Desert Island Discs: Archive 2005-201020 Jul 2008

John Stefanidis

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is one of the world's leading interior designers, John Stefanidis. Described as brilliant and inimitable, his work has blazed a trail since the late 1960s. The homes he designs for a closely-guarded list of loyal customers include palaces in Saudi Arabia and log cabins in Aspen, Colorado. His clients will sometimes ask him to design four or five houses for them. He's also designed commercial properties - the public areas in the Bank of England as well as suites at Claridges and Rocco Forte's Le Richemond Hotel on the shores of Lake Geneva.

He had a cosmopolitan upbringing. The only child of Greek parents he was born in Alexandria but, from the age of eight, he mostly lived with his aunt and uncle in Cairo where he became a frequent visitor to the Cairo Museum. It was growing up among the teeming, richly scented streets and bone dry heat of Egypt that he became enraptured with architecture, artefacts and the transformative power of light.

On coming to England for the first time as a teenager he watched 12 plays in 10 days - and says in spite of the cold rooms and dripping walls of his halls at Oxford, he found the rain and green grass exotic.

[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]

Favourite track: Vissi d'Arte from Tosca by Giacomo Puccini Book: Odyssey by Homer Luxury: Sketch book with lots of pencils.

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Episoder(247)

Sandie Shaw

Kirsty Young's castaway is the singer Sandie Shaw. With her melodic, velvety voice, bare feet and Sassoon bob she was the epitome of everything that was swinging about the '60s. She was just 17 when s...

26 Des 201035min

Nick Park

Kirsty Young's castaway is the Oscar-winning animator Nick Park.His most famous creations are Wallace and Gromit: Gromit the silent but wise dog; Wallace, his well meaning owner with notably less brai...

19 Des 201036min

Sir Torquil Norman

Kirsty Young's castaway week is the aviator, inventor and arts patron, Sir Torquil Norman. He comes from a family where derring-do is in the DNA - his grandfather was a pioneering airman, his grandmot...

12 Des 201035min

Frances Wood

Kirsty Young's castaway is the writer and historian Frances Wood. As head of the Chinese collection at the British Library she is the gatekeeper to some of the rarest printed texts in the world. Her l...

5 Des 201035min

Robert Harris

Kirsty Young's castaway is the best-selling writer Robert Harris. He was, apparently, a political junkie from a young age; he was just six when he wrote the essay: 'Why me and my dad don't like Sir Al...

28 Nov 201037min

Alice Cooper

Kirsty Young's castaway is the rock musician Alice Cooper.As a teenager he says it was British music that he tuned in to - listening to The Beatles, The Yardbirds and The Who. He realised that while ...

21 Nov 201036min

Anna Del Conte

Kirsty Young's castaway is the cookery writer Anna Del Conte. Born to a wealthy Milanese family, she arrived in Britain in 1949 where her Italian ingenuity with food was sorely needed in a nation stil...

19 Nov 201036min

Ian McMillan

Kirsty Young's castaway is the poet and broadcaster Ian McMillan. Thirty years ago he was working in a factory gluing together tennis ball halves. Then he got a grant, chucked in his job and devoted h...

7 Nov 201037min