Professor Ghillean Prance

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 two, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:30

My castaway this week is a botanist. He's already had a taste of what it might be like to live on a desert island. While working in the Amazon rainforests, a supply plane crashed, leaving him and his colleagues without food for eight days. On another occasion, he nearly died when he caught malaria and got lost in the jungle. None of this, however, has deterred him. He knew he wanted to be a botanist from the age of nine, and four years ago he took over the top job in his profession. He's the director of the Royal Botanic Gardens Q, Professor Gillian Prants. Gillian, that that's Gallic for Ian, is it?

Professor Ghillean Prance1:05

It is. It's a Gallic name that comes from the Isle of Skye that's very common there, and there's a mountain called Scuna Gilian, and my parents had their honeymoon there.

Presenter1:14

And pronounce?

Professor Ghillean Prance1:15

Prance is uh originally a Welsh name, ap Rance, and as far as I know, my predecessors came more from uh Devon and Cornwall rather than Wales.

Presenter1:26

But your friends call you Ian.

Professor Ghillean Prance1:27

Yes, I do.

Presenter1:29

Now you've sampled, as I said, a a desert island experience, marooned in in the Amazon rainforest for eight days with no food. How did you cope?

Professor Ghillean Prance1:37

Well, I think I do well on a desert island because of that experience. I proved that I can live off the land. Of course, there's a great more diversity in the Amazon than there would be in a desert island. I think that there we cope by dividing up the different people that were with us to special tasks. I went out with a field botanist who knew the plants, and we collected food from the forest. We had with us two geologists who'd never been in a jungle before, although they were Brazilians, and so we gave them some fish line, which we fortunately had, and hooks and sent them fishing because we thought they could do that and help, and it did help. And some other of the team clearing the runway so that the mess that the plane had made when it crashed was out of the way, so they could send in a rescue plane. Getting everyone organized was the secret to surviving there.

Presenter2:26

And were you in charge? Were you the boss?

Professor Ghillean Prance2:28

Yes, I was. I was leader of the expedition, so I set everything going.

Presenter2:33

You're also a world expert in the Brazil nut.

Professor Ghillean Prance2:35

Yes, I am. That's because I've lived so much in the Amazon forest and love the Brazil nut trees. So after I've been there a few years decided to make that one of the plant families in which I specialized in my research.

Presenter2:47

I must say that you you do sound I mean, one calls you a botanist, but you sound to have been as much an or to be as much an explorer. Have you found that the one has developed into the other, or do you still stick to the the line that you are only a botanist?

Professor Ghillean Prance3:00

No, I say that I'm both, really. I began definitely as a botanist because my interest was in plants. But I was always interested in the curiosities and looking for plants that no one had seen and new plants, and that led me into the exploring side, and I think the two go together very well indeed.

Presenter3:18

But on the other hand, explorers are perhaps looking for adventure, whereas for a botanist an adventure means it's a mishap, really, it's a badly planned expedition, isn't it?

Professor Ghillean Prance3:26

My exploring is definitely to find plants, not to have misadventures. I've been out and talked to a lot of authors and journalists who have been out there and then read their books and I've said to several of them that if I had an expedition like that I would consider it a disaster. They caught disaster in order to have something good to write about. I think it's a good expedition when nothing's gone wrong.

Presenter3:49

Now then, cast away this time, though, entirely alone, on a desert island, no Brazil nuts, no nothing well, there might be, I don't know. What what would be the first record that you put on your grammophone?

Professor Ghillean Prance3:59

Well, it would be Samba Lele, played by Cristina Ortiz, a pianist that I know quite well, and also because it was one of the favorites of my children when we lived in Brazil.

Presenter5:14

Christina Ortiz playing Samba Le Lei Crazy Samba by Eitor Villalobos.

Presenter5:20

It's a it's a long way from from Brazil to Kew Gardens, but you regard now the job that you have and your official title is Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens. You regard that as the top job in your field, don't you,

Professor Ghillean Prance5:34

I do, because the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew is definitely the top botanic garden in the world. There's no doubt that we lead the word, and it's something that Great Britain can be proud of, not because we're just a garden, but because we're a major research institute, and so we lead both in the things that we cultivate at Kew, the quantity of plants that we have there, as well as in the type of research that we do.

Presenter5:59

So what world problems are you solving there at Kew today?

Professor Ghillean Prance6:02

Well, we're working on all sorts of things. Today it's largely the environment. So we're working on ways to use natural environments more wisely and to conserve the plants. So instead of just having the plants there as curiosities, we want to build up a collection that conserves the rare ones and that we can reintroduce them into the wild.

Presenter6:23

But you would be tackling, for instance, the the problems of famine, would you?

Professor Ghillean Prance6:26

We would. We're looking at new food plants, new fruits, and we're looking at the way in which you can cross different cereals. There are all sorts of ways in which we're tackling famine. We're also in northeast Brazil have a programme where we're looking for ways to feed the goats without letting them out into the vegetation and so that the goats can be better kept there. We're looking into ways in which we can provide more nutritious foods for local people who can't afford to go and buy food in the supermarkets.

Presenter6:59

And you even, I understand, have a project under way which could, could, provide a treatment, if not a cure for AIDS.

Professor Ghillean Prance7:06

We do have a project like that that's rather exciting. We are doing a lot of work in our chemistry labs analysing plants, testing them for medicines, and we've got two that look very promising for AIDS. One that we've done a lot of work on on a plant called the Moreton Bay chestnut from Australia and the other one on something that was sent to us from Uganda. And the interesting thing is that it is being used in folk medicine there to treat AIDS-like symptoms. And when we are doing our preliminary tests, we find that it has several highly antiviral compounds in it.

Presenter7:42

So is that how you find out about um such an application in the first place, that actually a local would tell you about it? Or do you suddenly say, Hang on, there's something in in the Moreton Bay chestnut that we think might do the trick here?

Professor Ghillean Prance7:54

Very often it's because local people are using it in some way, and not always for the way that we discover it can be used in eventually. The other way is that uh we know that certain plant families have a large number of chemicals that are useful in medicine, alkaloids for example. There are a whole lot in certain plant families and none in others. So it's either where they are in the classification, what the relatives of this plant are, or folk medicine that gives us the leads as to what plants we should work on. And that we find we strike much more often than if we were to do random screening with plants just because they were growing in Kew Gardens or something.

Presenter8:32

And how far off is the result of all of that research, the AIDS problem?

Professor Ghillean Prance8:36

Well one of the AIDS drugs that we've worked with is actually being tested in the United States on humans now, and so it's quite well developed. The other is in the very preliminary stage, and we have a grant from the Medical Research Council in this country to do further work. So we've got rather a lot of plants that are in the very early stages that we're looking at.

Presenter8:57

So, as you say, far from being a a pleasure garden, Q could well have found uh the answer to a huge problem.

Professor Ghillean Prance9:04

I hope we will, yes. We're working hard to do so, along with a lot of other people in the world.

Presenter9:10

Shall we have record number two there?

Professor Ghillean Prance9:12

Yes, I would like to remind us of Kew Gardens. Not many people know. There's a song by that interpreter of London, Ralph MacTell, called Kew Gardens.

Speaker 49:21

Air was cool on lily pools Hazy, lazy, and here and there

Speaker 49:32

It stopped a star admiling all the flies Wandering round for us The sun was warm across the lawns

Presenter9:51

Q Garden sung by Ralph McTell

Presenter9:54

When was the first time you went to Kew Gardens?

Professor Ghillean Prance9:57

I went to Kew Gardens certainly as a child. Quite often. I had an uncle that I used to come and visit in London from time to time, and he took me several times as a small child. I went to Kew Gardens, to the Royal Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh, because of my interest in plants. And I think one of the

Professor Ghillean Prance10:15

Most significant times was when I came on an open day at Kew when I was at Morvern College and my biology master took me here and we saw the work inside Kew and we also went to what are called the order beds where all the plants are arranged in families and he showed us all the classification of plants he'd been teaching us in biology.

Presenter10:35

And you were always riveted from when you were very small. You you knew botany was your thing.

Professor Ghillean Prance10:39

I was absolutely riveted on botany, and that's what I wanted to do from when I was about seven years old. I started making notes about plants. I collected plants when I grew up in the Isle of Skye from then on and wanted to be a botanist.

Presenter10:55

Why do you think why do you think it was in how did you know? Oh, where did it come from?

Professor Ghillean Prance11:00

Well, I think it came probably from the fact that my two aunts were very keen amateur botanists, and my great-aunts were also amateur botanists, so there were quite a lot in the family, and they really encouraged me. They got really excited that I liked their hobby, and they took me out and taught me how to use floras, taught me the Latin names instead of the common names of plants right from a child, and that stimulated me.

Presenter11:25

Record number three.

Professor Ghillean Prance11:27

I would like one to remind me of Scotland. Mouth music is something that my mother used to sing to me when I was a child, and that's because it's a sort of occupational music. They sing it to milk the cows and the various tasks. And I think on a desert island I would be singing these sort of songs that are nonsense but based on Gallic pronunciation. And apart from the ones my mother taught me, I would be singing some that I make up myself.

Speaker 411:55

Far a meheen a sound of Ismagaucus, Farmby, Mahina Sound of Ismagawkis, Farmby Mahina, Sound of Ismagawkis, Farambi, Mahin B. Magawkis sound, hate meen a sheen and ooketa ye feeper, hate me sheen and oka ya feeper, hate meen a sheen and ooka ye feeper, sneeze and brought the gowns out of no large Magawkis, far a meheen a sound of Ismagis, farm be mahina sound of

Presenter12:25

Aleister MacDonald singing and accompanying his own mouth music.

Presenter12:29

You got your degree in botany from Keeble College, Oxford Professor, and then uh you studied for your PhD. What did you study for that?

Professor Ghillean Prance12:37

I studied a tropical family of plants called the Chrysobalinaceae, the golden fruited plants that grow around the world in the tropics, and I worked out the classification of the genera of that plant family, and so that got me deeply interested in tropical botany of all three tropical continents.

Presenter12:56

And so that's how you first came to go d to to the Amazon countries?

Professor Ghillean Prance13:00

Yes, when I was finishing my PhD, I got offers to go to Africa or to go to South America, and I was offered a postdoc at New York Botanical Garden to work up further the South American part of the Chrysobalinaceae.

Professor Ghillean Prance13:19

Then I accepted that, or was just about to, and I got another letter to say, I'm sorry we can't pay your airfare to come to New York, but we do have funds for an expedition to South America, and that will pay your airfare via South America. Would you mind going to Suriname for four months to join a New York Botanical Expedition? Well, that's what I really wanted to do, so it was wonderful. I went and spent four months in the field in South America, then went on on a planned eight months to New York to work up both that expedition and continue my work with that plant family.

Presenter13:52

But obviously you had no intention at that stage of making your career in New York, but suddenly this temporary stint that you'd won for yourself, as it were, developed, and in the end you stayed there for twenty five years.

Professor Ghillean Prance14:03

I did. I went for one year and I thought I was going for one year and then I signed up for a second year and thought that it would be a two-year stint. And after then they put me on the permanent staff, so I began to think about that. But it wasn't till after about five years that I realized that my career was developing in North American botany institution rather than in Britain.

Presenter14:24

But what is, in fact, the New York Botanical Gardens? Is it their answer to Kew Gardens?

Professor Ghillean Prance14:29

It is indeed. Kew is very like New York Botanical Garden. It's an interesting history. New York Botanical Garden is a hundred years old this year. It was founded in eighteen ninety two.

Professor Ghillean Prance14:41

And the first director of New York Botanical Garden was a professor at Columbia University. He came to London on his honeymoon. And his wife was also a moss specialist, a botanist. And they went back from their honeymoon saying to New York, New York must have a Q. So they patent it exactly on Q, so it's a mixture of horticulture, research and education, just as is Q.

Presenter15:07

But it's in the Bronx.

Professor Ghillean Prance15:08

That's its trouble. It's a it was a nice area when it was built there, and the Bronx has gradually crept on them, and a lot of people are afraid to go there. But it's a lovely garden, it's next door to the zoo, and it's quite safe if you go by the train which is very near to it, or take a taxi.

Presenter15:25

But it's not as grand as RQ Gardens, I'm sure.

Professor Ghillean Prance15:28

It isn't as grand. Their research programme is not as large. And also our horticulture is so much better. One thing is we don't have a New York climate here. It's too hot in summer, too cold in winter, so plants can grow so much better. I'm so happy to be back where we can grow so many different things in a garden.

Presenter15:48

But for those twenty five years it was a jolly sight nearer the Amazon countries that you loved so much anyway.

Professor Ghillean Prance15:53

It was wonderful because I I was completely free to go back and forth to South America. My job was to develop their research programmes in the Amazon region, so it was perfect for me.

Presenter16:05

Next piece of music

Professor Ghillean Prance16:06

Yes, well I'd like to remind myself of the New World and have uh part of the New World symphony, please.

Presenter17:13

Part of the second movement of Vorjak's New World Symphony played by the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Kirill Kondrashin.

Presenter17:20

You made, as you say, during your quarter of a century in New York, many expeditions to Brazil and to the Amazon rainforests. In the beginning your interests were purely botanical. Obviously it's the world's richest ecosystem. But at what point did the botanist become the environmentalist?

Professor Ghillean Prance17:38

Well, I enjoyed the first ten years really as a botanist only, and I think it was definitely when I was teaching a class in botany in Brazil, a Brazilian class, and I took them to see the impact of the Trans-Amazon Highway on the environment there. And I took this whole class of ten, together with another very good ecologist, Robert Goodland of the World Bank, and we taught together this course in ecology, and we saw the devastating impact that this highway was having because of the unsatisfactory colonization program along it. So we began to think about it and we began to discuss it with the students there. And I could see myself gradually getting more involved in the environmental issues and changing my research interest a bit to do more applied research, to look for solutions for this, rather than just work on the biology.

Presenter18:32

Because, of course, they weren't just hacking down the trees to build highways, they were hacking them down for so many different reasons, weren't they?

Professor Ghillean Prance18:38

Very many different reasons, but the tragedy of it is that so much of the deforestation was for projects that just had no viability in the long term, cattle pasture that were cut because mainly there were tax incentives and property speculation rather than how many cows the land could support.

Presenter18:58

And we've now I think today the figure is we've lost fifty per cent of the world's rainforests, haven't we?

Professor Ghillean Prance19:03

We have lost fifty percent of the rainforest, but I'm very glad to say that we've only lost about eleven percent of the Amazon rainforest. That's why it's such a challenge to me. There's still so much to save in the Amazon, and so it's a place to be, to work out a rational way to use it, rather than to allow the cutting to continue. And over the last three years, the deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has more than halved.

Presenter19:28

Well now what work is going on and what can you instigate at Kew to help this problem?

Professor Ghillean Prance19:34

Well, we're doing projects in rainforests in many different countries, in Madagascar, in Indonesia, in Brunei and, of course, in Brazil. And the sort of things we want to do are twofold. A, give the information about plants as to where the crucial areas are for biological reserves, and b to find out ways in which you can use the forest sustainably without cutting it down.

Professor Ghillean Prance19:59

For example, the rattan palm is a wonderful conservation tool. It grows in the tropical forests of the Far East, and it's a vine, and so it needs trees on which to perch.

Presenter20:11

This is rattan that you can use to make furniture.

Professor Ghillean Prance20:13

Yes, it is. It's a cane furniture.

Presenter20:15

So the world expert in Rattan is in Q, is he?

Professor Ghillean Prance20:18

He is indeed. John Dransfield is the world's expert in rattan palms.

Presenter20:21

But

Presenter20:23

And there's another project, apparently, to to make ice cream from the from the fruit of the rainforest.

Professor Ghillean Prance20:28

Yes, that's one of my projects in the Amazon, and I've been working with a food company in trying to develop some of the Amazon fruits as a flavour in ice cream. Some of the ones that are already being used in Brazil, my favourite one is a relative of the chocolate bean called Coupoisu, that has a very fragrant and spicy sort of taste. And when I've served it to people, they've liked it very much.

Presenter20:55

Record number five.

Professor Ghillean Prance20:56

Yes, I would like uh Mozart's Jupiter Symphony, uh the first orchestral piece in which I played the bassoon in the school orchestra at Morven.

Presenter21:06

To still play the bassoon.

Professor Ghillean Prance21:08

No, I am afraid I gave it up when I left school. I wish I did.

Presenter22:13

Part of Mozart's Symphony No. forty one, The Jupiter, played by the Academy of Ancient Music, conducted by Christopher Hogwood.

Presenter22:20

What about Gillian Prance the the indigenous people of the Amazon? I mean, presumably going there so much over the years you've grown rather fond of them.

Professor Ghillean Prance22:28

I have indeed. One of the most wonderful things of my work in the Amazon has been all my contact with the indigenous peoples. I've spent a lot of time in fact, I think I visited 16 different tribes of Indians. Initially it was because I was collecting plants in their territory, but then I very soon became interested in the way they use plants and in the way they manage the forest. So I started becoming what's called an ethnobotanist, someone who combines the study of people and plants.

Presenter22:56

So presumably, I mean they know much more about what plants to use to heal whatever is wrong with you, and I mean, all of those things you can pick up and bring home.

Professor Ghillean Prance23:03

They have a remarkable knowledge, and I did an inventory in various parts of the forest and then went with the Indians and asked them what they used the trees for. And in most cases they use about ninety per cent of the trees that are in any one plot of forest. Uh the medicines is one of the things, building materials, fibres to weave with, and numerous other uses, blow gun darts and poisons for their arrows and the fish poisons to fish with.

Presenter23:34

And so is your medicine cupboard at home full of little pots and potions that nobody else would know what they were, but you know exactly what to do with them?

Professor Ghillean Prance23:41

No, it isn't. But I have been healed when I've been quite sick from time to time by taking a tea brewed by one of the indigenous people.

Presenter23:49

You did, though, once get malaria, didn't you, in the jungle, and you very nearly died, I understand.

Professor Ghillean Prance23:53

I did get malaria, and it was in the most remote place we could possibly be. We d had an expedition up one river to the end of the river, as far as we could go by boat. Then we planned to walk across the watershed and get an our boat down the other river. Well, I happened to get malaria the day we got to the end of the river, so not only did I have malaria, but I had to walk out with it. And I can remember putting my hammock up when I had the fever and then walking when the fever went down. Fortunately, I made it out the three days' walk. Just uh completely collapsed when I got there, but I made it out.

Presenter24:29

Was there a point when you thought you wouldn't make it?

Professor Ghillean Prance24:32

Yes, there was. There was one point when I lay down in the forest and thought I can't go on, and sort of reasoning, well, you've got two options, just to stay here or to force yourself to go on. It's wonderful when you are in an extreme condition like that what you can force your body to do. I would have no idea that I could have done that then.

Presenter24:50

But you did contemplate death in that moment?

Professor Ghillean Prance24:52

Yes, I did. Oh, yes, of course.

Presenter24:54

And and when you've thought about death since, have you sometimes imagined that it it may just happen to you in such unusual circumstances?

Professor Ghillean Prance25:01

Yes, I think uh in my sort of work one takes that risk.

Presenter25:07

Are you a religious man?

Professor Ghillean Prance25:08

Yes, I am. I have uh faith and uh I I pray and uh read the Bible and that is sustained me through a lot of the work I've done.

Presenter25:19

Shall we have record number six then?

Professor Ghillean Prance25:21

Yes, and that would be appropriate for this. I'd like Amazing Grace, and I'd like it with the bagpipes in it to remind me of Scotland, too.

Presenter26:29

Amazing Grace, played by the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards. It was in nineteen eighty seven, Professor Prance, that the call to Q came. New York fought back and offered you the Presidency of their Botanical Gardens, the top job, but it was too late. You you'd made your decision, you were coming home. Did you make the right decision?

Professor Ghillean Prance26:48

I definitely made the right decision. I'm very happy with Kew and I like both gardens, but it was time for a change. Twenty five years in one place. That was a good thing for me, and Kew was a new challenge which I'm enjoying thoroughly.

Presenter27:04

But you came back to two large problems. The the Gales of'eighty seven' had done their worst to Kew Gardens, and Thatcherism was demanding that the place be put on a more business like footing. In other words, the the botanist who'd become the environmentalist had then to become the business man, I presume.

Professor Ghillean Prance27:20

I did, yes. Fortunately, when I was at New York, I did a lot of fundraising for the programmes there, for the research programmes I was in charge of. So fundraising was no shock to me. And I think that prepared me very well for the need to find support for Kew from other places as well as the government. The government gives us a lot of our funding at Kew, but we do need to find some of it from elsewhere. And that was a new challenge, and that's going quite well. When I came, 95% of Kew's budget was coming from the government, and now it's 83%. That's because we've been successful in private fundraising, not because we've been cut by the government.

Presenter28:00

But when you came the entrance fee was, what, less than a pound, and now it's three pounds thirty, and there's been there's been a lot of squawking over that.

Professor Ghillean Prance28:07

Yes, I'm afraid because our government grant didn't keep up with inflation, that was a necessary thing to do to keep our programmes going and to keep the garden functioning properly. I would like it to be less, but it's still a great bargain compared with the other attractions in London.

Presenter28:24

It's been necessary pain.

Professor Ghillean Prance28:25

But It has, and we've tried to ease it by having season tickets for the local peoples and various concessions. So it's not as much of a pain as it appears if you just say everyone was admitted for three pounds thirty.

Presenter28:38

You've also been trying to raise the profile of Kew. I mean, did did you find, in comparison with its American counterpart, that it it was really

Presenter28:47

Rather behind the times in the commercial sense. Bit dusty.

Professor Ghillean Prance28:50

It it certainly was sleepy and it needed the profile raised. And again, that was something I was very used to in the very competitive life of keeping a botanic garden funded and before the population in New York. And it's much harder there because the people aren't gardeners like they are in Britain, so and they don't know so much about it. So you're constantly having to make them aware. In Britain, you've got wonderful interest in Kew first place and in the subject we're about, botany and plants.

Presenter29:23

Record number seven.

Professor Ghillean Prance29:24

Yes, I would like James Gorway playing John Denver's Annie's song, and that's because this was my youngest daughter, Sarah's favourite song, and I heard her play it in public many times. And my other daughter, Rachel, who's in Brazil, plays the flute, and so it would remind me on the island of my two wonderful daughters.

Presenter30:15

James Galway playing John Denver's Annie song.

Presenter30:19

The job as the eleventh director of Kew Gardens brought with it a lovely three story Georgian house overlooking Kew Green. Did all the other ten directors live in it too?

Professor Ghillean Prance30:28

Yes, the wonderful thing is that we've all lived in this house, so it is full of history.

Presenter30:33

And has it got a garden, and do you do it?

Professor Ghillean Prance30:35

It has a garden, a very nice garden, between Kew Green and the gardens itself. And I have a gardener to help. I obviously don't have time with all the busyness of my job at the moment. I would like to, but there's just simply not time. Then the other wonderful thing we have is a walled Victorian vegetable garden, which we have a wonderful arrangement with another gardener at Kew who shares the produce with us. And many of the guests at Kew get wonderful fresh vegetables because of our organic vegetable garden.

Presenter31:08

It's organically grown there, isn't it?

Professor Ghillean Prance31:10

It is absolutely.

Presenter31:11

And then in the cupboards of Kew there are some six million dried plants about a tenth of the world's flora, is that right?

Professor Ghillean Prance31:19

We have six million dried herbarium specimens. Those are dried pressed plants, the basis for all classification of plants. And we have many more than a tenth of the total species there. There are only a quarter of a million species in a world, but we have duplicates of many of the different things that are in there, because you don't want just one specimen, you want to see the range of variation in it. And I think we have certainly more than eighty percent of the world's species of plants in that herbarium.

Presenter31:50

And and are some of them the ones that that you've discovered yourself?

Professor Ghillean Prance31:54

Yes, some of them are, yes. All the time I was in New York I sent duplicates of my collection to Kew, and so there are quite a lot of specimens in there that I collected, some of them which were new undiscovered species.

Presenter32:07

And and are they then named after you? Or do you do you name them?

Professor Ghillean Prance32:09

Do you do you

Professor Ghillean Prance32:11

You don't name it after yourself, of course, but when you collect specimens you send them out to specialists in the different plant families. So everybody sends me the Chrysobalinaceae and the Brazil nut family Lesithodaceae to identify. And so I might name something that a colleague had collected after him. And that's happened to me numerous times. There are about fifty plants species named after me in one genus.

Presenter32:36

What would they be called? Prancipiae or something.

Professor Ghillean Prance32:38

Pranciae or Prancianthus in the case of the uh genus.

Presenter32:44

Last record.

Professor Ghillean Prance32:46

Yes, I would like th the Beethoven's Kreutze sonata, my wife's favorite piece of music, and that would remind me of her.

Presenter33:54

Part of the finale of Beethoven's Kreutzer sonata in A major, opus forty seven, played by Yehudi and Jeremy Menouin.

Presenter34:02

Which one of those eight records, then, would be most important to you on your desert island?

Professor Ghillean Prance34:06

I think without any doubt amazing grace.

Presenter34:09

Why did you say that?

Professor Ghillean Prance34:10

Well, I think my Christian faith is the most important thing to me. It reminds me of that, it will remind me of Scotland, and I just would need the skirl of the pipes, too.

Presenter34:22

And what about your book as well as the Bible and Shakespeare?

Professor Ghillean Prance34:25

Well, if I had the Bible, then I think I would want something that reminded me of natural history, and I think The Natural History of Selborne by Gilbert White, which is a wonderful eighteenth century example of how to write up natural history, and a book that's actually being reissued this year. It's still read by any naturalist.

Presenter34:47

And your luxury.

Professor Ghillean Prance34:49

Well, I first thought when I was asked to come that I would take a plant press, obviously, but then I thought I could make a plant press, so that would be a waste of time. So my accordion, and then I would really have time to practise and to become really good on it.

Presenter35:06

Professor Gillian Prance, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Professor Ghillean Prance35:10

It was very nice to be with you.

Speaker 235:19

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