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

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

For more information about the program, please visit BBC.co.uk.

Radio 4. My cast away this week is the actress Dame Harriet Walter. From Hedder Gabbler to Cleopatra to Lady Macbeth with plenty in between. She has been a stalwart of the stage for more

than three decades, winning great acclaim for her work with the Royal Shakespeare

Company and the National Theatre. She turned down a place at Oxford because she knew she wanted to act, only to find that the drama schools didn't want her.

She applied five times over before getting a place, and after that, success a slow burn rather than a quick burst of fireworks.

Lots of TV and film work has come her way too, but she says,

the roles that have fed me and used me best have been my stage roles.

I don't think about making the clever career choices.

I don't feel I'm a household name or a national treasure, but I certainly feel really happy. It's come out better than I ever imagined.

I want to start then Harriet Walter with some of the things that have come out better than you ever imagined.

In the space of just a few months, you've turned 60, you've been made a dame and you got

married for the first time. That's quite a list.

Things come in three, so I think I've had my luck for quite a while.

Quite a year.

Yeah, amazing.

Not only, you know, having never changed my name for 60 years,

suddenly being having a choice between being a dame or Mrs Guy Paul.

So which is it?

I think I'll probably just stick with Harriet Walter actually.

I think...

...