Desert Island Discs

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BBC Radio 4 FM

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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.

BBC Radio 4 LW

Desert Island Discs: Professor Sir Jeremy Farrar

Professor Sir Jeremy Farrar

BBC Radio 4 - Desert Island Discs, Professor Sir Jeremy Farrar

Professor Sir Jeremy Farrar, medical scientist, shares the soundtrack of his life.

Professor Sir Jeremy Farrar, medical scientist, and director of the Wellcome Trust, shares the soundtrack of his life with Lauren Laverne.

Professor Sir Jeremy Farrar is Director of the Wellcome Trust, a global charitable foundation which funds scientific research. He is a member of Sage, the scientific group currently advising the government on Covid-19.

He is the youngest of six children and was born in Singapore.  His mother was an artist and his father was a teacher, who worked around the world, and the family lived in New Zealand, Cyprus and Libya.

After struggling to win a place a medical school, he trained as a doctor in London and then moved to Edinburgh to work as a neurologist. He switched to public health and was for 18 years the Director of the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit in Vietnam, where he worked on infectious diseases, including the re-emergence of bird flu in 2004. He was knighted for services to global health in 2019, and is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences and a Fellow of The Royal Society.

DISC ONE: Under The Boardwalk by The Rolling Stones
DISC TWO: The World Service Lillibulero theme, composed by Henry Purcell
DISC THREE: Muezzin Call To Prayer, recorded by David Fanshawe 
DISC FOUR:  Ulysses by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, read by Sir Simon Russell Beale
DISC FIVE: Mallai Chroch Shli by Duncan Chisholm
DISC SIX: Nabucco: Chorus Of The Hebrew Slaves from Verdi's Nabucco, by the Chicago 
Symphony Chorus, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sir Georg Solti
DISC SEVEN: 7 Seconds by Youssou N'Dour & Neneh Cherry  
DISC EIGHT: Love under the Moonlight by The Khac Chi Ensemble

BOOK CHOICE:   Other Men's Flowers: An Anthology of Poetry by A. P. Wavell
LUXURY ITEM: A cricket bowling machine   
CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Love under the Moonlight by The Khac Chi Ensemble

Presenter Lauren Laverne
Producer Sarah Taylor

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