Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the physician, philosopher, novelist and poet Professor Raymond Tallis. His specialism is the care of elderly patients - it's an area that he combines with his philosophical interest in considering what it is that makes humans unique - all part, as he says, of 'unpacking the miracle of everyday life'.

He was one of five children brought up in modest circumstances in Liverpool. A bright child, he studied at Oxford and then St Thomas' Hospital although he acknowledges that his father was always disappointed that he had become a doctor - thinking it rather a shabby profession compared to his own preference for mathematics. Throughout much of his working life he rose before dawn in order to squeeze in time for his writing before he started his clinical work and in 2000 he was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in recognition of his contribution to medical research.

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

Favourite track: The first movement of String Quintet in C Major by Franz Schubert Book: Being and Time by Martin Heidegger Luxury: A video of a day in the life of his family.