Lord Palumbo

Speaker 10:00

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 10:08

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

Presenter0:29

My Castaway this week is a property developer and patron of the arts. His father's financial acumen meant that he had risen from humble beginnings in the East End of London to property millionaire by the time his only son was born.

Presenter0:41

The son went to Eton, Oxford, and then into the family business. There for more than thirty years he has led a controversial campaign to redevelop the mansion house site in the City of London.

Presenter0:53

He is an assiduous collector, and owns, among other things, four houses by famous twentieth century architects. In recent years he has been able to bring his private passion for the arts to the public arena. He is the chairman of the Arts Council, Lord Palumbo.

Presenter1:08

Are you um a hoarder as well as a collector, Peter Palombo? Do you, for example, keep the programmes of all the concerts and operas and plays you go to?

Lord Palumbo1:17

I do, really. I wouldn't say I'm a hoarder. I think I am a bit of a collector.

Lord Palumbo1:21

particularly when things appeal to me as they do in that particular instance.

Presenter1:25

But you must have a room full of programmes if you being

Lord Palumbo1:28

I have several cupboards full, yes, I must say.

Presenter1:31

Do you go t to things all of the time? I mean, does does the job of Chairman of the Arts Council require that you're always at something?

Lord Palumbo1:37

My wife and I are out really every night at something, and I must say it's not a labor, it's a labour of love.

Presenter1:43

Is it? Is and is that on the fringe as well as in the mainstream?

Lord Palumbo1:43

Duck.

Lord Palumbo1:46

Everything. Everything. You're in. Every art form.

Presenter1:47

You're in the middle of the

Presenter1:49

And you're in Hull and Exeter as much as you're in London.

Lord Palumbo1:52

Yes, I try and travel once and sometimes twice a week to the regions.

Presenter1:56

I want to talk to you more about the Arts Council later on, but let me ask you a little bit more about your collections, because you also collect cars, don't you?

Lord Palumbo2:03

I have a few cars, yes. Uh I have uh Democratic cars and

Lord Palumbo2:09

sort of people's cars, which have always fascinated me. Those sort of cars that were bought rather cheaply in their time and were expendable, were considered as being expendable, but which have somehow managed to stand the test of time.

Presenter2:21

What what sort of cars? Bull nose Morrises.

Lord Palumbo2:23

A bull nose Morris and an Austin seven, uh an Austin Chummy and uh that sort of thing, and an old Volkswagen, yes, and then of course the Mini.

Presenter2:28

A beaker

Lord Palumbo2:31

and uh the fiat, those sort of things.

Presenter2:34

So what do you do with them? I mean, do you drive them or?

Lord Palumbo2:36

Yes, I drive them at the weekend. I like driving.

Lord Palumbo2:39

And I like the feel that uh these uh objects were made in the past, but they still have some relevance today.

Presenter2:46

Well, all you can collect where we're sending you are seashells, I think. What sort of music are you going to play when you're on this island?

Lord Palumbo2:52

Well, I think it's music that is first of all essentially from the twentieth century, since I only have eight choices. I've decided that it should be predominantly twentieth century. Uh culled, I think, from recollections of people, places and events, and anticipating the moods that one inevitably will get on a desert island by oneself.

Presenter3:17

Because you you actually own a few desert islands as well, don't you?

Lord Palumbo3:20

Well, I don't know about desert islands, but uh as I own a a a group of small islands off the west coast of Scotland, and so I do I have some practical experience of what it is like to be almost alone in the inner Hebrides.

Presenter3:33

So what's the mood of the first piece that you've chosen?

Lord Palumbo3:36

Well, the mood is intensely exciting. I feel it's very inspirational. It's uh got terrific vitality and turbulence.

Lord Palumbo3:44

And it's the first piece of music that I can really, apart from lullabies, ever remember, which my mother used to play to me. And it is the Firebird by Stravinsky, played in 1910, which was a very, very creative and turbulent time in uh artistic endeavours.

Presenter5:01

The Infernal Dance from Stravinsky's Firebird, played by the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Claudio Obardo, a piece of music, as you say, written in nineteen ten, and most of your pieces are twentieth century. Four of your houses are leading examples of twentieth century architecture, as I said at the beginning.

Presenter5:17

Have you always had modern taste? Are you naturally attracted to the avant garde?

Lord Palumbo5:23

I think I have a very

Lord Palumbo5:24

Catholic taste, as a matter of fact, I'm extremely attracted to the antique.

Lord Palumbo5:29

Uh what interests me is the relationship between old and new and the thread that seems to run between the two. That's really the fascination of it and also I think the uh interdependence of art forms, the relationship for example of music with architecture, uh painting with literature and so on.

Presenter5:48

When did you first begin to feel all of that? I mean, if it wasn't conveyed to you by your parents, I mean, was it at school? When were you?

Lord Palumbo5:55

I think it probably was, yes. I mean, my mother was intensely musical. My father was not musical, but had an interest in the visual arts. But I think it was really at school that my taste was formed, or basically formed, by a remarkable man, Oliver Van Oss, who was my housemaster at Eton. And he was a wonderful, wonderful teacher, with encyclopedic knowledge and a tremendous, tremendous appreciation of the arts.

Presenter6:24

And he introduced you to the work of Mies van der Ow, did he?

Lord Palumbo6:24

Yeah.

Lord Palumbo6:27

Yes, he did. He used to take us as senior boys, and we used to take, every Sunday, I remember, one painter or sculptor or architect from any age, and it was in that context that I first came across Mies van der Roar.

Presenter6:37

Any

Presenter6:41

But little did you dream that you'd commission him one day to uh build a skyscraper for you.

Lord Palumbo6:46

That's right. I had, of course, no no idea. I was completely seduced by his architecture, and particularly the Farnsworth House, which looked quite ravishing in the photographs.

Presenter6:57

But what happened? Because in nineteen sixty two, when you and your father decided to develop the so called mansion house site, now known, I think, as Number One Poultry, more precisely, in the City of London, did you just simply pick up the phone and say, Hello, mister Vanderohr, I've got a job for you?

Lord Palumbo7:14

No, I didn't, but I wrote to him, and I told him what a fan I was of his work and his architecture, and that I had a proposition to put to him for London, a commission to offer him, and might I come and see him? And I got a letter back, almost by return, saying please come and see me.

Lord Palumbo7:30

Uh in a fortnight's time at ten o'clock in the morning.

Presenter7:32

He was getting on a bit by then, so

Lord Palumbo7:34

So did he think he'd see it

Presenter7:36

So did you think you could see it through?

Lord Palumbo7:38

No, I made it clear to him that when I met him that if he accepted the commission it would be unlikely to be built for twenty-five years because there was there were very long leasehold interests on the site which couldn't be acquired and he understood therefore that what I was really offering him was a posthumous commission and I think that interested him really because he'd never been offered a commission on that basis before and he said well what do you want of me? Do you want a simple sketch? Do you want me to do the simply the elevations? And I said no I want everything. I want the the full design drawings including the office layouts, the ashtrays, the letter chutes, the door furniture, everything.

Lord Palumbo8:22

A couple of months later I got a huge package in the office from Chicago, and it turned out to be a set of bronze door furniture and an onyx ashtray and a little note saying, Is this the sort of thing you have in mind? That was his way, you see, of accepting the the big commission.

Presenter8:37

Uh

Presenter8:40

But in the end it it wasn't to be in the the climate of taste terms.

Lord Palumbo8:43

Sadly it wasn't to be, no.

Presenter8:45

And you didn't get the planning permission. So there isn't a Vanderer building i in this country at all, is there?

Lord Palumbo8:51

No, it's nothing by mees at all in this country. It's a rather sad um uh situation, but there we are.

Presenter8:56

But there is one just outside Chicago in and you own it.

Lord Palumbo8:59

That's right. Uh I'm fortunate enough to own the Farnsworth House, which was, I suppose, his most famous house in the United States. Uh it's a single room really, and it's uh set above a flood plain, uh five feet uh above the flood plain on stilts. It's a steel and glass house, very beautiful, and I'm very, very fortunate to own it.

Presenter9:21

So we have record number two.

Lord Palumbo9:23

This is part of Sibelius's Symphony No. Seven.

Lord Palumbo9:28

It always reminds me of the Farnsworth House. I play it a great deal when I'm there, and it is an example, I think. Somebody once said that architecture is frozen music, and I believe that to be very true, but it is the music that I most associate with that particular work of architecture.

Presenter10:47

Part of Sibelia's Symphony No. seven in C major, played by the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Vladimir Ashkenazi.

Presenter10:53

You didn't really set out to collect houses, did you, Peter Polumbo, but somehow that's what's happened.

Lord Palumbo10:59

Yes, it wasn't a conscious act at all, but as you say

Lord Palumbo11:02

Um it was I was really driven by circumstances.

Lord Palumbo11:07

which seemed to propel me in a certain direction, and when that happens in life I don't believe that one should resist.

Presenter11:13

What do you mean the houses came on the market and you had the money to buy them?

Lord Palumbo11:16

Well, partly that, but I mean, there were extraordinary circumstances of the Farnsworth House purchase. Very briefly, I was happened to be in Chicago one day in nineteen sixty eight, uh visiting Meese. I was early for the appointment, and so I read

Lord Palumbo11:31

for the first time the Chicago Tribune, the newspaper there, and saw out of the corner of my eye a little advertisement in that in in in that morning's edition of the of the paper uh saying that the Farnsworth house was for sale. It was as a matter of fact the first day uh that that advertisement had appeared in the paper and I happened to be in Chicago and I happened to be early for a meeting and I happened this and I happened to that and it it was all I think destined to be

Presenter12:00

And then there's a Frank Lloyd Wright house in Pennsylvania, Kentuck Knob.

Lord Palumbo12:05

That's right, yes.

Presenter12:05

Yes. And then there's a pair of Le Corpusier houses uh built in the fifties in in Paris, apart from your traditional English country house in Berkshire and a town house in London. So when do you get time to live in all of these houses?

Presenter12:18

Or vis to visit them, at least.

Lord Palumbo12:19

Uh

Presenter12:19

Yeah.

Lord Palumbo12:20

Oh, well, I of course I one I'm always thinking that I shall have more time in the future and won't it be nice when I do have more time uh to do more of these things. And um I uh meanwhile they are they are objects of enormous beauty. And um

Lord Palumbo12:38

I I I'm I'm glad that various people can visit them by, you know, by appointment and get some satisfaction from them as I do.

Presenter12:48

So we have record number three.

Lord Palumbo12:49

Record number three is the great, one of the two greatest jazz singers in my opinion of all time, Billie Holliday, singing Moonlight in Vermont. Vermont has wonderful memories for me, as does the United States, for which I've had a great love affair for 40 years. And I think it was Stephen Hearst that said what appealed to him about the United States was the vitality of a nation sparking across a continent like unearthed electric current. And that's really what I feel about it, this terrific vitality and sense of wonder that that particular country evokes. And the Billy Holiday, who is so vulnerable and fragile and sings really about life itself.

Speaker 413:38

So hypnotized by the lovely

Speaker 413:45

Evening.

Speaker 413:48

Some of Rees.

Speaker 413:53

Wobbley of Amerilla.

Speaker 414:00

Moonlight

Speaker 414:03

In Vermont.

Presenter14:08

Billy Holiday and Moonlight in Vermont.

Presenter14:11

Can we talk a little bit about your origins? Palumbo is obviously an Italian name. Um your paternal grandfather it was who came here and opened a cafe, was it?

Lord Palumbo14:21

That's right. He came here in the middle eighteen eighties, uh from Amalfi, just south of Naples, and opened a cafe in the east end of London.

Presenter14:29

He served bath buns and milky coffee to the office.

Lord Palumbo14:32

I suppose, yes, I suppose he did, yes, or maybe, um maybe bacon sandwiches.

Presenter14:37

Your father then was born at the the turn of the century and um as I said at the outset, despite his humble background and his lack of education and the unusual name, I suppose, by by the height of the depression he was a millionaire. I mean he must have been quite a guy.

Lord Palumbo14:53

Well, he was he was. He was an amazing uh man, really, because with all those problems of self education and so on, he had a most brilliant mind, uh financial mind.

Lord Palumbo15:06

and terrific determination and really great charm. He was a very shy person, I think in part because he felt that he lacked the social graces. I don't think that was true actually, because as I say he had enormous charm, but he he felt he was socially not very adroit.

Presenter15:22

But he was obviously very determined that you should have those things.

Lord Palumbo15:25

Yes, he was. I think that he was um that I was fortunate to have all the things that he he wasn't able to have.

Lord Palumbo15:33

And um

Presenter15:33

So he sent you to Eton, then?

Lord Palumbo15:35

He gave me a wonderful education.

Presenter15:37

And he but he was also he required you, didn't he, to be quite proper with him. You had quite a formal relationship.

Lord Palumbo15:42

We were very close, uh but I was always um enormous uh alm enormously respectful of him.

Lord Palumbo15:50

And I did what I was told. Children tended to do that in those days. I called him sir. I called him sir till I was eighteen.

Presenter15:54

You called him sir.

Lord Palumbo15:57

But we had a very, very close relationship, and I really adored him.

Presenter16:01

Uh does any of that stick, though? I mean, are you still very correct?

Lord Palumbo16:06

I think I'm reasonably correct. Yes, I think so. I I mean, I don't like bad manners.

Presenter16:11

But you find it difficult to be rude.

Lord Palumbo16:15

I do find it quite difficult to be rude. Um I I think um there are there are ways, of course, of of showing displeasure. Ways and ways. I don't I don't like uh rudeness.

Presenter16:27

But even in arguments where perhaps millions of pounds are at stake, do you are you the man in the boardroom who keeps his cool?

Lord Palumbo16:34

I like to think I like to think so. And I um

Lord Palumbo16:38

It very seldom happens that th those circumstances prevail.

Presenter16:44

But did your father teach you or say to you all those other things that parents tend to say to their children? You know, always remember how lucky you are, and concentrate on one thing at a time, and if you're going to do something, do it well? Was it all of that sort of

Lord Palumbo16:57

Yes, he used to say Providence has been very good to us that was his great expression and never take anything or anybody for granted, and work hard and play hard, and all these sort of things, and I tried to do that.

Presenter17:10

And do you still do you go on living, by the

Lord Palumbo17:12

I try to, yes I think it's not a bad creed.

Presenter17:15

Next piece of music.

Lord Palumbo17:17

This is really in memory of my father, who was not musically inclined, but who had a great sense of the visual arts and the applied arts. But I remember on one occasion he took me rather sweetly to the final evening of the proms. Of course, at the end of the proms, there is always Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance March. And this was one such occasion, and it's really something I think that I would like to associate with my father.

Presenter18:54

Part of Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance marched number one in D major, played by the London Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Sir George Schulte.

Presenter19:02

It's often said of you, Lord Palumbo, rather unkindly, that you're a property developer who's never developed anything, and it of course it's not been for want of trying. It's rather unfair. You've struggled over three decades to try and develop the mansion house site in the city.

Presenter19:16

Was the development of that site originally your father's dream?

Lord Palumbo19:20

In a way it was a joint venture, if you like. I had just come into the firm when we began to assemble the site, not with any ideas of developing it, but purely as an investment.

Lord Palumbo19:31

And it was only

Lord Palumbo19:33

four years later in nineteen sixty two, when the possibilities of a rather major development began to emerge, that we started thinking about architecture and who would be the best person perhaps to design a building to match the prominence of that particular site.

Presenter19:50

So then you commissioned, as we were saying earlier, the uh Mies to uh design

Presenter19:55

This building, what did your father think when Prince Charles said it was like a glass stump in downtown Chicago?

Lord Palumbo20:04

Well, of course my father, uh right or wrong, would always take my side. I think uh that's what he did. He thought it was an unfortunate remark. And uh

Lord Palumbo20:15

I don't think he felt it was justified.

Presenter20:18

But then you needed his backing presumably again when that design having been turned down in 1985 you commissioned James Sterling.

Presenter20:27

And this time the Prince of Wales said this building was like a nineteen thirties wireless. How do you feel when those kinds of insults are thrown at the people whose work you revere?

Presenter20:38

Do you feel a a deep sense of frustration that people

Presenter20:42

have no vision of the future which perhaps you feel you have.

Presenter20:45

that they are shocked by the new.

Lord Palumbo20:49

Well, I think that we have in this country we're intensely musical and we're intensely literary. Where I think we have a weakness is in the awareness of the visual arts. And that really is because we are not surrounded in contemporary terms with great buildings. There are, of course, the honourable exceptions. But it's only when you are able to see and appreciate great works of contemporary architecture that you understand, I think, that this is very much part of the heritage and that what we build today is actually the heritage of tomorrow. And so the shock of the new doesn't apply. It's a matter of education and education is a slow, slow process.

Presenter21:36

And it's it's thirty five years, I think, since your father acquired the first bit of that site. Do you think that that that his dream?

Presenter21:45

Your dream that you had together with him of a major new office building there.

Presenter21:49

is about to come true.

Lord Palumbo21:51

I very much hope so. We have overcome all but one hurdle now, and if that final approval goes our way, I hope that we shall be building next year.

Presenter22:04

But the cost has been great.

Lord Palumbo22:06

The cost has been great, yes, but everything that's worthwhile does take time.

Presenter22:11

Record number five.

Lord Palumbo22:13

Record number five is a recollection of the other love of my life, which is South America. I love it because of the great range of the Andes, which stretches unbroken for four and a half thousand miles, and it's a magical, wonderful continent. This particular piece of music, the Alturas, is played by Inti Ilemani from the BBC series The Flight of the Condor.

Presenter23:13

Alturas, played by Inti Iliamani. You have a lot of children, Peter Palombo. How many altogether?

Lord Palumbo23:18

I have six, three by my first marriage and three by my present marriage.

Presenter23:24

And then you have some step children.

Lord Palumbo23:25

And I have two stepchildren, yes.

Presenter23:26

And the ages range.

Lord Palumbo23:28

The ages range from thirty two to one.

Presenter23:30

So right down to tiny talks.

Lord Palumbo23:32

Right down to tiny tots.

Presenter23:33

And are you a grandfather yet?

Lord Palumbo23:35

I'm a grandfather twice over.

Presenter23:37

But so you were a grandfather before you became a father again, as it were?

Lord Palumbo23:40

That's right.

Presenter23:41

And tell me about meeting your second wife,'cause it was quite an unusual meeting, wasn't it?

Lord Palumbo23:46

Yes, we found ourselves sitting next to one another on a flight from Paris in 1976. And my wife was coming to London to meet the man she was to marry. And we began chatting because she said to me quite suddenly, out of the blue, Do you mind very much if I paint my fingernails? And I said, not at all. She said, Do you object to the smell of of nail varnish? And I said, no, not at all. And she did it with such incredible speed and beauty, really, that I couldn't help remarking on it. And we got into conversation. And that was that. I mean, it was a forty minute, forty-five minute flight.

Presenter24:29

And she was on her way to marry somebody else.

Lord Palumbo24:30

And she was on her way to marry somebody else and, um

Lord Palumbo24:33

We didn't see one another.

Lord Palumbo24:35

For ten years.

Lord Palumbo24:37

And then we met again in nineteen eighty six.

Lord Palumbo24:40

I had in the meanwhile been divorced and then my wife had first wife had died. She had been divorced. And we met at a dinner party in London, sitting next to one another, and we both remembered w each other instantly. And that again is another example, I think, of the way that fate propels one in a certain direction. In any case, we were married within six months, and we are very, very happy indeed.

Presenter25:06

Y you mentioned faith, but um you also have a very strong religious faith, don't you?

Lord Palumbo25:12

I am a religious person, I think, and I find it um a great strength.

Presenter25:17

Didn't you consider going into the church once?

Lord Palumbo25:19

Well, I think I think we all do, don't we, when we're seventeen or eighteen years old, and I was no exception. But of course I didn't go into the church and um

Presenter25:27

But you've been a church warden instead, I think, for some thirty years or more, haven't you?

Lord Palumbo25:30

I have, yes, a very beautiful church next to my office, St. Stephen Walbrook, wonderful architecture, and a wonderful rector, Chad Vara, who has been a great and close friend for all that period of time.

Presenter25:44

And who of course founded the Samaritans there and

Lord Palumbo25:46

And who founded the Samaritans, absolutely.

Presenter25:48

You've spent many thousands of pounds of your own money uh restoring that church, haven't you?

Lord Palumbo25:54

Yes, I I've I've helped to restore it with others.

Presenter25:57

Is it, though, important to you that, um putting something in putting something back, if you like, making a contribution?

Lord Palumbo26:05

I think it is. I think those

Lord Palumbo26:08

who are fortunate in life should help the less fortunate. And I must say it's always been part of my education, part of my parents' teaching, if you will. But certainly at public school at Eton, it was an essential part of life really, whether you were the son of a a dustman or a duke. You had to give this kind of service to others, to cook and to clean and to scour and so on, and to run messages. And I think it was an invaluable lesson, really, for the life to come.

Presenter26:44

Let's have some more music.

Lord Palumbo26:46

This is the great cornet player, Bix Beiderbeck. It's a recollection, really, of an evening spent in 1972 in Florence when I went to see the Henry Moore Exhibition of Sculpture, which was located at the Belvedere, and I remember arriving very late in the evening, about half an hour before closing time. There was nobody at the exhibition at all. It was a bright moonlit night, and suddenly out of the darkness, somebody began playing a jazz trumpet. I don't know who it was or even what it was, but it was one of those heart-stopping moments that I shall never forget. It reminded me of Bix, who was, as I say, a great hero of mine. And this piece of music, Taint So, Honey, Taint So, was played in 1928 when he was with the Paul Whiteman band.

Presenter28:40

Big Spiderbeg playing Taint So Honey Taint So

Presenter28:43

You believe, then, Peter Palambo, in private sponsorship for the arts, that that rich companies and individuals should behave like the great patrons of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, do you?

Lord Palumbo28:54

I do. I think that patronage of course has changed from from the great patrons of the past, which were essentially the church and the crown, then the landed aristocracy.

Lord Palumbo29:05

And that function nowadays should be a partnership really between the public and private sectors.

Lord Palumbo29:11

between government and local authorities on the one hand,

Lord Palumbo29:14

And

Lord Palumbo29:15

wealthy individuals and corporations on the other.

Presenter29:18

And in your four years at the Arts Council, do you feel that you have encouraged more people to to to patronize the arts?

Lord Palumbo29:26

Well, I hope so. I hope so. It's it's difficult to quantify these things. But certainly uh private sector giving has increased substantially, and I don't claim uh any credit for that, really. It's the Association for Business Sponsorship of the Arts which runs that side of things.

Presenter29:44

But there's never enough. People go on complaining, I mean, recipients included, that there is not enough money. Doesn't that make it ultimately rather a miserable job?

Lord Palumbo29:54

Well, it is deeply frustrating, but we have to do the best we can, and I've taken the view that it's wrong to try and spread equal misery all round. What we should be doing as an Arts Council is to make choices, and some of those choices are of course painful, but I believe that it's really necessary to make them.

Presenter30:13

Record number seven.

Lord Palumbo30:15

We've already had several pieces of music played by clients of the Arts Council, the London Symphony Orchestra, the Philharmonia, the London Philharmonic Orchestra. And now we're privileged to hear the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Simon Rattle, playing the final movement of Mahler's second symphony. This is something that I'd like to dedicate to my wife. We spent a magical evening and a very emotional evening in June 1992 in the new orchestra hall in Birmingham listening to this wonderful, wonderful music.

Presenter31:49

Part of the final movement of Marla's Symphony No. two, The Resurrection, with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, conducted by Simon Rattle. You've got another year at the Arts Council, Peter Palumbo, and and then what? Have you got a project in mind?

Lord Palumbo32:04

Well, I have really, and the project is to spend much more time with my family, with my wife and uh children, which is important at my age, and with the small three small children, and apart from that, to try and build one or two good buildings in the City of London.

Presenter32:19

We talked about making a contribution. Um if you never came back from your desert island

Presenter32:25

How would you like to think people were summing up the contribution that you'd made while you were here?

Lord Palumbo32:32

Well, do you know, I don't think I would give it very much thought or or be very much or very worried about it. Having a little bit of experience of islands, I do of course know that one might never come back. You might never see that sail on the horizon, or if you did, it might sail off somewhere else. And so one might be stranded there for the rest of one's life, and one might even perish. Uh and that's um that's another thought.

Speaker 132:58

Last record.

Lord Palumbo32:59

And this is really what my last record is about, being played out, if you like, never, never having the possibility of rescue. And so I would like to be played out by one of the great, greatest sopranos of all time, Jesse Norman, singing one of the last four songs of Richard Strauss by I'm Schlaffengen.

Presenter34:24

One of Richard Strauss's four last songs, by Ms Schlaffengen, sung by Jesse Norman, with the Gevanthaus Orchestra of Leipzig, conducted by Kurt Mazur. If you could only take one of those records.

Lord Palumbo34:36

I think it would be Marla's second symphony, because if my wife Hayat wasn't with me at the time, I would feel her presence in this music, and that would be some consolation.

Presenter34:51

And your book?

Lord Palumbo34:53

A book I've always been interested in travel and travel books and uh traveleurs for that matter.

Lord Palumbo35:01

I think my book would be On the Road by Jack Kerouac. It had a t profound influence on me in the in the sixties, I remember, and it is, in a way, a travel book.

Presenter35:11

A new luxury.

Lord Palumbo35:13

I would like, if I may, to take with me a telescope.

Lord Palumbo35:16

Not simply to look for ships on the horizon, but also to look at the stars at night, which have always fascinated me.

Presenter35:25

Peter Balumba, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Lord Palumbo35:28

Thank you.

Speaker 135:29

Uh

Speaker 135:35

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