Dame Stephanie Shirley

Desert Island Discs: Archive 2005-2010

BBC

Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 804 Ratings

🗓️ 23 May 2010

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Entrepreneur Dame Stephanie Shirley joins Kirsty Young on Desert Island Discs.

As a child, she escaped Nazi Germany on the Kindertransport - travelling across Europe for two days in a train with a thousand children and just two adults. She went on to set up a computer programming company which made her a millionaire many times over. But she has given away most of her fortune and now is an ambassador for philanthropy. Her determination throughout it all, she says, has been to prove that hers was a life worth saving.

Record: Mozart- Sonata in C, K. 545 Book: AA Milne - Winnie The Pooh Luxury: Mother and Child by Henry Moore.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, it's Nicola Cochlin. Young people have been making history for years, but we don't often hear about them. My brand new series on BBC Sounds sets out to put this right. In history's youngest heroes, I'll be revealing the fascinating stories of 12 young people who've played a major role in history and who've helped shape our world. Like Audrey Hepburn, Nelson Mandela,
0:22.4	Louis Braille and Lady Jane Grey, history's youngest heroes with me, Nicola Cochlin. Listen on BBC Sounds.
0:30.4	Hello, I'm Kirsty Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Discs from BBC Radio 4.
0:36.7	For rights reasons, the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.
0:41.2	For more information about the IT entrepreneur Dame Stephanie Shirley.
1:09.0	Although, having given away 50 million pounds to date, she may
1:13.3	more accurately be described as an ambassador for philanthropy. Extraordinary, yes, that she's done it,
1:19.5	but extraordinary too that she had the fortune to give. She arrived in Britain in 1939 on the eve of
1:25.3	war, packed off from Vienna without her parents on the
1:28.4	kinder transport. In the years since, her motivation has always been the need to prove that her
1:34.1	life was worth saving. Her experience has, she says, given her, a need to feel that I've
1:39.5	helped somebody, achieved something, that I haven't frittered the day away.
1:48.5	Now, I introduced you as Dame Stephanie, but in fact, for decades you've been known as Steve.
1:50.6	Why have you been known as Steve?
1:56.4	Well, my IT company was more of a crusade for women, Kirsty.
2:03.7	And we had a very slow start and no real capital to put in literally only six pounds and I wasn't really getting any responses to my business development letters and my dear
2:12.9	husband of over 50 years sort of suggested that I signed my letters just as Steve rather than Stephanie.
2:20.8	And it seemed to me as if we began to get some responses and the business began to take off.
2:28.1	But Stephanie, stroke Steve, would have to turn up to meetings.
2:30.9	What happened when you walked through the door?
2:32.4	Well, there was a little frisson of surprise, but people were sufficiently civilised, I think, to get over that. And this was
2:42.0	1962? 62 has started. Right. What does your husband call you then? Oh, he calls me Steve or
	...

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