Christina Dodwell

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 four, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:29

My castaway this week is an explorer. Born in Africa, she spent her early years running wild in the bush, a childhood experience which seems to have echoed throughout her life. She was expelled from English boarding schools, and at the age of twenty four left the cultivated life of London to explore the whole of the African continent. In the twenty years since then she's made many exciting and dangerous journeys, usually alone. She's eaten with cannibals, been attacked by a lascivious sea captain, and arrested as a spy. She admits it's a life she wouldn't have chosen. But it happened, she says, and it felt right. She is Christina Dodwell. What makes it the right life for you then, Christina? What drives you out there?

Christina Dodwell1:11

I don't think that I'm particularly driven. I think it just happens. It's this business of falling in at the deep end, which tends to make it easier. Because uh like when I started travelling and four of us set off with the Land Rover and then the two boys stole the Land Rover and vanished, suddenly all I hopes, all the dreams, all the preparations all went up in this kind of puff of smoke. Then what drove me forwards was well, let's just take a little look a bit further and just check on around the next corner.

Presenter1:40

What part does fear play in all of that, then? Do you sometimes think you must sometimes think when a when you meet a python in your path, or this sea captain leaps on you, do you sometimes think, What on earth am I doing here? I should never have come? There are

Christina Dodwell1:53

There are times when one thinks, oh goodness but in general the actually dangerous things that happen like for example my first experience of whitewater rafting going down the Wagi River in Papua New Guinea on about the third day my raft flipped upside down and I was underneath the rapids. You don't even know which way's up. That time I'd got a gulp of breath so that I wasn't panicked and finally I came up and then I could see the raft further down and I'd come through the rapids and I got on top of the upturned boat and then I stood up and when I could see the size of the rapids I was just about to go into and nothing to hold on. Then I was scared, but not until then because I'd been too busy beforehand.

Presenter2:32

So there's a kind of exhilaration, is there, when that's happening? There's no room for fear. It's just how am I going to cope? And there's an exhilaration in coping.

Christina Dodwell2:39

There's no time for fear. When there's time for fear, it can be hell. Perhaps the worst of that was the hunting spider bite. I thought it was a scorpion. I just felt this stab of pain in my ankle and I screamed. And then I looked by the campfire light and I could see these two trickles of blood coming down. But the pain went straight up my leg and the poison, as it hit my lymph glands, the pain was mind-blowing. Within half an hour, I couldn't speak, and all my muscles had stopped working.

Christina Dodwell3:11

Um, and how long did that last?

Presenter3:12

BAAP

Christina Dodwell3:14

That lasted about ten days, but having survived that first night, I knew that I wasn't going to die. The first night was horrendous and was extremely frightening when you're fighting to keep yourself breathing.

Presenter3:25

So did you then think I should never have come? This was always bound to end in

Christina Dodwell3:31

In tears? No, never occurred to me then. I think that kind of thing, when I'm um stuck in the rain on a ridge and I've got no no water left in my bottle and I've got there's no dry firewood and there's no grazing for my horse and everything looks absolutely appalling and it's getting dark and still raining, then I tend to think

Christina Dodwell3:50

I wish I was somewhere else.

Presenter3:51

Well now, do you play music as you travel?

Christina Dodwell3:54

Yeah.

Presenter3:54

Uh

Christina Dodwell3:54

I think To myself and

Presenter3:55

I've claimed

Christina Dodwell3:56

Yeah.

Presenter3:56

Yeah. Mm-hmm. What sort I mean, is that the sort of music you're taking to your desert island? It's the sort of music which you take to your own desert island which are your journeys, really?

Christina Dodwell4:03

Indeed.

Presenter4:03

So what's the first one?

Christina Dodwell4:05

My first record is Miriam McCabe singing the click song, because that was all the rage when I was travelling on my horse through southern Africa and this was my first big journey. And I was travelling through the Troza land where they speak with a click and my horse was called Troza, so that it was very much part of my first journey.

Speaker 44:27

Here's a sh

Speaker 44:29

Kikim Bam Tanam, Hel Hel His His Impundance Cover

Speaker 44:38

Is it all in the I am all a joint?

Presenter4:54

Miriam McCaber singing the Click Song. So w what do you put your wonderlust down to, Christine? I mean, is is it in the blood, or is it was it all those years of running round in the bush?

Christina Dodwell5:04

I put a lot of the wanderlust down to an inherited kind of roaming.

Christina Dodwell5:09

I was born in West Africa. My mother was born in China. My grandmother spent 30 years in China. She was an unconventional lady traveller during the time of the warlords. And my mother used to talk enormously about her journeys. In fact, my mother spent 13 years there and then spent 25 years in West Africa, which is where I was born and grew up. So that it's always been very natural. It's not like a family where it's unusual. You know, they always treated it as a totally normal thing to do. But are your brothers.

Presenter5:41

But are your brother and sister the same?'Cause I mean, you ran round the bush in Nigeria with them, as it were, didn't you?

Christina Dodwell5:47

We were all the same. At different points in life, we've all been like that. My brother's worked for a long time. He worked in Mali in West Africa. My sister used to live in Italy years ago. But whereas those two have settled down, I haven't.

Presenter6:00

Yeah.

Presenter6:02

So how difficult was you you came back to this country, didn't you, when you were six, the family came home to England. How difficult was it for you to settle into a kind of orthodox schooling existence?

Christina Dodwell6:14

I don't know that I did particularly settle. I think my early memories are living in a funny little house in Camberley that backed on to, oh, the Grange that had gone bankrupt and it had acres and acres of wilderness garden where we three children would play. I guess somewhere in it I g went to school, but those aren't the bits that I remember.

Presenter6:32

So you found

Presenter6:34

Simply

Christina Dodwell6:34

Hi.

Presenter6:34

How many times were you expelled from school?

Christina Dodwell6:36

Oh, not until the very later stages. I was never expelled when I was young. I was a sweet young thing. It was only later on when I was about 15, I think, was the first time I got politely asked not to come back. You were the classic disruptive influence, right? Never. Shall we have record number two? Record number two is Far Away Places. It's composed and written by a Chinese man, and it's done with all the traditional instruments.

Presenter8:01

A piece of Chinese instrumental music called Faraway Places, the bamboo flute, I think included there among other instruments. It's difficult to imagine, Christina, but it's apparently true that you were finished, perhaps in more ways than one, at uh Lucy Clayton, where you were taught to type and to walk properly, and then you went on to work for a moment.

Christina Dodwell8:19

I'm very good at arranging flowers too.

Presenter8:22

Comes in very useful. Was there ever any chance of you settling to that kind of neat and tidy existence?

Christina Dodwell8:27

It was finishing and it was also secretarial to give you a little bit of skill in life, and they sent us out to do two days of practical work experience at the end. And I did my two days and I thought, I made a terrible mistake. This isn't the life for me at all.

Presenter8:40

But were you very unhappy, do you I mean, more unhappy than the average young person who's just settled down to the first job and is finding it a bit tedious.

Christina Dodwell8:48

No, it was probably terribly normal, actually. No, it wasn't tedious. It was whatever is new and you're learning is always interesting. It's once I've got the hang of things that I feel I should be going forwards again.

Presenter9:01

But you were abnormal in the sense that you did decide to do something really rather large about it and to escape.

Christina Dodwell9:07

That was when things got to a sort of a a difficult stage in my life where everything seemed to go sour. Oh, job, boyfriend, flat social life. I became aware that I was sitting in the most appalling rut and the only way I could think of to get out of it was to run away. So you ran away to the Sahara? Not quite run away. I've advertised and four of us got together, bought this Vandrover and off we went with.

Presenter9:31

You advertise, so you didn't know these people beforehand? No, I didn't.

Christina Dodwell9:35

No.

Presenter9:35

And

Christina Dodwell9:36

Was that your downfall that you? No, because I made one lifelong friend, and I think that even as we went across the Sahara Desert right at the beginning, one came across various married couples who had got to the stage of never speaking to each other again and saying, you know, as soon as we get across this wretched desert, we are divorcing, boy. However, they.

Presenter9:55

However, they didn't uh actually dump each other in the middle of the desert without anything, which is what these two men did to you two girls.

Christina Dodwell10:01

Actually, yes.

Presenter10:02

Uh

Christina Dodwell10:02

S.

Presenter10:02

He woke up one morning wanting the Land Rover had gone.

Christina Dodwell10:04

We were just across the desert. In fact, we were in Karno in northern Nigeria, and that was where it happened. But why did they do it?

Presenter10:10

Make up b

Christina Dodwell10:12

I think they did it because we had entirely different reasons for the journey. When we were crossing the desert, the two lads wanted to stop in the evenings where they knew there'd be other overlanders so they could discuss the mechanical problems in the day. The other girl, Leslie, who I still keep in touch with, she and I tended to go off, use what you can of the last bit of daylight to go walking, see where you are, exploring the mountains. And when all the light has gone and one can just still work out where the Land Rover was, then we'd head back to camp. Now, you see, we'd get back to camp and the lads would have cooked supper and be sitting around so that we were never there to cook or do any of the chores because we were using the daylight to see where we were and coming back and then wanting to eat.

Presenter10:56

So how did you cope? I mean it sounds very romantic at this distance in time, some twenty years ago, but there were you and your friend called Leslie.

Christina Dodwell11:02

That's your friend.

Christina Dodwell11:03

Yeah.

Presenter11:04

With really very little equipment, no transport, middle of the Sahara.

Christina Dodwell11:09

Uh

Presenter11:09

Uh not really no

Christina Dodwell11:11

Knowing how to cope at all, presumably. We put what miserable things we'd got together. We made rucksacks, and it was so hot that holding a needle and thread, you know, the the sweat on your hands, it's very hard to stitch. But we made these backpacks and put what was left of our gear in them, and then went through Kano and set off again. Then, of course, the country ran out of fuel and we were deep in the bush, but we found these two semi-wild horses. We put our luggage on those and set off to reach Cameroon. We had no food supplies, we had water bottles, we used our sleeping bags as saddles, and we made bridles out of string. But it wasn't at all an easy journey. I think because it was tough, it taught me the importance of learning how to survive.

Christina Dodwell11:55

Record number three.

Christina Dodwell11:57

Record number three is Pink Floyd and One of These Days.

Presenter12:01

Why do you want that?

Christina Dodwell12:02

Because I've travelled with it for so many years, if ever I take a cassette with me on a journey, it's always had this one on it.

Presenter12:40

Pink Floyd and One of These Days. Leslie left you after a year to go to the States and get married and you travelled on alone for another two years alone. You prefer travelling?

Christina Dodwell12:52

being alone really, don't you? I didn't know that at the time. I thought that I should fill this gap beside me with someone else, and I started looking, but everyone else seemed to find excuses why they couldn't. So uh

Christina Dodwell13:05

While I was messing around, I went to the Chamani Mani Mountains, which are on the border between Zimbabwe and Mozambique. And I'd spent three wonderful days up in those mountains, made a bed out of dried grasses and hay and stuff, put it at the back of a cave. No, I put it at the front of the cave to start with, and warmed myself with a fire, and then I thought, wait, this is a terrorist route between the two countries, and I'm frightened of the dark, which is something I still hadn't at that stage flung off.

Christina Dodwell13:35

I lay there, feeling perhaps I should go and huddle at the back of the cave and and be scared. And at that moment the full moon came above the mountainous horizon and it was stunning because it cast the whole landscape at at ten thousand foot into a black and white, majestic scene that kept changing with moonshadows. And I let my fire die down and I stayed sleeping in the mouth of that cave all night. And since then I don't think I've ever been afraid of the dark.

Christina Dodwell14:04

I equally came to terms with travelling alone. I realized that if I could be happy on my own, that then for the rest of my life the world would be open to me to go when I wanted, how I wanted, where I wanted, without having to wait around for other people.

Presenter14:19

Without

Presenter14:21

So you found your own kind of security?

Christina Dodwell14:24

That took a little bit longer because I was still terribly insecure at that stage. Whenever I stopped at houses, I'd feel afraid in the leaving because you're going into a completely empty future. You don't know what's going to happen any of the days ahead of you. You don't know where the food might come from, where you could buy some in what village, where where you'll stay, you don't know anything. And I found it at the beginning slightly daunting. And then I came to realize that

Christina Dodwell14:50

Security has nothing to do with houses and walls, it's something you carry around inside you.

Presenter14:56

How does your family cope? I mean, how do they know whether to worry about you or not to worry about you? Do have they just taught themselves that they really mustn't worry and just hear from you when they do?

Christina Dodwell15:05

We used to have a system when my mother was alive that if three months passed and they hadn't even had a card from me, then she was allowed to do a bit of worry.

Christina Dodwell15:15

This happened, I think, in that first

Christina Dodwell15:18

Five years of travelling, it happened about three times. And she was very clever about what she did. She'd say, Okay, she's gone missing now, and it was in southern Africa. She contacted a friend who was a farmer, who knows who in South Africa, the farmer's the fisherman, and they all spread the word, Who's seen a woman on her own on a horse? Now, you see, a woman on a horse on her own doesn't pass unnoticed. Everybody knows. They all knew where I was. It was just a question of information getting outside.

Christina Dodwell15:49

Next piece of music.

Christina Dodwell15:51

My next piece of music is a carol. It's in the bleak mid winter. Now I used to sing this to myself not only at Christmas time, but at any point, when you're in the forest and the sweat is dripping off your nose with every step, I'd sing it to feel cool, and by the end of the first verse I would feel cooler.

Speaker 416:22

For still wind made moan.

Speaker 416:29

Or swood hardness all.

Speaker 416:35

What a life of storm.

Speaker 416:42

Snow had fallen, snow, snow, snow, snow.

Presenter17:09

That was, of course, the choir of King's College, Cambridge, singing in the bleak midwinter. So you're not frightened, Christina Dodwell, as a woman on your own. But in fact, at one point you were made an honorary man, weren't you?

Christina Dodwell17:21

Yes, it was. I was initiated I was initiated into manhood. It happened because when I was in Papua New Guinea, I travelled for three months paddling a canoe, a dug-out canoe, down the Sepik River, which is New Guinea's largest river. Curiously, no one, no foreigner, had ever paddled down it before, so that there was a certain surprise and respect that was given to me for doing what other people don't do. And there's areas with a lot of taboos against women, paths you may not use, you can't go into the spirit house, you're not allowed this, not allowed that. But because they said, look, if you spent three months travelling on your own in a canoe to come here, you are more than welcome into our spirit houses and to be treated as a full man by the men.

Christina Dodwell18:09

one particular village which became my home village for a while.

Christina Dodwell18:13

There was an initiation ceremony coming up.

Christina Dodwell18:17

And because I'd been allowed all the secrets of the man's house and the spirit world, they simply finished off the job by initiating me into manhood. It's done by cutting the skin on in my case it was on my shoulder and they cut the scale pattern on the forehead of the crocodile. The area is thick with crocodiles and some days you see a lot sliding off the banks into the river. The largest I saw, which was not far from this village in the Blackwater, was longer than my canoe. And as I paddled up river to the village one day and the crocodile lazily swam the other way and he was a tad bigger than me. Man eating crocodiles? They say sea pit crocodiles don't eat people. I think this is true. In fact, the sepit crocodiles are quite small and quite timid, but there's a lot of saltwater ones that have worked their way upriver and they are more ferocious.

Presenter19:10

Mm.

Presenter19:12

So they cut your shoulder. Um I mean, is it painful? What what what happens next?

Christina Dodwell19:17

It is painful and it's meant to be painful. The theory of initiation is that you go through pain and fear and come out a man, so that the cutting, which is deep and it's meant to be because you're meant to produce a lasting scar, and it's done at dawn after a night of drumming and singing, it hurts and it's frightening. If it's not frightening

Christina Dodwell19:40

Then it doesn't change you. If you go through something that's the most horrible and terrifying experience of your life, then for the rest of your life you have that extra strength. Any dangerous situation you face, you can say, Hey, but I've already been through worse, and somehow it makes it more easy to manage.

Christina Dodwell20:00

Next piece of music.

Christina Dodwell20:02

My next piece of music is Les Armand, sung by Charles Dumont, with Edith Piaf in the background, which I'm taking because it's romance, it's love, it's strong, and when I'm on this desert island I don't want to forget that I've got a husband who I adore, because he's a very special person.

Speaker 420:20

God is them all.

Speaker 420:28

C'est chance, c'estuse, my belleur, C'est s. Quil pleur.

Presenter20:44

Charles Dumand and a little bit of Edith Piaff in the background there with Les Amand.

Presenter20:50

I suppose the greatest enemy then, Christina, if it's not other people, not wild beasts, not unknown terrain, it must be illness. I mean, what happens to you when you really get sick out there? What do you take with you? Do you take packets of pills and antibiotics?

Christina Dodwell21:04

No, they'd all have gone off. They wouldn't have kept well in the heat and the humidity. And I think that medicines that don't work are probably worse than no medicines. I tend to go to the witch doctor or the healer or or the herbal people. And does he do the trick?

Christina Dodwell21:21

Occasionally, one of the best ones was a chap I paid him two chickens and he threw into the calabash some twigs and they started to fizz and bubble and uh then I had to produce sort of the old empty beer bottles and he said now you've got to drink two beer bottles a day of this stuff. It tasted very bitter. I had bronchitis at the time and he said that um if I did that I had to keep doing it until the bronchitis went away.

Christina Dodwell21:44

I'm sure it was quite a good tonic for me. It didn't really do the trick, but um it might have done.

Presenter21:51

What about the matter of food? You must have developed a strong stomach, as I understand it. Reading some of your books you've eaten pig's ear, crocodile soup, reindeer blood soup, maggots as a delicacy, wood lice, rat, flying ants, and you've lived to tell the tale.

Christina Dodwell22:06

When you're hungry, you respond to food in a completely what seems to be normal way. You eat what there is, and it tastes absolutely fine.

Presenter22:14

What even if they're maggots from a reindeer's hide?

Christina Dodwell22:16

Those I wasn't so keen on, but I got quite used to the maggots, the sago grubs in New Guinea, by about the fifth time. You see, the first time one's always a bit more squeamish and thinks, gosh, well, am I really that hungry? I did actually put my foot down when it came to eating the live ones that they squeezed out of my reindeer's back. He said he gave me an excuse because he said they're not quite ripe. You know, when the sort of ridges on their back are black, then you can eat them like sweets, but in fact, another two weeks yet before it's time.

Presenter22:39

Then you

Presenter22:44

This was in Kamchatka, was it? You.

Christina Dodwell22:45

Yes, it is.

Presenter22:46

Which is the sort of straggly bit.

Christina Dodwell22:48

Beyond Siberia. It's that thousand kilometre long peninsula that drops down from beyond Siberia to Japan. It's studded with volcanoes and hot springs and full of bears and reindeer and very few people. And it's perishingly cold. It was minus forty when I arrived there. It was hard to know how on earth to prepare for minus forty because I couldn't imagine what it would mean, clothes-wise and things. I'd never experienced such cold. And you know, the advantage is in the cold you can always put more things on. And in fact, I was wearing reindeer skins before very long, you know, reindeer skin trousers with the hairy side inwards and stuff. And when you're in the heat, there's a limit to the amount that you can take off. So that actually I was quite impressed with the cold. We better have your next record, I think. Kamchatka Music.

Christina Dodwell23:38

My next record is something that I actually recorded because when I was heading for what I thought was a dog race with my careful planning, I was going to watch the start of this the longest dog race, husky race in Russia. And I got there and they said but they left days ago. While I was messing around with my dog team there, I bumped into a song and dance group and they said, We're just off to visit all the reindeer herdsmen scattered through the tundra to give them performances of traditional song and music. Would you like to join us? And this was their theme tune.

Christina Dodwell24:20

Yeah.

Speaker 424:37

Not irony boshkiri.

Presenter25:14

It was a group of travelling singers in Kamchatka. What was that strange noise towards the end?

Christina Dodwell25:19

That was a seagull. As part of most of their songs, the gulls introduce all sorts of animal noises. There are festivals to the seagulls when they come back after the winter to nest on land. There are festivals to the wolf. There are festivals to the reindeer, and sometimes you'll find the huffing noises. And as they sing, when they come to the bits that involve seals, they'll sort of turn to face you and and and waggle in a very seal-like way, because their lives are so completely bound up with the animals that they share the tundra with.

Presenter25:48

And

Presenter25:50

So the pattern of the last twenty years, Christina, has been a long journey and then home to write a book about it, sometimes to finance the next journey?

Christina Dodwell25:59

Quite like that. There wasn't the home in between because I never I had my family in this country always, but I never had the first ten years I had no place. I wrote my first book in France. I wrote my second book in America and in Mexico. So that it's only in the last ten years that I've been coming more and more back to England.

Presenter26:21

And in the last two years home has been a rather more fixed business because you got married. What does your husband do for a living?

Christina Dodwell26:29

He is with insurance with Lloyds.

Presenter26:32

And will he understand, if one day, as you surely will, you up and off again?

Christina Dodwell26:37

You see, if you marry somebody like me, you can't imagine that they're going to sit and and work in a kitchen and and have them do all that sort of thing. You don't pick people like me if that's the kind of wife you want.

Presenter26:48

But is he really prepared for it? Have you laid the ground? Have you organized everything so that you can just disappear tomorrow?

Christina Dodwell26:53

BEAP

Christina Dodwell26:54

When I went to Kamchatka I left him and my animals. I wasn't over impressed with the way they looked after each other, but I teach everything on my farm to be independent so that it can manage when I'm not there.

Presenter27:07

So how often right now because that was a year ago you went to Kamchatka, how often right now do you get out the atlas and look for another unexplored straggly bit?

Christina Dodwell27:15

Just at the moment, in fact. This is sort of rather a current thing. The atlas is out on the table, although I tend to put it away when I know that people are coming to the house.

Presenter27:24

And are there any predictions?

Christina Dodwell27:26

N or well Somewhere warmer than Kamchatka, definitely. The rest is still to me something of a mystery.

Christina Dodwell27:35

Record number seven.

Christina Dodwell27:37

Record number seven is Dear Lord and Father of Mankind. In all the travels

Christina Dodwell27:43

Sundays, special times that I go into no matter what church, no matter what denomination. Often a church can just be some sawn up bits of log uh without walls, without anything, although usually the altar is the most important part. It's for all the sharings and uh all the the kindness of people.

Speaker 428:21

Speak down, let me shrewd on, speak holy wind and fire, what space for its own.

Speaker 428:38

Yeah.

Presenter28:50

Dear Lord and Father of mankind, what kind of island do you imagine yours to be, then, Christina? I mean, is it is it tropical or Siberian? What kind of thing might you live off? What will you do?

Christina Dodwell29:01

I'd never even thought of it being anything but tropical, with golden sandy beaches and palm trees full of cocoanuts, and a few wild banana groves and uh you know, all sorts of useful things.

Presenter29:13

You make it sound really quite idyllic and really quite alluring. I just can't help thinking it can't really be like that.

Christina Dodwell29:19

Well, there's not going to be any mosquitoes on my desert island for a start. Nor any of the sand flies, nor any of the jiggers and stuff like that.

Presenter29:28

But what might you live in? You you I mean, obviously you'll cope. Obviously you're deeply resourceful. You're the ideal castaway in many ways, aren't you?

Christina Dodwell29:35

I'd be terribly happy. I don't know that I'd want to come off the island for at least a year.

Christina Dodwell29:40

It would have

Christina Dodwell29:42

everything by the end. At the beginning it would be a great deal of hard work. I'm going to need to make a boat to get around in the shallows in and maybe get across to the next island, but only a sort of a small outrigger type of thing.

Presenter29:55

So your stay will be indefinite?

Christina Dodwell29:58

Well, I was wondering whether anyone was scheduled to come along and rescue me, or if I was meant to be there forever. Forever seems a little bit long if I've got nothing to do. Am I allowed to where's where's my goodies that I'm allowed to take with me? We're coming to those. We'll have your last record before that. What is it?

Christina Dodwell30:14

This is Massenet's Meditation de Thais, because I love it. At all times, day, night, it's wonderful.

Presenter31:12

Arthur Grumio accompanied by Istvan Hoydu playing part of Massenet's Meditation de Tais.

Presenter31:19

Now, if you could only have one of those records on your travels, Christina, which one would it be? Pink Floyd you said you always take.

Christina Dodwell31:26

It would be Pink Floyd because that's been with me for so many years and seems to be a part of my life. What about your book?

Christina Dodwell31:34

My book is The Prophet by Cahil Gibran.

Christina Dodwell31:38

I keep it beside my bed, and I love to dip into it late at night or at those odd hours of the night when if one happens to be awake. I think the most beautiful part of it is towards the end where he talks about death. For what is to die but to stand naked in the wind and melt into the sun? And what is to cease breathing but to free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered.

Christina Dodwell32:04

It's an extraordinary book, and certainly I don't have any hesitation over that choice. What about your luxury?

Christina Dodwell32:11

My luxury would be paper and pens, so that I could write, and with those tools then I'll be happy for many years on the desert island.

Presenter32:20

Christina Doddwell, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Speaker 432:25

Uh

Christina Dodwell32:25

Thank you.

Speaker 432:25

Yeah.

Speaker 332:33

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