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 2007.

My My castaway this week is Yoko Ono.

She was already a noted avant-garde artist in her own right when she started dating one of the most famous men in the world, John Lennon.

Then, depending on who you listen to, she either stole him from

the nation or helped him to focus on what was important to them both. For a long time, she was

publicly reviled, but now more than 25 years after John's murder, and with Yoko herself, aged 73,

the public perception of her is at last shifting. Yoko Onopo McCartney said of you that he had

initially thought that you seemed to be this cold woman and then he added, I think that was wrong.

She's just more determined than most people to be herself. Do you think that's true?

Well, I think he was very kind to say that.

But it's true.

You know, your life is not to appease people, but to be yourself.

My mother was always telling me that.

And that's what I was.

I was just being myself.

I was always like that, you know.

It's how I was brought up, I think, yeah. I mean, most of us, most of us do care, don't we, what people think of us,

as much as we might all pretend that we don't.

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