Sir Trevor Holdsworth

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 ninety one.

Speaker 20:12

And the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:33

My Castaway this week is an industrialist. Throughout his working life he's been attracted to the strength and force of heavy industry. It impressed him during his Yorkshire childhood and motivated him during his long service with one of Britain's leading manufacturing companies, Guest, Keen and Nettlefold, or GKN as it became. This was the firm that he put back on its feet, rising to become its chairman in the process. Since then he's served as President of the CBI, Chairman of BSB, and currently as Chairman of National Power.

Presenter1:02

But those heavy weight appointments don't tell the full story. This is a man who might have been a musician instead, and is still at his happiest when playing the piano. Only last January he gave a masterly performance of a Mozart piano concerto in the banqueting hall in London. He is Sir Trevor

Presenter1:21

It's um an unusual combination, Sir Trevor, a love of Mozart and a love of manufacturing. Have you found them difficult to marry?

Sir Trevor Holdsworth1:28

Not at all. Um there seemed to have been a natural

Sir Trevor Holdsworth1:31

a pairing all through my life.

Presenter1:33

Really? Because people don't expect to find someone who's a a sort of expert on constant velocity joints also knowing about Koehl numbers, really.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth1:42

Yes. Well, I think it's it it happened, I think that I wanted to be a musician and it didn't happen that way. But I kept it going in parallel all the time.

Presenter1:52

But have you have you ever, you know, played the trick of inviting a competitor, or indeed a colleague, to a concert where you just happened to be the star performer?

Sir Trevor Holdsworth2:00

No, no, uh not really. Uh people are surprised by it, but every so often I've done concerts and invited my colleagues to them.

Presenter2:10

They all go away rather impressed.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth2:13

I think they're surprised.

Presenter2:16

But do you do you use the one love to solve the other? That is, if you've got a a manufacturing problem, do you sit at the piano and try and solve it?

Sir Trevor Holdsworth2:24

No, no, I don't think I use one. It's a marvellous relaxation. I find that uh music is the one thing that uh when I do it I don't think about anything else. It's all absorbing. Whereas you can um do other things. You can watch television, you can do gardening, you can play games and you think you can think about other things perhaps. But with um me music takes over, so I don't. So I can't solve manufacturing problems playing Mozart. I just have to solve Mozart's problems.

Presenter2:52

I've said in the past that that that music lovers who um enjoy fishing are ideal castaways, and and round the world yachtsmen who can put up with loneliness, I think, are ideal. But perhaps you uh you know, maybe a maybe a down to earth industrialist with a passion for the piano is absolutely ideal. Do you like the idea of going to a desert island?

Sir Trevor Holdsworth3:11

To start with, yes. I'm not certain about the long term. I might want

Sir Trevor Holdsworth3:16

Uh to play before an audience, and there won't be one there, will there?

Presenter3:19

Certainly not, no. Shall we hear your first record?

Sir Trevor Holdsworth3:21

Yeah.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth3:22

Well, this is the one concerto that I would like to have time.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth3:28

To learn and to play, and this is the Rachmaninoff third piano concerto.

Presenter4:31

That was Rachmaninoff playing his own third piano concerto in D minor, opus thirty, with the Philadelphia orchestra conducted by Eugene Ormondy, and that was recorded in nineteen forty. Well, Sir Trevor, if if you're going to practise the Rachmaninoff, I dare say you need a piano.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth4:46

Yes, and I was hoping you'd allow me the luxury item of a piano on the desert island. Then I can really have the time to learn that.

Presenter4:54

I think the the classic answer to that is, yes, you can have it, as long as you promise not to live underneath it.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth4:59

I'll have a nice upright.

Presenter5:00

Right, okay.

Presenter5:02

Of course you you've performed not Rachmaninoff, but you've performed Grieg and Mozart in public, to my knowledge. Are you not terrified? Play I can ask you that because you're not a professional. I mean but you do play in front of distinguished audiences.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth5:14

Yes, always um leading up to concert um very apprehensive. But actually when you're um on and working it's it then the nerves go.

Presenter5:25

But what is the fear? I mean, is it the fingers seizing up?

Sir Trevor Holdsworth5:28

For an amateur, uh not doing it all the time, it's memory. Uh that's the one thing that I worry about, that you uh forget. And you don't have the professional instincts of muscular memory which you can take over if those things go wrong. So yes, it's it's really remembering.

Presenter5:45

Are you in a way still testing yourself to find out whether you should have taken that gamble and actually not gone into industry but gone onto the concert platform?

Sir Trevor Holdsworth5:54

No, I don't regret not having gone in for music. I think mm I think it's almost certain my parents were right, and it was my parents who decided I wasn't going to be musician. But it was in nineteen forty two, forty three, in the middle of the war.

Presenter6:08

But was there an argument? Can you remember saying, But look, I want to dedicate my life to music?

Sir Trevor Holdsworth6:12

I don't think I was that strongly motivated and

Sir Trevor Holdsworth6:18

I think also that uh with music if you think you've got a choice one thing or the other you should do the other thing. There shouldn't be a choice.

Presenter6:26

But you have to be single-minded about music.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth6:28

Yes, yes.

Presenter6:30

But your your parents didn't want you to do that anyway. They wanted you to be a sensible chap.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth6:34

Yes, very down-to-earth Bradfordian's Yorkshire didn't think music was a real career for him.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth6:42

Boy or a man?

Presenter6:43

Not a proper job.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth6:44

Not a proper job, no.

Presenter6:45

But an accountant is a proper job.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth6:47

Uh yes, yes.

Presenter6:49

And that's what you decided to do.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth6:50

Well, it was an entry into industry because there were no business schools in those days if you wanted to go into management. That was the best training to be a chartered accountant.

Presenter7:01

Shall we have record number two?

Sir Trevor Holdsworth7:03

Well, this takes us to Bradford again, because the Bradfordian composer Delius is one of my favourites, though he doesn't sound like a Yorkshire composer. And of course he was German. I think Delius hated Bradford actually, but but glorious music, and I still think his music is very English.

Presenter8:17

Delius Summer Evening with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Sir Thomas Beecham, Delius who was born in Bradford, as was my castaway, Sir Trevor Holsworth. What are your early memories of the place, Sir Trevor, this heart of the textile industry?

Sir Trevor Holdsworth8:31

Yeah.

Presenter8:32

Uh

Sir Trevor Holdsworth8:32

I know.

Presenter8:32

Uh

Sir Trevor Holdsworth8:32

I have a lot of affection for Bradford. It was a very unique place and very much a textile place. But I never thought of the textile industry as being real industry in my little mind. Um the wool exchange and cigar smoke and Bentleys uh on a Thursday didn't quite seem to be industry.

Presenter8:50

So it didn't inspire you at all.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth8:53

No, I d I particularly since uh I had a trip at uh from my school to Sheffield.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth8:59

in I think about nineteen thirty six.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth9:01

And there we went into a forge. That's what I thought of as industry, when you could hear these big forges and hammers hitting metal. And that seemed to me to be real industry. I carried that impression with me.

Presenter9:15

It was the it was the noise that attracted you, was it?

Sir Trevor Holdsworth9:18

Noise, power. Yes, probably. That was manufacturing industry to me.

Presenter9:23

But that was where it all began, when you y you as a schoolboy heard it and saw it and thought this is for me.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth9:26

You as a schoolboy.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth9:28

And for this.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth9:30

Yes, I was always good with Meccano sets as well.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth9:34

And train that.

Presenter9:37

Right, third record.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth9:40

Well, of course I was also in the Bradford Cathedral Choir during the thirties, and so church music was bred into me at that point. So I've selected Fory's Requiem, and I think that's just a a nice reminder.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth9:59

of um nice church music and boys' choirs.

Speaker 410:44

Swashy love stand

Presenter10:56

Foray's Requiem, performed by King's College Choir, Cambridge, and the new Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by David Wilcox. So you were a chorister, Sir Trevor, in Bradford Cathedral. Weren't you there up the back of the choir stalls, when a certain bishop gave a rather famous sermon?

Sir Trevor Holdsworth11:13

Yes, Bishop Blunt of Bradford was the man who opened up the whole of the abdication crisis of King Edward the VIII. And I was obviously there at the time and missed it because of course we in the choir joined the sermon, used to play little games with one another and the back of the hymn books. I think it was Hang the Butcher we used to call it and we used to draw little diagrams and see who got the last piece in it. So you missed this great movie.

Presenter11:43

So you missed this great moment in history.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth11:45

Yeah.

Presenter11:47

You were evacuated after that, weren't you? I mean, during the war you were sent away. You were

Presenter11:57

But you met some one, then, who influenced you enormously?

Sir Trevor Holdsworth12:00

Yes, I was b um uh lived with um a local solicitor called um Harry Wall. Uh my brother and I were billeted on him. And um he was quite a remarkable uh playwright.

Presenter12:14

What sort of influence did that have on you? What did it make you think about?

Sir Trevor Holdsworth12:17

Yes, yes. I wasn't particularly, I think, um fond of uh drama or literature and he opened up he had a marvellous library and uh he opened up my mind to all that.

Presenter12:30

Do you think you returned home then as a different person from the boy that got sent away?

Sir Trevor Holdsworth12:35

Yes, yes, I d I don't really know. Obviously did, I think. Yes, yes.

Presenter12:41

Broadened you out.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth12:41

Yeah.

Presenter12:43

So so when you deferred to your parents' wishes and and agreed to become an accountant, were you then planning really already to look beyond books and figures, planning to sort of go on from there, even at that age?

Sir Trevor Holdsworth12:53

An intestine.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth12:56

I knew that I wasn't going to be a professional accountant in practice doing the sort of audit work. I saw it all the time as the

Sir Trevor Holdsworth13:09

Entry to industry. This was my management training course.

Presenter13:11

Dude

Presenter13:14

Let's have record number four.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth13:16

Well, of course, once I'd put aside being a musician, a very serious musician, I wanted to be a classical pianist and so on, I suddenly discovered that I liked all sorts of music, jazz and popular music in a big way. So that and of course then one realises that jazz is the 20th century inheritor of the ability to improvise that used to be in the classical stream but is no longer there. And jazz is just marvellous for improvisation and all students of music should be able to do it. So I pick one of the greatest of the improvisers, Oscar Peterson, on the piano, playing probably the best musical writer, Bernstein.

Presenter15:00

I Feel Pretty from West Side Story, music composed by Leonard Bernstein played by The Oscar Peterson trio.

Presenter15:07

So you ended up, Sir Trevor, in um Forces Radio. What did you do in the Forces Radio?

Sir Trevor Holdsworth15:13

Well, in 47, 48, I was virtually their staff pianist. I did everything. I was doing auditions in the morning and.

Presenter15:17

Pin

Speaker 215:18

Yeah.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth15:22

Uh doing piano playtime, lunchtime and um oh did everything, everything.

Presenter15:27

Cliff Mitchellmore was there.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth15:28

Cliff Mitchell Moore, Raymond Baxter, Alexis Corner.

Presenter15:31

So you might have ended up presenting two way family favourites, might you?

Sir Trevor Holdsworth15:34

Yesterday Def Mitchell Moore got there first.

Presenter15:37

But you wrote some tunes you were writing, composing.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth15:39

Not a lot then. Uh I did later. Um

Sir Trevor Holdsworth15:44

But that was another one.

Presenter15:45

What sort of stuff?

Sir Trevor Holdsworth15:46

Well, it was mainly popular stuff and special numbers. The Ted Ray show, uh, I did.

Presenter15:51

So you gave up all this glamour, all this horses radio and writing signature tunes, and you came home.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth15:53

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth15:56

Yeah.

Presenter15:57

You can join the Bow Water Group.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth15:59

I was demobbed about um nineteen forty nine. Um a year later I became a chartered accountant and then I wanted to go into industry.

Presenter16:07

So he went into the this this paper industry.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth16:09

Yes, the tape of the bow water tape of course.

Presenter16:10

Bow waters.

Presenter16:12

By all accounts you were a young man in a hurry, impatient for change, frustrated at every turn. Chairman wouldn't listen to you, and you knew how to do it. Is that about it?

Sir Trevor Holdsworth16:19

You knew how.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth16:22

Yes, I didn't like l I didn't make it too obvious, I think. But yes, I think that's right. Yes.

Presenter16:27

So you came across this company which was against computers, was against any kind of

Sir Trevor Holdsworth16:32

Well, nothing against, but it I must say, in in retrospect, it seemed rather old-fashioned.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth16:38

Actually the leadership of it was excellent. Eric Burwater was a great uh entrepreneur and leader, so he was uh very dynamic. But um

Presenter16:48

He didn't like you and your computer.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth16:49

Well I did.

Presenter16:52

Anyway, you you were about ten years out you stuck it for ten years. Oh yeah.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth16:56

Oh yes, it was very exciting, really.

Presenter16:58

Um

Sir Trevor Holdsworth16:59

And I was first

Presenter16:59

Uh

Sir Trevor Holdsworth17:01

Real job. And

Sir Trevor Holdsworth17:04

I was progressing well. Yes, I went through a whole series. I never stayed still there and ended up as the controller of the paper mills. Yes, it was a good good period.

Presenter17:12

And then you got headhunted for Guest Keen and Nettlefold. Now, headhunting must have been a novel concept. It was.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth17:14

Mm.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth17:19

It was, yes, I think I was one of the very first people to be hunted by the very first firm, Spencer Stewart.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth17:27

It was a very uh novel concept.

Presenter17:30

This was the early 60s, wasn't it?

Sir Trevor Holdsworth17:31

It was uh sixty two, sixty three. Very uh and people felt very uncomfortable about it in this country.

Presenter17:38

Did they?

Sir Trevor Holdsworth17:38

It was uh Peter Brooke who is now the

Sir Trevor Holdsworth17:41

Uh Minister for Northern Ireland.

Presenter17:44

Who headhunted you?

Sir Trevor Holdsworth17:45

He was then running the the firm.

Presenter17:47

The opposite knew how to choose the right man because you stayed there for the next twenty-five years and became the chairman.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth17:52

It happened at the right time. I was thirty, early thirty, thirty-four. And it's the right time to move if you're going to.

Presenter17:59

And was GKN just what well, it was guest keen and metaphold then, wasn't it?

Sir Trevor Holdsworth18:03

Metaphor then, wasn't it?

Presenter18:05

Uh the full title. Was it just what you'd had in mind as that young boy in Sheffield who'd seen all those sparks flying?

Sir Trevor Holdsworth18:10

I suppose it was. I d I really did think of it as the

Sir Trevor Holdsworth18:15

uh epitome of manufacturing industry. The mirror of the

Sir Trevor Holdsworth18:19

Industrial Revolution, Iron.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth18:21

Railways

Presenter18:23

And it made and it made a lot of noise.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth18:23

And it made

Sir Trevor Holdsworth18:25

I suppose it did, yes, yes. It and products and and things that lasted.

Presenter18:30

We'll hear a bit more about that in a minute. Let's pause for some more music.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth18:34

Yes, well this really reverts again to my British Forces Network days. I've always been intrigued by the music of Billy Mayle, who was a 1930s pianist, but a very good composer. I think he's underrated and I think he's going to come back. And I'd love to be able to have his most famous piece, Marigold.

Presenter19:58

Marigold played by Billy Mayle.

Presenter20:01

So guest keen and nettlefold, Sir Trevor, is as old as the hills.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth20:06

Yes, one of the oldest. Indeed, within it they have by an acquisition in the sixties one the oldest firm in the world, Coxtile Forge and Engineering Company in Leeds, which was started by the monks in about twelve hundred. It's still on the same site, is still in metal. But that was not one of the main branches o of um of Geskin Nettlefeld. But

Sir Trevor Holdsworth20:31

Iron and steel was.

Presenter20:33

Trevor Holdsworth arrived, and two years after that, nineteen sixty five, I think, Steele was nationalized.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth20:34

I've

Sir Trevor Holdsworth20:40

Yes, that was the beginning of the steel nationalisation. It was completed about 1967.

Presenter20:45

What effect did that have on the company?

Sir Trevor Holdsworth20:46

Well, it's very dramatic. It was like ripping the core of the whole business out. It had always been the steel.

Presenter20:51

Yeah.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth20:54

Steel had been the uh the whole rationale of the business was making steel and using it. Therefore it i it uh made a lot of other things irrelevant, so one had to start changing.

Presenter21:04

What did it have to change to?

Sir Trevor Holdsworth21:06

Well, the first decision was whether to go back into steel, because the government changed in 1970 and we could have bought back our steel companies, and we didn't.

Presenter21:15

You want it to have end products, you want it to make things.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth21:17

Yes, yes. So we had to decide what we wanted to make and what industries we wanted to serve. And of course, it was the automotive industry that we really chose as the main target.

Presenter21:27

You also had to decide, though, who your customers should be, didn't you where they were in the world.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth21:31

Yes, because th even after two hundred years of existence it was very Commonwealth oriented. But that's all. Very little in in nothing in America, very little in Europe.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth21:43

And so if you're going to follow the automotive industry, you really had to set about

Sir Trevor Holdsworth21:48

making it much more international.

Presenter21:49

Now you as a a strategist, um which is said to be your forte saw all of that, could sort of see the way things were going, but you weren't always listened to, were you?

Sir Trevor Holdsworth22:00

No, I did have one or two battles. Yes, yes, I was lucky to survive, I think.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth22:05

Took a lot.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth22:07

Longer than one would think.

Presenter22:08

Talking about nineteen years.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth22:10

Well yes, yes, yes, it is kind of

Presenter22:11

Uh

Presenter22:12

Very difficult, though, for people to accept that a long established traditional industry had to go in quite a different direction doing quite different things. I mean that was a problem.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth22:20

Got it.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth22:21

And we had to shrink and we had to shrink as well.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth22:24

which is always difficult for business.

Presenter22:26

It's painful.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth22:27

painful. And we were very lucky in having mm it was probably more than that. We did realize that um the constant velocity joint doesn't sound a very romantic product, but it it was the the thing that made front wheel drive possible.

Presenter22:42

The mini car.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth22:43

The Mini was the um the first um mass version of it, but then it just swept round the world and we were sitting there with the the right technology and being good at it.

Presenter22:53

However, shortly after you became chairman, isn't it true that the profits of GKN went from one hundred twenty six million down to minus one point two million?

Sir Trevor Holdsworth22:59

Um

Sir Trevor Holdsworth23:02

Yes, the

Sir Trevor Holdsworth23:05

Became chairman.

Presenter23:06

How did you explain away that?

Sir Trevor Holdsworth23:07

Yes, well, f uh part of it was the the steel strike. It was a s a steel strike in

Sir Trevor Holdsworth23:15

Yes, it started on the first of january, nineteen eighty.

Presenter23:18

Just as you sat in the chairman's chair.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth23:19

Yes, as I started, yes, which is a good start. So it was a tough time and um manufacturing industry in particular had to make a lot of changes.

Presenter23:28

So you strip things right back. You you shed an awful lot of stuff.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth23:31

We did. Yes, we did.

Presenter23:32

And you came through.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth23:34

Yes, we needed to change and uh we did change and it it worked.

Presenter23:39

But would mister Guest and or mister Keene or mister Nettlefeld recognize their company to day?

Sir Trevor Holdsworth23:45

No, uh they wouldn't, because I ended up by getting

Sir Trevor Holdsworth23:49

Guest out of steel, keen out of bolts, nettlefold out of screws. So

Sir Trevor Holdsworth23:55

Yes, I'd got rid of uh Geskin and Alpha. Now it's called GKN of course.

Presenter24:01

Six record.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth24:03

The sixth record um is very English. It's Elgar, uh chosen uh a for its Englishness and b because the Enigma variations on a desert island. It's all about uh my friends within, and you can take those twelve pieces and and pop your own friends into those variations.

Presenter25:24

The ninth of Elgar's Enigma variations, The Nimrod, played by the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir Adrian Bolt.

Presenter25:31

So we have this picture of you, Sir Trevor, sitting on the island.

Speaker 425:35

Mm-hmm.

Presenter25:35

tinkling the ivories of your luxury piano. Do we assume, as as a man of strategy, that um you would have planned your escape as well from this island?

Sir Trevor Holdsworth25:44

I wouldn't have got there in the first place if I'd done it properly, would I? Strategy. Well, yes, yes, but uh yes, strategy is uh knowing what to do when there is nothing to do, as against tactics, which is knowing what to do when there is something to do. Um so yes, I should really be thinking about how to get away, I suppose.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth26:05

But maybe I'd like it.

Presenter26:05

But maybe that

Presenter26:06

Tell me about the strategy for for BSB, British satellite broadcasting, which went rather awry last year, didn't it? When there was a sort of de facto takeover really by Rupert Murdoch's Sky television.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth26:14

Yeah.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth26:19

Yes, yes.

Presenter26:20

Was that a great disappointment to you?

Sir Trevor Holdsworth26:21

Yes, direct broadcasting by satellite had been very difficult to launch in this country and so finally when the franchise was awarded,

Sir Trevor Holdsworth26:32

It really needed uh a period of um uh of freedom, no competition actually. Uh that sounds a funny thing to say, but it

Sir Trevor Holdsworth26:41

It was too delicate a plant uh to have that happen to it.

Presenter26:45

which was exactly what it didn't get.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth26:47

That's exactly what it is.

Presenter26:49

And now you're chairman of National Power, which has just been floated on the stock market, possibly the last of the great privatization of major public utilities.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth26:53

On the stock.

Presenter27:00

Do you think overall that the the policy of privatization will be judged by history as a successful operation?

Sir Trevor Holdsworth27:08

Yes, I think it will. So I don't I sometimes get worried about taking a public monopoly and making it into a private monopoly.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth27:17

Mo all monopolies are inefficient, private ones as well as public ones. Uh as soon I ran one, Gesky and Neddovo were an absolute monopoly in wood screws and if anybody else started to do it they bought them up and in the end um it um it became

Sir Trevor Holdsworth27:33

The wrong sort of business, it wasn't sensitive enough and had to go. So I think businesses need as much competition as possible for their longevity, really, and strength. This one has actually been put done from the beginning with the competition in mind. It has all the right elements to make it happen.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth27:56

But uh

Sir Trevor Holdsworth27:57

But government's job is not to run these things, it's to watch and make certain that the competition is open. And then

Sir Trevor Holdsworth28:06

And looking round the world, governments are not too good at this at times.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth28:11

They do participate in this uh uh conspiracy of uh uh of um not having competition.

Presenter28:19

Record number seven.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth28:22

Well, this is a a a a particular uh favorite of mine um because it's by Rachmanoff again. But it w what it does is to take the human voice and female voice and make it into an instrument. And it's just a perfect little uh

Sir Trevor Holdsworth28:38

Uh cambio uh vocalies by Ragmanidoff.

Presenter29:39

Ragmaninoff's Vocalese, sung by Suzanne Murphy, with the Scottish National Orchestra conducted by Naimie Yervie.

Presenter29:47

So how do you persuade young people, Sir Trevor, as you were in that factory in Sheffield as a young schoolboy? How do you persuade them that the future is in industry and not in the city and the fast buck, as they might think?

Sir Trevor Holdsworth30:00

Yes, it is difficult. And of course, particularly in the in uh the um uh British um

Sir Trevor Holdsworth30:07

A culture which has been a a an anti-industry culture.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth30:12

Since the Victorian times, one is seeing now that well at one time countries used to have empires, now it's it's companies that have them and uh one of these days they ought to join the United Nations. Toyota probably has got more people and more economic power than other nations in there there, and also much more international, crossing borders.

Speaker 230:32

Yeah.

Presenter30:32

There.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth30:36

Um it's a great influence.

Presenter30:38

So how do you persuade young people that that's what they've got to do?

Sir Trevor Holdsworth30:39

But that's what

Sir Trevor Holdsworth30:42

With difficulty. It's that excitement that I think it's uh that one ought to feel about uh

Sir Trevor Holdsworth30:48

making things and uh products.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth30:51

and technology.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth30:53

It's the use of technology. Business is all about technology. It always has been.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth30:59

the way that the ideas of a few improve the lot of the many. It's really once said it's the way you change a struggle for existence into a standard of living. And technology does that and it'll go on doing it. And that is technology is in the manufacturing industry.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth31:21

rather than services and um

Sir Trevor Holdsworth31:24

more peripheral things. Those are very necessary. I mustn't uh appear to uh say that they're not. But um at the heart of a really strong economy is its capability in manufacturing industry.

Presenter31:38

Past record.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth31:40

Well, my last record is back to Mozart. If I had to choose one opera, it is Cosy Fan Tutti by Mozart. And I think on the desert island, the very end, the last Tutti, which loosely translated, happy is the man who looks at everything on the right side and through trials and tribulations makes reason his guide would be a very nice thing to build play frequently.

Presenter33:09

The finale of Mozart's Cosifantute, with the orchestra and chorus of the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, conducted by Sir Colin Davies.

Presenter33:16

The leading parts there sung by Monserrat Caballee, Dame Janet Baker, Iliana Kotrubash, Vladimiro Gansaroli, and Nikolai Gedda.

Presenter33:25

So which one of those records, Sir Trevor, would you need to have with you more than any of the others?

Sir Trevor Holdsworth33:31

I think uh

Sir Trevor Holdsworth33:33

I think vocalese by Rachmaniov would be the one that I

Sir Trevor Holdsworth33:37

Take.

Presenter33:38

You'd float away on.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth33:39

Yes, I think so.

Presenter33:41

And we know your

Presenter33:43

your luxury, which is a a piano upon which you will play. So um there remains your book. You have the Bible and you have the complete works of Shakespeare.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth33:53

And my choice would be the um

Sir Trevor Holdsworth33:56

Collected plays of JB Priestley. We're back to uh Bradford again. JB Priestley used to be live in near us in Toler Lane in Bradford. But never see he was a great

Sir Trevor Holdsworth34:09

Author and

Sir Trevor Holdsworth34:11

Dramatist.

Sir Trevor Holdsworth34:13

And very original plays he wrote. He was a sort of Alan Aykebourne of the thirties.

Presenter34:18

So he keep you quietly happy on your desert island.

Presenter34:21

Sir Trevor Holsworth, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Speaker 234:33

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