John Major

Speaker 40:00

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 40:08

The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen ninety two, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:30

My Castaway this week is a politician. His background and childhood are well known indeed, his humble origins are part of the reason why, just over a year ago, he was elected leader of his party.

Presenter0:42

His characteristics are familiar too. He appears self effacing, but he must be ambitious. His manner is always pleasant, but clearly he must be tough. He claims to stand for a country that's classless. He wants the nation, he says, to be at ease with itself.

Presenter0:57

We shall soon know if the people support his views. Before the summer is over, he will have won or lost a general election. On this, the fiftieth anniversary of Desert Island Discs, my castaway is a man not yet fifty himself, the Prime Minister, John Major.

Presenter1:13

You entered the House of Commons just as misses Thatcher was becoming Prime Minister in nineteen seventy nine. I wonder what you'd have said if anyone had told you then that you were going to succeed her?

John Major1:22

I'd have thought it was a pretty unlikely prospect, and I guess most other people would have made the same judgment.

Presenter1:27

But you always had your eye, I think, on on the Chancellorship, really, didn't you, if you'd been pressed? That was what you wanted.

John Major1:34

Well, it's a fascinating job. Yes, I did.

Presenter1:36

But tell me about you and ambition. I mean, you were briefly Foreign Secretary as well, and now you're Prime Minister, and yet you are, as I said in the introduction there, self effacing in the main. But there must be ambition beneath the surface.

John Major1:49

I'm not overtly ambitious. I don't forever plan to what my next job is going to be. I've never done that.

John Major1:55

I certainly perhaps have a streak of stubbornness. If people think I can't do something, then I will say, Well, perhaps I'd like to do it.

Presenter2:02

And you've had a determination to get on.

John Major2:05

I think lots of people have it. Um perhaps I have a determination and but I've had the luck as well.

Presenter2:09

Tell me about you on a desert island and ambition and determination. Will you be happy to sit there away from it all, or will you be determined to escape?

John Major2:15

Only for a short time. The idea of uh sitting on a desert island sometimes is very attractive. three fifteen on Tuesdays and Thursdays says this is often very attractive indeed. So the idea of staying there for a brief while I would very much enjoy.

John Major2:31

But because I was trapped there, I would want to get away. I would have to try and escape, and I'm sure I would.

Presenter2:37

And in the meantime you'd have your music to listen to.

John Major2:39

I had had music.

Presenter2:40

How have you set about choosing your eight records? It's a difficult task, isn't it?

John Major2:44

Very difficult. I thought when I first sat down that it wouldn't take very long. I'm very fond of music. I've got quite wide-ranging tastes in music. And I thought there'd be no difficulty in picking eight records. But I was wholly wrong. Picking eighty would have been easy. But reducing that eighty to eight was very difficult. And eventually it was a choice that enabled me to bring in music of all different sorts. And music that in one respect or another had a special memory or a special meaning.

Presenter3:12

And what's the first one?

John Major3:13

The first one is a Gershwin tune, Rhapsody in Blue, played by the New York Phil.

Presenter3:17

And why do you want that?

John Major3:19

Beautiful piece of music, very haunting, lovely clarinet introduction, and I have spent years listening to my daughter graduate from the recorder to the clarinet and playing in the room next door. I'll be able to remember that as well.

Presenter4:32

George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, played by the New York Philharmonic, conducted by Zubin Meiter. Going back to your beginnings, Prime Minister, you were, by all accounts, lucky to be born and lucky to survive the first year of your life. I think you started off as a a bad case of indigestion, didn't you?

John Major4:48

Well, so family legend has it. My mother was very slender, had been a dancer in her youth and was slender all her life. And uh the family legend tells me that she went to our family doctor, a doctor Robinson, complaining of indigestion, and he uh he informed her that it wasn't indigestion, she was seven months pregnant.

Presenter5:07

But your your parents your father was I think about sixty-four when you were born and your mother was older.

John Major5:11

My father, I think, was sixty-six when I was born.

Presenter5:14

Your mother was in her mid forties, and they already had two children, aged what, ten and thirteen.

John Major5:20

Yes, my brother and sister were a good deal older and uh

John Major5:24

My sister in many respects was a second mother during my childhood.

Presenter5:27

Tell me about family life after the war, at home south of London, in in Worcester Park, with your father making garden ornaments for a living in the back garden. Tell me about the atmosphere of that early childhood.

John Major5:41

Well, it was bliss. It was a very it was a very close knit family.

John Major5:46

People talk a lot about my father. He was a very colourful character, the best one on one raconteur I have ever heard, bar none. And he was almost immensely entertaining to listen to, and I was entranced as a small boy, listening to his many stories, going across the Atlantic in masted sailing boats, all sorts of things that he had done.

John Major6:05

But our family actually revolved around my mother.

John Major6:08

She was a formidable personality in her own right, and she was the centre of the family. She determined what we did. My father made the important decisions, like what the government should do, and she decided where we went to school and where we live.

Presenter6:21

Uh

Presenter6:22

And he'd been an entertainer, and he he'd been in circus and music hall and theatre and so on.

John Major6:26

Theatre and so on. He was in Music Hall for many years. He was an impresario for a while. He had his own small travelling show. He was a magician, he was a singer, he did a bit of acting.

John Major6:36

And my mother originally worked in his show. She was a dancer.

John Major6:40

And uh as a child she uh toured with my father for many years.

Presenter6:45

But the neighbours, I mean, the the neat and tidy people of Worcester Park must have thought you were quite an unconventional family, really.

John Major6:52

Well, it never struck me so at the time. But our house was always full. I remember, for example, Coronation Day in nineteen fifty three. My father had bought a television specially, and it seemed to me that half the street were there, and there was nothing unusual about that.

Presenter7:07

So it was a b it was obviously, although, as we say, as as I keep saying, your father was a lot older than those of your peers, nevertheless it was a a happy and secure family.

John Major7:16

Totally. And I wouldn't swap those memories.

Presenter7:20

Shall we have your second record?

John Major7:21

Hm, yes.

John Major7:22

At June Bronhill singing The Holy City.

John Major7:25

Norma has been a friend of June Bronhill. They shared a flat at one stage, and for a while Norma acted as a nanny to June's uh to June's daughter many years ago. And June also sang at our wedding, though not, I must say, the Holy City.

John Major7:39

And the best holiday Norma and I ever had was at a chantry in the West Country. And the chantry was empty, and we had taken one long playing record with us, and it was June Bronhill singing sacred songs, and amongst it was the Holy City, and I can hear it echoing now as we lay out on the lawn in this large empty chantry. It was beautiful.

Speaker 48:01

Last night I lay asleeping, there came a dream so fair I stood in O Jerusalem Beside the temple there.

Speaker 48:16

I heard the children singing.

Speaker 48:20

And ivorous they say

Speaker 48:24

Methought the voice of angels from the heaven in onset rang. Methought the voice of angels from the heaven in unsurrang.

Speaker 48:47

Jerusalem, Jerusalem, lift up your gates and see.

Presenter9:00

June Bronhill, singing The Holy City. So, up until the age of twelve, as far as you knew, life for the majors of Longfellow Road was a happy and secure affair. But suddenly it all went went wrong, didn't it? What happened?

John Major9:14

My father, who was then in his seventies, had entered into some injudicious business venture or another.

John Major9:21

And being my father, he had never signed contracts, word of mouth, and a handshake was sufficient for him. And quite what went wrong I don't know. But he was left with a large debt of some sort, and being my father, he met the debt in full, and that meant selling our home in Worcester Park and moving away.

Presenter9:39

So you moved to Cold Harbor Lane in Brixton.

John Major9:41

We moved to Brixton.

Presenter9:42

How did the accommodation compare?

John Major9:46

Well, it was a bit different. From a a fairly pleasant, though modest bungalow with a large garden and a pond and poplar trees at the bottom of the garden and a big lawn, we moved to the fourth floor of an old Victorian building. And we had two rooms and a landing, and there were the five of us.

Presenter10:04

and the gas ring was on the landing.

John Major10:07

The gas ring was on the landing, that's right.

Presenter10:07

Yeah.

Presenter10:08

And the loo is about three floors down.

John Major10:10

The loo was on the ground floor.

Presenter10:13

And the other occupants of the house were apparently not um

John Major10:16

They were a mixed bunch. And over the years they changed from time to time. There were some youngsters who were here just for a few months and then went away to avoid tax and then came back again. There was an elderly gentleman who had some very eccentric habits indeed.

Presenter10:17

Mm-hmm.

John Major10:35

Um

John Major10:36

I guess there are other people in the house whom I prefer not to remember.

Presenter10:39

A few on the wrong side of the law.

John Major10:41

There were one or two, yes.

John Major10:42

I was dispatched by one of them from time to time as a I guess I must have been twelve, rising thirteen then to go and place bets with an illicit bookie, who at that stage plied his trade in the environments of Loughborough Junction station. And that happened two or three times till my father discovered it, and no more.

Presenter11:02

And th your your parents stopped you from mixing with them, did they?

John Major11:05

No, but they certainly stopped me carrying Betts to the illicit bookie.

Presenter11:08

But what effect did it have upon you as a young adolescent? What do you think it made you feel?

Presenter11:14

The fact that your family had fallen on hard times.

John Major11:18

made me feel pretty strongly that I didn't want other people to live in the same circumstances.

John Major11:22

I think it did harden some attitudes in me that otherwise wouldn't have been there. I hate people who patronize. I dislike snobbishness. I don't like selfishness. I find those intolerable ways to behave. And I think it was probably in those years that I learnt to dislike that quite so much.

Presenter11:39

Because you suffered from those things.

John Major11:41

People in those circumstances do.

Presenter11:43

How would you then have reacted if if a politician had said to you at that time, you know, I understand your distress, and I understand that you've lost your home, and that you're not as happy as you were, but I can't offer you much immediate help. You've got to wait because we've got to get the economy right first?

John Major11:58

I would want to look in his eyes, and see if he meant it.

Presenter12:03

It wouldn't help you in that moment, though, would it?

John Major12:05

At that particular moment, I understand how people feel who are in difficult circumstances when politicians can't put it right immediately. But the only way for the politician, if he is to be honest to what he needs to do, the only way he can behave is to set out honestly and genuinely what needs to be done to prevent those circumstances reoccurring for other people and to lift the people who face them into better circumstances.

Presenter12:29

But that's the politician talking. I mean, what reaction would that have had in the thirteen-year-old boy who'd lost his family, happiness, and his sense of security?

John Major12:38

I can't tell at this distance in time.

John Major12:41

I hope I would have understood it. I hope I would have uh realized that people were trying to help. People did in those days. I believe they often made the wrong judgments. But there were many people who were trying to help.

Presenter12:53

Next record.

John Major12:54

I think the third record I'd like is rather different from the first two, The Happening, Diana Ross and the Supremes. I worked in Nigeria in my early 20s, and whilst I was there, I had a motor accident and spent some time in hospital there, and then quite a few months with a very serious leg injury in hospital in the United Kingdom in May Day in Croydon. And I remember turning on the radio as I lay there in plaster up to my thigh for month after month, and this was the record that always seemed to be playing at that time.

Speaker 413:23

Hey Life! Look at me!

Speaker 413:26

I can see the wheels and shut me, jump me out of my world. I walk up.

Speaker 413:34

Suddenly a dense ball had got

Speaker 413:36

Do I have a name?

Speaker 413:38

When you find that you love to feel your behaviours And you gotta do that love you take care of Then you better be wearing

Presenter13:52

The happening, Diana Ross and the Supremes. So you left school at sixteen against your parents' wishes, I think. Was that because you felt guilty,'cause you felt you ought to be bringing home some bacon by then?

John Major14:04

I had no particular wish to stay at school, but also I did think that an extra few pounds would make a difference.

Presenter14:10

What was your first job?

John Major14:12

I worked at Price Forbes.

John Major14:15

in uh just over London Bridge. And uh I remember going for an interview and I came home and I I was offered a salary.

John Major14:22

of two hundred and sixty pounds a year, five pounds a week.

John Major14:25

And on the bus going home I remember thinking to myself,

John Major14:28

Was it two hundred and sixty or one hundred and sixty? And it was a huge worry.

Presenter14:33

This was as an insurance clerk.

John Major14:35

That's right.

Presenter14:36

Do you remember your first day? What did you look like? What did you wear?

John Major14:40

I wore a charcoal suit that uh

John Major14:46

I thought was the right sort of wear. I'm not sure entirely that it was.

John Major14:51

And I was a bit of a fish out of water, frankly.

Presenter14:54

So you eventually left, and later on I think you became a a labourer, didn't you, in your father's old firm, which had been bought out by somebody else. But

John Major14:58

On the side.

John Major14:59

which had been

Presenter15:02

Finally that folded, and you were on the dole. Tell me about that experience.

John Major15:07

Well, it's a long time ago now. It was in the early nineteen sixties, and I was unemployed for a while.

John Major15:12

And uh

John Major15:14

It isn't pleasant. I think I can understand how other people feel. Though it has to be said I was unemployed as a young single man. The real problem, I think, is when you're unemployed and you have family responsibilities. Whether as a man or a woman you have family responsibilities and you're older. I think it is much worse then. But I think to some extent I can understand how people feel.

Presenter15:35

You you said since that it was perhaps the the lowest and most demoralizing period in your life.

John Major15:41

It is demoralizing, if uh

John Major15:45

If you have nothing to do, it is demoralizing.

Presenter15:49

How difficult for you then is it today to preside as you do over increasing unemployment? I think since you've been Prime Minister another three quarters of a million people have become unemployed. That must be difficult for you to live with in the light of your experiences.

John Major16:04

You can live with it only.

John Major16:06

For one reason.

John Major16:08

And that is because you are in a position to put into place the policies that you think will recreate jobs, not temporary jobs, not jobs that will last for a month or two months or six months, but permanent jobs to give people permanent security. Providing you believe you can do that, then I think you can live with the difficulties.

Presenter16:31

Record number four.

John Major16:33

The fourth record is uh a Joan Sutherland record, uh the mad scene from Lucia de Lamamour. It uh the first time Norma and I ever went out together.

John Major16:43

Was to a gala for Sir David Webster at Covent Garden in 1970, in the early part of 1970. And I had been up for most of the previous two nights. I was a Lambeth counsellor at the time, and we'd had very late meetings, and I'd had very little sleep. And the gala went on a very long time, and Joan Sutherland came on to sing the mad scene quite late at night. And as she began to sing it, I nodded off. And how our relationship survived that, I'm never sure.

Presenter18:07

Joan Sutherland singing part of the Mad scene from Act Two of Donizetti's Lucia de Lamamour, with the orchestra of the Academy of St. Cecilia, Rome, conducted by Sir John Pritchard.

Presenter18:18

Another adjective one would pause before ascribing to you, Prime Minister, would be impulsive, and yet apparently you proposed to Norma Johnson within three weeks of meeting her.

John Major18:27

I guess that's right.

Presenter18:29

Uh

John Major18:29

Many of the things I've done have been impulsive. The most important and worthwhile piece of impulsion was as you say, Norma. But not only that, the house we live in. It took me two minutes to look at it and decide to buy it. Yet it was infinitely the most expensive purchase I'd ever made. And at the moment I decided to buy it, I wasn't quite sure how I would pay for it.

Presenter18:51

Let's go back to you a as a young man. It seems to me that that a transformation occurred in your early twenties. Um you were, as we've heard, a young man with a fairly threadbare C V in your late teens and you had no prospects. But by the age of twenty six you were or twenty seven you were chairman of uh Lambeth Housing Committee, you were vice-chairman of Brixton Conservatives, you were a governor of a few schools, you were a member of various voluntary organisations, and you had a proper job. You had a job in a bank with prospects. Now, that transformation, if you like, from the wrong to the right side of the track was was quite calculated, wasn't it?

John Major19:29

Yes, it was. I don't shrink from admitting that. Yes, it was. I wanted to get into Parliament. It was perfectly clear that in many ways I didn't have a classic C V, I hadn't been to university, I didn't have an Oxford double first, I didn't have many of the classic ingredients that one might look for in a Parliamentary candidate. So I had to build up my curriculum beta in another way, with work within the party, with experience in other ways. And I needed a qualification.

Presenter19:53

So in the middle of the

Presenter19:54

In that sense you're a very good example of what you mean by the the classless society, aren't you? A society in which people without money and wi without contacts, without the right qualifications, can win through and come to the top.

John Major20:06

Well, that is what I mean. That's exactly what I mean by a classless society. I don't want uh when I use that phrase I don't intend to uh damage the the vivid tapestry of life that we have in this country and and and the variety that we have in this country.

Presenter20:19

But that's fine, isn't it, the politics of self-improvement, if if you're good at it. And and you are a shining example, and um Mrs Thatcher too, your predecessor was, the grocer's daughter who went to grammar school and so on. But for every one of you, there will be hundreds of others uh who for whatever reason won't have the guts and the ability and the determination to get there. What about those people who fall by the wayside in your enterprise culture?

John Major20:43

Oh

John Major20:45

Not everybody would want to do that, quite apart from having the luck, the good fortune to do so. Not everybody would actually wish to do that. They would wish to live their eye life in different ways. And I believe they should be entitled to.

Presenter20:49

Uh

John Major20:58

But if what underlies your question is the thought, do we need a proper welfare safety net in this country, then I believe very much that we do. That is not at all inconsistent with the belief that those people who are able should be able to achieve whatever they want, whether to become a captain of industry or to go into politics or science.

Presenter21:21

And yet, you know, one of the most striking images, if you like, of of the eighties were those people we saw who still do sleep in cardboard boxes and the

Presenter21:31

Already a telling image of the early nineties are people whose uh h homes are being repossessed. That doesn't quite fit, does it, with what you're saying.

John Major21:40

Well, we stopped, if you will recall, the repossessions just before Christmas. We took action, which should stop most of the repossessions. There will always be some marriage break-up and problems of that sort that no government can wholly solve. And so there will always be some repossessions, and there always have been. I'm very concerned about the cardboard box people. But they're not there because there is no accommodation for them. In the areas where they actually sleep, you will actually find there is shelter available for them, and they simply will not go to that shelter. That is the problem. Night after night, people try and encourage them to go to the shelters that were there. I set up more of those when I was Minister of State at the Department of Health and Social Security in different parts of the country, precisely to deal with this problem. But there are some people, for whatever reason, who stand outside the normal habits of society and simply don't want to come inside. And it's a very difficult problem in a free society to cope with.

Presenter22:36

Record number five.

John Major22:38

The fifth record.

John Major22:41

Is uh Rostropovich playing uh The Elfin Dance?

John Major22:45

The reason for this is that the uh

John Major22:48

Period I was Chancellor. After a lot of very difficult negotiations, we managed to arrange for the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development to come to London. And later on, we had the opening, and at that time, I was Prime Minister. And Rostropovich played after the opening to the guests. This was one of the pieces he played. He's a magnificent player. One can hear his music on record or on C D and realize how wonderful it is. But to sit four feet away and see him playing is to see genius at work.

Presenter24:20

Rostropovich playing part of Popper's Elfin Dance.

Presenter24:24

Is it true, mister Major, that when you took your first Cabinet in November nineteen ninety, you sat down in the Prime Minister's chair, you looked up and down the line with a mischievous grin and said, Well, who'd a thought it?

John Major24:36

Yes, it is true. It is true. Everyone was sitting round the Cabinet table, looking rather tense, and wondering what was going to happen, and whether I was going to produce some uh pompous announcement of what we were about to do. And it seemed the right way to break the ice, and it worked.

Presenter24:54

But you couldn't have achieved the Premiership, could you, without misses Thatcher's help?

John Major24:59

I've no idea who can tell. Who can tell what would have happened or when it would happen? But certainly I was tremendously fortunate. The two years I was Chief Secretary, the Chief Secretary in any Cabinet has a very close relationship with the Prime Minister of the day, very close indeed, because the Chief Secretary tends to sit on all the Cabinet subcommittees, most of them, well many of them in any event, chaired by the Prime Minister. So they naturally see a great deal of one another. And in the two years I was Chief Secretary, I saw a great deal of Mrs. Thatcher, and we worked very closely together.

Presenter25:32

But to outward view she did more or less deliver the job to you. She stepped out of the running. Ultimately, you were able to go into the running. Her supporters more or less moved over to you. Then within the first few months of taking office you dismantled the poll tax, which was so dear to her heart, and now you've negotiated a stance on Europe which she feels that she has to abstain from. Have you ever during that time had a sense of

Presenter25:57

I suppose betrayal is too strong a word, but but certainly um letting her down or backing off from the trust that she put in you.

John Major26:06

I don't believe anybody delivers the Prime Ministership, the votes of three hundred plus Conservative MPs to anyone else.

Presenter26:06

Uh

John Major26:13

The House of Commons

John Major26:15

is like a small village.

John Major26:18

Everyone in the House of Commons knows everyone else very well indeed. They know their strengths, they know their weaknesses, they know what to expect from them. So everybody knew a great deal about me. I'd been around a long time. I'd been Foreign Secretary, I was Chancellor, I'd been Chief Secretary, I'd been a Social Security Minister, I'd been a whip, and therefore around the House a great deal. So I don't think it is true to say that the Premiership was delivered to me in that way. People knew what I was and what I stood for.

Presenter26:47

But there is a

John Major26:48

The principle of the community charge was right, but the practice of the way in which it worked when it was implemented did not accord to the principles we'd originally set out. And they made their judgments according to that.

Presenter26:58

And they made

Presenter26:59

But they thought that you supported the poll tax, and they thought that you were very wary about Europe.

John Major27:02

Very wary.

John Major27:03

Indeed not, I made it perfectly clear in the campaign for the leadership that we would have to change the community charge.

Presenter27:10

But the essence of my question is that Mrs Thatcher had been a very important person in your life she'd been a very important person in all of our lives. There must have been a moment when you stood in Downing Street taking making these moves which she would not wholly have gone along with and certainly wouldn't have been made if she hadn't been there.

Presenter27:27

and that you must have thought

Presenter27:29

Golly, she wouldn't like this much.

John Major27:32

No, no, that's not so. Every Prime Minister must make his or her own decisions about what is right.

Presenter27:38

Of course. But you must have felt that. Being a human being, you must have felt that.

John Major27:39

Transit.

John Major27:42

No, no, I I don't think in that sense I did. Everyone must take their own decisions. Events move on. Prime Ministers both make events happen and they also have to respond to events. And Prime Ministers have to make their judgments against that. That is what I did, and I think the judgments that I made about the community charge were right, indeed inevitable.

Presenter28:03

Record number six.

John Major28:04

Record number six. The greatest way I have to relax is watching cricket. And when I can't watch it, I listen to it. And I listen in particular to Test Match Special. And for many years I listened to that, John Arlott and all his colleagues. And I'd like a piece of commentary. Not one, alas, that I heard at the time, but it's John Arlott commentating on the Test match, England against Australia, in 1948, Bradman's last innings.

Speaker 428:34

For rights reasons, we are unable to bring you this choice.

Presenter28:38

John Arlett, commentating on the England-Australia Test match on august fourteenth, nineteen forty eight. Well now, Prime Minister, how are you at shelter building? Are you, as they say, good with your hands?

John Major28:50

I'd be pretty amateurish, I think. But I guess I'd have a lot of time to improve.

John Major28:54

So I think I'd be able to build a lean too.

Presenter28:56

But if you sat there day after day, you know, staring out at the same sea and that same empty horizon,

Presenter29:03

How long would it be before depression set in?

John Major29:06

Not depression. It wouldn't be depression, it would be a determination to get off the island.

John Major29:10

I don't think that would be very long. A few days, perhaps a fortnight, a fortnight's holiday. And I'm usually very frustrated and want to go back and do some more work.

Presenter29:20

But how are you going to accomplish this? I mean, no no ship is necessarily going to sail by. What are you going to do?

John Major29:24

Well, I'm a politician. Perhaps I can build a hot air balloon.

Presenter29:28

Would you miss power for itself? Is I mean, that's something that you've had really ever since you

Presenter29:34

I got on to Lambeth Council all those years ago. You've had it in various forms.

Presenter29:38

How would John Major cope stripped of power?

John Major29:43

I don't believe uh I'd be uh I'd find it difficult to cope with that.

John Major29:48

I'm uh I'm fairly laid-back about it, fairly pragmatic about it. If I lost it, I think I could cope fairly well.

Presenter29:56

Next piece of music.

John Major29:59

Well the next piece of music perhaps strikes rather oddly against that. It's Elga's Pomp and Circumstance March, conducted by Malcolm Sargent.

Presenter30:07

Why do you want them?

John Major30:08

It's a lovely piece of music.

Presenter31:09

Part of Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance March, number one, in D Major, opus thirty nine, played by the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sir Malcolm Sargent.

Presenter31:19

You're a relatively young man, Prime Minister, in political terms. You're fifty next year. It's been an outstanding political career to date, three of the highest offices of State. But it could all be over in the next few months. What would you do with yourself if that happens?

John Major31:35

Well, I don't believe that it will happen. Um I don't believe that will happen, so I don't think I need contemplate that.

Presenter31:40

But there may not be much to do if you did lose office. I mean, you have to face the fact, don't you, that the Tory party is not known for staying with a leader who loses.

John Major31:49

That is what commentators write. I know I can think of a lot of Conservative politicians who didn't win an election and remain leader of the Conservative Party. I seem to recall Mr Heath lost his first election in 1966 and remained leader of the Conservative Party and won an election in 1970. But I think it is hypothetical, for I don't expect the circumstance to arise.

Presenter32:10

But do you have other ambitions? Are there things which in another life you would like to achieve which politics have kept you from?

John Major32:20

I've always been most concerned in being in politics, because that's where so much happens from. It's being in politics that enables you to do things.

John Major32:28

Um if you have an absolutely first-class brain.

John Major32:32

A double first brain. Perhaps you can be a great scientist and you can do something remarkable there. Or if you have the talent, you can be a great surgeon or a great musician. If you don't have any of those things, you have to carve out an area where you can actually do something, and that is politics. You can make more change, hopefully for the better, in people's lives, in politics, than in many other activities. Now, at some stage, I will leave politics.

John Major32:59

Uh there are other things to do in life outside politics.

Presenter33:02

Such as what, being a m manager of Chelsea, or a

Presenter33:06

Ball by ball cricket commentator.

John Major33:08

Well, I must say that sounds very attractive.

Presenter33:10

But it does sound to me from what you're saying that you're trying to do.

John Major33:12

Most of them.

Presenter33:12

That you're a man who's fulfilled his dreams, then?

John Major33:15

No, there are lots of other things that I would wish to do.

John Major33:19

I'd be quite happy to quite happy to try my hand at writing. I'd like to do a bit of writing. But not yet.

Speaker 433:24

Yeah. Tracer.

John Major33:25

Yeah.

John Major33:26

Last record is Frank Sinatra, Sinatra singing The Best Is Yet To Come.

Speaker 133:31

The best is yet to come and babe won't it be fine?

Speaker 133:40

Best is yet to come, come the day of mine.

Speaker 133:48

State of mind.

Speaker 133:52

I'm gonna teach you to fly.

Speaker 133:56

We've only tasted the wine.

Presenter34:02

Frank Sinatra singing The Best Is Yet to Come. So, Prime Minister, which one of those eight records is more important to you than the rest?

John Major34:09

I think Sutherland and the med scene, and I wouldn't dare go asleep again.

Presenter34:13

Then you have to choose a book, bearing in mind that the Bible and Shakespeare are waiting for you on the edge of the sand.

John Major34:19

Yes, this that was very difficult. The book was extremely difficult. I'm a great lover of books. Uh we have a great number. We're forever putting up extra bookshelves at home. But uh I so I looked at many. I looked at Wisdon, of course. I looked at a book called The Crowthers of Bank Dam that John King had gave to me and said I'd enjoy, and I did. Uh I thought of anything from the Pallaser series, perhaps uh Phineas Finn.

Presenter34:41

This is cheating, you know, getting all these books.

John Major34:42

I know. Well, if I mention them I can perhaps remember them.

Presenter34:46

Uh

John Major34:46

It would have you choose. The Small House at Ellington by Trollope

Presenter34:49

Why?

John Major34:50

It's a beautifully written book, and I think in Lilydale there is the favourite heroine my favourite heroine in all fiction.

Presenter34:58

There's also the old joke, of course, which one of your predecessors used to make, which is uh Harold Macmillan saying you should always go to bed with a good trollop.

Presenter35:07

What about your luxury?

John Major35:08

My luxury.

John Major35:10

Well, I'm expecting a little difficulty with you over my luxury. Uh but what I'd really like to take uh with me is a full size replica of the Oval Cricket Ground.

Presenter35:21

Good heavens I don't think well, will it fit? I doubt it.

John Major35:24

Oh, it's a big island, and it'll be lovely. The sun will shine, the grass will grow, the pitch will be beautiful, and I will be able to bowl on it, or bat on it, with the bowling machine that lives in the Ken Barrington Centre to my heart's content.

Presenter35:36

I gather you've been called the Velvet Steam Roller. Perhaps that's what you do, is flatten the pitch every day.

Presenter35:41

John Major, I'm not sure whether I can guarantee we can get the Oval to the Desert Island, but we shall do our best. Thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

John Major35:50

Thank you very much.

Speaker 435:58

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