Elizabeth Esteve-Coll

Speaker 30:00

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 30:08

The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen ninety one.

Speaker 30:11

And the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:31

My Castaway this week is the director of one of Britain's most famous museums. Far from being a dry academic, she's someone who wants the public to participate fully in the joys of the treasures she protects.

Presenter0:43

At the age of nineteen she abandoned her university studies, married, and went to sea with a Spanish naval officer. It was during their life together that she educated herself, took a degree, and became a university librarian.

Presenter0:56

When she took over her present job in nineteen eighty eight, she was immediately plunged into the biggest controversy the museum has ever faced. But she weathered the storm and has just been invited to stay for a second five year term, giving her more time to make it a popular place for everyone to visit. She's the director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, the V and A, Elizabeth Esteve Coll.

Presenter1:19

Elizabeth, your revolution at the VA was certainly not achieved without pain, but was it worth it? I mean, are more people coming? Is it more popular? Well, I've just left the museum to come to the studio, leaving great crowds of people in the museum. So, yes, I think it is worth it, because they're discovering the museum for the first time and saying, Oh, it's not full of Victorian furniture. It's marvellous. It's full of jewellery, it's costume, it's dress. There's something there for everybody, and people are rediscovering that, and that is very exciting. And are people making voluntary contributions at the door, which since 1985, before your time as director, is what they've been asked to do, this admission charge, which was. Yes, they are indeed. And more people than ever are making that contribution. What do they pay? It's always a b job to know what one ought to offer up, really. There's a suggested amount, three pounds, but most people give what they can. Some people give much more than three pounds, and hopefully most students don't pay. So it's very easy, and people don't seem to find it as objectionable as perhaps they thought it was going to be in 1985. I wonder what the most is anybody's ever offered up at the door.

Elizabeth Esteve-Coll1:55

Yes, they are indeed.

Elizabeth Esteve-Coll2:17

I was

Presenter2:22

Well, I can tell you that in my time it was ten thousand pounds from a visiting American couple who wished to be anonymous and I simply received a telephone call to say there's a donation downstairs. Um would you like to come and receive it? And by the time I got downstairs they'd gone. They disappeared? Yes. So completely anonymous. Well we did in fact later find out where and we were able to write and thank them. It was a marvellous experience. Well now how would an efficient academic come manage a fare on a desert island? Are you the sort of person who would cope very happily and easily? I reckon that emotionally I'm probably relatively self-contained. Certainly when I was at sea I used to spend a great deal of time in the evening lying on the deck looking up at the stars, sometimes listening to music, but really just being at one with the universe. And I hoped that the desert island would be like that. And your music, is that going to be very important to you? Oh, tremendously. And choosing eight records has been incredibly hard. Clearly I had to have some bach. But I've chosen as my first record a particular recording of a Romanian pianist who died in 1950, who was introduced to me by friends in France when I was at school. And I belonged then to an organization called Jeunesse Musicale Française and learnt an awful lot about music at that time and first heard Dino Lippati played at that time. And it has remained a firm favourite with me ever since. And I couldn't go to a desert island without it.

Presenter4:49

DINULIPATIE playing the Prelude of Bach's Partita No. One in B flat. You obviously want to, as you say, encourage children to come in and and and encourage them to feel that it's a place they can move about and come and go to.

Presenter5:01

Was that the kind of child you were in Darlington as as a girl of nine or ten, um just after the war? Were you the sort of child who went frequently to museums? Oh yes. I think um all our family weekends were spent either visiting historic buildings, museums, cathedrals, churches.

Elizabeth Esteve-Coll5:09

Oh yes.

Presenter5:17

Both my musical education and my historical and art education was received.

Presenter5:23

Via the enthusiasm of my parents. Um and so we did these things as a family, and indeed when it's possible we still do. And uh they're still alive, are they? Yes, they are. And are any of those places or exhibits, do any of them have a special place in your memory?

Elizabeth Esteve-Coll5:32

Yes, that

Presenter5:38

Oh, without question, Durham Cathedral. Durham Cathedral, with its incredible Romanesque architecture, its huge spaces, the majesty of it, the simplicity of it, the grandeur of it. It's a wonderful sight. It's a marvellously exciting building. And as a practising Anglo-Catholic, I've regularly always gone to church. And hearing music in the cathedral has always been a marvellously uplifting experience. So your parents will take you, as you say, at weekends to all of these places. What about at home? Music and books and?

Presenter6:13

Well, yes, m my my parents always collected books in very large quantities, um and I'm afraid I do the same thing with the result that there's no room for visitors to sit down because there's so many books on the floor and um on the seats. But my parents were very keen indeed and still are on opera, and so it was quite a long time. I had a very good operatic uh education as a youngster.

Presenter6:35

But it was quite a long time before I came to grips with instrumental music, and in particular chamber music.

Presenter6:42

And that is something I am very grateful to my friends for having introduced me to.

Presenter6:46

But before that, during the war, uh your father was away um in the army. And and uh you went off to live with your grandparents in Whitby.

Elizabeth Esteve-Coll6:49

Indeed, my father was in the army.

Presenter6:53

Well, no. Um we spent a lot of time with my grandparents, quite near Whitby in a small village on the North York Moors. Tell me about your grandfather, who was quite an influence on you, wasn't he? Oh well my grandfather was a very well both my grandparents were very special people. They were very musical. And one of the great tragedies in my life is that I can't sing in the same way that the rest of my family, and I'm always teased about this, because my family on all family occasions do sing together. But my grandfather was a maritime engineer.

Presenter7:25

And had the most incredible recall he could remember where he had been many, many years before. And so later when I went to sea, he was able to say to me, Well, when you go to Rio de Janeiro, if you go down a particular road in a particular direction, you will see X, Y and Z. And I tested this on a number of occasions. And he was always right. And he used to love the fact that I'd send him a postcard or I'd ring him up and tell him, Yes, it's exactly as you remember it, or no, it's changed completely and it's full of skyscrapers, but I can still see the outline of the keys. So the sea, as well as literature and music, won a very early place in your heart. Oh, yes, absolutely. Well, anybody coming from the northeast grows up very close to the sea.

Elizabeth Esteve-Coll7:56

So

Elizabeth Esteve-Coll7:59

Are we in sight?

Presenter8:04

Let's have your second record.

Presenter8:06

Well, my second record is very much connected with, um, I suppose my early uh experience of of church music.

Presenter8:13

And I'd I'd find it very difficult to be on a desert island without having some Gregorian chant.

Presenter8:19

And so for my second record I've chosen part of the Midnight Mass from Christmas, Christus Natus Est.

Speaker 48:36

Oh leave.

Speaker 48:44

He is who snows and holy

Presenter9:20

Christus Natus est from a Gregorian chant Midnight Mass sung by the choir of the monks of the Abbey of Saint Pierre de Soleime conducted by Dom Joseph Gajard.

Presenter9:30

You studied Spanish and English in the mid fifties at Trinity College, Dublin. Was there a particular reason for choosing Dublin?

Presenter9:37

Oh yes. Um I was

Presenter9:39

Passionately interested in Anglo-Irish literature, and in particular the works of J. M. Singh.

Presenter9:46

I'm very lucky. I had been extremely well taught at school and my English literature had been rather more extensive I think than is normal at A level.

Presenter9:58

So I was very, very keen to go to Ireland to live in the community that had produced Singh, that had produced Yeats.

Presenter10:08

So there you were happily immersed in Singh and Yeats and no doubt Shakespeare and Beckett and so on, when one day something happened which caused you to to drop them all and run, as it were, because you fell in love.

Presenter10:23

How did that happen?

Presenter10:25

Well, a mutual friend of my husband's rang me up and said he was coming to Dublin on business. He didn't know Dublin, and would I show him round? And so rather reluctantly, and I think possibly rather grudgingly and ungraciously, I said, Well, if I must, I will. And really that was the end of the story. Or the beginning of a very long story. Very long story. He he was a a Spaniard, a naval officer. He'd he'd served in the British Navy too, hadn't he? Yes, he was a Spanish naval officer from the Republican Navy.

Elizabeth Esteve-Coll10:45

Yeah.

Elizabeth Esteve-Coll10:51

Okay.

Presenter10:55

um an exile from Franco Spain, and he'd served in the British Navy during the war and was working in the Mercantile Marine.

Presenter11:05

Jose Esteve Col.

Presenter11:07

And he was thirty years older than you.

Presenter11:10

What did he look like?

Presenter11:12

Short, dark, receding hair, um, with amazingly um warm um brown eyes. And I think um his eyes were probably the thing that attracted most people to him, and particularly young people and children. But no doubt enormous amounts of so-called sensible advice was was heaped upon you by tutors and parents, was it? Well, I think my family was slightly taken aback by the fact that um having relatively recently embarked on a university career and doing quite well on it, I suddenly decided to throw it up and get married and, as it were, go to sea.

Presenter11:48

And what did they say? Did they try to stop you? No, my family were immensely, and always have been hugely supportive. And as my father and I were used to arguing at length on poetry and poetic matters, we respected each other's viewpoints and standpoints, so we knew exactly the nature of the argument.

Presenter12:05

Record number three.

Presenter12:07

Well, record number three goes back, I suppose, to my meeting with Alex, who always used his English name and not his Spanish name.

Presenter12:15

To some folk songs, Spanish folk songs, which I had known many years before, again from France, and which he too knew.

Presenter12:23

And one that I've chosen in particular is a very simple refrain. It's a truism. It's shepherds leaving to go to the Sierra to take their flocks and the shepherdesses being left behind weeping. It's an eternal situation and I think it's wonderfully sung by Germaine Monteraux, who I believe in 1954 won the Grand Prix du Disc, and I have been passionately attached to that record ever since.

Speaker 412:52

Ya cevan los pastores alas tremadura.

Speaker 413:00

Ya ceván los pastores palas tremadura.

Speaker 413:07

Yace queda la siera, triste yoscura, ya se que da lasiera, triste yoscura.

Elizabeth Esteve-Coll13:09

Yeah.

Speaker 413:19

Yacevar los pastores, yacevar malchando.

Speaker 413:29

Yacevar los pastores, ya sevan machando, ya los pobre saga los se que danoando, ya las pobre saga las se que.

Presenter13:46

Germaine Montero singing Yacevan los Pastores, a Spanish folk song, The Shepherds are Leaving.

Presenter13:53

So you married Elizabeth Estevecolle, and throughout the sixties you were travelling on the high seas. In what sort of vessels did you travel?

Presenter14:00

I want a great variety of vessels, but mostly in general cargo vessels, and in particular one wonderful Norwegian boat, built in Oslo in nineteen hundred and four. Everybody used to turn out on the quays to look at it when it came into harbour, because it was so old.

Presenter14:18

All the wooden fittings were in mahogany, brass, and they were in wonderful condition, and it was an absolute treat to sail on her. But it did take six weeks to cross the Atlantic, and people used to pass us and wave and send radio messages. It was a quite incredible experience. But she was very, very beautiful, and she was broken up in Greenwich in the late 1960s, right at the end of the 60s. Did you help crew the boat? I mean, did you work on it? Well, I probably got in everybody's way, but I spent a lot of time reading, and I set myself programmes in English and in French and in Spanish to sort of take me through

Presenter14:57

Spanish literature, French literature. And I taught myself Spanish and I taught myself Italian and I read certainly a great deal in French. Do you have all these books on board then? I used to make myself great lists, and every time we got to a port, I'd rush off to a bookshop and then come back in a taxi with carrier bags and carrier bags full of books. My husband used to feel that he was being crowded out by this incredible pile of books. But presumably you were the only woman on board? Oh, yes, yes. And how how many crew would there have been? Normally a crew of about thirty-seven.

Elizabeth Esteve-Coll15:25

And

Presenter15:30

So did that mean you were terrifically spoilt or did you kind of muck in?

Presenter15:34

I think I was tremendously spoilt. Of course, I was very young and it was a Spanish crew, and most of the men were immensely fatherly to me, and I learnt a lot from the boatswain. I got very good at oxyacetylin welding. And I was also quite involved in a pastime which is called chipping and hammering, which means taking the rust off the deck plates. And I was rather good at that. So I think the bo'sun had a good pupil. And you never got seasick? Oh, I was dreadfully seasick. We had storms which were terrifying. In particular, I remember a hurricane off the coast of Brazil.

Presenter16:13

When I really thought that this was the end, forty foot waves crashing down, one couldn't see the decks, water everywhere, the most tremendously frightening noise, and one realized the huge power of the elements, and the next morning seeing the twisted metal on the deck and windlasses bent completely, and one realized what one had been through.

Presenter16:34

And and were you for those, what, nine or ten years really you were at sea, um, were you making plans for what you would do when you stopped sailing round the world, or were you actually entirely happy? I was entirely happy and would go back to that kind of uh life reading, working, sitting in the sun, um, and being a connoisseur of ports and port architecture any day that it's offered. Really? So you're incredibly lucky? I was incredibly lucky. Have you been as happy since? Yes, I have, I think. I've had a very happy and very privileged life.

Presenter17:07

Some more music.

Presenter17:08

It would be very difficult not to um take from that part of my life when I was at sea something which I got to know in Argentina.

Presenter17:18

I've always been interested in the presentation of the Mass in many different ways and I came across a folk mass in Argentina where characteristic folk dances and folk songs were being used for the presentation of the Mass for the Kyrie, the Gloria, the Annus Day.

Presenter17:38

And I'd like to share a part of that with the birds on the desert island.

Elizabeth Esteve-Coll17:57

Cor there's que ta.

Elizabeth Esteve-Coll18:15

Ten compación de no soul.

Presenter18:40

The Agnos Dei from Misa Criolla sung by Los Frontarithos with the Basilic de Cocoro choir conducted by Ariel Ramirez.

Presenter18:49

If you spent most of the sixties at sea, the seventies were back on dry land, with your husband moving towards retirement and you still educating yourself. That must have been really rather tame in comparison. No, I don't think so. Um it was a different kind of challenge, um a different pace of life. Clearly when one is at sea

Presenter19:09

Life is governed very much by the rising and the setting of the sun.

Presenter19:13

And you can't live in that way in London. And we soon realized that. We did a great deal of gardening. We had huge fun with our friends and godchildren.

Presenter19:25

So you took a degree in art history from Birkbeck. You did that through evening classes, didn't you? And you got a first. Yes.

Speaker 419:32

Yeah, yeah.

Presenter19:34

And then you you started work in earnest. You were a librarian at at Kingston College of Art and later at the University of Surrey.

Presenter19:41

Um and it was during this time, as the seventies turned into the eighties, that that your husband died. Was his death one of the reasons you started to go out to work in a in a full time sense?

Presenter19:52

Well, I certainly wouldn't be doing the job that I'm doing if he was still alive, because it is a total commitment and a complete full time uh involvement. But I think that

Presenter20:04

inevitably had um an impact on what I chose to do.

Presenter20:08

Would he would he be surprised to see you um now as the director of the V and A? By which I'm asking, are you a rather different person today from the woman who was married for twenty years to a a Spanish seaman?

Presenter20:21

Well, I suppose I'm probably more assertive, and that might have caused friction. Record number five.

Presenter20:29

Well, again, Bach is one of my great pleasures, and one of the things which I play very frequently indeed is the wonderful duet from Bach's cantata, Jezu dadume.

Speaker 420:47

In the world, the fancy has been the reason which looks full painting its free. O Jesus Lord might stone to heaven to me. Oh he is all ye storm is all high.

Speaker 421:18

For in the storm of man's second street of the world,

Elizabeth Esteve-Coll21:22

Yeah.

Speaker 421:24

Rise in the drink, O ye to Meister, to heaven to deal. Oh Jesus, oh Jesus, who must have come.

Speaker 421:39

Oh, I let strong and for men singing shrieked and for years of mister Heavens or deep.

Presenter21:49

The duet from Bach's cantata Jesu der Du Meiner Zeela, sung by Ursula Buckel and Herte Terpe, with the Munich Bach Orchestra conducted by Karl Richter.

Presenter21:59

You had apparently decided not to apply for the director's job at the V and A, um Elizabeth when Sir Roy Strong was leaving, and then something happened to change your mind. What was it?

Presenter22:11

Well, it's one of those funny stories which are almost irrelevant in the great sort of issue of things. I'd been asked by the staff to apply for the job, and I had consistently said no. I really didn't think that it was a job that I was fitted to do and that I would enjoy doing. You were the librarian then? I was then the keeper of the National Art Library.

Elizabeth Esteve-Coll22:34

And that

Speaker 422:34

Uh

Elizabeth Esteve-Coll22:34

I was

Presenter22:38

And I had consistently said no. I went away at Easter, having left instructions for part of the library to be painted.

Presenter22:45

and I had asked for emerald green walls and a white ceiling.

Presenter22:49

and I came back at the end of Easter, and I went in on the Sunday in order to see what was in my intray, and I found that I had white walls and an emerald beam ceiling.

Presenter22:58

And I remember stomping round the office thinking, I'm going to apply for that job because I'm going to do something about this sort of thing. You can make it right. That was really what tipped the balance. Well, now initially your appointment seemed to be very popular, but within a year you were being publicly vilified, not least by a former director, Sir John Pope Hennessy.

Elizabeth Esteve-Coll23:06

You can make it round.

Presenter23:19

He called you a a vulgar populist. That must all have been very wounding.

Presenter23:24

Well, um it's extremely painful, of course. Um the whole period was traumatic, very difficult indeed for everybody within the Museum, and I think

Presenter23:33

Most people who went through that period

Presenter23:36

will always feel somewhat scarred by it. But I do think that the kind of success that we're having now with the great Shinkle Exhibition

Presenter23:47

With the visions of Japan, bringing in a huge cross-section of the public.

Presenter23:53

The non traditional museum visitor

Presenter23:56

The family who have never discovered the V and A is enormously exciting and important. But of course the Furore was as much about the way you went about what you did. There was a point when early on when you virtually sacked nine of the museum's senior staff, some of them leading authorities in their field.

Presenter24:15

Have you any regrets in hindsight? Do you think it was wise to to displace so many people in one go like that?

Presenter24:21

Well, I think we must be quite clear. I did not sack senior staff. We went through a process of voluntary redundancy.

Presenter24:30

All change is painful, and I do believe that it was an extremely difficult decision to take.

Presenter24:38

Um perhaps if we'd had more time, perhaps if we had had more money, the decisions wouldn't have been taken in quite that way.

Presenter24:46

Um but I am absolutely certain that they were the right decisions with hindsight. Your your detractors didn't care for your um the kind of advertising you uh took up either, did they? I suppose the most memorable one called the V and A, an Ace Calf with quite a nice museum attached. Uh do you think that was the right tone?

Presenter25:04

Well, of course, it was aimed at a particular cross-section of the public. It was ironic, it was jokey, and that cross-section of the public understood the humour that was implicit within the advertisement. It was not something which a lot of other people found amusing, but it certainly increased awareness of the museum and brought a lot more people into the museum.

Presenter25:26

Record number six.

Presenter25:29

Well, during the Jubilee year I had the enormous privilege of going to Hampton Court. I was actually working at Kingston Polytechnic at the time.

Presenter25:39

and a friend who was going to the concert at Hampton Court rang me up at the last moment and said her husband had had to go abroad, and would I go instead? And I said, Look, I've only got jeans on. Does it actually matter? and she said, No, no, no, the music is wonderful. Come.

Presenter25:54

And that was the very first time that I heard Jessie Norman live, and I heard her singing Dido's Lament from Purcell's Dido and Aeneas. I'd had many recordings of it, but I'd never heard it sung this way with this heroic majesty, with this tenderness, and with such heart breaking purity.

Speaker 426:38

Yeah.

Presenter27:14

Jessie Norman singing Dido's Lament from Purcell's Dido and Aeneas with the English Chamber Orchestra conducted by Raymond Lepard.

Presenter27:22

It was the the biggest row in the history of the V and A, as I've said. It was public, it was undignified, it was vicious, you were insulted both professionally and personally. How did you keep your nerve?

Presenter27:36

I have a group of extremely supportive close friends. I have a small, tight, close family.

Presenter27:43

And they closed ranks and were quite incredible, and I owe them a great deal.

Presenter27:49

But there must have been times when, even if you had close people to talk to about, it was just deeply upsetting when you put your head on the pillow at night and close your eyes and you think, My God. Of course the worst moment of it was um I had a much loved Old English sheep dog.

Presenter28:04

um, who was getting extremely old, and I had to have her put down in the middle of that, and that was really a bending point. It was quite intolerable. But the staff in the office and the staff in the Museum understood and were very, very kind. Did you lose weight, sleep?

Presenter28:20

I think I lost a lot of sleep. Um I have never found it terribly easy to lose a lot of weight.

Presenter28:25

You've now been extended for for five years, extended, as they say, until nineteen ninety seven. So I suppose this is a rather premature question, really, but

Presenter28:33

What kind of V and A would you like to think that you would leave behind you when you go? How would you like to sum up the changes that you've brought about?

Presenter28:42

Well, I think the restructuring was enormously important, and I think that that is now in place and is working very successfully. Clearly, it's got to be consolidated and built upon. But if there were one sentence that could sum up what you achieved in your ten year tenure.

Presenter29:00

What would it be?

Presenter29:03

To make the V n A much more a part of the national subconscious, to to get it into the national bloodstream, that it it was a a real and very living and very important part of our culture. It it wasn't something that was elitist, it wasn't something that was

Presenter29:22

Only for the art historian. There's something in the VA for everybody, and that's what I'd like everybody to know.

Presenter29:30

Some more music.

Presenter29:31

Well, I've always been extremely interested in Beethoven's sonatas, and whilst I was working at the University of Surrey I learnt a good deal about music from a friend there who was piano tutor, and I'd like to hear

Presenter29:47

one of Beethoven's last sonatas, number thirty one, played by Martin Hughes, who is no longer at the University, but who is professor at the Conservatoire in Berlin.

Presenter30:57

Part of Beethoven's sonata number thirty one in A Flat, opus a hundred and ten, played by Martin Hughes. It's fairly obvious, Elizabeth, that you're in love with your job, and and that you're a a workaholic. How do you escape um when you can? What do you do? Where do you go?

Presenter31:12

Well

Presenter31:14

I read a lot of poetry.

Presenter31:16

I've always read a great deal, but I find that if I'm reading papers in bed at night, it's rather difficult to concentrate on fiction, and indeed certainly to concentrate on non-fiction. So I read more poetry than I used to. I've always read a lot. And during the holidays, I usually try to get away to France. I walk a lot, and I suppose I'm fairly antisocial. I enjoy the company of a small group of friends. We listen to music, we talk, we read, and I find that very relaxing. So I'm just wondering whether you're one of those rare people who might actually enjoy being cast away on a desert island.

Presenter31:54

Well, in the abstract, certainly I think I might, but the realities could be tremendously different. Your last record.

Presenter32:01

When I was thinking about our new Indian Gallery.

Presenter32:08

Um I was invited to go to India.

Presenter32:12

by the Indian Government.

Presenter32:16

extraordinary privilege of having as a companion on that trip the former keeper of our Indian collection, Robert Skelton, who is much loved and respected in India and knows it very, very well indeed. And so I had an insight, an introduction into India, and I would very much like to take to my desert island.

Presenter32:39

recording of Kavali music. I first heard this played in Nisamodin in Delhi and I've heard it played since in London at Woolwich. And I'd love to hear some Kavali music.

Speaker 433:12

Me up.

Presenter33:56

The first time I heard that kind of music in Delhi I sat for three hours. I can't say cross legged all the time, but I wasn't aware of how long I'd been sitting on the ground listening to the music. It's intensely spiritual and devotional in the same

Presenter34:13

Odd way that I think the Gregorian chant is, and I found it deeply moving.

Presenter34:19

With the Sabry Brothers and Ensend performing Dhamma Damme Must Galanda.

Presenter34:25

Well, now you have to choose one of those records, which is more important to you than the others. Can you do that?

Presenter34:30

With difficulty? With great difficulty. I think, however, that I probably would take um the Gregorian chant, the midnight mass. It's something so eternal, so spiritual, so lyrical, so joyous, and is so constant that I would take that. And a book, as well as the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare.

Presenter34:51

Well, there's no doubt in my mind I'd take the complete works of TS Eliot. That's rather against the rules, really, to have the complete works. Is there one poem or one piece of his work that you'd choose? I'd find it very difficult. I'd probably then take the four quartets.

Presenter35:06

and a luxury.

Presenter35:09

Well, if I'm going to do all this practical gardening and building of sheds and being active, I think I'd love to have a bottle of really good, expensive, perfumed hand cream.

Presenter35:20

Elizabeth Esther Vecolle, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Speaker 335:33

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