"HAVING TO TAKE A BIBLE WAS ALL VERY WELL IN 1943" -

Nobody has to take the bible or Shakespeare, it was just that in the early days it got tedious because lots of people said they'd take either one or the other, so the producers said, oh FFS, here, pretend you get those already, now pick something else.

Martin Carthy asked for Dickens (a notional "Complete Works") as his favourite book - the 63rd person to ask for him. 27 have gone for Jane Austen, 18 for Tolkien.

For luxury, 58 people have asked for a guitar like Carthy, 185 for a piano, 92 for pen and paper, 63 for bed, 88 for bath, and 239 for various kinds of drinks or drink-dispensing devices (crates of booze, coffee machine etc).

As you can see, you can data-mine the Desert Island Discs website for nuggets of info, searching by castaway, musical choice, book choice, luxury, occupation etc - see http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/features/desert-island-discs/find-a-castaway# .   From there you can Listen Again to archived editions, going back at least to the 1960s.

For instance, there have been 14 folk musician episodes (out of 2925 total), according to their classification, including Peggy Seeger, Joan Baez, Mike Harding (from 1982) and Christy Moore - though one or two, eg Delia Murphy from 1952, are not listenable-again-to.