Tuning in…
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Composer
140 episodes
Chosen over the decades
140
Total castaways
1970s
Peak decade
8
Decades seen
Castaways who chose this
June Spencer on climbing to the highest point of a desert island to shout Hallelujah
Rob Delaney on meeting his wife while caring for a 17-year-old girl with cerebral palsy
How a two-week-old nettle stem helped Patricia Wiltshire catch a murderer
Adam Kay on being told he was gay by a classmate running a pornography library
Richard E Grant on witnessing his mother with his father's best friend at age 10
Maggie O'Farrell on hiding in her daughter's Wendy house to write during lockdown
Helena Morrissey on her childhood obsession with earning Brownie badges
Garry Kasparov on his mother refusing to let him quit during a losing match
Marjorie Wallace on learning the entire Rime of the Ancient Mariner by heart at six
Sister Wendy Beckett on her father's return from war and her loss of status
Simon Murray on being forced to run in circles with rocks in the Foreign Legion
Jung Chang on her grandmother crying in a mosquito net and cursing the Communists
Nicholas Parsons on his mother's fear that show business would deprave him
Anthony Horowitz on discovering writing as an escape from a cold boarding school
Katharine Whitehorn on her husband telling her to get a job on a Hampstead Heath bench
Cormac Murphy O'Connor on waking up at three in the morning and wondering if it's all true
Kyffin Williams on cutting holes in his own paintings with a Stanley knife
Alec Broers on being thought lonely at university for enjoying ice skating and music
Clarissa Dickson Wright on the carrots her father fed her, still with slugs on them
Colin Dexter on Lord Harding of Penshurst offering to publish his first Morse novel within 24 hours