Ian Rankin
Desert Island Discs: Archive 2005-2010
BBC
4.4 • 804 Ratings
🗓️ 16 July 2006
⏱️ 34 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the writer Ian Rankin. Ian Rankin is an award-winning writer of crime fiction and the creator of the Scottish detective John Rebus who has featured in 17 novels to date.
Born in Fife, Rankin came from a working-class background in a coal-mining town where he says he spent most of his childhood trying to "look like he fitted in". In his bedroom he would live out a fantasy life, writing poems, stories and creating strip-cartoons. He admits there are many parallels between himself and Rebus - they lived at the same Edinburgh address, both are fond of a drink and now they even share the same taste in music, though unlike Rebus, Rankin has never smoked. However all that is about to change; Rebus has reached the age of retirement in the police force and Rankin's next novel will be the last in the series.
[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]
Favourite track: Solid Air by John Martyn Book: A Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell Luxury: Pinball machine (traditional American one)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're about to listen to a BBC podcast, but this is about something else you might enjoy. |
| 0:05.4 | My name's Katie Lecky and I'm an assistant commissioner for on demand music on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:10.7 | The BBC has an incredible musical heritage and culture and as a music lover, I love being part of that. |
| 0:17.4 | With music on sounds, we offer collections and mixes for everything, from workouts to |
| 0:22.4 | helping you nod off, boogie in your kitchen, or even just a moment of calm. And they're all |
| 0:28.1 | put together by people who know their stuff. So if you want some expertly curated music in your life, |
| 0:34.9 | check out BBC Sounds. Hello, I'm Krista Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. |
| 0:41.8 | For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music. |
| 0:44.9 | The program was originally broadcast in 2006, and the presenter was Sue Lawley. |
| 0:50.2 | Music My castaway this week is a novelist. |
| 1:08.5 | He writes in the main about a Scottish policeman called Rebus, |
| 1:11.9 | who he says is trying like him to make sense of the world around him. The Rebus stories have made him one of Britain's best-selling writers. |
| 1:19.1 | Set in Scotland, they capture many different aspects of the darker side of life there today, from paedophilia to political corruption. |
| 1:26.0 | He wrote the first novel about Rebus when |
| 1:28.5 | he was 25, but it wasn't until he published the eighth that the world seemed to recognize he |
| 1:33.3 | had a talent that deserved wider recognition. Once an unknown writer, hardly scraping a living, |
| 1:39.1 | he's now famous, successful and popular. It seems to me that the figures of the detective and the novelist are similar |
| 1:45.3 | in some ways, he says. Both seek the truth. Both are interested in human nature and motivation. |
| 1:51.1 | Both are voyeurs. He is Ian Rankin. Let's start with being a voyeur then, Ian. Have you always |
| 1:58.6 | been an outsider looking in? |
| 2:06.5 | I think so. I mean, when I was a small kid growing up in a coal mining town, I knew I was different from the other kids. You know, I would sit in my room and try and write poetry or |
| 2:10.7 | song lyrics or whatever or strip cartoons. But I had this kind of knack of looking like I fitted in. |
... |
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