciding that he needed to change his life as he reached the age of 40. He is married to the sculptor Beth Cullen-Kerridge. BOOK CHOICE: White Heat by Marco Pierre White LUXURY: A Shaving Kit FAVOURITE TRACK: Proof by I Am KlootPresenter: Lauren Laverne Producer: Sarah Taylor

Kate Atkinson won the Whitbread Book of the Year Award for her 1995 debut novel Behind the Scenes at the Museum, and has won the Costa Novel Award twice, for Life After Life in 2013 and for A God in Ruins two years later.Born in York in 1951, she was the only child of a couple who ran a medical and surgical supplies shop. She began to write after she had failed her doctorate at Dundee University and had given birth to two daughters. She took on a wide range of jobs while writing short stories for women's magazines, and did not publish her first book until she was in her early 40s. Her mid-career reinvention as a writer of detective fiction has seen her publish four novels starring her sleuth Jackson Brodie, with another one in the pipeline. She lives in Edinburgh, has two grown-up daughters, and two grandchildren.BOOK CHOICE: The Collected Poems and Letters of Emily Dickenson LUXURY ITEM: A 500 year old, mature oak tree FAVOURITE TRACK: Beethoven's Symphony no. 5Presenter: Lauren Laverne Producer: Cathy Drysdale

Tracey Thorn, musician and writer, is best known as one half of the duo Everything but the Girl. Brought up in Brookmans Park, Hertfordshire, she bought her first guitar, a black Les Paul copy, when she was 16 and her first band was called the Stern Bobs. Shortly after, she formed her own all-female band, Marine Girls, before moving to Hull University to study English. On her first night there, she met her future husband, Ben Watt, and they went on to form Everything But the Girl. Between 1982 and 2000, they sold more than nine million records and toured Europe and America. Despite their success, Tracey did not always enjoy performing live. At 35 she left the pop world to look after her twin girls, who were followed by her son Blake. She took about seven years out to be a full time parent, but since then she has come back to song-writing, recording music and writing: her first memoir Bedsit Disco Queen was a best seller, and she has a fortnightly column in the New Statesman.This year Tracey was presented with the outstanding contribution to music prize, at the AIM independent music awards. Presenter: Lauren Laverne Producer: Cathy Drysdale

Vanley Burke is a Jamaican-born photographer often described as the Godfather of Black British Photography. His body of work is regarded as the greatest photographic record of African Caribbean people in post-war Britain. He is motivated by a desire to document culture and history. Vanley was born in 1951 in St Thomas, Jamaica. When he was four, his mother emigrated to Britain to train as a nurse, leaving him in his grandparents’ care. His mother sent him a Box Brownie camera as a present when he was ten, and his interest in photography was born. When he was 14 he left Jamaica to join his mother and her husband and their children, in Handsworth, Birmingham, where they ran a shop. Vanley’s fascination with photography continued and he began taking photographs of every aspect of the life of his local community. He also started collecting relevant objects to provide more context for his photographs, gathering everything from pamphlets, records and clothes to hurricane lamps. His archive became so substantial that it is largely housed in Birmingham’s Central Library.In 1977 he photographed African Liberation Day in Handsworth Park, documenting what is thought to be the largest all-black crowd ever to assemble in Britain. In 1983 he held his first exhibition, Handsworth from the Inside, at the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham, and in 2015 the entire contents of his flat was relocated to the gallery for the exhibition At Home with Vanley Burke. His images have appeared in galleries around the UK and abroad. Earlier this year, he was commissioned to mark the 70th anniversary of the arrival of the Empire Windrush, creating the installation 5000 Miles and 70 Years at the MAC in Birmingham.CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Blue in Green by Miles Davis BOOK CHOICE: Encyclopedia of Tropical Plants by Ahmed Fayaz LUXURY ITEM: A Machete and a Crocus bagPresenter: Lauren Laverne Producer: Cathy Drysdale

Jacqueline Gold is the CEO of the retail brands Ann Summers and Knickerbox. She joined the business at the age of 19 for work experience, and faced resistance because her father, David Gold, was the owner. By the time she was 21, she had persuaded the largely sceptical all-male board to invest in her radical idea: to re-invent the Ann Summers brand by selling lingerie and sex toys at women-only parties held in their homes. Along with the parties, there are now over 100 high street shops, with a multi-million pound turnover.Jacqueline’s childhood was difficult after her parents divorced when she was 12. Although she was a shy child, she worked throughout her teens which brought her a degree of financial independence and resilience. Today she’s a strong advocate of female empowerment, supports women in business and has set up the WOW incentive on Twitter. Jacqueline was awarded a CBE in 2016 and was ranked as the 16th wealthiest female entrepreneur by The Sunday Times in 2017. Happily married for the second time, she and her husband Dan underwent several courses of IVF treatment, and she eventually conceived twins. One of the children, Alfie, only survived for eight months. Their daughter, Scarlett is now aged nine. CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Wishin' On A Star - Rose Royce BOOK CHOICE: The Secret by Rhonda Byrne LUXURY ITEM: Her own feather pillowPresenter: Lauren Laverne Producer: Cathy Drysdale

Venki Ramakrishnan is a Nobel Prize-winning molecular biologist. He is most renowned for his research into the atomic structure of the ribosome - a complex molecule in the cell which translates DNA into chains of amino acids that build proteins, the essence of life. This work eventually secured Venki a Nobel Prize in 2009, which he shared with Ada Yonath and Thomas Steitz. Venki was born in Tamil Nadu, in the south of India. Both his parents were scientists, and both pursued postgraduate studies overseas when Venki was very young. He completed his schooling in India, and then moved to the United States. Life on an American campus in the early 1970s was, he recalls, a culture shock for a self-confessed nerdy young Indian. He completed a PhD in Physics in 1976, but then switched to biology which he felt was a more exciting discipline. His research into the ribosome began when he was working at Yale as a post-doctoral fellow in the late 1970s. He moved to the UK in 1999, joining the Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge as a group leader. He was knighted in 2012, and has served as President of the Royal Society since 2015, where he has argued that science should enjoy a central place in the curriculum and in our wider culture. Presenter: Lauren Laverne Producer: Sarah Taylor

Nile Rodgers is a Grammy-winning composer, musician, and producer. With his own band, Chic, he's been enticing people on to the dance floor since the mid-1970s with hits like Le Freak and Good Times. With over 200 production credits to his name, he has worked on many highly successful albums from Sister Sledge’s We Are Family to David Bowie’s Let’s Dance and Madonna’s Like a Virgin.Born in New York City in 1952 to a teenage mother, he spent his early life immersed in his parents’ bohemian, beatnik, and drug-dominated lifestyle. Drugs played a part in Nile's life too from an early age, and he took his first acid trip with Timothy Leary at the age of 15. After learning to play the guitar, he got his musical break touring with the Sesame Street stage show and playing in the house band of Harlem’s Apollo Theatre, where he met bassist Bernard Edwards with whom he developed a productive musical partnership and went on to found Chic. Following the Disco Sucks movement of the late 1970s, Nile and Bernard turned to production, and sprinkled their magic dust on Sister Sledge and Diana Ross. When Nile and Bernard went their separate ways in the early 1980s, Nile forged ahead on his own, working with, among others, Madonna, Michael Jackson, David Bowie and Duran Duran.Nile went into rehab in 1994 and has been clean and sober for the past 24 years and has received successful treatment for cancer twice. He won three Grammys for his 2013 collaboration with the French electronic music duo Daft Punk, and has recently released the first Chic album in 26 years.Presenter: Lauren Laverne Producer: Cathy Drysdale

Composer Thea Musgrave celebrated her 90th birthday this year, an event marked by celebrations and concerts around the world, including the BBC Proms and the Edinburgh International Festival. She has published more than 150 compositions, including major orchestral works and numerous operas, and continues to write every day. Thea was born in Edinburgh in May 1928, and still has sharp memories of hearing news of the Dunkirk evacuation in 1940. She learned the piano as a child, but had ambitions to become a doctor. She began medical studies at the University of Edinburgh, but after struggling with the sciences, she switched to the music department, which happened to be in an adjacent building. In the early 1950s, she spent four years studying composition with Nadia Boulanger in Paris before moving to London and establishing herself as a prominent member of British musical life. In 1970 she became Guest Professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. In 1971 she married the American opera conductor Peter Mark, and she has lived in the United States since 1972. She was awarded a CBE in 2002, and earlier this year she was presented with The Queen's Medal for Music. Presenter: Lauren Laverne Producer: Sarah Taylor

Tom Daley started diving aged seven and by the age of 14 was representing Great Britain at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. He has won six British Championships, three European Championships and won the World Championships in 2009 and 2017.Born in Plymouth in 1994, he’s the oldest son of Rob and Debbie Daley. He has two younger brothers. His success at a very young age led to widespread media attention, but as he became famous, he was bullied and had to change schools at the age of 15. His parents encouraged his sporting ambitions and he was always able to spot his father in the crowd at competitions because he’d be waving a huge union jack. In 2006 Rob was diagnosed with brain cancer and despite initially successful treatment, the cancer returned. He died in 2011, missing the London 2012 Olympics, where Tom won a bronze medal in the individual 10m platform event.In 2013 Tom met Dustin Lance Black and they married in 2017. They recently became parents – through surrogacy – of a son called Robert. Tom is currently in training for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.Presenter: Lauren Laverne Producer: Cathy Drysdale

Henry Marsh is a neurosurgeon, who pioneered a technique of operating on the brain while the patient is under local anaesthetic. The procedure is now standard practice. He is also an acclaimed writer. He was born in 1950 in Oxford, where his father was an academic. His mother came to England as a political refugee from Nazi Germany in the late 1930s. Henry did not initially pursue a career in medicine: after dropping out of university, he found work as a hospital porter, and only then decided to train as a doctor. He was appointed a consultant at St George’s Hospital, London, in 1987. He has spent his career in the NHS, and has also frequently worked abroad, in Ukraine, Nepal, Albania and elsewhere. He retired in 2015, but continues to teach one day a week and to work overseas to help less experienced surgeons. In 2014, he published a memoir, Do No Harm, which was widely praised for its honesty about mistakes in the operating theatre. Presenter: Kirsty Young Producer: Sarah Taylor

Danielle de Niese is a soprano who has taken starring roles with leading opera companies around the world. She was born in Melbourne, Australia, to Sri Lankan parents, and at the age of eight she won a national TV talent show, singing a pop medley. When she was ten, her parents moved the family to Los Angeles, so that she could pursue her dream of becoming an opera singer. She also presented a TV programme, L.A. Kids, for which she won an Emmy award at the age of 16. She made her professional operatic debut when she was 15 with the Los Angeles Opera, appeared briefly in Les Miserables on Broadway, and first performed with the Metropolitan Opera in New York at the age of 19, taking the role of Barbarina in a production of The Marriage of Figaro, directed by Jonathan Miller. In 2005 she came to more widespread public attention with her performances as Cleopatra in Giulio Cesare at Glyndebourne, stepping into the role at the last minute when the original Cleopatra was unwell. She first appeared at the Royal Opera House in London four years later, and her international stage career now ranges from baroque operas to new works. She has also presented a number of television programmes about music. She married Gus Christie, the grandson of Glyndebourne’s founder, in 2009. Presenter: Kirsty Young Producer: Sarah Taylor

Pam Ayres is a poet and broadcaster.Pam was born in the Vale of the White Horse and retains her characteristic Berkshire burr. She is the youngest of six children, and grew up in the company of her four brothers and a sister in a small council house. Although she was interested in writing from an early age, she failed her 11-plus exam and left school at 15 to join the Civil Service and later the Women's Royal Air Force, where she found opportunities to appear in amateur dramatics. She began to perform her comic verse in local folk clubs in the early 1970s and her first break came when she secured a spot on BBC Radio Oxford. In 1975, she won the TV talent show Opportunity Knocks and by the following year she had given up her day job. Pam has sold more than three million copies of her books, and has been called "the people's poet", thanks to her ability to write verse which resonates with a wide audience. Her best-loved poems include Oh, I Wish I'd Looked After Me Teeth, which was voted one of the UK's top ten comic verses in a BBC poll. Striking a very different note, her poem Woodland Burial has become a popular reading at funerals. Presenter: Kirsty Young Producer: Sarah Taylor.

Marianne Elliott is the first woman to win two Tony awards for theatre direction: the first for War Horse and the second for The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time. Both transferred to Broadway from the National Theatre, London, and have gone on to travel the world. Marianne's parents, grandparents and great-grandparents all worked in the theatre. Her father, Michael Elliott, was a founding director of the Royal Exchange theatre in Manchester and her mother, Rosalind Knight, now in her 80s, has enjoyed a lifetime on the stage and is still working. Although Marianne read Drama at Hull University, it wasn't until she was in her late 20s that her career began, when she became assistant director at the Regents Park Open Air Theatre. She went on to follow in her father's footsteps, working at the Royal Exchange, before becoming Associate Director at the National Theatre in London. In 2017 she left to set up her own theatre company with producer Chris Harper. Their next show will be Stephen Sondheim's Company. In addition to all her theatrical prizes, she has just been awarded the OBE for services to theatre in the 2018 Birthday Honours list. She is married to actor Nick Sidi and they have one daughter.Presenter: Kirsty Young Producer: Cathy Drysdale.

Baroness Newlove is the Victims' Commissioner for England and Wales. She became a campaigner after her husband, Garry Newlove, was murdered by several youths in 2007. Born in Salford in 1961 she grew up in a working class family. Having left school at sixteen she became a copy typist at a magistrate's court and later a committal court assistant. She met Garry when she was 20 and they married and had two daughters. In 1992, when he was just 32, Garry was diagnosed with stomach cancer. He survived and the couple went on to have a third daughter. The family lived in an area of Warrington which was experiencing an increase in anti-social behaviour. In August 2007, Garry went outside to investigate a disturbance and was viciously attacked by some youths in front of his three daughters. Three days later, the decision was taken to switch off his life support. Three youths were subsequently found guilty of Garry's murder and in the wake of the family's experience, Helen set up an initiative called Newlove Warrington to provide support to the young people in the area.She was given a peerage in 2010 and sits on the Conservative benches. She took up various roles in support of victims in the House of Lords, culminating in her appointment as Victims' Commissioner, a post she took up in 2013. She is currently in her second term and will be serving in the post until 2019. Helen remarried in 2012. Presenter: Kirsty Young Producer: Cathy Drysdale.

Billie Jean King won 39 Grand Slams and a total of 20 Wimbledon titles and is regarded as one of the greatest tennis players of all time. Born in California in 1943, she was the eldest daughter of Bill and Betty Moffitt. She discovered tennis at the age of ten: at 15 she won in her age bracket at the Southern California championships, and in 1961, she won the women’s doubles at Wimbledon with Karen Hantze, the youngest pair to achieve such a victory. In 1968, when professional competitors were admitted to Grand Slam tournaments, she won Wimbledon for the third time and was paid just £750 while Rod Laver, the Men's champion, took home £2,000. So began her campaign for gender equality, which involved boycotting tournaments and setting up their own professional women’s circuit. In 1973, then aged 29, she beat the 55-year-old former tennis champion Bobby Riggs in a match which became known as 'The Battle of the Sexes': it remains the most-watched tennis match ever. That year the US Open awarded the same financial reward to men and women and in 2007 Wimbledon followed suit. Billie Jean also founded the Women’s Tennis Association and the Women’s Sports Foundation in the 1970s.She married her husband, Larry, in 1965 but by the late 1960s, she had realised that she was gay. She was outed by a former lover who sued her for palimony in 1981, and although she won the case, she lost almost all her commercial endorsements. She has been with her partner, Ilana Kloss, for nearly 40 years and retired from singles matches in 1983 and doubles in 1990. She was awarded the Medal of Freedom by President Obama in 2009 and has continued to be an ambassador for her sport and for gender equality.Presenter: Kirsty Young Producer: Cathy Drysdale

Philip Treacy is one of the most prolific and acclaimed hat designers working in the UK. His work was very much in evidence at this year's Royal Wedding and at Royal Ascot. Meghan Markle wore one of his designs for her first official public engagement as the Duchess of Sussex. Other notable clients include Madonna, Tina Turner, Grace Jones, who has showcased his creations on and off stage, and Lady Gaga, for whom he made a black telephone hat. Originally from Ahascragh, a small village in County Galway, Ireland, Philip learned to sew when he was six years old. He grew up opposite a church and he recalls how, as a young boy, he would go to all the weddings, uninvited, to look at the clothes and in particular the wedding dresses. He went on to study fashion at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin, and then won a place on the MA fashion design course at the Royal College of Art in London, graduating in 1990 with first class honours. He enjoyed a meteoric rise to success when fashion stylist Isabella Blow saw his student hat collection. She introduced him to Karl Lagerfeld, who quickly invited him to design hats for Chanel Couture when he was still in his early twenties. He has won the title of British Accessory Designer of the Year at the British Fashion Awards on five occasions, and was awarded an honorary OBE for services to the British fashion industry in 2007. Presenter Kirsty Young Producer Sarah Taylor.