You're about to listen to a BBC podcast, but this is about something else you might enjoy.

My name's Katie Lecky and I'm an assistant commissioner for on demand music on BBC Sounds.

The BBC has an incredible musical heritage and culture and as a music lover, I love being part of that.

With music on sounds, we offer collections and mixes for everything, from workouts to helping

you nod off, boogie in your kitchen, or even just a moment of calm. And they're all put together

by people who know their stuff. So if you want some expertly curated music in your life,

check out 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 2007.

Music My castaway this week is the writer Edna O'Brien. For more than 45 years she has lived in the literary spotlight. Described as a poet of heartbreak, her lyrical storytelling has excelled in capturing the fragility and pain of the human condition, reflecting the drama of her own life as much as the imagined journeys of her characters.

Born and raised in a small village in County Clare, her first and highly successful novel, The Country Girls, was banned and indeed burned in the streets of Ireland when it was first

published in 1960. An uneasy relationship with her homeland continues to this day. But she says of

Ireland, it's in my roots, and when I dream at night, it's the place I go.

So, Edna O'Brien, 20 novels, numerous short stories, screenplays, biographies.

You said in the past that if you were at peace, you wouldn't need to write, given that you are still writing.

Presumably you're still not at peace.

I would still stand by that.

Writing is generated or caused by some unknown

and indeed unnameable conflict or disturbance within one.

So that includes turmoil, but it also includes quest. There is a quest for something,

so that I am both glad that I have this urgency within me to make out of nothing some little thing.

Your identity, of course, as a writer, cannot be able to make out of nothing some little thing. Your identity, of course, as a writer,

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