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 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 2008.

My Castaway this week is the composer Howard Goodall.

Musicals, choral works, movie scores and popular TV show themes, including Blackadder and the Vicar of Dibbley.

His talent extends to almost any area of musical endeavour.

His enthusiasm and deep-rooted commitment to his life's work have regularly propelled him away from the score and onto our television screens,

where he's presented award-winning documentaries on the power and importance of composition,

earning him the sobriquet of music teacher to the nation.

Indeed, in January last year,

he was appointed as England's first ever national ambassador for singing,

leading a £40 million programme to improve group singing in primary schools.

Howard, you've said before that you hear music in your head all the time.

To those of us who don't, that's most of us, that seems quite

odd. Can you explain how it goes? Yes, it's a bit like a CD playing of music you've never heard

before all the time. And I suppose that's why I became a composer, because I suppose I would have

started to happen when I was a boy, around 8 or 9 or 10 years old,

I just started to hear music all the time, and then we'd started to write it down.

You said that it began right about the age of 8th.

When did you realise, well, I was going to say when did you realise that it wasn't normal?

...