Baroness Blackstone

Speaker 30:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

Speaker 30:08

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

Presenter0:29

My Castaway this week is an academic. Never one to retreat into scholarly seclusion, she's also an active Labour politician and a leading public servant.

Presenter0:37

She was educated at the London School of Economics, where she went on to teach, and then at the age of thirty five joined the Downing Street think tank, advising Wilson, then Callaghan.

Presenter0:47

Having twice failed to be selected as a Labour Parliamentary candidate, she returned to the world of education. She became Deputy Education Officer at the Inner London Education Authority, and more recently Master of Birkbeck College in London.

Presenter1:00

She was made a life peer in nineteen eighty seven, and became Baroness Blackstone of Stoke Newington, but she prefers to be known simply as Tessa Blackstone.

Presenter1:09

What does the handle Lady Blackstone do for you, Tessa? Does it put your teeth on edge, or is it does it just make you laugh?

Baroness Blackstone1:16

I really hate it. I much prefer just to be called Tessa, and I regret the fact that serving my party in the House of Lords means that I have to carry a title with me. I wish I didn't have to be called Baroness Blackstone or Lady Blackstone. On the other hand, you do in the end get used to these things. A lot of people still call me Dr Blackstone or Professor Blackstone, and I prefer that in many ways.

Presenter1:40

And a lot of people call you Master,'cause you're Master of Birkbeck, do they?

Baroness Blackstone1:43

Some of the staff at Beckbeck call me Master. I think these rather archaic titles will become gender neutral eventually, just as a result of more and more women occupying the posts that go with the titles.

Presenter1:56

So having got over the problem of how to address you, there's then the problem of of how to categorise you, because uh as I've said, you you're an academic, but I could as well have said politician, and you were a civil servant, and you very much are a p a public servant. What do you think of yourself?

Baroness Blackstone2:12

So fast.

Presenter2:12

Yeah.

Baroness Blackstone2:13

I have often thought of myself as a rather marginal person who doesn't quite fit into anything not really scholarly enough to be a proper academic, but too much of an academic to be a really effective politician, and maybe just a bit too political to be a good civil servant or administrator.

Presenter2:31

So where does that leave you? Does that I mean, that leaves you falling between all of the stools? Is that a happy place to be?

Baroness Blackstone2:33

Yeah.

Baroness Blackstone2:36

It leaves me falling between all of the stools, but somehow or other managing to sit with part of my bottom on, or three bits of the stool.

Baroness Blackstone2:45

So but it's comfortable. It sounds very uncomfortable. No, it's actually actually I think I've I've now come to terms with it and I actually rather enjoy the variety.

Presenter2:47

Yeah.

Baroness Blackstone2:54

Let's have some music. What what's your first Desert Island isqu?

Baroness Blackstone2:57

I would like to have Shirley Verrett singing The Song of the Veil from Verdias Don Carlos. I love the mezzo voice, and she has the most beautiful voice. And it was one of the greatest of productions, opera productions, at the Royal Opera House over the last twenty-five or thirty years. It's still going, and I don't think it could be improved on.

Speaker 43:21

I don't believe that the way you say

Speaker 43:26

We lost it more.

Speaker 43:29

Nothing, it's not that.

Speaker 44:06

I'm not sure if I can do it.

Speaker 44:14

Yeah.

Presenter4:19

Shirley Verret singing the Song of the Veil from Act Two of Verdi's Don Carlos, with the orchestra of the Royal Opera House conducted by Carlo Maria Giolini.

Presenter4:27

We were talking about titles and categories, Tessa, but what about names? I suppose the the phrase that was

Presenter4:33

Used a view that's proved difficult for you to shake off is dark-eyed evil genius. Now, where did that one come from?

Baroness Blackstone4:39

Yes, I fear that will be with me till I go to the grave. It was apparently invented by some wag in the Foreign Office when I was working in the Central Policy Review staff on a big piece of work which was known as the Review of Overseas Representation. And there was a bit of a campaign against some of our ideas from people from deep inside the Foreign Office. But your idea was.

Presenter5:06

But your idea was to attack their lavish lifestyle, I guess.

Baroness Blackstone5:09

Well, it actually wasn't really about that. Didn't you say they should sell their palatial residence? That was a very small part of a big piece of work. But it was this that that the newspapers of particularly the popular press, of course, focussed on.

Presenter5:13

Yeah.

Presenter5:24

But why did they pick on you? I mean, dark-eyed, evil genius is a sort of well, I suppose it's sexism, really, wasn't it? Was sexist stuff, wasn't it?

Baroness Blackstone5:33

Well, I worked in a team of five people, three of whom were men. There was one other woman, Kate Mortimer, and she and I were certainly to some extent picked on. And I suspect, particularly at that time, we're now going back more than fifteen years, some of the men that we were asked to interview were not used to working with women, and they found it more difficult. So I think perhaps there was an element of defensiveness on their part and a little bit of sexism too. But you you were.

Presenter6:02

Uh though uh I suppose you are a a natural feminist, aren't you? And from early on you seem to have been determined to

Presenter6:10

Establish your rights as a woman.

Baroness Blackstone6:12

Yes, there's no doubt that early in my career I was strongly motivated by a wish to demonstrate that women could succeed in a wide variety of different jobs and different positions in public life, that women could be both mothers and successful career women. And I suppose that I got into trying to be a young mother with a professional career in the early days when it was much less accepted than it is now.

Presenter6:44

This was early sixties because you you were married and and had a baby before you graduated.

Baroness Blackstone6:50

Absolutely right. And at that time, the view that predominated was that women with small children should stay at home. And I certainly knew that that wasn't for me. And I think it really wouldn't have been for my children either, because I would have been a pretty frustrated and not very effective mother if I had not been able to combine looking after my children with doing other things.

Presenter7:14

And have you had any regrets since, just looking back and it was, as you say, a long time ago now, um thirty years or more that any regrets that you you put that work before full time motherhood?

Baroness Blackstone7:25

No, I don't regret that at all. I I regret lots of things about what I did as a mother. Um I regret the fact that I was often terribly impatient and you know, I sometimes you know wish that you know I had spent more time doing certain sorts of things with my children when they were small. But I must say that I I do now have a wonderful relationship with my children and see a great deal of them. They matter hugely to me, and I like to think and hope that I matter to them.

Baroness Blackstone7:52

And now you're a grandmother. And now I'm a grandmother, and my eighteen month old granddaughter is the apple of my eye, I'm quite besotted with her. Record number two. I would like Jean Sablon singing Le Fiacre, and I'd like it because it reminds me of my father. He used to sing it round the lunch table on Sundays when he'd had a

Baroness Blackstone8:13

glass of beer or two when we were children, and then again he sang it to my own children when they were young and we always loved it.

Baroness Blackstone8:25

Uh yeah, hi.

Speaker 48:30

Jean la Vega Co Chevlan.

Speaker 48:38

Derier l'estor bicy, yaha, yah, vidya, hotla, der yer l'estor bici.

Presenter8:42

Yeah.

Speaker 48:46

On the tent paises.

Presenter8:49

Jean Sablan singing Le Fiere. You're a feminist, then, a left of centre political thinker. What are the roots of those persuasions, Tessa? Were your parents radicals?

Baroness Blackstone9:00

Not particularly. My father used to describe himself as the last Liberal in the home counties in the 1950s when there weren't very many of them around. But he certainly was interested in in politics. He sometimes got into discussions with us about political issues, but not very often. I wouldn't say we were a highly politicised family.

Presenter9:21

I thought you begged him to talk about politics and he refused because he didn't think it was proper.

Baroness Blackstone9:26

No, he would talk about politics, but what he wouldn't do was to tell us how he had voted in spite of this throwaway line about being the last Liberal. And he used to say this because he was a local authority chief officer, and local government officers, he used to say in a slightly jokey way, are not meant to reveal what their political persuasions are, because they should be able to work for either side.

Baroness Blackstone9:51

My mother, again, has always been interested in

Baroness Blackstone9:55

Public issues of one sort or another, but not in a party sense at all. Did she work? Did she have a job? She didn't for many years, and she was a deeply frustrated housewife and mother who really would love to have had a job and a career. She started life as an actress and as a model in Paris, and then actually met my father in the war when he was in London working for the fire service and she was a driver, enrolling like so many other middle-class girls at the time to do war work.

Baroness Blackstone10:27

And she, when I was close to leaving school in the sixth form, I think, went and got herself a qualification in shorthand and typing and became a medical secretary. But I think I was very influenced by being aware of her frustration. And she was a tremendous encourager of my sister and me. She wanted us to do well.

Presenter10:51

Yeah. And you've always said that you

Baroness Blackstone10:51

And

Presenter10:53

You didn't need any assertiveness training. Is this because you had to fight your corner in the family?

Baroness Blackstone10:58

Yes, I come from a large family with two brothers and a sister, and we used to compete tremendously in every respect.

Presenter11:07

But what you're what you're admitting to in saying that, uh, that you don't need assertiveness training, is that that you're bossy, which is one of those words that are

Baroness Blackstone11:07

But what's your

Presenter11:14

that's used of women who know their own mind or what they think should happen next. Have you d does that worry you, being bossy, or have you accepted that that's the way you are?

Baroness Blackstone11:23

I think I've accepted that I am an organising kind of person. I like running things. I like things to go smoothly. I like people to be using their energies in a way that seems to me to be constructive. What I don't like about myself is that I'm sometimes terribly impatient and I get cross with people if they're doing things too slowly or if they haven't worked out clearly what is a sensible way of tackling a particular problem. And I do wish I were more patient.

Baroness Blackstone11:56

I would like to have Lotter Lenya singing Sura Bayer Johnny Rechtwell song. This goes back to my late adolescence when I did German at school and German at A level and spent quite a lot of time doing exchanges, staying with German families. And although I don't think I actually heard Surabaya Johnny played in these families, it's a lovely piece of twentieth century semi-popular music.

Speaker 412:26

Uh by a johnny

Speaker 412:30

Warum bistu zoro suurabay johnni main got undich lib di so.

Speaker 412:42

Surabay Johnny Varum Binihnitro.

Speaker 412:50

Who hast kind her journey only?

Presenter12:57

Lottalenya and Surabaya Johnny.

Presenter13:00

So, um, home life in the home counties and at Ware Grammar School wasn't particularly politically inspiring. When and where, then, did you come across

Baroness Blackstone13:08

Politics.

Baroness Blackstone13:09

when I went to the London School of Economics as an undergraduate.

Baroness Blackstone13:12

I went there totally unprepared in many ways for what I was going to get.

Baroness Blackstone13:16

It was an enormously challenging experience for me, having been at a

Baroness Blackstone13:21

small, not particularly academic, girls' grammar school where I'd been very happy, but certainly I don't think tremendously stretched in in any way. And I suddenly found myself thrown into a very cosmopolitan group of students with a tremendously talented group of academics who taught me, and it broadened my understanding of life and the world hugely.

Presenter13:49

But what were the political ideas, what were the issues that set you alight at that point? Sixty one it would have been, right?

Baroness Blackstone13:55

Yes, South Africa.

Baroness Blackstone13:57

I arrived at LSE not very long after Sharpville.

Baroness Blackstone14:03

I think poverty in the third world generally. I met a lot of third world students for the first time in my life. I think inequality within Britain. I learnt through my lectures on the social structure of modern Britain the extent and degree of poverty, which I was unaware of within my own country. All these things radicalised me, there's no doubt about that.

Presenter14:28

And you also fell in love.

Baroness Blackstone14:29

I did.

Presenter14:30

You fell in love with a man who articulated all of these things very well. Was that part of the attraction?

Baroness Blackstone14:36

Yes, he came from a South Wales mining background and was President of the Students' Union at LSE, with piercing blue eyes and auburn hair. He had a sort of charisma and he was tremendously involved in politics himself. He'd been a member of the Labour Party from quite a young age and again was a great debater and took part in National Union of Student Competitions and that sort of thing. So getting involved with Tom also got me more deeply into politics than perhaps I would otherwise have done.

Presenter15:12

So you you you married him, Tom Evans, uh, and you had a child, and then later another one, both now grown up, of course. But uh he, Tom, your husband, sympathised with your feminist aspirations, didn't he? I mean, he didn't blame you for not wanting to stay at home and look after the children.

Baroness Blackstone15:28

Yes, he passionately believed that women should have the same opportunities to contribute to the wider world beyond the home as men. Although coming from a background where, on the whole, the women looked after the men in their homes, and he had certainly not been brought up to do very much round the house, he accepted that this was something that he really should do, but he was never terribly good at it. Much as he tried and wanted to, he was very impractical. But he was very, very committed to taking his turn and coming back and putting the children to bed on those occasions when I couldn't get back, that kind of thing.

Presenter16:05

But in the end, um I think what after about nine or ten years the marriage came unstuck. It did.

Presenter16:11

But you came together again as a family in really very sad circumstances, much later on in the mid eighties, didn't you, when when Tom found he had cancer?

Baroness Blackstone16:19

That's right. Tom and I remained enormously close friends even after our marriage broke down. And we constantly talked to each other about politics, our careers, life, and the children, of course, who remained at the centre of both of our lives. But he very sadly got stomach cancer in his early forties and eventually died. And it was a very difficult period, of course, for my children as well as for me. But I did look after him in those final weeks of his life, and I'm very glad I did so. Next record.

Baroness Blackstone17:00

I would like Ella Fitzgerald singing every time we say goodbye, and I would like it because it was something that Tom used to sing when we first lived together. He had one of those enormous great big tapes that we had in the early sixties of Ella Fitzgerald singing Cole Porter, and this is the one I would choose from that tape.

Speaker 417:23

Every time we say goodbye, I die a little

Speaker 417:36

Every time we say goodbye.

Speaker 417:43

I wonder why a little

Speaker 417:48

Why the God above me?

Presenter17:53

Ella Fitzgerald, and every time we say goodbye. You twice tried to become a a Labour candidate, Tessa Blackstone, in Stoke Newington, and then later in Stevenage. Why were you rejected, do you think? What what didn't the local parties like about you?

Baroness Blackstone18:08

Well, you'd have to ask them. Difficult to answer that question. I suspect that I I wasn't quite what they wanted at that time.

Baroness Blackstone18:17

I don't now particularly regret having failed. I think I was always a little ambivalent about it anyway. It happened that there was a vacancy in my own local constituency, and therefore it seemed sensible to have a crack at it, even though I realised at the time that my chances of being selected were not very high.

Presenter18:31

Uh

Baroness Blackstone18:37

But I always felt that perhaps I wasn't going to make a very good Member of Parliament, that there were things about the life which I would find irritating and difficult. I was also always, to be honest, a little bit worried about whether I was going to be able to cope.

Baroness Blackstone18:52

As a single mother, as I was by then, with looking after my children and doing all that you have to do as a full-time politician.

Presenter19:00

But you're in politics proper now. You're opposition spokesman now in the Lords on foreign affairs, and you've done s education and science, you've done treasury, you've done trade and industry as well, haven't you?

Baroness Blackstone19:11

So I'm now a specsman in palm trade and industry.

Presenter19:14

Right. Um how much larger a role would you like to play? What's your political amb

Baroness Blackstone19:20

mission really, ideally.

Presenter19:21

Yeah.

Baroness Blackstone19:21

Well, my political ambition is to get rid of a Conservative Government and elect a Labour one. And if that were to happen, and I hope and expect it will at the next General Election, then I would very much like to play some part in working for or in a Labour Government. But what kind of part would you ideally like?

Baroness Blackstone19:43

That's a very difficult question to answer. There are lots of different things that I would be happy to do. I don't have one clear idea of what I want to do, and I think it would be very dangerous to have such an idea.

Presenter19:55

Certainly, I mean you'd narrow your options for a start, but surely it would be in the area of education, which has been your life study really?

Baroness Blackstone20:01

Uh

Baroness Blackstone20:02

I wanted actually to change from education in the Lords during last session because I got just a little bit stale and a little bit bored. I may well want to come back to it at some point, but I wouldn't say that that's necessarily the department that I would want to end up in if we had a Labour Government. More music.

Baroness Blackstone20:22

I would like to have part of Strabinski's Rite of Spring. I would like the Adoration de la Terre. I've chosen this because one of the great loves of my life is ballet, classical ballet, and Strabinski was the great twentieth century composer of ballet music. Very hard to select a piece from all the wonderful works that he wrote for ballet.

Baroness Blackstone20:46

This piece, however, I think is enormously exciting, and I've chosen it partly because, of course, when it was first played, it was a great scandal in Paris. It was booed, and I think it's a demonstration of how audiences can get things wrong at first.

Presenter22:07

Part of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, Adoration de la Terre, played by the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Herbert von Carrion.

Presenter22:15

You became master of Birkbeck in nineteen eighty seven, and uh you've been there ever since. You've said since that you feel there like a round peg in a round hole. Why do you say that? What makes you feel there?

Baroness Blackstone22:26

I think because I identify so strongly with what it does, I really believe in providing higher education.

Baroness Blackstone22:36

of high quality for people who want to study part-time.

Baroness Blackstone22:41

In their twenties, their thirties, their forties, in other words.

Baroness Blackstone22:45

When they're older, not just at the conventional age of eighteen to twenty-two, but

Baroness Blackstone22:50

The thing I also love about Birtbeck is its students. They're wonderful people because they're so motivated and so enthusiastic about what they're doing.

Presenter22:58

They're committed perhaps in a way that ordinary undergraduates are.

Baroness Blackstone23:01

Don't you it's not a good idea.

Presenter23:02

When do they come then? Do they come in the evenings or during the day when they fit it in?

Baroness Blackstone23:05

No, they come in the evenings after work. Most of our students have jobs in the day, and anybody who can manage to do a three-year undergraduate course in four years combined with a job has an awful lot of energy and drive and commitment.

Presenter23:21

The college also happens to be in a rather attractive part of London, in in Bloomsbury, home to the British Museum, and a higher than average number of blue plaques, signifying ancient distinguished residents.

Baroness Blackstone23:31

Yes, I'm extremely lucky in that I live in a University of London house, with a blue plaque, which in my wildest dreams I wouldn't have ever imagined would be outside my front door. It says Millicent Garrett Fawcett lived here.

Baroness Blackstone23:47

So this is your tide cottage? This is my tide cottage. And to live in a house which was lived in for forty years by the great suffragist and fighter for women's rights is wonderful.

Presenter23:58

So it would be quite a large decision to move on. I'm sure the next job your next job would have to be very attractive to persuade you to leave a post in which you felt happy and and a home that you loved. Absolutely. You haven't got one in mind. Not at all. Record number six.

Baroness Blackstone24:13

I would like the trio from Mozart's Cosy Fantutti at the end of Act One. It's the most beautiful piece of music. Also I think it would be rather appropriate on this desert island in that what they're singing, the two women and Don Alfonso, is May the wind be gentle and the waves be calm as they're waving goodbye to the lovers as they go off in a boat and I would be thinking may the wind be gentle and the waves be calm and somebody come and get me.

Presenter25:42

Elizabeth Schwarzkopf, Christa Ludwig, and Walter Berry singing part of the trio Suave Silvento from the first act of Mozart's Cosifan Tute, with the Philharmonia Orchestra, conducted by Carl Burm.

Presenter25:54

You're on the main board at the Royal Opera House, Tessa. You're chairman of the Ballet Board. You've been on committees at the Arts Council. You've been chairman of the BBC's General Advisory Council. You're a trustee of the Natural History Museum. The word governor or trustee or patron turns up numerous times in in in your C V. Is this pure altruism at work, or or is there something in it for you too?

Baroness Blackstone26:17

Oh, there's a huge amount in it for me. First of all, I love being involved in a wide range of different institutions in this country. Being chairman of the BBC's General Advisory Council, for example, was enormously instructive for me. I learnt a lot about broadcasting and how a great public organisation like the BBC works. Similarly, being involved with the Opera House, it's a wonderful privilege. It's not just altruism.

Presenter26:47

But those are the fun ones, those are the big ones, those are the influential ones. What about the numerous and I cannot overstate this really numerous other roles that you play on various committees for various reasons. I mean, can you simply, when they ring up, not say no? Oh, I do.

Baroness Blackstone26:47

But there's a

Baroness Blackstone27:00

I I mean, I I often say no, and in fact I've taken a New Year's resolution this year not to take on anything else unless I get off something, because there is a danger that you just go on adding more and more things, and you know, I have a job to do, and I have a political role to play, and I want to do those properly.

Presenter27:19

But presumably.

Baroness Blackstone27:19

Uh

Presenter27:19

Uh

Baroness Blackstone27:19

Uh

Presenter27:19

Probably based on what we were saying earlier about your being naturally assertive, committees are all the better if you're the chairman. I mean, otherwise it's jolly frustrating business if you think, Oh, come on, this person could move this along, you know, and you would be able to do it better.

Presenter27:32

Added.

Baroness Blackstone27:33

Well, you can no. I think you can play a perfectly effective role and try to make things happen as a member of a committee rather than um try to chair them all, and I'm certainly not chairman of everything that I'm involved with and wouldn't want to be. Next record. I would like to have part of Beethoven's sixth symphony, The Pastoral. This again is like my previous choice, a just wonderful piece of music. I don't think I could go to a desert island without some Beethoven.

Baroness Blackstone28:02

What this music would do, I think, is make me think about the English countryside, walking in the Star Valley. I have a little cottage which I share with several friends on the Suffolk Essex border, and I love going there at all times of the year, but I think in particular I would think about walking there in autumn.

Presenter29:20

Part of Beethoven's Symphony No. Six in F major, the pastoral, played by the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Herbert von Karrion. I think we've established that you're not particularly domesticated, Tessa, but you're ordered and you're organized and you're efficient, so so your island will work for you, will it? I mean, you'll get it all sorted out. You won't just sit there miserably hoping someone will turn up.

Baroness Blackstone29:40

Oh, I'll certainly sit there miserably hoping somebody will turn up. I I will be terrible on this desert island. One, I'm not terribly good spending long periods of time on my own. I don't like my own company for more than a few hours. And secondly, I'm

Baroness Blackstone29:56

terribly impractical. I wouldn't really know how to chop down trees and make a fire. I wouldn't find it very easy to go out and catch fish, and even if I caught one I'd hate killing it. So I'd probably starve quite soon.

Presenter30:13

This is very pathetic stuff.

Baroness Blackstone30:14

Thanks.

Presenter30:16

And what we're not going to do is

Baroness Blackstone30:16

I can organise other people to do things for me, you see, that's the problem, rather than doing things for myself of this sort. What will you miss most?

Presenter30:18

Yeah.

Baroness Blackstone30:25

I'll miss my granddaughter. I'll be sitting there longing uh to go back and have her on my knee looking at a book. She's just starting to talk and saying dog and cat and what does the dog say, woof woof.

Presenter30:41

And if if you didn't pull through I'm sorry to put this to you, but but it's quite an interesting question. If the rescue came too late and there you were a dusty heap on the beach what would you like to think that we'd be saying about you back here? What would you like to be, I suppose, remembered for, or as?

Baroness Blackstone30:59

I suppose I would like people to remember me as a woman in the second part of the twentieth century who fought to improve opportunities for children from every kind of social background, particularly in relation to education. And I suppose I would like people to remember me as somebody who had a wide range of concerns as far as public policy is concerned.

Presenter31:28

And some one who perhaps was I mean, do you like to think of yourself a as a role model for younger women?

Baroness Blackstone31:35

Well, it all sounds a little bit pompous and sort of pretentious. I don't know that I am a perfect role model. In fact, I know I'm not. I suppose I would like to be thought of as somebody who had encouraged younger women in a variety of different contexts.

Baroness Blackstone31:53

But I find this question very embarrassing. Then we shall stop forcing you to answer it and ask you for your last record. I would like to take Janet Baker singing von der Schoenheit from Mahler's Song of the Earth. The reason I've chosen this is that it's a beautiful piece of music, but it's also a piece of music that was used by Kenneth Macmillan in his great masterwork, The Ballet, The Song of the Earth. When I first saw it in the 1960s, it had a huge impact on me, and I think as well as listening to the music, I would think about the dancing.

Speaker 432:34

Fish wings do

Speaker 432:39

Oh

Speaker 432:46

Uh

Speaker 432:59

Rise up.

Presenter33:29

Janet Baker singing Fonder Schoenheit from Mahler's Song of the Earth, with the Royal Concert Gabar Orchestra of Amsterdam, conducted by Bernard Heitink.

Presenter33:37

Well, now which one of the eight Tessa do you think you'd have to have, above all others?

Presenter33:42

I think I'd

Baroness Blackstone33:43

Want to take the Mozart.

Baroness Blackstone33:44

Uh

Presenter33:45

The motor

Baroness Blackstone33:45

About your book.

Baroness Blackstone33:46

I would like George Eliot's Middle March. I'm a great admirer of George Eliot, one of the great women writers, and I think that is her best work. And your luxury.

Baroness Blackstone33:57

Well, I'm, as I've already mentioned, very impractical, and I have to own up that I can't even type.

Baroness Blackstone34:05

So I wondered whether I should take a lap

Baroness Blackstone34:09

Top word processor.

Baroness Blackstone34:11

But it would have to have an incredibly simple manual that had been specially written for very stupid people like me, so that I didn't get stuck at lesson two.

Baroness Blackstone34:23

The alternative is to take

Baroness Blackstone34:25

one of those walls that you get at smart tennis clubs with a nice piece of concrete in front of it and plenty of balls and a good tennis racket so that I could bang away when I got fed up with swimming, which I don't like nearly as much as playing tennis.

Presenter34:43

On the basis that there's no such thing as an easy manual to teach you how to use a computer, I think you better have the tennis wall. Okay. I'll accept that. Tessa Blackstone, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your Desert Island discs. Thank you.

Speaker 335:04

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