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 castaway this week is the writer Peter Acroyd, a master of grand biography, astute

fiction and sweeping history, he could be described as a method writer,

wrapping himself around his subjects expertly finding their voice and committing it to print.

Brought up on a council estate in London,

he took a double first from Cambridge,

won a scholarship to Yale,

and became the literary editor of The Spectator by 23.

He then left to write full time, picking up numerous prestigious awards.

Yet, despite all that and being an alumni of the Barbara Speaks School of Tapdancing,

he says, I don't find myself interesting. You could sum it up in a few words

or sentences really.

Came from nothing, self-educated, luck, energy, curiosity, ambition, that's it.

I actually think, Peter Accroyd, that sounds like a killer cocktail of interest.

Is it simply that you don't like talking about yourself that's the problem?

I'm not very keen on talking about myself, must say it's a subject which I approach with

trepidation I'd much rather talk about my work rather than about my life because I don't

really think my life holds that much interest for anyone apart for myself.

Even when you hear me, give that little astonishing list there.

You don't think actually she might be onto something.

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