Lee Child, writer
Desert Island Discs
BBC
4.4 • 13.7K Ratings
🗓️ 11 January 2026
⏱️ 54 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Lee Child is a writer who is best known for his series of bestselling novels featuring Jack Reacher. Reacher is an enigmatic 6ft 5in, 17-stone ex-military police major who rights wrongs before disappearing off into the sunset. The books have sold in their millions around the world and have inspired two films starring Tom Cruise and a television series.
Lee Child was born James - Jim - Grant in 1954 and grew up in Birmingham. He studied Law at the University of Sheffield and then joined the presentation department at Granada Television where he was a shop steward and became a thorn in the side of the management.
At 40 he was made redundant and sat down to write his first Reacher novel Killing Floor. He found himself an agent and the novel was published in March 1997 - the franchise was up and running. In the UK Lee outsells both Stephen King and John Grisham and worldwide he sells between 12 and 15 million copies a year.
In 2020 Lee announced that he was handing over the Reacher franchise to his younger brother Andrew Grant. The two brothers have worked on several novels since then and the thirtieth Reacher title features both brothers’ names on the cover.
Lee Child was appointed CBE in the 2019 Queen’s Birthday Honours.
He lives in the Lake District with his wife Jane. They have one daughter.
DISC ONE: She Loves You - The Beatles DISC TWO: (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction - The Rolling Stones DISC THREE: So What - Miles Davis DISC FOUR: Tchaikovsky: Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-Flat Minor, Op. 23: I. Allegro non troppo e molto maestoso – Allegro con spirito. Performed by Stephen Hough (piano) and Minnesota Orchestra, conducted by Osmo Vänskä DISC FIVE: Joe’s Blues - Joe Pass DISC SIX: The Lemon Song - Led Zeppelin DISC SEVEN: Für Elise (Bagatelle No. 25 in A minor) Composed by Ludwig Beethoven and performed by Lang Lang DISC EIGHT: Delibes: Lakmé / Act 1: \"Sous le dôme épais\" (Flower Duet) Performed by Renée Fleming (soprano), Susan Graham (mezzo soprano), Philharmonia Orchestra, conducted by Sebastian Lang-Lessing
BOOK CHOICE: Killing Floor by Lee Child LUXURY ITEM: A mechanical wind-up watch CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: So What - Miles Davis
Presenter: Lauren Laverne Producer: Paula McGinley
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts. |
| 0:07.0 | Hello, I'm Greg Jenner, and good news, |
| 0:09.5 | Your Dead to Me, is back for a new series. |
| 0:11.6 | Here we go. |
| 0:12.1 | Yes, we'll explore Emperor Nero's notorious reign with Professor Mary Beard and Patton Oswald. |
| 0:16.9 | I would not want my daughter having the remote control, not alone an empire. |
| 0:38.6 | We'll dissect the decadent life of Philippe Duke-Dolion with Tom Allen. I've often tried to pretend I'm an aristocrat and being very quickly knocked down. And there'll be so much more with comedians like Olga Koch, Mike Wozniak and Rihelina. I'm excited. You're dead to me. The comedy podcast that takes history seriously. Listen first on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:43.7 | Hello, I'm Lauren Levern, and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast from BBC Radio 4. |
| 0:51.0 | 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. |
| 0:54.5 | For rights reasons, the music's shorter than on the original broadcast, |
| 0:59.8 | but you can find a version with longer music tracks on BBC Sounds. Listeners will also get access to episodes 28 days earlier than everyone else. I hope you enjoy listening. My castaway this week is the author Lee Child. His fictional creation, Jack Reacher, is a giant, |
| 1:33.5 | literally and figuratively. Six feet five of pure muscle with book sales to match. Apparently everyone |
| 1:39.3 | stopped counting once they shot past 100 million. For 30 years, Reacher has travelled across America |
| 1:45.1 | from town to town and book to book, |
| 1:47.5 | uncovering dirty secrets |
| 1:48.8 | and meeting out rough justice |
| 1:50.3 | before disappearing off into the sunset. |
| 1:53.1 | The man behind the Enigma |
| 1:54.4 | may have been born a world away from his hero |
| 1:56.8 | in 1950s Coventry, to be precise, |
| 1:59.3 | and grown up in Birmingham, |
| 2:00.7 | but they do share a few qualities. |
... |
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