David Dimbleby

Presenter0:00

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.

Presenter0:08

The programme was originally broadcast in two thousand eight.

Presenter0:27

My castaway this week is David Dimbleby.

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At a time when broadcasting's standards are being called into question as never before, he is regarded by many as that rare thing the trusted voice of a nation.

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From the Queen Mother's funeral to the Golden Jubilee and every election since nineteen seventy nine, his presence has seen us through grief, celebration, and uncertainty, marshalling the facts that matter, handling chaos with enviable ease, and, crucially, knowing when to shut up and let the pictures do the talking.

Presenter0:56

Although he claims never to have planned a career in the media, his credentials are top drawer. From a long line of broadcasters and journalists, his great-great-grandfather was in the local newspaper business, his grandfather was a lobby correspondent, and his father, Richard Dimbleby, was the very personification of the Reethian broadcasting principle. Indeed, even the neighbours were in on the act. When David was a little boy, John Logie Baird popped round to visit and planted a friendly peck on his head. He kissed me like the wicked fairy, and that's what got me started in broadcasting. It is, of course, the live events that you're known for, these huge set pieces. I was wondering about the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, that happened just over ten years ago.

Presenter1:39

It must have been very difficult to properly prepare for that. First of all, of course, it was unexpected and secondly, plans were changing right up to the last minute.

David Dimbleby1:47

It was a strange event because the B B C

David Dimbleby1:52

were obsessed by what tone to set. And I kept saying, Stop talking about what tone you should set. I'll take my cue from the crowds and from the feeling on the day. I don't need to decide in advance with you what kind of tone we should set. And when it came to the day, I'd spent I'd been around, I went up to Kensington Palace and saw the crowds and the flowers that were laid out in the bit before. And when it came to the funeral itself, which was completely, yes, unpredictable, I just kept as quiet as I could and said things where I thought it was appropriate, as though I was sitting on a sofa watching it with somebody and just whispering to them, Oh, that's the younger son, or that's the Duke of Edinburgh and the Queen.

David Dimbleby2:44

and letting the pictures tell the story. I was simply describing what was going on in the streets of London and trying to reflect a bit on what her children not reflect on what her children might have felt, because I I wouldn't have gone into that territory, but allowing the sort of family feeling to show through, and not talking.

Presenter3:05

Yes. L I want to ask you a little bit about this business of not shutting up. It takes a huge amount of confidence not to say anything. It takes a huge amount of confidence not to convince people that you know every single fact about the the roof of the chapel or the route that's been chosen or uh the titles of all the various field marshals and so on. That takes a lot of bottle to

David Dimbleby3:23

Various field marshals and so on.

David Dimbleby3:27

I I've always thought you get paid for your silence. But but you have to have all that other stuff in reserve, because of course things go wrong, and you suddenly find yourself having to say something. Anything you don't say can't be held against you, that's my view.

Presenter3:44

Wise, wise choice. Um your choices today are quite quite emotional, music, I think. Are you quite an emotional man?

David Dimbleby3:53

I chose the music.

David Dimbleby3:55

Because they meant things to me and

David Dimbleby3:59

You would have to judge whether it's emotion or not.

Presenter4:03

So tell me then about your first piece of music.

David Dimbleby4:07

I'm not a I'm not a great sort of expert on music, but I've always listened to music, mainly classical music, and sometimes I hear sounds that just transport me, that enrapture me, that carry me completely out of myself, whatever mood I'm in, into a different world, into the spheres, and this is one of them, which is the um adagio from Schubert's string quintet.

Presenter5:33

The opening of the second movement of Schubert's String Quintet in C, played by the Lindsays with Douglas Cummings. We'll hear a little about you as a boy, David Dimbleby, in a moment, but first of all I want to explore your background. It's a pretty fascinating one. Your great-great-grandfather was Jabys Dimbleby, who came from Yorkshire, middle of the nineteenth century, and every generation since then has been in newspapers or broadcasting. What do you think it was about?

David Dimbleby5:55

It's an addiction, isn't it? Journalism, I think. I think it is.

David Dimbleby6:00

There are professions that are addictive, and b uh for instance being a doctor seems to be an addiction. Doctors follow doctors.

David Dimbleby6:07

It it it gets into your blood. I think it's because it's the most enjoyable of professions and

David Dimbleby6:13

In the years I've been doing it, I'm constantly.

David Dimbleby6:17

Astonished at the sort of privilege of going, not just of interviewing Nelson Mandela, but of interviewing a family in the slums of Bombay. It's just a

David Dimbleby6:27

Privilege beyond compare, really.

David Dimbleby6:30

And just by virtue of being a journalist it's l legitimized.

Presenter6:34

When you were born then in nineteen thirty eight, your father, Richard, was already I mean, probably the best known broadcaster of his his generation. When did you begin to be aware that he was a man who was very much at the centre of cultural life?

David Dimbleby6:46

Cultural life.

David Dimbleby6:49

When I was at I went to boarding school when I was about ten no, eight no, seven, actually, seven, that's right. Wicked world. Um and I remember we went out for a day out at Hastings. My school was just near Hastings and there were a group of women down from London for a day out, and I remember them dancing round my father, and one of them had her knickers on her head, and I thought there's something very odd going on here. My father is clearly rather too well known to these people.

Presenter7:18

Did he try to explain it to you or was it just sort of left hanging as it were?

David Dimbleby7:22

It was he was very he was very ac accepting of it. I mean, it was at a time when particularly when television began, and rarely everybody knew him, because there was one channel, BBC, and there was about five hours broadcasting a night, and he did two hours a week or something. So I grew up with the idea that it was perfectly normal.

Presenter7:43

I said, I don't know how much you would object or not to my characterisation of him as the very personification of the Reethian ideal public service broadcasting. He wasn't just a broadcaster, he was a public service broadcaster.

David Dimbleby7:53

I think that's right. I think he had a strange career, on the other hand, which is maybe why he didn't want me to do it, to go into broadcasting, which he didn't. And there was a reason, I think, which was that he had had a very tough war. He'd flown missions over Germany. He'd been to Belsen. He'd come back

David Dimbleby8:13

Very experienced, very well trusted. And in truth, looking back on it, I think the BBC couldn't find anything for him to do.

David Dimbleby8:23

You know, you c you can't estimate the effect of the war on people, the Second World War on people, the horror, uh, terror of it, and

David Dimbleby8:32

I think afterwards everything

David Dimbleby8:34

seems a bit flat.

David Dimbleby8:36

Um

David Dimbleby8:39

And he died when he was fifty two, and he got ill when he was forty seven.

David Dimbleby8:43

So he only had a really a relatively brief career.

David Dimbleby8:50

Um and I think he would have I don't know I don't know what he'd like to have done.

Presenter8:57

Tell me then about your next piece of music.

David Dimbleby9:00

I want to take my children to this desert island, and I know I'm not allowed to. And I've got four children. And my younger daughter is a singer, and this is one song of hers that I particularly like, which is

David Dimbleby9:17

If I wrote a song that you like, would you like me?

Speaker 49:20

I want to write a song that you'd like And if I wrote a song that you'd like

Speaker 19:21

Yeah.

Speaker 49:27

Would you like me?

Speaker 49:32

I want to write a song that you'd like I want to write a song that you'd like And if I wrote a song that you'd like Would you like me?

Presenter9:49

My Castaway's Daughter Kate Dimbleby and Song That You'd Like. So tell me about your childhood then. Where did you grow up?

David Dimbleby9:57

Um

David Dimbleby10:00

I sort of

David Dimbleby10:02

Remember just being

David Dimbleby10:04

Very happy?

David Dimbleby10:07

I remember

David Dimbleby10:09

Family life being very important.

David Dimbleby10:12

I remember loving it when my father came home when he'd been away, because he was a warm, warm character.

David Dimbleby10:20

I remember being sent away to school, which I didn't like.

Presenter10:23

You said it's seven, so quite quite early.

David Dimbleby10:25

Yes, seven.

David Dimbleby10:27

Was a bit early. I

David Dimbleby10:29

I'm very against sending away children at that age. I was so homesick I used to

David Dimbleby10:35

Get myself to sleep by imagining in my mind a little house that I lived in.

David Dimbleby10:42

And it wasn't where I was, it was somewhere else.

David Dimbleby10:47

I wasn't a great brain. I didn't do well at school particularly. And

David Dimbleby10:53

For me my life really began when I went to university.

David Dimbleby10:56

kind of liberation from

David Dimbleby10:59

From schools

Presenter11:00

I'm wondering what your mum was like. I mean, it's very easy, of course, when people talk to you to talk about your dad,'cause we all know about your dad.

David Dimbleby11:05

Yeah.

David Dimbleby11:06

What about

Presenter11:06

What about your mother?

David Dimbleby11:08

My mother, who's now

David Dimbleby11:11

Just celebrate her ninety-fifth birthday.

David Dimbleby11:13

has always been has become increasingly, as a matter of fact, the cornerstone of the family, the matriarch.

David Dimbleby11:21

And I suspect always was, though my father was such a sort of big in every way character that we

David Dimbleby11:28

assumed he ruled the roost, but I think secretly my mother did because she handled him.

David Dimbleby11:35

Brilliantly, she actually was his manager.

David Dimbleby11:37

and she devoted herself entirely

David Dimbleby11:41

To us.

David Dimbleby11:42

The children. Four children there there were.

Presenter11:46

Did she mind at the time your father being away so much?

David Dimbleby11:50

She would mind very much, but she couldn't do anything about it. He was away for three years in the war. We went off and lived in the countryside, while he was in the western desert.

David Dimbleby11:59

She kept the show on the road.

Presenter12:02

I wonder about that. I mean, I'm thinking of her, and I mean this only as a compliment. She must have been something of a tough cookie.

David Dimbleby12:06

Well, she's half Welsh, so she's got a determined streak.

Presenter12:10

Uh you took yourself off to Oxford then, where you uh studied politics, philosophy and economics. Were you a were you a diligent pupil?

David Dimbleby12:17

I was diligent at enjoying myself.

David Dimbleby12:20

I learnt to live a bit. I learnt to loosen up. And I think that on the serious side.

David Dimbleby12:26

I learnt about argument. The first term I went to Oxford I read logic with a brilliant teacher.

David Dimbleby12:33

And it just taught me about how to argue. And it really set me up, I think, for for the career I had. I would never have been able to do political interviewing if I hadn't been through that process, which was to work out when an answer doesn't fit the question you've asked, and to keep pursuing the question until you get the answer you want. Not by bullying, not by emotional sort of displays of horror, but just by filleting the argument. It taught me a lot. It used to drive my father mad when we stop arguing.

Presenter13:07

You haven't stopped ever since. Tell me about your next piece of music, Bern.

David Dimbleby13:12

When I left Oxford, I in the in the ten years, fifteen years, I used to go to the States a lot. And in fact, when my father died in 1965, I was about to take up a contract to work in America. And I think I would have actually ended up working in America. But I went backwards and forwards. It was a very exciting time in the States. And I used to go to the jazz clubs in New York and in New Orleans and got a sort of taste for a particular kind of rather rough-edged jazz. I particularly liked uh Blind Boy Fuller, who had a rough old life and sings in a sort of unsophisticated way that appeals hugely to me.

Speaker 113:56

Say you can't ever tell

Speaker 114:00

Where sound is women mine?

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I got a

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Uh

Speaker 114:04

Uh

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Says you can never tell

Speaker 114:09

What sounds these men and mine?

Speaker 114:15

Yeah they'd be hugging you and kissing you.

Presenter14:18

Uh

Presenter14:19

And Queen You All Instagram. Blind Boy Fuller and You Never Can Tell. So, David Dimbleby, whilst you were at Oxford you edited Isis, the student magazine. I think of that as an activity that's only undertaken by a

Presenter14:31

Incredibly driven, ambitious sort of people who see their lives going in a certain direction.

David Dimbleby14:35

In a second.

Presenter14:36

Where you wanna

David Dimbleby14:37

No, no, no. I I wanted to make a bit of a splash, I suppose.

Presenter14:37

Good.

Presenter14:41

Yeah.

David Dimbleby14:41

Why?

David Dimbleby14:42

I always have. I don't know why, really. I just to be truthful.

David Dimbleby14:47

You wouldn't go through broadcasting and all the

David Dimbleby14:51

difficulties of it as well as the excitement, if you actually wanted not to be noticed, would you?

David Dimbleby14:57

I never had any fear of microphones or cameras, that's true, because I was used to seeing.

David Dimbleby15:04

My father broadcasting, and I think that's the only link there really is.

David Dimbleby15:09

Whether this is going to create generations and generations of dimblebiz at the microphone, I don't know.

Presenter15:16

Maybe we shall talk about that later. I'm interested in this great opportunity that you were offered then to go to America and the beginnings of a career there. How did that come about, and what was the job that you were offered?

David Dimbleby15:26

I was sent to Belson.

David Dimbleby15:28

By the BBC for the commemoration of the twentieth anniversary.

David Dimbleby15:34

of V E Day I think it was. And they did a huge link up with CBS and the BBC.

David Dimbleby15:41

I can't remember quite how it worked. Anyway, I had to do a report from Belson, and they listened to that, and they liked it, and sent me a cable saying, come and work for us.

David Dimbleby15:48

I I couldn't have a serious career in in in Britain.

Presenter15:52

Because he would always be Richard's son.

Presenter15:55

And then you were forced to come back to England because of your father's illness. As you say, he he became ill in his late forties and and died of cancer at at fifty two, and you came home to to run the family business?

David Dimbleby16:09

There wasn't any any question about what I'd do then.

David Dimbleby16:12

M my mother was widowed, my brothers were much younger.

David Dimbleby16:18

There was a business that had to be run.

David Dimbleby16:21

And I came back.

Presenter16:24

Tell me then about your next piece of music.

David Dimbleby16:27

This is a song I first heard sung in a concert in Dorset, and it really struck me. And it's.

David Dimbleby16:36

Setting to music the words of Annabel Lee by Edgar Allan Poe. To me it's the song of the

David Dimbleby16:44

The dangerous innocence of love.

Speaker 416:50

Many and many are ye go in the kingdom by the sweet.

Speaker 416:58

That a man of them lives whom we all may know by the name of a man.

Speaker 116:59

In the home.

Speaker 417:06

And this made the nature live within one of the

Presenter17:19

David Lloyd singing Annabel Lee accompanied by Gerald Moore.

Presenter17:23

I'm suddenly reminded of watching you interview Bill Clinton. It was, I think, for Panorama, the big set piece interview. He had chosen to give you an interview because he wanted to publicise his book. You, of course, as any good journalist would, used it as an opportunity to question him on all sorts of things, not least the Monica Lewinsky saga.

Presenter17:43

Uh he lost his rag quite badly, as I seem to remember. How d what are your memories of the situation?

David Dimbleby17:48

Surprise?

David Dimbleby17:50

I thought he was a cool customer.

David Dimbleby17:53

And I was astonished, and he went off into

David Dimbleby17:57

A rant, really.

David Dimbleby17:59

So I was I was taken aback, but the odd thing is he was professional enough after he had done his explosion.

David Dimbleby18:05

I mean, I'm used to people exploding in front of me with rage. Um Harold Wilson exploded in front of me with rage and it sort of reverberated for months afterwards and the B B C held an inquiry into the questions I'd asked him.

Presenter18:18

Indeed, that was to do with the amount of money that he was going to make from the booth.

David Dimbleby18:20

Yes, the thing is just touching a nerve. You touch a raw nerve, sometimes inadvertently, and people explode. But afterwards he was sweet as pie, Clinton, so I never knew quite whether it was real anger or synthetic.

Presenter18:36

He got over it then, but you do say that you enjoy um a little bit of trouble on air. It it gives you something of a fizz. I'm not necessarily talking about interviewees getting mad with you, but just the general chaos. And I mean, live broadcasts can be

Presenter18:48

Intensely chaotic.

David Dimbleby18:49

The excitement of live broadcasting is the chaos. It's only fun when things go wrong. I mean, if you get through an entire election programme and there's never been a hiccup in it.

David Dimbleby18:57

You think, oh, well, you know, what was in that? No, I do. I do like it when things go wrong. As long as you realize that the audience, too, enjoys the gaiety of your confusion.

Presenter19:09

They cut back to you once eating a chocolate bar, didn't they? John? Yeah. Was that in an election programme?

David Dimbleby19:11

Yeah.

David Dimbleby19:13

That was an election programme. Robin Day was always very very cross if his interviews were interrupted. He was in the middle of an interview and they said Robin, Robin, stop, stop. You've got to hand to David for important information. So Robin, in the most portentous way, said, I have to stop you there, Minister. I have to hand over to David Dimbleby for an important announcement.

David Dimbleby19:34

To me. And I was actually eating a Mars bar because it was, you know, one of those snack periods. And we were cutting back for nothing. I think it was a shot of Mrs. Thatcher getting into a car or something. So I laughed. I expected to get free Mars bars for life, but I didn't even get a letter from them.

Presenter19:49

Working for the BBC, you'd have to send them all somewhere.

David Dimbleby19:51

We'd send them all.

Presenter19:52

Tell me about your next piece of music then.

David Dimbleby19:56

This is a bit this is a bit weird, really. I've always been very excited by the sound of the violin. For me it's the instrument of all instruments. And because of that I like particularly the unaccompanied violin.

David Dimbleby20:12

And I suppose because of that the kind of extraordinary sound of Bartock's unaccompanied violin sonata thrills me.

Presenter21:22

Ivry Gittlis playing part of Bartock's sonata for solo violin. Oh over the last twenty years you've thrown your hat into the ring on a few occasions to be either Director General.

Presenter21:33

Or chairman of the BBC, I'm wondering why on earth somebody like you would do that, given that you have, as you characterize it, a fascinating job, you've got a lively family life, you enjoy the world, why would you want to sit through all those committees reading all those bits of paper and trying to marshal an organization that seems to be running in so many directions at once?

Speaker 121:33

Yeah.

David Dimbleby21:53

I quite agree. You're absolutely right. I must have been off my head. But I tell you why. On each occasion, for one reason or another, I thought, arrogantly I suppose, that I knew what the BBC should do in a particular pickle it was in. And particularly, I think, that I could explain it to the licencepayer. In other words, that I could articulate what the BBC was about to the people who were paying for it. And I think it's a huge relief not to have because I mean, the years I've had since I first ran for the chairmanship in particular have been terrific. I've had the most wonderful time and

David Dimbleby22:30

And I seem still to be at it. And if I'd been chairman, I'd have been sapped by the Government. I'd have had to resign three times over by now.

Presenter22:36

Can I ask you briefly what what you would have done if you'd headed up the BBC that hasn't been done?

David Dimbleby22:42

No. And I tell you why. I took a Trappist vow. I I made my pitch and I swore after that that I wouldn't go on about it. I said what I said to them and I m wrote about it at the time. And as far as I'm concerned, it's a closed book. I mean, the people who run the BBC now

David Dimbleby22:59

can't be sniped at constantly, in my opinion, by broadcasters. Otherwise the whole thing becomes just like a piranha fish in a small pond. I don't think it's very seemly that.

Presenter23:12

Tell me about your next piece of music then.

David Dimbleby23:14

I'm taking this record with me because I'm rather fearful that it may turn out to be a desert island with palm trees and sandy beaches and sunshine, which I would hate from the moment I landed to the moment I escaped, because that's not the kind of island I want to be on. And I just think this bit of music, Sea Interlude from Peter Grimes, is the most brilliantly evocative music about the sea that I've ever heard. And I love the sea, and I go sailing whenever I can.

David Dimbleby23:47

And this swish of the waves at dawn just does it for me.

Presenter24:53

Dawn The first C interlude from Peter Grimes performed by the orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden conducted by Benjamin Britton.

Presenter25:01

I I want to talk to you about your brother, but I'm not sure you're going to talk to me about him. Jonathan, of course, who we know for doing the stuff.

David Dimbleby25:07

One of my brothers.

Presenter25:08

One of your brothers, your broadcasting brother. What about him? Well, I wonder if you talk to each other.

Presenter25:16

About your work.

David Dimbleby25:18

We families are very, very intimate.

David Dimbleby25:23

Institutions, aren't they? And they're very difficult to.

David Dimbleby25:27

define and describe. And when it comes to private matters and personal matters, we're a very close-knit and supportive and intimate family. When it comes to our work, it's less interesting to us in truth. And because it's a very competitive world, we also feel a bit awkward about saying what we're planning to do, because you don't ever tell anybody what you're planning to do. So we we don't much talk about broadcasting in truth. Har in fact, I'd say hardly at all.

Presenter26:06

And what about the dynasty thing? You you mentioned it yourself earlier, intriguingly, saying will there be generations to come doing the same thing as you do. You have you were married to the food writer Jocelyn Dimbleby for twenty five years. You had three children with her, you now have another son in your second marriage. I'm uh your three children from your first family, if I can describe it as that. None of them have gone into broadcasting.

David Dimbleby26:25

Snow.

Presenter26:26

Is that a relief to you as it would have been to your father?

David Dimbleby26:29

No.

David Dimbleby26:30

It's not, though I have to say, when my

David Dimbleby26:34

Elder Son broadcast the other day about food on radio four

David Dimbleby26:39

He did it so well that I was quite relieved that he he hadn't gone into broadcasting. There's a missed career, if ever there was one.

Presenter26:47

And what about your youngest? He's is he around ten now?

David Dimbleby26:49

He's yes, he he he he's the one I think who who who's most likely to do it because he he's just fascinated by broadcasting, loves it, always wants to know about how it's done and all of that stuff. But um best not talk about it because his ears may hear and I wouldn't want him to know what I thought he might do.

Presenter27:11

All right, that's fair enough. But I have heard that he does a a pretty good impersonation of you on Question Time. Is that true?

David Dimbleby27:16

Apparently. Yes, I don't recognize it, but everybody else falls about with laughter. He does the spectacle trick, putting your spectacles onto the end of his nose.

Presenter27:24

Got you taped, yes. Um what about this belief in tradition, though? You you talked about your mother being the the matriarch and overseeing the family at the the grand old age of she's ninety five now, and the the children and the grandchildren. Is is tradition, continuity within a family, important to you?

David Dimbleby27:42

No.

David Dimbleby27:44

I find the the whole shape of a family.

David Dimbleby27:48

Exciting.

David Dimbleby27:50

But not as a tradition. I think tradition

David Dimbleby27:54

Can be the absolute death.

David Dimbleby27:56

Of

David Dimbleby27:58

originality and energy and

David Dimbleby28:01

A fulfilled life.

Presenter28:02

You make it sound as though you think that can be something of a burden to a child, but but I'm thinking of you coming home from America when you were embarking on what could have

David Dimbleby28:05

Do a child

Presenter28:10

It's been the most exciting part of your life. And when you spoke to me about it, you said.

Presenter28:17

There was no choice. That was what I had to do, what was right, and and there's something of duty in that, surely.

David Dimbleby28:23

But that's maybe why I think um

David Dimbleby28:26

That if you can avoid tradition.

David Dimbleby28:29

You're well out of it because of that choice.

David Dimbleby28:33

And because there was no choice.

Presenter28:37

Do you think, then, of what might have been if you hadn't done that?

David Dimbleby28:41

I'd have just been a broadcaster in America instead of a broadcaster in Britain, wouldn't I?

Presenter28:47

As it just you sounded there as if there was a little air, untypically a little air of the possibility of regret.

David Dimbleby28:53

I don't think I have any real regrets of that kind.

David Dimbleby28:57

We had this business.

David Dimbleby28:59

and I came back and ran it.

David Dimbleby29:01

I can't say I terribly enjoyed it.

David Dimbleby29:05

On the other hand, on the upside, it allowed me to have blazing rows with the B B C without worrying where the next penny would come from, which is always a strong position to be in.

Presenter29:15

A good point of negotiation for any contract. Tell me about your next piece of music, then.

David Dimbleby29:21

About um about seven or eight years ago we moved out of London and went to live in I don't think of it as the countryside, I I I call call it the landscape of the South Downs. And the one of the great advantages and pleasures of it is it's right close to Glinebourne. So we've taken to going to the opera at Glinebourne. We we took to taking my son when he was about seven, and to my astonishment he rarely loved and loves opera. So the piece I've chosen is because it was one of the things that rarely turns him on and I thought it would be a nice memory on the island to have of him. And it's a particular performance of Julius Caesar which David McVicker put on. This aria, non di Spera quisa, which is a beautiful aria, he had the attendants marching backwards and forwards across the stage while it was being sung. And when we play it at home, Fred marches up and down the kitchen doing this. He now listens to all sorts of operas and loves it. But this was one of the key moments that turned him on.

Speaker 430:40

No, despite all the braille, a brace of the world.

Speaker 131:16

Uh

Presenter31:21

Danielle Denise singing Cleopatra's Aria non d'Aspera quisa do not despair who knows from the first act of Handel's Julius Caesar, from David MacVicker's production at Glinebourne with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment conducted by William Christie. You said the idea of being on this little island, with its well, it probably does have palm trees, I'm afraid, and it probably is quite hot, fills you with horror.

David Dimbleby31:44

Yeah,'cause I don't like hot. I hate beaches. I like craggy grey light and shafts of sunlight coming through mist.

David Dimbleby31:55

Which doesn't at all accord with palm fringe. I don't do palm fringe.

Presenter32:01

What about being on your own, on this island? Because you seem to me to be

Presenter32:06

A connector. You're somebody who likes meeting the gaze of other people. Would being on your own drive you mad?

David Dimbleby32:11

No. I I'm th I th I'm quite solitary. Are you?

Presenter32:14

Are you?

David Dimbleby32:17

I think I'll be all right.

David Dimbleby32:18

I give myself a month at the most, I think.

Presenter32:22

Quite a long time.

Presenter32:24

And what about

David Dimbleby32:25

I don't want to do, you know, I'm a celebrity on this island. Get me out of here to test the island.

Presenter32:30

No, we won't make you eat slugs or anything. Tell me about your final piece of music then.

David Dimbleby32:34

For several years past I've been asked to do the commentary at the Cenotaph in Whitehall on Remembrance Sunday.

David Dimbleby32:43

And

David Dimbleby32:44

It's one of the broadcasts I think the broadcast above all else that I think is a huge privilege to be asked to do, because you are then, in a sense,

David Dimbleby32:55

Trying to speak for the memories of millions of people in the country.

David Dimbleby33:00

And

David Dimbleby33:02

It also represents a side of Britain that.

David Dimbleby33:06

is very powerful, which is the

David Dimbleby33:09

The ability to behave bravely, courageously, when threatened, and then to remember the debt we owe to the people who acted with such courage in those two World Wars. So what I've chosen is a rather sombre choice, but it's as a reminder of some of the things that I think Britain can be most proud of.

David Dimbleby33:35

And I it almost makes me choke when I have to say these words each year, but this is from Dido and Aeneas When I'm laid in earth, may my wrongs create No trouble in thy breast Remember me, but ah, forget my fate.

Presenter34:24

The band of the Irish Guards performing Dido's Lament from Purcell's Dido and Aeneas. So, of course, I'm going to give you the complete works of Shakespeare. I'm going to give you the Bible.

Presenter34:34

And one other book you can take. What would you like to take?

David Dimbleby34:36

I'd take unhesitatingly the collection of Montaigne's Essays, sixteenth century French philosopher, whose writing I've always found completely fascinating and intriguing, and it would be stimulating, and he's a wise man, and he's a man of the world, and he has a sense of humour, and he's erudite.

David Dimbleby34:54

and I can't think of better company.

Presenter34:56

It's yours and a luxury.

David Dimbleby34:59

Take you.

Presenter35:02

I'd love to camp.

David Dimbleby35:03

But I suppose you're not available.

Presenter35:05

I'm afraid it's not allowed under the rules.

Presenter35:08

Okay.

David Dimbleby35:10

Then I think I'll take

David Dimbleby35:12

A collection of drawing books a supply of pencils

David Dimbleby35:16

and some varnish so it doesn't smudge, and I'd spend the month doing what I would really like to do day in, day out, which is draw, draw, draw. It's what my artist daughter told me to do, just keep drawing, and that's what I'd take, and that would be my consolation.

Presenter35:30

You may have that. And if the waves were to threaten to wash to the shore and take away your disks, which one would you run through the sand to save?

David Dimbleby35:38

Oh, there's no question. I'd I'd have to have memories of my family, so Kate would have to stand for my huge family of one, two, three, four generations.

David Dimbleby35:48

Um

David Dimbleby35:49

Kate singing

Presenter35:50

David Dimbleby, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

David Dimbleby35:54

Thank you, and I'm sorry you won't come with me.

Presenter36:03

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