Christopher Lloyd

Speaker 30:00

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

Speaker 30:08

The programme was originally broadcast in the year two thousand, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:30

My Castaway this week is a gardener and writer. To those who love plants he's a source of inspiration. His many books and his column in country life, for which he's written for nearly forty years now without missing a single week, contain a wealth of information, and more importantly, assertive judgments about what does and doesn't work.

Presenter0:50

He still lives in the house, Great Dixter, in Sussex, in which he was born in 1921. It was bought by his father and remodelled by the famous English architect Edwin Lutyens, and has been his place of work throughout his life. Here he's created a world of plants and flowers which never fade, maintaining colour, interest and beauty throughout the year. I've done what I can in my lifetime, he says. When you've spent eighty years in a place, you should have improved things. He is Christopher Lloyd. A lifetime spent in the same house in the same garden, Christopher, that's that's a rare achievement these days, isn't it?

Christopher Lloyd1:28

Well, it is partly luck, and partly you have to make your luck, don't you think?

Presenter1:32

But of course you haven't planted every plant yourself. You you still have plants that your mother and father planted, haven't you?

Christopher Lloyd1:38

Oh, yes, there's a lot of topury, for instance, that my father was extremely keen on. But the trouble about topury is it takes time and people are impatient.

Presenter1:48

I read that your topiary was Peacocks but has become coffee pots, is that right?

Christopher Lloyd1:53

Well, no, they are separate pieces. There are two coffee pots and there are a lot of what we call peacocks now, but they originated as fighting cocks and blackbirds and pheasants quite a menagerie, but they've all subsided into comfortable middle aged peacocks.

Presenter2:10

So that was your father's that is your father's legacy. What's your mother's?

Christopher Lloyd2:14

Well, she was the plants woman, and um she was very keen on the actual business of weeding, planting, sowing seeds, and and and I learnt from her the business of gardening deviling for me, she used to call it.

Presenter2:31

But of course the the man who laid out the bones of the garden was, as I said in the introduction, Edwin Lutyens. And and it's been said that if if the bones were his, the the flesh is yours now at at eighty years old.

Christopher Lloyd2:41

Well, that's a good expression.

Presenter2:43

But what you did and created an enormous buzz in the haughty cultural world a few years ago was you dug up his rose garden, you raised it, you did away with it.

Christopher Lloyd2:44

But what you did

Christopher Lloyd2:55

That was designed by Lutchens very nice design on the side of an old cattle house called the

Christopher Lloyd3:02

the hovel and he focused it on a cattle drinking tank in the centre and the beds are still exactly as he laid them out in a symmetrical order. They had rose bushes in them for eighty years and then Fergus Garrett, my head gardener, who came to me as head gardener in 1993 and I thought, ah, now here's my chance to put into practice something I've been longing to do for years. These rose bushes are just so many sticks from a lot of the year and I got really rather fed up with them and they didn't like the heat because it's a very much enclosed garden and gets baking hot in the summer. So I thought, well, what would be really nice would be to give it a sort of tropical feel, as though we were nearer to the equator than we are, just for a few months in the year. So out came the roses and there was a wonderful tearing noise of roots as Fergus dug them out. And we started again in 1993 and we've just done it now, I suppose, for about the seventh time.

Presenter4:01

But an act of vandalism, surely, to rip out the roses.

Christopher Lloyd4:05

Well, I know, and you know some people come they say, Where's the rose garden? looking around them and seeing a jungle of bananas and palms.

Presenter4:14

But it got worse because you went on to write about the fact that the rose was an ugly thing and it was a vicious thing and you didn't really like it. Yeah.

Christopher Lloyd4:22

They are vicious. Have you ever handled them yourself, Sue? I mean, they are beasts.

Presenter4:25

They are indeed and they can be quite ugly for quite a lot of the year.

Christopher Lloyd4:30

Well, that's what I thought. So there's two of us who think that.

Presenter4:34

But I I understand you did keep one very special one, misses Oakley Fisher.

Christopher Lloyd4:39

Yes, well now She's still there. She's still there, and just a few others. I have got a grain of sentiment still in me. Mrs Oakley Fisher was given to me as cuttings by Vita Sackrill West, and I've still got a very nice bush of her, and she has to compete with canners, but she seems to manage.

Presenter4:57

Tell me about your first record, Christopher.

Christopher Lloyd4:59

When I was at school, I was at rugby and there were 650 boys there at the time. This was in the 1930s. And they had a very enlightened director of music. And the result was that more than half the boys were learning a musical instrument. And the director of music, Kenneth Stubbs, and he made me learn the oboe. And one of the pieces that I did with two other friends in the same house as myself for one of the competitions they used to hold, we played the slow movement of Poulé's trio.

Presenter6:22

The opening of the second movement of Poulan's trio for oboe bassoon and piano, played by Nicholas Daniel, Rachel Gough and Julius Drake. Let's do some name-dropping, Christopher, because you um met several people during your youth whose reputations have kind of resonated down the decades. Vitasak for West you you mention, she of course would have lived nearby in in Sissinghurst.

Christopher Lloyd6:45

Yes, Sissinghurst is only ten miles away, and she was very sweet to me always. She knew me as Christo, which is my family abbreviation for my name. And, um

Presenter6:55

But did you talk gardening with her?

Christopher Lloyd6:57

Oh yes. No, I didn't talk books or sex or anything like that.

Presenter7:02

But but gardening certainly.

Christopher Lloyd7:04

Yes, and um she was warm. I found Harold a bit distant. He was a shy man. He longed to talk to, but he needed a subject, and I was very shy with uh people like him, with intellectuals.

Presenter7:16

And then there was Gertrude Jekyll, another famous gardener, of course. You knew her as well, didn't you?

Christopher Lloyd7:21

My parents took me when I was age seven to visit her garden, and she must have recognised that I was keen even at that age.

Presenter7:29

Were you? Even at that age?

Christopher Lloyd7:30

Oh yes, r right from as far back as I can remember. I remember she was splitting polyanthus when we went there with a knife after they'd flowered. She was supposed to be rather fierce, but I didn't find her so at all, and she actually blessed me as as we left. I was rather impressed, you know, and said she hoped I'd grow up to be a great gardener, so that was rather nice.

Presenter7:53

And then of course there was there was Lutyens, Edwin Lutyens, the architect, renowned for his English country houses, and he'd helped to create Great Dixter, um your house but that was before you were born because

Christopher Lloyd8:04

That's right. So I really didn't know uh Lutchens at all. But on the whole he was very sympathetic to children. And for instance he made our nursery with lots of corners so that we could keep out of sight of whoever was meant to be l looking after us. And he made a a crawling window there as we called it, a window at ground level so that we could look out and the dogs used to look out with us. And I used that a lot.

Presenter8:27

Hey,

Presenter8:28

It was an inspiration, really, of your father to ask him to do it, to remodel this house fifteenth century house, wasn't it?

Christopher Lloyd8:35

Yes, and and the fact that my parents got on well with him showed, I think, in the work that he did.

Presenter8:40

But also you know, full marks to your father, both for spotting the house and spotting him, really. I mean he he really caused something to be created that's very beautiful.

Christopher Lloyd8:51

Yes, I think he was quite an exceptional man in his way. He um he started off as a colour printer in Blackfriars and made enough money to be able to retire in his early forties when my parents uh came to Dixon in nineteen ten.

Presenter9:05

But he paid six thousand pounds for the place, didn't he, which was a lot of money in in in nineteen ten.

Christopher Lloyd9:10

Yes, I suppose um he he had the money to spend, but then he changed his career and became an architectural historian, largely under the tutelage of uh Lutchens.

Presenter9:20

But there was no garden there. It was a farmhouse, really, wasn't there?

Christopher Lloyd9:23

There was no garden, no. So Lutyens created the garden all round the house. The house is central. And uh my father actually after the First World War uh made a sunk garden uh where there was a lawn originally and that's a very nice feature and uh Lutyens was kind enough to say I'm proud of my pupil when he saw it.

Presenter9:44

Tell me about your second record.

Christopher Lloyd9:46

I was taught the piano by Kenneth Stubbs himself, the director of music at rugby, and he got me interested in Browns' piano music. And that has been my chief love on the piano. And this particular intimezo, number two of Opus 117, is a late Browns work. And Browns' piano music is is very personal and very internal, and you feel you are entering into the centre, into the heart of a man when you're playing it.

Presenter11:17

Artur Rubinstein playing part of Brahm's Intemezzo, Number Two in B flat minor. You were the youngest of six children, I think, Christopher Lloyd, and you've said you were an odious child. How odious

Christopher Lloyd11:29

Well, I was a terrible goody-goody. I never got into trouble, and I hated sport of all kinds. And, you know, at school you need to uh go along with the others. You could never get anywhere, you could never become a captain, as they were called, unless you were good at games, and um so I never got anywhere in the hierarchy at all.

Presenter11:52

But there was one good thing, as it turned out, wasn't there? You you had to write home the Sunday letter.

Christopher Lloyd11:58

Yes, my mother was very insistent on that, and the school itself always made time for the boys to write home uh uh after Sunday lunch and uh that was a regular thing and my mother was an extremely regular letter writer herself, and she mo wrote the most lively and evocative letters, and I think that that promoted the same sort of approach to letter writing in me.

Presenter12:20

So do you think that was in many ways the the beginning of uh well, the origins, if you like, of your writing career in the sense that the column you've written for country life all these years, what, since nineteen sixty three? It's putting a kind of Sunday letter.

Christopher Lloyd12:34

It may be so, but also if you believe in a subject and you you want other people to enjoy it in the way that you have, and you want to communicate with them, so it's very valuable if you can express yourself on paper.

Presenter12:50

Record number three.

Christopher Lloyd12:52

I think there can be no doubt that Bach was the greatest composer ever. He is so unexpected so often he does such wonderful things, and he had a great heart, too. I've been really enjoying lately, particularly, the Goldberg variations.

Presenter14:09

The first of Bach's Goldberg variations, played by Christophe Roussea. Of course, there's much more to writing um a weekly column than writing a letter each week. It's a bit like writing the arches, I would have thought, Christopher. You've got to be very careful about not repeating yourself or contradicting yourself.

Christopher Lloyd14:25

Well, I don't mind contradicting myself, because I'm always changing my mind, and I don't think that's a woman's prerogative, as sometimes is said. I think as you get older, you should your tastes should develop.

Presenter14:37

But but do you need to keep a card index?

Christopher Lloyd14:39

Oh yes, I do. I keep a card index and I have right from the first, uh since my first article on the 2nd of May 1963.

Presenter14:47

What people also, of course, have picked up from your columns over the years and and are many things, but first of all, your your passion for plants. That's what it is, really, isn't it? You have a passion for your garden.

Christopher Lloyd14:58

Well, that is true.

Presenter15:00

And I get the impression that you're

Presenter15:02

A bit like a shopaholic, you know, you you hear about a new plant or you see a new plant and you must have it.

Christopher Lloyd15:08

I think that's a wonderful feeling when you see a plant that's new to you, and your eyes light up, and your adrenaline starts.

Christopher Lloyd15:17

Pumping away and you think, gosh, I must have that. Of course it can result in crime. We all know that gardeners, if they have no other way of getting a plant, may pinch a a cutting or something like that. Uh and it happens in my own garden. I don't go around spying to see what people are doing because I know the feeling myself. But um on the whole if you ask the owner and show an interest, um you you can get what you want by l legal means.

Presenter15:48

But are there still things that you can't resist? Are there still plants that can set you on fire?

Christopher Lloyd15:54

Well, I'm still collecting. Yes, I am, Sue, and I haven't given up. I haven't completed my task.

Presenter16:01

And then of course within your columns there are your opinions and you're never short of those.

Christopher Lloyd16:07

Well, I'm called opinionated, but, you know, I think it's very boring if you don't have opinions.

Presenter16:13

Of course. And one of your opinions is, it seems to me, gardening is not easy, you know, despite these transformations we apparently witness on the television every week. You know, you don't believe there are no shortcuts.

Christopher Lloyd16:25

That's really a cop-out, isn't it, those television programmes. People shouldn't be told that it's dead easy, um just because they want to hear it. They should be told that the fact that it's complicated is nothing to put them off and is something to be enjoyed. If it wasn't complicated, you'd get bored.

Presenter16:43

Tell me about your fourth record.

Christopher Lloyd16:45

Mozart of course is a giant, but many people put off his music by its sort of tinkly quality. And a lot of the time poor Mozart was writing potboilers, and uh they give people an idea that he's a sort of mountain goat tripping up the hill and tripping down it again, and that there's nothing more serious to him. Whereas the the deeper Mozart is very, very real and human. It's most easily absorbed, I think, in his operas. You take uh an opera like Cosi Pantutti, which is really a very flippant subject where two m lovers decide to test the girl's fidelity. Then suddenly, in the middle of all this flippancy, you get a love duet which is absolutely genuine.

Speaker 417:42

My was thrown.

Speaker 418:14

Tech Long El Kante Kui.

Speaker 418:23

Said away the world of thy care.

Presenter18:31

Dame Janet Baker as Dorabella and Vladimiro Ganzaroli as Guglielmo singing their love duet Il Core Vidono, This Heart That I Give You from Act Two of Mozart's Coussi fan tute with the orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, conducted by Sir Colin Davis. So let's have some more opinions, Christopher Lloyd, notably on on colour, because again you've shocked you like putting yellow and pink together, don't you?

Christopher Lloyd18:55

Oh yes. Um I think yellow and pink often work very well together, and you see them in the same flower, and nobody says that's wrong.

Presenter19:03

Quite. But the the English taste is very much for those understated pinks and greys and misty blues of the herbaceous border, aren't they? And you think that's boring,

Christopher Lloyd19:13

Well, it isn't it so much boring, and I would do it myself some of the time, but it's safe, and um many people are afraid of outside opinion. They want their revered friend, who knows more about gardening than they do, to uh approve of what they're doing. And they can always uh find approval if they have colour harmonies of soft um pastel shades. I like the combination of pastel shades f sometimes, but a lot of the time I think a contrast is really going to stir you up a bit, and you can mitigate it always with what you put around the contrast.

Presenter19:52

But you like big bold bright you like orange dahlias, don't you? And yes, but that's the one.

Christopher Lloyd19:57

Yes, but I don't want big orange dailies. A small orange dahlia I'm perfectly happy with if they're plenty of blooms. The bigger the dahlia, the fewer of them you get.

Presenter20:06

But you and you like nasturtiums and you like zinnias and th don't you I have to be very careful here, but don't you have to be careful that it doesn't end up looking like a pub garden?

Christopher Lloyd20:11

Yes.

Christopher Lloyd20:18

Well, I think some pub gardens are absolutely wonderful, and that's one of the good things that's happened to pubs of recent years with this uh mania for ha uh for pots and hanging baskets. And I'd certainly go into a pub that was decorated like that in summer in preference to one that just looked dreary.

Presenter20:36

If the food was good.

Christopher Lloyd20:38

Exactly, but you don't know when you're a traveller.

Presenter20:40

And you're not a stickler for heights, are you? You don't believe in having the tall stuff at the back and the low stuff at the front.

Christopher Lloyd20:45

Well, to an extent, of course, you've got to do that, because otherwise if all the small stuff is at the back and all the tall was at the front, you wouldn't see anything at the back.

Presenter20:53

But again, that very elegant English graduated line is something that you've argued again.

Christopher Lloyd20:59

No, yeah, that's right. And there are some what I call see-through plants that you can put at the front of a border, and it gives you a bit of variety and uh and also you want variety of texture, not just to have all perennials, that's rather fashionable now, but to have shrubs with a bit of substance as well. And uh I I would mix any type of plant in a mixed border rather than go for the old herbaceous, which again people love to categorise for safety.

Presenter21:26

But do you ever uh hear visitors in your garden who've perhaps just come on from Sissinghurst sort of saying, Gosh, this is a bit bright or don't like this?

Christopher Lloyd21:36

Well, luckily, Sue, I don't hear them'cause I'm deaf.

Presenter21:41

But do you think they do? Is it reported to you? Do you think it happened?

Christopher Lloyd21:44

They do. I mean, Sussinghurst is wonderful in its way, and I'm never going to knock Sussinghurst.

Presenter21:49

But there must be something that you really hate. There must be something that you think is hideous and grotesque. What wouldn't you have in your garden?

Christopher Lloyd21:58

Well, I don't think of gardening like that. Uh if I come upon it, uh uh there are always exceptions and I r I rarely

Presenter22:06

What about a big fat chrysanthemum?

Christopher Lloyd22:10

Yes. They are a bit difficult, I must say, but you very seldom see them in the garden, and I love chrysanthemums as a flower. The trouble is, if you're gardening for the show bench, it's another game altogether, and you want size and uh symmetry, and you get that with jailers and chrysanthemums, and good luck to the people who do it. I mean, at least they are growing plants, but it isn't what you want in a garden.

Presenter22:24

Yeah.

Presenter22:36

More music.

Christopher Lloyd22:37

Early nineteenth century was particularly rich in sort of Sturm and Rang, the poor neglected young man who was deserted by his girlfriend. And uh I think Muricke's poetry is very good and in this one called Homesickness you hear the trudge of a young man as he goes further and further from his loved one.

Speaker 423:04

Here shines on a kind of light.

Speaker 423:13

Kirdweuft mirr alles o

Speaker 423:27

Had ye desire so friend einemy?

Speaker 423:34

So far

Speaker 423:47

Mas Bech lein morn priest Arber com thine ear forever, Seist au heer fer peace.

Presenter24:01

Dietrich Fischer Discow, accompanied by Gerald Moore, singing Heim Weh, Homesickness from Hugo Wolf's Murica Leader. And you've just confessed, Christopher Lloyd, to what you don't like. Go on.

Christopher Lloyd24:12

Well, I'm not very keen on lawns, I have to say. All those little bitty bits of grass which take such a lot of upkeep. If you're going to keep a decent lawn, it's as much work as a complicated border. And it seems to me unforgivable that part of gardening should be both boring and labour-intensive, which lawns are. So more and more I've converted my lawns to other things.

Presenter24:42

Indeed, as you open the front gate to Great Dixter, I mean, walk me in there. You've you've lived there for nearly eighty years, as we say. I mean, you went away to school, army, and horticultural college, but basically there was only ever one home.

Presenter24:54

You walk in that gate, and there's rough grot well, it's meadow, isn't it?

Christopher Lloyd24:58

Yeah, and people who lean over the gate are really horrified by being confronted with what they consider a hay field. But it was always like that, and my mother was very keen on this form of gardening, and so we have a lot of pieces of meadow gardening at Dixter.

Presenter25:16

So you've got crocuses, snowdrops, and daffodils following on Narcissus.

Christopher Lloyd25:20

That's right. And we don't cut the grass'cause we want everything to seed and increase itself that way.

Presenter25:27

But then we turn left and we go through the Peacock Topiary, I think, don't we? Michaelmas daisies and Asters and Irises and so on into the Orchard Garden. And then you go on through the Orchard Garden and you come out on to the Long Border. This is the pride and joy of Great Dixter, really, isn't it? Two hundred and fifty feet, I think. Is that right?

Christopher Lloyd25:46

Yes, I expect that's right. What's interesting about it?

Presenter25:48

What's in the

Presenter25:51

What's in it?

Christopher Lloyd25:51

There is a mixture. There are hydrangeas. There's a a rather pushy lady called Annabel in the hydrangea class, um, wh whom I've put to the back of the border because she tries to call the tune too strongly. And there are cardoons which grow about eight foot high and look like giant thistles, and they have mow flowers covered with bees in their season. And there then there are a lot of annuals, and we keep changing things around there, so as one annual goes off, we put another one in, right up to the beginning of September.

Presenter26:23

And then there are figs. That's a a Luttian's relic, isn't it? He was a fig man.

Christopher Lloyd26:27

Lutchens used to use figs. He didn't do much planting, but he recommended figs and quite a lot of the houses are on the stable block. But of course there is the fruit to consider and if you prune a fig into a wall every year you don't get the fruit. And as it happens to be I'm really rather a fig pig and I I want my figs to grow fairly freely so that they make the fruit at the tips of their shoes and in a good year I get a nice crop.

Presenter26:54

Record number six.

Christopher Lloyd26:57

Beethoven is chiefly admired, I suppose, among the public for his symphonies and his c concertos, and of course I've I've found them extremely uh exciting in my time. But uh the Beethoven that I really enjoy most are the late quartets, and these are very personal. Actually this is not one of the very latest, the Opus Ninety-five quartet, and it's a bit of the last movement, which has a really good rhythm.

Speaker 427:46

I'm not sure if I can do it.

Presenter28:25

Part of the fourth movement of Beethoven's string quartet number eleven in F minor, and that was played by the Bush quartet, recorded in nineteen thirty two.

Presenter28:34

Five acres of garden, then, Christopher, and then there's the house itself, which you can see at every turn, because Latien's integrated the two, which is what he did. Are you as passionate about the house as you are about the garden?

Christopher Lloyd28:47

Oh, yes, oh yes, it's a lovely house to live in. People say, Don't you rattle around here on your own but I like to move t to different parts of the house at different times of the year. One part of the house is very nice in the summer, because it's got a door leading straight into the garden, and you can feel in touch with outside whilst you're actually inside. But um, on the other hand, the solar, which is at the other end of the house, has a big fireplace in it, right in the centre of the wall, and that's my favourite winter uh quarters.

Presenter29:18

What will happen to it when you're no longer around? As you say you haven't married, so there are no children. Who'll look after it when you're gone?

Christopher Lloyd29:25

That I don't know. It'll go to my niece, Olivia, and she's a very dear relation. But she does live abroad, and whether she will be able to live at Dixon, I think, is very doubtful. But she has some hard decisions to make, obviously.

Presenter29:39

Terrible to think of its not continuing though. Wouldn't it break your heart to think of the garden falling into that?

Christopher Lloyd29:44

I don't I think one should live in the present as Lull. I mean, I do want to look after the place and not pass it on as a wreck, but I think it's better not to hark back on the past too much and not to worry about the future.

Presenter29:57

Bit like ploughing up the rose garden, really. You're remarkably unsentimental about some things.

Christopher Lloyd30:01

Yes, on the whole I'm not sentimental, just occasionally about music, and some of the plants I like growing, like old fashioned stalks.

Presenter30:10

Tell me about this Schumann next, then.

Christopher Lloyd30:12

Another example of the jilted man is um given in Heinrich Heine's set of poems called Dichtel Lieber, The Love of a Poet, where the p poor young man's been jilted and he hears his forsaking love at her wedding celebrations and the sound of the fiddles and the trumpets and it's a wild sort of waltz tune, rather a bitter sort of waltz tune.

Speaker 430:44

Thas is stein fluid and und gend petensmet and petensmertar.

Speaker 431:00

The tunnels to him hoche fly.

Speaker 431:04

Yeah.

Speaker 431:21

Thus is my thing of good, I now cannot die shall I?

Presenter31:28

Peter Peirce, accompanied by Benjamin Britton, singing Schumann's Dasisdein Flurten und Geigen, that's a flute and violin from Heine's Lumps of a Poet. It's a quite a sad song for a desert island, Christopher, a mood of desperation, suicide. Is is that how you'll feel, cast away on this parched bit of land?

Christopher Lloyd31:47

Well, no. I certainly think more about nice things than about the the things I've hated.

Presenter31:55

So we're going to take you away from it all, and we're going to put you on a desert island, and you're going to have no company, and not much to garden, I don't think,'cause I I think it is a bit parched in the middle of the ocean. What will you do with yourself all day?

Christopher Lloyd32:08

What will I? I don't know. I think I'll do a lot of writing.

Presenter32:13

Last record. Tell me about that one.

Christopher Lloyd32:15

Janufa is my favourite opera of of Janacek, the Czech composer. So I'd just like to start with the opening prelude, where Janufa is waiting for her lover, who is in danger of being called up, in which case he wouldn't be able to marry her, and she is pregnant by him, and sh there would be a terrible family disgrace if she had um his child out of wedlock. The whole opera is based on a mill which is owned by the family and um

Christopher Lloyd32:52

There's a tune which you hear right at the beginning that uh gives you the feeling of a mill wheel turning round.

Presenter33:54

Gabriele Benachkova as Yenofa in the opening scene of Janicek's opera with the Brno Janicek Opera Orchestra conducted by Frantyszek Yilek.

Presenter34:04

If you could only take one of those eight records, Christopher, which one would you take?

Christopher Lloyd34:10

Oh, must it be one of those eight or ten?

Presenter34:11

Yes, oh yes, everyone I think.

Christopher Lloyd34:13

I mean, I I haven't mentioned Wagner, I like Pizza Ring.

Presenter34:15

No, John, that's too late now.

Christopher Lloyd34:19

Well, I think it would have to be Bachelboe first.

Presenter34:21

Well, you get the whole lot anyway, so there's a lot, isn't there?

Christopher Lloyd34:24

Yeah.

Christopher Lloyd34:26

The Naz run there.

Presenter34:27

What about um a book of your own choice? We give you the Bible and we give you the complete works of Shakespeare.

Christopher Lloyd34:34

Well, I very much enjoy

Christopher Lloyd34:37

Gustave Flaubert's letters the letters are so good, they're so personal, and they've got none of the sort of restriction that he felt uh when he was writing for the public. They are absolutely free and really most delightful and very revealing, too.

Presenter34:55

And your luxury.

Christopher Lloyd34:57

Well, I'm afraid I'm a a bit of a sybarite, and I would like my Scotch whisky, please.

Presenter35:03

Any particular one?

Christopher Lloyd35:04

Well, yes, I I have a whisky which uh is called Syndicate that is sent to me from Edinburgh, uh a whole cargo of it. You have to come out to the desert island once a year, and um you get it at a slight discount, but it is an extremely nice whisky.

Presenter35:22

Christopher Lloyd, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Speaker 335:33

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