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 Our castaway's career has pursued a route beloved by people writing sensational paperbacks,

shop girl to sex symbol.

Throw in a childhood in India, a convent education,

plus the normal gossip column speculation,

linking her with superstar this and royal that.

And you have the ingredients for an international bestseller,

followed no doubt by a mini-series.

I'm amazed, in fact, she's not written it herself

because she's quite capable,

having once been a columnist on the Times. She is the actress Joanna Lumley. That makes you sound like a very exotic bird. It does, doesn't it? Do you think of yourself that way, Joanna? Well, I think I've probably had quite an unusual life. I feel perfectly normal in the middle of it, but in actual fact, when I've looked back here some of the things I've done, they do seem to be quite exotic. And so I decided to sit down and do a bit of writing, which I'm doing at the moment, just sort of trying to remember some of the stranger and the more amusing parts of it. Is it difficult remembering what happened? I find it very easy. I have an enormous recall from about five onwards and glimmerings before then. What begins to happen, and might it be great age, Michael, is that the nearer we get to now, the dimmer it all becomes. Yes, I think that's probably true. Yes. The great age you're speaking from, of course, is 41. 41. Let's put this thing in perspective. Let's also ask you then, in looking back, and recollecting on your life, what part did music play in it? Any part at all?

Yes, my parents both loved music, and so we had it playing a lot. We had things like Mozart,

Diana Klein of Nachsh music playing around the house. And also, because my father was keen on jazz and things,

we had quite jumpy, nice music. And I can also remember vividly things like when South Pacific must have come out,

...