Geraldine James

Geraldine James

Author: BBC Radio 4 May 30, 2004 Duration: 36:47

Sue Lawley's castaway this week is one of Britain's best known actresses - Geraldine James. Geraldine James became a household name 20 years ago for her performance as Sarah Layton in the epic, lavish series The Jewel in the Crown. But she is also used to far more earthy roles - one of her first television performances was portraying the real-life story of a deaf/mute prostitute from Bradford for which she won a TV Critics' award. The TV role she took after Jewel in the Crown was as the redoubtable and beefy Lady Maud in Blott on the Landscape and, later, more northern prostitutes in Band of Gold.

She is a well respected stage actress - key roles include Portia in the Merchant of Venice opposite Dustin Hoffman and When I Was a Girl I Used to Scream and Shout. Her most recent screen work was as the prim and disapproving Women's Institute leader in the hugely successful film Calendar Girls. After school she studied drama at the Drama Centre, London, and spent three years in repertory theatre and school theatre before embarking on her television career; most recently as Lady Rowley in Trollope's He Knew He was Right. She was made an OBE in 2003.

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

Favourite track: In Tears of Grief, Dear Lord We Leave Thee by Johann Sebastian Bach Book: The Fatal Shore by Robert Hughes Luxury: iPod


The Desert Island Discs: Archive 2000-2005 podcast opens a unique window into a pivotal era, drawing from the BBC Radio 4 archives. This isn't just a collection of interviews about music; it's a deeply personal exploration of life, ambition, and memory through the voices of the early 21st century. Each episode presents a guest from this period-be they an artist, a politician, a scientist, or an activist-facing the program's enduring and revealing premise: selecting the eight pieces of music they would take if stranded alone. The conversation that unfolds around these choices is where the magic happens. The host gently guides them from their selections into stories of childhood influences, career-defining moments, personal triumphs, and profound losses. You'll hear the crackle of a vinyl record lead into a confession, or a symphony cue a tale of resilience. Listening to this podcast feels like uncovering a time capsule of cultural and emotional history, where a pop song can explain a political stance and a classical adagio can frame a love story. It’s an intimate study of character and a testament to how the soundtrack of our lives shapes our identity. These archived conversations, preserved in this podcast, remain compelling because they bypass the superficial, using music as the key to unlock genuine human experience.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 100

Desert Island Discs: Archive 2000-2005
Podcast Episodes
P D James [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 36:28
P D James was born in Oxford, later moving to Ludlow on the Welsh Borders where she experienced a childhood which she says had more in common with a Victorian childhood than anything today. She was a well-behaved, quiet…
Carl Djerassi [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 36:17
Carl Djerassi was born in Vienna to an Austrian mother and Bulgarian father. Both parents were involved in the medical profession and, growing up surrounded by medical paraphernalia, he assumed that he would become a doc…
Paul Gambaccini [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 34:05
Paul Gambaccini was born in New York City in 1949 and revelled growing up to the sounds of the 1960s. He loved listening to the radio and chose to go to Dartmouth College in preference to Harvard or Yale because it had a…
Philip Pullman [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 37:00
Philip Pullman is the author of the celebrated His Dark Materials trilogy: Northern Lights, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass. He was born in Norwich and spent his early years travelling all over the world with his…
Dame Alicia Markova [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 43:43
Dame Alicia Markova was born Lilian Alice Marks in December 1910, in a two-bedroom flat in Finsbury Park, London. She began ballet classes because she was flat footed and knock kneed. Her natural talent, when she was ten…
Timothy Spall [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 33:32
Timothy Spall grew up in Battersea, South London. He found school pretty uninspiring and left with art as his only qualification. However, when he played the part of the Cowardly Lion in the school production of The Wiza…
Brian May [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 36:55
Brian May spent his childhood in Feltham near London and he learnt his first chords on his father's ukelele banjo. He soon progressed to the guitar, which he started learning when he was eight. He perfected his technique…
Alan Titchmarsh [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 37:02
Alan Titchmarsh was drawn to gardening from an early age in Ilkley, Yorkshire, making his first polythene greenhouse at the age of twelve and deciding he was going to be a gardener when he grew up. He left school at fift…
Minette Walters [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 36:38
After Minette Walters' father died of injuries sustained in World War II she won a scholarship to Godolphin School, and eventually became Head Girl. From a young age she shunned girls' story books, preferring the more gr…

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