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Composer
453 episodes
Chosen over the decades
448
Total castaways
1990s
Peak decade
8
Decades seen
Castaways who chose this
Harold Fielding on the contract demand that got him a police car ride with Sinatra
The Duchess of Kent on her first memory of music from a Victorian musical box
Nigel Lawson on switching from maths at Oxford before he was found out
Thomas Armstrong on singing for Queen Alexandra as a nine-year-old chorister
Miriam Rothschild on losing her microscope vision and turning to wildflowers
Josephine Barnes on her father becoming a mature undergraduate at Oxford aged 44
Robert Runcie on turning back to rescue a crewmate from a burning tank
Claus Moser on watching Hitler's torchlight procession from his window
Hugh Trevor-Roper on being ordered to investigate Hitler's disappearance
How a photograph of Roald Dahl's nieces convinced Patricia Neal to marry him
Lord Armstrong on going to Buckingham Palace with Heath to resign and returning with Wilson
How a desire to be a poet got Vernon Scannell sent to a psychiatrist
James Callaghan on the Ministry of Pensions paying his two-guinea school fees
Jacques Loussier on instantly understanding piano at his first sitting
Nicholas Goodison on buying a cheap barometer that led to writing the standard reference book
Peter Fluck and Roger Law on splitting their desert island by the high tide
Phil Edmonds on his family being ostracized as 'Kaffa Booties' in Zambia
David Wilson on taking his coat off at his British Museum interview
How writing a memoir after a friend's death helped Alison Lurie get published
Christopher Reeve on his first stage role as a boy soprano in Gilbert and Sullivan
Gerald Priestland on being sent away to boarding school at the age of seven
Elwyn-Jones on the emotional ordeal of reading the death sentence in court
Marvin Hamlisch on the concert where his pajamas showed beneath his trousers