Hi, it's Nicola Cochlin. Young people have been making history for years, but we don't often hear about them. My brand new series on BBC Sounds sets out to put this right. In history's youngest heroes, I'll be revealing the fascinating stories of 12 young people who've played a major role in history and who've helped shape our world. Like Audrey Hepburn, Nelson Mandela, Louis Braille and Lady Jane Grey,

history's youngest heroes with me, Nicola Cochlin.

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 2009. My castaway this week is the actor Martin Shaw. He was still a student when

Alec Guinness sent him fan mail. He auditioned for Sir Lawrence Olivier and trod the boards

with John Gilgud. Even Elvis Presley apparently endorsed his talents.

In many of his best-known roles, he is a maverick, a campaigner and an idealist, elements that seem to have been important to him in real life too.

But although he's been one of our most popular stage in television actors of the past 40 years and has taken on more than a hundred

different roles. He has spent half a lifetime moving out of the shadow of one of his earliest

parts, Ray Doyle in the professionals. He says of his choices, anything worth doing is going to be

risky and I really wanted to take risks. I don't think we take enough. Everybody is so afraid of

upsetting somebody. People have just got to grow up. If they're upset, then don't watch. We will come on,

Martin Shaw to Lawrence Olivier and Gilgut, I hope, a little later. But first of all,

the King, Elvis, how did he come to actually see or almost review one of your performances?

It happened through a psychic who came to see me playing Elvis in Are You Lonesome Tonight,

which was a tribute written by Alan Blesdale.

And it was one of the final performances.

And I got this extraordinary letter from a psychic.

He said that he was aware that Elvis was on stage,

that he'd been in touch with Elvis,

...