The writer Ved Mehta unfortunately lost his sight at the age of four: "Most blind people in India at that time were beggars, or stayed with their relations like wounded animals."

He describes to Roy Plomley how, in spite of tremendous odds, he gained an education at Oxford University and Harvard, and went on to become a staff writer for the New Yorker, and he chooses the eight records he would take to the mythical island.

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

Favourite track: String Quartet No 14 in C Sharp Minor (Last Movement) by Ludwig van Beethoven
Book: 11th edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica