Marquess Of Bath

Speaker 10:00

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 two thousand and one, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:30

Mike Castaway this week is an aristocrat. He hopes he'll be remembered as a painter and a writer, but his unconventional lifestyle suggests that he'll more easily come to mind as the man who had seventy four lovers and owned one of England's most famous stately homes. Public school, the army, and Oxford failed to extinguish his ambition to become an artist, and after he'd begun to live permanently in the family home, he began covering its walls with murals. He's also built up a very successful business. The estate had more than 400,000 paying visitors last year, while all the time maintaining his belief in what he terms individualism. My entire background, he says, is one of isolation. He's the owner of Longleat, Alexander the 7th Marquess of Bath.

Presenter1:16

And and indeed you you live alone a lot of the time, Alexander, don't you, despite your your many and much publicised wifelets. Do you actually live in Longleat, the house?

Marquess Of Bath1:25

Yes, one third of the house I've lived in since nineteen fifty three, and I've now got a shall we call it a penthouse suite on the top of the house where I regard as even more specially my own.

Presenter1:38

It sounds very grand, the penthouse sweet. What's it like? Describe it to me.

Marquess Of Bath1:41

Well, in the top corner of Longleat I look out over two sides, over the garden and over the park, where there are the lakes and the lions.

Presenter1:51

Do members of the public ever stray into your quarters by mistake?

Marquess Of Bath1:54

Not into my penthouse, that is a holy of holies. But into the part where I did all the murals, they are practically driven in or enticed in, in any case.

Presenter2:04

Certainly, but what I mean is if if you were sitting in your dining room drinking a bowl of soup or something, have they ever walked in on you?

Marquess Of Bath2:10

Oh, very much. Yes. Uh th when I'm giving a weekend party th uh th they are sometimes surprised that the door opens and twenty people troop through.

Presenter2:19

So you've lived in the house in Longleat for for years, as you say, since you were twenty-one. You're the only member of your immediate family to do so, aren't you? You weren't brought up there.

Marquess Of Bath2:28

Yes, my my my father when he was alive used to live in a house um f four miles away and come over to Longleat regularly, but to him it was really his business area.

Presenter2:38

And what does it mean to you, therefore? Because you've probably been closer to it, as I say, uh than any other member of your family. Are you are you

Presenter2:47

Proud of it? Do you do you love it or d I think

Marquess Of Bath2:50

I think it's a most wonderful stage backdrop. My life is entirely lived against that backdrop. I think I'm very lucky to have a wonderfully ornate, historical, inspiring backdrop to do anything that I choose to do. And I, in a sense, am serving it. I'm the acolyte in the temple, seeing that it gets enjoyed by a a massive audience that helps pay for its way.

Presenter3:15

You're still sitting to Chatsworth, though, in the ratings table, aren't you?

Marquess Of Bath3:19

Yes, the people who live in stately homes near the Midlands or near London have a certain advantage. For the West Country you can't do better than long leat and I would have said you can't do better than long leat in the entire world. But still it's we are aware that the figures are better at Chatsworth.

Presenter3:35

But you obviously feel very competitive about that.

Marquess Of Bath3:37

Oh yes, we feel uh friendly competitive. Uh we all meet together in the treasure houses and uh there's a group uh well, a group of us, ten of us, who watch each other's figures very much and also give nice helpful advice. So it's friendly competition.

Presenter3:50

But of course your father set the whole thing in motion, which I want to talk to you about. But let let's pause there. Tell me about the first record you'd like on this desert island.

Marquess Of Bath3:57

Well, I'd like something wonderfully rhythmical, percussion, something that uh doesn't have strains of music going through it, but I can let myself go in dancing, in just being fully alive to rhythm.

Presenter4:39

Brasilia, performed by Sarlo Fernandez and Jean-Pierre Fabien. Let's talk, Alexandra, about your muralization of Longley, because it's been pretty controversial on two counts really, both in content and where you've done it, because you you began, I think, in some of the principal rooms, and there were those who thought it was a it was sacrilege.

Marquess Of Bath5:00

When when you say principal rooms, no, I regard the principal rooms as being what the public see on the historical tour. It's not in those rooms. It was in the side where my grandmother, who I never knew, died just before I was born, but it was her sort of her suite of rooms. And you s you say principal, well it certainly came secondary to the historical side, which they lived in too.

Presenter5:21

But vast sort of panels which you would normally expect perhaps in such a house to to have a fraganard or something developed a

Marquess Of Bath5:30

Yes, Monsieur Fragonau would have been the w what you expected in the drawing room when I started.

Presenter5:30

And Alexander.

Presenter5:32

Yeah.

Presenter5:36

But did you paint over anything? I there must have been fears that you were going to destroy some wonderful Chinese wallpaper or something.

Marquess Of Bath5:43

One of the last murals that I did was the Kama Sutra room, and I wanted a bedroom to do it in, and I have used one where there was Chinese wallpaper, but the murals I've painted are all on panels which can be lifted off bars so they can be done away.

Presenter5:54

Or all my

Presenter5:58

So they can be done away with.

Marquess Of Bath6:00

Yes, they care.

Presenter6:05

You mentioned the Commerce. I mean, again, that was why they were controversial, very, very erotic, that people worried about that.

Marquess Of Bath6:11

Just one room is erotic and to to

Marquess Of Bath6:14

Paint without mentioning eroticism would be a pulverized attitude that uh it wouldn't be genuinely me.

Presenter6:21

Right. And there's also a paranoia room or sequence of murals, isn't there? Yes.

Marquess Of Bath6:27

Uh

Presenter6:28

Which you've said, I think you've written that it's reminiscent of the kind of persecutions which beset you in your childhood. What do you mean by?

Marquess Of Bath6:35

Oh, I didn't link it especially to childhood. The background of paranoid thought was there in my teenage, so I I've tried to get it out of my system by painting it

Marquess Of Bath6:47

Extravagantly, as the thoughts come into one's head.

Marquess Of Bath6:53

And then learning to live with those images.

Presenter6:55

But you have images of f of k a kicked dog cowering from an eagle, I think.

Marquess Of Bath7:00

that that comes into it. It's many a paranoid thought of persecution, and by painting it out it becomes something which I can even regard as a joke. It's no longer as serious as it was before. It cures me.

Presenter7:13

It caused me.

Marquess Of Bath7:15

Oh, I think I'm a very normal, unparanoid person now.

Presenter7:18

Bye.

Presenter7:19

But in the middle of those particular panels, I think, were also portraits of your mother and father.

Marquess Of Bath7:25

Yes, they they are there, and all these things are going wrong, and they're wonderfully serene portraits, and they stand out with magnificent strength in that manner.

Presenter7:34

But you would expect people, therefore, to draw obvious conclusions that somehow there were these two serene people while you were this frightened, cowering dog, schoolboy, whatever.

Marquess Of Bath7:45

I think if a paranoid person is truthful in mapping out how he came to be paranoid, the parents do have a a strong role to play.

Presenter7:46

Okay.

Presenter7:55

As Philip Larkin said, really. As Philip Larkin famously said.

Marquess Of Bath7:59

Uh yes, indeed. I won't quote it, you can, but

Presenter8:04

Let's pause for your second record.

Marquess Of Bath8:04

Supposedly a second record. Oh, yes, something wonderfully wild, bestial, fierce. Something that appeared in Fantasia, Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. I just hope those animals aren't there on my desert island, but I'd like to hear it musically.

Presenter9:20

The Orchestre de la Suisse Romand, conducted by Neme Yervi, with the Glorification of the Chosen One and the Evocation of the Ancestors from Stravinsky's Rite of Springs all very savage stuff, Alexander.

Presenter9:33

The simple fact is I I'd like to talk just a little bit more about your relationship with your father. You just didn't get on, did you?

Presenter9:41

Yeah.

Speaker 49:41

Yeah.

Marquess Of Bath9:41

That probably gives a a wrong impression, because there were times that we were affectionate towards each other and getting on perfectly well. It's just that there were certain climaxes of not getting on, which are perhaps

Marquess Of Bath9:56

Memorable, but I don't want to dwell on.

Presenter9:58

No, no, no, of course not. But it's important, it seems to me, to the understanding of you and what you've done with your life, is the fact that you spent a long time trying to please him and not really succeeding.

Marquess Of Bath10:10

Yes, that is so, that I was um very much living my life in order to be a son that he truly admired, and it never came off.

Presenter10:19

Why do you think that was?

Marquess Of Bath10:24

Well, you see, any analysis of this is bound for me to mention too much that I don't really want to go into. We'd um uh he would have liked me to be somebody who followed in his footsteps with pride

Speaker 110:30

We did.

Marquess Of Bath10:38

towards him and the fact that that wasn't ha

Presenter10:41

Yeah.

Presenter10:42

But it did happen for a long time, didn't it? You you went you did well at Eton, you went into the army, you you did well there, you were

Presenter10:50

Very dashing, much admired, very good looking, clean cut young man, but it didn't cut any ice with him.

Marquess Of Bath10:57

No, because there wasn't the degree of following in my footsteps or idea that he would have probably liked. I was always saying, No, I'm going to be an artist, no, I'm going to be I I wasn't being the image of the person following in his footsteps that would have made life easier.

Presenter11:13

But but why is it and I quoted you at the beginning as saying, and you have said it on several occasions in one form or another, that your entire background is one of isolation.

Marquess Of Bath11:24

Having begun to do my own thing without encouragement from my family or my mother encouraged me at the start, but that dropped away after the divorce and she was more concerned, perhaps, to um reintegrate with my father's approval.

Presenter11:40

So you lost a champion.

Marquess Of Bath11:41

Yes, but let's say that I was by then able to think in terms of I can champion my own cause.

Presenter11:48

But what about your your

Marquess Of Bath11:48

Uh

Presenter11:49

Brothers and sister.

Marquess Of Bath11:50

My elder sister was married she's dead now but was always supportive from a distance, with plenty of criticism thrown in.

Marquess Of Bath12:00

Where my brothers were concerned, I mean, I was perhaps difficult as far as they were concerned in having all of Long Neat, all of the wealth coming in my direction. So it was jealous.

Presenter12:10

So it was jealousy of the first born, was it?

Marquess Of Bath12:12

I think they felt a certain correct indignation that wealth wasn't divided more equally.

Presenter12:20

Record number three.

Marquess Of Bath12:22

Oh, I'd like um I'd like a Wagner chorus. The Pilgrim's Chorus would probably be my favourite choice there.

Presenter13:29

Pilgrim's chorus from Act Three of Wagner's Tannhuizer with the Vienna State Opera Choir and Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Sir George Schulte. At what point then, Alexander, did you g give up trying to impress your father and grow the ponytail and start wearing flamboyant clothes and painting the walls?

Marquess Of Bath13:49

Well, it came in stages. Uh when I was at Oxford I was learning how to put ideas that were different to the ones that he preached together and to be disagreeing with him. Well, one could even say trying to pull the carpet from under his feet in argument in, let's say, the dining room when I went over there for dinner. I would be deliberately seeking to show that I totally rejected his ideas.

Presenter14:16

How did he react to that?

Marquess Of Bath14:18

Oh, there were screaming matches. We were both sho shouting as loud as we could, and um I would sometimes be walking out of the house.

Speaker 414:26

Hmm.

Marquess Of Bath14:27

But still, one repaired these things, one sort of z zimpsed on in trying to get a relationship together that worked.

Presenter14:34

And did it ever did you ever get a relationship together that worked?

Marquess Of Bath14:37

No, but we both learned to keep a step back and not discuss the dangerous issues, and so it was really quite a lot of friendly meeting as well.

Presenter14:48

Hmm because of course he signed over a lot of the property to you, didn't he? And all the potential to avoid death duties, as it were. He uh

Marquess Of Bath14:52

While I was that, yes.

Presenter14:56

But eventually he didn't put you in charge of it, he put your brother in charge of it.

Marquess Of Bath15:00

Uh yes. Well, looking at it from his point of view, I wasn't going to give up being a painter and writer and regarding that as my prime task in life, and I wouldn't have been prepared to work in his office doing whatever he told me to do. So it wasn't really an option that I should be put there. I could make a case for saying it was a very dangerous thing to put a younger brother there, but he did anyway.

Presenter15:23

So the place was in your name, but they ran it, as it were.

Marquess Of Bath15:26

Yes. And that is only talking about Longleat and the park, not about the estate in general.

Presenter15:32

I see. Because of course your your father I mean

Marquess Of Bath15:32

Which I ran.

Presenter15:36

was very inspired, really, because, as I say, he was the first person to open a st to see that the way to keep a stately home going was to get the paying public in.

Marquess Of Bath15:46

Yes, indeed.

Presenter15:47

And it w obviously the concept was that the the animals roamed free and the the public were in cages called motor cars.

Speaker 415:53

Uh

Presenter15:54

But is it true that when you first put in planning permission for it, the planning authority thought when you talked about wild animals you were talking about deer and didn't realize it was lions?

Marquess Of Bath16:04

Uh I don't know if that's true or not, but it certainly was a story that went round.

Presenter16:07

'Cause it did cause uproar, to coin a phrase, didn't it?

Marquess Of Bath16:10

Yes, and the Times came out with a leader saying that a country landowner should be happy with sheep and cows and sort of threatening everybody's lives with lions.

Presenter16:19

Record number four.

Marquess Of Bath16:21

Yes, I'd like something where they nice clear flute-like music, and the best proponent of that, I think, is Bach. So I'd like one of his sonatas.

Presenter17:30

Part of the allegro from Bach's flute sonata in C major, played by Jean Pierre Rompal. How much then do you have to do now with the running of the house in the Safari Park, Alexander? Or or do you delegate it all?

Marquess Of Bath17:44

I certainly delegate, but I need to know all that's going on, and I have regular meetings where it's discussed, and if there's a decision to make, it's mine to make.

Presenter17:53

Because essentially you've only been doing that for the past, what, eight years since you were or seven years, since you were sixty years old when your father died, because before that he and your younger brother did it.

Marquess Of Bath18:03

Uh well, no, the estate and the farms were under me right from nineteen fifty six.

Presenter18:08

Yes, but the house and the safari par

Marquess Of Bath18:10

Hmm.

Marquess Of Bath18:11

The house in the Safari Park came under my father, and well, make no mistake, it was my father who ran it, but he did have um my younger brother doing what he was told.

Presenter18:21

So when you did take over, because he did die in 1992 and you took full charge, you then.

Presenter18:29

ousted your younger brother, as it were.

Marquess Of Bath18:32

That was certainly uh something that was necessary to do, but I don't want to go into details.

Presenter18:38

But but I suppose looking at it from the outside

Presenter18:41

People might think I wonder why he did it. It sort of seems a bit mean spirited, I suppose.

Marquess Of Bath18:45

Well, it would have been great folly if I had not done it, but I as I say, I don't really want to go into the exact um reasons.

Presenter18:53

And how much have you added to the business since since then, since'ninety two? What have you done?

Marquess Of Bath18:58

Well just before nineteen ninety two I I was um reaching an agreement with Centre Parks to set up a holiday village and that opened uh just before my father died, but it was entirely me who um uh was arranging that.

Presenter19:14

Haven't you d developed a a lunar labyrinth? Was that yours?

Marquess Of Bath19:17

Yes. If one's going to walk round the gardens at Lomneat, you do it in ten minutes. So I had to do something where that once the tourists have started going into the gardens, there's something to keep them there, and something to also that to leave unfinished, so that they feel they've got to come back another time to do what they didn't do last time. And amongst those five labyrinths, there's plenty of room to go back and see the bits they didn't see.

Presenter19:41

So the commercial imperative is always there, obviously. But do you have that creative input? Do you design the maze or the lambridge?

Marquess Of Bath19:46

No, I didn't. I always relied on delegating that to maze designs.

Presenter19:51

I mean, what a wonderful thing.

Marquess Of Bath19:53

If I was um empty of

Presenter19:55

Canvas to have.

Marquess Of Bath19:56

If I was finding there weren't things for my own hands to do in writing and painting, yes, I w would probably then be looking let me have a try at doing something like that. But I've got so much to do that I'm worried will not be finished in my lifetime that I'm doing that first.

Presenter20:12

Record number five.

Marquess Of Bath20:13

I'd like a record that brings up the spirit of when my children were very young and they were coming down to stay with me in France and the thing that got got them jumping around, dancing and

Marquess Of Bath20:26

I think it's called coconut, although I always knew it as put the lime in the cookie.

Speaker 420:42

The report

Speaker 420:43

Time is

Speaker 420:51

Lime in the rock and the Chicago Donny cookie noticed

Presenter20:55

Ah.

Speaker 420:55

If there's nothing that can take us to the

Presenter20:59

Harry Nielsen putting the lime in the cocoanut and reminder of life with your children, Alexander. How many do you have?

Marquess Of Bath21:07

I could answer two or three. I think I'll answer two.

Presenter21:10

Oh.

Presenter21:12

What I don't understand.

Marquess Of Bath21:15

I don't want to go into the whole thing of all my children that perhaps exist elsewhere, and I think I'll keep uh that to myself.

Presenter21:22

So you have two with your wife. But but possibly

Marquess Of Bath21:26

Um yes, there is another child. Yes, so I think

Presenter21:28

Only one other.

Presenter21:31

But you've had seventy five wifelets, as you call them.

Marquess Of Bath21:34

Yes, most unproductively. I've all been trying to persuade them to have huge amounts of children by me, but I haven't been very successful.

Presenter21:41

Why do you call them wifelets?

Marquess Of Bath21:44

I felt that it would be running them down to call things like concubines, mistresses. I just sort of preferred a a pleasantly humorous term that one can all talk and all feel, yes, I have a happy wife that

Presenter21:57

What's wrong with Lover?

Marquess Of Bath21:57

Yeah.

Marquess Of Bath22:00

Well, the intention was to have children, so it was to make it a family something in a in a family form, and uh yes, I can also call them lovers.

Presenter22:10

But the intention also, as I if I think I understand it right, is is to find a kind of this is part of your

Presenter22:18

Individualism, as you call it, is to find happiness, and you you find polygamy, as it were, or p a polygamous existence.

Marquess Of Bath22:27

Yes, I feel it ought to be for the mother to choose the family form that suits her the best. And she's got a choice between single parenthood and monogamy, polygyny, polyandry, group marriage. It's her choice.

Presenter22:43

And has your wife chosen that? Your your wife y you don't

Marquess Of Bath22:47

No, no, she she no, no, these are my values and what I've been trying to do. But she

Presenter22:52

But she has gone along you've had an open marriage in that she knows about the wifelets.

Marquess Of Bath22:56

Yeah, she certainly knows about it, but I don't suppose she would say she approves of it. She puts up with it is probably

Presenter23:01

But she doesn't you don't cohabit very often. She lives in Paris, doesn't she?

Marquess Of Bath23:05

Oh, quite often enough, we cohabit. Uh she's always over at Longleat, uh, let's say one week in four.

Presenter23:11

And what about your children? What um they're now the the the two children by your wife are are, what, twenty-five and thirty something?

Marquess Of Bath23:18

Yeah.

Presenter23:20

Yes, what what do they think of it?

Marquess Of Bath23:22

Oh, I don't think they go along with it either. I think they they support my wife on these matters.

Presenter23:28

So i is your son and heir, then, as alienated from you as you were from your father?

Marquess Of Bath23:34

No, that isn't the case. I actually get on very well with him. But that doesn't mean to say he's got to support me in my beliefs in um wide number of fields. No, he's got his own ideas, and that is corrected in the spirit of individualism.

Presenter23:48

And indeed you brought him up very differently from the way you'd been brought up. You you didn't send him to Eaton, you sent him to the local Comprehensive, didn't you?

Marquess Of Bath23:55

Yes, I've kept away from the idea of buying privilege, by buying an education that isn't open to everyone to receive. And uh they've done very well in the comprehens through the comprehensive system.

Presenter24:07

And your but your son did in fact take himself out of comprehensive school and put himself into a public school, didn't he?

Marquess Of Bath24:14

Yes, I would have much preferred he didn't, but um he his trustees were pointing out to him that he did now have money in his own, and uh if he wanted to taste the other side of education it was his choice, and uh I agree it is.

Presenter24:31

Record numbers

Marquess Of Bath24:31

Ticks.

Marquess Of Bath24:33

Of operas, I d love Lucha de la Mamour and the dying scenes of something dramatic happening, probably that when she is herself dying or going mad, I would love that to take to my desert island.

Presenter25:45

Joan Sutherland in the death scene from Donizetti's Lucia de Lamamour with the orchestra and chorus of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, conducted by Richard Bonning. We didn't mention your son's name, Alexander Ciorlin, which is an ancient Wessex name.

Marquess Of Bath25:58

See you.

Marquess Of Bath26:01

The third king of Wessex was Sjorlin, or they he they might have pronounced it Chavlin or Chawlin, but uh we chose our own pronunciation. And it was also a hero in Celtic legend, so it's not quite certain where it came from. It might be that the Saxons when they arrived just grabbed all the heroes from the Celts and said they're our kings.

Presenter26:20

You styled yourself King of Wessex at one point.

Marquess Of Bath26:23

Oh no, no, that's totally untrue. It was a sarcastic remark by uh a relative who um uh told some press we call him the King of Wessex and it was never my quotation.

Presenter26:33

But you stood for Parliament as as a Wessex regionalist.

Marquess Of Bath26:36

Yes, indeed, and that is looking forward, not backward, to a united regions of Europe as the way that democracy will evolve and a vote will really count for what happens in Europe.

Presenter26:49

And you've published novels and you're always writing your autobiography. That's an ongoing project. How many words have you written so far?

Marquess Of Bath26:57

Who is really terrifying? It's reached four million words.

Presenter27:00

And what year have you got?

Marquess Of Bath27:02

1982. So it'll be probably six million words or so by the time I catch up with the present.

Presenter27:09

As you say, Longleat gives you the platform and the wherewithal, I suppose, to enable you to do these things, to indulge your talents, as it were.

Marquess Of Bath27:16

Yeah.

Marquess Of Bath27:18

But

Presenter27:19

Um

Presenter27:20

Is that enough in itself, or do you want something more? You want recognition, don't you?

Marquess Of Bath27:25

I want recognition, I don't have recognition, but yes, there's never one never says die on that. One's always supposing yes, it will happen.

Presenter27:33

So you want school children to study the life and works of Alexander Thym, is that?

Marquess Of Bath27:38

When they're studying biography, I'm hoping that this would be the example of w what

Marquess Of Bath27:44

biography can reach out to include and that they would be quoting little bits from it, but probably not for a little while yet, because I can't even publish it fully until the last person in it has died.

Presenter27:56

Everyone has to die. I see. It could be a long way off then.

Marquess Of Bath27:59

Yes, it could be.

Presenter28:00

I think

Presenter28:04

But seriously, what chance what chance do you think you've got of that happening, of your becoming a topic on mastermind?

Marquess Of Bath28:12

I don't think it's for the writer to bother about that. I still have confidence that in the long run it will stand as the best autobiography that's ever been written.

Presenter28:21

No, but not just that. All your writings and your painting do you how good do you really think you are?

Marquess Of Bath28:29

I believe I'm good, but can we just leave it at that?

Presenter28:31

Yes.

Marquess Of Bath28:34

Yeah.

Presenter28:34

Oh, this is this is how good a singer you are. Here we are.

Marquess Of Bath28:37

Oh well, we've got a reminder that and this I'm not putting into the same

Marquess Of Bath28:42

Comparison as my writings and paintings, but I have also sung. I write songs, and there was a particular time when I put lots of them to music and accompanied them, myself playing to the guitar. I was doing this once on television, and Desi Connor happened to be listening and rang me up next morning and said, Have you written any more songs like that? I said, Yes, plenty. Well, if you bring them round, I'll listen to them and put them on a record with me singing. Yes, this happened.

Presenter29:08

And did he think?

Presenter29:10

And this is one of them.

Marquess Of Bath29:11

This is one of them. I I'm not saying that this is the best on the record, but I'm choosing this one because it was the one I wrote for Anna, my wife. It's called Love Words, and so I think we ought to have some reminder both of the fact that I have been a singer as it has been recorded, and also some words of affection to my wife.

Marquess Of Bath29:33

Flowers have scented coming. But the savours I like best Are the tastes of your night coming Mingled with heartstrumming Here on my naked chest

Marquess Of Bath29:47

Spirit whose dream was the colour Yeah.

Marquess Of Bath29:50

In the rainbow watching storms

Marquess Of Bath29:54

Please now when this scholar dances in step

Presenter29:57

Follow learning with me to perform. Is that you playing the guitar as well?

Marquess Of Bath30:01

Yes, but there was a better guitarist along with me, and so the bits you were admiring probably weren't my fingers.

Presenter30:09

That was love words composed and uh played and sung by my castaway Lord Bath. How do you feel about a desert island, Alexander? Well, having

Marquess Of Bath30:19

prided myself on my uh being able to isolate myself. I suppose it wouldn't be too much of a trauma when I find it happening.

Presenter30:28

But what about joys then? Is there any joy in being alone in on a desert island?

Marquess Of Bath30:32

Listen

Marquess Of Bath30:33

If I'm getting down to my routine of writing, and there's still a few million words to perform.

Marquess Of Bath30:40

I think I shall be perfectly happy. It if I finally had finished it, well, then I'll have to start doing things that I can write about the present.

Presenter30:48

And what do you think you'd miss most about your present existence?

Marquess Of Bath30:56

Longleat, I won't get long leat there. It is lovely having that platform to um perform on. So learning to perform on a desert island will be something very different.

Presenter31:06

And what, as you sit on the sand and mull it all over and look back across it all, what will you regret most?

Marquess Of Bath31:15

I suppose, in all truth, one will be regretting the absence of that um rescue ship on the horizon, but

Presenter31:23

But if you were

Marquess Of Bath31:23

Looking

Presenter31:24

Yeah.

Marquess Of Bath31:24

Sixty-seven years.

Marquess Of Bath31:27

I think I might be regretting that the

Marquess Of Bath31:30

Seventy four ladies aren't on the island. I'm imagining that will be the case, but one has to live through it before one really knows what one regrets.

Presenter31:38

So you're saying you've got no great regrets, really, about your love. You would have done it differently.

Marquess Of Bath31:41

I think uh I would be a candidate for somebody who really can uh be in isolation for a long time and just get into routines of doing things which uh

Marquess Of Bath31:53

have kept me happy and healthy up to now.

Presenter31:55

Yeah, you think you'll be good at it, don't you?

Marquess Of Bath31:57

I think I would, yes, although I'm getting a bit old for these things.

Presenter32:01

But you'd give it a shot in

Marquess Of Bath32:03

Yes, I would. Last record. Oh, let's have something arousing in the European national anthem, Beethoven's Choral Symphony.

Speaker 432:41

Yeah.

Presenter33:11

The finale of Beethoven's Symphony No. nine in D minor, the Ode to Joy, or to Freedom as it became on that momentous occasion in Berlin in nineteen eighty nine, when it was performed by three large choruses and six orchestras, all under the baton of Leonard Bernstein. Now, if you could only take um one of those records, Alexander, which one would you take?

Marquess Of Bath33:31

I think that last one.

Presenter33:33

Dude.

Presenter33:34

Yeah.

Marquess Of Bath33:34

One might be feeling a bit depressed sometimes, so I think that this would help if it I'm thoroughly arousing me and looking for that sail on the horizon.

Presenter33:42

What about your book as well as the Bible and Shakespeare?

Marquess Of Bath33:45

Well, I want to be continue writing, so I think my book will be a combined dictionary and thesaurus.

Presenter33:52

And what about your luxury?

Marquess Of Bath33:55

My luxury I've got to have that laptop computer somehow, and I will have a a bicycle perhaps that I combine with charging it up and also get rid of I don't suppose I'll be getting too much extra fat on this island, but it it it'll be good exercise anyway.

Marquess Of Bath34:12

Bicycle bicycle with all the things that go in to make friction and um gather electricity.

Presenter34:18

and exercise you at the same time.

Marquess Of Bath34:20

Yes.

Presenter34:20

Alexander Thyn, seventh Marquess of Bath, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island iscs.

Presenter34:26

Type.

Speaker 134:42

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