Wisden and Desert Island Discs

In November 2023, broadcaster Peter White was asked on to Desert Island Discs - a tribute to a career that included an upcoming half-century as presenter of BBC Radio 4's In Touch programme. Having chosen eight favourite tracks, he was offered the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare, then invited to choose one other book with which to be marooned. He plumped for Wisden's 1962 edition. A Hampshire fan, White - blind from birth - picked that year so he could read about his county's first Championship-winning season. He did not expect he'd have long to enjoy it, since his survival was a moot point: he'd be "dead within weeks," he told Lauren Laverne.

White is the 14th guest to turn to Wisden for company on his fictional island. Others have included Alec Bedser, commentator Rex Alston, and William Frankel, long-time editor of The Jewish Chronicle. Colin Cowdrey, appearing on the programme in 1968, requested the 1956 edition so he could relive his performances on his first Ashes tour. Solipsistic, sure, but it doesn't compete with the sheer cricket badgery of Gary Lineker in 1990. When Sue Lawley told Lineker, the then 29-year-old England football captain, that his request for a complete set of Almanacks was "very crickety", he said it was about to get cricketier - and asked for a bowling machine as his luxury item so he could stage his own matches. "I figured I could just about make a cricket bat, especially if there's a willow tree," said Lineker, who had already chosen "Soul Limbo" as one of his records. Island life would have advantages, he realised: no fielder to catch his skied edges, no umpire to give him out.

Hosts have disagreed over whether a full set of Wisden is permissible - it's hardly the same as asking for a Harry Potter compendium. The programme's creator, Roy Plomley, was generous with his castaways, never quibbling over the space those yellow books were going to take up in the boat, or whether they might sink it before reaching shore. Kirsty Young forbade Stuart Rose, then the chairman of Marks & Spencer, from having a copy of The Times delivered every morning, but didn't recognise the nightmare printing project she was agreeing to when he opted instead for Wisden's "collected works" in a single bound volume. Laverne took a stricter line with White, who was refused the entire collection, even though he said he would have taken them "digitised, so I could read them in Braille" on a special machine. Who knew the sweet-faced DJ could be so cruel? Film-maker David Puttnam sensibly opted for the four-volume Wisden Anthology, which raised no eyebrows, and which he was certain would stave off boredom better than rereading a novel.

Geoff Boycott, interviewed in 1971, supplemented the Wisdens he had been given with a telephone line to a cricket-scores service; 25 years later, Dickie Bird upgraded this luxury to satellite TV. When Boycott picked "My Way" as his favourite track, it surprised no one, but Dickie's choices were a revelation: "When I Fall In Love", "Feelings", "The Way We Were". The romantic content was countered with his typically bluff description of Shirley Bassey and Barbra Streisand as "tremendous professionals".

Tony Greig's appearance, when he was Test captain, was similarly illuminating. Few other 29-year-olds would have chosen "There'll Always Be an England" and "Scotland the Brave" as their opening tracks and, when Plomley asked what Greig would be happiest to get away from on the island, he answered in a flash: "The tax man." Choosing Wisden was also a business decision, providing the reference material he needed to write a "very, very" serious cricket book. Unfortunately, he'd forgotten to ask for pen or paper: Plomley suggested he scribble in the margins, presumably with beetles' blood.

Two musicians, interviewed separately in the mid-1980s, saw Wisden as more of an escape. Jazz saxophonist John Surman imagined relaxing with it when he wasn't setting Shakespeare or the Bible to music. Violinist Nigel Kennedy told presenter Michael Parkinson that "it transports you to a different world". So would his other two books, given his plan to turn them into a raft. You must, however, be careful what you wish for. Conservative MP John Biffen spent his childhood in Taunton, and requested a 1946 Wisden so he could spend hours "reading the delightful results that were attained by Somerset in that year". As any fule kno, Harold Gimblett and Arthur Wellard's efforts - to help their county to fourth place in the Championship - are recounted in the 1947 edition, and all Biffen would have got were a couple of wartime fixtures at Bristol and Glastonbury.

Perhaps, then, no one has chosen better than White. His 1962 selection doesn't just offer a six-page essay on "Happy Hampshire". It also includes an Ashes tour diary by Jack Fingleton, beginning with two lines from Henry Longfellow's A Psalm of Life: And, departing, leave behind us Footprints on the sands of time. What could be more Robinson Crusoe?