William Boyd, writer

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 30 March 2025

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

William Boyd is the author of eighteen novels, five short story collections and numerous screenplays. His first published novel, A Good Man in Africa, was inspired by his childhood in West Africa. He is well known for writing ‘whole life’ novels including Any Human Heart which he adapted as a BAFTA-winning television series.

He was born in Accra in Ghana where his Scottish father worked as a doctor, specialising in tropical medicine. In 1964 the family moved to Ibadan, Nigeria where he witnessed the Nigerian Civil War – the Biafran War – which had a profound effect on him both personally and professionally.

He read English Literature and Philosophy at the University of Glasgow and became a lecturer in English at St Hilda’s College, Oxford. During this period he wrote novels and short stories on the side until his breakthrough novel, A Good Man in Africa, was published in 1981.

In 2005 he was appointed CBE for services to literature.

William lives in London with his wife Susan and over 10,000 books.

DISC ONE: Sunday - Mandy Patinkin (George), Sunday in the Park with George Original Broadway Cast Ensemble and Orchestra DISC TWO: Sorry Sorry - Femi Kuti DISC THREE: Away Down the River - Alison Krauss DISC FOUR: Que reste-t-il de nos amours - Charles Trenet DISC FIVE: Daniel - Elton John DISC SIX: Britten: Violin Concerto, Op. 15: 1. Moderato con moto. Performed by Janine Jansen (violin) London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Paavo Järvi DISC SEVEN: Brahms: Horn Trio In E Flat, Op. 40 - 1. Andante - Poco più animato. Performed by György Sebök (piano) Arthur Grumiaux (violin), Francis Orval (horn) DISC EIGHT: Al Otro Lado del Río - Jorge Drexler

BOOK CHOICE: Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov LUXURY ITEM: A piano CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Daniel - Elton John

Presenter Lauren Laverne Producer Paula McGinley

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, you're about to listen to a BBC podcast, so I'd like to tell you where you'll find more just like it.
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0:42.3	BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts.
0:46.3	Hello, I'm Lauren Levern, and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast.
0:51.6	Every week, I ask my guest to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island.
0:54.5	And, for rights reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast.
0:59.2	I hope you enjoy listening.
1:27.4	I'm going to hear. My castaway this week is the writer William Boyd. He's the award-winning author of 18 novels, five short story collections and numerous screenplays, which have made him one of Britain's most successful writers. He's made the genre of whole-life novels pretty much his own, writing four of these cradle-to-grave narratives, including any human heart, which became a BAFTA-winning
1:45.7	television series. Perhaps he was always destined to become a writer. Growing up in the 1960s, between
1:51.7	the family home in West Africa, where his father worked as a doctor and his Scottish boarding school,
1:56.8	he developed what he's called the curious eye of the permanent visitor.
2:03.9	His critically acclaimed breakthrough, a good man in Africa,
2:07.7	drew on the world of his childhood in Ghana and Nigeria.
2:13.0	His books combine broad historical sweeps with the intricacies of everyday life and interrogate what he calls the vast indifference of the universe.
2:16.8	The role of luck, good and bad, also intrigues him,
2:20.3	particularly how his characters deal with the forks in the road
	...

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