Sir Robin Butler

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 three and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:28

My castaway this week is a civil servant. His credentials are impeccable. He won a scholarship to Harrow, graduated from Oxford with a double first in classics, and entered the Treasury, having come top in his exams. Hardly surprising then that he's ended up in charge of the place.

Presenter0:43

He was a founder member of the Government Think Tank and Private Secretary to Prime Ministers Heath, Wilson, and Thatcher. Colleagues say he has the ability to put across unpalatable truths, a gift for which he is probably grateful in his present position as Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Home Civil Service. Here's Sir Robin Butler.

Presenter1:01

Is is putting across unpalatable truths, Robin, a skill you've worked at, or is it a a natural talent you discovered you had early on?

Sir Robin Butler1:09

Well, I didn't know that I was particularly good at it. But it is a thing that civil servants have to do, because we support the governments in the carrying out of their policies, but that sometimes means telling them the difficulties about those policies, and perhaps the inconsistencies in them.

Presenter1:24

So is it a professional problem, then, that you almost enjoy, or are you like the rest of us? Do you dread telling somebody something they don't want to hear? And do you procrastinate? Do you put it off?

Sir Robin Butler1:34

I don't particularly enjoy it, but I can do it if I have to. What I enjoy about uh these problems is analysing them and uh coming up with the analysis and presenting things to people. It's the intellectual challenge I like.

Presenter1:48

It was apparently Victor Rothschild, um, back in the early seventies as head of the first think tank, who who exploited this talent of yours. Did he send you in to bat on sticky wickets because he spotted that you were rather good at putting the nasty news across?

Sir Robin Butler2:01

Well, I don't know. But he did uh put me in an extraordinarily exposed position once. The think tank had the job of making presentations on strategy to the government, and I remember that as quite a young man I had to stand up before the cabinet at uh chequers and give them a half term report on how they were carrying out their policies, including, shown on the chart, the good things and then in red the bad things, the things they'd failed to do or that were going wrong.

Presenter2:29

And what happened?

Sir Robin Butler2:31

They took it, and it couldn't have damaged my career much, because uh it wasn't long after that that Ted Heath asked me to be his private secretary.

Presenter2:38

I think it was said that he admired your courage for telling them what they were doing wrong. Is that true?

Sir Robin Butler2:42

Well, I don't know about that, but I remember that Mrs Thatcher told me in uh later years that one of the things that uh I'd said on behalf of the think tank was that the government would have to live with high inflation. She told me that it was the most shocking thing she'd ever heard a young man say, but she did forgive me because of my youth.

Presenter3:02

Senate.

Sir Robin Butler3:02

She didn't agree with it.

Presenter3:04

But doesn't that point up the great difficulty uh of the senior civil servant, how to cope with different masters and different personalities and still be your own man? That's that's what you have to hang on to, isn't it?

Sir Robin Butler3:17

Yes, I think you do, and that's a matter of integrity. You uh don't um obviously put advice in favour of nationalization to a conservative uh government. You similarly uh observe the point which uh governments come from. But you have to observe your integrity and uh advise as you think right.

Presenter3:36

But it's it's a great dilemma, surely, because if you agree too much you lose the boss's respect. If you disagree too much and keep telling them the unpalatable truth, you might lose your job.

Sir Robin Butler3:47

I don't think you lose your job, and I think that my experience is that politicians are open to argument. They have a vested interest in success. They want things to work, and so they are, though they may be immediately irritated, grateful for the advice which the Civil Service gives them.

Presenter4:03

So how do you fancy turning your back on all of these problems and escaping to a desert island?

Sir Robin Butler4:08

Oh, I would regard it as a disaster. I'd miss it immensely.

Presenter4:10

Oh, really, would you?

Sir Robin Butler4:11

Yeah.

Presenter4:11

So you don't want to go.

Sir Robin Butler4:13

I w I would make try and make the best of it while I was there, but no, I'm quite clear. I would want to get back as soon as possible.

Presenter4:17

Or would

Presenter4:20

We're sending you anyway, but we're giving you eight records. What's the first one you'd like to take?

Sir Robin Butler4:24

Well, the first is a record that I had when I was a child during the war. I had one of those wind-up gramophones and I had a 78 of Lilly Marlane, which I played over and over again. My father was away in the war, and I think what fascinated me about this record was that it showed the human side of the war from the German point of view.

Speaker 45:06

Marley

Speaker 45:09

I'm being born.

Presenter5:12

LALA Anderson singing Lily Marlane. Your credentials, as I said, Sir Robin, are impeccable. Scholarship to Harrow, Head Boy, Oxford, Rugger Blue, Double First. Was it as effortless as it all seems when you read it on paper like that, or was there a lot of hard work behind it?

Sir Robin Butler5:26

No, I remember a lot of tension and uh hard work, particularly about the sport. But no, I was good at those conventional things. I was good at sport. I came from a family of sportsmen. My great-grandfather had been a very famous England cricketer. My grandfather was a Oxford soccer blue and played for Switzerland for some reason. My father played for England versus the rest at rugby, so I was really rather a come-down as just an Oxford blue.

Presenter5:56

But as the only boy the pressure was on.

Sir Robin Butler5:59

Yes, I had a sister who was uh a German measles baby and she was deaf and she had a hole in the heart and she li needed a lot of attention from my parents, so that in some ways took the heat off me, which was a good thing.

Presenter6:13

But you enjoyed school.

Sir Robin Butler6:15

Oh, I enjoyed it very much. Yes, I was very happy.

Presenter6:17

You were, it's been said, a natural schoolboy.

Sir Robin Butler6:20

Yes, I suppose I was, because uh as I've said I was uh I liked sport and uh and was good at it and uh I was good at exams.

Presenter6:28

But you liked also, did you? Rules, you liked the community and the sense of order and

Sir Robin Butler6:34

Yes, I have always liked that. I like playing by the rules. That was true of both school and games.

Presenter6:40

Did you ever break the rules?

Sir Robin Butler6:42

I didn't think I was at all naughty now.

Presenter6:44

But you never never had a detention.

Sir Robin Butler6:46

Oh yes, I had that. I had that I had that, but I don't think they were very wicked things.

Presenter6:47

Yeah.

Presenter6:51

And then at Oxford, at University College, you were President of the JCR. But you didn't, according to one of your contemporaries, enjoy the rough and tumble of student politics. Again, you had a gentle approach. You tended to look after your your fellow students rather than get out there and fight on the front line.

Sir Robin Butler7:08

Yes, I think that uh in my college I was interested in uh looking after what the students wanted. I didn't take any part in the Oxford Union. I rather regret that. Actually, I would have enjoyed the debate on current affairs, but uh I didn't have time for it and I didn't do it.

Presenter7:26

What did you think then at that time that life had mapped out for you? I mean, what were your parents' expectations for you? What were yours for yourself?

Sir Robin Butler7:34

Well, I came from a family where, rather like the Foresight saga, I was the third generation of a family which had started a small business and was looking to go into the professions. My father wanted me to be a lawyer, and I remember that when I was sixteen, he took me to the law courts, and we went into a court where a barrister was cross-examining a woman and very professionally taking her story to pieces and exposing the inconsistencies of it. And it was very properly done, but I had the sense that for him it was a professional matter, and for her it was life and death. And wrongly thinking that all the law was like that, I couldn't bring myself to do it.

Sir Robin Butler8:20

And I think what attracted me about the Civil Service was both that I

Sir Robin Butler8:24

liked and admired the people that I knew were in it, and I felt that it was doing something for society.

Presenter8:32

So we have record number two.

Sir Robin Butler8:33

Well record number two is a Harrow School song.

Sir Robin Butler8:37

After the war, my parents bought a piece of land at Harrow, and my father, with his own hands, with the aid of a bricklayer, built the house that we lived in, and that was on the top of Harrow Hill. And Harrow's played a great part in my life, because I was a schoolboy there, and I subsequently was a governor and became chairman of the governors. And the song which I've chosen is one called Good Night, which is about the lights of Hampstead seen from Harrow Hill as one of the boys is going to sleep.

Speaker 49:07

Oh my god.

Speaker 49:11

And I know it's nearing.

Speaker 49:15

I strong hams and many pure wall.

Speaker 49:24

Paint on poll and the shape of everything.

Speaker 49:32

French and broad are friendly.

Presenter9:39

Boys of Harrow School, singing Good Night, accompanied here in the studio by Sir Robin Butler.

Presenter9:45

So the family paint firm wasn't for you. You took the civil service exams instead, and you came top out of uh your entry. What did you have to do? How did they choose you?

Sir Robin Butler9:54

We had two days of tests where you had to chair a committee, you had to examine a file on a problem and produce a recommendation from it, you had to draft a letter from a minister explaining things, and I remember that you had to write a critique of yourself, first of all by your warmest admirer, and secondly by your worst critic. That I think was the most difficult of all.

Presenter10:20

What did you put? That's by far the most interesting one, really. What would your critics say?

Sir Robin Butler10:24

I wrote the exact converse in the criticism of the virtues that I had claimed in the praise. What they were now, I can't remember.

Presenter10:34

Believing in one and not believing in the other, I bet.

Presenter10:37

But you were, as we've said, exactly the kind of person that that would be chosen as a high flower, the Oxbridge and the Blue and so on. Ironically, that's an attitude that you're taking steps to try and break down now in Whitehall, isn't it?

Sir Robin Butler10:50

Well, I'm trying to widen the entry to the civil service and to persuade people from a full range of universities and the old polytechnics that they would be valued and welcome in the civil service. I want to get the best people from everywhere.

Sir Robin Butler11:12

But I think that the wider that we can cast our net, the more likely we are to achieve that.

Presenter11:17

Well, now, thirty years ago, when you were chosen and were coming up through, you chose to go to the Treasury. Why why the Treasury?

Sir Robin Butler11:23

Well, I felt that the Treasury was at the centre of things. Everything depended on money, and therefore the Treasury got involved in all issues. And I was rather influenced by the fact that Peter Jay, who was a year ahead of me at Oxford and a friend of mine whom I greatly admired, had gone into the Treasury, and that attracted me to it. I also knew a senior

Sir Robin Butler11:45

person in the Treasury at that time, Sir Edmund Compton, to whom I owe the fact that he encouraged me to go into the civil service, and his example also led me there.

Presenter11:55

Let's have your third record.

Sir Robin Butler11:56

While I was at Harrow, there was a wonderful man, Ronald Watkins, who produced Shakspere plays in the conditions of the Globe Theatre. And what he taught us was that without any scenery or special lighting effects, the words of Shakspere could create the scenery.

Sir Robin Butler12:13

And I have always greatly valued John Gielgood's Ages of Man, and I would very much like to have an extract from that, perhaps the piece where Caliban is telling Prospero about the desert island.

Speaker 112:27

Be not afeard the isle is full of noises, sounds, and sweet airs that give delight, and hurt not.

Speaker 112:36

Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments will hum about mine ears, and sometimes voices, that if I then had waked After long sleep, would make me sleep again, and then, in dreaming, the clouds methought would open, and show riches ready to drop upon me that when I waked I cried to dream again.

Presenter13:02

Sir John Guilgood and part of Caliban's speech from the third act of The Tempest.

Presenter13:07

Edward Heath chose you, as we've mentioned, to be his private secretary in nineteen seventy two. What is the job? What what were its attractions for you?

Sir Robin Butler13:16

Well, number ten is very much like a family, because it's not only the Prime Minister's office, but it's his house, and it is very small. And there are five civil service private secretaries there, whose job really is to act as the link between the Prime Minister and the Government departments. And you ask them for advice, you transmit the Prime Minister's views to them, and generally act as the means of communication.

Presenter13:46

So what happens to you and that small team that you described there, working in Number Ten, when the politics take over, as they did, for example, for you in early nineteen seventy four when Edward Heath lost the numbers game in the general election, and then he sat in Number Ten agonising whether to stay or whether to go? What's your role then?

Sir Robin Butler14:06

Well, the role during that week end was not very much, because it was very much a political negotiation, while he was trying to make an arrangement with the Liberal Party, and then concluded that he couldn't. And I don't think I did much more that weekend than run in and out with cups of tea.

Presenter14:24

But you you I mean, you can put the government business on hold, but can you put your emotions on hold?

Presenter14:30

Well, you have to.

Sir Robin Butler14:31

As a civil servant, you have always got to remember that you may be, you never know when, working for a government of the other party. And that is a matter you've always got to remember.

Presenter14:44

But is it true that you considered resigning at one point after mister Heath left Number Ten because you felt that somehow you did want to speak out and

Sir Robin Butler14:45

But is

Sir Robin Butler14:53

No, it it isn't true that I seriously considered uh resigning. I did ask myself at that stage, once again, uh whether I wanted to take a more public role, as Peter Jay had uh done before me at the Treasury. But I uh soon satisfied myself that I was better and more fitted to a the job of a civil servant.

Presenter15:14

So you lined up with the rest of the Downing Street staff as they do when there's a a new Prime Minister arriving, and you applauded as they do the arrival of Harold Wilson. Yes.

Sir Robin Butler15:27

No, I don't think so, because you have to satisfy yourself, and I've always felt satisfied, that it's your profession. It's a professional requirement. You're like a barrister. You've been working for one client. You now have to work for another. Of course it can be personally traumatic because you get attached to people. But it is part of the profession and that's what essentially divides civil servants from politicians. And both sides recognise it.

Speaker 115:43

Yeah.

Presenter15:53

Your job, obviously, is to see when when there's a change of of power of that kind, that the transition is seamless, as it were. Did you therefore, before the last election in April last, did did did you make it your job to make friends with Neil Kinnock? I mean, he might have been your boss the next day.

Sir Robin Butler16:09

Yes, I did. I had a lot of contacts with Neil Kinnock. And throughout, in my job, you have a certain number of contacts with the Leader of the Opposition. That happens not just before a general election, but all the time. But in the period before the election, with the approval of the Prime Minister, all the permanent secretary heads of department had discussions with the leading opposition spokesman so that we both got to know each other, understand what Labour's priorities and policies were, so that we would have been able to hit the ground running if Labour had won the general election.

Presenter16:42

Hmm.

Presenter16:43

Some more music.

Sir Robin Butler16:44

Yeah.

Sir Robin Butler16:45

Well, I now go to opera and I would like to have, if I may, some Puccini, which was my first love in opera, and I would love to have the duet from the end of the first act of Madam Butterfly between Pinkerton and Butterfly when they've gone through their marriage, they're alone, and they are for a time lyrically happy.

Speaker 417:32

We know we hope.

Speaker 417:41

Lance My Baby.

Presenter18:04

Maria Callas and Nicolai Gedda singing part of the duet Voliatimi Benne from the first act of Puccini's Madam Butterfly with the orchestra of La Scala Milan, conducted by Herbert von Carrion.

Presenter18:16

Um you were misses Thatcher's principal private secretary, Sir Robin Butler, from'eighty two to'eighty five, and legend has it that you saved her life. That was in Brighton in nineteen eighty four when the bomb went off. What happened?

Sir Robin Butler18:29

Well, it wasn't a very heroic way of saving her life.

Sir Robin Butler18:33

She had just finished work on her party conference speech, and all her advisers on that had gone, and I had a minute on which I needed a decision from her before breakfast the next day. And I gave her this minute and said would she look at it overnight and let me know at breakfast what instructions she wanted to give on it. And she said she would much rather do it then and there, so that she could concentrate on her speech.

Presenter18:58

which was one time quite very late.

Sir Robin Butler19:00

Quarter to three in the morning.

Sir Robin Butler19:02

And we sat in her sitting room at the Grand Hotel, and she was reading The Minute, and I was thinking how lovely it would be to be in bed in ten minutes' time, and there was then this great explosion.

Sir Robin Butler19:16

And the only way in which I saved her life was that had she not stayed there to read that minute, she would have gone to get ready for bed and she would have been in the bathroom, which collapsed.

Presenter19:28

Hmm.

Presenter19:29

What did you do the minute the bomb went off?

Sir Robin Butler19:31

I thought it was probably a car bomb outside, and I said to her, I think we ought to get away from the windows, and we went across the room. And then, before I could stop her, she plunged into the bedroom where Dennis Thatcher was sleeping.

Sir Robin Butler19:47

And from there I could hear the sounds of falling masonry and pouring water, and I had a vision of myself in front of the tribunal and them saying to me, Mr Butler, you let the Prime Minister go into this chaos. So it was a great relief to me when she and Mr Thatcher emerged a few seconds later.

Presenter20:05

You probably wouldn't have been able to stop her anyway if she was determined to go in.

Sir Robin Butler20:09

Uh

Presenter20:09

Yeah. Uh

Sir Robin Butler20:09

I'm quite sure that I wouldn't, but it was one of those very indicative moments when there's no pretence, but her first thought was for her husband.

Presenter20:19

Hmm.

Presenter20:20

Your relationship with Margaret Thatcher was obviously a successful one, because later on she was to appoint you Cabinet Secretary in'eighty eight. But it's also been said that you found it a strain. In what way was it a strain?

Sir Robin Butler20:32

Well, misses Thatcher was very professionally demanding.

Sir Robin Butler20:38

You had to know your stuff. You could never relax when uh you were with her or were advising her. She also had the most extraordinary physical stamina. I think she really was indifferent to sleep and she didn't mind whether it was three, four, five o'clock in the morning. And I found it a strain to keep up with that. But I found in the end that I could, and then I relaxed.

Presenter21:06

How does the atmosphere in number ten differ to day?

Sir Robin Butler21:08

Well, mister Major is also very demanding and very rigorous about the facts and the arguments. He has a more clubbable style, so the atmosphere in that respect is different.

Presenter21:25

So are you enjoying life more in number ten these days?

Sir Robin Butler21:28

Oh, I wouldn't make any comparisons. I love it. I have always enjoyed it. I enjoyed it with Ted Heath, I enjoyed it with Harold Wilson, I enjoyed it with Margaret Thatcher, I enj enjoyed it with John Major.

Presenter21:40

This is the diplomat answering now.

Sir Robin Butler21:41

It isn't. It's the truthful man. I enjoy the operation of Government. I'm very happy in it, and all the people that I've served as Prime Minister have been highly professional.

Presenter21:54

Record number five.

Sir Robin Butler21:55

Record number five is The Seekers and Close the Door, Light the Light. And this is for two reasons. We always with our family played an album of The Seekers in the car when we were going on holiday. But also, this is a joke between my wife and me, because on those rather rare occasions these days, when we have an evening at home with my working on my papers at one end of the city and she correcting her school books at the other because she's a teacher, we say to each other, Lock the door, light the light, we're staying home tonight.

Speaker 422:28

There'll be peace of mind when we live in a world of our own.

Speaker 422:38

Oh my love, oh my love, I cried for you so much. Lonely nights without sleeping, while I long for your touch. Now your lips can erase the heartache I've known. Come with me to a world of

Presenter23:00

The seekers and a world of our own or close the door and light the light. Do you do you have a bed at work? Can you stay over at number ten if you have to?

Sir Robin Butler23:07

There is a bedroom that I can use, but I've always made it a point of principle to go home. However late the nights go on, if it's five or six in the morning, I always go home. I only live uh ten minutes away, just to get my feet in the real world before returning to the hot house of Downing Street.

Presenter23:22

Before

Presenter23:24

And your office is actually on Whitehall, but it's linked to number ten, isn't it?

Sir Robin Butler23:28

Yes, there's a closed door between the Cabinet Office and Ten Downing Street, and those who watched Yes Prime Minister will remember that they once changed the lock so that Sir Humphrey couldn't get through.

Presenter23:41

How many times a day on average do you go through? How many times a day do you see the PM?

Sir Robin Butler23:46

It depends whether the Prime Minister's in London, but I have a weekly meeting with him just between the two of us when we discuss the future programme of Cabinet and Cabinet Committee business and civil service appointments and things like that. And then I will go through anything between naught and three times a day to sit beside him at meetings.

Presenter24:10

You obviously have to be very careful, as you've stressed, about that relationship between government and the civil service, you you as the civil servant and him as the politician.

Presenter24:20

Is it true that you recommended that Bernard Ingham, misses Thatcher's Chief Press Secretary, should go back to his department because you felt that he'd come too close?

Sir Robin Butler24:29

No, it isn't true. I had great admiration for Bernard Ingham. I think that he was thoroughly professional. And what always astonished me was that when Bernard Ingham faced the lobby twice a day for eleven years in the job,

Sir Robin Butler24:50

that it wasn't the large number of times in which he got himself into any trouble, it was the very, very small number of times. I think that was a remarkable achievement.

Presenter24:57

Cool.

Presenter24:59

But you'd have to be a saint, really, wouldn't you, to have to spend that long working closely with a politician, um and being side by side with that politician in a position of great power, and not become less than objective, not become partisan.

Sir Robin Butler25:13

Yes, and that's why in general the rule is that Downing Street is staffed by people on secondment who only stay there for two or three years and don't get too close to the uh Prime Minister and uh don't themselves have their heads turned by the power that there is in being there. And in general I think that that is a good principle.

Presenter25:38

More music.

Sir Robin Butler25:39

Well, it's back to opera, and this is a sad piece. It's the duet from the second act of La Traviata, where Violetta has found great happiness with her lover, but her lover's father asks her to give him up, and she agrees to do so, though with great agony.

Speaker 426:21

Siosara del Vastro todo situa.

Speaker 426:28

Yeah.

Presenter27:00

Ettore Bastianini and Maria Callas singing part of the duet Morro la Mia Memoria from the second act of Verde's La Traviata, with the orchestra of La Scala Milan, conducted by Carlo Maria Giolini.

Presenter27:12

You ride a bicycle around Whitehorse, or Robin.

Sir Robin Butler27:15

Yes, I ride a bicycle both for exercise and because I find that it's the most reliable way of getting to places on time. You never get caught in a traffic jam.

Presenter27:23

You've also done a a spot of apsailing down the treasury walls, I understand.

Sir Robin Butler27:27

Well, I think Ab Saling was putting it rather glamorously, but I had asked to have my windows cleaned and nobody was doing it, and I said that if it wasn't done by a particular date, I would do it myself. And it wasn't done, so making quite sure that I was firmly tied on, I did climb outside onto the ledge of the treasury and clean them. After that, they were always cleaned on time.

Presenter27:51

Yeah.

Presenter27:51

So you're fit and active and and well prepared for life on a desert island in the physical sense.

Sir Robin Butler27:56

I think I'm getting rapidly less fit as time goes on, but uh yes, I suppose I'm relatively fit.

Presenter28:01

What you will be able to do on your desert island, of course, is is stand on the beach and yell to the waves exactly what you really think about everybody and everything and all those politicians in front of whom you've had to button your lip. I mean, will that be a great release?

Sir Robin Butler28:15

I don't think I would do that. When we come to my luxury, I was thinking of asking whether I could have a tape recorder to make a record of all I remember, since I've never kept a diary. But then the thought occurred to me that the Government might not try to rescue me. So I'm going to ask for something else.

Presenter28:32

Even on your own the s your the secrets would stay.

Presenter28:35

firmly inside.

Sir Robin Butler28:36

Yes, they're in the treasure house of my mind, and uh I think I have an obligation to keep them there.

Presenter28:43

Forever.

Sir Robin Butler28:44

Forever.

Presenter28:46

Next record.

Sir Robin Butler28:47

The next record is Mozart. I would like to have some Mozart and the piece I've chosen is Mozart's Laudati Dominum, which is Psalm 117, and was sung at my daughter's wedding, and it would therefore serve two purposes. It would be some Mozart, and it would be a memory of a blissfully happy day.

Speaker 429:58

Lord Christ Sorce.

Presenter30:12

Kiritakano were singing Mozart's Laudate Dominum with the English Chamber Orchestra conducted by Barry Rose.

Presenter30:18

Do you consider, Sir Robin, that you're doing your job well if we don't hear much about you, if you keep a low profile?

Sir Robin Butler30:26

Yes, in general, I don't think it's the job of the civil servant ever to usurp the position of the politician. But, with one exception, the other part of my job is head of the civil service. So I have to be, to some extent, visible to them. And so I do allow myself a bit of exposure in that way, mainly by giving interviews to the local press and radio when I go round visiting the civil service.

Presenter30:54

But your predecessor, Robert Armstrong, your predecessor was Cabinet Secretary, that half of your job, became very high profile, of course, when he went to Australia and gave evidence in the Peter Wright trial.

Presenter31:04

Would that have been close to a Cabinet Secretary's idea of hell?

Sir Robin Butler31:09

Well, I didn't expect Robert enjoyed it very much, but it's the sort of thing which you may at any time have to do. The other week I find myself up in front of a select committee of Parliament being questioned about the government expenses for the press statement in relation to Norman Lamont's tenant of his house. And it's perfectly right that we should be questioned in that way. But that is the sort of thing that can suddenly plunge you into publicity and give you notoriety, and you've got to be prepared for that.

Presenter31:45

But that particular appearance in front of the Select Committee raises one important question, doesn't it? As the country's most senior or one of the country's most senior public servants, whose interests do you defend when the public and the government are at odds?

Sir Robin Butler31:58

Well, I'm trying, I think, to convince Parliament and to convince the public that a rigorous decision has been taken about what public money should be spent on. And that is a decision which, when it concerns the politician, the politician shouldn't take themselves. And therefore, somebody like me has to take it. And what I want to do is to convince people that we take that decision scrupulously and with integrity.

Presenter32:29

Which part of your job do you think you would on a desert island be most pleased to have escaped from?

Sir Robin Butler32:35

And I don't honestly think that there is any part of it that I could say that I dislike.

Sir Robin Butler32:41

and that I would want to be free of. I love it very much.

Presenter32:44

Even appearing in front of select committees.

Sir Robin Butler32:46

Even that is a challenge.

Presenter32:49

What do you think you'll miss most while you're there?

Sir Robin Butler32:51

Oh, my wife

Sir Robin Butler32:52

Of course I would also miss my family, I would miss home, I would miss the work, I would miss colleagues, I would miss the office. There's a lot of things I would miss. In fact, I would be profoundly miserable.

Presenter33:04

Last record.

Sir Robin Butler33:05

The last record is one to give me hope. I would very much like to have I Know That My Redeemer Liveth from Handel's Messiah because it's the piece of music which I think most combines comfort with hope.

Speaker 433:21

Under the trees.

Speaker 433:52

Believe believers.

Speaker 433:58

A teacher's

Presenter34:18

Elizabeth Schwarzkopf singing I Know That My Redeemer Liveth from Handel's Messiah, with the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Otto Klemperer. So which one of the eight would you have if you could only have one?

Sir Robin Butler34:28

I would have to have the last one. I know that my Redeemer liveth, because what I would most need is hope and comfort.

Presenter34:35

And you've got the Bible there, which may give you some of that and um the complete works of Shakespeare. What about an extra book?

Sir Robin Butler34:41

I'd like to take The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers by Paul Kennedy, because I would like a really substantial book on world history that I could read and reflect on.

Presenter34:53

And your luxury.

Sir Robin Butler34:54

Well, I thought of taking a tape recorder, and have rejected that for the reasons I've given, so I've decided to ask you, if I may, if I could have a bag of golf clubs, so that I could devise a golf course for myself around the island. That would be a perpetual challenge. But please, lots of golf balls.

Presenter35:12

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

Sir Robin Butler35:16

Thank you very much. I've adored it.

Speaker 435:25

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