John Sutherland

Speaker 20:00

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 six, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:29

Mike Castaway this week is a literary scholar. He became an academic by a curious route. Born into a working class family, he never knew his father, who was killed in the war, and after a peripatetic childhood he joined the army.

Presenter0:43

With no war to fight, he decided to leave his commission and go to university instead. To day he is a pre eminent literary figure, combining erudition and historical research with a taste for the modern and the new.

Presenter0:56

His book on Victorian fiction is a standard text. He's written biographies, most recently that of Stephen Spender. His literary puzzle and quiz books is Heathcliff a Murderer, so you think you know Jane Austen, a bestseller's, and he has a regular column in The Guardian. He's also the pioneer of book summaries on mobile phones in text form. Hence, Pride and Prejudice becomes Ivery one Goetz Murray. A reformed alcoholic, he says he's now going to write his autobiography because, quote, I'm at that stage in life when my own life interests me more than other people's. He's the recently retired Lord Northcliffe Professor of English Literature at University College London, John Sutherland. And you were chairman of the Booker, of course, recently. Booker judges, John. It's a distinguished career for someone who's got this working class background, no apparent family history of academic study. You must have looked into your own background the same as you do into those of your subjects. Have you come up with any explanation for your academic bent?

John Sutherland1:59

I was very lucky. Obviously, I was no cleverer than my antecedents. It just so happened I was born at a time when the opportunities were there. And also, I think it's all the unremembered, often unremembered, acts of assistance and kindness and interest, actually. It's people taking an interest in you. And of course, for me, the big social event, which I think in fact was a liberation, not just for me but for my generation, was the Second World War. which for one thing shook up the British class system. I think it's now actually sort of settled back in something like its old sort of shape. But for those years and the years afterwards there was much more social mobility. And of course the the great sort of political intervention was the 1944 Education Act, which

Presenter2:45

So if you were intelligent, if your working class boy was intelligent, all of a sudden you could do something with your brain.

John Sutherland2:50

It was grossly unfair and very wasteful. It was grossly unfair because, you know, in in my catchment area it took one child out of five and gave them a privilege. In that sense it was it was just too straight a gate. On the other hand it was a gate that was open and so one could get through it.

Presenter3:07

So what did you read? I mean, what did you have an appetite for as a boy? What kind I mean, did you devour books? Were you always interested in them?

John Sutherland3:13

I suppose so. I I yeah, my childhood was I I was shaken up by the war, I said my at least my my circumstances were. My father was killed, my mother really had to go out and make her own way in the world. As a result of it I was left alone a lot and I I think as what they call a a good child, one of those who's seen and not heard, because I I found it quite convenient to put my nose in a book.

Presenter3:35

But some serious reading, therefore, went on in your childhood, uh and yet here you are to day advocating learning by text message. You know I mean, I gave one example of pride and prejudice. Jane Eyre is summed up as an Mad Woof sets fire to house, as it were.

Presenter3:51

This has got more to do with selling mobile phones than educating anybody in in literature, isn't it?

John Sutherland3:57

You say that, but I can remember I took the 11 Plus, as it was then called, and I remember sitting next to a child, and the invigilator came along and took one look at what he was doing and said, you realise if you use that pen, you'll probably fail this examination. And the pen was a biro, as it was called, a ballpoint pen. And there was a terrific down on them because it was thought that they, as it were, sort of, they made writing too easy.

Presenter4:22

Does this analogy hold up?

John Sutherland4:24

Well, no, it does seem to me that in the educational establishment there is a kind of prejudice against the new. It seems to me that the thing about texting is a whole generation of young people have taught themselves shorthand. Not only do they write shorthand, they can communicate. And they have their own styles of writing. Now it seems to me that whether or not you can see how that fits in, you should to some extent be open to the possibility that it might.

Presenter4:24

Well the

Presenter4:48

Ludder, you are not, I take it. We shall um explore this some more, but let's have your first record.

John Sutherland4:53

The first record I've chosen because it was the first record I ever owned, I think, which meant anything to me. It's Earl Bostick's Flamingo. I can remember the wonderful effect that the opening sort of call of this saxophone in pain had on me when I first bought the record. But at the time it represented for me a world which was so far away from myself, you know, like the city on the hill, where in fact there were kind of saxophonists, black saxophonists, sort of serenading flamingos.

Presenter6:23

Earl Bostic and Flamingo and memories of Youthful Rebellion for my castaway, John Sutherland. Um youthful rebellion in the nineteen fifties at Colchester Royal Grammar School, John. But it it'd been a long and uh a nomadic route to there, hadn't it? Because, as you say, your father died when you were a very small boy. Can you remember it happening?

John Sutherland6:41

I think I got a couple of snapshots uh of him in you know somewhere in one of my kind of deepest buried mental albums. But the fact is I I never knew him, except by the you know, the kind of legends and family reminiscences that one clings on to and and builds an image. But you're skilled in the woods.

Presenter6:57

But he was killed in the war, essentially.

John Sutherland6:59

He was killed in the war he he was in in bomber command and he was killed in training. I I I met a lot of friends in Germany after the war and I saw the devastation visited on German cities and I was rather glad that he hadn't been part of the conflict, which I I had very mixed views about.

John Sutherland7:14

How old would

Presenter7:14

How old would you have been then, Menny?

John Sutherland7:16

I still have to be about three or four.

Presenter7:17

And what did he do before he went into it?

John Sutherland7:19

He was a policeman. It w he was one of these displaced Scots who came down I think he was a very intelligent man, also a rather large physical man um and he came down to London, the best road, as Dr Johnson said, that a a Scotsman never sees.

Presenter7:34

And your mother, what did she do?

John Sutherland7:36

My mother was in service originally, but she was a very enterprising woman.

John Sutherland7:40

She ran away from home and ran to London, where I think she she she in fact was in service. My my grandmother once said rather proudly that she had a daughter at Bedford College, but the fact that that daughter was cleaning the rooms at Bedford College and she met my my father who I think actually sort of he was he'd matriculated but couldn't get to university because of financial reasons. She had a scholarship to go to a blue coats school in Colchester but but her parents couldn't or weren't inclined to pay for the blue coats, the uniform. So she was

Presenter8:10

So she was widowed in the early 40s and then immediately after the war she went away, didn't she?

John Sutherland8:16

Yeah, she she went um uh w one one of the difficult things that that children often have to come to terms with is the fact that they're they're they're usually in the way um and encumbrances and unless parents devote their whole lives to them they can be difficult burdens. And my mother actually had her own life to live and she went away to Argentina. It must be very exciting for her. Less exciting for me because I was with a number of um relatives. I treated very well I have to say.

Presenter8:41

So you were rather passed around, were you, between distant relatives or strangers even?

John Sutherland8:45

Well the kind of what I what I suppose anthropologists would call an extended family. Uh and it wasn't it wasn't a bad childhood actually. It's I was treated very well. No one no one beat me. No one deprived me. I was never put in the cold hole or so.

Presenter8:56

But you felt like a nuisance.

John Sutherland8:58

I felt in the way all that all the time I was an only child and adults to some extent can't incorporate young children into their social lives. So I d I did feel at at times that I was I was uh as it were sort of um a hindrance. And I was of course.

Presenter9:13

And I was, of course. And you were past about, so it wasn't particularly stable, is the point, because I know that you've.

Presenter9:20

I said before now that that lack of kind of social ease that might have

Presenter9:25

developed as a result of that kind of instability in your childhood is one of the reasons behind your drinking.

John Sutherland9:30

Yes, I mean, uh un unless you have you know inner qualities, which I I don't think I did have, um, it it leads to crippling shyness, which I certainly had. And drinking was one way in which I I managed to, as it were, treat that shyness very successfully, I must say.

Presenter9:46

Record number two, telephone.

John Sutherland9:48

Record number two is very hard now to imagine how limited one's access to media was in the 40s and 50s, and how important the BBC was, which then of course was a monopoly. The record I've chosen, which is The Foggy, Foggy Dew, which was quite often played on things like family favourites or housewives' choice, was very naughty. It's about illegitimacy, it's about sort of sex. And somehow, I don't know how, it became a kind of quite often-heard record on the BBC, though it had a kind of impropriety which I found at the time really charmingly daring.

Speaker 410:23

I will Uh

Speaker 410:25

Hold her in the winter time.

Speaker 410:29

And in the summer too.

Speaker 410:33

And the only, only thing that I ever did wrong

Speaker 410:37

Was to keep her from the foggy foggy do

Speaker 410:42

One night she knelt close by my side when I was fast asleep.

Speaker 410:50

She threw her arms around me.

Speaker 410:53

Yeah.

Presenter10:53

The Lives and the Foggy, Foggy Dew. And you remember hearing that on Two Way Family Favourites, do you? The smell the smell of Sunday lunch cooking, isn't it?

John Sutherland11:01

Indeed, yes, that's right. Which parts of which would uh return on Monday lunch and Tuesday lunch and if one was unlucky on Wednesday.

Presenter11:09

The other effect, it seems, reading about your life um of this kind of early rootlessness is that you uh you've always liked institutions, haven't you? Whether it's sort of school and then the army and then, you know, academe.

John Sutherland11:22

I've always felt very safe in institutions, that's to say, you know, I felt there's a kind of shelter over me, and to some extent it makes one into a company man. And yet there's another part of me, of course, like all company men who who is also the kind of the rebel, there's a bit of a bristow about me, I think. Yeah.

Presenter11:36

You were rebellious enough not to get particularly good A levels.

John Sutherland11:40

I never really understood school. You know, I one knows oneself after many years and I although I I find it very hard sometimes to get into subjects, you know, to to to leave the starting blocks and as a result of which my school education was respectable, but uh I couldn't get a university place.

Presenter11:55

But one of the reasons behind that, I I gather, was also'cause you'd you'd been sort of m misusing tablets of some kind.

John Sutherland12:02

Yeah, so well that's right. Of course these were the days when you could go into a chemist and say that your sister was dieting and could they give you some amphetamines and preludeism. It was kind of like the 1920s I suppose when prohibition was lifted. Adolescence was very different then. It went on much longer and was much more tormented. I mean kids it seems to me now just seem to grow up. I mean they're wearing designer clothes at nine and they're adults at the age of 15. So it was a longer and in some ways you know much more kind of I think fraught period for me. Did your mother

Presenter12:28

Did your mother come back during anything?

John Sutherland12:30

She came back, yes, and we actually had a rather happy life actually,'cause she came back and we we s we set up home together, went our separate ways. I would come back and find a ten shilling note on the table. Sometimes our paths would cross, but from that point of view it was uh a fairly ideal family for a someone in my in my situation.

Presenter12:45

And then you were called up. It was still National Service.

John Sutherland12:47

It was the end of national service. To to be honest, if if you went in with a kind of hiccup they would actually sort of give you a deferment or or or in fact sort of turn you away'cause they didn't really want any more um of these kind of awful kind of conscripts, they're terrible soldiers.

Presenter13:01

But you wanted to go in.

John Sutherland13:02

I wanted to go, I had nowhere else to go. So in fact I went in and it was it was it was rather a nice time because National Service was winding down, there were no interesting wars going on, but there was still Cyprus, there was still a bit of in internal security stuff going on.

Presenter13:14

Do you remember your number?

John Sutherland13:15

Yes, uh two three four seven eight nine nine one nine. Uh population of Tokyo, as they used to say. But uh good was right, they they used to work out your status by uh the the kind of brevity of your number, really.

Presenter13:26

And yours was extremely low.

John Sutherland13:27

My in fact was the end of the line, yes. Mequic number three, Colonel. The legal number three, in fact, is I was in the Suffolk regiment, known throughout the British Army as sometimes the Silly Suffolks and sometimes the Suffolk Swedes. They didn't have much respect, they had a lot of very impressive battle honours. But they also had what in fact was the the least sort of uh convenient quick march song in in the British Army called Speed the Plough and which as soon as as soon as it was played everyone's feet started falling over. It's very, very hard to actually sort of march to it. But I have a certain affection for Speed the Plough.

Presenter13:29

Make it number three, Constantine.

Presenter14:32

That's short and sweet. The regimental band of the Cold Stream Guards and Speed the Plough. So you rose to the dizzy heights of second lieutenant, but I mean, you've got a commission, so you you you behaved well, which is what you say you did in your life.

John Sutherland14:45

I I never found it hard to take orders doing what I was told and uh that's really all it came down to.

John Sutherland14:51

So yes, that was an experience.

Presenter14:51

So yes, that was an experience. And then you had got other qualifications by then, so you moved on, you were able to go to university, you went to Leicester University, and this is where you began, isn't it, to take an interest in Victorian fiction. Or did you already have an interest, or was it waiting to happen?

John Sutherland15:06

I read voraciously as a child and and a lot of Victorian fiction came my way. And then I I went to Leicester. I was very lucky because at Leicester I came under the wing of um uh Monica Jones, who's very well known now as as the consort of Philip Larkin. What was she like?

Presenter15:21

Or she lie.

John Sutherland15:22

She was a remarkable woman. In fact, I think she was the stuffing inside Philip Larkin, really, of a lot of things which he's famous for, not travelling because of the dust and not being able to publish because poetry had given up him. In fact, I think they were derived from her. She believed very strongly that in this day and age, in universities, it was more distinguished not to publish than to publish. And she had very, very pronounced views on writers she liked. She liked the poet Crabb, she liked the novelist Scott, and she was crazy about William Makepeace Thackeray, an enthusiasm which she passed on to me.

Presenter15:54

And indeed you've you've written the biography of Walter Scott?

John Sutherland15:54

And do you

John Sutherland15:56

I've written a biography of Walter Scott and did my PhD on Thackeray and several books on Thackeray, in fact, and edited most of his major novels. But the fact that she in fact took an interest in me was immensely influential. And a lot of her attitudes I just took over wholesale, except the, you know, not publishing. I couldn't see the point in not actually talking to people. I like to be admired.

Presenter16:16

But Victorian fiction is a is a huge field in which to specialise. I mean, how how many how many novels have been were published under in the Victorian era?

John Sutherland16:25

Well, by my estimate, about seventy thousand, but it's a rather fuzzy sort of uh area at the borders and and no one really knows.

Presenter16:30

Really nice.

John Sutherland16:32

Yeah, in fact it one will never know it. It it's you can just scrape the surface of it. I mean in fact when when um uh courses on Victorian fiction are offered usually it's about five novels, which you know is a bit like having a brick and talking about architecture.

Presenter16:44

But how many of them have you read and reached?

John Sutherland16:46

I I reckon about eight thousand for the um bitch I think I'm gonna stop at that actually. I still read one or two, but uh n now I reread the ones I like best.

Presenter16:54

But eventually you wrote your your magnum opus, didn't you? The st the Stamford Guide to Victorian Fiction. Um you wrote it much later in California in in the eighties.

John Sutherland17:01

That's right. I was very lucky. I had this job in California, which effectively was a sinecure. I had 10 years, the most beautiful, idyllic library in the world, the Huntington. One of my colleagues said if I died and went to heaven, it would be like the Huntington Library. But is that.

Presenter17:15

But is that when and where you're at your happiest? Obviously like the Huntington Library, but i you know researching, sitting in a library, you know, a a solid book in your hands, just reading, researching, writing?

John Sutherland17:28

You know, i there is a moment of truth in in your life when you're given what you want uh and the challenge, well, okay, do it then. And that that that decade for me was was in fact very productive and very happy, but it seems to me that happiness means different things at different times of your life and is defined differently at different times of your life.

Presenter17:45

Next piece music.

John Sutherland17:46

I never had really a sophisticated taste in music though. In fact, modern jazz always seemed to me to be somehow classy in a way and I was terribly culturally snobbish about it. But this next record, which is Dave Rubeck and his quartet playing The Way You Look Tonight, that for me was the acme of sophistication.

Presenter18:36

Dave Brubeck and the way you look tonight. Um you went up to teach in uh in Edinburgh at Edinburgh University uh in the mid sixties, John. Um this is apparently where the the serious drinking began. What what what motivated it at that point?

John Sutherland18:50

Well, it was a kind of there was a cult of what we might call heroic overindulgence. But it was also very companionable. People always always, to some extent, sort of forget the good side of drinking, which it makes people sociable. It's a lot of fun. Looking back, I feel there was a lot of liberation as well that came along with this kind of what would now be called partying, I suppose. That's to say, I tended to drink in Scotland with colleagues, very learned, in some cases, very eminent people. So it wasn't all bad. I mean, it wasn't all sort of lying in the gutter of my own vomit.

Presenter19:30

And it obviously didn't come between you and your work because I mean you were there in in Edinburgh for some time, but you were spotted, weren't you? You were recruited by Frank Kermot, who was by then running the English department at University College London. I mean you you were functioning despite some very heavy drinking.

John Sutherland19:47

Oh, yes. This is kind of a feature of the career alcoholic, that for about 20 years, sometimes longer, they can usually actually sort of hold their drink, is the phrase which is used. And at the same time, sort of be quite high-performing. Certainly, I could keep it all together. But in fact, there is too much of it, and a cost is paid. And then gradually, of course, as your tolerance builds up, you tend to drink more and more, and the drink becomes more central. And certainly, a lot of my friends of that era have succumbed fatally to alcoholism. It is, in fact, a dreadful thing.

Presenter20:23

But but you obviously, as we say, kept kept going. You you you went to University College London, you made your mark there, you began, didn't you, to to cross was that the point really, when you began to cross the divide from academe into kind of popular culture, writing for newspapers and all of a sudden academics were allowed to do that kind of thing. It wasn't a dis disgraceful act anymore.

John Sutherland20:44

No, it wasn't. And you you are cheek by jar. I mean sort of University College is earlier a stone's throw from where we're sitting at the moment in in Broadcasting House. So to some extent it it seemed to be f foolish, you know, to as it were sort of go into the Ivory Tower when there was so much just around the Ivory Tower.

Presenter20:57

Yeah.

Presenter21:00

Mm, yeah.

John Sutherland21:00

Um

Presenter21:01

Well, I mean, there have always been uh serializations of the classics, of course, but I mean, and the the the recent Bleak House is done in a much more popular form, isn't it? Or the updating of Shakespeare that we've had recently, you know, that all of those things and all of the, I suppose, many more books published than ever, many more book prizes. Uh, it's there's so much more of it going on and it's so much more accessible, isn't it?

John Sutherland21:22

It is, yeah. I mean in fact it it overwhelmingly so. I mean uh you can argue that to some extent it's out of control. There's like over ten thousand novels published last year and there is so much quality now. In fact life is really too short, but it is a wonderful time to be alive.

Presenter21:37

Book number five.

John Sutherland21:38

The fifth record I'm afraid is is um as they say in sort of um in AA My Name is John and I'm an alcoholic. Uh this is in fact is uh a wonderful sort of anthem to alcoholism. It's Tom Waits and the piano has been drinking. Uh of course every alcoholic blames everything except himself for the fact that he's drunk.

Speaker 421:58

The piano has been drinking.

Speaker 422:04

The piano has been string.

Speaker 422:09

But no.

Speaker 422:12

That we

Speaker 422:15

Not me.

Speaker 422:17

Not me.

Speaker 422:21

No

Speaker 422:23

Great.

Presenter22:28

Tom waits and the piano has been drinking.

Presenter22:31

Um finally you were drinking catastrophically. John, when did you in the AA phrase touch bottom?

John Sutherland22:39

Oddly enough, it is exactly like that. I mean, you sort of go as low as you can, and either you stay there or come back up. But it's when I went to California, and I went out there, and I was still drinking heavily. And what I discovered in California was that America, of course, there's a land of opportunity, but there are no safety nets. And if you start dropping, then you just keep dropping until you hit something very hard.

Presenter23:02

How did you drop them? It got pretty grim, didn't it?

John Sutherland23:04

I it did, yes. It got very squalid, very sordid. Uh these these are these are kind of memories which can still as it were sort of I can still sort of groan when I when when I when I when I remember them and I suppose you know they'll always be as it were grooved or etched into me but uh I I I started going to Alcoholics Anonymous which is an American invention really, a very good one in which i i it it starts from the premise that only alcoholics can help alcoholics. It works for some people. It certainly worked for me and I think it it it works for uh for many others as well, at least I hope it does.

Presenter23:36

But you said something you let me quote, you said, I found sobriety very easy once I got into it. I mean, that that's unusual, isn't it? Or how long did it take you to get into it?

John Sutherland23:45

Well th as I said earlier, I always found it very easy to take orders and sort of uh you know to follow instructions uh and be good. I mean well Alcoholics Anonymous uh you know sets up this kind of apparatus. I g it is in fact a you know an institution. I I'm not an active participant now. I mean as I said, you know, I I needed that life belt, but I didn't want to go through the rest of my life with a life belt round my waist.

Presenter24:06

Don't you don't you go on needing it? Well, some do and some don't.

John Sutherland24:08

Well some do and some don't. So in fact if you are the kind of person that needs that kind of sort of shelter then in fact it will offer it.

Presenter24:15

So would you say that you now have control of yourself or can you never make such a large statement?

John Sutherland24:19

Can you never

John Sutherland24:21

I don't drink and I haven't drunk for twenty three years uh and I I don't even think about drinking nowadays. So yeah, I think I think probably. But it depends on the person. I mean there there are no rules here. Um I'm just very glad. I'm very grateful to AA. I'm very glad that I don't drink. I hope I never do again.

Presenter24:36

Do you remember the date of your last drink?

John Sutherland24:38

I vaguely remember because it was a period in which is still a bit foggy and lots of kind of empty bottles and sort of rather kind of painful hangover mornings, but I think it must have been January 1983. And I was very lucky in that my family, my wife and my son, stood by me. They had every reason not to, kind of being very beastly as terminal alcoholics are. But they they gave me the second chance. I I'd be eternally grateful for that.

Presenter25:08

Number six.

John Sutherland25:09

Uh as I said I I got server in California and California had had always existed for me. I'd been watching movies ever ever since I I was a conscious child and I'd always had this vision of California, the places where, you know, I spent a kind of sort of uh an Elysium. I I did love it. And then and the next track is uh it's it's rather corny. It's the The Eagles and and Hotel California. I like that line you can check out but you can never leave.

Speaker 425:34

Say

Speaker 425:36

Welcome to the Hotel California.

Speaker 425:40

Such a lovely place, such a lovely place, such a lovely place.

Speaker 425:49

Plenty a room at the Hotel California Any time of year, any time of year, you can find it here.

Presenter26:02

The Eagles and Hotel California. So you you quit the drink, John. You wrote the magnum opus on Victorian fiction and subsequently got invited back to University College London for for the job you had always lusted after, is that it?

John Sutherland26:15

Yes, I left Hotel California and came back to be Lord Northcliffe Professor, Modern English Literature at University College London. As Frank Kermode, my predecessor there, said, you know, Lord Northcliffe Professor of Modern English Literature was like being the Mammon Professor of God. But it was a job that meant a lot to me because it, you know, I love University College London, which in fact is the oldest English department in the country and has this tradition of mixing as it were, higher journalism and high scholarship. And has always seemed to me to be very open to new ideas and initiatives and really fun to be in, fun to teach and attracted interesting students as well.

Presenter26:57

And then you started writing your your bestsellers, your really popular books like Is Heathcliff a Murderer was the first. Is he?

John Sutherland27:03

I think he probably is, yes. Though we like him so much that we forgive him. He's one of those murderers that we let off the hook. I did that really because I couldn't didn't have time to work in libraries anymore. The period in your life when you had to live off your kind of accumulated capital and I didn't have time to spend week after week in libraries because I had administrative responsibilities for the first time.

Presenter27:20

Hmm.

Presenter27:27

And it turned out to be so popular. But I I noticed when I was reading about it that Stephen Spender apparently once came up with some such questions when he was setting um well he said, didn't he, when he was setting exam papers for students that he could only think of two questions on George Eliot, and one was his Casibon impotence and the other was was Daniel Deronda circumcised? Is this where you got the idea?

John Sutherland27:46

Yeah, yeah.

John Sutherland27:48

It wasn't, though in fact Stephen Sona was was briefly a colleague of mine. But yes, I mean that that kind of mischievousness I think was was in the air and there was a lot of it about and yeah, to some extent it it is fun sometimes, you know, to puncture the, as it were, the the seriousness of scholarship and and and literary scholarship has got incredibly serious in the last three or four decades.

Presenter28:06

Record number seven.

John Sutherland28:07

The next uh record i is one I'm uh fond of, uh Oscar Peterson playing tenderly. It's a s sometimes mu music can actually just sort of um you know just just just make you feel sort of uh terrific and th this has always had that effect on me.

Presenter28:12

To sit down.

Presenter29:15

Oscar Peterson and Tenderly and it was recorded live in Vancouver in 1958.

Presenter29:20

It's um probably fair to say, John, from the alcoholic moments you've described, that you've been to a desert island and don't want to be sent to another one. Is that fair?

John Sutherland29:28

Yes, I think I've I've done a serve of my time, so to speak. It's a question in my mind whether I really regret it or not. I've spoken to a lot of alcoholics about this, and quite a few of them actually say, well, if they had their time again, they're not sure they wouldn't go through it on the grounds that they feel that, to use that rather kind of tired phrase, it was a kind of learning process. I'm not sure I would quite like to suffer all that pain and humiliation again, but certainly, I mean, it's sort of, you know, one does if you get through it, you you do come through it differently and perhaps even probably a better person, I'd hope.

Presenter30:07

But if you go to our desert island you could actually begin to write that autobiography. Is that do you think what you're going to do next?

John Sutherland30:13

I think probably yes, I I I'm quite interested in you know, as one does at a certain stage of life one one does become very introverted and sort of uh and um I think it's really that you want to put things in in order, you want want to find out what it was all about.

Presenter30:25

But will you research it like you would a normal subject, or will you just sit down and write? Because we we we edit ourselves, we rewrite our own history all of the time.

John Sutherland30:29

We

John Sutherland30:33

We do and and obviously we fabricate and we and we sort of uh we falsify but at the same time I think it's quite important if you've lived to to know that you've lived and to know exactly what's happened and how it happened and put things in shape and as I say in order and so it would be to some extent I suppose a kind of writing cure as the Freudians might say.

Speaker 230:53

Last

Presenter30:54

Strickland.

Speaker 230:54

Uh

John Sutherland30:54

I've been very lucky in that all my kind of professional life has been spent with young people and I do admire just the smartness really and the way in which culturally and in terms of their kind of you know their tastes that nowadays they they are so so much further ahead than I was at their age of my little Earl Bostic stuff and the the last track is France Ferdinand and Take Me Out. It's a very enigmatic sort of very enigmatic lyric that it has, but the music is wonderful and this is music created by young people for young people and it is, I find, incredibly hopeful for the future when I listen to this kind of thing.

Speaker 431:50

Uh

Speaker 431:56

Smooth conduct.

Speaker 432:01

Take me out.

Presenter32:06

Friends, Ferdinand and take me out. Now, if you could only take one of those records, John, which one would you take?

John Sutherland32:12

Oh, I think I'll protect Tom Waits, just to cheer me up.

Presenter32:16

And, as you know, we give you the Bible, we give you the complete works of Shakespeare. What's your book? One book.

John Sutherland32:22

Well, I would really like to take the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, but I can't do that, no, obviously.

Presenter32:25

National Biography by Cante.

John Sutherland32:28

Um in that case I take Vanity Fair, which I think is the greatest novel in the English language.

Presenter32:32

See ya.

John Sutherland32:33

Better than

Presenter32:33

Better than Middle March.

John Sutherland32:35

Uh and more fun than Middle March and you don't feel lectured uh in the same way that you do with uh with uh George Eliot.

Presenter32:42

And a luxury. We give you a luxury. What's it to be?

John Sutherland32:44

Well, I don't know whether this is eligible, but uh I think the the sixty uh gigabyte iPod, which would give me fourteen thousand nine hundred and ninety two other tracks. But if I'm going to be marooned next year, I'll take the hundred and twenty megabyte iPod, which I'm sure is coming down the track.

Presenter32:59

It's a real cheat, but I can't say no. John Sutherland, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

John Sutherland33:04

Thank you.

Speaker 233:12

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