Christopher Ondaatje

Speaker 40:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in two thousand and two, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:24

My Castaway this week is a business man. At least he made his wealth in business. He's found his fulfilment in setting himself free to enjoy his passions writing, exploration, art, music, and nature.

Presenter0:36

Born in Sri Lanka, then called Ceylon, the son of a powerful colonial family, he was sent to England for his education. His family fell on hard times, and at the age of twenty three, with thirteen dollars in his pocket, he went to Canada. He made a fortune through a combination of publishing, stockbroking, and finance. But fifteen years ago he sold. He gave it all up to pursue the things that really interested him. He's written books on the leopard and his hunt for the true source of the Nile, and he's become a major philanthropist of the arts. The new wing of the National Portrait Gallery bears his name. I was going to succeed, and that was that, he says. But the best decision was chucking it all in 1988. He is Christopher Ondarce. So for the last fourteen, fifteen years, Christopher, you've been having a ball doing exactly what you wanted to do in life, have you?

Christopher Ondaatje1:24

Absolutely.

Presenter1:25

But can you remember the moment when you took that decision? It was a huge decision for a very highly successful businessman to take, to suddenly say, I'm going to chuck this.

Christopher Ondaatje1:34

Again, absolutely, because I was I didn't really intend to do it. I was just on safari in Tanganyika, or Tanzania as it is known now, chasing leopards, and I was with my wife, and we were in the middle of nowhere, and I was just having a fantastic time, and didn't have to field all the phone calls and see all the people that I had to see, or meet the press, and answer all kinds of ridiculous questions. And I was just free. Free. I mean, free in much the same way I was when I was a little boy in Ceylon. I just said to myself, what on earth am I doing? Just beating my head against the brick wall. I mean, why don't I do this all the time?

Presenter2:12

You were what, you were mid fifties at the time, weren't you?

Christopher Ondaatje2:14

Yeah.

Presenter2:15

Why would you feel like that? Most people and you were so success you control billions. I mean, let's let's put some figures on it, first of all. Let's say how big you were. We're not just talking about an averagely successful businessman, are we? We're talking about a hugely successful businessman.

Christopher Ondaatje2:27

Well the the publishing company that I started with practically nothing did control a billion two hundred thousand dollars. And I was I was working almost all the time. I mean I was your your really mind is on twenty four hours a day. You cannot turn your mind off.

Presenter2:37

I mean I won't

Presenter2:42

But you were so you were much respected. You were a guru, weren't you? People in Canada, and this business was in Canada, turned to you, admired you. Y you enjoyed adulation, no less, didn't you?

Christopher Ondaatje2:51

Oh, certainly, certainly. The thought of giving it up was difficult because you you knew you were giving up all this adulation, as you say, and and you the power and the money and the control of money. It's it's an addiction. I mean, if you're successful in business and you are doing what you really want to do, it's a drug. It's a drug, and it's just hard to turn it off.

Presenter3:09

And, truth be told, you were rather tired of of feeding what you regarded, I think, as your shareholders' greed, weren't you?

Christopher Ondaatje3:15

When I had the public company, we were enormously successful. And the company Baguerian at that time was making $89 million a year after tax. But people wanted increased earnings, more dividends, etc. And that really wasn't what I set out to do. I was having so much fun at the beginning, at the beginning running these corporations, and it just wasn't fun anymore.

Presenter3:34

So you went back to Canada from Tanzania. You set about selling off, dismantling, selling everything that you had. People, your colleagues, your shareholders, everyone must have thought you were mad.

Christopher Ondaatje3:44

You can't just do it like snapping your fingers. I mean, you have to really.

Christopher Ondaatje3:50

Be very quiet about it, and you have to be it's quite secretive because when you make a decision, I mean, making money is a lonely business.

Christopher Ondaatje3:56

All your decisions are lonely decisions. You can make your decisions and then you have to put them into effect. You can't go just charging out in the street and yelling that this is what I've decided to do. It isn't like that.

Presenter4:06

Well, here we strip you of everything. You'll be glad to hear. We'll send you off to a desert island with absolutely nothing, only these bits and pieces of music. What's the first bit you take?

Christopher Ondaatje4:15

Well, I think if there was I was only going to take one record to the Desert Island, I would take Rosen Cavalier. My first choice is this wonderful prelude to Strauss's Rosen Cavalier, where the Marchalin is enjoying a night of love with her young lover, and it tells its own story.

Presenter5:32

The prelude to Richard Strauss's Der Rosen Cavalier, The Night of the Rose, played by the Vienna Philharmonic, conducted by Herbert von Carrion. So you um reinvented yourself, Christopher, fifteen years ago, and there have been other reinventions along the way, others born of absolute necessity, the need to survive, and we'll hear about those. But let's go back to your very beginning, in Ceylon, as it then was, in the thirties. How would you describe that small boy you were then?

Christopher Ondaatje5:56

Very free, very happy, absolutely didn't have any responsibilities. My father was a tea planter. We lived on the top of an an enormous hill or mountain, semi-mountain really. I was there with my two sisters and my brother, younger brother Michael, was born ten years later. And we were just up there on the tea estate and we'd get up in the morning and have breakfast and just go out into the jungle. I'd walk with my father. It was a fantastic existence. Marvelous existence.

Presenter6:18

It was

Presenter6:19

It did his childhood, obviously. You were very close to your father, weren't you?

Christopher Ondaatje6:23

Very close to my and and to my mother, but I was very close to my father because, you know, I was the first born son and all that sort of stuff. And, you know, he he drank a lot and he had a real drinking problem. But I used to like going o out walking on the estates with him, discussing men things with him, if you like, whether it was birds or shooting or hunting or anything. I could talk to him.

Presenter6:42

But there was this, as you say, he drank and there was a a sort of darker side to him. You mentioned Michael, your brother, and people will have made the link with the name Michael on Darchie, the Book of Rise winner, wrote The English Patient, and so on. He's written rather comic stories about your father doing mad things, but it seems to me, reading what you've written, that it was not so funny when you were there.

Christopher Ondaatje7:01

No, it certainly wasn't funny. Remember, you know, Michael was ten years younger than I was. So the life that you remember when you're two to four years old is different when when you're

Christopher Ondaatje7:10

older uh before I left uh Ceylon. So, I mean, when I was from ten to thirteen and fourteen, those three to four years were terrible, terrible.

Presenter7:19

There was a terrifying story of your father driving you in the car with your two small sisters to the edge of a cliff.

Christopher Ondaatje7:25

It's quite sad really, but you know, my mother, you know, to protect us, I suppose, and the whole family, used to send us with my father out to wherever he was going. So he would drive us, and with that responsibility, drive us back. So there he he tended not to drink, but this time he did drink, and of course he drank rather more than he should have. And there was this terrifying drive back to our bungalow, our house at the top of the hill, where he was, you know, winding his way off these really, really dangerous roads. And the car went over the edge, but didn't go all over the edge. It was just teetering on the brink. And Michael has written rather a humorous story of that in Running in the Family. But in my book, The Mani Tripanani, which you may have read, you know, I it was it was a terrifying thing because, you know, we couldn't move.

Presenter8:07

Think.

Presenter8:09

Because the car might have gone over the edge.

Christopher Ondaatje8:11

Absolutely, yes.

Presenter8:12

It's rather like that filmy Italian job, isn't it? When you've got one wheel hanging over the edge of the pressure.

Christopher Ondaatje8:16

Right, right, right.

Presenter8:17

But you loved your father nevertheless, obviously. You were very loving.

Christopher Ondaatje8:20

Absolutely, definitely. I loved him as much when I was there as when I wasn't there. And that's an important thing, because remember, I left when I was thirteen and never saw him again. So I really lived without th that father image, that guiding influence. And let's face it, your father is the most important influence in your life. And he certainly was in mine, even though he wasn't there. Everything I always did, I did for him. Even now, I do things and I think of him and I said, Would he have been proud? He has been the most important influence in my life.

Presenter8:50

And you parted, as you said, when you were thirteen, and you were going off to school just after the war, to come here, to Blundalls in Devon, your public school. Do you remember the moment of parting?

Christopher Ondaatje8:59

Oh, absolutely. It was terrible. It was terrible. We gave each other a huge hug, etcetera. And he gave me his watch, which I still have, and he was in tears. And I remember him turning away at the car. He just staggered into the house. He wasn't drunk or anything like that. It was a very sad moment. I've been back, obviously, to the planters' bungalow where we lived, and I've seen exactly the same place, and the whole horrible scene came flooding back to me.

Presenter9:24

But you never saw him again, did you?

Christopher Ondaatje9:26

No, never saw my father again.

Presenter9:28

Record number two.

Christopher Ondaatje9:29

Well, I was in England and learning this new country, and the first piece of music that was very English that really influenced me was Kathleen Ferrier singing Blow the Wind Southerly.

Speaker 49:45

Southerly, southerly, Blow the wind south O'er the bunny blue sea.

Speaker 49:57

Blow the wind southerly, southerly, southerly

Speaker 410:04

Love only breathes my love heart to me.

Speaker 410:12

They told me last night there were ships in the offing, And I hurried down to the deep rolling sea.

Speaker 410:28

But my eye could not see.

Speaker 410:31

Where am I the bark that is bare

Presenter10:41

Blow the Wind Southerly, sung by Kathleen Ferrier. So it was immediately after the war, Christopher Andarchy, as a boy of thirteen, you were posted off to boarding school here, put into long grey trousers and a shirt and a tie for the first time. Having to reinvent yourself essentially. How difficult was it?

Christopher Ondaatje10:58

Quite difficult. It was 1947. I sort of arrived, this wild young boy with a shock of black hair, probably with a Bombay Welsh accent, which you can probably still detect every now and again. And I had to learn quotes to be an Englishman. It was very cold. We had to leave the windows of the dormitory open. We were not allowed to wear vests underneath our shirt. There was no central heating. It was pretty miserable. It was the rugger term. I love rugger. I love rugger then, I love rugger now. But it was tough when you're suddenly shoved into the scrum and you don't know what you're doing.

Presenter11:31

But what's even more tough is that you never went home, you and you never, for some years, I think how many years, saw a member of your family, the family you'd grown up with?

Christopher Ondaatje11:41

No, I didn't see anybody of my family again until I was 1951. And these are the most formative years.

Presenter11:46

Four or five years, yeah.

Christopher Ondaatje11:48

But more than that, those are the years that you really form yourself and that you really you g really grow up. Unfortunately, during this terrible time as I was at school too, my parents separated and divorced, so that was another traumatic thing that I had to go through. But what really happened was I learnt that I had to rely on myself. But I knew that in the end

Christopher Ondaatje12:09

That I had to make the final decision. So, what I was going to do with my life, or what I was going to feel.

Christopher Ondaatje12:14

I had to make the decision.

Presenter12:16

So you made a life there for yourself, you created it and you you you you learned how to look after yourself, but then all of a sudden that was taken away from you, wasn't it?

Christopher Ondaatje12:23

I saw my mother in nineteen fifty one. She came to Petergate, my house, and the housemaster introduced me to my mother, which is an extraordinary situation. I mean it's I mean, we we knew each other, we hugged and we kissed, etcetera, but you know, I I was seeing my mother who I hadn't seen for

Christopher Ondaatje12:40

Gosh, an enormous amount of time. When she left that afternoon, the housemaster said that she he was very sorry to tell me that I couldn't stay at school any more because we didn't have the money to pay the bills. So there was this life that I'd learnt to survive in, learnt to protect myself, built a cocoon of safety around myself, and suddenly it was taken away, and I spent my seventeenth birthday in the city of London learning a completely new

Christopher Ondaatje13:04

Game World of Finance.

Presenter13:06

Record number three.

Christopher Ondaatje13:08

During this time in England, I became fascinated with American music. And I later learnt that really American music almost charted the waves of financial prosperity or failure in the States. And I just used to collect these records and listen to them. And I just became the start of my sort of yearning and learning for North America.

Speaker 413:29

Land to cruel.

Speaker 413:34

If you want to win your heart's desire

Speaker 413:38

Sweet melodies of love inspire

Speaker 413:43

Romance

Speaker 413:47

Just murmur, da-da-dee-da-da-da-dee.

Speaker 413:52

And when you do

Speaker 413:57

Newlandsur dot Addy

Presenter13:58

In Crosby and Learn to Croon, and that was recorded in 1933. So, um, the family, Christopher Andoti, was destitute effectively and divided because your mother had brought one sister over here and another sister, and Michael, your younger brother, was left in Ceylon. How and where did you live here? How did you cope? How did you live?

Christopher Ondaatje14:17

My mother was an incredible woman, and you you couldn't ever knock her down. She had just this tremendous spirit. I mean, let's face it, she'd had quite a privileged life and you know, looked after. In those days, you know, Salon was very, very wealthy before independence in nineteen forty eight. And she just chucked it all.

Christopher Ondaatje14:34

came to England and said, Screw this, you know, I'm going to be with my family, my children. And she got a job in Nottinghill Gate looking after a house and absolutely. And she ran this boarding house in return for one room in the basement which she lived in with my sister.

Presenter14:41

Supporting house.

Christopher Ondaatje14:49

And I had this tiny little attic room, and that's how we lived. And she used to be. She scrubbed the floors, she did. She scrubbed the floors and looked after the people who were in the boarding house. She used to tell us, you know, that we're we're in Chelsea, and this is where all the Bohemians are, and all these other people. You know, they're all Bohemians, you know, but they're they're not really Bohemians. We are the real Bohemians. We are the people who, you know, who are down here living this way now, you know, because we are the real aristocratic Bohemians. I mean, she just gave us so much.

Presenter14:52

She scrubbed

Presenter14:53

Yeah.

Christopher Ondaatje15:14

Confidence. I mean, and I've kept that all my life.

Presenter15:17

And somewhere in all of this well, perhaps that's what inspired you, you decided, didn't you, that you were going to recoup the family fortune. That's that was your mission in life.

Christopher Ondaatje15:24

I hated being poor.

Christopher Ondaatje15:26

You know, as they say, you know, I've been rich and I've been poor, and rich is better. And, you know, I I really didn't like it. I mean, I I felt sad for my mother, this proud woman.

Presenter15:35

It was a sense of shame, perhaps, of what had been lost, how it had been lost.

Christopher Ondaatje15:37

There's more as well as shame of my father.

Presenter15:40

Mm.

Christopher Ondaatje15:41

Than the way we lived and my mother.

Presenter15:43

Did you communicate with your father?

Christopher Ondaatje15:44

Oh gosh, yes, absolutely. We should write right all the time.

Presenter15:47

But he had a sense you've written of being betrayed.

Christopher Ondaatje15:50

Later on I found that out that, you know, he f he thought that we'd left him. I mean, in and and I'm sympathetic to that.

Presenter15:56

But he remarried, didn't he? And how long did he go?

Christopher Ondaatje15:57

Uh

Christopher Ondaatje15:58

He remarried absolutely and had one other uh daughter.

Christopher Ondaatje16:02

Why?

Presenter16:02

Why why didn't you ever go back and see him?

Christopher Ondaatje16:05

We didn't really have the money. I mean, you know.

Presenter16:07

But he died when you were, what, uh coming up to thirty, by which time you had a job in Canada. Why did you never think I'm going to go to the market?

Christopher Ondaatje16:14

Well, I did think of it all the time. I did. But basically you become estranged. I mean, you write letters and you don't get a reply. Life in Salon has become further and further away and and the shame was not so much the way we lived in Nottinghill Gate. The shame was really the past, that we were up there and we'd lost it, we'd knocked it down. I never did get that out of my system, and I haven't got it out of my system now.

Presenter16:35

He did meet a rather ignominious end, didn't he?

Christopher Ondaatje16:38

That was terrible. At Rock Hill, which is my grandfather's estate where he lived and eventually died, uh you know, he was screaming at his second wife, you know, for the gin, which obviously she had hidden and and he unfortunately tripped and smashed his head on the stone parapet in the veranda, and he never recovered con consciousness.

Presenter17:00

Record number four.

Christopher Ondaatje17:01

Bessie Smith was one of the greatest of all American blues singers. This record, which is when Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out, has always been a warning to me. So I said you've been up and you've been down, you know, and up is better, but you've got to remember that there is a down.

Speaker 417:16

But if I ever get on my feet again

Speaker 417:22

Then I'll meet my long lost friend.

Speaker 417:27

It's mighty strange.

Speaker 417:30

Without a doubt Nobody knows you when you down and out I mean when you down and out

Presenter17:43

Nobody knows you when you're down and out, sung by Bessie Smith. You were determined, as you've said, Christopher, from the beginning, when all of these awful things happened to you, not to be down and out. But luckily for you

Presenter17:53

Money making business had a natural fascination for you. Didn't when did you discover this?

Christopher Ondaatje17:59

Well, somewhere before 1956 when I went to Canada, because when I was working for the bank in London, we had to take these exams. This teacher, I can't remember his name now, I mean, he just taught us about these quotes, pieces of paper. And these pieces of paper were worth more or less depending on whether more people bought them or not, or whether the company did well or not.

Christopher Ondaatje18:22

And I just said to myself, God, how long has this been going on? And at that moment I knew exactly what I was going to do for the rest of my life, because I then became very ambitious. England in the early fifties was not a very good place for a young ambitious person. And I looked at the gross natural product charts, and I didn't even know what a gross natural product was, really. Looked at these chart books, and there were the three up charts in the world of the United States, Canada, and Australia. And it was just easy to go to Canada then. So I just went to Canada, as you say, with $13 in my pocket, and I just charted again.

Presenter18:54

But from pretty humble beginnings, I mean it was rather of a Dick Whittington story, really. You were living, I think, in a basement in which was kind of laundry, sharing a room with a washing machine, and you went hungry sometimes.

Christopher Ondaatje19:04

I stayed in a basement house in Leaside in Toronto, in in a laundry room actually, with these white sheets hanging around me, which were wet sometimes. Initially I didn't have any money at all, so I remember go used to buy a round of toast, which is only ten cents then, a round of toast, and I'd eat one slice for dinner and I'd have the other slice in the morning, and I'd

Christopher Ondaatje19:22

But I had to wait for a month before till I got my first paycheck.

Presenter19:25

To one side for a moment, I mean, in the midst of all of this and you did get there, as we know, you became part of the Canadian Olympic bobsleigh team, and in fact they took gold in Innsbruck in'sixty four'.

Christopher Ondaatje19:35

The barb sled thing was just a thing on the side. And as a team of young chaps, we went to Innsbruck, and our sled actually did not win the gold medal. Vic Amory on the Canada one sled did win. We came 14th out of 28. But it was a wonderful experience. Wonderful experience, just going there. And a wonderful experience in that it gave us confidence. It certainly gave me confidence, because when I got back again, I had established for myself, although I hadn't realized a springboard.

Christopher Ondaatje20:00

from which to move into the financial world.

Presenter20:02

So how long did it take you from the moment you arrived in Canada to the moment when you were pretty well set up in business and you were beginning to achieve it and make it big?

Christopher Ondaatje20:11

Well, after the Olympics in 1964, I'd taken all the investment exams in London, I'd taken all the investment exams in Canada, and I moved into the brokerage business, the brokerage business into Pitfield-Mackay-Ross and Company and the institutional division. And in 1970, we started our own firm. It was that quick, really. If you'd like, the doors had been opened, they'd let me in. So I was now in the world of finance. So now it's a matter of are you going to be good? Are you going to be bad? Are you going to be creative? Are you going to be able to make it or not?

Presenter20:38

And you could. And not least because, of course, you were in the right place at the right time. There was this booming American bull market which lasted then through until 87, just before you gave it up.

Christopher Ondaatje20:47

I was at the right place at the right time. We were in Montreal when I was married.

Christopher Ondaatje20:51

And we had two children and we moved to Toronto in in nineteen sixty two. And really right after that, those twenty five years, Toronto was the fastest growing town in North America. And and the year they were they were hard working years, but they were pretty good years.

Presenter21:03

So you were the maverick who cut a swathe down Bay Street, and then uh you made up your mind and you gave it all up.

Christopher Ondaatje21:09

Well, it wasn't really quite as easy as that. Anyway.

Presenter21:09

One what

Presenter21:12

Tell me about your next record.

Christopher Ondaatje21:14

Gordon Lightfoot, he really is the Canadian troubadour. Canada is the second largest country in the world. 90% of the population lives within 200 miles of the American border. And all these provinces are tied together with these twin ribbons of steel, the Canadian Pacific Railway. And it is the thing that's forced Confederation and really has still held Canada together. So this is Lightfoot's song of the CPR.

Speaker 321:38

There was a time in this fair land when the railroad did not run.

Speaker 321:43

And the wild majestic mountains stood alone against the sun

Speaker 321:50

Long before the white man and long before the wheel.

Speaker 321:55

When the green dark forest was too silent to be real

Presenter22:03

Gordon Lightfoot and the Canadian Railroad Trilogy. So you left the world of finance, Christopher Andaci, and then went off to the other jungle, the real jungle with the real predators, leopards and so on. But I'm fascinated about your time as an explorer. Am I right in saying that you overturned, aged sixty-six, a few years ago, what we believed and have believed for a hundred years to be the true source of the Nile? You said, no, it ain't there, it's here.

Christopher Ondaatje22:30

I became fascinated with Sir Richard Burton in the 1970s. And so I determined then, having read everything about him, everything that he'd written, and everything that anybody had written about the Victorian explorers, to go and search for the source of the Nile myself. Because the one thing I realized was that all these chaps brought back information that was different from the others. And so the claims of Great Britain in the middle of the 19th century, I didn't think, were really particularly accurate. I mean,

Presenter22:57

So in nineteen ninety six you set out with a handful of guys and a Jeep and say, I'm going to put this right?

Christopher Ondaatje23:02

Well, I just first of all remember that I've chucked everything. Okay, I'm now I need a mission, I need a goal, I need something to do. The thing is that Lake Victoria is not the source of the Nile. Lake Victoria and Lake Albert are two reservoirs.

Christopher Ondaatje23:15

And they are the two great reservoirs. They are fed by two mighty rivers, the Kagera River and the Semliki River. And so these two rivers are the main source which drain, a, the Burundi Highlands, and B, the Rwenzori Mountains.

Presenter23:28

And the Royal Geographical Society has endorsed your phone as you have remote.

Christopher Ondaatje23:31

But it's not American endorsement. They won't endorse anything. They won't change history and change geography. Why should they?

Presenter23:38

So we're back to danger, really, again, aren't we? Because you're hacking through the jungle, as you say, and and in books you've written about these adventures there are packs of hyenas sniffing at your tent and there's a nasty encounter with a lion. I mean this these days is what turns you on, is it? This is where you get the bars and the adrenaline.

Christopher Ondaatje23:54

Certainly. I mean, it's a different kind of buzz. It's very rewarding, but it's not rewarding from a money monetary standpoint. And there is danger involved, but I I quite like that. I quite like that.

Presenter24:03

But it seems to me that your fear in all of these things these days is dying without completing that which you have set out to do, you know, the task that you have set yourself.

Christopher Ondaatje24:13

Well, that is true, because I certainly don't want to die with the words Financia emblazoned on my gravestone.

Christopher Ondaatje24:19

But the ambition, you know, it's it's nice to say that I'm hacking my way through the jungles and going to the Sauce Nile and all that stuff, but that that's really what I want to do because it's it's fun and it it drives me. But that's not my life. My my life is having been a very selfish person.

Christopher Ondaatje24:33

What I'm really trying to do now is to do something that's really worthwhile and to be unselfish. So although I will never give up exploring, really it's doing something with the money that I've been lucky enough to earn. And you have to be unselfish. If you want to do something very worthwhile in your life, you really have to drive yourself to a goal that is unselfish.

Presenter24:54

I want to talk to you more about that in a second, but let's pause for record number six.

Christopher Ondaatje24:57

Josephine Baker was a black musical artist from Harlem who made a great hit in Paris. And she has a wonderful song called I Have Two Loves. And for me it's particularly permanent because although I'm British and have a British passport, I'm also Canadian.

Speaker 425:14

Yet is our moon.

Speaker 425:19

Won't pay a party, party to you.

Speaker 425:28

On caravine La Ferang et Bella.

Speaker 425:37

Maisac moi die, cirque mom sor de sal.

Presenter25:44

Josephine Baker and J De Zamour. I have two loves, and that was recorded in nineteen thirty. So the other part of your new existence, Christophon Dottie, is philanthropy. You've been hugely generous to arts establishments, galleries and theatres and universities.

Speaker 425:44

Josephine

Presenter25:59

Um both here and in Canada, and and of course both main political parties here, and two cricket clubs here, I think, Somerset and Linton and Lynmouth have benefited. The most notable beneficiary in this country, though, has been, of course, the National Portrait Gallery, and there is a a a wing named after you. You were the lead donor for that stunning new wing. I gather you took the decision to put up that money it was a substantial amount of money, two and three quarter million, I think, when you were up the Semeleki.

Christopher Ondaatje26:25

Absolutely.

Presenter26:26

Yeah.

Christopher Ondaatje26:27

And well, I mean it was almost at the end of the trip. I mean I'd really

Christopher Ondaatje26:31

At the bottom of Lake Albert, where if if Baker had gone a little bit further, he'd have found the Semileke River, and history would have been different.

Christopher Ondaatje26:38

But at that time, you know, Long Kabila was just

Christopher Ondaatje26:41

Overthrowing Mobutu, and all the refugees were literally pouring across the border into Uganda from Zaire. I was in the Semliki forest, and I was in this one tent by myself, and being eaten alive by God knows what, and there was this banging and shouting, and guns going off all over the place. And I just didn't know that I was necessarily going to survive. And I just thought about all the things that I had done that were good, and all the things that I'd done that were bad. And I determined that when I came back, the first thing I would do is that if they still wanted me to do it, that I would help them get this wing belt, and I would make the lead donation.

Presenter27:15

So it's all about being a better person, is it? About being a better person. It is not.

Christopher Ondaatje27:19

Well, it is now, you know. It is now,'cause I'm sort of I'm an older person now than I was. I don't think I was necessarily always going to be a better person when I was younger.

Presenter27:28

But it's about coming to terms with yourself, is it? And and what you've done for yourself. It's not about public recognition, or is it? Because the wing is named after you, it's the Undarchy Wing.

Christopher Ondaatje27:37

I think it was fantastic of them to do that. I mean, I was just thrilled, but it wasn't a part of the deal or anything. It was just, you know, you have to do something. You have to actually do something that's worthwhile. And if you die and you haven't done something worthwhile, I mean, I would have a terrible last few hours. Record number seven.

Christopher Ondaatje27:55

I've always been fascinated with North American music, and I cannot talk about North American music without including Louis Armstrong. And so I'd like to take with me his wonderful recording of West End Blues

Christopher Ondaatje28:06

Because it certainly has his most creative trumpet solo.

Presenter29:02

Louis Armstrong and the Hot Fives playing West End Blues, and that was recorded in nineteen twenty eight.

Presenter29:08

So you're doing now what you always intended, it seems to me, Christopher and Dodge, or or did do once you'd made some money, which is you're giving money to institutions and you're back here living in Britain. Do you regard yourself as British? Because you spent less time here than anywhere else, really.

Christopher Ondaatje29:23

As they say, a British subject I was born, a British subject I was die. I've always had my British passport, you know, uh,

Presenter29:29

Didn't a Prime Minister of Canada say that?

Christopher Ondaatje29:31

He did. So John A. McDonald, absolutely. That's why I said it actually.

Presenter29:35

How difficult has it been for you to make your way into this

Christopher Ondaatje29:35

Out if

Presenter29:39

Conservative with a small C society of ours, you know, a man self-evidently with no background in the British establishment.

Christopher Ondaatje29:46

It was difficult to not necessarily be accepted, because I don't ever want to be quotes accepted. I'd just like to have an influence, I'd like to be listened to, and it's not just a matter of give me the money and stand over there.

Presenter29:59

But one just had the impression that in the beginning and you're probably past it now that there was a willingness to take your money, but a kind of slight wariness about taking you. I said, Well

Christopher Ondaatje30:08

Could be. But I don't care about that, you know. I mean

Christopher Ondaatje30:11

What do I care? The end result to me has always been the important thing. I mean, there are all kinds of bigots and and people you know who

Christopher Ondaatje30:19

If I had worried about that a long time ago, I would have got nowhere.

Presenter30:21

Well, it's a bit like when you went to school first here, isn't it? Absolutely. Put on the carapace and get on with it.

Christopher Ondaatje30:23

Absolutely.

Christopher Ondaatje30:27

No, I don't consider consider myself an outsider in any way. I mean, I I I have a wonderful life and I've got wonderful friends here and I'm and I'm involved with all the institutions that I really want to be in. And I've helped them and it's it's great and there's and a lot more things to do too.

Presenter30:40

What is it? What more do you want to do now? What that's crazy?

Christopher Ondaatje30:43

Well, I've just finished this book, Hemingway in Africa, but I want to do another one. I don't know what it is, but I wanted to do something.

Christopher Ondaatje30:50

As soon as October rolls round in England, you know, it gets starts getting a little bit cooler, and then it gets colder by November. And you know, somewhere between the beginning of November and the end of February is an opportunity to do something somewhere where it's hotter.

Christopher Ondaatje31:03

And it's probably more uncomfortable and and you know, my my ambition, so adrenal starts flying around now.

Presenter31:11

Last record

Christopher Ondaatje31:12

Final selection: Strauss's Rosen Cavalier again.

Christopher Ondaatje31:16

The last trio launched by Marshland, where she literally pushes her young lover, Count Octavian, to his new love, Sophy.

Presenter31:24

Why do you want to take that?

Presenter31:26

I think of

Christopher Ondaatje31:27

As I said, if I was only going to take one record, I would take the highlights of Rosen Cavalier. It's the ultimate escapism for me.

Presenter32:34

Part of the trio from the end of Act Three of Strauss's Der Rosencavalier, sung by Anna Tomoa Sinto, Agnes Boltzer, and Janet Perry, with the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Herbert von Karrion. You said that would be the one you would take if you could only take one.

Christopher Ondaatje32:47

Absolutely.

Presenter32:48

The Rosen Cavalier highlights of What about your book? We give you the Bible and we give you the complete works of Shakespeare.

Christopher Ondaatje32:54

The book that I I would take is Robert Service's Anthology of Poetry. Now Robert Service is a young English poet who went to Canada at the end of the nineteenth century and he chucked his banking and went out to the Yukon and observed the Yukon Gold Rush and wrote some of this wonderful poetry.

Presenter33:13

And what about your luxury?

Christopher Ondaatje33:14

I would choose a painting called Blue Nude by Justin Derriniaguller. I bought this Blue Nude in Ceylon, and I thought I recognised the Aniasnin face, and it's since been confirmed that it is. So I think I'd take this probably ridiculous luxury.

Christopher Ondaatje33:32

This painting that I love the most, Blue Nude, by Justin Deraniagala, and somehow I would protect it on the island.

Presenter33:39

Another mission you'd give yourself, obviously.

Christopher Ondaatje33:42

Well, it's getting that way.

Presenter33:44

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

Christopher Ondaatje33:47

Thank you.

Speaker 433:55

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