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Desert Island Discs

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Castaway guests share the soundtrack of their lives.

Eight tracks, a book and a luxury: what would you take to a desert island? Guests share the soundtrack of their lives.

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Kirsty Young

Frances Wood

Desert Island Discs: Frances Wood

05/12/2010

BBC Radio 4 - Desert Island Discs, Frances Wood

Writer and historian Frances Wood joins Kirsty Young to choose her Desert Island Discs.

Kirsty Young's castaway is the writer and historian Frances Wood. 

As head of the Chinese collection at the British Library she is the gatekeeper to some of the rarest printed texts in the world. Her life has been immersed in the language and culture of the Far East and, along the way, she's spent time learning how to throw hand-grenades, plant rice in the paddy-fields and bundle Chinese cabbages. 

She was in China in the final months of Mao Zedong's regime and remembers being aware of the sense of national unease: "There were the bodies that floated down the Pearl River to Hong Kong - you did get a real sense of foreboding. You did know that the whole country was on edge." 

Producer: Leanne Buckle 

Record: Don Carlos 
Book: A copy of Chinese dictionary Cihai, (which means Sea of Words) from the 1930s 
Luxury: The War Memorial outside Euston Station.

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