Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.

For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

Elements of this program may offend or upset some listeners.

The program was originally broadcast in 1997 and the presenter was Sue

Lolly. My castaway this week is a writer. He's unlikely to be nominated for the book

prize. Indeed, critics can be rather dismissive of his work. The fact remains, however, that he's one of the most successful authors in the English language.

One in every 50 books sold by W.H. Smith is written by him, and he's sold at least 10 million books worldwide.

The secret of his success is the disc world,

a fantasy land of wizards, witches, and other strange creatures

whose antics are designed to make you laugh but also to make you think.

It's a world which has made its creator very rich, but commercial success is not the only thing

that drives him.

Every book that he writes will he hopes be as beautiful

as it is entertaining. He is Terry Pratchett. What do you mean by that Terry?

It's very hard to get across the terror with which you sit down and

tackle that first page and it doesn't matter how many books you've done before.

Every new book is a first book. But you've produced so many books. How many

discworld books are there? There's 20 discworld books yes. And you've done those

over what 13 years?

I think about 15.

Yes, I mean I know you try on the whole to write two a year, don't you?

That seems to happen, I don't try.

...