The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is the racehorse trainer Jenny Pitman. She'll be talking to Sue Lawley about the empathy she feels for the horses she trains and her relationship with their owners. She won the Grand National in 1983 with Corbiere, and she has twice trained the winner of the Cheltenham Gold Cup. In 1995 her charge, Royal Athlete, won the Grand National, crowning her spectacular success as a trainer.

[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs] 

Favourite track: A Four Legged Friend by Roy Rogers
Book: Veterinary Notes For Horse Owners by M Horace Hayes
Luxury: Television set Published on October 1, 1995.

Jenny Pitman

The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is one of the country's most successful lyricists, Don Black.

Songs like Born Free and Diamonds are Forever, and musicals like Sunset Boulevard, Billy and Aspects of Love have made him a rich man. But he'll be talking to Sue Lawley of his early memories of his poor but happy Jewish family in the East End of London and how an apprenticeship on the New Musical Express led him into the world of popular music. 

[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs] 

Favourite track: The Four Seasons Adagio In G Minor For Organ & Strings by Antonio Vivaldi
Book: 14,000 Things To Be Happy About by Barbara Ann Kipfer
Luxury: Snooker table Published on October 22, 1995.

Don Black

The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is the novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard. In 1950, her first novel The Beautiful Visit was published. Now, some 45 years later and after many other books, she has just completed the concluding book of The Cazalet Chronicles. She'll be talking to Sue Lawley about the problems of combining writing and marriage; she abandoned her three marriages - her first husband, being the naturalist Peter Scott, and her last, the writer Kingsley Amis; and she'll be ruminating on the nature of love and who might experience it. 

[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs] 

Favourite track: Requiem Dies Irae by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Book: All the sonatas by Scarlatti
Luxury: Piano Published on October 29, 1995.

Elizabeth Jane Howard

The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is the writer Umberto Eco. His best-selling novel The Name of the Rose propelled him from the relative obscurity of his post as Professor of Semiotics at Bologna University to worldwide fame at the age of 50.

He'll be talking to Sue Lawley about how he deals with the demands of his celebrity status, his childhood in Mussolini's Italy and his other works - Foucault's Pendulum and The Island of the Day Before.

[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs] 

Favourite track: Goldberg Varations No 22 by Johann Sebastian Bach
Book: The New York Phone Book
Luxury: Laptop computer Published on November 12, 1995.

Umberto Eco

Desert Island Discs Archive: 1991-1996
Castaways choose eight records, a book and a luxury to take with them to the mythical desert island. Full listings can be found on the Desert Island Discs website.

Desert Island Discs 91-96

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