Rt Hon Gillian Shephard MP

Rt Hon Gillian Shephard MP0:00

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.

Rt Hon Gillian Shephard MP0:08

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

Presenter0:29

My Costaway this week is a politician. She was born and brought up in Norfolk, a county which has remained at the centre of her life.

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Her schoolteachers predicted great things for her, but although she went to Oxford, she remained in local government, professionally and politically, until her late forties. And then, in 1987, she entered Parliament for a Norfolk seat, and she's since enjoyed the most rapid rise to prominence of any member of the Cabinet. Within five years, she was Secretary of State for Employment, a year later, she was at Agriculture, last year she moved to Education, and this year she was rewarded with the combined role of Secretary of State for Education and Employment. She is Gillian Shepard. So you were a late starter, Mrs Shepard. Was it always your intention to reach high places, or did you surprise yourself?

Presenter1:16

I suppose that secretly it was my intention to try to rise as high as I could, but I'm not certain that I ever really admitted it to myself. And it is also the case that I've enjoyed everything that I've done, whether it was as a careers advisor in Norfolk, whether it was looking after village halls and playing fields. You've had an awful lot of jobs. About 40 jobs, I think, on your C V.

Rt Hon Gillian Shephard MP1:38

Two.

Speaker 41:38

Yeah.

Rt Hon Gillian Shephard MP1:38

I don't know.

Rt Hon Gillian Shephard MP1:41

Yeah.

Presenter1:43

Perhaps not quite as many as that, but certainly a large number of jobs. And, you know, what they've all had in common is I've learned a lot from them and I've enjoyed them all. What they all had in common as well is that that you were in charge, didn't they? I I think whether you were head girl at school or chairman of the the Norfolk Health Authority, you were running something.

Presenter2:03

I suppose that's true. Yes. And I do enjoy running things, organizing things, uh planning policy, looking ahead, and getting people to work in a team. Do you think you'd be any good at running the country?

Presenter2:16

I think I have my hands very full with the task that I have at the moment. Running the country the country. Running the country, it seems to me, is something quite other.

Rt Hon Gillian Shephard MP2:21

Russian would have an art sign in the country.

Presenter2:27

But you wouldn't rule it out. I think that uh my age and my current responsibilities and uh other historical concatenations rule it out. Uh historical concatenations rule it in, surely. Mrs Thatcher was a woman. Mrs Thatcher was older than you when she was Prime Minister.

Presenter2:42

Mrs Thatcher was younger than me when she became leader of the Conservative Party. And I must say to you, looking at Mrs Thatcher as a woman, as a politician, as a Prime Minister, is not encouraging. She did everything so well. She was so phenomenal, so exceptional. It's not encouraging for ordinary mortals.

Presenter3:04

Let me ask you the sexiest question, because people always do. They they always ask high achieving women if they can be tough. I I I gather that uh y you have a temper, you're a kicker, a swearer, and a jumper, and you made ministers cry.

Presenter3:18

Well Belgian ministers anyway.

Rt Hon Gillian Shephard MP3:19

I

Presenter3:22

It is true. I had a very, very vigorous exchange with a Belgian minister on one occasion in Brussels. I do think, don't you, that women have a different way of approaching confrontation from the approach that men have. Who is to say which is the more effective? But we can still lose our tempers. Oh, yes, indeed. And we do, who do? Yes, we do.

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Tell me about you on a desert island and this music then. Uh music is a very important part of your life, isn't it? Yes, it is. I started to learn to play the piano when I was seven. I had a very gifted piano teacher.

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And she revealed to me

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absolutely another world. But I went to our local grammar school, and there I was delighted to find that there was just as strong a musical influence. We had a gifted uh music teacher, we had uh a number of choirs, we performed, we made our own music.

Presenter4:18

That was when the love of music was set in me and it's never left me. It's enriched my life. I haven't chosen my eight current favourites because obviously as your musical taste develops and your musical education develops your tastes uh change and your favourites change. What I've tried to do is to choose uh pieces of music that either mark an advance in my musical education or else a period in my life. Tell me about number one.

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Number one is something from Bach's B minor Mass. I can remember now when I first heard this performed at a concert in Norwich. It was an amateur performance. It was a big mass choir, big mass orchestra.

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And I can remember now the thrill uh that I had from that performance. Indeed, I can picture the scene. And I've chosen uh the uh cum sancto spirito piece of the mass, but I've also chosen for it to be performed by uh a small group of voices, really to illustrate in a sense that one's tastes move on, and I think that it is a wonderful performance.

Speaker 45:30

Samuel

Speaker 45:49

In the Lord!

Speaker 45:59

Uh

Presenter6:29

Cum Sancto Spirito from Bach's B minor Mass, performed by the Tavernor Consort and Players, conducted by Andrew Parrott.

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Let's talk Gillian Shepard about Norfolk, because it's obviously a very important part of you, and it seems to me that apart from going to Oxford and a couple of years teaching, I think, up the road in Bedford, you haven't really left it, have you? I think uh no, uh I haven't.

Presenter6:49

I'm fortunate enough to have roots. Not everybody does. I greatly value the fact that I know well still the area where I was born and brought up, that my father's family can trace their line back five or six generations, and indeed they were involved in the same trade for all those generations. What are the disadvantages? I suppose people might say that it's a bit narrowing in the end that you don't perhaps understand how the other half live, or the other 95%. If you don't break out of it, and if you don't make certain that you experience other things and make a great effort to understand where other people are coming from, of course it can be a disadvantage. But my word, it's a terrific strength. Particularly, you know, when things are going less than well, one returns to one's roots where you find, miraculously, in Norfolk, most people haven't entirely taken in perhaps the arcane row you might have been having in Whitehall. So you rush back every weekend and refresh yourself. Yes. Tell me a bit more about your father. He was a cattle dealer in the village of Napton. A dicky dealer, says the researcher. That sounds a bit disparaging. I think dicky dealer was a term that was used by someone who didn't know quite its resonances. We don't say that. My father was a cattle dealer, and so was his father, his father and his father, all in the same village. So you come from good, solid Norfolk stock, the rural variety. Not a lot of money, but strong on decency. Yes. Only. And very, very strong on hard work.

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It was borne in on me from the earliest possible age that, if you wanted a pound, really you had to go out and earn it.

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and that on the whole it was probably better not to spend it if you could avoid it.

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Tell me about record number two. Record number two is the last movement of the Mozart uh concerto for two pianos in E flat major, the K three six five.

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My piano teacher and I performed this last movement arranged for piano duet.

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at a concert that she gave to mark uh the point at which a number of her pupils, including me, were leaving school and going off, in my case, to university. So while I listen now with amazement to the feat that I was at that time able to perform, because I'm quite certain I couldn't play like that now, it also brings back that moment at which we were all fanning out into the broader world.

Presenter10:12

Part of Mozart's concerto for two pianos in E-flat, K365, played by Ellen Corva and Sepp Krotenhaus, with the Amsterdam Mozart players conducted by Jürgen Kussmau. You got to grade eight at school. You you did everything else terribly well at school, it seems, as I read about you. You were an academic high achiever, you sang, you took the lead in the school play, you enjoyed reading Virgil. The teachers thought you showed tact and initiative beyond your years, and what's more, the other girls liked you. It's um there must have been some shortcomings, I think is the question coming from that. I think there were plenty of shortcomings. The fact is that it was a very small school.

Presenter10:50

And there wasn't that much competition, obviously. It would have been very different, I'm quite sure, if I'd been in a school of a thousand or two thousand, and I wouldn't have shone in the same way. How many girls were there in your school? There were about three hundred, so you see it was a very small school. We were terrifically well taught.

Rt Hon Gillian Shephard MP11:05

Boom.

Presenter11:08

Our teachers were, I suppose, the last generation of uh dedicated single women, and they took a huge interest in us, did their absolute best for us, and I think gave all of us a very, very good start.

Speaker 411:24

Yeah.

Presenter11:25

Of course, it is exactly the sort of school that those who want to see a return to grammar schools mean when they say, let's return to grammar schools, don't they? It was strong, solid teaching of the three R's to a selected group of good achievers. Usually single-sex, weren't they? And there was space and time, as you said, for them to nurture those individuals, for them to be allowed to blossom. Now, surely you have some sympathy with that view. Yes, I do. My overriding conviction about the success or otherwise of schools is that it depends on the quality of the head. Doesn't it also depend on the size, though? I mean, you've just said it yourself, where you could be allowed to blossom. Yes, but let me also say that a school of three hundred

Rt Hon Gillian Shephard MP12:05

Yes, yes.

Presenter12:12

had in my day anyway some limitations. For example, it wasn't possible to offer two modern languages, it wasn't possible to offer two classical languages.

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I think that

Presenter12:23

A better size is somewhere near a thousand. But that wasn't possible for us then. But it was possible to offer standards, which really are all that matter in education, aren't they? Yes. Standards are, as far as I'm concerned, THE issue.

Presenter12:38

And, again, they stem from the quality of the head and the quality of the teaching. It does seem strange, though, doesn't it, that we're now, what, forty years on since this daughter of a Norfolk dicky dealer was able to find her way through this State High School to an Oxford college

Presenter12:57

When today, as I say forty years on, we are by your own admission producing often semi-literate children who grunt too much and can't put a sentence together and have bad grammar. Let's put that into context. There's no doubt that now we have the means of measuring what schools are doing. Not all of what is measured is comfortable.

Rt Hon Gillian Shephard MP13:06

Not again.

Presenter13:18

We can show that there have been improvements in examination achievements both at GCSE, GNVQ and A level. That is good. But we can also show that something like twenty to thirty percent of lessons that are taught are not taught well enough, in the words of the Chief Inspector. Now the important thing is to have the means of measurement, which we now have. Once you've got that, then you can do something about what you find. We are not there yet, but at least we know what's wrong and at least we know what should be done to put it right. But the argument is that perhaps we were there forty years ago before the system was changed. Well, you say that. Children today have

Presenter14:02

Enormous opportunities, great challenges, but they also have.

Presenter14:08

Quite a lot of difficulties, I think, because the external influences to which children are subject are now quite powerful in a way that they weren't when I was at school. What does that mean? T television, cinema? It means television, social means pop music, it means social life, it means uh peer group pressures, fashion.

Rt Hon Gillian Shephard MP14:22

Social life

Presenter14:28

So they don't concentrate as hard as they should on school work as well. I think that it gives children quite a lot of pressures that I know I didn't have.

Rt Hon Gillian Shephard MP14:29

So they don't

Rt Hon Gillian Shephard MP14:31

Yeah.

Presenter14:37

and which make it more difficult for schools, perhaps, to have the influence on young people that they had in my day.

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Record number three. Record number three is the second movement of the Schubert string quintet in C major.

Presenter14:54

I was brought up in a very strongly classical tradition as far as my musical education was concerned. Certainly my own piano teacher, our teacher at school, had very strong classical biases. If everything had stopped at Bach or possibly Beethoven on a good day, I think both of them would have been very happy. And it wasn't really until I got to Oxford that I felt I could luxuriate in the romantics. And this piece, I think, is exquisitely beautiful.

Presenter16:09

Part of the second movement of Schubert's string quintet in C major, played by the Raphael Ensemble. Tell me about university. You you narrowly missed a first in in French and Latin. Now there are um those and again probably supporters of the grammar school who say, Well, of course Latin is also the answer to the the education problem, that if you get children to do that at GCSE level, then you'd ensure that they had a grasp of grammar.

Presenter16:34

And knew what parts of speech were. You're nodding. There's no doubt about that. Uh I loved Latin in any case for its own sake. But you of course you can't approach it unless you have a very strong gram grasp of grammar. And I happen to believe that to understand the way language functions is enriching and interesting and enlightening. So why don't you make it a an essential part of the national curriculum?

Presenter16:59

I don't disagree with it, but I do see the pressure on the national curriculum for all kinds of other things too. Now all your teachers were saying that you were born to teach or you'd end up running the country and things like that. Um what about you at the time when you were coming out of Oxford? What did you think you were going to do with your life?

Presenter17:17

I wasn't very sure. I went into teaching. I didn't enjoy it very much. I liked the children. I liked the contact with my subject. What I didn't terribly like was being uh stuck in one place with uh a daily routine that didn't alter very much. And in the end you went back to Norfolk, as we've said, and you became a careers advisor and a school inspector and and you lectured for the Cambridge Extramural Board and so on. You were obviously very dedicated to your work. Did you think that marriage was not for you?

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In my twenties and early thirties I was so busy

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pursuing a a vast range of things, that I did feel my life was rather full.

Presenter17:57

You did get engaged a couple of times, didn't you?

Rt Hon Gillian Shephard MP17:59

Uh

Presenter18:01

And you got cold feet? Yes, I got cold feet. It uh it wasn't for me at that time. Was it fear of commitment or the wrong men?

Presenter18:10

I think probably the wrong men. So what was different about Tom Shepherd when you met him? And you would have been, what, thirty four?

Presenter18:19

Yes, thirty four or thirty five.

Presenter18:22

I very much admired the work that my husband did. He was considered as a very, very good professional. He was ahead of his colleagues, yes. And he was doing a most terrifically

Rt Hon Gillian Shephard MP18:28

He was ahead of his toilet.

Presenter18:33

A good job, so I was interested in him professionally.

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and had indeed known him for three or four years, simply through professional contact and then when it came to it all the other problems seemed to melt away.

Presenter18:48

And you agreed to marry him? Yes. He had two um sons. Hi his wife had died. Yes. Two sons who were then aged eleven and fourteen. Work didn't matter. You you in fact gave it up to look after them? Yes, I did. It would, I think, be honest to say that I was not unhappy to have a change at that moment, but also there was no way I could continue with my job because it was in a different town from the town where my husband was working. But until that point it doesn't sound as if you were the sort of person who would give up work for love. And this must have been love. Well, I suppose it must have been.

Presenter19:26

You're not sure?

Presenter19:27

I think the way things have turned out it must have been. Next piece of music. My next piece of music is French, César Fran, the sonata for violin and uh piano, the fourth movement. Actually Fran was born in Belgium, but uh he is generally speaking regarded as a French composer. And I've chosen this because I'm enchanted by French people. I love uh their elegance, I love their intelligence, and I love the fact that they prize intelligence, which I feel we don't do too much in this country. But there are aspects of the French character which I find maddening, and one of them is their relentless logic, even when they know they're wrong. And I think this particular piece of music illustrates that perfectly. It's a lovely tune, very elegant, but maddening.

Presenter21:17

Part of Cesare Frank's sonata for piano and violin in A major, played by Pinker Stuckermann and Mark Nykrug.

Presenter21:24

So, Julian Shepherd, you dedicated your life for some years to your husband and two stepsons. You said since the whole experience changed me completely, it broke me open. What does that mean? Well, obviously, it was a shattering change of routine from one who had been single and professional. It wouldn't be true to say that I remained at home during those years because during that time I got elected to the county council. I was doing a part-time job for a director of Anglia Television, which was extraordinarily interesting. I was a magistrate. I got involved in health authority and so on. But

Presenter22:02

Of course, experiencing bringing up children at first hand does make you understand all kinds of uh challenges that you you couldn't otherwise know. But how much did you calculate um the personal side of all of this? As you say, you you went on being very active and you were still a magistrate and you became a county councillor and so on. You switched into the politics of local government.

Presenter22:26

W did you always intend, therefore, that once the boys were off your hands, as it were, you were going to let your ambition in?

Presenter22:34

I don't think that I ever planned my career. I just took uh opportunities that seemed to present themselves. But where did you find the confidence? It's one thing to operate on a local level, but to believe that you can operate on a national level requires an enormous amount of confidence. And you were somebody who, as you've explained, you know, had stayed at home and done the domestic duties and so on. You hadn't carefully built yourself up over a period of years heading towards Parliament. There you were, a woman of forty-six when you were eventually adopted. How did you know you could do it? It didn't occur to me that I couldn't. It seemed to me that there was a whole range of issues with which I was very familiar and probably more familiar than a lot of other people trying to go into Parliament at that time. So you had no fears?

Presenter23:26

It wouldn't be quite true to say that. I had some apprehensions, and indeed to this day find certain things quite nerve wracking. Which things are they? Well, I must say the House can be the House of Commons can be quite an intimidating place. But on the other hand, I knew that I had enough to bring to the task, and that with hard work I hoped I would make a success of being a Member of Parliament. Did you imagine you'd make the Cabinet? No, certainly not. It didn't occur to me. I thought that starting at forty seven put one right out of court, for all of that.

Presenter24:03

And I hadn't thought that the qualities that I brought were particularly the qualities that would be valued.

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What I hadn't realized was all kinds of qualities and characteristics are valued, and it's a very mixed and rich world. What did you think you lacked then to be a Cabinet Minister? Well, clearly, uh experience in the House and experience of uh politics at national level, which obviously I did, so it's been rather a fast learning curve.

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Record number five. Number five is a record which was given to me by my younger stepson. It's Lo Hear the Gentle Lark. The words are by Shakespeare. The music is by Henry Bishop.

Presenter24:43

Curiously, it was first recorded by Nellie Melbourne, but uh this version is by Cleo Lane and James Galway, and I think it's a glorious mix of uh Cleo Lane's beautiful dark voice and uh the silvery flute.

Speaker 425:02

Lo, we hear the gentle love, we hear your breath.

Speaker 425:10

On his moist cabinet, Mount Sab And wakes the morning from whose silver breast The sun rises in truth of majesty, the sun

Speaker 425:36

Gracious in true majesty, Lord hear the gentle royal breast form his moist parameters, mother of God.

Presenter25:59

Cleolane and James Galway, and lo, hear the gentle lark

Presenter26:03

You now preside, Gillian Shepard, as I've said, over two huge areas, education and employment. Does the the fusing of the two imply that the Government believes that unemployment is not simply an economic problem, but that it's an educational one, that we're not producing a potential workforce of the right standards?

Presenter26:22

I think that we merged the two departments because it's quite clear that there is a continuum as far as the individual is concerned, starting with nursery school, going through education, through vocational academic qualifications, on into training, higher education, and then on into the workplace with a continuing need to retrain and reskill. Of course, the Government has sought to remedy the problem of not having a sufficiently well-educated workforce by broadening higher education over the last few years, offering the chance of a degree to more students. And in order to do that, you've upgraded the polytechnics and called them universities. But haven't you simply, in doing that, devalued the currency? Haven't you made it easier for more students to go to university by giving more institutions the right to hand out degrees, which is not the same as improving the standards of the lesser institutions? We have to ensure that what is on offer is of good quality, of a high standard. And the point is that what is offered now in higher education is a much broader range than was available when I went into higher education. And it's designed for a much broader range of purposes. You say it's important for the quality to be maintained, for the standards to be there. Is a first-class honours degree from a newly converted polytechnic as valuable as a first-class honours degree from the University of Manchester? Supposing that you were applying for a job in a newly established business, would you be more used to that business if you had a first-class honours degree in English from one of the Saudi-based universities that you mentioned? Or if you had a degree in computer sciences from one of the former polytechnics? I would say to you it depends what the business is. The former polytechnics are offering degrees in English. And as we know, there were stories this summer that certain employers didn't want to interview students who came from certain newly converted polytechnics. They said we don't want to see them. We don't regard their degree as being very valuable. Look, as you say.

Rt Hon Gillian Shephard MP28:06

But the form of politics

Rt Hon Gillian Shephard MP28:08

And as I know the

Presenter28:23

Uh it could be that uh degrees in English vary in standards between universities. That is almost undoubtedly the case. With 120 or so institutions, it is clearly the case that some will be better than others. What is important is that what is on offer is monitored, is checked, is inspected, and that it is useful to the individual and the employer. That is what is important. Record number six. Record number six is a Diana Ross song.

Presenter28:55

I had the good fortune to meet Diana Ross earlier in the year at a friend's house. Uh she was extraordinary, extremely modest, very understated, but with uh a lot of power there, just waiting to be unleashed, I imagine, by the stimulus of a public performance. And uh I've chosen a song called One Shining Moment.

Speaker 329:17

Own my dream.

Speaker 429:20

Gotcha.

Speaker 429:25

Honey oh my

Speaker 429:28

One shiny moment.

Speaker 429:32

Yeah.

Speaker 329:35

And if I never have another

Speaker 329:39

I'm glad that I'm home.

Presenter29:44

Diana Ross and One Shining Moment.

Presenter29:46

There's little doubt, Mrs Shepherd, and we've touched on some of the areas that our education system is perceived as being ill at ease. Parents feel, on the whole, and I generalise of course, our education isn't too good. We're not doing our best by our children. Now why do you think that is? It has to come down, doesn't it, to two things. It's either poor standards of teaching or it's lack of money. Which do you think it is? While an enormous amount of progress has been made, and progress continues to be made, naturally parents must be concerned if they think that the quality overall isn't as good as it could be. It isn't as good as it could be yet, as I said, between. Between teaching or money? Between twenty and thirty percent of lessons are not adequate, and that is the quality of teaching.

Rt Hon Gillian Shephard MP30:23

But isn't it

Presenter30:32

Our Chief Inspector has insisted throughout since his appointment that the key issue is the quality of teaching, and I know that to be the case. So you've invented a test for head teachers now. They must pass an exam before they can qualify to lead a school. What about the teachers generally? Should there be more rigorous testing of them? We now have a teacher training agency whose task it is to run and monitor teacher training.

Presenter31:01

And we are looking very carefully both at the way initial teacher training is delivered and also at the way that we target

Presenter31:11

In-service training, because both of those things are immensely important. More music.

Presenter31:17

The next record is an inevitable choice. It is Benjamin Britton. He does so represent East Anglia and the grittier side. The piece I've chosen is one of the sea interludes from Peter Grimes. It's called Sunday Morning, and you might think from that title that here was a calm, reassuring piece of music. It is anything but. It is menacing. It is over busy. There is this heavy tolling of a bell and a sort of spiky movement representing the people. It's not at all comfortable, and I think it sits well with some characteristics of East Anglia.

Speaker 432:38

Uh

Presenter32:53

Plot of the third interlude from Benjamin Britton's Peter Grimes, played by the orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and conducted by Benjamin Britton.

Presenter33:01

So you stagger home to Norfolk on a Friday night, Julian Shepard, with your red boxes. Does does mister Shepherd have the supper coming nicely to the boil, and has he has he become new man?

Rt Hon Gillian Shephard MP33:09

Has he

Presenter33:11

He is certainly a good cook. He does quite a lot of the shopping. But I must say I also enjoy cooking. But how quickly can you throw off the burden of office on that Friday night, or does it stay with you?

Presenter33:22

I think I throw it off almost immediately. Uh I'm closely in touch with my parents and with my husband uh during the week by telephone. So you know h how everything's running at home. Do you get back and sort of try to restore order?

Rt Hon Gillian Shephard MP33:33

Oh yo

Presenter33:36

that maybe has slipped in your absence.

Presenter33:39

If you are asking me if I tidy the house when I get home, the answer is always yes. You may not need it, but I always do it.

Presenter33:48

What about your own appearance, not not that of your house? Um how much does that matter to you? I mean, you're you're a professional politician. You know that, annoying and superficial as it is,

Presenter33:58

Appearance matters. Yes, I've had to come to terms with that, of course, and I I've evolved a system where it takes the least time possible, consistent with looking reasonably presentable. But what about your image? What what

Presenter34:10

I suppose the image we have certainly is neat, tidy, well ordered, conscientious, does her homework, all those things we've talked about. They're all very sound and proper. But but what's what's the truth about Julian Shepherd? Is she more exciting than that?

Presenter34:24

I don't think it's for me to say. You better ask my friends. But what do you think what would you like to think your image was, as well as all those things I've mentioned?'Cause obviously you're proud of those.

Presenter34:35

I certainly want to be regarded as businesslike and gripful.

Presenter34:39

I also uh prize the fact that most people think that I'm very good company and have a good sense of humour. I like that, I find it very complimentary. Last record. It is a Mozart string quintet. It's the first movement of the G minor string quintet, the K five one six. I just want it to go with me on this desert island because I love it.

Presenter35:58

Part of Mozart's string quintet in G minor, K516, played by the Amadeus Quartet with Cecil Aronowitz. I didn't ask you, Gillian Shepherd, about coping on this island. I'm in no doubt. I mean, you're going to be fine-bored out of your mind, but fine. Certainly bored out of my mind. I do love company, so it will be the most incredible deprivation. And I shall develop a wonderful line in talking to myself of that, I'm certain. But yes, as far as making a shelter is concerned, I'm sure I can do that, and I'm quite sure also that I shall be able to catch fish and animals to eat. If you could only take one of those eight records, which one would it be? It would be the B minor Mass, because I find that the most intellectually satisfying, and because I know the work very well, so that to have that particular piece would mean that I could recall quite a lot of the rest of the work. And a book?

Presenter36:50

I finally decided to take The Waning of the Middle Ages by Johan Hoitzinger. It's a a great big canvas of the end of the Middle Ages, and I think it would be very helpful on a desert island because it would enable you to work in your own mind on knowledge of that period. It's a good reminding book.

Presenter37:13

And what about your luxury? Ah Well, now you have insisted that this must be a real luxury, and so what I would like to take is an everlasting supply of Madame Rochards.

Presenter37:27

I see. Very luxurious, and we shall supply it. Gillian Shepherd, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Rt Hon Gillian Shephard MP37:43

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