Frances Partridge

Frances Partridge0:00

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.

Frances Partridge0:08

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

Presenter0:29

My Castaway this week is a writer. She's as old as the century. At the age of nine she marched in support of votes for women. Aged eleven she lost her religious faith for ever. After Cambridge she returned to Bloomsbury, where she was born, and immersed herself in the society of the dazzling and unusual people who were to dominate her life.

Presenter0:48

Now, aged ninety three, she's published five books about herself and her friends in the Bloomsbury Set. I've known the most interesting people of my generation, she says. That, to me, is the success of my life. She is Frances Partridge. Indeed, it's often said, Frances, that you're the last surviving member of the Bloomsbury Set. Now, i is that a tag you enjoy, or is it a bit of a curse? Well, it isn't rarely quite true.

Presenter1:15

I think it's true to say I'm the oldest surviving member. Do do you think that your judgment of all those people that we call the Bloomsbury set, Virginia and Leonard Wolfe and the Bells and EM Forster, Maynard Keynes, Lytton Strachey and so on, do you think your judgment of them has become clouded at all by time, or do you recall them as clearly as ever?

Presenter1:36

I recall them very vividly in a way. I recall, for instance, Maynard's brilliance of his eyes. I think it showed his remarkable intelligence. I think he is the most intelligent person I've ever met in my life.

Presenter1:52

But the fringe things rather get forgotten sometimes.

Presenter1:57

Such as

Presenter1:59

Well, how their voices were, whether they what their laugh was like. At this moment I'm being asked about Dora Carrington, because there's a play and a film actually going to be done.

Presenter2:11

And I find it very difficult to remember the sound of her voice, her laugh. Hum. What about Virginia Wolfe? You were quite frightened of her in the middle of the morning.

Speaker 32:20

I'm Kimstra.

Frances Partridge2:20

Uh

Presenter2:22

I remember her voice pretty well, but it has of course been recorded, and that also was in a play the other day, and it it wasn't right. It was the one thing that wasn't right.

Presenter2:34

But wasn't it she, Virginia, who who encouraged you, what, more than sixty years ago, to write? She said to you, didn't she, Frances, you should write, I know you're a writer.

Presenter2:43

Don't remember that. Somebody has said that to me. The person who did is a person who's not so well remembered, who was Boris Andrep, Russian mosaicist.

Presenter2:54

And he did, just before he died, lean across the dinner table and say

Presenter3:01

Do write about the people you knew.

Presenter3:04

But you didn't do so until the seventies, when you were well into your seventies. Why not?

Presenter3:10

Well, it wasn't that I wrote then, you see, I was dializing everything that's been published.

Presenter3:16

was written as as a dare.

Presenter3:19

Or most of it. I've written one autobiography called Memories. Let's have your first record. What is it? Well, my first record.

Presenter3:29

relates to a sort of love affair, because when I was nine

Presenter3:34

I was taken to a concert with Pablo Casals and others playing.

Presenter3:39

And this is Pablo Casal's playing part of the second movement of Schubert's trio in E flat major. A a special thing which endears it to me is that he snored a little as he played, and his snore was really rather winning, and I rather hope we might hear it on the record.

Presenter4:59

Part of the second movement of Schubert's trio in E-flat major, Op. 100, played by Pablo Casals and Mayor Chisław Khoszzovsky. You were born in Bloomsbury, actually in Bloomsbury, weren't you? In Bedford's way in the heart of it, which are they're vast houses, aren't they? Yes, lovely houses. Now mostly offices, indeed publishing houses outside, I think. But did your family fill the whole house?

Frances Partridge5:17

Yeah, of course, I think it's a good idea.

Presenter5:21

They did, because my father, who was an architect and had an office there, had six children, of whom I was the youngest. Was it grand living, as we would call it to day? Were there servants scuttling about? There were six servants six servants and six children.

Frances Partridge5:33

Yeah.

Presenter5:37

And were there statutory hours for seeing your mother, and were you nannied? Nannied up to point, but nanny was very important. But they were f leftish-wingish middle-class professional people. My mother more than my father. She she was more adventurous in her ideas, I think. She she was something of a suffragette, wasn't she? She was, yes, suffragist, very important, not jet. That that's that means you try and persuade people you don't hit them on the head with something. Non-violent. Non-violent. Suffragist. And and she took you out, as I was saying in the introduction, on on her marches with her. Did you know what you were doing? Well, I thought so. After a fashion. Did you know what you were doing aged eleven when you decided to to set aside all religion?

Frances Partridge6:13

Who won't you?

Presenter6:24

I certainly did, I think, and I remember the moment extremely clearly, which took place in a seaside boarding house.

Presenter6:32

and it was really more that it had slowly congealed in my mind that there was no reason to believe in a deity.

Presenter6:40

And I got at

Presenter6:42

A horrible shock.

Presenter6:43

into my next sister above me by saying that I didn't believe in him.

Presenter6:48

as I jumped into bed one night.

Presenter6:50

So that is the moment I remember. And you've never been tempted to believe in God. Not at all.

Frances Partridge6:55

No

Presenter6:57

Not affinant.

Frances Partridge6:57

Not

Presenter6:58

Not even much later in your life when you suffered the the deaths of your husband and your son in pretty swift succession.

Frances Partridge7:04

Pretty sweet folks.

Presenter7:05

I know, one would think I might. But I think i if anything replaced God for me, or what other people find, I I found it in nature, particularly vegetable nature. But you also have, do you not, what you described in your writing as a senseless love of life? I have, it's true. I also did read philosophy among other subjects when I was at Cambridge, so I had to think about these subjects. Why senseless?

Frances Partridge7:32

But why is

Presenter7:34

Sensed is because we look at it. I mean, it's so dreadful when you look at it, isn't it? But th it's also.

Presenter7:43

It's also wonderful. I mean the two things don't combine, I don't think. Do you still have that little love of life? I I do. I do. But it comes and goes.

Speaker 37:49

But

Frances Partridge7:49

Yeah.

Presenter7:55

And when it goes, what replaces it?

Presenter7:58

Well, senses gloom, maybe. Do you ever?

Presenter8:02

long for um the total oblivion, I suppose, which presumably you believe death brings. I do. I c the thing is that if I imagined that there was another world

Frances Partridge8:06

Presumably you

Presenter8:13

which I sometimes do and I realize there could be, I can't say.

Presenter8:19

My heart nearly drops through me. I mean, I'm terrified at the thought of it. I want a a sweet oblivion at the end of the day, as I do when I go to bed at night.

Presenter8:30

Shall we have record number two?

Presenter8:32

Emma Kirkbe and Evelyn Tubb singing Monte Verde's duet Quio Medoro

Presenter8:40

Why do you want that? I want that because when I went to Cambridge I was also swept up into a a mad group of madrical singers by quite a well known musician called Bodis Ord.

Presenter8:53

And so I chose this this Monte Verdi magical.

Speaker 39:18

Si vo ye seve si di veti vochi de siri de

Presenter9:57

Emma Kirkby and Evelyn Tubbs singing Monteverde's duet Chiomedoro. But before Cambridge you you'd been to boarding school, and not just boarding school, you'd been to a coeducational boarding school, Beedale's. It must have been very avant garde in nineteen oh four. Before you I insisted on going because my best friend

Frances Partridge10:06

Additional thrilling speeds.

Frances Partridge10:10

Good job.

Presenter10:15

Julia Street Lytton's niece went there. What was it like there?

Presenter10:19

Oh, it's pretty uncomfortable.

Presenter10:21

Cold bath and not really a proper mattress in the bed. Cold bath every day. Yes, running along the f passage naked. So mean, did you like it? No, I didn't like that. We ma we grumbled and groused about that. But I think one was always slightly in love with somebody, and that helped. Of the opposite sex? Yes. Did you get into trouble for that? Oh no,'cause it was so remote.

Frances Partridge10:42

Did you get it?

Presenter10:46

Probably they didn't know.

Presenter10:49

Were were the rules about young men any less strict when you got up to Cambridge?

Presenter10:55

No, which was terrible, because the Thirst War was just coming to an end, and all the rules dated from well before that.

Presenter11:04

Aiden had a brother who'd been in prison all through the war because he was a

Presenter11:09

uh studying in g in German in Germany.

Presenter11:12

And he was now at Cambridge. He wasn't allowed to come without him, what you call chaperone to look out when he came to tea with me. Who were the who were the major influences on you there? Who made a lasting impression on you at Cambridge?

Presenter11:28

G Moir uh was the the figure who affected Bloomsbury so much. I did join a thing called the Moral Sciences Club, which was rather

Presenter11:38

uh romantic sort of mostly men crouching round a fire and smoking pipes.

Presenter11:45

and tying themselves in knots while they considered extraordinary problems as

Presenter11:50

why the French king had no beard or something. I'd always seem to do something like that. But but Bertrand Russell, Wittgenstein? Yes, Wittgenstein. That he I really got to know after I'd gone down, because

Frances Partridge11:55

But

Presenter12:03

His greatest friend, another very brilliant philosopher who died very young, Frank Ramsay.

Presenter12:10

I married a great friend of mine, so I got to know Wittgenstein, which I'm very glad of, as he's a most remarkable man.

Presenter12:17

And and Bertrand Russell, didn't he? Bertrand Russell I knew, yes, through Bloomsford, too, but uh not well. Was he not discovered in bed with Lady Ottiline Morrel?

Presenter12:27

Maybe I should think very highly l I think he was very much in love with her. He was always in love with ladies. The odd thing to me is that ladies were in love with him, because he looked exactly like the mad hatter, with his hair blowing in the wind. I thought you once said that her excuse was that she wasn't really in bed with him, but she was just giving him a little aspirin. Oh, that's right, yes. That may have been him, or it may have been Henry. That was Henry Lamb, I think. Though she had all sorts of lovers.

Presenter12:59

However, going back to you at Cambridge, you you you obviously

Presenter13:02

had already a distinct set of values before you arrived there. You you were a a convinced pacifist. You were an atheist. Yes. You believed in women's rights. I know, it's rather dull. I'm afraid I didn't change for a month.

Presenter13:16

Right, let's pause there for record number three.

Presenter13:19

Well, record number three comes when I was in London working in a book shop.

Presenter13:25

and having hijinks and adoring dancing.

Presenter13:29

Black Bottom, Charleston, the Lott.

Presenter13:32

And it is fat swallows ain't misbehaving.

Speaker 213:37

One to one ball

Speaker 213:39

All by myself.

Speaker 213:41

No one to talk but put the map beyond the shelf Amit Briven Living my love for you.

Speaker 213:52

For you, oh baby, I know the buddy

Speaker 213:58

The one I love.

Speaker 214:01

I'm through it flirting it too that I'm fingin' out.

Speaker 214:05

Aim at five and

Speaker 314:06

Right.

Speaker 214:08

Live in my love.

Speaker 214:10

Yeah.

Presenter14:11

That's Waller, Ain't Misbehaving and Memories of Your Dancing. So you were working i in a bookshop in Bloomsbury. Yeah, that's where I saw Virginia Wolf and

Presenter14:21

Uh, Clive Bell and all the rest of them. So the sitfuls, all sorts of strange people came into our shop. You you've written since that it was like all the windows being opened in a stuffy room that you'd been sitting in for far too long. Suddenly you met all of these people that you identified with. It's rather unkind of me,'cause I don't think my parents made a stuffy room for me. They were really very kind people, especially my mother, really. But were you bowled over by them in the sense that you admired them, not least because they flouted convention?

Presenter14:52

I did begin to think what is the point of convention. Yes, I've always rather disliked it. You must

Presenter14:58

Like things you must think your own values out, I think I began to feel. So that marriage wasn't important as far as they were concerned. That didn't sort of spring to the eye so much, you know, in a bookshop as you might by reading the books. But of course it was very, very important.

Presenter15:16

But in fact you you became involved in in the now famous ménage à trois, if one can call it that, which was in fact

Presenter15:25

Dora Carrington, who was married to Rafe Partridge, whom you were to marry, but she was in fact in love with Lytton Strachey. That's right. And Lytton Strachey was in love with Rafe Partridge.

Frances Partridge15:34

Yeah, it's a

Presenter15:35

Yes. When you came across that setup, that situation, how did you react to it?

Frances Partridge15:36

When you

Frances Partridge15:38

Yeah.

Presenter15:41

Um

Presenter15:43

Well, I was rather uncertain about everything socially. I don't think I was of sort of prison.

Presenter15:50

I I remember going down to their then house, which was called Tidmarsh, and being rather surprised by some of the conversation, but I was interested. The thing was that Carrington's feelings for Lytton were so extraordinary

Presenter16:05

all absorbing, and unlike anything I'd come across, his faraf had long since converted themselves into just a great friendship on both sides, one thinking of

Presenter16:20

The older man's his master anyway.

Presenter16:24

And Eaton, depending on Rafe, who is a strong and very masculine man.

Speaker 316:29

Hmm.

Presenter16:29

Uh And depending on him for physical and mental support.

Presenter16:34

But, nevertheless, you were a young girl who'd been brought up, as I understand it, to believe that it simply wasn't done to show your feelings or disgust. That's right, that's quite right. Well, Rafe himself um believed in communication. That was a slightly different point, because it covered all things, not just sex. He li he thought that if if two people were in love, they should really talk about everything openly. Certainly, that was a rather shock.

Presenter17:04

Because my

Presenter17:06

Family rather ordinary in that way.

Presenter17:09

Let's pause there for your next record.

Presenter17:11

Toria Dlas Angeles, singing Malagena, accompanied by the marvellous Gerald Moir,

Presenter17:18

And this is because Rafe and I looped to Spain. I call it that.

Presenter17:24

And we heard a lot of Spanish music, which I found very, very thrilling.

Speaker 317:38

Who am I studying in Bulbario?

Speaker 317:44

I slay your God you love my gift of savior.

Speaker 317:54

He also skipped all.

Speaker 318:00

Don't sanitize.

Presenter18:34

Victoria de Los Angeles singing Malagena accompanied by Gerald Moore, and memories of your elopement, as you call it, to Spain in in nineteen twenty five with Ralph Partridge. It wasn't really an elopement, though, was it? Because he was married to Dora Carrington. That's right, yeah.

Frances Partridge18:46

Edge

Presenter18:48

He was a literary journalist, wasn't he? That's what he he was trying. Well, he came out of the war, you see, as all these he'd gone into the war in nineteen. He went all through it as very, very great distinction as a an infantry officer.

Presenter19:03

and came out with no job at all. He worked first at the Hogarth Press with the Wolves, and it was when he was travelling books to our bookshops that I got I think that he rather fell for me.

Presenter19:17

You didn't fall for him that quickly, then? Not that quickly, no. He was rather rombastic in a way.

Frances Partridge19:19

Ha!

Frances Partridge19:20

To slow business.

Presenter19:25

But once you had fallen for him, isn't it?

Frances Partridge19:27

Is that Bill

Presenter19:31

So so you and Rafe set up home together in nineteen twenty six. That's right. But that must have been very difficult, living openly with a married man. Well, not as much as you think. When you think how everybody does it now, I mean they didn't know. It was hydrant. Probably the most difficult thing was my old nanny.

Speaker 319:34

Yeah.

Presenter19:53

Had to be had to be told I'd married.

Presenter19:56

And she presented me with six teaspoons.

Presenter20:00

My mother took it very well. I explained to the her situation. She was a very, very excellent woman, very intelligent woman. But you did marry in the end?

Presenter20:10

Oh yes, but you see Carrington killed herself when Lytton died.

Presenter20:14

So you were free to marry, but but if Convention meant little to you. Why did you need to marry? Because I wanted a child.

Presenter20:24

And Rafe suggested it because he knew I wanted a child.

Presenter20:27

And uh and there it goes. I mean

Presenter20:33

I think that's a good reason.

Presenter20:36

Record number 5.

Presenter20:38

Record number five Isaac Stern with William Primrose and the Perpignon Festival Orchestra Conducted by my dear Pablo Casares, playing part of Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante in E flat.

Presenter21:53

Isaac Stern and William Primrose and the Perpignant Festival Orchestra conducted by Pablo Casals playing part of Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante in E flat.

Presenter22:03

So the the the tangle of the four lives that we've talked about resolved itself. It resolved itself in tragedy. In nineteen thirty two. Yes, by a little slow death.

Frances Partridge22:11

Yeah.

Presenter22:15

Oh man, I need fifty two.

Presenter22:18

And um he died of cancer. None of the specialists who were called in recognised what it was.

Presenter22:26

But his character rarely came out of that, as is shown in Howard's book, I think.

Presenter22:32

And Dora Carrington was stricken with grief. Stricken with grief. And.

Presenter22:37

contrived. I mean, Wraith was in the position of trying to keep her from suicide, and it was just a s a fight with which he lost, and I think that was very, very dreadful strain. Well, it was for all of us, really. And eventually she shot herself. Yes.

Presenter22:54

How difficult was it then for you and and Rafe, who, as we said, then then married? And but you went to live in the house that the three of them had lived in, at Hamsbury, near Harley. Well, we had you see, all the time we were living in London it was an unusual we used to come down for weekends, say that the the whole situation had been accepted. These things are sometimes. So you had no sense of guilt? Um we had none. I believe some people thought that one could have stopped it, but I knew that everything had been done. And Rafe was was great realist.

Presenter23:29

Always said afterwards, I know that if people really mean to do it, you can't stop them.

Presenter23:36

So you you lived there for for the next thirty years, I think. Thank you. Very happy, yes. Through the Second World War, during which you were both convinced pacifists. That's right, yes. Now, what did you do then during the war? You must have suffered opastracisation from people. Not really. Very little. I know when I published my book, my first book.

Frances Partridge23:50

The host

Presenter23:58

I'm darned about it. They said put in everything of that and I find it very difficult to find anything. People rarely weren't nasty at all. But did you never, again, have any sense of guilt that you weren't part of the war effort, that you were doing nothing?

Presenter24:13

Not to win the war, but obviously. Rafe had been a pacifist. I mean, I didn't convert him. He'd become one, really was one, as a result of what he'd seen in the First World War. But how else did he imagine

Frances Partridge24:15

Isn't it

Frances Partridge24:28

I will listed

Presenter24:30

The Nazi threat would be countered. Ah, well, that's a question I think too long to go into. It is an endless thing. One could one thing, nobody could know what would happen.

Presenter24:41

If everybody were pacifists.

Presenter24:44

But I think he thought, which has happened and we both thought, that there would be endless war in Europe ever since, and so there has been. I mean, it wasn't going to put an end to war, as they were all told, the soldiers, after nineteen eighteen. So you you've never had any regrets? I've n I've believed that, I continue to believe it, but I think it's without solution. I d think that war will end the world probably.

Speaker 225:00

I've never

Presenter25:09

Because I think man is a vision.

Presenter25:12

Warlike being.

Presenter25:14

It's not a very cheerful note to go on to, but I can't see much hope.

Presenter25:19

More music.

Presenter25:20

Um, part of Richard Strauss's, Richard Strauss, I have to call him, Metamorphosen, and it was written as a lament.

Presenter25:30

very near the end of Strauss's life, for the bombed concert halls and opera houses in Germany. And I find it very, very moving, as well as a very beautiful, sad piece of music.

Presenter26:35

Part of Richard Strauss's Metamorphosen played by the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Herbert von Carrion.

Presenter26:41

When your husband Rafe died in nineteen sixty, you recorded in your diary, Now I am absolutely alone and forever.

Presenter26:49

How how could you be so convinced that you'd never marry again?

Presenter26:54

Well, I don't really know, except that there was this extraordinary closeness in our marriage, and it was close in conversation and

Presenter27:03

Communication.

Presenter27:04

But it was a bit unkind to my son, who was still alive. For the next three years He died aged twenty eight of a heart attack. An absolutely unsuspected heart attack. You must have been completely devastated. Well, I was.

Presenter27:19

I didn't know how I was going to go on then.

Presenter27:22

But I don't ever remember thinking of marriage.

Presenter27:26

But how did you survive that time? I mean, I did you ever may I ask did you ever contemplate suicide? I mean we talked about Dora Carrington. I did, but I don't think I had the courage, and perhaps I had more love of life.

Speaker 327:33

We talked about Doris.

Presenter27:40

She was a very dramatic and poetic character, and only a rather ter a terre one, perhaps. So you faced the the second half of the twentieth century, really, uh on your own? That's it. I've been alone for a hell of a long t.

Presenter27:55

Everything we've been talking about uh you know, and we're talking there about the the sixties, wasn't it, when your husband and your sixty five? That's right, at the end of sixty he died. Sixty three Berger died. It must seem like a a a lifetime ago now. Yes, it does.

Frances Partridge28:00

Yeah.

Speaker 328:02

Yeah.

Presenter28:11

Does. I miss I remember it so clearly as I do even.

Presenter28:15

So I you have a horror of boredom, I know. You filled your life what with with music, with friends

Frances Partridge28:20

Friendship.

Presenter28:21

I did translation a lot. I translated about twenty books from Spanish and French.

Presenter28:28

And did a certain amount of literature reviewing and things like that. But essentially you're the same person, aren't you? I mean, we were talking earlier on about that set of values that you established for yourself. I think so. You've remained you are entirely consistent.

Frances Partridge28:39

Establish for yourself.

Frances Partridge28:42

Ruby.

Presenter28:44

I do think so.

Presenter28:46

That's rather admirable, isn't it?

Presenter28:48

Rather admirable. Oh, well, I think it's rather dull, perhaps.

Presenter28:53

And I can't make myself change.

Presenter28:56

Let's have record number seven.

Presenter28:59

Number seven is part of the first movement of Brahm Sextet, string sextet, in B flat major, played by the Amadeus Quartet.

Presenter30:07

That was part of the first movement of Brahm's sextet in B-flat major, played by the Amadeus Quartet with Cecil Aronowitz and William Pleith.

Presenter30:16

So much, Frances Partridge, has been written about the Bloomsbury set not least by you two that when you look back across the years, across those fifty, sixty, and seventy years since you were part of them, how extraordinary, how truly original were they, do you think?

Presenter30:34

Yes, that's a very interesting question. Certainly I haven't increased my feeling about their originality, but I still

Presenter30:43

believe it that there was some

Presenter30:46

almost haphazardly some very remarkable people in that group of friends.

Presenter30:52

I am amazed that they've got so well known. I do think that the battle has been scraped rather too much, perhaps by me among others.

Presenter31:02

Do you think they would have been amazed? Amazed

Presenter31:06

I don't think they greatly cared, you know, what people thought about them.

Presenter31:10

But you you said, as I said at the beginning, that you you have known the most interesting people of your generation, but it was, as I've said, fifty, sixty, seventy years ago. Do you feel that you lived your life then and you've had a lesser life since?

Presenter31:27

Well, I've made lovely friends, you see. I I know I've got friends I simply adore, and those are the ones that have made my life worth living. I've I've relied on them. Of course there are lots of other people. Some of my best friends are twenty years younger than me now.

Presenter31:45

But I do think there'll plenty of.

Presenter31:48

Wonderful friends. But do you look back on Bloomsbury as being having been the most important part of your life?

Presenter31:56

I don't think I think in terms of importance quite this and perhaps if I was I should be more detached than I am about my life.

Presenter32:04

I feel that it influen influences they had, certainly.

Presenter32:09

Last record.

Presenter32:11

Last record.

Presenter32:13

Expresses, I hope, my feeling for friendship. Placido, Domingo, and Cheryl Milne singing Dio que ne lalma infondre from Verdi's Don Carlo.

Presenter32:26

The Friendship Song

Speaker 333:01

All the waters here.

Speaker 333:06

Uh

Speaker 333:21

Uh

Presenter33:28

Placido Domingo and Cheryl Milne singing the friendship song Dioque nel alma in fondere from Verdi's Don Carlo.

Presenter33:35

Well, now you've got to choose one of those eight records, Francis. Perhaps the most difficult choice of all isn't it?

Frances Partridge33:39

This is perhaps a

Frances Partridge33:41

Really?

Presenter33:44

I think I'd choose the most art, really. Would you? I think so. And your book.

Presenter33:51

Are the book now?

Presenter33:53

I don't know. Ah, the book I thought of. It's a long book, but it is all one book. It's not an encyclopedia.

Presenter34:01

It is the memoirs of Saint-Simon.

Presenter34:05

And it's no good having the English translation because it's cut to pieces because it's in French. And we also give you the complete works of Shakespeare. And we also.

Frances Partridge34:13

I'll serve.

Presenter34:14

Give you the Bible. Bible? I was going to say I would give up the Bible if that helped, but I don't wouldn't give up Shakespeare for words.

Frances Partridge34:21

Well that's

Presenter34:22

What about your luxury?

Frances Partridge34:22

What a

Presenter34:24

Well, again, would you allow a pregnant Burmese cat?

Presenter34:30

Oh no. You wouldn't. Living things not allowed. That's right.

Speaker 334:32

Living

Presenter34:34

I had a sort of feeling that was there. Why should he be pregnant? Oh, I see.

Frances Partridge34:37

Uh

Presenter34:42

No, well we'll put the cat away.

Presenter34:45

I'm an amateur botanist. This is a thing I haven't mentioned. But I have done collecting for the Natural History Museum, and I'd like to

Presenter34:55

be given an outfit uh for collecting the press, paper,

Presenter35:01

A little instructions. And I think a desert island is not all sand. It just means there's nobody there. That might be the most fascinating. Um flora and f grasses and seaweeds. But you see I'm terrified of being bored, but still I don't suppose I shall be there to pay very long. Francis Partridge, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs. Thank you. I really enjoyed it.

Speaker 335:20

Transported

Speaker 335:23

That's the time.

Frances Partridge35:35

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