Rt Hon Ann Widdecombe MP

Speaker 20:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

Speaker 20:08

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

Presenter0:31

My castaway this week is a politician. At the last Tory party conference she thrilled the delegates when, without notes or autocue, she attacked the government's policy on health. It was a speech to start speculation. Could this redoubtable woman eventually become leader of her party? Educated in a Royal Naval School in Singapore and a strict convent boarding school in Bath, she entered Parliament at the age of forty. Right-wing, anti-abortion, pro-hanging, with a fierceness tempered by jollity, she says of herself, All I do is what I think is right, and I leave the rest to God Almighty. She is the newly promoted shadow home secretary, Anne Whitticombe.

Presenter1:09

You obviously thought it right, Anne, to go on to that party platform last autumn without notes, as I say, without autocue, pace up and down, going for the govern Government's jugular.

Presenter1:20

God was obviously on your side because it worked. The party loved it, didn't they?

Presenter1:24

Yes, they did. I mean, I'm not going to pretend that I didn't have a qualm or two when I left the notes behind and just walked out onto the stage. What made you do it? I wanted to talk to them, rather than standing at a lectern talking at them. I wanted to very much be myself and talk to them about things as I saw them, about what I wanted us to do, what I thought we should do. I thought they needed it. We'd been through a rough time as a party. I thought they actually needed somebody just coming along and saying it as it was, and I took that risk. But for somebody who purports not to care very much about image, it seemed to me you'd thought about it quite a lot. You were very blue, very smart, you were very Thatcher-squeeze. You'd obviously planned it quite carefully. I certainly didn't think I was Thatcher-esque. But I mean, obviously, if I was going to appear in front of uh an audience of thousands, uh I would be fairly careful about what I looked like. But you were quite commanding. You know, you went out there and took them by storm, as she had done so many times. Well, I

Presenter2:21

Tell things as I saw them. I was just myself. If that worked, well, I'm very pleased it worked. But would you agree that it was a turning point in your political fortunes? Because before that, and we can talk about it later, you were characterised as somebody who'd committed political suicide by sticking the knife in Michael Howard. Then all of a sudden, people are saying, oh, isn't she wonderful? She's the darling of the party. People point to various so-called turning points, including, for example, the debate on hunting in the House of Commons. I'm not able to say exactly where, or when, or even why the turning point happened, nor is my head turned by it, because I know very well things can turn back again. Precisely, but it has happened, hasn't it? I mean, you know, you did think you were enjoying it. You did think you were dying for it.

Rt Hon Ann Widdecombe MP3:04

You did think you were done for it.

Presenter3:10

I thought I probably had some time left on the back benches, yes. But of course, by the time I made that speech at party conference, I was already the shadow health secretary, so things had already turned. So but what does it mean? Does it mean I suppose it can mean one of two things? Either honesty and consistency wins through in the end, or politics is just a completely fickle business, really?

Rt Hon Ann Widdecombe MP3:13

Yeah.

Speaker 23:13

But of

Presenter3:30

Politics is fickle. It's the sort of business in which you can't ever rely on anything or anybody. So there's certainly an element of that. But I think it is also the case, and increasingly the case, that people are fed up with what is now called spin.

Presenter3:44

with style over substance, with the promotion of image, with everything looking absolutely perfect, but may not be underneath. And I think there is an increasing desire for honesty. And I think people are longing for rather more grown up debates than they're getting from politicians.

Presenter4:02

Tell me about your first record. D do you know anything about music? Do you care about it? I'm afraid I'm tone deaf. I cannot sing a note. And indeed, if I do attempt to sing in church, people do give me rather odd looks. Tell me about the first one. Well, the first thing I've chosen is my favourite hymn. It's How Great Thou Art, which I think sums up everything that Christians believe, that the majesty of God, the beauty of God, the superb nature of His creation.

Presenter4:31

But it also has a personal memory for me, because the Cardinal

Presenter4:36

came to my fiftieth birthday party. Basil Hume. Basil Hume. And this was the grace that was sung at that dinner, and I will now forever associate that hymn with Basil Hume, who I think was one of the greatest men of this century.

Speaker 44:54

But why can't when I was a wonder?

Rt Hon Ann Widdecombe MP4:56

And I don't

Speaker 45:01

Consider all the works thy hand hath made.

Speaker 45:09

I see the stars, I hear the mighty thunder my path throughout my lonely past is fair.

Speaker 45:26

It sings my song, I saved your love to thee.

Speaker 45:34

Oh praise O Lord!

Speaker 45:38

Please go!

Speaker 45:42

In change my soul, my Saviour of

Presenter5:54

Alad Jones singing How Great Thou Art with the B B C Welsh Chorus accompanied by Hugh Tregellis Williams on the organ.

Presenter6:01

Anne Whitticom, if you hadn't been a politician, you might have been a Latin mistress, or you might have been a missionary. Quite a difference between them. Or why did you choose politics?

Presenter6:10

I became attracted to politics when I was still in my early teens, but I think for wholly different reasons from those which finally impelled me to choose politics. I think when I was thirteen or fourteen I thought all politicians were like Winston Churchill and had huge impacts and made real differences. Now you know that's not true. Well now I know that that is a very exaggerated picture indeed.

Rt Hon Ann Widdecombe MP6:27

Well

Presenter6:30

But uh what attracts me to politics is the possibility of solving the seemingly insoluble.

Presenter6:38

Whether it's an individual problem, it can be a constituent who's using me very much as a last resort, or whether it is a big macro problem like the health service, the pension system, there is an enormous challenge there, and it's a very satisfying job from that point of view. You've talked before now about it having a bond, an engagement for you. Is that what you mean?

Rt Hon Ann Widdecombe MP6:53

And you've

Presenter6:59

It is certainly not just a job, it is a way of life. It is a fact of political life that it's certainly not nine to five. You give it seven days a week, and days a week includes the evening and very often half the night as well.

Speaker 47:12

Yeah.

Presenter7:12

Though less so these days.

Speaker 47:12

Mm-hmm.

Presenter7:14

And that is one of the reasons why I have always said I want a proper retirement. I don't actually want to be in the House of Commons till I'm eighty five or something. I if the law lets me live that long, I actually want to enjoy retirement. At what age do you want to retire? Round about the early to mid sixties. So you may never see office again?

Presenter7:34

Oh, you're far too gloomy, I expect to see office in a couple of years' time.

Presenter7:38

I wonder if you because I know your father was a senior civil servant uh connected with the MOD, Ministry of Defense, wasn't he? And you went to this Royal Naval School in in Singapore. Did you ever consider the services as a career?

Presenter7:49

Only very briefly. When I left my first University at Birmingham I did consider uh whether I should uh uh should go into the services. I regret height qualifications did not permit it. Not tall enough.

Rt Hon Ann Widdecombe MP8:01

Yeah.

Presenter8:02

Not all of you. Five foot one and a half and didn't forget the half.

Rt Hon Ann Widdecombe MP8:02

Tallery.

Presenter8:07

You also said that you have your mother's looks and your father's disposition. How would you characterize that disposition?

Presenter8:15

He was very ambitious, very single-minded, and encouraged us to be the same. They never forced us, but encouraged us to be the same.

Rt Hon Ann Widdecombe MP8:23

How did he encourage you?

Presenter8:25

Uh we had this most wonderful agreement uh when I was at senior school, that if I came first he gave me a pound, the old green pound note.

Presenter8:34

And if I came second he gave me fifteen shillings, and if I came third I got one of those old brown ten shilling notes.

Presenter8:40

And if I came fourth I got five Bob. But after that the agreement was I had to start paying him. I'm pleased to say I didn't end up paying him.

Presenter8:48

What your parents did do was send you to a Roman Catholic boarding school in Bath, although you and they were were Anglicans. It seems an odd thing to have done. Were you the only non-Catholic in the school? No, I certainly wasn't the only non-Catholic in the school. There there were quite a number of us, although predominantly, obviously, the girls there were indeed Catholics. But were you given rosaries and and meant were you meant to do your Hail Marys or yes, I was indeed given a rosary, which I very strategically lost down behind the grand piano. But it was very strict. I'm sure you got told off for that. It was extremely strict. We got up for Mass at six thirty, three times a week.

Presenter9:25

We had mass and benediction before breakfast on Friday. It was the sort of place where you dare not leave your gloves off if you went outside the school gates. Uh there were extremely strict rules. I actually think it did me no harm, although I have to say, looking back on it, I would have preferred a slightly different regime. Did you stand up for yourself then as fiercely as you might now?

Presenter9:52

I certainly learnt there to stand up for myself in terms of belief, because I was in a minority. Not only was I in a minority, but I came from a family where my brother was training for the Anglican priesthood. And so there was certainly a lot of conflict of belief around, and I learnt to stand up for what I believed. Record number two.

Presenter10:11

is the sailor's hornpipe.

Presenter10:13

Now, as you point out, I grew up in quite a naval tradition.

Presenter10:17

Very recently my father died, and at his memorial we played the sailors' hornpipe, because we were determined it was going to be a celebration of his life, not a mournful occasion. So I think, rather to the amazement of the Admiral present, whose eyebrows shot up, we had the sailors' hornpipe.

Presenter10:59

Adrian Brett, playing the sailor's hornpipe. You were a teenager in the sixties, Anne, but um n no Beatles, no mini skirts for you, not interested. Certainly no mini skirts at Bath Convent. Good heavens, no, nothing like that. So what did turn you on in the sixties?

Speaker 411:10

Uh

Rt Hon Ann Widdecombe MP11:10

Uh Yeah. But

Presenter11:13

I very much regret that in the sixt well, I don't very much regret it, but I observed that in the sixties um I was interested in things like uh Roman history, uh very intensely interested in Latin.

Presenter11:25

That is the sort of thing I was doing in the sixties. I'm well aware other things were going on outside. No, I didn't take a view to shun those. I did what came naturally, and what came naturally was not that.

Rt Hon Ann Widdecombe MP11:29

That side.

Rt Hon Ann Widdecombe MP11:32

So I didn't

Rt Hon Ann Widdecombe MP11:35

Play was

Presenter11:36

At at some point later on what came naturally was to wear hot pants. That was at Oxford. That was in the the early nineteen seventies. I did indeed during that period when hot pants were all the rage, have hot pants, as indeed when they were all the rage I had uh a a Maxi.

Presenter11:52

And it was a very romantic time, I gather, at Oxford. You you were sylph-like in your hot pants, and you had a a boyfriend. Well, I did, yes, but I think uh Oxford is a romantic time anyway. You've got all those vast sweeping gardens in the colleges, you go punting down the river, you have commemoration balls. It's a very fairy tale world. I mean, all the time, of course, below the surface of that, there is the work and what one is doing. But it is still a very fairytale world, and I still feel immensely privileged to have been there.

Presenter12:24

And the relationship lasted for three years, I think, and then in the end it ended. Do you remember being heartbroken or was it just the way these things go? I think because uh i i it was uh mutual and because it had lasted a long time and the end was inevitable. Now I wasn't heartbroken and

Rt Hon Ann Widdecombe MP12:32

Yeah.

Speaker 412:32

I

Rt Hon Ann Widdecombe MP12:39

Yeah.

Presenter12:40

I'm certainly not going to say that. I also I don't think that sort of thing is fair.

Presenter12:45

I mean a lot of people talk about how cut up they were when this ended or that ended.

Presenter12:49

Very unfair burden to hand to the other person. Quite. It's just that you've talked about it since, and I that's really why one feels a able to bring it up, because you've gone further than that, and you've talked about what a a chaste mm business it was, and you've actually put on record that you are still a virgin. Why actually I have never done that, and I have never used that expression. I have a clear morality, which I have never hidden, and I adhere to that morality, but I have always said that it is absolutely nobody else's business. You answer my question in that sense, because I was going to ask you why have you answered such personal questions? I wouldn't. I always say it is not your business, but journalists are very clever. They can ask the same question in four different ways, and at the end of it, they'll come to a conclusion.

Rt Hon Ann Widdecombe MP13:20

Within you I

Rt Hon Ann Widdecombe MP13:21

Yeah

Rt Hon Ann Widdecombe MP13:26

I questioned.

Rt Hon Ann Widdecombe MP13:34

Yeah.

Presenter13:35

So so these things get printed. And then you've gone further than that and you've said other self-critical things. You know, you've said that you're overweight or middle-aged. I've said that. It sounds quite defensive, but I have the impression that it's not defensive, it's just you.

Rt Hon Ann Widdecombe MP13:44

That was crazy.

Rt Hon Ann Widdecombe MP13:46

Yeah.

Presenter13:51

No, it's recognizing facts. I mean, there th there was a time when the press uh made a great thing uh about my looks and all the rest of it, and I just said, Yes, all these things are true, so what?

Rt Hon Ann Widdecombe MP13:51

It's speaking as recognising that.

Presenter14:02

If if people want to make these comments, it is very much better to deface the facts, because I always say this, that in society today we have a complete overemphasis on physical perfection, which is actually dangerous.

Presenter14:16

Because what it does is to marginalize people with disabilities, people with severe disfigurements, people with very obvious limitations. That is the result of too much concentration on physical perfection. So if somebody wants to turn round and say, But Dickum, you're overweight and you've got crooked teeth, I'll say, Young, so what?

Presenter14:33

Record number three.

Presenter14:35

My third choice is you've talked about the sixties is the seekers, the carnival is over, because that sums up very much my attitude towards not only the sixties, but the seventies as well.

Presenter14:46

It was a time of great promise when everybody thought the world was changing, we were all going to be much freer and therefore much happier, we were all going to do what we liked and this was going to make us all a much more easy society. The exact opposite has happened. We've ended up with record breakups in families, record rates of suicide, we're a much more unhappy country. And I look back now to the sixties and seventies and I think the carnival's over.

Speaker 415:16

Now the heart, the light is calling.

Speaker 415:22

This will be our last goodbye.

Speaker 415:29

To the carnacle in Toba.

Speaker 415:35

I will love

Speaker 415:38

You till I die

Presenter15:42

Judith Durham and the Seekers singing The Carnival is Over. Seeds of destruction, you say, Anne Whitticomb, in the permissive society, which perhaps stood for everything you're most against, homosexuality, divorce, and abortion, about which you feel most passionately. You said you would go to the stake to fight against abortion. What do you mean by that? How far? I mean that I regard that as a supreme cause. I don't actually equate the abortion issue with the issue of sexual morality.

Rt Hon Ann Widdecombe MP16:05

I mean the

Presenter16:15

Abortion is about life itself, it is about taking life.

Presenter16:20

It is not a women's issue, it's something that should concern us all.

Presenter16:23

You've got a reputation, of course, as a result, for being rather anti- Oh, I have, yes. I mean, because of that a and women priests uh because I'm against the ordination of women.

Rt Hon Ann Widdecombe MP16:23

You can

Rt Hon Ann Widdecombe MP16:26

Two.

Speaker 416:27

Yeah.

Presenter16:33

People think I'm anti-woman. That is not actually true. I see these issues differently. I see abortion as being a a very wide concern to all of us, men, women, children alike.

Presenter16:42

So I do think that abortion is probably the most fundamental issue along now with genetic engineering.

Presenter16:49

Which we're facing at the end of this century. When you say you will go to the state, what do you mean?

Speaker 216:52

When you say you will announce.

Rt Hon Ann Widdecombe MP16:54

Yeah.

Presenter16:55

Oh, simply this, that I think all politicians have to have some cause which is much greater than them.

Presenter17:03

And therefore, if I ever had a choice to make between the progress of my career, or anything else, and my support for the pro-life stand, I would always take the pro-life stand. It is the one issue on which I would not compromise. The fact is politics is the art of compromise. This is the one that I've always said, no, no compromise.

Presenter17:26

The only surprise in all of this, in view of your standpoint point on all of these issues, is that you didn't convert to Catholicism earlier. You you didn't convert until your mid forties. I wonder why when it it you know, Rome stands for everything that you believe in, it seems.

Rt Hon Ann Widdecombe MP17:40

Pa

Presenter17:43

There is no doubt in my mind that when, for example, I returned after a fairly prolonged period of agnosticism,

Presenter17:49

I was admiring Rome. I had less than admiration for the Church of England. But the fact is I had strong Anglican roots. It was a mistake.

Presenter18:01

I think I knew it was a mistake at the time.

Presenter18:04

But it is also a fact that when I did finally cross to Rome, I didn't do it over night, as a lot of people seem to think. I had a very long process of trying to resolve doctrine.

Presenter18:13

Now I hadn't looked at doctrine since I left Bath Convent, because I have never been of the view that Saint Peter is standing up there with the thirty nine articles in his hand or something, you know. I have never been of that view.

Presenter18:24

But when you are received into the Catholic Church you have to make a statement which says, I believe, that all the Church teaches is revealed truth.

Presenter18:34

So unless you're prepared to stand there at the point of reception and commit a fairly significant act of perjury, you've actually got to believe that it's revealed truth, and that obliged me.

Presenter18:43

to spend quite a time addressing doctrine, which I have to say I haven't done since.

Presenter18:47

But it obviously what attracts you is are those uncompromising truths you like absolutes, you don't like fudge, you don't like grey areas.

Rt Hon Ann Widdecombe MP18:51

Yeah.

Presenter18:57

Something is either uh true or it is not. And you do therefore believe that contraception is wrong.

Presenter19:03

I accept the Church's teaching on contraception. But intellectually, surely you see that it it it would cause the most enormous problems. I have to say that you don't determine what is right by those sorts of criteria, but what I do think is this, I wish that the Church

Rt Hon Ann Widdecombe MP19:11

That

Presenter19:18

Distinguished

Presenter19:20

Between abortive contraception in inverted commas and preventative contraception, there is now a complete fuzzing of the two. So you don't totally accept what the church says. You do intellectually challenge it on that one, at least. No, I mean let let me say this. I wish it made that distinction between the two, because I think it is important that.

Rt Hon Ann Widdecombe MP19:34

No.

Presenter19:40

And that we steer clear of abortion.

Presenter19:43

But at the same time, if I were now younger and married, I would stick to what the Church teaches. It is easy for me to say, which is why I don't pontificate very much about it. It's too easy for me to say I'm not married and I'm gone fifty.

Presenter19:56

But I do accept the Church's teaching on contraception.

Presenter20:01

Record number four.

Presenter20:02

Um my next choice is the African Children's Choir singing Oh Happy Day.

Presenter20:08

This little choir came along to the Speaker's House a couple of years ago.

Presenter20:13

And gave a performance for MPs. And at the end of it all,

Presenter20:18

They went into the speaker's apartment, where there is a very large and enormous historic bed.

Presenter20:23

which normally you just stand and look at and go away again and nobody's allowed to touch. These kids were all bouncing up and down on it, smiling and chattering and looking very happy indeed. It's a wonderful memory. But I think a happy day sums up for me the feeling of release when you've made the right decision.

Speaker 420:44

What's your friend?

Presenter21:10

The African Children's Choir singing Oh, Happy Day. Minister for Prisons was as high as you got in government, Anne Whitticom, under Michael Howard as Home Secretary. As everyone knows, you scuppered his chances in the Tory leadership by saying that you felt there was something of the night about him. That was the phrase that stuck. It's a very damning phrase. I wondered if, since, you'd had any regrets about saying that? I don't want to go over again what happened two years ago, because I have always believed that you say what you have to say and then you keep quiet. You don't turn a quarrel into a feud. I don't wish to change anything that I said at the time, nor do I wish to go over it again.

Speaker 421:47

You're dead.

Rt Hon Ann Widdecombe MP21:47

Or do I

Presenter21:49

Was there an element and I think one can say reading about it that one mightn't have blamed you had there been an element of revenge in what you did, because I gather that you did have trouble making yourself heard in the Home Office. It was a question of asking permission to speak at meetings, having to put out your hand and then I would have to do it.

Rt Hon Ann Widdecombe MP22:05

Yeah.

Presenter22:08

Influence what I did, which was done on the merits of the case, which can be read in Hansard, which I am not going to rehearse again on this programme.

Presenter22:15

But there was and again I think no one would would blame you for wanting to have your own back in some way there was quite a lot of spinning against you at the time, it seems to me. You were accused of receiving flowers and chocolates from the then Director General of Prisons, Derek Lewis, and it was rather a sexist business, it seemed to me. You were said to have gone weak at the knees because you received these things. It was a load of old nonsense. I mean throughout the entire time that he was Director General I never received a petal or a crumb of chocolate or a dinner from Derek Lewis. I made my knees? He certainly did not.

Rt Hon Ann Widdecombe MP22:45

Dinner

Rt Hon Ann Widdecombe MP22:48

Did he make you go weak at the moment?

Presenter22:51

I made my recommendations at the time because I believed that he was and indeed is one of the very few significant managers that we've got in this country, that we were lucky to have him, that he'd made a huge impact on the prison service. That was why I took the line that I did, for no other reason. But there was that spin there, and it can't all have been down to journalists. I mean, there must have been some shenanigans behind the scenes about all of that. You must resent that. And it is a problem of being a woman, isn't it?

Presenter23:20

No, I don't whinch like that. I don't say, Oh, I'm a woman. I've got it half because I'm a woman. I've never taken that line. No, I I know you haven't, but uh it it did happen because you if you were a man it wouldn't have happened.

Rt Hon Ann Widdecombe MP23:20

No, I can win

Presenter23:31

Uh they would have found some other line of attack. I mean, what actually happened was I went on the attack, I was attacked back. Um the fact that the basis for the counter attack was false, uh, you know, is just one of those things in politics. But it's a rough trade, politics. Yes, it is a rough trade. Uh do you think you've found it rougher than some?

Rt Hon Ann Widdecombe MP23:44

Yeah.

Presenter23:47

No, I mean, I I wouldn't sit here and pity myself like that.

Presenter23:51

I am so used to it that it really is like water off a duck's back. I'm not going to say it doesn't provoke mild irritation, because of course it does. If somebody writes a complete fabrication, it it is going to irritate. Is it only mild irritation? I mean, isn't it hurt? Surely. I mean you weren't. I think if it had all happened the day after I entered politics, then yes, it would have been devastating, but the fact is you get inured by degrees.

Speaker 424:07

I think of it as

Rt Hon Ann Widdecombe MP24:07

Uh

Presenter24:14

Uh by the time you're a minister, and certainly by the time you're a high-profile minister, uh you are inured.

Presenter24:20

Next piece of music.

Presenter24:21

I think

Presenter24:22

Life is full of surprises.

Presenter24:24

My father once said to me when I passed my driving test

Presenter24:28

He said, Now remember, it's not only your own mistakes you've got to look out for, you've also got to drive for the other fool on the road.

Presenter24:34

And I took it at the time to apply only to driving, but actually I think it's it's probably quite a good um

Presenter24:39

Quite a good maxim for one's approach to life. And very often you're going along gently and everything seems to be going well, and then suddenly, womph, something happens to take you completely off track.

Speaker 425:15

Uh

Presenter25:52

Part of the second movement of Haydn's Symphony No. 94, The Surprise, played by the NBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Arturo Toscanini. And now, Anne Whitticombe, your first novel is to be published next year, in the early part of it. But Edwina Curry, needn't worry, because yours is about a moral and ethical dilemma. Give me a two-sentence blurb on it. Yes, it's about a family with a very, very profoundly handicapped child against the background of a euthanasia bill going through Parliament, being propelled along by one of the relatives of the family. Your publisher says that you write as if you'd been writing all your life. Maybe he would say that. But has it come that naturally? Have you enjoyed it? Has it felt like? I've always enjoyed writing.

Rt Hon Ann Widdecombe MP26:37

Who is

Presenter26:39

When I was young I used to do short story competitions at school. Like most people I've started books before which I haven't actually finished.

Presenter26:46

When uh in may ninety seven I suddenly found myself on the back benches, no red boxes, no ministerial timetable, I thought, right, if you don't do it now, would it come, you never will?

Presenter26:56

So I wrote and wrote and wrote with a vengeance, so to speak.

Presenter27:00

And I was delighted that it was accepted. I have to say, I.

Presenter27:05

I didn't know whether it was going to be or not. But what was the experience like? Did did the characters come to life, you did they take you over? They take over completely. I mean, I've always heard this. Never really understood it until I wrote that book.

Rt Hon Ann Widdecombe MP27:10

They take you over.

Presenter27:17

They changed things that I had planned. They did things I wasn't expecting. I really got to the stage, so I used to sit down at the word processor and I used to think, Oh, I wonder what you're going to do to me today? So that's where you are with the book. What about with the cinema? We we were talking earlier about uh your image as portrayed by the media and what they say there is that you only go to uh the pictures to see harmless films like 101 Dalmatians. And that's probably true, isn't it?

Presenter27:42

Um, I'm fairly choosy about the films I see, but the last one I saw, for example, was Life is Beautiful.

Presenter27:48

Um which had a profound effect on me.

Presenter27:51

This is the one where a father tries to shield his child from what is happening in a concentration camp by pretending it's all a game. And a lot of people have said it's frivolous. It isn't, it's heartbreaking.

Presenter28:03

Record number six.

Presenter28:05

is in fact Richard Dimbleby recording his impressions when he was one of the first people through the gates of Belstom. I think we should never forget this great evil which swept the civilised world in the middle of this century. I mean the appalling thing is not only what happened, but that it happened where it happened in a country that was renowned for its culture, its opera, its creativity. At the time it happened, which was not the Dark Ages, but the middle of the 20th century, it should lead us always to be watchful and wary.

Rt Hon Ann Widdecombe MP28:41

I passed through the barrier and found myself in the world of a nightmare.

Rt Hon Ann Widdecombe MP28:46

Dead bodies, some of them in decay, lay strewn about the road and along the rutted tracks.

Rt Hon Ann Widdecombe MP28:53

On each side of the road were brown wooden huts.

Rt Hon Ann Widdecombe MP28:56

There were faces at the windows, the bony, emaciated faces of starving women too weak to come outside.

Rt Hon Ann Widdecombe MP29:04

propping themselves against the glass.

Rt Hon Ann Widdecombe MP29:06

to see the daylight before they die.

Rt Hon Ann Widdecombe MP29:09

And they were dying every hour and every minute.

Rt Hon Ann Widdecombe MP29:12

I saw men, wandering dazedly along the road, stagger and fall.

Rt Hon Ann Widdecombe MP29:18

Someone else looked down at him, took him by the heels, and dragged him to the side of the road to join the other bodies lying unburied there.

Rt Hon Ann Widdecombe MP29:26

No one else took the slightest notice. They didn't even trouble to turn their heads.

Presenter29:32

Richard Dimbleby, commentating on the liberation of Belsen.

Presenter29:36

So, Anne, writing apart politics is what you do, therefore you must give it your best shot. Carpe diem, seize the day is your motto.

Rt Hon Ann Widdecombe MP29:42

The day is your motto, isn't it?

Presenter29:45

In a game like politics.

Presenter29:47

where you are always looking at the next move, always looking ahead. There is a terrible temptation to do just that, to live in the future for what you hope will be.

Presenter29:58

And that is a very dangerous occupation because you don't actually know that you're going to live beyond tomorrow. None of us do. So we should always seize the day, really get on with the day and not worry too much about tomorrow. But you don't just seize it, you stretch, you do your duty, you do your best, you give yourself a message.

Rt Hon Ann Widdecombe MP30:12

I try to.

Presenter30:17

How far can you stretch could you stretch to leading your party?

Presenter30:21

Oh, I think that is very flattering. But it is in the realms of complete fantasy and hypothesis. I don't expect that to help. But all things being equal, would you like to? All things being equal, and if some amazing circumstance were ever to occur at some time in the distant future, ask me again then. But it's a logical progression from what you say. Seizing the day, stretching yourself, doing your duty, you should want to. The fact is, the back benches on both sides of the House are littered with people who would like to have been Prime Minister. I ain't making that mistake. I'm going to get on with today. I'm not going to worry about these other things.

Rt Hon Ann Widdecombe MP30:44

To the five

Presenter30:54

So what would you do? What do you want to do? I would love one day to be Home Secretary.

Rt Hon Ann Widdecombe MP30:55

Dude, what

Presenter30:58

But you know, I may uh fantasize on. I'm quite happy once again to just get on with what I'm doing. You may fantasise on about the Tories coming back to power, of course it is. And when and if it does, do you think it will be recognisable as the Tory party we've known, or do you think that it will be

Rt Hon Ann Widdecombe MP31:08

That's not offend

Presenter31:20

a kind of right wing rump.

Presenter31:22

No, I think it will be the Conservative Party with the principles that the country wants, because the fact is that the only way Tony Blair was able to get elected was by adopting most of our agenda. That is a clear indication that the country wanted what we were doing, wanted our principles, because we had been there rather a long time they didn't want us.

Presenter31:42

Now, uh therefore we don't need to turn our principles on their heads. We do obviously need to give them fresh application because things change year on year. And you'll be back before you're sixty.

Presenter31:52

Oh, long before that.

Presenter31:55

Record number seven.

Presenter31:57

Um well the next one I've chosen actually um is a holiday sound. We've been talking about work. The one rule I have is that I do not work in August.

Presenter32:07

And I always try to get right away in August, because my experience is that if you stay in this country you never escape the telephone and the pager and people saying, Well, just this little matter, you know, can I ask you? So I go right away.

Presenter32:18

And the furthest away I ever got from civilization that is, not in terms of miles, was the African bush.

Presenter32:26

And I can still remember now this was nineteen eighty nine, that's ten years ago.

Presenter32:30

Lying in my tent at night, listening to the sounds of the animals.

Speaker 432:42

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 432:45

Yeah.

Presenter33:06

Sounds of contented hippo grunting and wallowing. It says I'm just glad they're contented, really, aren't you? Um how would you seize the day on a desert island, Anne?

Presenter33:16

I would take the opportunity of being away from everybody, of taking a rather detached look at life, at all the things that had happened.

Presenter33:27

I think it would be a very good opportunity merely to think without all the pressures of the day around.

Presenter33:34

I would, of course, pray, and I would look out over the seas and see God's majesty in the sky and the seas. And watermelon. And probably sing How Great Thou Art, because nobody would be around to have to put cotton wool in their ears, so it would be all right. So you wouldn't be alone, obviously, because you would have God. Would you therefore.

Speaker 433:41

I'll probably sing.

Presenter33:51

Accept your fate, or would you pray to him to get you off there? Oh, copy deem. I'd be looking round for driftwood and everything else. But what or who would you miss?

Rt Hon Ann Widdecombe MP33:54

Yeah.

Presenter34:00

I think I'd miss my family.

Presenter34:02

Um I would uh miss my mother, uh miss the small members of the family, the great niece, um the great nephew they would be the ones that I would miss.

Presenter34:11

Last record. Everybody has to have something that's background music. You know, it's the sort of thing when you're flicking a duster around the house you have on in the background, or when you're writing the book, you have on in the background. For me, it's undeniably the Brandenburg concerto. The thing that you enjoy but doesn't intrude.

Presenter35:28

Part of Bach's Brandenburg concerto number three in G major, played by the Berlin Philharmonic, conducted by Herbert von Karian. Now, if you could only take one of those eight records, Anne Whitticom, what would you take? How great thou art, beyond all doubt.

Presenter35:42

And what about your book, as well as, of course, the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare you've got too? I think I would take Thomas Gray's Poems.

Rt Hon Ann Widdecombe MP35:46

Yeah.

Presenter35:49

I think they're wonderful for putting things in perspective. I particularly enjoy the ode on a prospect of Eton College, which of course contains the immortal words, where ignorance is blissed is folly to be wise. And actually I take that very seriously because I think we should protect children, we should shield them, we shouldn't try to introduce them to reality too early.

Presenter36:10

And your luxury.

Presenter36:11

My luxury is a hot shaft.

Presenter36:15

on which is perched a photograph of my family, and around which is a shelf of wonderful, smelly, scented things to use in the shower.

Presenter36:23

Three luxuries there. Never mind, you can have them. Anne Whitticom, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs. Thank you.

Speaker 236:37

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