Lady Warnock

Speaker 20:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

Speaker 20:08

The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen eighty eight, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:30

My castaway this week is a teacher and a philosopher. A brilliant classicist, she became an Oxford Don, the mother of five children, and then headmistress of a high-powered girls' school. Her clarity of mind, combined with her sense of humanity, have made her a natural choice for many public committees, and it's perhaps in this capacity that she's achieved most recognition, in particular as chairman of the inquiry into the ethical questions surrounding test tube babies. She's the mistress of Girton College, Cambridge. She is Baroness Warnock of Week in the City of Winchester. It's a wonderful title, Lady Warnock, isn't it? I like it, yes. Would you that all makes you sound very serious and academic, which of course you are, but would you describe yourself as a blue stocking?

Lady Warnock1:07

Yeah.

Lady Warnock1:16

I certainly was a blue stocking, if that means someone who was interested very much interested in academic work when I was an undergraduate.

Lady Warnock1:25

But I suppose no, not wholly. I mean, I spent an awful lot of my childhood listening to Radio Luxembourg and, um, riding horses. So I don't think that's blue stocking work really.

Presenter1:35

But did you spend an awful lot of your time at university discussing existentialism until three o'clock in the morning?

Lady Warnock1:40

Good gracious, no. I sat with my head down, slogging through my work, not talking to anybody much.

Presenter1:46

There's quite a flamboyant streak in you, too, isn't there? I mean, you had a or have a reputation in Oxford for being a bit of a dresser.

Lady Warnock1:53

Well, that's very nice. I I hope that's true. But um I certainly always loved clothes. Yes, disastrously. I mean, I'm a great buyer of clothes, really.

Presenter2:02

What sort of clothes?

Lady Warnock2:04

Well, I always have a fantasy about how I'm going to be asked out to wonderful lunch parties. I hardly ever go out to lunch, actually, but there's always this thought that in this dress I shall really look marvellous.

Presenter2:15

But the big floppy hats also attract you, don't they?

Lady Warnock2:18

Well, y I think even I have grown out of the fantasy that there'll ever be a time when I shall wear these hats, but I do love hats. So what to wear on the desert island? There's a problem.

Lady Warnock2:28

trousers and several big sweaters, preferably man, men's sweaters.

Presenter2:33

And what about um music on the island and records? Music is very important to you, isn't it?

Lady Warnock2:37

It is, yes, it is. I might have to have a piano according or something that I could actually teach myself.

Lady Warnock2:46

to play a bigger repertoire, I'm not sure.

Lady Warnock2:49

That would be useful. I might not be good enough to do it. I'd love to have an instrument there of some kind.

Presenter2:54

Is that going to be your luxury? You can try to get away from that.

Lady Warnock2:55

Well, I'm not sure. I'll have to think about it.

Presenter2:57

All right, well we'll think about it as we go on. Let's hear your first record.

Lady Warnock2:57

What?

Lady Warnock3:00

Well, my first record is going to be Mozart's Serenade in C minor.

Lady Warnock3:05

played by the Albion Quartet with my son, my eldest son, playing in it, which is why I've chosen this recording. And it is an enormous pleasure in my life to have a professional musician among my children.

Presenter4:17

The finale of Mozart's Serenade in C minor played by the Albion Quartet with Felix Warnock on bassoon.

Presenter4:24

You have, Lady Warnock, as I mentioned, served on on many public committees, from education to pollution. In fact, two reports have have borne your name, haven't they? Yes, that's so. Two Warnock reports. How did you become such a a natural for these things?

Lady Warnock4:34

Two wool

Presenter4:40

Yeah.

Lady Warnock4:40

Being a philosopher is a great help.

Lady Warnock4:42

Um because you in a way don't have a subject of your own. You're always trying to find out about other people's subjects, science, literature, everything, and standing back and commenting.

Lady Warnock4:54

And so in a way, a philosophy chairman is is quite useful. They start ignorant.

Lady Warnock5:00

But they are quite quick to learn.

Presenter5:00

Yeah.

Presenter5:01

And it means that you're um

Presenter5:04

not frightened to ask the naïve question.

Lady Warnock5:06

Absolutely. That is is quite right. And you are quite accustomed to saying, I don't understand, you better go back and tell me. Which is useful in a chairman.

Presenter5:15

Well indeed, because otherwise experts blind everyone with science and nobody's got the guts to put their hand up and say, I don't know.

Lady Warnock5:20

The other thing I think is that perhaps temperamentally, I don't know, I'm capable of not getting too much involved in um the actual things that make people upset on the report. So other people get very frantic and I can put it all away.

Presenter5:38

You're not sentimental about test tube vapors or

Presenter5:46

So you maintain your academic distance. That's merely being professional, really, isn't it? That is being professional, yes.

Lady Warnock5:51

Yes, absolutely.

Presenter5:51

Uh

Lady Warnock5:51

Yeah.

Presenter5:51

Uh

Lady Warnock5:51

Uh

Presenter5:52

But of course once you get a a a reputation for being good at these things, presume it's a bit like being an actress, I presume, the the invitations then flow in.

Lady Warnock6:01

Yes, they do, but it's quite easy to put one's foot wrong and um they get out of favour, which I dare say is true of actresses as well, but um politically out of favour, one one may well get to that and then the invitations stop flowing in.

Presenter6:15

Has that happened to you?

Presenter6:17

I suspect

Lady Warnock6:18

It may have, yes but it may be that I am just resting.

Presenter6:22

Another record, please.

Lady Warnock6:23

Well, the next record is part of a recording of the Brahms Requiem.

Lady Warnock6:29

that I absolutely love and I think

Lady Warnock6:31

This is where I would say I was sentimental. I need to have reminders of um mortality around me. And I have a particular passion for Brahm, so this brings the two together.

Presenter7:44

Den Ales Fleisch Es ist Vrigras from the Brahms Requiem with the chorus of the Wiener Staats opera and the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Bernard Heitink.

Presenter7:54

Do you come, Lady Warnock, of a highly academic family, then?

Lady Warnock7:58

No, not really at all. My father was a schoolmaster who died before I was born. My mother was really not highly educated at all, but extremely clever and came from a large complicated Jewish family. But, um, no, we weren't particularly academic, but I'd say we were very

Lady Warnock8:18

cultivated. I mean there was lots and lots of music and lots of books.

Lady Warnock8:22

Yeah.

Presenter8:22

You had, or you have, a sister to whom you were very close.

Lady Warnock8:26

Yes, she and I were very much the end of the family, and we were brought up really very much as if we were just the only two in the family. We did everything together, and I still see a great deal of her. And you had your own language, I gather.

Lady Warnock8:41

Well, we had a s we used to tell each other a story where the characters were horses.

Lady Warnock8:47

And it was called Talk Talking. And every time we went for a walk, we went on with this long continuing saga. And we went on doing that, I have shame to say, until we were undergraduates. But we'd forgotten by then that the characters were horses. We were always casting operas and talking about music, really, in disguise of this.

Presenter9:08

Well you were obviously therefore very happy at home, and and and it was very happy childhood. Did that make you, therefore, when you went to school, a rather private person, because you already had a a whole and rounded life?

Lady Warnock9:19

I think that's absolutely right. I greatly enjoyed school, greatly enjoyed it, and I loved all the dramas.

Lady Warnock9:26

Uh that seemed to be forever going on at school.

Lady Warnock9:29

But I always felt

Lady Warnock9:31

Well, not exactly superior, but but different from most other people, and reverted to a completely separate life in the holidays.

Presenter9:39

Did you feel um different in that you were cleverer than most of them?

Lady Warnock9:43

No, I don't think that, because I had some very, very clever friends at at school who were cleverer than I was. I mean, we I and these clever friends formed a rather disagreeable little clique, I think, probably.

Lady Warnock9:55

But that I didn't feel that set me apart, but I did feel

Lady Warnock9:59

separate as far as music went, not because I was a great performer, but because I knew a lot of music, I think, which and and always felt secretly that I it was more important to me than it was to other people.

Presenter10:12

Do you still feel that when you meet people or go about your business, do you feel are you aware of your cleverness? Is really what I'm trying to say, I think.

Lady Warnock10:22

Oh, certainly not. I mean, in school I think I I was always aware that there were few of us who were going on to university, few of us who were really interested in classics or whatever it was, and and that did.

Lady Warnock10:34

Especially in the war, I think that set one apart rather. And I used to be very frightened of meeting people because they'd think I was a blue stocking or didn't understand the things they were interested in. But that's not true any more. I mean, partly I've met so many people, including my husband, who are far cleverer than I.

Presenter10:51

Shall we have your third record now?

Lady Warnock10:53

I need to explain my third record. It's a very different thing from the last.

Lady Warnock10:58

It's the Everle Brothers, and the first of their songs that I ever heard, which is By By Love.

Lady Warnock11:05

Always I've had a great taste for pop music.

Lady Warnock11:08

In the fifties and sixties, when my children were at school, at home, we used to buy an awful lot of singles, and there was something about both the lyrics and the wit of the Everley Brothers that really got to me. I loved it.

Speaker 411:26

Bye.

Speaker 411:27

Big is

Speaker 411:29

Hello loneliness, I think I'm a gonna cry

Speaker 411:34

Bye-bye.

Speaker 411:37

Bye bye sweet Chris

Speaker 411:40

Hello emptiness, I feel like I could die. Crybide my love, goodbye.

Speaker 411:49

There goes my baby

Presenter11:53

The Everley Brothers and Bye bye Love. You went off to Oxford into Lady Margaret Hall to read um classics. You had, up until this time, as I understand it, led a a manless life. How did you meet your husband then?

Lady Warnock12:06

As an undergraduate but not the first time I went to Oxford, I split my career there, went off for two years in the middle because it was the war.

Lady Warnock12:16

and taught at Sherbourne Girls' School.

Lady Warnock12:20

and then came back and did two more years. And it was then that I met my husband.

Lady Warnock12:25

I was by then doing philosophy.

Lady Warnock12:28

and became secretary.

Lady Warnock12:31

of an undergraduate philosophical society.

Lady Warnock12:37

be invited to belong to.

Lady Warnock12:39

And the tradition was that the secretary became president and chose

Lady Warnock12:44

Her secretary.

Lady Warnock12:45

If somebody told me I ought to choose this brilliant undergraduate,

Lady Warnock12:49

Warnock, and I had never met him.

Lady Warnock12:51

Though I had seen him.

Lady Warnock12:53

And so I spent ages wondering how to address him. We were very formal in those days.

Lady Warnock12:58

So I wrote a letter that said, Dear mister Warnock, may I call you Geoffrey? and then asked him whether he'd

Lady Warnock13:04

be secretary and subsequently president, and he wrote back saying

Lady Warnock13:08

Dear Mary, may I call you Miss Wilson?

Lady Warnock13:11

So that was one of the worst snubs I've ever had, and that was my first encounter with him.

Presenter13:14

About

Presenter13:17

However, you did marry him, despite the snow.

Lady Warnock13:19

Well, yes, because it was after that we had great fun running this society and I suddenly realized that men could be funny and that uh i it was actually

Presenter13:19

Well yes

Lady Warnock13:28

Just as much fun gossiping with him as with all my women friends.

Presenter13:34

How did you then sort out having a professional academic life with being married and subsequently producing children? Because it was not particularly encouraged at the time that you should do both, was it?

Lady Warnock13:44

No, it certainly wasn't encouraged, but um I never really, seriously thought of giving up, though occasionally when things got a bit rough and the children it all seemed too much and we couldn't keep a nanny and whatnot, I said I'd give up.

Presenter14:00

But how did h you were you were both fellows of Oxford College?

Lady Warnock14:04

Yeah

Presenter14:05

But then you had to find time in some way to have babies.

Lady Warnock14:10

Yes, well, more by good luck than judgment, I think all of my children except one were born in the long vacation, which worked out terribly well because I could take that that's four months then, when one can have the baby and start it off and all is well. One of them was um born

Lady Warnock14:28

on the first day of the Hillary term and I took four weeks off then. But that was all. I didn't have to have any more time off.

Presenter14:34

But was all of that, all of these marital goings-on, frowned on by your fellow academics a bit?

Lady Warnock14:40

It was thought unusual. There were some

Lady Warnock14:43

married fellows, but they were conveniently divorced or widowed, and I think I was the only one with a sort of ongoing

Lady Warnock14:49

marriage and then of course children were thought to be pretty difficult to manage. But, um again, looking back on it by luck

Lady Warnock14:58

The fellows of my college were very much accustomed to having pets, and they kept tortoises and cats and dogs, and used to ask after one's another's pets.

Lady Warnock15:09

And my first child was called Kitty.

Lady Warnock15:12

And my second child was called Felix, and somehow it worked very easily. They slipped into saying how is Kitty and How is Felix, and they took their place among the pets, so somehow they passed unnoticed.

Presenter15:23

Another record.

Lady Warnock15:24

Well the next record is one of Handel's concati grossi, number two.

Lady Warnock15:30

And this I love, have always loved Handel.

Lady Warnock15:34

And it's played.

Lady Warnock15:36

in this recording by a group called The English Concert, whom I admire enormously, and especially the harpsichord playing of Trevor Pinnock.

Presenter16:46

Handel's concerto grosso number two in B flat major played by the English concert, conducted from the harpsichord by Trevor Pinnock.

Presenter16:55

So the rigours of the working mother were um visited on the Warnock household some twenty years, really, before the problem became fashionable. Did you experience all that guilt, all that uh heartache of not being there for the first step?

Lady Warnock17:08

Yes, very much so. I I particularly felt guilty about the children being left in the hands of exceedingly inadequate nannies for a bit. We settled down. I mean, by about 1954 we had a serious succession of lovely nannies. But no, I think that I did feel appalling guilt about not being there and particularly when they got ill or anything went wrong with them. It always seemed that it must be my fault.

Lady Warnock17:34

and I felt they suffered the most awful things, going to school when they should have been kept at home, and that kind of thing.

Lady Warnock17:39

So there was no there is no end to the guilt, I think.

Presenter17:43

So you suffered a great deal, did they?

Lady Warnock17:46

I think so. I'm sure they did. I'm sure that that these awful nannies really were harmful to them.

Lady Warnock17:53

But I dare say they would have suffered if I had been at home as well. I don't know.

Presenter17:57

Well, what do they say now, now they're grown up? I mean, do they have awful memories of times when they wanted you and you weren't there?

Lady Warnock18:03

I don't think that, because I don't think they'd ever admit that they'd ever wanted me. But, um, I think they have fairly awful memories of some of their nannies. And

Lady Warnock18:13

Yes, I mean I think they now probably realize our childhood was by no means ideal.

Lady Warnock18:20

But I think

Presenter18:21

Yeah.

Lady Warnock18:21

They're forgiving about it.

Presenter18:23

I mentioned that you um became headmistress of a very high powered girls' school. That was Oxford High School. How did that come about?

Lady Warnock18:30

I was really getting a bit sick of teaching philosophy. I'd done it a fifteen year stint.

Lady Warnock18:37

And I really thought a change would be nice. And I'd been very much involved in secondary education on the Oxfordshire county education.

Lady Warnock18:45

committee running the um music

Lady Warnock18:48

subcommittee of that, which I greatly enjoyed.

Presenter18:51

You have of course um written a lot about education and and lectured about it. I think you have um little time for the government's buzzphrases of the moment um parent power and opting out.

Lady Warnock19:02

Uh

Lady Warnock19:03

I must say I do distrust that very much. Parent Pearl I I don't really believe in, because I truly think

Lady Warnock19:13

that a government must have an education policy.

Lady Warnock19:16

which has got to take into account

Lady Warnock19:18

what all children need, including handicapped children and very bright children.

Lady Warnock19:24

And parents, understandably enough, and properly, are interested in their own children.

Lady Warnock19:29

And they cannot be expected to form policy.

Presenter19:32

You also, though, believe fundamentally, don't you, in the comprehens

Lady Warnock19:36

I do.

Lady Warnock19:38

And I don't honestly think the comprehensive system had long enough to adapt to what was really a very new idea, which is that everybody requires education and not some people getting good education, some people getting bad, but everybody.

Presenter19:53

Yeah.

Presenter19:54

It comes strangely from you, though, having been headmistress of a highly selective girl.

Lady Warnock19:58

Indeed it does. And I I do s see that that's an inconsistency. But even while I was there, that system was collapsing.

Lady Warnock20:07

And um if I had my time again.

Lady Warnock20:10

and was allowed in my time again to be a headmistress. I would like to be headmistress of comprehensive school.

Presenter20:15

Perhaps those views are are why you've um fallen out of favour, as you put it.

Presenter20:20

I do say it like that.

Lady Warnock20:22

But um I think it may be so, yes. I I don't I don't think that um what I say about education is very popular.

Lady Warnock20:31

The fifth record, please.

Lady Warnock20:33

The fifth record is a part of an anthem My Beloved Spake by Purcell, sung by the choir of Christchurch Cathedral.

Lady Warnock20:40

And I've chosen this rarely because

Lady Warnock20:43

Until now I've always lived in a cathedral tower in either Winchester or Oxford and I I think the one thing I really miss about leaving Oxford is leaving the cathedral, which I love.

Speaker 420:56

My beloved spirit can sell unto me My beloved spirit can sell unto me

Speaker 421:08

My beloved spake and said unto me bright of my fore and come.

Presenter21:56

Purcell's My Beloved Spake, sung by the choir of Christchurch Cathedral, Oxford, with the English concert and organist Simon Preston.

Presenter22:06

You will, of course, have a voice on the education bill and a vote indeed as you now sit in the House of Lords. Do you do you go there very much? Do you exercise that power?

Lady Warnock22:14

Uh

Lady Warnock22:14

It's quite difficult to go there during term because it's very unpredictable.

Lady Warnock22:20

when things are going to come up.

Presenter22:21

Your period was, of course, in recognition of the public services that we've talked about, and not least for the Warnock report on human fertilization. You concluded in that report that human embryos should not be experimented on after fourteen days, but that still hasn't become law, has it?

Lady Warnock22:39

No, no, it hasn't, though a law of some kind, I think, is promised before the next general election.

Presenter22:44

Does it mean, in the meantime, that that kind of research can go on?

Lady Warnock22:48

Yes, at the moment it is going on, but subject to voluntary guidelines that the

Lady Warnock22:54

British Medical Association and Medical Search Council have put together.

Presenter22:58

It's always, of course, uh the fear of creating the the the master race or of as we've recently been seeing on television the hybrid, the gorilla come human. I mean, do you think that could happen?

Lady Warnock23:10

I don't think that

Lady Warnock23:12

hybrids, uh for example.

Lady Warnock23:15

could at the moment, at any rate, happen, and I think that w it would be very reassuring.

Lady Warnock23:20

If there were a law in place that criminalised certain activities like cloning, like cross-fertilization and so on, which people really do fear very much. I'm really quite anxious now that what we as a committee recommended most strongly, which was that there should be a central ethical committee to look at all these questions, including gene therapy and all the things that have grown up since actually since 1984 when we published our report.

Lady Warnock23:50

I think that central committee ought now to be established.

Lady Warnock23:54

Whatever other legislation there is.

Lady Warnock23:59

Well, the next record is a record by Schubert. Thinking of

Lady Warnock24:04

The desert island. I think I would almost have to have some Schubert there. And this is a particularly lovely work called Auft Strom.

Lady Warnock24:14

Well, I think the combination of tenor and horn is absolutely amazing.

Speaker 424:21

Let's all upfront crease on the grace.

Speaker 424:32

Ich Mocham Turzan, Ilan Fusich Anam Vern.

Speaker 424:44

Strong it found as strong as all

Lady Warnock24:44

Yeah

Speaker 424:50

Crushed the muffin for the toggle.

Lady Warnock24:51

Ah

Presenter25:22

Schubert's Aufdeim Strumm, sung by Robert Teer with Neil Saunders horn and Lamar Krausen piano.

Presenter25:29

It was in nineteen eighty four, I think, Lady Warnock, that you and your husband achieved a unique academic double. You both became heads of Oxbridge colleges. At least he was already

Lady Warnock25:38

He was there, yes, he was.

Presenter25:38

Principal of Hartford, Oxford. You became mistress of Girton. So you you went off to Cambridge and left him in Oxford?

Lady Warnock25:45

That's right. Yes, yes. It was um a cause for some speculation, I think. But um we worked out it was it was a good time. I mean, the children were all away.

Lady Warnock25:57

And it looked like partly an exciting new thing that.

Lady Warnock26:05

It would be a good experiment.

Presenter26:07

How did he cope without you, or how does he cope without you, and how do you cope without him?

Lady Warnock26:12

Well, he was well looked after as long as he was at Harford. He could always um eat in college and there were people

Lady Warnock26:20

looking after partly looking after our rather large house there.

Lady Warnock26:25

So that was really no problem. Now that he's retired, he's become extremely domesticated.

Lady Warnock26:31

So I don't there's no problem really.

Presenter26:33

He now lives in your house in Wiltshire.

Lady Warnock26:35

He does and uh looks after it and keeps it clean and tidy.

Lady Warnock26:39

And I live in a very nice flat in Girton for the middle of the week, and keep it untidy.

Presenter26:46

And you go home to a lovely, warmed house and a beautiful supper on a Friday night?

Lady Warnock26:50

Wonderful. I mean, I now know what it's like for men to be married. It is absolutely blissful. To come in and the house is gleaming clean and warm and everything is in working order and you don't fear the ceiling will have fallen down in the frost. It it's absolutely marvellous.

Presenter27:05

So you you have two homes now, Cambridge and Wiltshire. There was a time when you had three, Oxford, Wiltshire and Cambridge. How did you cope with that? I mean, wasn't everything always in the wrong place?

Lady Warnock27:14

Always. I never had the right clothes, and especially not the right shoes or bag. It was really very difficult.

Presenter27:20

The other point, of course, is that that, as we've been discussing, for practically the whole of your life you'd been your your grown up life you'd been an Oxford woman, and then suddenly, four years ago, you became a Cambridge woman.

Lady Warnock27:31

Uh

Presenter27:32

Yeah.

Lady Warnock27:33

Yes, that's that's taken a bit of getting used to, certainly. And I think um probably I'm looked at still as a somewhat dangerous alien.

Lady Warnock27:43

in Cambridge. But I do love it. I mean, I I love the feeling that I am part of Cambridge University. I like that very much indeed. And I very much, very much love my college girton. It's a very nice place.

Presenter27:54

You are, if I may say so, in your early sixties. Is retirement on the horizon? Yes, I think so.

Lady Warnock28:01

So I think

Presenter28:01

Yeah.

Lady Warnock28:01

I will have done a decent stint when I have done seven years, which is two and a half years.

Lady Warnock28:07

From now

Lady Warnock28:09

So I shall prob I shall retire then.

Presenter28:11

And go and mess up the house in Wiltra.

Lady Warnock28:13

Absolutely, just what I shall do.

Presenter28:16

Right, I think we've got to your seventh record.

Lady Warnock28:19

Well the seventh record, again I I couldn't have a list of eight records that didn't have Bach and it would have been very easy to have eight records by Bach, who in a way I think was my first love as a composer. So this is um a part of the first cantata with Dietrich Fischer Diskow whom again I admire to distraction.

Speaker 428:50

Yeah.

Speaker 428:52

Stars Ram.

Speaker 429:01

A storm.

Presenter29:34

Bach cantalte number one, Christlag in Todesbanden, sung by Dietrich Fischer Dieskau, with the Munich Bach Choir and Orchestra conducted by Karl Richter.

Presenter29:45

Can I ask you, Lady Warnock? I know it's something you've made a bit of a study of, why do men outperform women at university?

Lady Warnock29:53

Ah. I think they are bolder. I think they are less concerned about whether they get things right. They are more anxious to chance their arm. Of course, I mean, there are very brilliant women at university, but they tend to be a little bit more cautious, I think, and end up in the two one.

Lady Warnock30:10

class rather than the first, where men might be a little less cautious and tip themselves over into the first class.

Presenter30:18

What do you think women are are cautious about? I mean, are they frightened of being seen to be clever, do you suggest?

Lady Warnock30:24

I suspect they've got over that by the time they get to university, though it may still be with them.

Lady Warnock30:29

I think they're more they are trained up more to try to get things right.

Lady Warnock30:34

and fear making fools of themselves. And that probably does remain with them and may be slightly inhibiting sometimes. And really that's why.

Lady Warnock30:43

I'm very much in favour of um single sex education because I think girls

Lady Warnock30:49

between the age of about twelve and seventeen are particularly prone

Lady Warnock30:54

to holding back and and letting boys go ahead of them.

Presenter30:57

Could you have that in your comprehensive system?

Lady Warnock31:00

I could. I could. I could also have selective teaching of girls in subjects like physics and engineering where they wouldn't be made to look fools by by the boys.

Presenter31:13

You've you've said before now that um we've talked all about your academic life and your life in public service. You you've also said that you wouldn't have minded, really, foregoing all of that and gone and going into advertising or commerce. Can that be true?

Lady Warnock31:26

Yes, I think that is true. I think I'd have loved it. I learned a lot about that in the days when I was on the Independent Broadcasting Authority and I rarely r realized how

Lady Warnock31:36

Seriously, I took the whole question of advertising, communicating, not ever having an idea that wasn't capable of being passed on to somebody else. And I love the wit.

Lady Warnock31:47

and lightness of advertising.

Lady Warnock31:50

So that I think I I would have been very happy in that sort of world.

Presenter31:54

I wonder if um y you might have gone into politics. You were a a contemporary of the uh of the Prime Minister at Oxford. You you have an ability to dominate, to be a bit bossy.

Lady Warnock32:03

I

Lady Warnock32:04

I don't know that I have. I hope I'm not too bossy. I suppose I'm fairly bossy. But no, I could never have gone into politics. I simply couldn't, because I dislike

Lady Warnock32:13

The compulsory deceit, the lack of candor that goes with politics. I mean, I know it goes with advertising too, but v advertisers carry round with them the fact that they're not telling the whole truth. Politicians, um, on the other hand, pretend to be making promises they can keep, speaking the whole truth when they're not. And I really would find that very, very disagreeable. And I wouldn't like I'm very bad at people publicly criticising me and rubbishing what I say, so I'd have nothing going for me as a politician at all.

Presenter32:46

Let's have your eighth record.

Lady Warnock32:48

The Eighth Record is in a way a rather silly record. I heard it one day when I was driving up, I think, to a meeting of the IBA.

Lady Warnock32:56

And it practically took my car off the road. I'd never heard a sound quite so dramatically lovely as this. And it's uh part of a trio sonata by a Czech composer called Zelenka.

Presenter34:10

The second movement of Zelenka's Trio Sonata, number three, in B flat major, with oboists Heinz Holliger and Maurice Bourg, Sashko Gavrilov on the violin, and Klaus Tunemann on the bassoon. So some choices. First of all, which of the eight records would you like to take more than any of the others?

Lady Warnock34:28

That is the most awful and difficult question you can imagine.

Lady Warnock34:32

Because how can I live without Schubert? On the other hand, I think that I will choose the purcell the record that contains my beloved Spake.

Lady Warnock34:43

Because I shall be deeply homesick on this island, and what I shall miss, among other things, is the the Church of England and the Cathedral Choir, and so on. So I think I'll have to have that.

Presenter34:53

The book you have, I'm sure you know this, the uh Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare.

Lady Warnock34:58

I'm thankful about that,'cause I think they will do me very well, both of them. But again, I think I shall be thinking about England rather obsessively, so I've got to have a book that tells me about England, and I've got to have a novel, because I do love novel reading.

Lady Warnock35:14

So I think I'll have a novel by Trollope, and probably the best of all his novels is um The Last Chronicle of Barset.

Lady Warnock35:22

We shall keep in our home.

Presenter35:24

And your luxury you were muttering earlier, perhaps, about a musical instrument to teach yourself.

Presenter35:29

Uh

Lady Warnock35:29

Yes, I was, but I think rarely what I'll have to have, if I'm allowed it, is a barrow and a lot of paper, because I have always kept a diary, and I think on the desert island this diary will become very important, even if nobody ever sees it. But I'd hope to be rescued.

Presenter35:46

Okay, I

Lady Warnock35:46

And then I could publish it.

Presenter35:48

That's definitely allowed. In fact, lots of buyers in case they run off.

Lady Warnock35:50

Lots of barriers in case one runs out and lots of paper. Thank you.

Presenter35:52

I could

Presenter35:54

Baroness Warnock, thank you very much indeed for playing to us your desert island discs.

Speaker 236:06

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.