Chris Patten

Speaker 40:00

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.

Presenter0:29

My castaway this week is a colonial governor. Next year, with all due pomp and ceremony, he will leave behind the Asian community he's ruled for five years and return to Britain. To do what? This is no career diplomat coming home, but a leading Conservative politician who enjoyed a glittering career up until the last election. It's his political instincts that have led him in his present job to fight for the protection of human rights, even though he knows that the Chinese who will succeed him will sweep away most of what he's tried to leave behind. He is the twenty eighth and last Governor of Hong Kong, Chris Patton. Or is it His Excellency Mr Christopher Patton? What is it?

Chris Patten1:07

In Hong Kong it's fei pang, which is uh fatty pattern.

Presenter1:10

Platty Pang. But in your in your own territory, as they say, you're His Excellency.

Chris Patten1:14

I'm His Excellency, exactly. Or I wen went to an old people's home the other day and they called me Your Majesty, which I thought was going a bit far.

Presenter1:21

But you've in the main you've done away with all the pomp and and ceremony and feathers of it, haven't you?

Chris Patten1:26

Yes, I I think it's all part of my feeling that um uh that was pretty much old hat, which is no reference to the plumed version, uh and that um it was the sort of expression of accountability that one could deal with most easily. I thought I should look like everybody else looks in Hong Kong, rather than a colonial throwback.

Presenter1:45

But you do go, I think, instead on on weekly tours around the colony, don't you? Pressing the flesh, you know?

Chris Patten1:50

Yes, I do. I I get out of Government House at least once a week into the district, but I also go out and try to do my own shopping and wander around a bit.

Presenter1:59

How important is it to you, that that sort of warmth that you meet in the streets, because you've suffered such terrible insults from the Chinese? They called you all sorts of names like a serpent and a violin a tango dancer who's opened his legs to President Clinton.

Chris Patten2:12

Yes, that's

Presenter2:12

As well as fat patent.

Chris Patten2:14

Yeah.

Presenter2:14

I mean pretty horrible to bear, though, seriously.

Chris Patten2:17

Well, I'm pretty thick-skinned. I I always feel that um if people haven't got a very good argument they hurl abuse at you and I also comfort myself with the fact that uh Chinese officials have called one another much worse names in the Cultural Revolution. But you're right in saying that in order to avoid feeling isolated, in order to ensure that one still has some uh contact with reality, getting around meeting people is important for me personally and it's certainly important for my uh morale.

Presenter2:46

Whatever happens, whatever has happened, it's um one thing's absolutely certain, that on june thirtieth next year, nineteen ninety seven, the British flag will come down on Hong Kong, the most opulent possession in colonial history, no doubt with full pomp and circumstance, and you'll have the feathers on your head, will you?

Chris Patten3:00

No, I certainly won't. No feathers. I arrived featherless, and I shall go featherless.

Presenter3:02

Where do you

Presenter3:05

So even in that moment, I mean, I have this vision of you being standing on the deck of HMS Invincible in Hong Kong Harbour with all the epaulettes and the plumes, no.

Chris Patten3:14

It won't be inv it won't be invincible and I'll be wearing um a grey suit, I should think.

Presenter3:14

Yeah.

Presenter3:18

Fireworks

Chris Patten3:19

Oh, loads of fireworks, and of course a few echoes of Elgar on the humid evening breeze.

Presenter3:27

And what will you be feeling in that moment? A certain sadness, nostalgia?

Chris Patten3:32

I'll certainly be feeling both sad and nostalgic. It will be the end of five years of my life. It will be the end, as it were, of my full time relationship with one of the most remarkable cities men and women have ever created. I've been very happy there. My wife and youngest daughter, who's had been at school there, has been very happy too.

Presenter3:53

Tell me about your first record.

Chris Patten3:54

Well, I mentioned Elgar um a moment or two ago. Elgar's one of my favourite composers. I also very much love the cello. Uh and uh you put the two together and you've got one of my favourite pieces of music, which I've always thought gives the lie to any suggestion that the English aren't romantic.

Presenter5:13

Part of the first movement of Elgar's cello concerto in E minor, played by Jacqueline Dupre, with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir John Barbaroli.

Presenter5:23

Being Governor of Hong Kong, Chris Patton, has obviously been a fascinating experience, and one that you could never have planned for. Was the offer, when it came from the Prime Minister from John Major, a complete surprise when it came within hours of your losing your seat at the last election? Or did you know it might be on the cards?

Chris Patten5:39

No, I didn't know it would would be could be on the cards. I'd actually thought for some time um that it was likely that I'd lose my seat. When I told the Prime Minister what I thought the election results were going to be and gave him a list of seats that we would win and a list of seats that we would lose, he was shocked to see that um I'd put Bath on the list of seats that we would lose.

Presenter5:59

But he offered you a choice, didn't he, as I understand it, between the governorship or a seat in the Lords and therefore in the cabinet?

Chris Patten6:06

Well, there were three options, I suppose. First of all, to see if I could fight a by-election somewhere. But I know enough about politics to know how difficult it is to parachute alleged grandees into constituencies. And I also know enough about politics to know that it's very difficult to win by-elections when you're in office. And I didn't want to become, as it were, the Conservative Party's version of Patrick Gordon Walker. I didn't want to put my family through that. As for the Lords, I think if you get into difficulty doing a big departmental job in the Lords, the Commons tend to take it out of you. And the other option was to sort of hang about. And what I hated the idea of was being a sort of wallflower with people feeling vaguely awkward about me, vaguely sorry for me, thinking that perhaps they should occasionally throw a scrap of information in my direction. I didn't care for that thought at all. What I said that I wanted to do was, if possible, another job in public service. And this was a job that he focussed on immediately.

Presenter6:30

Right and bottom

Presenter7:09

A lot of people did feel sorry for you, though, on that night when you lost. A lot of people didn't, of course. There is always the story that some members of the Conservative Party cheered and called it a Tory game when you lost. But an awful lot of people did see that film of you and your wife Lavender standing on the steps in Bath, and she was crying, I think, and you looked on the verge of tears. It was a pretty devastating experience, wasn't it? You looked very hurt.

Chris Patten7:34

It was a very bruising experience. Nobody should go into politics thinking that politics is about gratitude. It it isn't, it shouldn't be. People have a perfect right to make choices. But I'd had a relationship with Bath, and not only the fact that I lost, but the way I lost, and the behaviour of some people, were were extremely hurtful.

Presenter7:53

And how much also was there a huge disappointment on your part? Because this was really your big chance lost, wasn't it? Because if you'd won, you could have had one of the big offices of state, presumably.

Chris Patten8:05

I think that for any politician not to be able to test yourself against one of the really big jobs in politics is a disappointment. I'd done at the environment a job that was extremely burdensome, but it's not like doing a job like the Home Office or the or the Treasury or the Foreign Office, which are the the biggest and most interesting and demanding jobs.

Presenter8:27

Do you think you might get a chance at doing one of those yet?

Chris Patten8:29

I I think it's probably unlikely. Not impossible. But I think those who are always quick to suggest that I'm going to about to reenter British politics are never fr frightfully convincing about exactly what route they propose for that journey.

Presenter8:45

Well, we'll discuss possible routes in a minute. Tell me about your second record first.

Chris Patten8:49

My second record is a great Te Deum Laudamus. It's Haydn's. This I first heard in St Mark's in Venice on New Year's Eve in 1989. We'd gone there for a wonderful family holiday and I can remember the doors of the church being thrown open, that wonderful golden screen turned so that it faced the congregation, and hearing this Te Deum pouring out of the church, it was wonderful.

Speaker 39:44

It's called the Turkish Columbia.

Speaker 310:00

God was going because they were signed.

Presenter10:18

Part of Haydn's Te Deum Laudamus performed by the English Concert and Choir, directed by Trevor Pinnock.

Presenter10:24

The little known but fascinating fact one latches on to about Chris Patton is that his father was responsible for the fifties pop song sung by Guy Mitchell She wears red feathers and a holy holy sk lives on just coconuts and fish puzzle. Did he did he write it? Publish it?

Chris Patten10:36

No, he published it. He he wa he was a music publisher, and in those days what you had to do was to um go around trying to persuade people to um uh perform the songs that you'd published.

Presenter10:47

But he was a jazz musician himself.

Chris Patten10:49

Yes, he'd he'd left school, I think to the s consternation of his parents in the thirties, both of whom were head teachers at um primary schools in in inner city Manchester.

Presenter10:59

And he met your mother across a crowded hotel dance floor in Exeter and

Chris Patten11:02

That's exactly right, at the Rougemont Hotel in in Exeter at a dance. And I think for her parents it was a double shock because so their beautiful uh second daughter was not only going off with a jazz drummer um but was also going going off with a Catholic drummer.

Presenter11:17

But their marriage w was a love story, and and and they had you, quote, a happy, clever boy, good at games, uh who won a scholarship to Balliol at the age of sixteen, where you apparently then took to your bed.

Chris Patten11:29

Well, I I was sleepy. The idea of lectures at nine or ten o'clock um was not one that greatly appealed to me. But I I would get up in order to get to a cafe called the Kemp in Broad Street, in the Broad in Oxford, opposite Balliol. I would get up by quarter to eleven in order to get into breakfast in the Kemp.

Presenter11:48

But what else did you do? Did you did you write? Did you sing? Did you act? Did you

Chris Patten11:53

I I did a lot of writing. I used to write sketches and reviews. I performed a bit uh in smokers and reviews and I played quite a lot of games. I was I was quite a decent uh cricketer and rugby player. So between acting, writing and um playing games there wasn't all that much time for history. But I I managed to put in a bit with some very, very good tutors. We had marvellous tutors when we college.

Presenter12:15

What about the politics?

Chris Patten12:17

No, not n never at all. I think I went into the Oxford Union once, and I suspect that was to visit the bar rather than a debate.

Presenter12:26

Record number three.

Chris Patten12:27

The next track is one of my favourite pop songs. It's The Rolling Stones. And I'm playing it for one particularly substantial reason, and that is the first dance I ever took my wife to, The Rolling Stones, with a band. It was the Maudlin commemoration ball in about 1963 or 64. My wife will shoot me for not remembering. 64. So The Rolling Stones and Route 66.

Speaker 312:52

Down to Missouri, Alkalama City looks so pretty. Your sleep to Mexico

Speaker 313:02

Flags comparison, don't forget on him Mix up Boscows ain't burned in the one too Get him to this kind of tip

Speaker 313:12

Big old tank

Speaker 313:14

That California trim

Speaker 313:18

You joking?

Speaker 313:20

I'm rooting six to three

Presenter13:23

The Rolling Stones and Route 66. So, Chris Patton, you were hailed as the man to watch through the 70s. You had patrons in Edward Heath, Peter Carrington, Willie Whitelaw. You wrote speeches for top politicians, and indeed you wrote much of the 1979 Manifesto. But when Mrs. Thatcher got into office, 1979, she dropped you. You were put out in the cold. In fact, you were to stay there for years. What went wrong?

Chris Patten13:45

Well, I think we had a disagree had two disagreements, really. First of all, I disagreed with the decision that was made in 1979 to end the autonomy of the Conservative Party's Research Department and wind it up in Conservative Central Office. Secondly, I wasn't tremendously sympathetic with the drift of economic policy in the early years of the Thatcher Government. I think I was partly wrong. I think I was actually right about one or two things. But by and large, I think that the shift in a more market-based direction was the right one.

Presenter14:17

And you did something, didn't you, that people might

Chris Patten14:17

I need

Presenter14:19

Got quite foolhardy. Within, I think, a couple of weeks of her being elected, you wrote her a letter and told her monetarism was a bad thing.

Chris Patten14:25

No, I met I wrote mo mostly about the Conservative Research Department, to her credit. She had always known that I was a pretty ornery, um, cussed sort of person, uh, who did argue and uh answer back a bit, and she never held it against me th throughout the nineteen seventies when I was director of the Conservative Party's Research Department.

Presenter14:42

But she did in the eighties. I mean, as I say, you were put out in the cold, weren't you?

Chris Patten14:43

I mean as I say

Chris Patten14:46

I only had um four years on the back benches, and I rather enjoyed myself. I rebelled a bit. Um I I was on the Defence Select Committee, on other select committees, and I hope I learnt to uh speak in Parliament.

Presenter15:00

Well, that I mean, that's been very positive about it, but you got yourself there, and I think you would be willing to admit, would you not, that that

Presenter15:08

You know, you're quite bad at knowing when to stop, that you actually did push it too far with Mrs. Thatcher, and that that is that a problem for you? Is that

Chris Patten15:13

And it

Presenter15:16

Is that sort of latent aggression in you?

Chris Patten15:18

I don't think it's it's um quite as thuggish as that. I think it is true uh that I believe very strongly that um if you've got principles you should say what they are and stick to them. Um I I have a very determined view of um what the world um should be like, and I'm not sure what the point of going into politics is and un unless you're like that.

Presenter15:42

And in the end you got your reward because in nineteen eighty nine you became Secretary of State for the Environment with the very special job of implementing the poll tax. You were a cunning appointment really in that, weren't you? Someone who had been a super wet to sell a super dry policy.

Chris Patten15:58

I was a surprising appointment. I'd had three or four ministerial jobs before at Northern Ireland and in overseas development, and rather a difficult one at education with Keith Joseph, a splendid man, but not necessarily the easiest person always to work with. Then I got the environment rather unexpectedly and had two main responsibilities there. One was to develop an environmental policy, and the other was to deal with the poll tax, which I suppose is the single most unpopular policy that any British government has tried to introduce since the last war.

Presenter16:33

And you didn't necessarily agree with it anyway, did you?

Chris Patten16:35

Well, I I thought it was, unfortunately, for for for political reasons, targeted um like an exocet missile on the very people that um on the whole politicians try to win over, that is, uh the the middle class in marginal constituencies.

Presenter16:53

In the end, you were, I think, one of three ministers who told Mrs Thatcher during the leadership election that if she stood in the second ballot you would resign. How did you justify that to her? What did you say?

Chris Patten17:04

Well, I actually made it clear to her that I'd find it difficult to support her in another ballot. She was extremely good about it. She recognised that some of us did feel that very strongly, did think that she would be in an impossible position after the first vote if she held on to the job narrowly in a second ballot, that it would be weakening for her, that it would be demeaning for a leader as substantial as her. But she was getting advice from other people that she should battle on. I think that was bad advice, and I think a lot of people felt exactly as I did, and exactly as my two colleagues did, but weren't saying so. Again, you might put it down to the fact that sometimes perhaps I say too much, or at least say what others decline to say.

Presenter18:01

Tell me about record number four.

Chris Patten18:03

It's from Fidelio, it's Mirist Sovunde Bar, and it was used as the theme tune for a film which the BBC made about me and my family when I was a junior minister in Northern Ireland, which I remember being memorably reviewed by Simon Hoggart as being like Elvira Madigan Without the Suicide Pact.

Speaker 318:46

My daisy story.

Speaker 319:05

It kind of shall be as trimmed if sure the smaller wave.

Presenter19:21

Part of the quartet Mir Istso Vunderbar from Act one of Beethoven's Fidelio, sung by Kurt Mahl, Jesse Norman, Pamela Coben, and Hans Peter Bochwitz, with the Staats Capella Dresden, conducted by Bernard Heiting.

Presenter19:34

So really become full circle at that point, Chris Patton. You became party chairman under John Major. You won the war for the Tory party, lost your battle in Bath, and thence to Hong Kong. You hadn't been there very long, I think some six months or so before you were taken ill. What happened?

Chris Patten19:49

Well, I had um I had prob a problem with my heart. Uh I had uh an angiogram, and it was concluded that I needed angioplasty, which uh sends catheters up up your arteries and with a balloon on the end, and it's pretty painful, but in my case, as in I as I think happens in most cases, it worked very well.

Presenter20:07

But were you overweight? Did you smoke? What was it, Professor? It was a combination.

Chris Patten20:10

It was a combination of things. I'd smoked until the early 80s, and I gave up in the early 80s. Really, last time I was ill, I had ulcers, and I had a burst appendix, which I walked around with for about a year, which caused a huge abscess in my side. And I spent quite a long, long time in hospital dealing with that. So I'd given up smoking at that stage, but I was overweight. I didn't take enough exercise, and I think I should have remembered as well that both my parents had died quite young of heart attacks.

Presenter20:43

How old were you when your father died?

Chris Patten20:45

I was in my early 20s, I was 22, 23, and that was a pretty big shock. I think that anybody who's got cardiac problems in the family should take particular care with their health, and that's what I should have obviously done, and that's what I should continue to do now. I have regular health check-ups, I play a lot of tennis and take a lot of exercise, but I like, I'm afraid, I'm a foodie, I do like eating, and I tend sometimes, with big official things, I tend sometimes to eat out of boredom.

Presenter21:09

But you like peaking duck and

Presenter21:20

Hm. Do you, as a result, worry about death?

Chris Patten21:24

I don't worry about death.

Presenter21:26

Think about it.

Chris Patten21:26

I think about death and

Chris Patten21:29

I I believe it's extremely important to do so and to try to put oneself in a situation where one isn't anxious about death. But I do think about it quite a lot and I don't regard that as being um creepy or bizarre. Uh I think it's it's an important part of being sanely alive to think about not being alive.

Presenter21:53

Record number five.

Chris Patten21:54

The next record is is Purcell. It's from Come Ye Sons of Art. It's marvellous Sound the Trumpet sung by Alfred Deller and John Whitworth. I can remember hearing this sung for the first time at a Bath Festival performance in Wells Cathedral, which is one of my favourite cathedrals in the world.

Speaker 322:16

I'm a trumpet.

Chris Patten22:41

Oh no.

Chris Patten22:43

Uh

Speaker 322:45

And the spy, your wife, and the spider of the night, the spy your wife with the old thing.

Chris Patten22:48

I'm not sure.

Chris Patten22:53

The old

Speaker 323:05

And skillful one must have employed to sell and reach the silly

Presenter23:12

Her cells sound the trumpet sung by Alfred Deller and John Whitworth. So Hong Kong, Governor Patton, you're accused by your critics of lifting the diplomatic lid with a vengeance, speaking out again, as we've been saying, setting in train a programme of democratic reform the like of which the colony has never known, and so destroying Britain's carefully cultivated relations with the Chinese. Why did you, as they say, needlessly stir up trouble?

Chris Patten23:36

Well, I didn't. And those who think that the al alternative to having occasional arguments with China was a quiet life are kidding themselves the alternative was having endless arguments with Hong Kong and with majority opinion uh in Hong Kong.

Presenter23:51

But you went about it in your critics would say an undiplomatic way. I mean, it is what we've been talking about, isn't it? That you do call a spade a spade, you do speak out. And instead of recognising that the Chinese

Presenter24:01

In all things must have their face saved. You said, No, no, I'm just going to tell it like it is to them.

Chris Patten24:07

No, that's not strictly fair. I think it would be easier if perhaps the only argument was that the approach that I'd adopted had been wrong. I don't think it's the approach which is the problem. It's the substance which is the problem. And the substance, as far as the Chinese were concerned, was that I believed that we should have a bottom line. I believed that we should deliver on the promises that we'd made to people in Hong Kong in good faith in the early 1980s, promises about the protection of their human rights and promises that had been made with China about the step-by-step process of democratization. But what I've found quite interesting is that even though it's true, as you've said before, that I have a reputation for speaking my mind, I always had a reputation in British politics for being a pretty consensual, pretty moderate fellow, and I'm the same chap in China. The important thing is to have principles and to stick to them in negotiations.

Presenter25:02

But what will remain of those principles and the democracy that you set up after next June? The freedom of the press will go, the court of final appeal will be worthless, your Democratic Assembly will be swept to one side. What will it all have been for?

Chris Patten25:14

Well, if things like freedom of freedom of the press and freedom of assembly go, it won't have anything to to do with anything that I've done in the last few years. It would be extremely sad, and it would mean uh that uh the Chinese were going back on what on what they'd promised people in the joint declaration.

Presenter25:31

But you suspect they will, don't you?

Chris Patten25:32

How they build.

Chris Patten25:33

Well, I very much hope not, because I think it would be damaging for Hong Kong, not just making Hong Kong a less decent place for people to live in, but a less successful place economically as well. And deep in my bones, I feel very strongly that in Hong Kong, as elsewhere in Asia, when people are better educated, better traveled, better off, they develop political aspirations and nobody will be able to snuff out the democratic aspirations of people in Hong Kong.

Presenter26:03

Nobody. I mean, the Chinese have shown themselves capable of doing exactly that, haven't they? In Tiannanmen Square in nineteen eighty nine, when their political will was challenged, they snuffed it up.

Chris Patten26:08

Yeah.

Chris Patten26:13

I think they can dismantle institutions, but I don't think that in Hong Kong they can roll back the things that have started in the last few years.

Presenter26:23

But isn't the truth that the job you've been attempting to do for the last four years it will be five by next June

Presenter26:30

is an impossible job.

Chris Patten26:32

One of my friends, an American political scientist, after he'd been staying with us a few days, said, Well, you've got an impossible job. You have to make it look possible for as long as you possibly can. I don't take as negative a view of it as that, but it's certainly a difficult job, and it's a challenging job, not only politically but ethically. I think that for years after 1997, some people are going to be saying that we tried to do too much to safeguard Hong Kong's civil liberties. Others will be saying that we did too little. I very much hope history doesn't judge the latter to be the case.

Presenter27:09

Next piece of music.

Chris Patten27:10

The next piece of music, which um isn't uh offered up with any autobiographical intent, I promise you, is Handle with Care by the Travelling Wilburys, uh some of my favourite pop musicians, Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison, George Harrison, and so on and it's one of my favourite pop records.

Speaker 327:27

Got somebody

Speaker 327:31

To leave on.

Speaker 327:35

Will jump out and

Speaker 327:37

Next to mine

Speaker 327:39

In a dream

Speaker 327:44

I've been bumped up and I've been fooled

Speaker 327:49

I've been loved and ridiculed

Speaker 327:52

Taker centers and night schools.

Speaker 327:57

And

Presenter28:00

Handled with care by the travelling Wilburys, who are in fact Bob Dylan, Roy Alberson, George Harrison, Jeff Lynn and Tom Petty.

Presenter28:07

What of your political future here, Chris Patton? There's been so many stories. You know, the safe seats are being kept warm for you, that the Prime Minister, if he loses the election, will keep the Tory leadership warm for you until July.

Presenter28:18

Would you care to rule out any of these scenarios?

Chris Patten28:21

Yes, most of it's, of course, complete nonsense. I have not thought very much about what I am going to do after I leave Hong Kong not least because there's going to be a big job to do right down to the wire.

Presenter28:33

But the facts of the matter are that you have resisted offers to come back early from Hong Kong and fight a safe seat. That's true, isn't it?

Chris Patten28:39

That is true. I said when I went that I was going for five years. I've said right the way through that I intended to stay to the end, even though I always knew that it would make it impossible for me to fight a seat at the next election. It would have been dishonourable for me to have behaved differently.

Presenter28:57

And is it also true that you would still, in certain scenarios, like to be Prime Minister? Not you don't have an obsession about it, but it's still a natural ambition.

Chris Patten29:07

I think it's a natural ambition, but I think it's exceptionally unlikely that it will ever happen. I mean, the analogy but very unlikely. I'm a very keen tennis player. I would love to play at Wimbledon, but it's very unlikely. So I play at the other end.

Presenter29:13

Good question, though.

Presenter29:21

But you're more like I mean, you're rather better at politics than you are at tennis.

Chris Patten29:25

I should hope so. Yes. Um if if I had a at politics the backhand that I got at tennis, I'd I'd have uh never got into the House of Commons.

Presenter29:33

But let me ask another specific question. Surely the outcome of the next election will have a direct effect on what you decide about your future. I mean, if your party's in opposition, you won't won't want to know. If they're in office still, you will want to know something, surely.

Chris Patten29:48

I don't think it's as straightforward as that. For example, if the government is re-elected, exactly the same dilemmas would face me as were there in 1992. But you're not going to rule out active politics. No, I'm not, because it would be stupid of me to do so. What I'm certainly not going to rule out either is taking part actively in some of the discussions that will unfold in the next few years. I have strong views about things like Britain's role in Europe. I have strong views about things like how we can use our economic strength to help those in need in the community. I've got strong views about education and training. Those are all things about which I feel very strongly, and I'm not going to simply bury those thoughts when I come back to Britain.

Presenter30:34

More music.

Chris Patten30:35

Well the th the next record is

Chris Patten30:38

Part of the Kyrie from Mozart's Great Mass in C minor, K four two seven. I think this is a splendid piece of choral music. I shall play it very, very loud on my desert island.

Speaker 331:00

Peace on Savior.

Speaker 331:24

Peaceful.

Presenter31:44

Part of the Kyrie from Mozart's Mass in C minor, sung by Margaret Marshall, with the chorus and Academy of Saint Martin in the Fields conducted by Sir Neville Mariner. Are you completely spoiled in the practical sense by your wife and three daughters and all these servants you've got, Chris Patton, or would you be entirely hopeless, therefore, on a desert desert island?

Chris Patten32:01

I'm not hopeless, but I am spoiled. I mean, for example, I can cook. I don't wash an iron particularly well. Um indeed, I don't wash an iron at all. But I dare say that um that won't be a real problem on the desert island.

Presenter32:16

But shelter building, no shelter building for Governor Patton.

Chris Patten32:18

No shelter building. Well, I'll I'll have a go at it, but I am pretty useless at things like that. I'm a very good gardener, though I say it myself well, an enthusiastic gardener. I haven't got the greenest of fingers, but they're not a bad colour green.

Presenter32:32

You'll miss your family, of course, on this desert island, and um but I'm sure you wouldn't miss the phone or the fax machine or the television and so on. You've got your music so

Presenter32:40

Perhaps it would be pretty idyllic for you, would it?

Chris Patten32:43

It had been dyllick for about two days.

Chris Patten32:46

But um I would miss my family and friends. I'd miss uh conversations and arguments and I've got three um sparky daughters and um I'd miss them something rotten.

Presenter32:57

And you'd miss your dogs, whisky and soda, whom you're going to miss for six months very soon, um, because they're going into quarantine, of which you heartily disapprove.

Chris Patten33:04

Yes, and I wish that I'd known more about the quarantine regulations earlier. I'm afraid sometimes in life you only learn about ridiculous policies when you find yourself subjected to them. I don't think we'll be able to change the quarantine regulations before my own dogs are put into quarantine. And of course I wouldn't wish for them to have any different treatment from anybody else's dogs. But the sooner these regulations can be dropped the better, because they cause a lot of unnecessary suffering and anguish to an awful lot of families.

Presenter33:33

That's point number one in the Pattern Manifesto of the Future. Last record.

Chris Patten33:38

The last record is um the record really I don't want to sound morbid um that I'd quite like to go out to, um in every sense of the word. It's Jesse Norman singing at Gloming in Abbendrot, uh the last of Strauss's four last songs, and I think it's pretty well the last thing that Strauss ever wrote.

Presenter34:50

Jesse Norman singing Im Arbentrote, the last of Strauss's four last songs, with the Gavanthaus Orchestra, conducted by Court Mazur. It's pretty bleak, isn't it?

Chris Patten35:00

Oh, it's wonderful. I think about a curtain moving gently in the evening breeze.

Presenter35:06

If you could only take one of those eight records, what would it be?

Chris Patten35:08

I think it would be the, um, um, Mozart Mass.

Presenter35:11

And your book?

Chris Patten35:13

My book is the best or my favourite anthology of poems. It was put together by Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes. It's called The Rattle Bag, and it's the most marvellous collection of poems and fragments from poems.

Presenter35:26

And what about your luxury?

Chris Patten35:28

My luxury well, I've I've s assumed that there might be some way of putting pen to paper anyway, that I one might be able to find charcoal or um there might have been a few reams of paper washed up on the beach. If that's so, what I would choose is a bath. I I'd like one of those big Edwardian sit-up baths with great big taps, and I could sit there um every evening and uh contemplate um the eternal verities.

Presenter35:53

Chris Patton, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Chris Patten35:56

Thank you very much. I've enjoyed it.

Speaker 436:04

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