HRH The Duchess of Kent

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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.

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The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen eighty nine.

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And the presenter was Sue Lawley.

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My castaway this week is a royal duchess. She enjoyed an idyllic Yorkshire childhood, and then twenty eight years ago met and married the Queen's cousin. At the beginning of her life as a member of the royal family, she gained recognition for her sense of fashion, and was often voted one of the world's best dressed women.

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But her popularity has been earned through her charitable work. She has also enjoyed a life long love of music and is patron of the Leeds Piano Competition and President of the Royal Northern College of Music.

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The Yorkshire girl called Catherine Worsley is today known everywhere as Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Kent.

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Your Royal Highness, does the um idea of being cast away on a desert island appeal to you in any way at all?

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It appeals to me enormously. Just at this very moment, just before Christmas, I can think of absolutely nothing nicer than being a castaway on a desert island.

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with no timetables to keep to and just lying and

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Being myself.

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Is there a way in which you might almost enjoy the loneliness of it? I would, yes, I really would. I suppose only for a certain length of time.

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And are you practical at all? I think Cecil Beaton once described you as the perfect outdoor girl. Did he mean in more than just looks?

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I think I would, after a while, become practical.

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Well, I mean, very soon I'd have to become practical'cause I'd have to think how I was going to

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catch my fish or whatever there is on the island that I'm going to eat. Could you do that? I mean, could you gut a fish?

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I've never done it. I'd hate it, but I'd have to do it, wouldn't I? Well, you would if you're gonna survive, I suppose. Could I mean, could you shin up a tree and look for passing ships? Oh, yes, I could do that.

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And you're a swimmer?

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Swimming is one of the things I love doing more than anything else, and that I would revel in. But I would hope that there was a lovely spring of soft water on the island that I can use as well.

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If you're a swimmer, would you try to escape by swimming? Not for a while.

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You'd enjoy it first. Yeah.

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In a sense, of course, you're the the perfect castaway, because of all the credentials we've just mentioned, and uh you're also someone who finds a great deal of consolation in music, aren't you? Yes, I get very emotional about music.

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I studied it till I was twenty five, full time.

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and was very sad to slowly have to give it up.

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But I am now participating in music again, as well as listening, which has given me an enormous amount of pleasure.

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What's the first piece that you've chosen to play on your desert island?

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It sounds rather conceited in a way, but because I studied music and because I loved music.

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Eight pieces of music is obviously

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Terribly difficult to choose.

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So I've had to choose pieces of music which

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have meant something to me or the person who's playing it has meant something to me in my life so far.

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So the first

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Peace I chose.

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was a Mozart piano sonata.

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that I played when I was about twelve in the school hall.

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with my parents listening.

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And I know I played the first chord wrong, but never mind, I'd love to hear it.

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The beginning of Mozart's sonata in D, K two eight four, played by Mitzko Uchida.

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And you played that on the on the piano at age twelve. That was quite advanced stuff, wasn't it? Yes, but I do remember I got that first chord wrong. I was too conceited, I think.

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So music had attracted you from a very early age, had it? Yes, I think from a very early age. I remember a lovely Victorian musical box my father had, which I now have. And I remember listening with my ear on it. It was only about three, listening and feeling the vibration of the music coming through. That's my first sort of feeling of music. It's that musical box of my father's. So you you said you went on to study music. Where and how?

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Well, I failed to get into the Royal Academy of Music, which was one of my big disappointments. And so I went to Oxford, um, where I learnt piano with a wonderful lady called Professor Gomery.

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And I learnt the organ at Queen's College, and I studied French at the same time. So I was there for about six or seven years. Let's go back, if we may, to your roots. I was saying you were you were born in Yorkshire, Catherine Worsley, the only daughter of Sir William and Lady Worsley, of Hovingham Hall. Can you describe it to me, the family home? What was it like?

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It's incredibly beautiful.

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The country round is heather and

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Rolling Hills. My father loved forestry, had a passion for forestry.

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And so I lived amongst

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Beautiful woods.

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and he would make them particularly bootful, because although they were obviously commercial,

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Um he would plant along the outsides of the forest cherries and maples so that people driving past saw beauty as well as the lots of beautiful hardwoods or softwoods that he was planting for commercial purposes. And there was I think one of the main features around the house was um a cricket pitch, wasn't it?

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Yes, and a very beautiful one, too. Cricket was a an enormous love of my father's. He uh actually kept in Yorkshire, sadly, before I was born. But it must have been lovely to have been able to

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sit and actually watch your father captaining the Yorkshire team, but I didn't have that pleasure.

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So you were brought up to, um to know a googly from a leg break, where you?

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Not really. I was more interested in the players themselves than the actual game.

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Oh, really? Well, I was always I was lucky, you see, I was always meeting people like

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Who had played with my father, or whom my father had met late later after he'd retired from playing cricket, people like.

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Don Braddon from Australia. I remember shaking his hands and not washing my hands for a week afterwards. And you were the only daughter, but you had three brothers? I have three elder brothers, yes. So were you a bit of a tomboy then? Yes, I think so.

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Hence the climbing of trees.

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not being unnatural to you.

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It's still not unnatural to me. Is it not? When did you last climb a tree?

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Well, my s children are growing up a bit now, and I don't get the chance. I'd be a bit foolish climbing trees by myself. I need a child to climb them with. So.

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It was obviously a a a privileged childhood, but an informal one, would you say?

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Yeah, that's

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I had lovely trusting parents.

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Shall we pause there and have your second record? What is it?

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About twelve and

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twenty

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There was a wonderful young conductor on the scene, called Guido Cantelli.

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who was tragically killed in an aeroplane crash when he was about thirty.

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He was a prodigy of Toscanini, and I think many people thought very, very highly of him. I certainly did.

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That's because I had a crush on him really, and I would

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be allowed by my parents to go and listen to him really, whenever it was possible, to go and listen to him conducting.

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I'd love to hear Guido Cantelli conducting again, if I might, from the Tchaikovsky Politique.

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Part of the second movement of Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. Six in B minor The Patatik, played by the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Guido Cantelli.

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You used to work, I think, your Royal Highness, in in the local orphanage, didn't you, in Saint Stephen's Orphanage in York?

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Yes, I did. I loved it. I drove in every day and um worked there for a short time, and that not for very long, I don't think it was. When was that? In your teens? Yes. It was just after I left school. I loved my home, but I didn't want to go and work in London, so I worked in York for a while.

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You did leave home, though, later on, didn't you? You did go to London. I did. I went I taught in a school, and again, my reason for teaching a school was the length of holidays I would get when I go back to my beloved Yorkshire.

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What did you think then at that stage, in your early twenties? What did you think you would do with your life?

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Well, I hoped music would be my life.

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Don't think I had any other real.

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ambitions at that time.

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And then when you were twenty four years old, I think you met a a certain young army officer who was stationed near your home in Catterick.

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May I ask how that meeting came about?

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Yes, we met at a private party, actually. Not in Yorkshire.

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It was a strange meeting. I had heard a lot about him I had read a lot about him in the papers.

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And uh

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We became friends very quickly.

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And of course with him being stationed up near me

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Near my home in Yorkshire.

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He came over often and uh

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He for the first time in his life.

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began to realize, too, that there was such a thing called the country. He'd never known the country before, and my father

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whom he came to love very dearly.

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having not had a father himself.

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Well, I believe his father died when he was six.

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He gained, I think, another father.

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and my father played an enormous part in his life.

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I think he would say himself he taught him what the countryside was all about.

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And I I read, and you may wish to confirm or deny this, that he the Duke also rather liked you in that you weren't at all deferential indeed you um bossed him about a bit.

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I wouldn't be surprised.

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But you you fed in love, anyway, and you wanted to marry, but I think it was considered at the time that you were both too young and and uh you were asked to wait, weren't you? Yes. I went abroad for a while.

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I suppose in a way to think it out as I might have done on my desert island.

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And during that time I think it just made us both quite certain that it was the right thing.

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But it must have been quite painful, that separation.

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Yes, it was. It was it was a long time.

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But I'm sure it was a wise thing to do.

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So you went off to Canada and his Royal Highness went to Germany with his regiment, didn't he? Yes. And he wrote lots of letters while you were there, I'm sure.

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Not too many. More telephone calls, I should think. Really?

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Black.

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Anyway, the romance survived the separation and then eventually uh four years I think after you met you were married.

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in Yorkminster.

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Yeah. June 8th, 1961.

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Do you still remember it in every detail?

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Like to do it again. I think the

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I remember so little about it. I mean, the day after I remembered so little about it, it was all a dream. I couldn't believe what was happening. The church that I knew so well.

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where I'd played the organ and suddenly was transformed with television lights and

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I just rather did what I was told that day and moved forward as I was told.

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An extraordinary day, a very wonderful day, and the sun came out in the afternoon.

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Rained all morning, rained all evening, that the sun came out in the afternoon, it was wonderful.

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And your dress, I think, had been specially commissioned from a top London designer from John Cavanaugh, wasn't it? Yes, my mother-in-law.

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Chose that for me.

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She had an extraordinary taste in dress, and I was very happy to be dressed by her. I then had very little idea about

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What I liked in the way of clothes, so I was lucky to have had her to train me. Shall we pause there for your third record?

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Well, it's rather a good time to pause, because

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I was going to ask.

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If I could hear a piece played

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on the organ of Yorkminster. Not at that time.

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But this particular or organ which I played on, all organists would know that it has a stop called the tuber stop, which is

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Not very common.

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And

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A tune was written called the Tube Batune, especially for the Yorkminster organ.

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And I would love to hear Francis Jackson, who played at my wedding.

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Playing the two-batoon.

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Francis Jackson playing the tuba tune at Yorkminster. Is that the only organ in the land that has that?

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I'm not sure about that, but I do know that your Windsor's is is very famous for that particular stamp.

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Now, going back to you and music, you're also a member of the Bach Choir, aren't you? Did did you have to audition for that? Oh, yes. We have to audition every three years, and it's a nightmare. We all hate it.

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What do you sing? Do can you sing anything like?

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Oh no.

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We sing a harmoni some harmonies and then usually an unaccompanied piece of sight singing.

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and then an accompanied piece of sight singing.

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Everybody has a cold or a sore throat before they appear before a musical director or an audition. It must be terrifying, I guess.

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So your musical interests mean that you've attracted a a lot of associations with musical events and w we see you each year at at the Young Musician of the Year competition and the Lead Piano Competition and as we were saying you're President of the Royal Northern College of Music. Those posts must be great fun for you in many ways. Oh yes, I love them.

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I think the B B C Young Musician of the Year is an extraordinary

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Occasion it brings out talent that

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None of us knew existed and it in fact caused quite a problem because we really haven't the

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Schools to take all these talented children.

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The Leeds piano competition I've been doing for quite a long while now.

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And that too has brought out students who have won that particular competition.

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have done extraordinarily well in their careers.

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And going up to Manchester to the Royal Northern I

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Well, I'm just terribly proud of it. I love the feeling of belonging to it, and I suppose that

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It's me going back to

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being a part of something. I've always longed to be a part of something.

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Where everybody in that same building is there for one reason, one reason alone, they love music.

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Yeah.

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Hmm.

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The only problem in being a patron of these competitions is, of course, it means you can't be a judge, and you must sit there year after year and disagree with the judges, do you?

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Yes, I'm afraid so. I do. But you never dare say it. But I have to remember that judges.

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at something like the Leeds Banner competition, had been listening for two weeks.

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I only hear the finals.

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So I have to admit to myself that I haven't sat for two weeks and seen them playing right through.

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I actually only hear them playing the con chi concato in the in in the last two nights of the competition. But your judgment might be fresher and purer there. Might be.

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Shall we have your uh next piece? What is it?

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You mentioned the places I'm patron of or musically. I'm I'm also patron of the

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Ye hoodie Menerin School and I visit there a lot and

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know and love the children very much.

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But long before I knew you, Hoodie Menwin, at all, and now he is a friend, a dear friend.

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I bicycled out to Ansbach in North Germany.

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to a Bach festival.

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and for the first time in my life

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I saw and heard Hu Di Menuen. He was playing at that time with.

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Wolfgang Schneiderhahn. Unfortunately there isn't a recording of of the two of them playing together. That is actually what I heard in Ansbach.

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They were playing piece I'd never heard before, which everybody else knew a long time ago.

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The Bach double violin concerto.

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And I would love just to hear the adagio played by Yehudi and Georginesco.

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Part of the second movement of Bach's double violin concerto recorded in nineteen thirty two by Yehudi Menouin and Georges Enesco with the Paris Symphony Orchestra conducted by Pierre Monteau.

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Going back to uh your propulsion into public life, mum, it it must have seemed that in one move on your marriage y you became public property, really. You were rarely out of the newspapers. Women used to copy you, didn't they? The page boy Bob, you had your your ha the haircut, and and then the choker pearls that you made very fashionable. Were you were you aware that people were copying you?

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Not really, no.

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I've always loved fashion and

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When we were first married I think a fashion I loved was

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Very much the romantic.

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Slightly old-fashioned.

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clothes. I I I love them.

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and I still do on certain occasions.

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But you also were, I remember, the very fashionable I think you were the the first member of the royal family to shorten your skirts, as it were. I mean you should know, yeah. I was seen in Oxford Street in a mini skirt. Very, very well. It was a mini skirt, wasn't it?

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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About as many as there can be, but manyer than other members of my family had gone to at that stage.

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But were you embarrassed when it became a a public business? No, but when I look back at photographs of myself in those closed eyes

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Were you embarrassed when it

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I I can't believe I really did it. And the boots, you wore the long courage boots, didn't you? The white boots. Yes.

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That's right, yes. But did you enjoy that? Are you very much a a trendsetter in many ways? I shall always en enjoy clothes.

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The fun

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But like

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Everybody else who I'm sure you put this question to.

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I'm sure

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Everybody who who has to look.

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Tidy.

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when they don't always want to.

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We'll always answer you, but I'd always rather be in a pair of jeans. But had you any warning of that? It must have come as as something of a shock for someone who had really hitherto been quite anonymous. But again I had a tremendous amount of help from my mother-in-law. Princess Marina was wonderful to me and and enormous source of endless advice and encouragement.

HRH The Duchess of Kent21:47

To be included anonymously.

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You were, as I said at the beginning, voted on on many occasions the one of the best dressed women in the world, and you did wonders for the millinery trade, as as the Princess of Wales is now said to be doing. Do you feel sometimes

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That that her public role today has many similarities to your own experience.

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Yes, we're all working for the same ideals. And together you make up, as as I think the Duke of Edinburgh has called it, the firm, is that not?

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Is that how you see it in many ways? In many ways, yes.

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We each have different charities which we belong to, work for.

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If I am a patron of a certain organisation.

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I try very hard to work for it, not just to be a member of it, but to actually work for it.

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I want to talk a bit more about that and about your your work for charity in a moment, but let's have some more music first.

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When I was studying music, I'm always going back to that, aren't I?

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I very rarely listened to music except my own.

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And

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I wasn't at all appreciative of opera.

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Until I was taken.

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To Bohem.

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At Covent Garden.

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And I heard Placido Domingo.

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Singing the part of Rodolfo.

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And from then on.

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What only have I formed

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A lovely friendship.

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With him

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But

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have formed an enormous love of opera.

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But because of the fact that it was through Boheme that I started to love opera and began to understand it, that I would love to hear one particular part from Te Gili de Manina.

Speaker 423:45

Glory to Moi.

Speaker 423:51

But it is

Speaker 424:09

Ah my

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Placido Domingo singing part of the aria Ce Cellida Manina from Puccini's Labueme with the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Sir George Schulte.

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We must talk, mum, about your work for charity, which is prolific. I must mention also too that Stuart Schulte is a great friend of mine as well.

HRH The Duchess of Kent24:54

Bus man

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So it all seems to be friendship throughout this. I think you know everybody and all the records. I'm very lucky. I've been privileged.

HRH The Duchess of Kent25:00

I think you know everybody. I know

HRH The Duchess of Kent25:03

Yeah.

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You trained, too, as a Samaritan, didn't you?

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Yes, I did. I didn't want to be patron Samaritans unless I actually became a Samaritan.

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And I did I did the course, I did train, and I actually worked at St Stephen's Wa W Walbrook for

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a short time, and enjoyed it enormously.

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And then the things I was being asked to do grew in number and

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I found that I couldn't simply go every Wednesday morning as I was doing.

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And it was with a great sadness that I actually stopped doing it. I'm very involved with the Samaritans, but I'm now not answering a telephone any more. But you learnt how to talk to people, for example, who are contemplating suicide, which is an enormously difficult thing to do. Yes, I did, but

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The course taught me an enormous amount about life.

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I mean, if you're going to spend.

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Quite a few months.

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Talking to people who are suicidal.

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Mainly through loneliness.

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You do begin to understand people.

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and their problems.

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and look at people in the street in a different way, and wonder what their problems are, and don't just take them all for granted as his being.

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Just another person in the street.

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And of course you you you go around talking to an awful lot of people, whether it's um

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old people, um, as part of age concern and uh or it's people.

Speaker 326:27

I love a

HRH The Duchess of Kent26:28

Uh

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Thank you. And I I just think that old age should be the happiest time in your life.

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and I can't bear it when it isn't, and sadly, in reality, it very rarely is.

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And of course what you also do, which must be the most difficult task of all, you talk to the dying, don't you? You you visit hospices around the country. Yes, I do. I suppose

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That is probably what I do actually more than anything else.

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But what then can you say?

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What then can you offer?

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I've never had to think.

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What should I say?

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Is they the ones who were?

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Ill.

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are the ones who give you the confidence to talk to them. That is the most remarkable part.

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of hospice work.

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They give to you much more than you can ever give to them.

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Shall we pause there for your sixth piece of music?

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I'd love to hear.

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Exactly in Dupre playing again.

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I met

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Jackie?

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Funny enough.

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We were never even introduced. It was at the Woman of the Year lunch quite a long time ago.

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She was in her wheelchair already, and she was wheeled past me, and I just said hello.

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and she said hello to me and

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as if we'd known each other all our lives.

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And we formed a

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Wonderful friendship.

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At the beginning she was she was either called Smiley or Jackie because she

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She was always laughing, always

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Happy.

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She was she was a very, very lovely person, and I

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Visited her most weeks.

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She got weaker very quickly and um

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I personally think I was very lucky.

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to have been with her just a very few hours before she died.

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Hope they would share.

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A few of those last moments with her.

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If I asked to have a piece of music played by Jackie.

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It has to be the Elgo Cello concerto.

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I think it's true in saying that public hazelles.

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when asked to teach her, said, There is nothing I can teach her.

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She knows it all she is just a born musician.

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And I believe that's true. And what a

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Sadness to all of us that she died so young.

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That was Jacqueline Dupre, who died in nineteen eighty seven.

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Playing part of Elgar's cello concerto in E minor.

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With the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir John Barbaroli.

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How do you relax, Your Royal Highness? How and when do you really kick off your shoes and forget about your cares?

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I have a passion for the Greek islands. If I could go there every year and swim, I'd be really happy. I don't always make my ambition, but

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I love swimming in those waters. Clear, lovely, clear waters that are cold. And you're a windsurfer too, aren't you? Not a perfectly good one, but I like I enjoy it, but I'm not a good one.

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A bicycle a bit.

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I

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Play tennis once a week?

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Ballet?

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Polly I love

Presenter30:33

I do actually dance a little.

Presenter30:35

Uh in London, when w when I'm in London.

Presenter30:38

But ballet is um something which I enjoy enormously.

Presenter30:43

And you enjoy a good football match, too.

Presenter30:46

Yes, I do. I enjoy football very much indeed. Do you go to every cup final?

Presenter30:51

Yes, I do.

Presenter30:53

I make a point of it, and I'm very touched to be asked every year.

Presenter30:56

And do you do you jump up and down and shout a lot?

Presenter30:59

Yes, I do. But it it's always a little difficult because for the first half I have

Presenter31:05

one of the team's chairman on my beside me, and the second half I have the other team's chairman beside me.

Presenter31:14

So I have to

Presenter31:15

Kick quite carefully, this impute I mean. Diplomacy. But you I think I think you're known, aren't you, to be quite a Liverpool supporter.

Speaker 431:19

Pluma's rival moments.

Presenter31:24

Yes, I do support Liverpool, yes. I was at a blind school the other day and and

Presenter31:29

I I I made a lot of friends of the children of twelve and thirteen after telling me when they grew up they're going to be football hooligans and I got that out of their system. They became very partial to me because they told me they were livable supporters as well. And then of course there's the game with which the world associates you and and and that's tennis. You're you're the lady from Wimbledon.

Presenter31:50

Yes, for about three or four weeks after Wimbledon I can't move around London at all. American ladies in quantity surround me and say I'm the lady of Wimbledon. I think that a lot of people think that I stand in the centre court throughout the entire year.

Presenter32:05

holding that plate and just waiting for

Presenter32:07

the new winner to come up and collect it and take it away from me, and then I remain there again for another year. But watching it must be a joy. I mean, especially when you've got the best seat on the centre court. I mean, millions across the world envy you. Yes, we're terribly lucky. And I go a lot. We are terribly lucky.

HRH The Duchess of Kent32:20

Yeah, but

Presenter32:24

Let's have record number seven.

Presenter32:26

I thought if I was on a desert island, although I love dancing.

Presenter32:30

I thought I needed something to make my head bob up and down and my feet dance up and down, so I'd like to hear the Beatles with Maxwell's silver hammer.

Speaker 332:41

Take you out to the pictures, John.

Speaker 332:47

But now she's getting rain

Speaker 332:50

A knock comes on the door.

Speaker 332:54

Bang-bang Man Swell Silver Hammer came down upon a hill.

Speaker 333:01

Clang clang Maxwell Silver Hammer made sure that she was dead.

Presenter33:09

The Beatles and Maxwell's Silver Hammer. Are you going to be dancing on the edge of the sand to that? Yes, I am.

Presenter33:15

Now you have to make two grand decisions about your life as a castaway. First of all, what book would you like apart from the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare? Well, I had a lot of thought about this, because I've got so many unif unfinished books that I'd love to take with me and read.

Presenter33:30

But as you would so unkindly only let me take one book.

Presenter33:34

I decided to take

Presenter33:36

Reader's Digest Do It Yourself manual,'cause I feel that might be incredibly useful on a desert island.

Presenter33:42

It's very practical. Are you going to build a shelter, then?

Presenter33:44

Oh yes, I'm going to build a raft and you would tell me how to do that and I'm going to build a fishing net and you would tell me how to do that.

Presenter33:52

And what about your luxury? What would you like that to be?

Presenter33:55

I don't think I'd like the long, dark nights,'cause of my idea of of of desert islands, they get dark about six, and dawn isn't probably till about three or four in the morning. So I think I'd like a solar powered lamp.

Presenter34:13

so that I can have light in the darkness and of course read through the long dark nights.

Presenter34:19

And so we come to your final record. What is that?

Presenter34:23

It's really been the most difficult one to choose of all.

Presenter34:26

Good singing with a choir.

Presenter34:29

There is so much we sing.

Presenter34:31

that I would love to have chosen.

Presenter34:33

But I think there's one piece which Mozart

Presenter34:37

sums all the coral works up with

Presenter34:41

It's Muti conducting the Ave Varum Corpus.

Presenter35:45

This piece has a particular fascination for me because it was written

Presenter35:49

He died in seventeen ninety one. It was certainly one of written in one of the very last few months of his life, so it has a particular meaning to me.

Presenter35:59

That was Mozart's Arve Verum Corpus, sung by the Swedish Radio Chorus and the Stockholm Chamber Choir, with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Riccardo Mutti.

Presenter36:10

Is that then, do you think, ma'am, your favourite record of the eight?

Presenter36:14

They're all favourites, but I think

Presenter36:16

as there are so many coral pieces that I would love to have chosen, and I've chosen this one to represent so many coral pieces that I love, that I would I think I would choose the Arvearum corpus as my

Presenter36:28

leading piece of my age.

Presenter36:30

And finally, Your Royal Highness, this programme is being broadcast at Christmas. Can I ask you where and how you'll be spending Christmas?

Presenter36:38

The whole family will be at home.

Presenter36:41

in Norfolk.

Presenter36:42

which is a lovely thought. We shall gather there probably on Christmas Eve. And I love the magic of going to midnight mass on Christmas Eve.

Presenter36:52

And then stockings in the morning.

Presenter36:54

Very important.

Presenter36:56

Whole family gets them. Nobody grows out of stockings in our family.

Presenter37:01

and presents after tea on Christmas Day, after a long walk in the country.

Presenter37:06

Your Royal Highness, have a happy Christmas, and thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs. I've enjoyed it. Thank you very much.

HRH The Duchess of Kent37:20

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