Diana Athill

Diana Athill0:00

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 four, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:29

My Costaway this week is a publisher. Her background is impeccably upper middle class, her attitude uniquely avant garde. She was born as Edwardian England had collapsed into the First World War, and enjoyed the tail end benefits of an expansive age, a grand house, lots of servants, plenty of horses.

Presenter0:48

By the time another war had come and gone, she joined forces with the publisher Andre Deutsch, working with such writers as V. S. Nypaul, Molly Keene, and Jean Rees. She was acknowledged as the finest editor in London, and before and since her retirement she's written a series of confessional and much acclaimed memoirs about her colourful and unusual life. There's no point in writing from personal experience, she says, unless you try to be as honest as you can. She is Diana Atthill. And you've been painfully honest, Diana. You've identified all sorts of what you've called indecent truths about yourself.

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It's as if you've always been observing yourself and noting down every detail. Is that how it's felt? I think that is true. I was always right from the beginning, when I was quite, quite young, I felt that I was always conscious and watching.

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Everything that I did and everything that I experienced it worried me.

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I used to think when am I going to be so involved in something that I stop watching. But how could you escape from yourself? But I used to think if I was madly in love.

Diana Athill1:55

But I used to say

Presenter1:59

That might do the trick.

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Actually, the only times one ever does, or when I ever do, is if I am so interested in something that I am watching outside myself. Yes, you escape at last from escape. But otherwise the hope was to escape into intensity of feeling like love. So when did you first fall in love? I was constantly falling in love from the age of four, I think.

Diana Athill2:11

You escape.

Diana Athill2:17

See ya.

Presenter2:23

But um with whom at the age of four? With the garden boy.

Presenter2:27

who had very beautiful brown eyes, and he was pumping the pump, hand pump, under the lavatory window, and he didn't look up, and I wanted to meet his eyes, so I spat on his head. And then he looked up. He looked up, and our eyes met, and I rushed out of the lavatory, scarlet in the face with excitement.

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And when did you first learn the facts of life? When did you first realize what sex might be about? That was useful at Mary Stopes, who was a little tiny, black book called Wise Parenthood.

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and I found this little black book in a corner, hidden away rather.

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I was amused. I thought that my parents had been trying to learn how to bring us up properly, and I pulled it out and I looked at it.

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There it all was. There was the whole thing described down to the minutest detail, and I was eleven.

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It was a wonderful revelation. A wonderful one. It didn't frighten you, it excited you. It excited me. She was very careful, old Mary Stopes, to say, Of course all this will be a very beautiful experience when illuminated by love, and so I hung on to there.

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So you were determined to grow up and have your share? I was.

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Tell me about your first record.

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The class kiss.

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We were an unmusical family. We listened to very little music. It never occurred to me that I might actually go and buy a grammophone myself and have records of my own.

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But at Oxford a friend of mine did have a gramophone, and she did have records, and she used to give little recitals. And I realized then that I loved music, and one of the things she had was quite a lot of cevellias.

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Including a song called The Airstre Kiss.

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which we all adored.

Speaker 44:15

Oh, silver mornets can share.

Speaker 44:29

The shimming frog and at home

Speaker 44:38

Se achon sha navani him len tenkas nalfashta chisen o dens mikchein.

Speaker 45:05

O Himlandsbliga Dutter.

Presenter5:15

The first kiss by Sibelius, sung by Hawkin Hagergaard, accompanied by Warren Jones. Do you recall your first proper kiss, Diana? I do. I do very well.

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I was being driven home from a dance by

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the family tutor, who had recently realized that I was beginning to grow up. I'd gone to the dance with other people and he'd come to it with other people, but he punched on me.

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and he drove me home and at a level crossing.

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We had to stop the car while the trains came by.

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He put his arm round me, and I was absolutely thrilled.

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And then more than that.

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Kissed me.

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And it was sort of disappointing, because we'd been driving the window, and his lips were quite cold. I thought, oh and then I thought, No, it's all right. First kisses are always disappointing. It'll get better.

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And it did. It did. How how old were you then?

Presenter6:13

I was quite young, I suppose, sixteen or seventeen.

Speaker 46:15

Yeah.

Presenter6:16

I know that it's led to you saying that the sexual revolution was in fact brought about not by the pill in the sixties but by the private motor car in the thirties, is that right? Well it did seem to me that it did. For the first time young men and women had a chance to be entirely alone in a small enclosed space with no one watching them. Simple as that. Because I presume the gulf between your mother's attitude to sex and yours could be said to have been much greater than the generation and you, the generation that came afterwards. I think so. Would she have thought then that, you know, if you kissed a man, you had to marry him? Pretty well, yes. Yes, yes.

Diana Athill6:58

Yeah.

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What would she have thought if she'd known that you were being kissed at the level crossing?

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Told her.

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She sat up in bed when I came back and said, Come in, it's very win and I said, Tony brought me home.

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I said he kissed me and she said

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Did he mess you about?

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And I could have killed her. I could have killed her. I wrote this great height of excitement and joy about this wonderful kiss. And as awful well did he miss you up for mum.

Diana Athill7:30

Yeah.

Speaker 47:30

Mm-hmm.

Presenter7:31

But of course, that was what she would have been terrified of. That's what she was terrified of. You might.

Diana Athill7:33

Yeah.

Speaker 47:35

This

Presenter7:36

Become pregnant. Yeah, that's burning. So if she had known that you were going to get into bed with him aged eighteen, you know, a year or so later, perhaps, well, she was very trusting.

Speaker 47:36

Become

Speaker 47:44

Well she was a

Presenter7:47

She just hoped that I wasn't going to. But she'd have been horrified. She would have been very horrified, yes. But did you intend because you went up to Oxford and you went to Lady Margaret Hall and read English did you intend to take lovers? I mean, was that part of the of life's plan? Part of life's plan was I was going to fall in love.

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I was going to fall in love, and once I fell in love, I was sure I would end up in bed with the person I was in love with. And we were all waiting for our great love, which was going to sweep us away. And by the time I was that age, we knew we were going to be swept into bed. And were you going to then marry that person and have children and live happily ever after? That was the great ambition. That was what we were going to do. Despite the fact you were going up to Oxford and might have had a career. The great ambition was, nevertheless, quite a conservative one.

Diana Athill8:23

Yes.

Diana Athill8:25

Yes, right.

Diana Athill8:27

Drug.

Diana Athill8:28

This

Diana Athill8:31

Yes, my

Presenter8:35

Oh, yes, quite a conservative one. It really hadn't entered my head that it would be anything else.

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Record number two. The second record, Tit Willow.

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Well, this is one of the things about being such an unmusical family. There was no music about in the house excepting, I think, six records that had once belonged to an aunt with a very small, dusty grammar phone that lived in a corner. And one of the records was Gilbert and Sullivan's Titwiller. And my brother and I it comes out of the Mikado. We thought it was terribly funny and very pretty.

Speaker 49:14

On a tree by a river a little Tom Teet

Diana Athill9:15

I am only

Speaker 49:19

Sang Willow, tit, will oat, it will o And I said to him, Dicky Bird, why do you sit Singing Willow, Tit, Willow, Tit, Willo?

Speaker 49:35

Is it weakness or intellect, Bertie? I cried, or a rather tough.

Speaker 49:43

Mean you're little inside

Speaker 49:47

With a shake on his poor little hand he replied

Speaker 49:56

Oh, will oh, tit will oh, tit will oh.

Presenter10:01

On a Tree by a River, or Tit Willow, from Gilbert and Sullivan's Mikado, sung by Eric Roberts, with the chorus and orchestra of the Doilycart Opera, conducted by John Price Jones. So, Diana Attill, tell me a bit more about the family background. This Norfolk estate that you were brought up on, which belonged, I think, to your maternal grandmother, was obviously incredibly grand. It was fairly grand. They were they were Yorkshire people by origins, and they were both very unpretentious people. So the grandeur was balanced.

Presenter10:32

By a good deal of Yorkshire common sense and morality too. And did you, as children'cause you were the eldest of three, weren't you? Did you have the run of the place? Could you go anywhere? We had the gorgeous run of the place, and we had ponies to have the run on and

Diana Athill10:43

I rehab you

Presenter10:49

It was it was the most wonderful place to grow up, really. But you thought you were a horse for a short while actually. When I was very small, I certainly thought I was a horse, and I used to amble round the house, grazing on green parts of the carpet, and drinking from blue parts of the carpet.

Presenter11:07

But at some point you decided you weren't, obviously. Well then I became then I had horses, of course, and and and the distinction between me and them became clear. And and you became a princess, I gather. This is what you decided you were, if you were. Well, the only romantic things we knew were princesses.

Diana Athill11:19

Yeah.

Presenter11:23

And so one's idea of a glamorous person was a princess.

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In my case, the princess with long, long

Presenter11:32

black hair down to below her waist, which as I was a mouse coloured child with rather short hair, it was rather sad.

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But did that mean that your parents were quite separate, and did you sometimes separate? I mean, we we saw a lot of them.

Speaker 411:43

Not all that's separate.

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We went rushing into their room first thing in the morning and jumped on their beds.

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And uh we went riding with them, we went walking with them, but they didn't have the boring bits of keeping us clean and fell. So would you be cleaned up and taken to see them as well? We were cleaned up in the evenings and taken downstairs, always.

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I suppose it was us being their best that they saw.

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And I gather that the greatest insult in the At Hill House was to be called silly. Yes. How could you incur that sort of insult, then? What what was silly? Almost anything naughty you did you were silly, little girl. If you felt you were naughty, it was rather dashing.

Speaker 412:13

It's not

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If you heard it was silly, it was mortifying. Tell me about your third record. Number three. This was a great event. My brother and I were taken into Nordwich to see Fiddleman.

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None of us had ever seen a film before, and it was Ben Her.

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And in the course of Ben Hur, I can't think when or how there was a sad woman with two children, very beautiful moment, and it was accompanied by a piece of music that both my brother and I thought was the most lovely thing we'd ever, ever heard.

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And when we got home, to our surprise, we were told that

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Among the few pieces of sheet music.

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On the piano in the morning room, this piece existed, and it was by a man called Schumann, and it was called Troumerai.

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And so I found it, and I used to pick out the right hand with one finger, and we thought it was very beautiful, quite rightly.

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That was Troy Murai, part of Schumann's Scenes from Childhood, played by Daniel Barrenboim. So it was against that kind of rather idyllic Norfolk country background that this tutor arrived in your life. You were fifteen when he came to tutor your brother. He would have been about twenty and you began, as we've heard, to fall in love with him. Really a perfect first love.

Diana Athill14:34

All in love with him.

Presenter14:37

I mean, he would have been a perfect person if he hadn't in the end dumped me. His name was Tony Raleigh, not Paul. I called him Paul in the book. He was genuinely a rather remarkable young man.

Presenter14:48

He did have

Presenter14:50

A great deal of spirit and energy.

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And intelligence. And you got engaged when you were up at Oxford. And we got engaged.

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He was in the the RAF, and he was stationed in Egypt before the war. And then, just as I was about to go and join him,

Presenter15:07

He was moved to Jordan. I don't think the war had quite begun, but it was in a state of tremendous alert, and he wasn't allowed to have anyone out to join him.

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I had two letters from him after that.

Presenter15:21

And then silence fell completely. How long did the silence last?

Presenter15:25

It lasted for two years. It was really terrible, because I kept on writing for a long time, and then I gave up in despair.

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Not knowing was absolutely cruel. And then a letter did come. And then a very short little formal letter came saying, Would I please release him for his our engagement?

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'Cause he wanted to marry somebody else.

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And

Presenter15:49

It was it was a very deep shock.

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I felt that there was no future.

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And I felt one's job had gone, really, in a funny way.

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And I felt that

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Obviously I hadn't been worth loving.

Presenter16:07

which was the worst thing, I think. It was a it was a great shock to my my self-confidence.

Presenter16:12

Do you think in a way it it sort of sealed your fate? Did your life and everything?

Diana Athill16:17

And I'm sure you

Presenter16:19

I'm sure it did. How long would you say, looking back, that it took you to get over that?

Presenter16:25

Well, I got over it in the sense of no longer moaning and waning about it in about two years.

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But

Presenter16:31

It didn't really end until

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Ages later, early sixties, when I it all came out in a book.

Presenter16:40

Took some what more than twenty years that it took to come out. But I'd had a lot of fun in the clean. I'd known lots of people. I'd had affairs. I'd done an extremely interesting job.

Diana Athill16:42

I'm not sure.

Presenter16:51

But if at any time during those twenty years someone has stopped me and said, What is the truth about your life?

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I would have said

Presenter17:01

It's a failure.

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But when it came out in the book it just poured out of you.

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It just happened to me. It was quite extraordinary. I sat down, put paper in the machine, began to type, and the book began.

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And it had all been brewing away in my subconscious mind, I suppose, all that time.

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And it came out

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and the sense of failure completely vanished.

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It was the most wonderful therapy. Tell me about record number four.

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Number four is really represents, I think.

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the romantic love which I felt so strongly in those days and which I said goodbye to.

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I used to sing it and play it and think about it and just that was him, you know, Night and Day You Are the One.

Speaker 417:45

Such a hungry, yearning, burning inside of me.

Speaker 417:50

And its torment won't be through Till you let me spend my life making love to you day and night.

Diana Athill17:57

Damn.

Speaker 418:00

Night and day

Presenter18:15

Fred Astaire singing Coal Porters Night and Day. So, Diana Attill, you found yourself having to earn your own living, become a a career girl in effect, having ha had marriage and all of your ordinary ambitions snatched away from you. And you met Andre Deutsch, and eventually he set up his own company, and you were a founding director. What was the first book that Andre Deutsch published that you feel, you know, made its mark and set you up as a a good quality little firm? Well, the one that that really broke through for us was Norman Mailer's Naked and the Dead.

Presenter18:52

which nobody else would touch because of how rude it was, because of his language. So lot of lot of F words. His American publishers have said it would be all right if it was spelt F U G. So that's how it was throughout.

Presenter19:07

and we sent out the review copies, and one of them was lying on the literary editor's desk at the Sunday Times when the editor of the paper, who was an old man, I believe he was eighty two, came shuffling in, and he's a leaf through it.

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And his eyes popped out of his head,'cause there was this page littered with the F word, you see.

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And he bustled off and wrote a little piece saying that a book was supposed to be being published. It was so utterly disgusting that no decent man could leave it about where his women and children could see it.

Presenter19:40

We had detectives in the next morning. Detectives? Yes, a huge detective from Scotland Yard, rather benign and nice. There was an injunction put on if we weren't allowed to pre-publish it.

Diana Athill19:42

Okay.

Presenter19:50

And what we would have done if it had actually been banned I don't know. We would have gone bust, I think, because we'd have meant to pay the printer and the binder.

Presenter19:58

And finally Andre got some one to ask a question in the House of Commons.

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And Hartley Shawcross answered it and said no, he wasn't going to ban the book after all, although he didn't think it was a very good book.

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So we were free and we were able to publish it. Most brilliant publicity, of course. It was marvellous. But, you know, we were all so naïve in those days. It took us a longish time to realize that it was brilliant publicity. And what about editing in general? Because I know that you did both that the nitty-gritty of that, as well as cosseting authors and so on. Did did you enjoy that? Did you enjoy it? I loved editing.

Diana Athill20:27

Yeah.

Diana Athill20:32

I dubbed.

Presenter20:34

But mind you, when you had a really good writer like Vidya Neipole or Jean Rees, you didn't really have to do any.

Presenter20:41

because they would put in a manuscript that was perfect. And all you had to do was be encouraging and make

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Soothing noises and said, Aren't you wonderful, darling?

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But you weren't very tactful on one occasion with V S N I Paul, were you? In fact, I think you lost them. I lost him to the couple. You lost him. What did you say?

Presenter21:00

I said told him that I'd found

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Two of his characters

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Rather unconvincing.

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I think this was the ninth of his books that I'd been through with him.

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He knew how much I admired him. I thought that I it was my duty to be honest, so to speak, which was very foolish.

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I had been.

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sitting on my feeling that he was a difficult person to work with. I'd been keeping my affection for him going as hard as I could in order to be a good editor to him. And when

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He said, well, he couldn't.

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Be with us in and warm.

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First of all, I was horrified, and then I found I was rather relieved.

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Because I didn't have

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To listen.

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To Vidya Beam Depressed over lunch.

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Ever again.

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Next piece of music, tell me about that.

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I'm very, very fond of of blues, because I think that nothing in music is more immediately autobiographical than a good blues.

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And I find that this particular one was

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The sad but resigned, patient old thing is shuffling down the road in shoes that don't fit and hurt his feet. I find that awful in a movie.

Speaker 322:18

I'm going down this road now, darling, feeling bad, baby Going down this road, feeling so low

Speaker 322:30

I wanna be

Speaker 322:33

Yeah.

Speaker 422:35

Treed him!

Speaker 422:37

Des away

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Big Bill Brunzy and I'm going down the road feeling bad.

Presenter22:48

So a deal of success in your professional life, Diana. Your personal life, though, at the same time, sounds as if it was pretty turbulent. And y you took on some um pretty turbulent men, too, it seems. I did. I had an image in my head of that sexual

Presenter23:07

Her relationship with the man was rather like a glass bottomed boat.

Presenter23:10

It was a way of learning about him better than any other.

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I've always felt it was rather boring having only one life, and I think that this this was a way of exploring other lives in a funny way. So to that extent you were very happy, weren't you? I I

Presenter23:30

gather from what you've written to to to be a mistress. You were a perfect mistress. You were a perfect other woman, weren't you? I liked being a mistress. I never felt it with hard luck. And I think I once described it as

Presenter23:42

Love with all the plums and none of the pudding.

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Of course, you see, by that time I had got rather over this whole thing about romantic love. On the whole, these were people I liked or was interested in.

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In the end you did meet a man with whom in fact you've spent the second half of your life.

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There might just as well be.

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But tell me about him.

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And he was a playwright.

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And he comes from Jamaica?

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Now, alas she's not at all well, so one has, in fact, all the sadness.

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Being married to someone?

Presenter24:20

looking after him in the end. You got some of the pudding in the end. Some of the pudding. But again, that's a relationship that began forty three years ago when mixed race relationships were

Presenter24:34

You know, not done or might even have been frowned upon, as it were. Were you aware that you were challenging the taboos? No. All my friends were writers or publishers or whatever. It wasn't so.

Diana Athill24:38

A vision

Diana Athill24:40

Yeah

Presenter24:45

difficult at all.

Presenter24:47

The family just managed to avoid knowing too much about it.

Presenter24:51

They were very clever at that. A lot of blind eyes turned. A sort of blind eye turning. But to you he was my lodger. I mean, he was considered to be a lodger, and it was sometimes said, I'm so glad you've got someone in the house when you you really aren't all alone for burglars and things.

Presenter25:08

It was it was very English. And and may I ask, I mean, have you have you loved him or or is love something now of your own? That was, you see, a good, solid, sensible, unromantic love, we both of us.

Presenter25:22

started by just liking each other very much.

Presenter25:26

And it just sort of matured out of that. I would call that proper love. Would you? Mm. So wh what is improper love? Improper love is when you're desperately trying to force someone into being something that they aren't because you've got this picture of them in your mind. And you want to possess them or you want to possess them. You want to possess them.

Diana Athill25:44

Or you want to persist.

Presenter25:46

Neither of us are possessive by nature. We never have been. But I think it's very easy to feel that when you're older, that you don't care for that. And to to arrive at this rather calm companionship. Yes. Which is more fulfilling, would you say, than the wonderful love that you once

Presenter26:04

I'm glad I had

Presenter26:06

The romance. But it certainly is more

Presenter26:10

satisfactory in the end.

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Record number six.

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De Vienne is, of course, a lovely romantic song, but on the other hand.

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Susanna

Presenter26:22

is not a romantic person, and she is teasing her dear husband.

Presenter26:29

Rather, so I think she represents a sensible love.

Speaker 426:42

Yeah.

Presenter27:29

Hilda Guden singing De Vieni non tada, come do not delay, dear hearts, who's Anna's aria from the end of Mozart's Marriage of Figaro with the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Erisch Kleiber. One other professional experience I wanted to ask you about Diana was to do with Myra Hindley, the Moore's murderer. You went to see her in prison, I think, with a view to doing a book with her. Someone approached us and said would I help her? Because she'd started writing a book about her life.

Presenter27:59

and about her crime.

Presenter28:01

and she had got stuck.

Presenter28:04

I was shown the early stuff that she'd written and it was good. It was a good account of her childhood, up to the point where she had met Brady.

Presenter28:14

And it did make you see very clearly how that girl, that rather arrogantly intelligent girl, met this man who took her up and he introduced her to books that she'd never read before, he introduced her to ideas that she'd never had before.

Presenter28:31

But when they got to the point where he began

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To pick up these children.

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And she stuck.

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She stuck in writing about it. She could not get further at that point, where one can well understand why, in fact.

Diana Athill28:40

She's about if you could

Presenter28:45

And I went to this prison.

Presenter28:48

The man who took me there had been her prison chaplain and was very concerned about trying to save her soul. Yes, that for him it was.

Diana Athill28:54

This is Alps' book.

Diana Athill28:56

Yes, that's

Presenter28:59

She'd said, All right, I was there. I did it. But she had to

Presenter29:03

make excuses to herself, I think, as much as Jenvori as to how she had become frightened of him.

Presenter29:10

She made herself sound much younger and more helpless,'cause in fact she was a very intelligent nineteen year old. So what did you think of her? There you sat. If you hadn't known who she was or why she was

Diana Athill29:21

I would have liked to have a lot of money.

Presenter29:23

Without any question she was seemed like an intelligence.

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Serious, humorous person.

Presenter29:30

She was, I thought, to an extraordinary extent not institutionalized, and she was quite funny about what you called her old men.

Presenter29:39

David Astor and Lord Longford. Yeah, what was her attitude to them?

Diana Athill29:42

Yeah.

Presenter29:45

sort of fond of them, but thinking they were rather funny.

Presenter29:47

I think

Presenter29:49

At what point did you decide, then, whether or not you were going to go? As I left, I thought, well, no, that's out.

Diana Athill29:53

Yeah.

Presenter29:56

Of course, you see this idea that it would redeem her

Presenter30:00

I thought that was probably nonsense.

Presenter30:03

She had made a device of her own inside herself to keep herself going. If you destroyed it, I didn't think there would be anything there. If she wrote an honest book. If she wrote a token. Otherwise you'd be party to her writing a dishonest book. Yes, I wasn't going to do that. And I also thought

Diana Athill30:12

Otherwise you'd

Presenter30:18

Evil is

Presenter30:20

Yeah.

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It is a sort of pornography to study it too much.

Presenter30:26

And I didn't want to have any part of that.

Presenter30:29

Record number seven. My next choice

Presenter30:32

is the sort of exact opposite of the feelings inspired by that meeting.

Presenter30:39

The most life-enhancing piece of music I know almost is Haydn's creation.

Presenter30:45

And I love it.

Presenter30:47

I'd love to play the whole thing, but we can only have a little bit.

Presenter31:40

The final chorus from Haydn's creation with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and chorus conducted by Sir George Schulte. Do you do you believe, though, Diana, that you would have been a a different person if you hadn't been jilted aged twenty two? It's difficult to believe that it changed you so much. I wonder if you had got married to Paul, to Tony, whether still, you know, you're kind of

Presenter32:02

Avant-garde wouldn't have risen to the surface of such. It might have done. It's very difficult to know. One would be probably very busy with family and children. It would have been a very different background. You don't think you'd have got a bit rebellious in the orthodox setting?

Diana Athill32:15

I think it's a very good idea.

Presenter32:18

So you've become a bit of an anti-romantic as well. I've become very much an anti-romantic. No. But cheerful with it. Cheerful with it. Yes.

Speaker 432:23

No.

Presenter32:28

I read have contemplated death every day because this is what Montaigne advocated, that half an hour a day you think about your own death. Is this true? I think that's a very good idea. I don't do it. I mean, I have.

Diana Athill32:35

Yeah.

Presenter32:41

Thought about death quite a lot and quite often. As far as I know.

Presenter32:45

I'm not very frightened any more of the idea of it. But any view of on what happens afterwards? Fairly strong conviction that nothing happens afterwards.

Presenter32:56

Last record.

Presenter32:58

My last record I rarely chose because it's a happy record.

Presenter33:03

and a beautiful record, and I have come to the fact that however awful life is in many, many ways,

Presenter33:10

I do love it.

Speaker 433:27

Yeah.

Speaker 433:44

I know.

Presenter34:07

Kathleen Ferrier singing Mahler's song Ich Atmet einen Lindenduft I breathed a gentle fragrance. Very beautiful, Diana. If um if you could only take one of those eight records, which one would you take? I should take The Creation. Good long record and full of lovely things. Life affirming, as you say.

Speaker 434:25

The answer.

Presenter34:26

What about your book? You get the Bible and you get the complete works of Shakespeare, as you know. Well, I decided it had to be a book that made you feel that you were in a whole life, and there was a choice between several of them, but I ended up with Vanity Fair, which I'm very fond of.

Presenter34:40

And your luxury.

Presenter34:42

My bed my bed not just any old bed, but my darling bed, which is exactly how I like it.

Presenter34:49

Light covers, but warm.

Presenter34:52

Enough elbow room.

Presenter34:54

and really, really soft pillow.

Presenter34:58

Dinah Athill, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Diana Athill35:09

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