Yvonne Brewster

Yvonne Brewster0:00

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 five, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:30

My Castaway this week is a theatre director. She was born into an affluent family in Jamaica. Her grandfather, a Pole, had set up a successful undertaker's business on the island. He was a great influence, introducing her to Shakespeare, Dickens, and Ella Fitzgerald.

Presenter0:44

She came to England to drama school in the fifties, where she was told a black actress would never find work, so she took herself off to the Royal Academy of Music and passed with flying colours. Back home, she founded a theatre company whose first production, The Electronic Nigger, caused a storm of protest and attracted big audiences. Back here in the eighties, she founded a black theatre group, where she put on all black productions, not just of works by black writers, but also of classics such as The Importance of Being Earnest and Anthony and Cleopatra, arguing that black theatre is an essential part of British cultural life. She called it Talawa, which means gutsy, feisty in Jamaican dialect. Fuelled herself with endless enthusiasm and zest for life, she's also pretty Talawa herself. She's Yvonne Brewster. Yvonne, there are lots of firsts in your C V. You were the first black woman to direct a play at the National. You were the first black officer at the Arts Council. But um

Presenter1:44

Most fascinating perhaps is you were the first black woman drama student in this country. This is back in nineteen fifty six, aged seventeen. Freshly arrived from Jamaica. You went to the Rose Bruford School of Drama in Kent. Now, they must have viewed you as quite a curiosity. They viewed me as a curiosity, and indeed I was. And Miss Bruford took one look at me.

Presenter2:06

and very kindly, I think, said, Well, you do know you'll never work.

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And I looked at her and I just sort of said, Well, you know, watch this space and went off downstairs. But why did she say that? I mean, w d do you think she was right at the time? Oh well, I I didn't

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You see, you d you don't when you're seventeen. I just thought she was funny. She was saying that she would take the money because my father had paid for me three years in advance, because he had anticipated they might want to get rid of me, and I'd go through the course, but I wouldn't pass and I wouldn't uh work because I was black. What about where you were living?'Cause you were in Diggs, in Sidcup, in Kent. How did that with the family, was it? Oh, yes, with a family in Hurst Road in Kent. And they also, I think, were being very kind to me. And they said, Well, you could have Christmas dinner with us if you showed us your native costumes. So I thought they were joking again. This is my life, you know, if everybody's joking. And I

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Did myself up with some beads and some it was in the fifties, so that long skirts with frills and I came down da-da-da!

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And they were so furious they put me out in the garden. Why? Well, because they wanted my grass skirt, you see. And I didn't actually, as a matter of fact, have a grass skirt. These were the very people who thought I must be middle class because my address in Jamaica was halfway tree, so I lived half way up the tree. I do not jest. This was fact.

Presenter3:44

You say you laughed at all of this. It's very difficult to believe that there weren't bleak moments, seventeen years old, all alone in this

Speaker 43:52

Boom.

Presenter3:53

Incredibly

Presenter3:54

Ignorant England of the nineteen fifties. There were bleak moments. There were many bleak moments. I have to think that people are not deliberately racist. And I had to think that, or else I couldn't go through. And I couldn't go back to Jamaica without a piece of paper, because my father would have cut my head off. So I had to get through those moments and say

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I will overcome.

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Tell me about your first record.

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Well, I've chosen this because of my grandfather his smashing, and he taught me how to appreciate Ella Fitzgerald, and he used to make me scat along with the lullaby of Broadway.

Speaker 24:42

Come on along and listen to the lullaby of Broadway Fidey high and poopadoo The lullaby of Broadway The band begins to go to town And everyone goes crazy You rock a buy your baby rock Till everything gets hazy Hush, I'll buy you this and that You hear a daddy saying And baby goes home to her flat

Presenter5:11

Ella Fitzgerald and Lullaby of Broadway. So tell me more, Yvonne Brewster, about this grandfather who introduced you to Ella. He he this was your mother's father. He was the one who'd set up the undertaker's business in Jamaica, and he was a Pole. How did he come to be in Jamaica?

Yvonne Brewster5:19

He was

Presenter5:25

His family had to leave Europe because of the Jewish uh situation that was obviously going to happen and get very difficult round about then. But they ended up in Jamaica and went native, as it were. And was it his voice, you know, that would echo in your head and give you courage when you were up against it? Was he that great an influence?

Yvonne Brewster5:39

And we're

Yvonne Brewster5:44

That great an influence.

Presenter5:46

All the time. He, I think, is the greatest influence in my life, because he made me read Dickens, he made me listen to Ella Fitzgerald, he made me scat with her, and he would say to me, Look, Yvonne, you know, if you do anything, you'll do it the best. And I tell you, if they don't like you, it's their loss.

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It used to echo in my head.

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These people don't like me, it's their loss.

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And then there was uh your maternal grandmother, who was also non-Jamaican, wasn't she? She was Scottish?

Presenter6:22

Oh, yes, we have Indian, we have African, we have Scots and we have Jewish Polish. So that's big enough. That's enough, isn't it? And life there w was good, wasn't it? I mean it was a well heeled family. The undertaking business was was a good one in post war Jamaica. Still is.

Yvonne Brewster6:37

Yes,

Presenter6:41

But tell me, give me a a kind of thumbnail sketch of the kind of life that you led there as well. We were privileged. My father and mother lived in a really

Yvonne Brewster6:46

Well

Presenter6:51

Fabulous house, actually. It's still a fabulous house, you know, five bedrooms, five bathrooms.

Presenter6:57

Tennis courts, big garage, and four cars, this sort of thing. I know Jamaicans aren't supposed to come from that sort of background, but I'm afraid I did. My grandfather up in the hills, he had one of the first cars in Jamaica, and I can remember my grandmother sitting in the dicky seat, they call them, those early, early fors, and going down to the market and shopping, getting in the car and driving back nine miles to Stony Hill with the maids with with baskets on their heads running behind the car. And was there a a whole society of people who lived like that? Oh, yes. So cocktail parties, bridge parties, all that?

Yvonne Brewster7:35

Yeah.

Speaker 47:35

Oh yes.

Yvonne Brewster7:38

Yeah.

Speaker 47:38

Is all that?

Yvonne Brewster7:39

Yeah.

Presenter7:39

Absolutely. Of course, I didn't think it was anything odd. It was just.

Yvonne Brewster7:43

Maybe this

Presenter7:45

What happened? Yes. And was it a a mixed assignment? Did you mix then with white?

Yvonne Brewster7:46

And I'm not sure.

Presenter7:51

Society in Jamaica as well. So you were invited to all of the kind of

Yvonne Brewster7:52

Okay, so you

Presenter7:55

Yeah, the the the the Governor Generals used to come down and sit on my father's veranda. They would sit there and sip rum and talk about philosophy and what have you. So I wanted to hear what they were saying, and my mother would let me sit behind the door and eavesdrop on big men's conversation, you know.

Speaker 48:14

You know?

Presenter8:15

Record number two. Record number two. I can remember my sister. She used to do ballet, and every time I hear this bit of music I can see Valerie on points doing her solo piece for us. It's one of Schubert's lovely little nonsenses.

Presenter9:33

The third of Schubert's Momon Musico, that one in F minor, played by Alfred Brendel. How many people are we talking about, Yvonne, in this kind of society in Jamaica then? Moving in your circles? Not that many. I I it's a long time ago, uh but I would think it probably is about

Speaker 29:43

No.

Yvonne Brewster9:43

Yeah.

Presenter9:50

Two, three hundred people. You see the same people all the time. And could you define them racially? Yes. Now, I must point out that this is a long time ago, and it's not like that in Jamaica any more. But in those days

Presenter10:04

Brown people, this is really rather difficult to say, but brown people really were the next best thing to being white, if you know what I mean. So they people of mixed race. Mixed race, but like you. We never use the term mixed race. Yes, like me. In England, I'm mixed race, but in Jamaica I'm brown. I mean to be a Browning in those days was actually quite a a a celebrated thing to be. You were the ruling class. Ruling classes and the Prime Minister Michael Manley and all those people for up until very recently were all of that from that background if you like. You know, all had some white people in the family and a few black, you know. And the but the blacks, they were the poor.

Yvonne Brewster10:17

Like you.

Presenter10:51

Yes, yes, yes, uh yes. They were your staff. I'm afraid so, yes. And some to some extent it still happens. But the ruling class in Jamaica now is certainly

Yvonne Brewster10:54

They were yours.

Presenter11:03

There there's some white people round, a few, and there's some brown people round, but the black people are Jamaicans and the our Prime Minister is a black man and a wonderful man he is too, you know, and and things have changed. But uh fifty years ago or even sixty years ago that was not the case, to be honest about it. And so you wouldn't have gone to school with black children then, would you? One or two scholarship girls.

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This sounds so awful. But I went to St. Hilda's, and we were trained by all these people who came out from England.

Presenter11:38

I remember one of these headmistresses called Miss Tweed, who I discovered afterwards came from Yorkshire, and we thought they were the B's and E's, you know. When I came to England I realized that my English accent was a bit Yorkshire, you know.

Presenter11:53

That was frowned upon at Rose Bruford, I can tell you. But you tried quite hard to get expelled, didn't you? I managed as well, once or twice. Yes, I did try I hated that place. But what would the family have wanted for you? What were their ambitions for you? Oh, to marry a very rich brown man.

Yvonne Brewster12:07

Oh, to that

Presenter12:11

Simple. Jamaican, preferably. Have babies. Play broadcast. Oh yes. Oh, yes. Record number three. Record number three is Nina Simone. Round about the time when I was at uh Rose Bruford.

Yvonne Brewster12:13

Have

Yvonne Brewster12:14

Yeah.

Presenter12:25

I needed somebody to tell me that I was young.

Presenter12:28

Gifted and black and when this came out I thought that is my anthem.

Speaker 412:35

I'm new to be young, yeah

Speaker 412:38

You stay in black.

Speaker 412:41

Oh how I've longed to know the truth.

Speaker 412:48

There are times when I look back

Speaker 412:54

And I am haunted by my you

Speaker 413:00

Uh what's my joy of today?

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Mean a simone and to be young, gifted, and black.

Presenter13:08

We talked about the the patronising attitude you met with when ignorant attitude, as we said, uh when you got here. But what about um people in general, you know, on tubes and buses and things as you moved around? How did they regard you? On public transport. They used to pull my hair and touch my skin to see if my colour would come off. And either they would sit next to me deliberately, so especially the men, and the hand would come across and they would be their hands on my knee and other places as well. You were open for molestation. Oh yes, absolutely. It was Freedom Hall. And so I realised that if I screamed

Speaker 213:21

Where did they

Yvonne Brewster13:38

Yeah.

Presenter13:47

It would be good.

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So as soon as the hand came across the knee, I would let it rest for a minute, then it had started to travel up. I would scream.

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And I thought it was very funny.

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But there's there's another side to this story, isn't there? Because uh there's an incident um think of that shows that you are capable of being patronizing in your turn. Wasn't there a moment on the uh the platform of the Northern Line at Tottenham Court Road? Absolutely. Everything has two sides, and all my life I try to recognise both sides. And this something it haunts me to this day, because there was a man who used to work on the farm.

Presenter14:27

where we had these big parties and there were horses and things. I think he used to look after the horses. And he had migrated, and I saw him at Tottenham Court Road station one day. I didn't recognise him really. He recognized me, and poor Sod is over here and he's lonely, and he sees somebody that he knows, and he rushes up to me.

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and he hugs me and I think was in the about to kiss me.

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and I reverted to form.

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And I was so rude to that man.

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You know, because in Jamaica he would not have done this.

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And I was new here, and I was still

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sort of the same old priggish little thing as I was in

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Jamaica. And I

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How dare you

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And his face just died.

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And he melted away, and I stood on the platform and I thought, Oh, my God, I must find this man and I he was gone.

Presenter15:22

But he presumed solidarity in colour. Absolutely, and he was so wrong. And and the the differentiation of the brown and the black hadn't been.

Yvonne Brewster15:24

He presumes.

Yvonne Brewster15:26

Absolutely and he

Presenter15:34

I mean, Blackby my grandfather could hug me. He was black. But he couldn't hug me. He was a

Presenter15:41

Labourer, you see?

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And that really taught me a lesson.

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But it haunts me, you know, all these years on, it's nearly fifty years ago.

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As time went on I didn't need Nina Simone to tell me I was young, gifted, and black. I got more sophisticated, and so therefore when Acabilk's Stranger on the Shore came along, I thought, All right, now, this is going to be my theme tune. I am a Stranger on Your Unwelcoming Shores.

Speaker 416:23

And that they're

Presenter16:46

Acabilkin Stranger on the Shore. You finally got your drama qualification here in England, Yvonne, but uh not at first from the Rose Bruford School. You took yourself off to the Royal Academy of Music. But you did an acting course, yes, yes. You can be an exterior or extramural student. So you did it on the sly from Rose Bruford at the same time. Oh, yes. No one knew. But I uh did Rose Bruford give you a piece of paper in the end to take home to your father? Oh, in the final analysis, yes, because I got.

Yvonne Brewster16:56

Yeah.

Yvonne Brewster17:01

Just

Yvonne Brewster17:03

From those very much at the same time.

Presenter17:15

and licenciate of the Royal Academy of Music twice too. And they phoned up and they said, Oh, Rose, your student has done terribly well. Student, what student? Anyway. Turned out it was me, and she almost was apoplectic. How dare you, how dare you, how dare you What is wrong, Miss Bruford? She said, You have passed with distinction. And and that's all I needed. And I went, Whoo, I don't need your Rose Bruford training college diploma now, do I? But I see you're a patron of the place now, Rose Bruford. You've forgiven them, have you? I've forgiven them. In fact, last year they made me a fellow of Rose Bruford, and I had to talk to the students. Did you tell them these stories? I certainly told them this story, because I said, You know, people will tell you that you can't work, and people tell you that you'll never work. So when you go out and they say you can't do it, just remember me.

Yvonne Brewster17:51

Yeah

Yvonne Brewster17:58

Did you tell them these stories?

Presenter18:10

Sir

Presenter18:11

Ha ha.

Presenter18:12

Okay, so back in Jamaica after all these qualifications, you you you did some radio and later on you did some television, but you founded a theatre called The Barn. Now, what was the concept there? What were you setting out to do that was different? Because there must have been theatre in Jamaica. Well there was theatre in Jamaica, but they weren't doing any plays to deal with racism or black people or African American plays or even Caribbean plays. It was all English plays and the expatriates were doing this and

Presenter18:39

I was unhappy about this because they wouldn't cast me in South Pacific, actually, to tell you the truth, and I thought I sang rather better than the woman who'd got the part. But she was white. She was white. She happened to be Canadian. And she had a very, very

Yvonne Brewster18:48

But she was right.

Presenter18:53

ugly voice. And so I thought, well, this is because I am not white, so I will f do my own thing.

Presenter19:03

What an awful person I must be. Anyway, do my own thing and form my own theatre. And it's still going strong. Is it? Oh, yes. But it was deliberately provocative from the start. As I mentioned in the introduction, your first play was called The Electronic Nigger. It was one of the first plays. And yes, it was written by an African-American man, and it was a highly contentious play. And didn't you take on Michael Manley, the Prime Minister, at one point? He tried to close you down, didn't he? Yes, he did.

Yvonne Brewster19:10

Is it?

Yvonne Brewster19:11

Here

Yvonne Brewster19:14

How was that?

Presenter19:31

He threatened me with an injunction because it was a silly undergraduate review we were doing called Soon Come Please not even English. And we did have this man called Michael True, who had been a student at the LSE, who was a trade unionist, and um it was a little bit recognisable. But um was about betrayal of the working classes. Yes, absolutely, because that's what we felt he was doing at the time. You know, he didn't like it, and he threatened to close us down, and he attempted to um throttle me, I think. And I just said, Well, my dear sir, if the cap fits, wear it and he really went bananas, they had to hold him back. But we didn't take the play off.

Yvonne Brewster19:54

Yes.

Yvonne Brewster19:57

Time you know

Presenter20:13

I think you need to stand up to bullies, you know.

Presenter20:16

More music, number five. Oh, yes, this is for Starr, my husband, and it's Kathleen Ferrier, singing Quai faro and he always tries to sing this, and tries to sound like Kathleen Ferrier, and fails miserably. But every time I hear it I remember Darling Starr.

Speaker 420:41

Yeah.

Speaker 420:42

Be on that.

Speaker 420:47

Oh, they are.

Presenter21:01

Kathleen Ferrier singing Ke faro senza Euridice What Shall I Do Without Eurydice from Gluck's Orpheus and Eurydice, with the Southern Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Fritz Steardry.

Presenter21:13

So you came here back again now to England in uh in the seventies, and that's when you started getting involved in the theatre here. You got hauled in to help out with various productions, and then you didn't stop after that, really. What kinds of plays were you directing after that?

Presenter21:28

I directed anything that moved really, but then as it went on,

Yvonne Brewster21:32

Billy

Presenter21:35

I honed in on doing plays that would give my colleagues and contemporaries and the younger people opportunities of

Presenter21:47

doing parts that wouldn't normally be offered to them. So an actress says, I want to do the importance of being earnest.

Presenter21:56

And you say

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Right.

Presenter22:00

will do it, because we need to show that we can do this. I have family in this country at that time who would probably have been just like Lady Bracknell's family. So why can't we have black people doing this sort of thing? And that was part of my

Presenter22:18

Zest for reality, if you like. And I did some Shakespeare. We did.

Presenter22:26

Cleopatra, I remember, simply because I'd read the script and I thought, wait a minute.

Presenter22:35

This old man Bill, as I call him, I just love him he says she's dusky. Well, what does dusky mean? Let's go to the dictionary. It it certainly doesn't mean white, does it? And so I thought, yeah, l let's go for it. But it had been played in the past by so many of our great white actresses Peggy Ashcroft, Vanessa Redgrave, Judy Dench, I think has played it.

Yvonne Brewster22:52

Uh

Speaker 422:52

Uh

Presenter22:55

And and then you got Donna Croll, a black actress, to play her. Do you feel you've claimed that role of Cleopatra for a black actress now?

Presenter23:04

I don't know if we need to claim it. Uh rather as Othello has been claimed. I mean, n these days when a white man plays Othello

Speaker 223:07

Yeah.

Presenter23:13

You know, we just feel it's not quite right. In a way, n n now there have been so many black players who've played Othello that it's accepted as a black role. Yes, but I don't think that the same works for Cleopatra. In fact, no, if that was my aim, I failed miserably, I don't think I've claimed Cleopatra because it's much too spicy a role for them to give it up to black actresses, let's face it, okay. I personally

Presenter23:39

Don't mind if a white man wants to play Othello.

Presenter23:43

Uh because then

Presenter23:45

A black man can play Prospero. You see it's a quid pro quo here.

Presenter23:51

We can't expect to claim Rose and say that you must be totally.

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Um

Presenter23:59

Imaginative in our casting, and then say, Oh, but there's some areas that you can't enter.

Speaker 424:05

Hmm.

Presenter24:06

Because then he could turn and say, you can't play Prospero, you can't play Prosperity. It is a bit of a minefield, this, but in the sense that you would not cast a thin person as Falstaff or an ugly person as Juliet, can you cast a black person as King Lear? I mean that person, that individual, simply doesn't look right some people. No, no, well I would say yes, because I have.

Speaker 424:10

But it's a ma

Yvonne Brewster24:27

Yeah, that's

Yvonne Brewster24:31

The oats are

Presenter24:35

And I tell you, my King Lear was a young King Lear. Not only was he not ancient, he was young. We went round to schools all over the place, and the students were so enamoured you had sixteen year olds reading King Lear. Now, if that's not a way into Shakespeare, what is, you know?

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Record number six. Okay.

Presenter24:59

Oh, Jimmy Cliff.

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Many rivers to cross

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I just think this is one of the finest pieces of poetry.

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To come out of Jamaica, I think it should be our national anthem.

Speaker 425:15

Many reverse the cross

Speaker 425:20

But I can't seem to find

Speaker 425:25

My way over.

Speaker 425:30

Wondering I am Lord.

Speaker 425:35

Is that travel alone?

Speaker 425:39

The white cliffs of Dover

Presenter25:43

Jimmy Cliff and Many Rivers to Cross. So you did all this theatre, this revolutionary stuff, Yvonne, under the name of Talawa, your theatre company, which you set up in 1986. Now, I think I'm right in saying in the first instance, the first thing you put on, was a play by C. L. R. James, the the West Indian Marxist writer, called The Black Jacobins. There was a reason for choosing that, wasn't there? Absolutely. It was a reason for Talawa coming into existence, really, because it was 1985, and I had read somewhere that in 1935 this play had been done in London, the one and only time, and they'd brought over Paul Robeson to play the lead role. But the 25 people in the play and everybody else were English people who had been blacked up.

Presenter26:32

And so we decided to do it because we could get the cast. And I put in this application crazy application for eighty thousand pounds to the GLC just before it got shipped off down the Thames, and got the money, and it played at the riverside,

Presenter26:48

and it was full every night, and the second Haitian Revolution happened on our first night.

Presenter26:55

And we made lots of money. So the money that we made we didn't know what to do with, so we did another play and off you went. And off we went. So you you lots of objectives there, certainly, putting on that play, but also giving work to black actors. But then I think part of the objective was also to

Yvonne Brewster27:01

And off he went.

Presenter27:11

Encourage black writers, because the truth was, all of the plays for black actors were written in another era somewhere else. Absolutely, they were all African American plays that were raising in the sun or some few things from the Caribbean. Derek Walcott, you know, would be writing and we did we could do all his plays. But you need to encourage people living here especially to write and feel that if they write it, they've got somewhere for it to be put on. The point is really, isn't it, that it's only in the last thirty years, and helped by your kind of work, as you're saying, that a black British name has appeared alongside the phrase written by. Isn't it wonderful? I go down to the National Theatre and I see written by Kwame, I see written by Roy Williams, I see Winsom Pinnock's new play coming up, and it's not just old plays that they're pulling out, but they're also pulling out some of the old plays as well, which is lovely, so that we have a history. And I think, yes, there has been a development in British theatre, in black British theatre, and it happened because we're here.

Presenter28:24

My code number seven.

Presenter28:25

Were we there already? Seven. Oh, yes. This is for my son, Julian. Bless his heart. And he got to grade eight and piano forty and he plays the piano and he writes songs. But

Presenter28:38

It's classical work that he does, and I wanted to hear him play.

Presenter28:44

The Entertainer by Scott Joplin, and so he did me as a very great favour he learned the first page.

Presenter29:19

Scott Joplin's The Entertainer. The ideal, Yvonne, where theatre should be aiming.

Presenter29:25

surely, is that it should be like society, where it should be aiming to it's neither black nor white, there are not white actors or black actors, they're just actors, and there are good and there are bad actors. How far do you think we're away from that kind of equality of approach?

Presenter29:42

We still have a road to travel, and art has to lead you have to lead, you have to see beyond the current, the future that we should be looking forward to.

Presenter29:56

Well, you may not have a future, Yvonne, because you're going to a desert island. Um what are you what are you going to be like on this desert island?

Yvonne Brewster30:00

What

Presenter30:03

Oh, I think I'm going to be just cool. It's going to be lovely non- people person though. Don't you need people around you? But I insist that I won't be there for very long. And that for the time that I'm there,

Yvonne Brewster30:06

It's going to be lovely not.

Yvonne Brewster30:09

Don't you need

Presenter30:17

Honestly, I'm going to enjoy myself. No mobile phone, no computer, just me and what I make of it. And I think, as it's going to be for a short period of time, I think I'm going to really enjoy myself.

Presenter30:33

Last record. Last record. Now

Presenter30:36

Bob Marley

Presenter30:38

is a favorite of mine. As a young reporter I interviewed him once and I found him the most dynamic person I've ever spoken to in my life. And this No Woman, No Cry

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or no woman no cry, which is the right pronunciation. Um he was really singing to his wife.

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Because they were sending him to England.

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And it was a new future for him, and she was really worried about

Presenter31:06

being left behind.

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And he says in our great future we can't but forget our past.

Presenter31:13

And I just love it.

Speaker 431:15

Good friends we have, oh good friends we've lost.

Speaker 431:22

Along the way I

Speaker 431:27

In this bright future, you can't forget your past.

Speaker 431:34

So dry and deer dice it

Speaker 431:40

No won't mind a pride.

Presenter31:43

Bob Marley and No Woman, No Cry, that's the Jamaican national anthem really, isn't it? Yes, yes. It's one of them. And there's Redemption's song as well. It's hard to choose with Bob Marley, it's just so wonderful. If you could only take one of these eight records, which one would you take to your island?

Yvonne Brewster31:56

This is some

Presenter32:03

Ah Many rivers to cross. Jimmy Cliff. Yes. Speaks to me. And then, you know, I'd manage to learn the words, probably.

Presenter32:13

We give you, as you know, the complete works of Shakespeare. We give you the Bible. What single book of your own would you like to take?

Presenter32:20

I'd like to take

Presenter32:22

Primer to learn Italian And then in my Shakespeare

Presenter32:28

I'm afraid it's a special Shakespeare gonna have a Twelfth Night in Italian.

Presenter32:35

So that I can ch'cause I know it off by heart. And I would be able to check my Italian, you see, um, with with that. So that's my book. And your luxury? Olive oil. You see,

Presenter32:47

In Jamaica. Olive oil is terribly expensive everywhere in the world, I suppose. But you could buy a thimbleful in Jamaica, because if you're not feeling well

Presenter32:55

You could take olive oil. If your skin's going dry, olive oil is the answer. You could cook with olive oil, as we know. You can do it for your hair,'cause black hair gets very dry very quickly, and you could put it in your hair.

Presenter33:07

It's got to be absolutely perfect extra virgin virgin first pressed Italian olive oil, of course, but an endless stream of that that should keep me happy.

Presenter33:16

Yvonne Brewster, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your Desert Island discs. Such a pleasure.

Yvonne Brewster33:28

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