Desert Island Discs: Archive 1991-1996
Society & Culture:Personal Journals
Sue Lawley's castaway on Desert Island Discs this week is the celebrated American writer John Updike. His novels include Rabbit Run (and three Rabbit follow-ups), Couples and The Witches of Eastwick.
He is both poet and historian, famous for charting the changes in post-war American society such as increasing marital breakdown and changing attitudes to death. He started his writing career by selling stories to the New Yorker magazine - something his mother had tried for years but had never succeeded. And he'll be telling Sue Lawley about how he overcame a bad stutter, how he has learnt to control his psoriasis and how now, aged 63, he finally feels normal; part of the gang he never was as a teenager.
[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]
Favourite track: Sing, Sing, Sing by The Benny Goodman Orchestra Book: Complete Works by Marcel Proust Luxury: Silken tent (for luxury, not survival)
Martin Amis
Jennifer Saunders
Ian Dury
Robert Winston
Bruce Forsyth
Rt Hon Tony Blair MP
Tessa Sanderson
Sir Laurens Van Der Post
Chris Patten
Jancis Robinson
Jackie Charlton
Rumer Godden
Lewis Wolpert
Ben Elton
Fran Landesman
Kevin Whately
Professor Colin Blakemore
Sir Terence Conran
Anita Lasker-Wallfisch
André Previn
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