Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Desert Island Discs
Presented by Sue Lawley
Britain's most senior religious leader and the 102nd Archbishop of Canterbury.
Eight records
It reminds me that I was brought up beside the sea at Liverpool. I have it in my blood, and people sometimes are, I think, divided between mountain people or seaside people. I'm definitely the latter.
I'd like something which set me humming those good tunes, the jazz and the dance band tunes, of the thirties.
The Pipers of the Scots Guards
reminds me of my Scottish father, who loved the pipes, but more of my army days with the Scots Guards.
Academy of St Martin in the Fields, Sir Neville Marriner
brings back memories of those marvellous days in that village community.
Christmas for me is very precious
we had this at our wedding in nineteen fifty seven in Cambridge
Sanctus from Mass in B minorFavourite
Academy and Chorus of St Martin in the Fields, Sir Neville Marriner
wonderful, faith affirming music.
The keepsakes
The book
Homer
I like it in Greek because I used to be able to read Greek, and I hope I might recover that.
The luxury
It is in the corner of my room at Lambeth, and I wouldn't like to go anywhere without it.
In conversation
Presenter asks
Do you like being alone?
Yes, I like some periods alone, and it's good for me to be alone. But I have to say that I doubt whether I would survive easily without company, because I suspect that I am by nature an extrovert and a gregarious character.
Presenter asks
How important is music in your life? Is it a source of great solace?
Yes, now I have to answer that carefully because I'm married to a professional musician, therefore, I have an inferiority complex on the subject. But we've come to an agreement about what irritates her and what irritates me. I've lived against the background of scales very often because she's a great practicer. I have dutifully at the beginning gone to my wife's piano performances, and I must say that I have grown to love piano music, particularly the pieces she plays which I can hum. I like a tune.
The recording
Timestamps play the recording from that turn
Speaker 2
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 2
The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen eighty nine.
Speaker 2
And the presenter was Sue Lawley.
Presenter
My first castaway of nineteen eighty nine is Britain's most senior religious leader.
Presenter
He was born into a family far removed from church affairs. His mother was a hairdresser. An Oxford education was interrupted by the war, in which he commanded tanks and won the military cross.
Presenter
He has still a reputation for calmness under fire, and has never been afraid of making plain his views on controversial issues in which he thinks the Church should be involved.
Presenter
He is the Most Reverend Robert Runcay, the one hundred and second Archbishop of Canterbury.
Presenter
Your grace, you are, I believe, a lover of travel and exploration, so being cast away to an exotic corner will not be purgatory for you.
Most Rev Robert Runcie
No, not at all. I do enjoy travel. I'm much influenced by places and by
Most Rev Robert Runcie
The fascination of people of every sort I should miss those on this desert island.
Presenter
Do you like being alone?
Most Rev Robert Runcie
Yes, I like some periods alone, and it's good for me to be alone.
Most Rev Robert Runcie
But I have to say that uh
Most Rev Robert Runcie
I doubt whether I would survive easily without company, because I
Most Rev Robert Runcie
suspect that I am by nature an extrovert and a gregarious character.
Presenter
What about holidays? Do you do you go on holidays in the sun? I mean, can an archbishop slip into his bathing drawers on occasion?
Most Rev Robert Runcie
Oh, yes, I try to plan that very carefully, because I don't get much in the way of days off, you know.
Most Rev Robert Runcie
and the pressure is very considerable. It's a matter of seeking anonymity. And um in Kent, for example, where I like to be beside the sea sometimes, I have a a a friend who is ready to come to um Dymchurch Beach with me, and we go to the water side with me in a straw hat and dark glasses. Then I quickly whip off the straw hat and the dark glasses and make for the sea, and he's waiting with the towel when I come out.
Presenter
How important i is music in your life? Is it a a source of great solace?
Most Rev Robert Runcie
Yes, now I have to answer that carefully because I'm married to a professional musician, therefore, I have an inferiority complex on the subject. But we've come to an agreement about what irritates her and what irritates me. I've lived against the background of scales very often because she's a great practicer.
Most Rev Robert Runcie
I have dutifully at the beginning gone to my wife's piano performances, and I must say that I have grown to love piano music, particularly the pieces she plays which I can hum. I like a tune.
Presenter
But she hasn't grown to love your singing.
Most Rev Robert Runcie
Not at all. Indeed, it's rather alarming. Sometimes at a great uh liturgical service in Canterbury Cathedral, with the place packed, I will start a sursum cordar, and I see my wife's hands, which appear to be covering her face in prayer, immediately assume that tense indication that their face is being covered in horror.
Presenter
There goes that dreadful voice again.
Most Rev Robert Runcie
Here goes that dreadful voice again. This is shared, I'm sorry to say, by the family.
Presenter
Plus again.
Presenter
Yeah.
Presenter
Your first record.
Most Rev Robert Runcie
Well, my first record is by a beautiful singer, Janet Baker, and it um
Most Rev Robert Runcie
It's when the sea birds are asleep. It reminds me that I was brought up beside the sea at Liverpool. I have it in my blood, and people sometimes are, I think, divided between mountain people or seaside people. I'm definitely the latter.
Speaker 3
Seemed on a swing.
Speaker 3
He murmured her soft song her song.
Speaker 3
For sure is a
Speaker 3
Uh
Speaker 3
Of this
Presenter
The Sea Slumber Song sung by Dame Janet Baker.
Presenter
Now, Archbishop, you were born in Liverpool, as you said. Tell me about your family and household.
Most Rev Robert Runcie
But it was a very happy household. My mother was romantic, affectionate, dreamy, and my father was an engineer and very Scottish and very much a man's man, good company, loved sport, and I adored him.
Presenter
Your mother, I was saying earlier, was a hairdresser. She used to to do hairdressing on cruise ships.
Most Rev Robert Runcie
Yes, she had this wonderful romantic view of the world, and you see, quite a lot of the dreamy side of my mother has probably come into me, and anything that is more masculine, I think, has come from my father.
Presenter
Now your parents were not great church goers. In fact, your your father didn't much care for parsons, did he?
Most Rev Robert Runcie
Well, my father was a marvellous character, and he was brought up really on burns and tended to think that you should be wary of people who were in Scottish unkergood and thought that parsons tended to be hypocrites. And the first recollection I have of hearing the name of the Archbishop of Canterbury was when on the wireless I heard a voice droning on, and my father said
Presenter
But
Most Rev Robert Runcie
That's the Archbishop of Canterbury, unctuous old beggar.
Presenter
You in fact, what did you think? Because you started to go to church quite a lot, didn't you, once you became about twelve or thirteen?
Most Rev Robert Runcie
Well, that was in my teens and
Most Rev Robert Runcie
A friend of mine at school and I were both keen on the same girl who went to the local school, so when we heard that she was going to confirmational classes we thought we'd go along too, and I have to say that's how it all started.
Presenter
What was her name?
Most Rev Robert Runcie
Well, her name was Betty. I'd better not give it all away.
Presenter
And what is your
Presenter
Let's have your second record.
Most Rev Robert Runcie
Well, I'd like to have Dinah, because it's one of the great songs of the twenties and thirties, and I'd like something which set me humming those good tunes, the jazz and the dance band tunes, of the thirties.
Speaker 3
I love to sit and gaze to the eyes of dinner leaves.
Speaker 3
Father, I say, with pride.
Speaker 3
Dynamite thing
Speaker 3
Oh damn it.
Speaker 3
Cause you wanted it, John I
Speaker 3
Revolt, you begin, budget, beef, you bold, revolt, revolt. I'm talking about dynamic.
Presenter
Yes, yes, yes.
Presenter
Fats Waller and Dinah.
Presenter
In fact, Archbishop, y you'd been singing and rehearsing for a broadcasting career in your back kitchen, hadn't you, at this time?
Most Rev Robert Runcie
Well, I was a great listener to the radio, and I.
Most Rev Robert Runcie
But
Most Rev Robert Runcie
keen on jazz bands, and I thought that um if I couldn't be good enough to be a cricketer or a football player, it would be good to be a jazz bandit. But I realized I wasn't a performer.
Most Rev Robert Runcie
So I thought perhaps I'd have to be a musical comedian.
Presenter
Uh
Most Rev Robert Runcie
Yeah.
Presenter
You were something of a mimic, weren't you?
Most Rev Robert Runcie
You know what?
Most Rev Robert Runcie
Yes, I've always been sensitive to voices and uh I could do Liverpool and uh I think I can still do a bit of Liverpool voice. I was uh in Liverpool uh just a week or so ago, and um wonderful woman this is what I like about Liverpool, you know, they cheer you up but cut you down to size, and the woman washing up I went through to see the people washing up after the meal which I'd had, uh she said to me, I thought you were a little man, I didn't realise you were so tall. Yes, I thought you were a little shrimp of a man.
Most Rev Robert Runcie
And it cheered me up immensely.
Presenter
What do you think your mother and father, the parents of of the the jazz fan and the mimic and the fun loving Liverpool boy, what would they have thought if you'd told them, if they or someone had told them, that their son would one day become Archbishop of Canterbury?
Most Rev Robert Runcie
Well
Most Rev Robert Runcie
They would have been astonished, but they would have been proud, because they would have thought I did what I wanted to do and I'd achieved something. And my father, although he was a little anxious about my religiosity, didn't attempt for one moment to prevent it. And it was a home of love and freedom and great expectations, but no forcing. And that's why I think I've had one of the greatest of gifts, which is a happy, secure childhood.
Presenter
Sadly, of course, neither of them lived even to see Ordain.
Most Rev Robert Runcie
No, sadly. My father became ill when I was in my teens and he lost his sight, and that was an upsetting time in the life of the family, and it was just happening when I was um coming to
Most Rev Robert Runcie
exams at school and playing in the first team, which he would have loved to have seen. He used to come along with my mother faithfully and she used to try and describe the game, but as she couldn't understand she used to get very mixed up and he used to get rather irritated. And then there were other lighter things as one looks back now. I used to read the paper to him and
Most Rev Robert Runcie
He was a great racing man. Even his blindness, of course, this was something that he could do. He could have a little flutter each day. And so I used to read the racing page and the form and became quite knowledgeable. And even now, although I don't indulge in it, I always try to boast to my family that a quick look at the sports pages before the National or the Derby will enable me to identify at least one of the first three.
Presenter
Shall we have your third record?
Most Rev Robert Runcie
Ah, now my third record.
Most Rev Robert Runcie
is The Pipers of the Scots Guards.
Most Rev Robert Runcie
playing the regimental march Heel and Laddie, and that, of course, reminds me of my Scottish father, who loved the pipes, but more of my army days with the Scots Guards.
Presenter
The regimental band and massed pipers of the Scots Guards playing Highland Laddie.
Most Rev Robert Runcie
Hilonas
Presenter
Heel and Laddie. Heel and Laddie. Now, why did you join the Scotts Gots? Obviously the father, your father was a connection.
Most Rev Robert Runcie
Yeah.
Most Rev Robert Runcie
I said, when I was interviewed, I said I'd like to.
Most Rev Robert Runcie
Go into a Scottish redroom.
Most Rev Robert Runcie
And uh
Most Rev Robert Runcie
Then immediately the adjutant looked forward and he said
Most Rev Robert Runcie
Had you ever thought of the Scots guards?
Most Rev Robert Runcie
And I said no, I hadn't, because it was, you know, beyond my expectations. The only thing I could uh say was I don't
Most Rev Robert Runcie
I mean, I haven't got enough money to go in the Scots Guards. And the adjutant then looked across to the other officer in the room and said, Why?
Most Rev Robert Runcie
Don't think in wartime you need too much money, do you, Bunny? And they then engaged in a great conversation about how much money you needed to be in the brigade during the war. And they concluded that I could manage and I provided I didn't spend too much time in London on public duties when the war was over.
Presenter
And you, of course, um were to win the military cross.
Presenter
for courageous leadership and bravery in the face of the enemy.
Presenter
Would you would you care to describe what you did?
Most Rev Robert Runcie
Well not much, but
Presenter
Uh
Most Rev Robert Runcie
Yeah. Yeah.
Most Rev Robert Runcie
It was um
Speaker 3
Yeah.
Most Rev Robert Runcie
a case of um one of the four in my particular tank having got stuck in when um we were all getting out'cause the tank was getting on fire. And it's a sort of instinctive thing to turn back and try and get him out. And that wasn't, as it turned out, too difficult. And then the other part of it was
Most Rev Robert Runcie
that we were held up because there was a German tank very carefully camouflaged in position, which was knocking out ours. And I took my tank out into the open. I didn't realise how exposed it was, and we happened with a very good shot to knock out this tank which had been holding up the whole British advance.
Most Rev Robert Runcie
I think that um what I remember most about the day, because I hadn't imagined that it was an act that would win any decoration, was walking over uh to that tank which we'd knocked out uh about two or three hours later and seeing the four dead Germans inside. And that did turn my tummy over and made me think
Most Rev Robert Runcie
Well, what's it all about? They look just the same as we were.
Presenter
None of your colleagues at that time apparently had any idea that you might eventually take orders, or even thinking of it.
Presenter
Um
Presenter
Why did you keep it such a secret, when you were so close to them, fighting by their side?
Most Rev Robert Runcie
It isn't true that nobody had any idea, but it wasn't commonised. They knew that I turned up when there was an opportunity to go to a service, and I hadn't made up my mind.
Most Rev Robert Runcie
finally. And I didn't until um after I'd returned to Oxford.
Most Rev Robert Runcie
But uh I suppose a a little bit of it was um
Presenter
Good.
Most Rev Robert Runcie
Cardus
Presenter
Willy Whitelaw was one of your commanding officers, wasn't he? It has been said that that um he has said, I think, that the whole mess would have doubled up with laughter if they'd been told that one day he'd be Home Secretary and you'd be Archbishop of Canterbury.
Most Rev Robert Runcie
Oh, yes, she was, yes.
Most Rev Robert Runcie
Well Yeah.
Most Rev Robert Runcie
I don't know how to take that up really, because there are a lot of people in public life now who happened to be in that regiment. But what I like was that the group of men that I soldiered with you know, the guardsmen, the gunners and the drivers of the tank and so on
Most Rev Robert Runcie
came together for a little party when I became Archbishop, and I hadn't seen so many of them for years, and they were wonderful. And I remember one of them grasping me by the arm as I left, everybody having drunk my health and wished me well, and he said
Most Rev Robert Runcie
And don't worry, sir, if any one ever says a word about that hogmany we spent in Cologne, I'll break every bone in the body.
Presenter
Another record, I think.
Most Rev Robert Runcie
Now I want to move to my love of opera and have the love duet from
Most Rev Robert Runcie
The end of the first act of La Boheme.
Speaker 3
But
Speaker 3
That's all I've done.
Presenter
Luciano Pavarotti and Mirella Freyni singing the love duet from Puccini's Laboeme with the Berlina Philharmonica conducted by Herbert von Carrion. So you um you returned uh to this country, you went back to Oxford, you duly took your degree and you won a first.
Presenter
And um I don't know why I should sound surprised about that. You won a first.
Most Rev Robert Runcie
Well, I think it was surprising because uh
Most Rev Robert Runcie
I did pack quite a lot into the time at Oxford, and I had been away from learning.
Most Rev Robert Runcie
Now I think I surprised people who were my contemporaries when I got a first uh more than I surprised even my fellow officers when I became ordained.
Presenter
So you were ordained, and you were sent as a curate to Tyneside. Then you went back to Cambridge.
Presenter
to teach theology and uh and then to become dean of Trinity Hall, where you met your wife, Rosalind.
Most Rev Robert Runcie
I was at Oxford with her sister, and her sister said that um when I went to Cambridge um
Most Rev Robert Runcie
My family would entertain me if I got fed up with the company of a theological college.
Most Rev Robert Runcie
It was a big family and uh
Most Rev Robert Runcie
When I went as a student to finish my or learn my theology, my wife, um Lindy, uh was just around. They'd been educated partly in America during the war. Anyway, I got to know this rather splendid family.
Most Rev Robert Runcie
And it was when I came back afterwards that I happened to meet her again and uh
Most Rev Robert Runcie
She said I'm the musical one. All her brothers and sisters were clever. So I'm having a hard time and I need to get some cash. So what about coming and being your secretary two days a week? And that started it all.
Presenter
And you married.
Most Rev Robert Runcie
So I married my in fact my father in law was then the senior fellow of uh the college, and I was the junior fellow. So the junior fellow married the senior fellow's daughter. I think that's called endogamy, the marriage within the tribe.
Presenter
So you married and um you were soon leading um a very happy life in in the countryside in Oxfordshire.
Most Rev Robert Runcie
Well, I was suddenly asked to go and preside over this famous theological college in a village just outside Oxford. And fortunately, with the teaching of the students in the college, under a strict regime which meant that I was there from morning till night, went the duty of being vicar of the local country parish. So we lived in a country vicarage.
Presenter
Was this where you developed your fascination for pigs?
Most Rev Robert Runcie
Well, I have to confess that I did and nourish the
Most Rev Robert Runcie
hope that one day I would be able to keep a Berkshire pig, which is a very special connoisseur's pig, but I promise that uh
Most Rev Robert Runcie
In talking on my desert island, I promise my family I will not go on about my pigs.
Presenter
Right. We shall stop talking about them immediately. We'll have another record and change the subject.
Most Rev Robert Runcie
Okay, okay.
Most Rev Robert Runcie
I'd like The Lark Ascending by Vaughan Williams, and I choose that simply because it brings back memories of those marvellous days in that village community.
Presenter
The Lark Ascending by Vaughan Williams, played by the Academy of Saint Martin in the fields, conducted by Sir Neville Mariner.
Presenter
We were talking about the sixties, when many more people, I believe, went to church than they do these days, and yet society's problems are perhaps even greater. Why are people not going to church so much any more?
Most Rev Robert Runcie
Obviously I would like more followers, but I think that um there is often uncertainty on moral issues because what it
Most Rev Robert Runcie
is possible for people to choose to do.
Most Rev Robert Runcie
is greatly multiplied.
Most Rev Robert Runcie
and a whole series of issues has made the church tend to look rather quarrelsome rather than
Most Rev Robert Runcie
creating spiritual energy in the life of the country.
Presenter
You have become in many ways a controversial figure on occasions. You, as I said at the beginning, have never been afraid of of entering the political arena, if that's where the voice of
Presenter
Christian conscience led you.
Presenter
Has that controversy that you've aroused surprised you?
Most Rev Robert Runcie
Yes, sometimes it has.
Most Rev Robert Runcie
Right.
Most Rev Robert Runcie
Have felt that dunk.
Most Rev Robert Runcie
The kind of things that I've been saying uh spring from my
Most Rev Robert Runcie
Fairly orthodox Christian belief, but a desire to apply that belief.
Most Rev Robert Runcie
Two.
Most Rev Robert Runcie
personal and social circumstances and things that I know about. And I feel that one of the things you have to do is to stand up for people who are
Most Rev Robert Runcie
not sharing, for example, in the general increase and improvement in the wealth of a country.
Most Rev Robert Runcie
The casualties of affluence, if you like. Mind you
Most Rev Robert Runcie
One of the difficulties is that the church should.
Most Rev Robert Runcie
Quite rightly.
Most Rev Robert Runcie
support those who have the responsibility to govern.
Most Rev Robert Runcie
I always think that it's symbolic that the bishops sit on the government side of the House in the House of Lords. It's not that they've always vote with the Government, but they believe in Government as such and order in society. But then I say that the Church has a duty to be the conscience of a people and to
Most Rev Robert Runcie
Exercise a kind of critical solidarity with government and
Most Rev Robert Runcie
There are times when and there are principles at stake and there are moral issues that lie behind political judgment that must
Most Rev Robert Runcie
bring anybody who is an official representative of the church into the public arena and
Most Rev Robert Runcie
I'm quite uh unashamed of that.
Presenter
Your sixth record, please.
Most Rev Robert Runcie
My sixth record is ah yes, something peaceable after that um conversation, because Christmas for me is very precious and I'd like a carol and uh
Presenter
Uh
Most Rev Robert Runcie
I'm very fond of In the Bleak Mid Winter sung to a special setting by Dark, and in this case it's sung by the Canterbury Cathedral Choir.
Speaker 3
What can I give him for as I have?
Speaker 3
Be my one husband.
Speaker 3
Oh it's love.
Speaker 3
I lose to my heart.
Speaker 3
Great boy can I give
Presenter
In the Bleak Mid Winter sung by the Canterbury Cathedral Choir.
Presenter
We left your career, your grace, when you were still happily ensconced in Oxfordshire, but from there, of course, you became Bishop of St. Albans. You'd been offered um
Most Rev Robert Runcie
Not a
Presenter
other promotions, so to speak, before, and turned them down, hadn't you?
Most Rev Robert Runcie
Yeah.
Most Rev Robert Runcie
Well, yes, I think that's all supposed to be confidential, but it doesn't seem to have uh remain so. I was um
Most Rev Robert Runcie
glad to move after ten happy years at Cudson, and I have been fortunate in finding that each step I've taken has brought me to a work which I felt, you know, was right and God wanted me to do.
Presenter
Were you aware, then, that you were in line, so to speak, for Archbishop of Canterbury?
Most Rev Robert Runcie
Well, people mention this, but I never took it seriously. I'm honest about it. And, um.
Most Rev Robert Runcie
I remember the night that I was receiving the letter from the Prime Minister. I had been to a wonderful party at the B B C, as a matter of fact. We came back late, and my chaplain in his dressing gown handed me an envelope which had from the Prime Minister on it, and it had been delivered by motorbike, and he had his suspicions, and he said somewhat solemnly to me
Most Rev Robert Runcie
Now your troubles begin.
Presenter
Do you think um she might have some regrets now about having asked you?
Most Rev Robert Runcie
I have a good friendship with the Prime Minister who was at Oxford with me, and I was once on one of her committees. And whatever may happen officially, we have a very good friendship. But I've never presumed to ask her that embarrassing question.
Presenter
Have you ever regretted accepting the job?
Most Rev Robert Runcie
Well, yes, I I think that there have been times, but um they've been overcome.
Most Rev Robert Runcie
Life is quite hectic for an Archbishop of Nome.
Most Rev Robert Runcie
But um
Most Rev Robert Runcie
Those who know me best
Most Rev Robert Runcie
Sometimes say, but you really enjoy it, don't you?
Presenter
And you do.
Most Rev Robert Runcie
I suspect they may be more right than I admit.
Presenter
Go seventh record, please.
Most Rev Robert Runcie
Well, I'd like to have a beautiful piece by Mozart. Now, I love Mozart, and this is my favorite, the Laudate Dominum from the Vespers. We
Most Rev Robert Runcie
had this at our wedding in nineteen fifty seven in Cambridge, and we were delighted when the Duchess of York chose it for her wedding, which I officiated at.
Speaker 3
Uh
Presenter
Felicity Lott singing the Laudate Dominum from Vespers of the Confessor by Mozart.
Presenter
We must now, Archbishop, talk about a matter which I know is a source of great anguish to you the uh the disappearance of Terry Waite. It's now two years since he went to Lebanon.
Presenter
The knowledge that he's missing must be with you all of the time.
Most Rev Robert Runcie
Yes, it is.
Most Rev Robert Runcie
There's a great gap and I long for it to be filled and um
Most Rev Robert Runcie
Not a day passes but what of course we don't remember him in prayer, and keep a candle burning for him in Lambeth.
Most Rev Robert Runcie
On the plus side, I have to say that with every
Most Rev Robert Runcie
Day that passes
Most Rev Robert Runcie
I become more confident.
Most Rev Robert Runcie
that we will eventually see him back.
Most Rev Robert Runcie
I hope that he'll survive.
Most Rev Robert Runcie
with the help of some of the qualities which I cherish and which I miss, as somebody who had a a deep faith, but
Speaker 3
Yeah.
Most Rev Robert Runcie
wasn't too um ecclesiastical or religious in another sense. He had a he had a deep faith. He was great fun as a companion.
Presenter
Do you sense in yourself that the day of his release is ever closer?
Most Rev Robert Runcie
In general, I think that the moves that have happened in the last year to improve relationships and the attempt of a lot of people in that part of the world to re enter the international community
Most Rev Robert Runcie
is something to be welcomed and encouraged and is in the context alone when
Most Rev Robert Runcie
Something can happen without deals being done which we can't enter into.
Presenter
Shall we have your eighth record?
Most Rev Robert Runcie
My eighth record is The Sanctus from the B minor Mass of Bach. This is wonderful, faith affirming music.
Presenter
The Sanctus from Bach's Mass in B minor, with the Academy and Chorus of Saint Martin in the Fields, again conducted by Sir Neville Mariner.
Presenter
I must finally ask you to make um three important decisions. And the first is, of all of those eight records, which one is the most important to you? Which one would you like to retain on your desert island record?
Most Rev Robert Runcie
In fact, we're on this.
Presenter
Yeah.
Most Rev Robert Runcie
Yeah.
Most Rev Robert Runcie
Well, I f very pushed between Mozart, whose music in general is my favourite, and the Bach. Someone once said that uh when the angels play for God they play Bach and when they play to entertain themselves they play Mozart and I feel a little bit torn like that, but because that sanctus, holy, holy, holy is so faith-affirming, in the end of the day I like to keep the Bach.
Presenter
Right. Then you have to choose a book. You have, I'm sure you know, the the Bible and uh the complete works of Shakespeare. And then one of your own choice.
Most Rev Robert Runcie
Well, I'd like
Most Rev Robert Runcie
Homer's Odyssey, and I like it in Greek because uh I used to be able to read Greek, and I hope I might recover that. And there are some wonderful lines in it. It's uh full of penetrating character sketches, and I could uh see myself perhaps
Most Rev Robert Runcie
pacing the sands and uh reciting uh the lines of Homer.
Presenter
And your luxury, what shall that be?
Most Rev Robert Runcie
I'd like a rocking chair, but not any rocking chair. I'd like a special rocking chair, because this one was created in very unluxurious circumstances. When I was in India, a very poor community.
Most Rev Robert Runcie
took immense trouble for my visit, and they made me this lovely rocking chair with basket work at the back. And I love rocking chairs. I was stunned by it,'cause it was exactly right.
Most Rev Robert Runcie
It is in the corner of my room at Lambeth, and I wouldn't like to go anywhere without it. It's my luxury rocking chair.
Presenter
Your Grace, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.
Speaker 2
You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk/slash radio four.
Presenter asks
What do you think your mother and father would have thought if they'd been told that their son would one day become Archbishop of Canterbury?
Well, they would have been astonished, but they would have been proud, because they would have thought I did what I wanted to do and I'd achieved something. And my father, although he was a little anxious about my religiosity, didn't attempt for one moment to prevent it. And it was a home of love and freedom and great expectations, but no forcing. And that's why I think I've had one of the greatest of gifts, which is a happy, secure childhood.
Presenter asks
Would you care to describe what you did to win the Military Cross?
Well not much, but it was a case of one of the four in my particular tank having got stuck in when we were all getting out 'cause the tank was getting on fire. And it's a sort of instinctive thing to turn back and try and get him out. And that wasn't, as it turned out, too difficult. And then the other part of it was that we were held up because there was a German tank very carefully camouflaged in position, which was knocking out ours. And I took my tank out into the open. I didn't realise how exposed it was, and we happened with a very good shot to knock out this tank which had been holding up the whole British advance. I think that what I remember most about the day, because I hadn't imagined that it was an act that would win any decoration, was walking over to that tank which we'd knocked out about two or three hours later and seeing the four dead Germans inside. And that did turn my tummy over and made me think, 'Well, what's it all about? They look just the same as we were.'
Presenter asks
Why are people not going to church so much any more?
Obviously I would like more followers, but I think that there is often uncertainty on moral issues because what it is possible for people to choose to do is greatly multiplied, and a whole series of issues has made the church tend to look rather quarrelsome rather than creating spiritual energy in the life of the country.
Presenter asks
Have you ever regretted accepting the job of Archbishop of Canterbury?
Well, yes, I think that there have been times, but they've been overcome. Life is quite hectic for an Archbishop of Nome. But those who know me best sometimes say, but you really enjoy it, don't you? And you do. I suspect they may be more right than I admit.
“I doubt whether I would survive easily without company, because I suspect that I am by nature an extrovert and a gregarious character.”
“I quickly whip off the straw hat and the dark glasses and make for the sea, and he's waiting with the towel when I come out.”
“I see my wife's hands, which appear to be covering her face in prayer, immediately assume that tense indication that their face is being covered in horror.”
“And that did turn my tummy over and made me think, 'Well, what's it all about? They look just the same as we were.'”
“And don't worry, sir, if any one ever says a word about that hogmany we spent in Cologne, I'll break every bone in the body.”