Hi, it's Nicola Cochlin. Young people have been making history for years, but we don't often hear about them. My brand new series on BBC Sounds sets out to put this right. In history's youngest heroes, I'll be revealing the fascinating stories of 12 young people who've played a major role in history and who've helped shape our world. Like Audrey Hepburn, Nelson Mandela,

Louis Braille and Lady Jane Grey, history's youngest heroes with me, Nicola Cochlin. Listen on BBC Sounds.

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Discs from BBC Radio 4.

For rights reasons, the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.

For more information about the programme, please visit BBC.co.com.ukes slash Radio 4. My castaway this week is Baroness Scotland.

As Attorney General, she's the government's chief law officer, expected to dispense top-notch legal advice whilst also sitting in on cabinet meetings.

Even before she entered Parliament, she had enjoyed a stratosphericly successful legal career.

She took silk at the age of 35, becoming the most youthful QC since William Pitt the younger.

But law has never been her only love. She was first drawn towards a career in ballet,

then for many years believed her vocation lay in becoming a nun.

In the end, however, she settled on a husband and a life in the law.

Of her success, she says,

in my family, it was just bog standard. I was brought up to

believe that everyone is the arbiter of their own fortune. If you said to my father, no one else is

doing it, he'd say, good, you can be first. Yet it seemed Patricia Scotland as if this

truly glittering career may reach an abrupt end just a couple of months ago.

It was September when we found out through the newspapers that you had been employing a housekeeper

who has subsequently been charged with working in the UK illegally. You were fined £5,000.

For your political opponents, it was a complete gift this situation, something of an own goal for you.

I think it was a very difficult time and I clearly accepted that I should have taken a photocopy of the passport.

I didn't. That was wrong. I was fined. I accepted it.

For legal reasons, we can't discuss the details of the case.

...