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 Kirstie 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 1986,

and the presenter was Michael Parkinson. Music I cast away today's both an actor and a star.

At present, he's appearing with the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford,

while at the same time starring in a successful film called The Mission,

sharing the billing with Robert De Niro.

The part of Charles Ryder in Brideshead Revisited

set him on the path to stardom.

The film The French Lieutenant's woman gave him an international reputation.

He is Jeremy Irons.

Jeremy, I should tell listeners that, in fact,

we are sitting in your home at Stratford, in a beautiful sort of late autumn afternoon, which accounts of the sort of wildlife noise we might hear throughout. I didn't want to think we've got crows in the studio. Correct. You were born in cows. What kind of a background do you come from? My father was a chartered accountant. He worked for Saunders

Road down the Isle of Wight. And I suppose a good solid middle class background. We lived in fact

in St Helens and had sailing dinghies that we use and horses that we rode. I went away as my

elder brother and elder sister did to boarding school at seven, which I've always

...