Lord Ashley

Speaker 20:00

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

Speaker 20:08

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

Presenter0:28

My castaway this week is a politician. Brought up in poverty in the northwest of England, he left school at 14 to work in local factories, where he became an active trade unionist. He went via Ruskin College, Oxford, to Cambridge, where he became the first working class President of the Union, pipping Geoffrey Howe to the post.

Presenter0:48

In the nineteen sixty six election he won Stoke on Trent for the Labour Party, and a high flying career seemed a certainty.

Presenter0:55

But then a minor operation on his ear went badly wrong, and he lost his hearing completely.

Presenter1:02

He nevertheless stayed in Parliament and became one of the country's best known and best loved campaigning MPs, fighting not only for the deaf, but for thalidomide victims, battered wives, and many other causes too.

Presenter1:16

Recently an operation has partially restored his hearing, and for the first time in twenty six years he's been able to hear the voices of his family again. He is Jack, now Lord

Presenter1:29

The magic moment, apparently, Jack, was when you heard your four year old grandson speak. What did he say?

Lord Ashley1:35

What he said was a very simple sentence.

Lord Ashley1:38

We were at a pond together, and I said, Look at the flies, Harry.

Lord Ashley1:43

and magically I heard him say, They're not flies, grandad, they were some other kind of insect and I was bowled over. It really was an absolutely magical moment, and it proved to me

Lord Ashley1:58

that this operation had in fact been a great success in restoring part of my hearing.

Presenter2:03

So what exactly do you hear? What kind of sound?

Lord Ashley2:06

I can't hear perfect speech because voices are very distorted. Yet I can hear speech. I need to couple it with lip reading. And yet sometimes I turn away and I can understand people, especially my wife Pauline. So that means I am in fact hearing speech, and I'm certainly hearing you far more clearly now, or understanding you far more clearly now than the olden days of nationwide when you and Mike Barrett very kindly mouthed.

Presenter2:37

But but at that stage your your wife, Pauline, used to sit behind us, I remember, and and in fact you appeared to be looking at me, but in fact you were looking at her over my shoulder, weren't you?

Lord Ashley2:48

Yes, well Pauline was always there as a safeguard and wa always managed to interpret and explain in t in cases of difficulty.

Presenter2:56

So you you were lip reading her over our shoulders.

Lord Ashley2:59

I was lip reading the interviewer and Pauline. I was moving between both, although I hope my eyeballs weren't that visible on television.

Presenter3:08

Terrifying, though, Jack. I mean, you might have made a mistake. It was live television.

Lord Ashley3:12

Well, it's fantastic that in all these years and with all those interviews there were no major disasters.

Presenter3:17

What about music, Jack? Um have you not heard any music for twenty six years?

Lord Ashley3:22

Um I've heard nothing for twenty-six years. I've heard no sound whatever.

Presenter3:28

So now can you actually hear music? Does it mean anything to you, or do you just hear what you remember in your head?

Lord Ashley3:35

Well, uh first of all I can hear music, but identifying it is quite difficult yet. But I'm told by the surgeon that in fact it will become clearer, as in fact voices are becoming clearer over a period, and I now can understand the rhythm and therefore identify to some extent. But of course I can't appreciate music in the days I could before I lost my hearing.

Presenter4:00

But you hold the tunes in your head, I'm sure.

Lord Ashley4:01

Yes, oh oh, very, very vividly indeed. I remember every tune from my childhood, every one, with tremendous, fantastic clarity, and how fortunate that was.

Presenter4:13

But have you sung to yourself during those twenty six minutes?

Lord Ashley4:15

I always sing to myself when I'm happy. I'm often singing to myself. People think I'm crazy, actually.

Presenter4:21

Yeah.

Lord Ashley4:22

And I can give you

Lord Ashley4:24

Uh the Blue Danube, uh the Blue Danube floors Dum Dum Dum This kind of thing I'm doing all the time, and I've not heard that for, well, at least twenty six years.

Presenter4:37

Well, we're going to play it to you now,'cause I think it's the first record that you'd like to have on your island, isn't it?

Lord Ashley4:42

Well, the Blue Danube is a very great favourite of mine.

Lord Ashley4:46

The reason I really like this very much and very fond of it is because it was one of the great tunes and I could almost

Lord Ashley4:55

Feel the Danube flowing as it was played in the olden days.

Presenter6:00

That was the Blue Danube Waltz, played by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Daniel Barrenboim.

Presenter6:06

So can you explain, Jack, how this operation has worked? Well how do you hear?

Lord Ashley6:11

It is a very complicated thing, but uh oversimplifying. There are twenty two electrodes connected to the remaining neurons of my hearing nerve. The electrodes go in the inner ear through the skull and then you wear a speech processor rather like um an old-fashioned mediocre hearing aid, but of course much more sophisticated. And the miracle, when this when I this was first switched on,

Speaker 26:32

Okay.

Lord Ashley6:37

I was so disappointed because all I could hear when people were speaking and it was Pauline's voice I first heard happily was D duh duh ps ps ps. I thought, My God, I've made an awful mistake with this it's terrible

Lord Ashley6:53

The surgeon sadure brain gradually crimatizes to these old sounds.

Lord Ashley6:58

and he began to relearn, to understand.

Presenter7:01

And it's an operation that costs about twenty-five thousand pounds.

Lord Ashley7:04

It is about that. That's including rehabilitation and all the rest of it, which is buttonless compared with heart transplants and all that kind of thing.

Presenter7:12

And did you get it on the National Health?

Lord Ashley7:13

Oh yeah.

Lord Ashley7:15

They should be available in National Health everywhere, but district health authorities have to pay for these operations and some don't, which I think is a scandal. And the reason for that is that they don't understand the importance of hearing. If it was blindness or paralysis, that's it's a magical operation. But the deprivation of hearing, and especially total silence, is shocking and appalling, especially if we're very young people, for very old people. And if they gave it a higher priority, then there'd be more operations.

Presenter7:49

Are you saying then that generally there's not as much sympathy for deafness as there is for blindness, for example?

Lord Ashley7:54

Precisely what I'm saying, and the lack of understanding as well. People are patronizing and they look down on deaf people. It's a very strange quirk of human nature, and it's time it was rectified.

Presenter8:08

Of course you you could never hear very well, could you? I mean, that was why you lost your hearing in the first place, because you had an operation to try and correct it.

Lord Ashley8:16

Not really. I could hear very well indeed, but because I was expecting to become a minister and all the press was assuming I would, the perforation didn't really seriously affect my hearing. That's the great irony that I could have carried on, because there were people much more hard of hearing than me. I wasn't really terribly hard of hearing, but to try to get back to perfection, then I slipped up, or the surgeon slipped up, and it became a disaster, just unfortunate.

Presenter8:49

What was the last thing, then, that you heard properly, do you remember?

Lord Ashley8:52

Well, I remember it very vividly. I'm a great rugby league fan, the proper rugby, not the union, the nonsense about rugby union.

Presenter8:57

Not the union.

Lord Ashley9:01

And uh the last voice I heard was Eddie Warings on Boxing there, and I couldn't understand his voice fading and fading and fading, and that was when I discovered within minutes that my hearing had gone completely.

Presenter9:14

Obviously you were devastated. It goes without saying. You stood in front of the press outside the House of Commons, because you'd been an MP for a couple of years then, and you told them, I have no future. Do you remember that?

Lord Ashley9:27

Yes, I remember it very vividly, and in fact I wrote my letter of resignation from the House of Commons to the local Liber Party, and I posted it with a very sad heart. I didn't think one could carry on with no hearing in what, in the best sense of the term, is the greatest talking shop in the in the land. I didn't think it was possible, but of course my constituents in Stockholm's Fence and my Parliamentary colleagues and above all my wife Pauline persuaded me it was possible, and incredibly it turned out to be so.

Presenter10:00

Record number two.

Lord Ashley10:02

Well, record number two is um Auve Maria. This happens to be uh a song that I loved in my younger days, and it was something that my family in Witness always sang on special occasions. My sister Mary used to sing it as well, so it's very special to me.

Presenter11:19

Ave Maria sung by Arlid Jones, and memories for Jack Ashley of being in the choir in Witness Catholic Church, your home town. Of course your deafness was all the more terrible in a sense, because you'd come so far to get to the House of Commons from

Presenter11:35

As I said at the beginning, terrible poverty, very humble beginnings. Can you describe life to me in Witness when you were little?

Lord Ashley11:42

Well, life in Witness was a life of uh almost total poverty in those terms. Um

Lord Ashley11:49

There were grades of poverty in Witnessville because although everyone was poor,

Lord Ashley11:54

Um because my father had died when I was five, my mother was a single parent and the families who had a father, they were naturally better off than we were, and the families who had a father working were almost aristocrats, and uh that was degrading of poverty in a very poor slum area.

Speaker 412:14

Hmm.

Lord Ashley12:14

And uh I was aware of the poverty as uh my sisters and I were, but nevertheless we were happy.

Lord Ashley12:20

Because there is this marvellous warm community spirit in the area.

Presenter12:25

But your mother worked as an office cleaner, I think, didn't she?

Lord Ashley12:29

Yes, she did, and uh she worked very hard and uh remember the wet sackcloth that she used to bring home from cleaning the ISO offices.

Presenter12:37

What, that was her apron, was it?

Lord Ashley12:39

It was her apron, yes, the the sackcloth was the apron, which was again with the measure of the poverty.

Lord Ashley12:45

And with shoes, for example, we'll literally put cardboard inside to keep the rain out.

Presenter12:50

Uh

Lord Ashley12:51

It's this kind of poverty that um uh one remembers very vividly indeed.

Presenter12:56

How did you keep the rain out of the house?

Lord Ashley12:59

Well, that we didn't really, because the it literally used to rain in, and we used to have buckets to catch the rain, and it was a matter of adjusting the buckets or the bowls when it rained in, and of course that led me, when I became older and in my teens, to awful battles with the landlord to do repairs, which he continually refused to carry out.

Presenter13:20

But he did eventually, did he not? Didn't you win the battle?

Lord Ashley13:22

Did you win the battle? It went further than that. I used to blast him. I was so strong about seventeen and eighteen that in the end he said, I'll give you the damned house and in fact he sold it to us for a nominal fee of five pounds. And I've still got the actual bill, five pounds for the sale of thirty-four Wellington Street to Jay Ashley. He wanted me off his back, and that was what started me campaigning.

Presenter13:51

How old were you when you first went out to work?

Lord Ashley13:53

I went off to work when I was fourteen inwardness.

Presenter13:57

with your bacon butty in your back pocket.

Lord Ashley13:59

Well, I had uh bacon butters lovely wrapped by my mother in a tin can with some tea, condensed milk and lots and lots of sugar, because in those days, before we became aware of what sugar was, um I had a very sweet tooth and that was on my way to work to an asbestos factory of all things an asbestos factory. But thank goodness I uh soon got fed up with that and got a job in the ICI, which was swapping asbestos for chemicals.

Presenter14:31

For sulphuric acid.

Lord Ashley14:33

It was sulphuric acid, former cassock, and acetic acid I remember that very veiled indeed, as a labourer.

Presenter14:40

Record number three.

Lord Ashley14:41

Well, my number three record is Lilly Malan, and this is because in those days when I was uh a boy, a lot of the men had been killed in the First World War or badly wounded, and the families used to talk about the Somme and Passchendaele and Wipers and Mons and Flanders. That was part of our heritage, and they used to sing Lilly Malayne. We knew the Germans sang it also. It was a kind of international brotherhood after the sadness of the war.

Speaker 415:11

The beast of lunch and by the parody.

Speaker 415:21

That you wish but tenderly that you loved me, you'd always be my nearly all the night.

Presenter15:41

The British Legion Choir singing Lily Marlane. So you humped these great carboys of sulphuric acid about for twelve and sixpence a week in the ICI factory, and you developed a flair for trade unionism, didn't you? Do you think you were from the beginning a natural fighter?

Lord Ashley15:59

I hate to claim so, but I think I am really. When the conditions in the factory were so bad and the men were treated like cattle in those days, if the foreman would come and say, You, you and you, go down there or go down here, I rebelled against it and I organized a trade union in my factory with no trade union and that started an awful lot of uh trouble in that factory with the management, but it was uh it was fighting the management.

Presenter16:29

And they were lumbered with you all through the war because in the end you were demobbed, weren't you, because of your hearing.

Lord Ashley16:35

That's right, I was in the army for one year and envied it out because of the hearing problems.

Presenter16:40

Now it was just after the war, I think, during a tea break, that you saw an advert for Ruskin College, Scholarships for Working Men.

Presenter16:49

Why did you think you could get one? I mean, you'd had really practically no education, had you?

Lord Ashley16:55

My typical arrogance in those days. I thought I could do anything and um you had to write an essay on a given subject and then you had to go for an interview.

Lord Ashley17:06

And um I began it by saying uh

Lord Ashley17:10

May I explain that um

Lord Ashley17:12

Before you begin to examine me, I've read no books at all apart from the standing orders of the Witness Borough Council. I was a councillor then, and a book called The Iron Heel by Jack London, which is quite a left-wing book. Those are the only two books I'd read, and I think they were very amused over this. The principal, Lionel Eleven, has written about this being a rather odd way of doing it, but apparently they were impressed and gave me scholarship.

Presenter17:42

So off you went with with miners and lorry drivers and others to Oxford too.

Presenter17:48

Read Plato and Aristotle and Marx. What was it like then, your your Oxford of the late forties?

Lord Ashley17:55

It was very difficult for me at that time because I then came up against the problem of having no intellectual discipline and I'm no academic, I'm no intellectual, and grappling with all these philosophers and economists was extremely difficult. So although I enjoyed Oxford, I didn't love it as I did Cambridge later on.

Presenter18:19

Record number 4.

Lord Ashley18:21

Well, my fourth record is Violin singing We'll Meet Again.

Lord Ashley18:25

And uh there's so many uh songs about the war, countless songs, but I think that we'll meet again reflects a kind of aching void of those days of separated families, men in the army and the women at home, and it has that message of hope of we'll meet again some sunny day.

Speaker 418:47

Meet her again.

Speaker 418:49

Don't know where, don't know when

Speaker 418:56

But I know we'll meet again some sunny day.

Speaker 419:06

Keep smiling through just like you always do.

Presenter19:15

Vera Lynn and we'll meet again. So how did you come to beat Geoffrey Howe to the Presidency of the Cambridge Union?

Lord Ashley19:21

Well, it so happened when I went to Cambridge I suddenly blossomed and I became very much at home at university. And uh I became the leader of the Socialists in Cambridge and Geoffrey was the leader of the Tories. In fact, we became great friends at Cambridge and um we've been friends ever since.

Presenter19:43

But you didn't have a dinner jacket to appear in the Union in.

Lord Ashley19:46

I didn't wear a dinner jacket because I couldn't afford one.

Lord Ashley19:49

and uh people in Barcetter wrote that I was insulting off my office by wearing a lownish suit. And I gave what I think was probably a dignified rejoinder. I think the attack helped me because people then thought if you're going to be attacked for these clothes, he must be a good blo

Presenter20:08

Hehehe

Lord Ashley20:08

And I went on and actually won the Presidency.

Presenter20:12

Did you have other financial problems? I mean, there would have been quite a few well heeled undergraduates buying rounds of drinks and ordering bottles of champagne. What did you do?

Lord Ashley20:23

Well, the scholarship was very good, but it didn't give me uh very much money. And in fact, I applied for a job cleaning for a couple who'd advertise for a girl to come and do the cleaning and light the fire, etcetera.

Lord Ashley20:37

I think they were taken aback when a young man turned up and said, I will do the cleaning. And I did do that job until I got a supplementary grant from the Ministry of Education.

Presenter20:49

But then you went on a debating tour later on of the United States, didn't you? That must have been

Presenter20:56

What a very strange experience for you, having come from this background of austerity, suddenly to be there in the land of plenty.

Lord Ashley21:05

It was indeed the land of plenty. We were fated and formed. I went with a man called Ronald Waterhouse, he's now a judge, actually, High Court judge, and we had great fun. And whenever we went, we were debating. We would accept this lavish hospitality at the American University as we travelled from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and then we would debate that we deplore the American way of life and we had a lot of fun. It was a most marvellous experience, really.

Presenter21:34

And then you came back and talked about your experiences to a mathematics scholar from Girton who was writing for Varsity, and her name was Pauline.

Lord Ashley21:44

That's right. She came to interview me and I had two weeks to go to my degree. I'd been away for two months, which is a deaf thing to have done, but I didn't regret it. And I said, I can't be interviewed now. I'm busy, but come back tomorrow. And she said, Well, I can't do that, but I asked the editor to send somebody else. And I said, Don't bother. If you don't come back, there's no interview. And she accepted the compliment and came back. And within six months, I had persuaded her to marry me. That was my best achievement so far.

Presenter22:20

Number five.

Lord Ashley22:21

Number five is um a song called Yours, and this song reminds me of when I was a young man, just beginning to start dancing, going out with what we call girls then, but uh

Lord Ashley22:34

My youngest daughter I'm going to say the word girls now, she says it's sexist sort of young women, but they were girls as we called them. And they remind me of warm summer evenings with the summer dresses of the girls and the dancers and an age of innocence when during the interval we'd have lemonade and crisps and that kind of thing. And when you took a girl home then you would kiss her on the cheek and say good night and that was that.

Speaker 423:02

Yours is till the stars lose their glory.

Speaker 423:09

You're still the birds fail to save.

Speaker 423:18

To the end of life's story, this pledge to you dear.

Speaker 423:27

I'm ready.

Presenter23:30

Bing Crosby singing Yours.

Presenter23:32

You'd been an MP for two years, as we said, Jack, when you became deaf, and you've said that your constituents and your friends persuaded you to stay on. Nevertheless, it was a huge decision. How did you think you would manage? You didn't know that you would be any good at lip reading, did you?

Lord Ashley23:51

Well, you're quite right. I I had no idea. It was like walking into a void, really.

Lord Ashley23:58

My lip reading was very rudimentary, and for seven years I went on.

Lord Ashley24:05

Into the House of Commons chamber alone. I didn't want Pauline to come, partly because of the children. We had three children.

Lord Ashley24:13

and partly because I wanted to go alone to prove to myself I could do it. And walking into that chamber with total silence, and the MP s looked as if they were miming silently,

Lord Ashley24:25

Was a an astonishing experience, but nevertheless it worked and I started campaigning and off I went.

Presenter24:32

But it you got some help apparently from people sitting from the opposition, actually.

Lord Ashley24:37

Well, actually, MPs on both sides of the House were really very generous with me, and the leaders, I mean, uh

Lord Ashley24:45

Ted Heath and Margaret Thatcher.

Lord Ashley24:49

whenever I would condemn them and I would condemn them, would turn to me and speak clearly for me, which I greatly appreciated. And I appreciated even more the fact that they would reply in kind, and when I would attack them, they would attack back, because it's so easy to be patronising with someone who is deaf or blind or disabled.

Presenter25:09

But you did have some trouble in the beginning, didn't you, with your own party, I think some members who

Presenter25:16

Just couldn't be bothered to make the effort and turned away when you came in.

Lord Ashley25:20

Yes, there were some. It was very saddening to find people turning away, or not turning away, but just looking in the middle distance and not bothering. But then you are realistic and you say, Well, fine. And if they close the door, you also close it from your side and make sure it's closed tightly. But then you value all the more the real friends and you find out the real values, I think, of what friendship means.

Presenter25:49

Yeah.

Speaker 225:49

More music

Presenter25:49

Yeah.

Speaker 225:50

Yeah.

Presenter25:50

Uh

Lord Ashley25:51

Well, my next song is uh what we used to call Sorrento, but it's come back to Sorrento, I mean. I used to thrill to the power of Gili when he used to sing this, and um I thought there was an air of sort of controlled desperation with the way he sang this song.

Speaker 426:13

Be the one on the fire.

Speaker 426:18

Rumble burning.

Speaker 426:22

Uh

Speaker 426:26

And remember the caution of

Speaker 426:37

The glorious good and neighbour, The fiand and the air is sure, And no remote goes in.

Speaker 427:06

Come on, stop it!

Presenter27:13

Ben Yamino Gili singing Return to Sorrento.

Presenter27:16

You made your reputation, Jack, as I said, as a campaigning MP. How different do you think your career would have been if you hadn't been deaf?

Lord Ashley27:26

It's not possible for me to say so. Uh at the time I lost my hearing, the uh

Lord Ashley27:32

Newspapers and magazines were forecasting that these backbenchers would get office Roy Hattersley, Eric Heffer and Jack Ashley and David Owen, and they did in fact go on to get office, those three, but I didn't. I was disappointed over not becoming a minister, but in fact the campaigning for the things I believed in for disadvantaged and disabled people

Lord Ashley28:00

was something I found very worth while.

Presenter28:03

Do you think you you had a natural affinity, really, for disadvantaged people? A b and and and not surprisingly from what you've said?

Lord Ashley28:11

Exactly. I think I did have a natural affinity. I mean, I was both patient.

Lord Ashley28:19

persistent, balanced I think, because it doesn't do to be extreme, but also bloody-minded, and I didn't mind making a nuisance of myself in Parliament, and I've debated at midnight with Secretary of State demanding change and demanding and demanding. They must have thought I was an awful nuisance, strident and bombastic.

Lord Ashley28:42

But that was the only way to win.

Presenter28:43

But it was exactly, of course, what you were doing back in the factories in Widness.

Lord Ashley28:48

Exactly. Well, that that's an echo from the past of refusing to accept being browbeaten or bulldozed or bullied. It was an echo of the olden days.

Presenter28:58

And now you're in the Lord's, where um if if you and they will forgive the joke they're traditionally hard of hearing. Is it is it easier there? I mean, the whole tempo of the place is slower, isn't it? And they there are fewer interruptions. Is it easier for you to follow?

Lord Ashley29:15

The the brief way to uh explain that is it's more civilized in the House of Commons. The level of debate really is far higher than I expected and I'm uh I'm very happy in the House of Lords pressing the same issues I used to press before and I'm still looking for new ones.

Presenter29:33

and still prepared to be bloody-minded if necessary.

Lord Ashley29:35

I stood prepared to be bloody minded full stop.

Presenter29:39

Record number seven.

Lord Ashley29:41

Well, my next song is The Hallelujah Chorus. It's a song of great beauty signifying unison rarely, but for me the most important thing about it is it seems to represent the triumph of the human spirit.

Presenter30:52

The Hallelujah Chorus from Handel's Messiah, with the Academy and Choir of Saint Martin in the fields conducted by Sir Neville Mariner.

Presenter31:00

Thinking about desert islands, Jack, you are used, I suppose, to a kind of isolation, aren't you?

Lord Ashley31:07

Yes, I am. After twenty-five or twenty-six years of total deafness, I am, yes.

Presenter31:12

And uh with your background you will undoubtedly be able to look after yourself.

Lord Ashley31:18

I think so, and I hope so.

Presenter31:19

Do the cleaning on your island.

Lord Ashley31:21

I ref I refuse to answer that to avoid self-incrimination.

Presenter31:27

However, doing without Pauline and your family would be a huge difficulty for you on a desert island, wouldn't it?

Lord Ashley31:34

Doing without Pauline and my daughters Jackie, Jane, and Caroline, would be a great penance for me, um, anyhow, but uh if I had to be alone, I'm pretty sure that somehow I would get by.

Presenter31:49

The story of your life, Jack, and we've had to leave out lots of bits of it, including working for the BBC.

Presenter31:55

But it has all the qualities o of a Dickensian novel, really, when you look back across it terrible poverty, death of a parent, social injustice, triumph over adversity, and then fate dealing you this seemingly irreversible blow, making you deaf. And now perhaps you can hear again.

Presenter32:17

When you look back across it,

Presenter32:20

Are you entirely philosophical about it, or do you still feel bouts of anger at some of the unfairnesses you've suffered?

Lord Ashley32:29

I don't look back either with anger or regret. Um I did have regrets at the time, but I've done my best. It's not a marvellous best, but it was my best, and um there's no point in pining.

Lord Ashley32:44

All you can do is to do what you can do.

Presenter32:47

Last record.

Lord Ashley32:49

Well, my last record is Silent Night. This to me represents the gentleness and the kindness and the warmth of Christmas. And I love children, as everyone does, of course. I love them very much. And I think Silent Night is particularly applicable to children. For that reason, it's my very great favourite at representing Christmas and all that Christmas means.

Speaker 433:20

I learned tonight.

Speaker 433:24

Holy night.

Speaker 433:33

What is wrong?

Speaker 433:47

Inforged tender on

Presenter34:12

Sunbury Junior Singers of the Salvation Army and Silent Night. Now, if you could only take one of those records, Jack.

Presenter34:20

Which one would it be?

Lord Ashley34:21

Oh, undoubtedly, uh hallelujah.

Lord Ashley34:24

Um I think this really lifts the spirit.

Presenter34:28

It was also the one that you reacted most to. I think the sound of it comes bursting through to you much more clearly, doesn't it?

Lord Ashley34:34

Absolutely. I sense it and I feel it and uh I think it's the most wonderful uplifting thing and all of us need uplifting.

Presenter34:42

What about your book?

Lord Ashley34:44

Well, the book I would take may come as a surprise to her, but it's about warfare.

Lord Ashley34:50

Now I've had a long interest in military history. I think it began as in my childhood when I mentioned to you about the Sorman Passion Day, that type thing.

Lord Ashley35:01

And I think war is a terrible thing, a terrible thing.

Lord Ashley35:06

And yet somehow it highlights and dramatizes so many aspects of human nature and so many human values like comradeship.

Lord Ashley35:16

and courage and determination and discipline.

Lord Ashley35:21

The whole of human life is written in warfare, and that's really why I'm interested. And there's a book written by John Keegan, and it's called A History of Warfare.

Lord Ashley35:36

And that's the book I would take with me on my desert island.

Presenter35:39

And what's the luxury?

Lord Ashley35:41

Now I differ from uh my family. They all like fresh salmon. I'm not that keen. I love smoked salmon. So I would want some means of smoking salmon on my island. And if I could have smoked salmon with some white wine, that to me is the greatest luxury in the world.

Presenter36:02

Jack Ashley, Lord Ashley of Stoke, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Lord Ashley36:08

Thank you.

Speaker 236:16

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