Lord Alexander

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

Presenter0:28

My Castaway this week is a lawyer. He began his career slogging it out as a jobbing barrister on the Western Circuit, where he earned a reputation that took him to the top of his profession. He won cases for Geoffrey Archer and Kerry Packer, and lost one for Ken Livingston's GLC.

Presenter0:43

In the eighties he moved to the City, first as chairman of the Takeover Panel, and then, rather surprisingly, as Chairman of Nat West. He's still there, but the law remains a great love, and those who know him best say that if the Conservatives stay in power he could become the next Lord Chancellor. He is Lord Alexander.

Presenter1:03

It's a large if, um, because of sixteen years of in power, if for no other reason. Do you allow yourself to think about occupying the Wool Sack?

Lord Alexander1:10

No, I don't. I love my present job. I love banking. As a barrister you never knew where your next case was coming from. I'm not seeking another case at the moment, and I certainly would have no idea at all where it would come from.

Presenter1:24

So you wouldn't expect to be Lord Chancellor, but then, as you indicate, you you didn't expect to be a banker, so it could happen.

Lord Alexander1:30

I was very surprised. I was gobsmacked when about six years ago someone approached me to become a banker.

Presenter1:36

Would you have been gobsmacked if you'd told the young Bob Alexander at home in the potteries at his father's petrol station that one day his name would even be mentioned in connection with such high office?

Lord Alexander1:48

Oh, my goodness, totally. I was um from the Midlands. We had a good, sound family, but it was a very ordinary background. My father had a filling station which became a repair garage. In those days Cambridge seemed a remote place, London seemed a remote place, and the bar itself seemed even more remote.

Presenter2:08

But there must have been a a tiny part of you that might have thought, if I really work hard, I I can achieve something, I can do something with myself.

Lord Alexander2:18

There was a tiny part of me that th obviously thought that, because I did work hard, but there was another part of me that was wondering all the time whether I could possibly make it.

Presenter2:27

But were your parents ambitious for you?

Lord Alexander2:29

Yes. My parents were remarkable. They had both left school at fourteen. My mother was an accountant's secretary. My father had been apprenticed to the old Standard Motor Company. They had built themselves up, and they were very proud to have done so, and they were very ambitious for their children.

Presenter2:46

Because they ended up sending you away to school, but you don't sound as if money was particularly um there wasn't a lot of it about, was there?

Lord Alexander2:53

There wasn't a lot of it about. They saved to send me to Brighton College on the south coast. My parents couldn't take holidays. We didn't have family holidays except occasionally to Rhyl or Prestaton in North Wales, and they really had to put themselves out to give my brother and myself a decent education.

Presenter3:15

Tell me about your first record.

Lord Alexander3:17

My first record reflects childhood. The Midlands, Stoke on Trent, when I was young, was a tough place, it was in the war, it was a hard life for people, and to hear coming over the radio Harry Lauder singing Keep Right On to the End of the Road was always a great tonic for all of us.

Speaker 23:36

Keep right on to the end of the road Keep right until the end Though the way be long, let your heart be

Lord Alexander3:47

Yeah.

Lord Alexander3:48

Or

Speaker 23:51

Keep right on round the bend. If you're tired and weary, still journey on till you come to your happy abode.

Presenter4:05

Harry Lauder, and keep right on to the end of the road. You won a state scholarship to King's, Bob Alexander, to read English.

Presenter4:13

What sort of figure would you have cut there? Can you describe yourself to me? Aged eighteen.

Lord Alexander4:18

Tall, gangly, dressed in cords and a duffle coat, bespectacled,

Lord Alexander4:25

wondrous about the world, eager to please and keen to make friends.

Presenter4:30

The most surprising thing I read about you was that you couldn't pluck up the courage to speak in the Union.

Lord Alexander4:35

That's correct. I was intensely shy, except when I got with my close friends, and I did try once to uh act at Cambridge in a play that wasn't notably well attended by the audience. But I certainly watched these great gladiators in the Union, and didn't feel I had the self-possession uh to do the same and to talk, although I'd have liked to do so.

Presenter5:00

But why not? It's such a a contradiction, isn't it? Because not that long after, you know, you began to stand up in court and you you were noticed immediately for your conversational manner, for your ease the ease with which you did it.

Lord Alexander5:12

I've never really understood why I could do standing up in court and why I couldn't speak in the Union. But what I found was, in Court I had a brief.

Lord Alexander5:22

In court I knew exactly what my role was. I also knew

Lord Alexander5:27

When my turn to speak came, so I didn't have to rely on brashness or interrupting to get my turn to be on my feet.

Presenter5:34

You mean you can't stand heckling, is that it?

Lord Alexander5:37

I wouldn't say that. I've never been in the House of Commons, and I'm glad in a sense that all my Parliamentary contribution has been in the more civilised atmosphere of the House of Lords. But I might have been able to respond to Heckling.

Presenter5:51

The other interesting thing is that you started off reading English, but you changed to the law, and have since said it was your vocation. What did did it come upon you suddenly?

Lord Alexander5:59

When I was reading law I found that all my university vocations were spent reading the biographies of the great advocates, and I loved them, and I was very attracted by the law as a discipline, because although I love English and it's always been a great solace in life, I find that law to

Lord Alexander6:19

Study is a more disciplined um and logical topic.

Presenter6:23

But in those days w when we were in Cambridge, you would have been there.

Lord Alexander6:26

nineteen fifty six to fifty nine.

Presenter6:29

Wasn't it more usual for young men who wanted to go to the bar to have independent means?

Lord Alexander6:34

Very much so. It was one of the reasons why I hesitated. I initially thought of becoming a solicitor, but my tutor Ken Polack, who'd just done his pupillage, encouraged me to come to the bar. He said it's a profession that's probably just changing. It's becoming the place where someone with the talent but without means may be able to make their way in the future.

Presenter6:57

Tell me about record number two.

Lord Alexander6:59

I would like something that reminded me of King's with its beautiful chapel what better than the carol that begins the annual Christmas Carol concert once in Royal David City.

Presenter8:10

once in Royal David City, sung by the choir of King's College, Cambridge, conducted by Sir David Wilcox. So you were called to the Bar, Lord Alexander, in nineteen sixty one, Middle Temple, another scholarship.

Presenter8:22

I'm I'm sorry to press this image of the kind of awe struck provincial, but had you been to London before? What did you think when you walked into the Inns of Court?

Lord Alexander8:30

Only a few times, and I remember the first time I came to eat a dinner, which was one of the means considered essential for qualifying for the bar in those days, and I was wearing my one suit, which was a green suit.

Lord Alexander8:44

and all the benchers, who appeal then very old to me, came up, and they were incredibly kind, but they all pointed out to me that next time I came, please could I be wearing a grey suit.

Presenter8:57

Were your preconceptions right? Were you surrounded by young men of independent means? And were you slightly different from the rest?

Lord Alexander9:04

Mostly they had some independent means, but they were very welcoming and friendly. I never felt out of it. I was lucky enough to get a job sub editing the Times law reports five nights a week during my pupillage. That taught me a bit of law, but it also gave me something to live on.

Presenter9:22

And you you sent for the editor one night, didn't you?

Lord Alexander9:24

Once um I, perhaps um because I was young and callow, went down to where my page was being set on the stone.

Lord Alexander9:35

And they changed the setting out from the old up and down columns of the Times to modern tabloid fashion. I felt this would reduce the quality, so I went straight to the editor's secretary. I said, Please may I see the editor and, to my great surprise, I was ushered immediately into the presence of Sir William Haley, who was then the editor, who explained to me very gently that he agreed with me entirely, but we had to march in time. What a wonderful experience that was of management, the editor being wholly available to the youngest night reader.

Presenter10:10

Was this moonlighting really you did on the tax? I mean, were you allowed to do such?

Lord Alexander10:13

I was yes, it was one of the very few external activities that you were allowed to do that were judged respectable for a young barrister. Because it was the law report. Because it was the law report.

Presenter10:24

But you then spent five years or more on on the Western Circuit, Portsmouth, Winchester, Southampton, doing what kind of work?

Lord Alexander10:31

Everything criminal work, divorce work, personal injury work, contract work was rather like a boxer learning the trade in the boxing booth, and the mix of experience stood me in marvellous stead afterwards, and was very exciting at the time.

Lord Alexander10:47

More music.

Lord Alexander10:49

When I was studying for the bar I did a postal course because I couldn't afford to go to tutorial college. It was an exceptionally dreary course, and I kept myself sane by playing and playing over and over again Mozart's clarinet concerto.

Presenter12:05

Part of Mozart's clarinet concerto played by Ernst Ottenzammer with Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Sir Colin Davis. You took silk when you were thirty six, and um not many years later, actually, Lord Denning described you as the best barrister of your generation.

Presenter12:21

How hard won was that reputation? We we you've described that you weren't a a natural public speaker, that you didn't have perhaps the connections of some of your contemporaries. It must have been won by hard graft.

Lord Alexander12:33

The bar is a very competitive profession. It is very hard work. Everyone who succeeded at the bar has had to work quite intensely, to drive out a lot of aspects of leisure and recreation in order to do so, and I don't think I was any exception to that.

Lord Alexander12:51

I found I needed to prepare my cases intensely thoroughly. If I was preparing a speech, I would write out every word of it in advance.

Presenter13:01

How meticulously then would you prepare for for the cross examination of a witness, for example?

Lord Alexander13:06

I would prepare every question in cross examination, and I would also have little lines leading down to alternative routes depending how the witness answered the previous question.

Presenter13:19

So you'd have a question for every answer, as it were.

Lord Alexander13:21

I would attempt to have a question for every answer, rather like a sort of family tree.

Presenter13:25

So you usually knew what you were going to say next, by the sound of it. Did you know what you were going to do next? I wonder how much you planned your gestures. One thinks immediately of you handing the box of tissues in the Geoffrey Archer case to the the the prostitute in the witness box whom you'd reduced to tears. I mean it was a good move, good good moment of theatre. Did you sound?

Lord Alexander13:46

It was totally impromptu and it wasn't actually meant as theatre. I believe witnesses are entitled to courtesy. And

Lord Alexander13:55

It was a quite genuine gesture. I'd questioned her softly. I'd not wish to reduce her to tears, because I think giving evidence is a very difficult business, and one thing I would deplore is when people ask questions which are unnecessarily offensive or asked in an unnecessarily offensive tone.

Presenter14:16

Some might deduce from that that you lack the killer instinct, then.

Lord Alexander14:20

I'm not sure about that, because my client is the person I'm acting for, and if it's necessary to press on, I can press on as strongly as need be, but it can be done in a courteous and gentle tone.

Presenter14:33

But you wouldn't deny that that the courtroom is theatre.

Presenter14:37

That there is a place for for.

Presenter14:40

Emotional outbursts in it.

Lord Alexander14:42

I agree that every judge has emotions. It's said that under the robes of a judge beats the bosom of a juror. I agree with that, and you need some appeal to the emotion but with a judge alone it's better disguised as a matter of logic.

Presenter15:00

But, nevertheless, you're saying he is susceptible to emotional appeal. No doubt at all.

Lord Alexander15:03

No doubt at all about it.

Presenter15:05

And you would use it and do use it have used it.

Lord Alexander15:07

Yeah, but it's got to be used subtly. If it's overdone in an old fashioned way, then it's totally counterproductive. With a jury, obviously it's different. With a jury you've got to capture the hearts of the jury, and not just their minds.

Presenter15:21

So you say that you rehearsed, as it were, planned, uh, prepared meticulously for these closing speeches. One thinks again particularly of the Geoffrey Archer case, which was such high profile, very important to you. I think you had a week end prepare before you had to deliver that on the Monday.

Presenter15:37

How much did you spend every waking hour on it?

Lord Alexander15:40

I spent the first two days of a long weekend writing out every word of my closing speech and correcting it. I then spent the third day inflicting it for three or four hours on my long-suffering wife and family to get their view on it.

Lord Alexander16:02

Do they not

Presenter16:03

Yeah.

Lord Alexander16:03

Uh

Presenter16:03

Yeah. Yeah.

Lord Alexander16:03

Off.

Lord Alexander16:04

There's a danger that they laugh, in which case we stop for a bit, and I tell them that it's a serious matter, and please will they help me?

Presenter16:12

Make What number four?

Lord Alexander16:13

Record number four reflects the fact that every barrister has to be prepared to

Lord Alexander16:18

act for unpopular causes, to tilt against windmills and I love Do You Hear the People Sing from Les Miserables?

Speaker 216:29

The beam of seven, singing a song of every day.

Speaker 216:34

Ignore the people who will not be slaves again.

Speaker 216:40

Please don't

Speaker 216:43

Please and love.

Speaker 216:46

Uh

Speaker 216:48

Well

Speaker 216:51

You give all you can give so that a banner may advance.

Speaker 216:57

Uh

Presenter16:57

Do you hear the people sing from the original London cast recording of Les Miserables?

Presenter17:02

How much did you worry as a barrister about the outcome of the case from the personal point of view of the person you're representing? I mean, obviously you don't want to lose the case is bad for business, but but would you lose sleep on behalf of the client?

Lord Alexander17:15

It depended on the case. I mean, sometimes it was inevitable. I mean the Geoffrey Archer case was immensely important to Geoffrey and Mary Archer and their family. I remember once crossing the Strand in the middle of it, and all the publicity.

Lord Alexander17:29

and a friend at the bar saying to me, You must be having fun, to which my reply was, actually, I'm absolutely stressed out.

Presenter17:37

How surprised were you to win?

Lord Alexander17:38

By the end I was pretty confident we'd win.

Presenter17:41

But how often is a verdict a surprise?

Lord Alexander17:44

Sometimes verdicts for surprise is particularly for defendants. I think it's very rare that you feel that some one who is innocent

Lord Alexander17:55

is convicted, but sometimes, because of the burden of proof in our system that the prosecution must prove its case beyond reasonable doubt,

Lord Alexander18:03

You felt that a defendant was acquitted whom you wouldn't necessarily have acquitted yourself.

Presenter18:09

Hm. Because of course in the early days of of um a barrister's career the cab rank principle applies. You've got to take on whatever's next on the rank, as it were, whichever case comes up next. So you must have ended up representing people

Presenter18:22

whom you didn't have a lot of sympathy for, or perhaps even people whom you felt didn't deserve to win.

Lord Alexander18:28

That's one of the strengths of the bar. Barristers don't decide cases. They're cogs in the machinery of justice. They're absolutely vital because everyone's entitled to have their case put fearlessly, strongly and independently. But it means that you can't choose who you represent and nor should you be able to do so.

Presenter18:47

But it helps if you believe your client is in the right, doesn't it?

Lord Alexander18:51

I think it helps. Not every barrister would agree.

Presenter18:53

How deeply compromising is it if you believe them not to be in the right?

Lord Alexander18:57

It's not deeply compromising because you do a totally professional job for them, you put the case properly and strongly, you've done your job. But I always found that if my personal view went along with the uh client's case, I felt just that much more convincing.

Presenter19:16

How did it work then with the high-profile cases that you've done? And we've talked about Geoffrey Osha, but there was Kerry Packer, Ian Botham, Ken Livingston, and so on.

Presenter19:24

I presume you could pick and choose, or you were chosen by their solicitor. Would you meet them before you finally committed to taking on the case, or did you have to commit before you'd seen the whites of their eyes?

Lord Alexander19:34

I had to commit before I saw the whites of the eyes. That's part of the Cabranc rule. Kerry Packer, for example, I'd not met at all. I mean, he'd been the subject of tremendous hate press because he was attacking that venerable English institution which I love myself cricket.

Lord Alexander19:51

When I was asked to represent him, I said why haven't I been offered the brief for the MCC? But when I met Kerry Packer, heard about his case and the force of it, I greatly enjoyed arguing that side of the case and ended up respecting him considerably.

Presenter20:07

But it must leave a a rather bad taste in your mouth when you win.

Presenter20:12

But you know in your heart that the best man didn't.

Lord Alexander20:15

It happens very rarely. That's the strength of our system, that if both sides of the case are well argued, and the judge holds the rings between the parties, then, generally speaking, I found in my experience that an injustice was pretty rare.

Lord Alexander20:33

Next record.

Lord Alexander20:34

Next record is, if I may have a piece of poetry, because I love the spoken word, could I perhaps have Rudyard Kipling's The Road Through the Woods?

Speaker 220:44

They shut the road through the woods seventy years ago.

Speaker 220:48

Weather and rain have undone it again, and now you would never know there was once a path through the woods before they planted the tree.

Speaker 220:56

It is underneath the coppice and heath.

Speaker 220:59

and the thin anemones

Speaker 221:01

Only the keeper sees that where the ringed dove broods and the badgers roll at ease,

Speaker 221:08

There was once a road through the woods

Speaker 221:12

Yet if you enter the woods of a summer evening late,

Speaker 221:15

When the night air cools on the trout ringed pool

Speaker 221:19

Where the otter whistles his mate

Speaker 221:22

They fear not men in the woods because they see so few.

Speaker 221:26

You will hear the beat of a horse's feet and the swish of a skirt in the dew, Steadily cantering through the misty solitude.

Speaker 221:33

as though they perfectly knew

Lord Alexander21:34

Though they

Speaker 221:36

The old lost road through the wood

Speaker 221:41

But there is no road through the woods.

Presenter21:45

Rudyard Kipling's The Road Through the Woods read by Robert Donut.

Presenter21:49

Why would a man at the peak of his profession, already earning a fortune, decide to leave it and enter another field altogether in your case ultimately banking, about which he knew

Presenter22:00

Well, not a lot.

Lord Alexander22:02

Probably nothing at the time. I'd been at the bar twenty five years or more. I'd seen a lot of cases. I was asked to take a part time job in the city as chairman of the takeover panel. I found it very interesting. Then one Monday morning turned up in my office the then chairman of Nat West.

Lord Alexander22:21

I wondered why he'd come, but

Lord Alexander22:24

To my great surprise he asked me if I was willing to succeed him. I had to think about that pretty carefully, and I asked them to think about that pretty carefully. But in the end the opportunity of a change of career into another area of life, banking, which I felt was thoroughly worth while, tempted me.

Presenter22:43

Certainly. But again, you were a man who had always worked on his own, and we've talked about this this meticulous preparation, very much a a self employed loaner, as it were, because that's the nature of being a barrister, suddenly to move into kind of corporate governance about which you knew little and had no experience whatsoever.

Lord Alexander23:00

That was the big culture shock. I don't think I appreciated quite how big the divide was. I went from a self-employed profession where relationships with your colleagues were very informal, generally Christian name, to a bank which then I found stuffy, hierarchical, uh bureaucratic. And for my first two years I found it very difficult indeed.

Presenter23:24

Daunted and lonely you've described it as being yourself as being

Lord Alexander23:26

It was daunting. It was lonely. And the recession came. A lot of problems hit banking. I felt I was having to play a part in sorting them out before I'd been able to go through my process of playing myself in.

Presenter23:40

So you you would say that it's not stuffy at all now, would you?

Lord Alexander23:44

I think it's improved a lot. We now, I think, have much more informality in dealings. Junior people are much more prepared to pl tell senior people what they think. The scope for it to go further, but I find it a completely changed place.

Presenter24:00

He also hit banking just as the clearing banks were becoming deeply unpopular.

Presenter24:06

Criticisms for overcharging allegations of poor advice, which as we know have ended up in court numerous cases. How much do you think that's our fault, the consumers' fault, that we've been very slow to cotton on that banking is a market-driven culture and that actually you're not really motivated by our best interests, but by your own?

Lord Alexander24:26

Can I say straightway that I think that even in a commercial culture a bank can only succeed if it has a very high regard for the consumer?

Lord Alexander24:36

The reason why

Lord Alexander24:38

we must care about the consumer is that in a competitive world, if we don't do so, the consumer will go elsewhere, and that gives us a very good stimulus.

Presenter24:48

But the the problem arises when somebody goes to the bank and believes they're getting the best advice when they're getting a loan or a pension or whatever it is.

Presenter24:57

But in fact, the bank manager is a salesman, isn't he? He's trying to sell them his product as opposed to somebody else's, so it's not the best advice, because the best advice might be to go somewhere else where he'll get a better deal.

Lord Alexander25:07

We've had very little complaint about the quality of advice.

Lord Alexander25:11

We've had more complaint about errors in charging, about not being willing to grant loans because we don't think that the customer is creditworthy. Banking is a pretty difficult business. I didn't appreciate before I went into it that if you get it right 99% of the time in making loans, you make a good profit. If you get it right ninety-eight percent of the time, you're

Lord Alexander25:41

close to being in financial difficulty. Now those are odds that should make banks prudent and do make banks prudent. I also think that borrowing and lending money is a pretty responsible business on both sides. Record number six.

Lord Alexander25:56

We like opera. My wife loves opera. We have a lovely recording of Aida. I think if you're on a desert island, perhaps the slave song where Aida is longing for home should be the song of expatriates everywhere. And please could it be sung by Rosa Poncell, who first recorded it seventy years ago.

Speaker 226:20

Yeah.

Speaker 226:30

I feel delivered all.

Presenter27:12

A nineteen twenty four recording of Rosa Poncel singing the aria O Patria Mia from Verdi's Aida.

Presenter27:19

Lord Alexander, the Government and the judiciary are often at loggerheads these days. The judges have set back rail privatisation and more recently they've required the Home Secretary to reconsider letting in the the leader of the Moonies into the country. It would be easy to believe that judges were becoming more political. Do you think that's the case?

Lord Alexander27:38

No, I don't. I think the stronger an executive becomes in a country where we don't have a written constitution, the more the separation of powers demands that the judiciary

Lord Alexander27:50

Monitor the conduct of the executive very carefully.

Presenter27:53

But it's happening more and more. Why do you think that is?

Lord Alexander27:56

It may be because executive action is reaching into more and more areas of life.

Lord Alexander28:01

It may be because the quality of executive decisions is in the view of the judiciary le needing greater restraint.

Presenter28:08

But why should we take what a judge says who is unrepresentative, he's not elected, he's appointed behind closed doors. Why why should his view prevail any more than the the our elected Home Secretary?

Lord Alexander28:22

Well, if we don't take regard to the views of the judges, who do we have to defend us against executives when they overstep the ambit of of their power?

Presenter28:34

But you accept the point there, do you? That that we have to have faith in the inherent fairness of those judges. I mean, we don't know what makes them tick. We have to believe that they can set aside what makes them tick, don't we?

Lord Alexander28:46

Certainly, and that's why we have an appeal process. We don't depend on any one individual judge. And every one individual judge is governed by a body of case law uh telling them how they should consider the case and what principles they should have in mind. They're not sitting under a palm tree acting on whim.

Presenter29:07

But some members of the Tory party obviously do believe that the judiciary is overstepping the mark. Members were told at a party conference to write to judges and tell them that they didn't like their the the way they were sentencing. Um and there have been campaigns both overt and covert against Nolan and Scott, for example, haven't there? Do you do do you find that threatening?

Lord Alexander29:26

I well, I find it deeply unattractive, but since I've

Lord Alexander29:30

Think that society will find it unattractive as well. I think it would rebound on the Government if they continued down that line.

Presenter29:36

More music.

Lord Alexander29:38

We have a small house in France, where we go and relax, and say something pleased to remind me of France, Kiritikanawa, singing one of the songs of the Auvergne.

Speaker 330:00

Some call.

Presenter30:44

Kiriticanoa, singing Brezerola, one of the songs of the Auvergne, with the English Chamber Orchestra conducted by Geoffrey Tate. So you have a house in France, Lord Alexander, a house in in Little Venice, in London. Are your parents still alive? Have they witnessed your great success?

Lord Alexander30:58

My mother lived till I became a Q C, and I think the last case she came to in court was the Kerry Packer case, but my father died sadly back in the nineteen sixties, so he saw me called to the bar. But I'd have loved him to see some o other aspects of my life.

Presenter31:15

You're now a a governor of the RSC, a trustee of The Economist, you're you're a tr you were a trustee of the National Gallery, I think, or various chairmanships and vice presidents and committee memberships and so on. It would be very

Presenter31:27

easy meeting you to believe that you were um the product of a classic establishment background, which

Presenter31:34

As you've described, you're not you're very much more the meritocrat.

Presenter31:37

Can I ask you, do you remain conscious of that? Is that something that's always in your mind? Conscious of the effort that's gone into the polishing of Bob Alexander?

Lord Alexander31:49

It's not always in my mind, and I haven't actually gone into any conscious polishing. What I've always tried to do is to see whether I could cope in the environment I was set, and if there's been any what you call polishing, then it's uh happened because of that. I think the only conscious polishing there was was when I came south to school. I used to speak with a Midlands accent and say grass and glass, and um people laughed at me so much. I think I did consciously try to take on a more southern accent.

Presenter32:22

So when you look back and and you know, I asked you to conjure up the image of of Bob Alexander aged eighteen and younger.

Presenter32:28

Does that seem like a stranger, that chap?

Lord Alexander32:32

In some ways it seems like a long time ago, and yet every now and again I see echoes of myself. If I've got to do something difficult and I wonder if I'll have the self confidence to do it, I I I see echoes. But in many ways it does seem like a a very different world, the world of my childhood.

Presenter32:51

And people now, when they write about you, use all of those adjectives, don't they? Self assured, confident, you know, man of the world. Do you do you feel like that person, or is that a a contradiction?

Lord Alexander33:02

I don't feel as self-assured as people sometimes say I am, and I may say uh my wife, when she last read that, said, Well, if if you were that self-assured, why would I have to spend so much of my life boosting your self-confidence? But uh at the same time, I do feel uh able to make a contribution i in areas of life, and that gives me a lot of satisfaction and obvious uh fulfilment and uh much fun as well.

Presenter33:33

Last record.

Lord Alexander33:36

In times of sorrow, which any family has, we've tended to bind ourselves together by a wonderfully emotional tape we have of Joseph Locke, the great Irish singer, and could I choose from that the one that's most special to us, which is I'll walk beside you.

Speaker 233:56

Some sad believes

Speaker 234:03

I love this idea.

Presenter34:25

Joseph Locke singing I'll Walk Beside You. Now, if you could only take one of those eight records, that's the next decision you have to make.

Lord Alexander34:32

I would take Do You Hear the People Sing?

Lord Alexander34:35

I think it's so much the spirit of everything that the bar's about, everything that representing individuals, and it would always give me hope and heart in those blank moments that I would have uh on a desert island.

Presenter34:49

Do you think you're going to survive this desert island?

Lord Alexander34:52

Doubtful. I can cook a bit, but uh any house that I build will probably have too many leeks in it. I will enjoy my own company for uh a time, but I do

Lord Alexander35:05

fry very much in the company of other people, and I would miss them intensely.

Presenter35:10

What about your book?

Lord Alexander35:12

A poetry book, please a remarkable poetry book, compiled by Lord Wavell, in the Western Desert, in the war, from memory, and called Other Men's Flowers.

Presenter35:25

And your luxury.

Lord Alexander35:27

I've recently started to learn to paint, so please may I have a box of oil paints and a large supply of canvases, if they can count as just one item.

Presenter35:38

Lord Alexander, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island disc.

Lord Alexander35:42

Thank you.

Speaker 335:50

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