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Composer
282 episodes
Chosen over the decades
282
Total castaways
1980s
Peak decade
8
Decades seen
Castaways who chose this
Mary Benson on pretending to write notes about Saul Bellow's Herzog while under house arrest
Kyra Vayne on eating potato peels and rotten fish bones to survive the Russian Revolution
Roy Calne on the collie dog that bounded into an auditorium after a kidney transplant
Christopher Hampton on writing his first play at the age of eight in Egypt
Gillian Shephard on being stuck in a teaching routine she didn't enjoy
Richard Dawkins on comparing God to Father Christmas and the Tooth Fairy
Frances Partridge on losing her faith in a seaside boarding house aged 11
Cicely Saunders on the patient who thanked her for telling him he was dying
How hearing the Turangalîla symphony in a lift convinced Harrison Birtwistle to become a composer
Oliver Sacks on a patient who thought songs from the 1970s were music from the future
Elijah Moshinsky on the night people walked out of his play because the theatre had no centre aisle
Christabel Bielenberg on ringing the Gestapo and demanding they turn off the lights
Juliet Stevenson on reading a poem at age nine that sparked her acting instinct
Anthony Rolfe Johnson on being told he was in the wrong job by a singing teacher
How Elvis Costello stood outside a bank with a whistle during bullion deliveries
Paddy Ashdown on being asked to call himself Captain Jeremy John Durham Ashton
Michael Tilson Thomas on being told to put his suit on and conduct mid-concert
Nigel Lawson on switching from maths at Oxford before he was found out