I'm Rory Stewart and I grew up wanting to be a hero and I'm still fascinated by the ideas of heroism.

In my new series, I'm taking in the long sweep of history from Achilles to Zelensky and asking, what is a hero?

Simply doing your job, being a decent human being.

A true hero is someone who just kind of shines by

their own light and that light is to be recognised by others. The long history of heroism with me,

Rory Stewart. Listen on BBC Sounds. Hello, I'm Krista Young and this is a podcast from the Desert

Island Discs archive. For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

The program was originally broadcast in 1987,

and the presenter was Michael Parkinson.

Music A castaway is an internationally renowned novelist. Born in Ireland, she wrote her first novel, The Country Girls, in 1960. It immediately gained her widespread acclaim and her reputation has grown with each new

book. On television and radio, she projects an intriguing personality. I've always thought of her

as a beguiling witch. She is, Edna O'Brien. You smile at the description, but that's really

accurate. That's what I do feel about you. Well, I'm very pleased, particularly.

Many people would be afraid of the word which.

I am not at all. One of my great friends and somebody whom I admired very much as a poet was Robert Graves.

And he was quite obsessed with goddesses, which is anything I suppose to do with psychic quality or something

that's beyond the norm and the rational. I know that even saying that many people will say,

oh, how silly, you know, let's deal with the rational. But I always think let's have a little

access to magic and to the unknown,

because life is primarily quite boring.

This is true.

Did Dick Graves call you, which is well, then?

...