Hello, I'm Kirstie Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Disks from BBC Radio 4.

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

For more information about the program, please visit BBC.co.uk.

Radio 4. The My customers, My castaway this week is the former president of Ireland and UN Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson,

a professional life defined by public service at the very highest level, she appears

the epitome of the cool-headed pragmatist, and yet she is also something of an enigma.

A committed Catholic who fought hard to legalize

contraception and divorce, an elected head of state with both a noble bearing and a

common touch. Self-assured enough to believe she can make the world a better place

but comfortable admitting publicly when she gets it wrong. As a lawyer she led from the

front championing controversial causes at home in Ireland then later

fiercely defending human rights at the UN. She also has a habit of making history. She

was Ireland's first female president and the first Irish head of state to meet the

Queen at Buckingham Palace. She says of her life and work, over the years I have

given many talks and taken part in many discussions on leadership, women's leadership, political

leadership, business leadership, grassroots leadership, but the element of leadership that really

fascinates me is moral leadership and that seems to me rather a

conventional notion Mary Robinson for somebody who's not a very

conventional person explain it a bit more to me. Moral leadership interests me because it's the most difficult I think.

You've got to be speaking out of your own experience that you've lived and you've got to be listening

to those who most need to hear the voice. I've been fortunate enough to be

involved in a group called the elders. I do stress that I'm one of the younger elders and

...