As a new series of Desert Island Discs gets underway, we investigate the least talked about but most fascinating aspect of the show: the castaway’s book choice…
This March, in the most momentous archival unveiling since Glasnost, the entire back catalogue of the world’s longest-running factual radio programme, BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs, went online.
Searchable and sortable, it’s a dangerously addictive resource, especially if you’re the sort of weirdo who’s been carrying around a mental list of eight songs, a book and a luxury since childhood.
Helpfully, the BBC has compiled a list of castaways’ top tunes: Ode to Joy, Land of Hope and Glory, and other drearily predictable fare.
What’s missing, however, is a league table of most requested books. It’s rather a niche interest I’ll admit, but the guest’s choice of desert island reading can be just as, if not more, revealing than their musical picks.
So, in an effort to record the literary tastes of the great and the good, I decided to conduct some research of my own.
The results were interesting, if not eye-poppingly startling.
In fact, the top three choices were pretty dull. Most popular was a dictionary (123 people), followed by an unspecific “anthology of poetry” (c.100 people), then an encyclopedia (90 people).
Putting them to one side, along with the odd guide to boat-building (how that got past Roy Plomley, I don’t know), things start to heat up.
The most popular non-reference book, appearing on 50 people’s lists, is A la recherche de temps perdu. In second place is another unread masterpiece, War and Peace (42 people). The third most popular choice is Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall, picked by 25 castaways including Jo Brand and Jeremy Thorpe.
Top author is Charles Dickens (61 people), although none of his books made it into the top ten. Surprisingly, the fourth most popular writer is Winston Churchill (27 people), although he’s gone out of fashion slightly since the 1960s. Just behind Churchill is the most chosen female author: Jane Austen. Holding up the top ten is Kenneth Grahame (for The Wind in the Willows), chosen by 18 castaways: that’s 12 more than picked poor old Geoffrey Chaucer.
Along the way, there were some wonderful bits of trivia.
The only Conservative Prime Minister to pick a novel as opposed to non-fiction was John Major (The Small House at Allington by Anthony Trollope). Disgraced MP David Mellor chose The Mayor of Casterbridge just two months before his own spectacular downfall in 1992. Ian Fleming, characteristically mysterious, went for War and Peace in German. Alfred Hitchcock opted, endearingly, for Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management. Warring sisters A.S. Byatt and Margaret Drabble both chose Proust. Britt Ekland asked if she could take “recent editions of magazines, e.g. Vanity Fair, Vogue”. Seven castaways picked the Koran.
Here are the top ten requested books, excluding reference:*
1. A la recherche de temps perdu (chosen by Diana Mosley and John Updike)
2. War and Peace (Princess Margaret, Frankie Howerd)
3. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Jo Brand, Jeremy Thorpe)
4. The Iliad and/or The Odyssey (Emma Thompson, Boris Johnson)
5. The Wind in the Willows (John Thaw, Ronnie Scott)
6. Divine Comedy (Luciano Pavarotti, Nigella Lawson – who asked for it in Italian)
7. The Lord of the Rings (Edmund Hillary, David Bellamy)
8. A History of the English-Speaking Peoples by Winston Churchill (Morecambe & Wise, Fanny & Johnnie Cradock)
9. The Diary of Samuel Pepys (Bob Geldof, John Le Mesurier)
10. Robinson Crusoe (Frank Bruno, James Stewart)
And the top ten authors:
1. Charles Dickens
2. Marcel Proust
3. Leo Tolstoy
4. Winston Churchill
5. Jane Austen
6. Edward Gibbon
7. P.G. Wodehouse
8. Homer
9. Dante
10. Kenneth Grahame
The rest of my groundbreaking survey, including the top hundred most popular books and a geographical breakdown, is available on request.
*Castaways are already given the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare, not that you needed reminding.
Anna Baddeley is editor of The Omnivore.
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