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 Kirsty Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Discs from BBC Radio 4.

For rights reasons, the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.

For more information about the programme, please visit BBC.co.com.ukes slash Radio 4. My castaway this week is Mary Portis. She has made an art form out of turning heads,

and her galleries have been the enormous plate-glass windows

of Harrod's Topshop and Harvey Nichols.

She put pop bands in the windows,

built an enormous fish from baked bean cans,

and most radically of all, one Christmas,

stripped out the displays and announced the money saved

was being given to charity.

If her designs are theatrical,

it's little wonder. Her first ambitions were for the stage, but family tragedy intervened,

and she was forced to abandon her place at Rada. After both her parents died when she was a teenager,

she was left in sole charge of her younger brother, with scant income and had nowhere to live.

I had no money and no home, but in some ways it was the making of me, she says.

I went into the driving seat and never left it.

So Mary Portis, you're someone who is very comfortable in the driving seat then.

Yes.

That's where you belong.

Yes.

...