BBC Sounds Music Radio Podcasts

Hello, Lauren LeVern here.

Desert Island Discs is taking its usual Easter break at the moment,

so to keep you entertained in the meantime, we've chosen some fabulous additions from our back catalog for you.

As usual, this is a podcast, so the music has been shortened for rights reasons.

We do hope you enjoy listening.

Music Music

My castaway this week is the writer, Julie Cooper.

She has been rattling out best sellers for 30 years,

filling them with heroes, horses, dogs and sex.

Her tales of make-believe tofs and the ribbled shenanigans are full of wit and warmth,

and set in a cotswold world populated by dashing cats with glittering eyes,

and women in sleek jodpers and ravishing ballgowns, who really ought to know better.

Her books have sold in their multi-millions, and although she takes around four years to research

and write each one, she must surely understand instinctively the proclivities and preoccupations

of their characters. She too was born into what would then have been called an upper middle-class

family, and her childhood was spent among buttercapped fields populated by ponies and pets.

At boarding school she earned the nickname the unholy terror, and her working life got off to

a rather rickety start. She was sacked from 22 jobs consecutively, but much like the story of her

fictional heroines it all came good in the end. She says, I am proud of these books. I know they're

frivolous, imperfect, but people love them. Maybe one day I will write something more serious,

but basically my aim in life is to add to the sum of human happiness. So welcome,

...