Jojo Moyes, writer

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Music, Society & Culture, Personal Journals, Music Commentary

4.3 • 14.3K Ratings

🗓️ 25 January 2026

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Jojo Moyes is a British novelist and screenwriter.

She began her writing career as a journalist and worked at the Egham and Staines News, Independent and South China Morning Post.

Whilst working nightshifts on the Independent, she pursued her novel writing ambitions and wrote books by day. Her first few books were well received but did not topple the best seller lists. That all changed in 2012 when her novel You Before Me was published. Readers fell in love with the story of Louisa Clark, who takes a job looking after an angry young quadriplegic man. The book sold fifteen million copies, was made into a film and Jojo wrote two sequels. Her novels are beloved of book clubs and have sold in excess of fifty seven million copies and have been translated into forty-six languages.

Jojo lives in London.

DISC ONE: Are You Lonesome Tonight? (Laughing Version) (Live) - Elvis Presley DISC TWO: Golden Slumbers - The Beatles DISC THREE: Silly Games - Janet Kay DISC FOUR: The Art Teacher - Rufus Wainwright DISC FIVE: Mozart: Vesperae solennes de confessore in C, K.339: 5. Laudate Dominum omnes gentes (Ps. 116/117) Composed by Mozart and performed by Edith Mathis (soprano), MDR Rundfunkchor Leipzig (choir), Staatskapelle Dresden (orchestra), conducted by Peter Schreier DISC SIX: Big Yellow Taxi by Joni Mitchell DISC SEVEN: A Better Time to Meet - Adrianne Lenker & Buck Meek DISC EIGHT: Je L’Aime à Mourir - Francis Cabrel

BOOK CHOICE: The complete works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky LUXURY ITEM: A mechanical horse CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Are You Lonesome Tonight? (Laughing Version - Live) - Elvis Presley

Presenter Lauren Laverne Producer Sarah Taylor

Desert Island Discs has cast many writers away to the island over the years including Helen Fielding, Marian Keyes and Dame Jilly Cooper. You can hear their programmes if you search through BBC Sounds or our own Desert Island Discs website.

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, Radio Podcasts.
0:05.7	Hello, you're about to listen to a BBC podcast, and I'm Ed Gamble, host of another BBC podcast, The Traitors Uncloaked.
0:12.7	But my show is available only on BBC Sounds, just like Ellis and John's Saturday bonus episodes,
0:18.2	The Pop Top Ten podcast with Scott Mills and Rylan, and comedy specials
0:22.2	from the likes of Harriet Kemsley, Susie Ruffle and Rommashranganathan. However, and maybe I'm biased,
0:27.9	it's really all about the traitors uncoaked. So for a whole bunch of exclusive scoops and
0:32.6	podcasts, listen only on BBC Sounds. Hello, I'm Lauren Le, and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast from BBC Radio 4.
0:40.3	Every week, I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury that they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island.
0:47.6	For rights reasons, the music's shorter than on the original broadcast, but you can find a version with longer music tracks on BBC Sounds.
0:55.1	Listeners will also get access to episodes 28 days earlier than everyone else.
0:59.5	I hope you enjoy listening.
1:25.3	I'm going to... My castaway this week is the writer Jojo Moy's.
1:44.9	Her books have been translated into 46 languages, sold over 57 million copies and reached the number one spot in 12 countries. She grew up in East London, the daughter of two young hippies with a work ethic. Her own CV includes working in a minicab office and cutting her teeth as a journalist while writing fiction in her free time. Her breakthrough book, Me Before You, is the story of a young quadriplegic man who wants
1:51.0	to end his life and the young woman who wants to persuade him not to. It was a global phenomenon
1:56.1	and became a hit film, though she almost didn't write it. It was a fellow novelist who convinced
2:01.4	her to keep going. She says, the story of my life is launching into things because no one
2:06.7	could give me a good reason why I shouldn't. Jojo Moyes, welcome to Desert Island Discs.
2:11.3	Thank you for having me. I'm so ridiculously thrilled to be here. I cried when I was asked to come.
2:18.7	I think if you're the daughter of two Radio 4 listeners and have grown up listening to this, it feels like the kind of pinnacle
2:24.2	of my professional career. So thank you. Well, we are so delighted to have you. So let's go back
2:29.7	to those astonishing statistics, shall we, Jo. Your 46 languages your work's being translated into.
2:35.7	I wonder which part of the world embracing you was most surprising.
	...

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