David Suchet

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. The programme was originally broadcast in two thousand nine.

Presenter0:27

My castaway this week is the actor David Suchet. Fresh from winning an Emmy for his portrayal of the fallen media tycoon Robert Maxwell, he has been a constant presence on stage and screen for almost twenty-five years. From Shakespeare to Mammoth, meticulous characterisations and nuanced performances are his trademark, never more apparent than in probably his best-known role, Agatha Christie's Poirot. He says of his technique, I have to inhabit the people I play. I have to get underneath their skin. I'm fascinated by them, the same way I'm fascinated by people. So, David Suchet, I have heard that you read all eighty of the stories that had been written, both short stories and novels, about Arcoul Poirot before beginning the role. Is that true?

David Suchet1:14

Yeah, well it's almost true. I I won't say I've read every single one, but I read, I would suppose, very close to the complete canon, and I literally set out to create only the character that Agatha Christie created, nothing else, and then spent um many, many, many weeks practising, practising, practising, practising.

Presenter1:29

Not

Presenter1:38

With Poirot and the others that we are going to talk about, and there have been many.

Presenter1:43

How do you manage to put them away? Once they're real, wh where do they go? They can't just vanish, surely. Do do you sometimes pass in and out of character?

David Suchet1:50

When you're in your real life in a theater play, uh you have to lose them every night. You have to say goodbye to them every night, and you have to go home as yourself, otherwise.

Presenter1:59

Literally say goodbye to them.

David Suchet2:00

Yeah, I'd say goodbye to them and come back to one's own self. I remember doing production at the young Vic Tymon of Athens, and I was playing Tymon, which is a very, very difficult and complex role. He actually goes mad. And a dear friend of mine, who was a psychologist, came to see the show, and he came back stage after and says, You can't do that. You can't do that every night. I said, What do you mean? He said, You can't do that every night and not get out of character. He said, You'll drive yourself crazy. I said, I am out of character. What are you talking about? He said, You're not.

David Suchet2:34

He said, What's your birthday?

David Suchet2:36

What's your wife's birthday?

David Suchet2:39

What's Robert, your son's birthday? Catherine's birthday. What's your address? Come on, what's your telephone number? Come on, what's your tele what's your bank account? What's your bank? I couldn't remember anything.

David Suchet2:47

I just couldn't remember them. And he said, There you are. You're not there. You're not present.

David Suchet2:53

Now look in the mirror.

David Suchet2:55

Get back to yourself. Say who you are. Go through your details and come back to you. Practise that, because in time you can do it very quickly and get out. And I can now, and that's what I do. At the end of every performance I just look in the mirror and in twenty seconds I'm back to me now. But in those days it would take two or three minutes to actually come back.

Presenter3:13

Tell me about your first piece of music to day, then.

David Suchet3:16

Well, the first piece has to be, I suppose, the piece that represents the character that really changed my fortunes as an actor, because it suddenly elevated me from being an ordinary character actor to being a leading character actor. And of course it's Hercule Poirot, and it's the theme tune by Chris

Presenter4:03

The theme music to Poirot, composed by Christopher Gunning. So, David Suchet, it has to be said your family background is fantastically colorful. Tell me about your mother.

David Suchet4:13

Well, my mum, she was a great influence on my life. She loved show business. At a young age, she was a hoofer, a dancer. She tried to audition for Cleopatra, the film Cleopatra, and she didn't get it. And she was in floods of tears. And she told me, she said that her dad, my grandfather, James Jarce, said, If you can't take the knocks in this business, Joan, get out. And she did get out. But she did amateur dramatics after that, and she was very thrilled when I wanted to be an actor.

Presenter4:46

So James Joshua you you've just mentioned was your grandfather. Um an apparently French name?

David Suchet4:51

Yeah, power.

Presenter4:52

And apparently French family but not. Explain that to me.

David Suchet4:55

Um, I don't know whether it was the fashion at that time, but there was he wanted to move away from Russian Jewish background and came as a refugee to Paris and then came to London and said that he was he was from France and he was a French photographer and uh I will take your portrait and all this, you know. I'd buy it long there, well I would buy it too. And he was quite a character, but he so he changed the name to Josh Shea.

Presenter5:15

I'd buy it too.

David Suchet5:22

And um said he was French, and said his father was French.

Presenter5:23

Your grandfather was a photographer who garnered some cracking scoops.

David Suchet5:28

Some cracking scoops he did Blarier's Landing, Churchill bricklaying he was just amazing and gave me my love of photography.

Presenter5:36

And Edward and Mrs. Simpson as well.

David Suchet5:37

Edward and Mrs Simpson. That was the big scoop of his. He was actually in the night club and got the first picture of Edward and Mrs Simpson together for the first time ever in print, in the tabloids.

Presenter5:48

So your father was a surgeon. He became a surgeon, but he arrived from South Africa in the was it nineteen thirties and he had he had to fund himself through medical school.

David Suchet5:55

Yeah.

David Suchet5:58

Totally. I mean, he had nothing. He came from South Africa. Once again, his family was from Russia. And he came over, had to finance himself, became a young houseman and w went into pathology and actually was with Alexander Fleming. He was the unnamed doctor in the discovery of penicillin.

Presenter6:15

Extraordinary

David Suchet6:16

He also was the first pathologist to test penicillin, and he tested penicillin on some sick greyhounds at the White City Dog Stadium because the dog derby was coming on and all the dogs got ill.

David Suchet6:34

And he was made a life member of the the White City Dog Track. And we used to go there for the Dog Derby every year in black tie, only because he saved the saved all the dogs.

Presenter6:41

In flag.

Presenter6:45

Your parents sound like fantastically colorful characters. I mean, what sort of people do you remember them as, aside from the roles that they

David Suchet6:51

Well, mum mum was very colourful. Dad was very dour, actually. Dad was a very, very serious man.

Presenter6:59

And were you a very serious little boy?

David Suchet7:02

Um I wasn't very, very serious, little boy. I think I've become more serious as I've grown older. I loved fun and I I loved sport. I was not a swat. I had

Presenter7:04

I think I'll pick

David Suchet7:14

Very little classroom ability, not like John, my elder brother, but very little.

Presenter7:21

More of that in just a moment. Tell me what you've chosen as your second track today.

David Suchet7:26

It's uh Frankie Vaughan singing You'll Never Walk Alone at Grenham House boarding school in the early fifties when John, my brother and I, were there. We had to go swimming in the sea every Sunday. And we used to walk down to Minnes Bay from the school and the headmaster would be in the front of us boys and he would walk into the sea and no one was allowed to pause. However freezing the sea was, you had to walk in. And we used to hold hands and sing You'll Never Walk Alone as we walked into the icy sea.

Speaker 48:02

When you walk through a storm

Speaker 48:08

Hold your head.

Speaker 48:11

Up high.

Speaker 48:14

And don't

Speaker 48:17

Be afraid.

Speaker 48:20

Out of the dawn.

Presenter8:24

Frankie Vaughan and You'll Never Walk Alone and memories there for you of uh walking with your brother John Suchet into the freezing briny. You say you could almost feel it coming up round your chest.

David Suchet8:31

You see

David Suchet8:32

Oh, literally rising up all those nether regions and taking deep breaths right up to the chest and right up to the chin and just going right under.

Presenter8:40

And so you are the middle of three boys. You were at school with John.

David Suchet8:42

I owe

David Suchet8:44

Yes, I was. I w prep school with John. We we went when we were eight. We boarded.

Presenter8:48

Can you remember that day of your parent did your parents come and wave you goodbye?

David Suchet8:51

Oh, it was awful.

David Suchet8:53

saying goodbye at Victoria station, and from then we would get on the train, the steam train, to take us to Burchington, which seemed the other end of the world. It's just in Kent. I mean we got beaten so often for for s minor offences, uh even for having Mars bars in our locker that mum would bring at quarter term, half term. I got six of the best uh for having a Mars bar.

David Suchet9:21

Well, I hated it. I think if that school existed today it would be closed down.

Presenter9:25

Uh what did you retreat in did you retreat into anything? I mean, was it books? Was it imagination? It was sport?

David Suchet9:28

It was sport. It was sport. And um my first drama was um Alice uh Through the Looking Glass and I played an oyster. I remember that first role actually. Did you give it your all? I gave it my all. We only had one performance. And my brother John was a daisy.

Presenter9:41

Did you give it your all?

Presenter9:48

We'll leave that just for a moment for people to enjoy. That's John Suchet, the newscaster we're talking about there. You have played, interestingly, a lot of outsiders as you have gone along. I'm thinking of Shylock, Yago, Caliban, and Robert Maxwell, and I want to talk to you about Robert Maxwell particularly a little later on. But I'm wondering if that was an early seed that was sown, this affinity with feelings slightly

David Suchet9:52

What are we talking about?

David Suchet10:03

Yeah.

David Suchet10:12

I think that's absolutely right. I'm sure that's right. I've always regarded myself as a sort of outsider, even though I was born in Paddington. I didn't fit into the classic English Brit mode of boys with blond hair and all the rest of it. And then my roles in my career would sort of reflect that.

Presenter10:33

And your serious connection then to acting a as a as a teenager, of course one one can see that there would be very obvious attractions of of the attention and feeling that you were expressing yourself and feeling a niche, but did it sort of creep up on you? Or or was there a moment of epiphany when you thought this is

David Suchet10:47

Was there a moment of epiphany when you thought this was for me? No, well, there was a moment of epiphany, but I think it was the first time I got approval.

David Suchet10:55

But the moment of epiphany of knowing that that I wanted to become an actor actually happened on the side of the stage at the Royal Court Theatre. When I was eighteen, we did a performance at the National Theatre called Bartholomew Fair, and I wanted at the end of the whole performance to see all the scenery coming down.

David Suchet11:14

And I saw all the lights coming down and the flats coming down, the scenery coming down, and I was watching this and I thought Wow.

David Suchet11:24

Fifteen minutes ago there were people there.

David Suchet11:27

applauding, laughing, having the time of their life, and we were on stage thinking this is the most important thing we've ever done, and let's get it right.

David Suchet11:36

And now it all that was make believe.

David Suchet11:40

And it was magic, and I thought

David Suchet11:43

This is where I want to spend my life.

David Suchet11:46

That's tough.

Presenter11:46

Take a break. Tell me about your next piece of music then.

David Suchet11:49

One of the things that I learned to do was.

David Suchet11:54

to play the drums, because I loved jazz. But the piece of music that I've chosen actually changed everything for me. It was like

David Suchet12:04

I heard drumming that I had never heard before in modern jazz, and it just blew me away. But it's Take Five by Dave Brubeck, and it's the drum solo played by Joe Morello.

Presenter13:18

Take Five by Dave Brubeck, the drum solo there played by Joe Morello and it's one that you've never managed to master yourself, David Suchet, you've had a go.

David Suchet13:24

Time is shake.

David Suchet13:25

Yeah, I don't actually play the drums any more. I I have uh a little set of bongos and uh that I bang with my hands, but I don't play the drums anymore.

Presenter13:34

You described so graphically, so well, that idea of being this uh teenager in the National Youth Theatre and and watching the show come down, and you sort of fell in love with the whole um environment, the whole profession, and your father, of course, didn't want you to go.

David Suchet13:49

Dad didn't want to know. He was very serious, as I've said, very serious surgeon and didn't want his boy, one of his boys, to go into show biz. But mum loved it. She was so excited and she really pushed me on. But the moment I joined the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, I got credibility, you see, because it was the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in one of our great national theatres in in in this country. So he came round at that point and then started coming to see me on a more regular basis.

Presenter14:21

How old were you then?

David Suchet14:22

Uh that was in I started rehearsing in nineteen s seventy two. So that's forty six fifty sixty six twenty six. Right.

Presenter14:31

So young. I mean, did you did you feel intimidated by being part of such an established and important

David Suchet14:35

Oh, I was my jaw just dropped. I was so nervous walking into the stage door. I was understudying a wonderful actor called Bernard Lloyd. I was understudying Macutio. I was understudying Orlando. It was him doing both roles. All these great roles. Bernard got a very bad back injury, just before the press night, this was. And I had to learn Orlando.

David Suchet14:59

and open to the press in four days.

David Suchet15:03

So I took over that role and I kept it for the whole of th the first year I was there. I also played Mikutio, because he was playing Mikutio. I also played Hotspur. This is in my first season, and I moved from dressing room twelve to dressing room one A and I never left there, and I was there for the best part from nineteen seventy two, seventy three to nineteen eighty six, off and on. And I think in that first year, to be honest with you, Kirsty, I think looking back I must have been the most unpopular actor in the company.

Presenter15:36

But what a start

David Suchet15:37

Oh, what a start

Presenter15:39

Let's take a break for some music. Tell me about what you've chosen for your route.

David Suchet15:42

Well, my next piece of music takes me right back to my brother John again. When we were growing up he was fanatical about Tchaikovsky and he got his first stereo record player. It was brown and it was sort of fake leather. But this piece of music was the only one he ever played and it drove me bananas. I used to say to him, S Shut it up.

David Suchet16:10

He kept playing where every time I hear it to this day, I go right back into our bedroom that we shared and this piece of music. I have to say, I've grown to love it, but not then. It is Tchaikovsky's Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in D. Just listen to this violin.

Presenter17:28

Leonide Coggan playing part of the first movement of Tchaikovsky's Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in D, with the Grand Symphony Orchestra of Radio and Television, conducted by Vassily Niebshin.

Presenter17:40

So you were telling me in the middle of that piece of music, as well as enjoying the violin playing, that

David Suchet17:44

Uh

Presenter17:45

Oh, I forgot to tell you, I broke my shoulder during that press night at the RSC when I was under study. Now, this is a story that. Well, you have to tell me more, because it sounds extraordinary and almost, I have to say, unbelievable. How on earth did you break your shoulder?

David Suchet17:58

I tell you exactly. Very early on in As You Like It.

Presenter17:58

Yeah.

David Suchet18:01

There's a scene, a wrestling scene, and I had to wrestle, and I had very few rehearsals. The person who was playing the wrestler was a wonderful professional wrestler and actor called Brian Glover. And the wrestling match came, and we were going through our moves, and he was very nervous, as was I, but he was incredibly nervous, and he threw me and I broke my right shoulder. Something went snap. I I can to this moment, as I'm saying it, I remember it.

David Suchet18:33

like that in my ear.

Presenter18:34

In my ear.

David Suchet18:35

And I stood up and the whole of the stage started to go around. Anyway, I managed to keep going to the interval, and I remember now a doctor came to see me, opened his bag, and took out a great big syringe with a it looked like a veteran one of these big veterinaries in it. He filled it with cortisone, plunged it into my shoulder oh my God, I can remember it now plunged it into my shoulder, and the whole thing went numb.

Presenter19:00

But the show went on. The show must go on.

David Suchet19:01

The show went on. What a story.

Presenter19:04

Did your parents come to see you then?

Presenter19:09

But but they did come to watch you at the Royal Shakespeare.

David Suchet19:11

Yes, they did. Both of them came and they were they ended up being very pleased and very proud.

Presenter19:15

And and was it significant to you that given you'd had a I mean, a huge amount of opposition from your father when you said significant that that he could be proud of you, or by that time had you moved on?

David Suchet19:21

And yeah, huge.

David Suchet19:27

No, hadn't moved on at all by then. I was thrilled to bits that he was coming into my dressing room and shaking me by the hand, and very quietly saying

David Suchet19:38

Oops.

Presenter19:39

Tell me about your next piece of music, then.

David Suchet19:41

Oh, well, this is my romantic phase.

Presenter19:43

Yeah.

David Suchet19:44

1972 Walking in to the Belgrade Theatre Coventry to start a season.

David Suchet19:53

I was told there was a young actress that had a message to give me from a mutual friend. Her name was Sheila Ferris, and I came downstairs, saw this actress, immediately fell in love.

David Suchet20:04

Immediately, totally, love at first sight.

David Suchet20:08

Oh, oh, it was absolutely I looked at her and my heart literally dropped. It sounds theatrical, but I'm telling the honest truth.

David Suchet20:18

Listen, it's happened before in Romeo and Juliet.

David Suchet20:21

And how did Juliet feel about you? She says she felt exactly the same. And it took me ages to manage to get her to come out for even a drink with me. The first dinner we I saved up for in Rep, I took her to a Chinese restaurant. And about two or three o'clock in the morning, we were sitting on a bench in the middle of the shopping precinct. How romantic. And I launched into Napkin Coles When I Fall in Love.

Speaker 320:51

When I fall in love

Speaker 320:57

It will be forever.

Speaker 321:02

Or I'll never fall.

Presenter21:08

Nat King Gole and When I Fall in Love, I'm casting my eye down your C V here, David Souchet, and I notice obviously there's the recent Emmy that I mentioned, Royal Television Society Awards, BAFTA nominations and OBE. And then I come to President of the Litchfield and Hathertons Canal Restoration Trust. You need to explain that to me. When do the love affairs started?

David Suchet21:27

Started in nineteen seventy four when my girlfriend, Sheila.

David Suchet21:35

And myself decided to live together.

David Suchet21:38

And we couldn't afford anything, so we got together six thousand pounds.

David Suchet21:43

And had built for us a narrow boat.

David Suchet21:47

and for seven years we travelled round.

David Suchet21:51

the waterways of Great Britain to the different reps in which we were performing.

Presenter21:55

What about the practicalities in those early days when you were full time living on this boat? I mean two actors b trying to l presumably learn their lines and live together.

David Suchet22:04

Well we did together. And we managed to make the bedroom became a study with double doors. We used to close the wardrobe door and cl close the loo door together and it became almost soundproof and she could listen to the television or I could listen to the television at one end of the boat and we could learn lines at the other end of the boat. You know, we didn't know then, but it was great. It really was a wonderful time.

Presenter22:16

Renym.

David Suchet22:29

Yeah.

Presenter22:29

I I noticed in one interview you were talking about your your wife and and you mentioned before the Nat King call that it was.

Presenter22:35

kaboom love at first sight or when you saw her. You said in this interview that you couldn't live without her. That is not always a successful recipe for living with somebody, the fact that you can't live without them. I mean, has it been a a harmonious relationship?

David Suchet22:47

It's been a wonderful relationship. She made the ultimate sacrifice for me. In other words, she gave up her career when children were born to allow me mine. We didn't have anything. We didn't have a penny. So one of us had to stay at home. And it couldn't be the one who was earning more money. But that quote was really my idea of, if you like, how does one recognise the partner you choose, that you want to spend the rest of your life with? And that quote was actually me saying, you can possibly live with a lot of people, but there are very few you can't live without.

Presenter23:27

And you've been together for 35 years, been married for what, around about 15 years. We married in 1976. Yes.

David Suchet23:31

We married in nineteen seventy six. Yes. And we've been together since nineteen seventy two.

Presenter23:35

And and what about you used that great word your did you say your father was doer, quite a doer character, and somebody who who was rather serious. What what sort of father have you been? Your children, of course, are now grown up, but uh what sort of father were you then?

David Suchet23:40

And yeah.

David Suchet23:46

I think I possibly as a fault I possibly overcompensated with having a very dour father, to being a father who wanted to be more a friend to their children. But I've always hopefully been accessible.

Presenter23:59

Did it always work even in those truculent teenage years?

David Suchet24:01

Um not always, no, but I have two wonderful children, and I'm very proud of them.

Presenter24:08

Let's take a break for some more music then. Track number six, what have you chosen?

David Suchet24:12

I was in my car driving to the Barbican Theatre.

David Suchet24:18

and a piece of music came on the radio.

David Suchet24:21

That

David Suchet24:22

As I listened to it.

David Suchet24:25

I found myself weeping at the wheel, literally weeping.

David Suchet24:29

Then I had to pull off. I couldn't drive. It affected me that much so much so that I suddenly had an urge to play the instrument that I heard.

David Suchet24:41

And it was the clarinet.

David Suchet24:44

But it all began in the car listening to Mozart's clarinet concerto, the Ginning of the Slow Movement.

Presenter25:42

Gervaise Dupayer playing part of the second movement of Mozart's Clarinet Concerto in A major with the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Pieter Marg. So it was in November, was it of last year that you and Sheila went to New York for the Emmy Awards? Did did you think you were in with a good shout?

David Suchet25:57

Yeah.

Presenter25:59

Yeah.

David Suchet25:59

Truthfully?

David Suchet26:01

Not a hope in hell.

David Suchet26:04

Not a hope in hell. And I'm told that nobody knows beforehand anyway, so okay, so we arrived in New York.

David Suchet26:11

We go into the big ballroom at the Hilton, and I am sitting at a table.

David Suchet26:19

So far away from the podium, I said to Sheila, Relax.

David Suchet26:25

I said, you can relax. We could hardly see it. We were watching the whole thing on big screens near the table.

Presenter26:26

I said you

Presenter26:31

Ah, the glamour.

David Suchet26:32

You know, and so and also at our table, I was sitting with the Norwegian football team.

Presenter26:33

And so

David Suchet26:41

So there was I, you know, as Maxwell saying, hello, and what do you do? Well, I play football. And I said, oh, marvelous. Who do you play for? Novie. And so the conversation in the evening went on. Yes, where do you go after that? Where do you go? So when it was announced, and the winner is.

Presenter26:55

Yes, where do you go after the market?

David Suchet27:02

DAVID SUCHE I was watching the screen. I wasn't watching the podium.

David Suchet27:06

And I turned round and looked at my wife, and literally our jaws dropped. Because then I had this.

David Suchet27:14

Marathon walk to the podium. In fact, half way through I started to run because I thought I'm never going to make it. And it was a wonderful surprise.

Presenter27:23

And you were it was for your portrayal of Robert Maxwell. It was an astonishing piece of uh filmmaking. Anyone who's seen it will know that you seemed to absolutely capture, not just physically, but the the the spirit of the man. You met his well now widow, Betty Maxwell. Betty Maxwell. What were the circumstances of meeting her, and were you able to ask her directly about him?

David Suchet27:26

It was a

David Suchet27:39

Yeah, Betty Maxwell.

David Suchet27:44

Well, actually, funnily enough, me Meeting Betty was to do with uh a series that I did when I played Augustus Melmott in The Way We Live Now, and ironically I based that character on Robert Maxwell.

Presenter27:58

Before you knew

David Suchet27:58

Before you knew I even knew I was ever going to play Robert Maxwell. And she gave me an insight into the sort of personality that that Bob Maxwell possessed. A very difficult man and a terribly hard beginnings and all the rest of it. But she gave me an insight into the character, and I also had recordings of his voice. To learn Bob's voice and to speak in the way he spoke and find his rhythm just opened the door for me. And and and voice actually opens the door for me in many characters.

Presenter28:30

Are you able to do that? Can you do that just now? Can you illustrate through your voice how you would find your way into, let's say, Robert Maxwell because we're talking about him? Can you do his voice?

David Suchet28:38

I couldn't I well, I wouldn't be able to do Rob, I could do Poirot for you, because my voice as you hear it now is is is chess voice or it's or it's diaphragm voice, very low. But if I think of Poirot as a walking brain, which I do, he wouldn't have his voice down there, it would be in his head, so I would have to move my voice from the bass voice that you hear now, slowly to the chess voice, into the throat voice, into the head and up to the top of the mad, and then put on the accent and talk like him and that is your queue Poirot.

Presenter28:41

Because my

Presenter28:43

Yeah.

Presenter28:45

Yeah.

Presenter28:46

Bye-fram.

Presenter29:06

Indeed it is. Tell me about your next piece of music, then.

David Suchet29:11

Well, the next piece of music takes me right back to my first performance in Amadeus at the Old Vic Theatre. Salieri is who I played, and Salieri has this great speech over this piece of music, and it affected me so much in performance that it's become for me every time I hear it. I went to St Martin's in the Field recently, and they were playing Mozart's Requiem, and the whole experience of being Salieri in that play came back to me.

Presenter30:45

The Lachrymosa from Mozart's Requiem. I've read various things over the years about your relationship with religion, that you've you've established a a strong relationship and that it's hugely significant to you.

David Suchet30:57

Yes, it is true. I went through a conversion experience in 1986. I've always believed if this is all we've got, then it's not very good.

David Suchet31:06

I I I I've always felt that.

Presenter31:07

That's interesting because I mean you seem when I meet you today to be a very optimistic characteristic. I am a very optimistic character.

David Suchet31:12

I'm a very optimistic guy. Yes, and I feel that everybody's life, however hard it is, is a gift and we have to do the best we can with it. But look at the world. Right. And if this is all there is, then there must be something better. So I was searching for something, and cutting a long story short, I wanted to read something that I knew was fact. So I read a letter from St. Paul, Paul to the Romans, and suddenly reading that.

Presenter31:24

Right.

David Suchet31:41

I saw a way of life to which I wished to adhere, something I'd been looking for all my life really, something beyond what just is around us. And I became very committed, and uh not without its hassles and troubles and trials, because I don't think having a a faith in today's society is an easy thing, it's a very hard thing.

Presenter32:04

And what about those closest to you? What about your your wife, your brothers?

David Suchet32:07

I think it was very hard at first for them because uh I I had found a faith. But I hope it's never encroached in any negative way. But I I have to say for myself it's been an anchor. It's been a wonderful bedrock for my life and my and my and my belief.

Presenter32:25

You have been on religious at least one religious retreat, and of course now you will be alone on the island. Yes. Will this solitude be welcome?

David Suchet32:36

Do you know, um no, is the answer. I used to, in my romantic imagination, think of myself as someone who would like isolation. But you know, you have to look at yourself and have to understand yourself. Where do you get your energy from? And I know I get it from being with other people. So I'm not going to be very happy on my island, I don't think.

Presenter32:57

Maybe the music will cheer you up. Tell me about your final

David Suchet33:00

Well, my final piece of music is uh a monastic chant.

David Suchet33:05

by Peter Abelard who he wrote which he wrote in the twelfth century, and it's David's lament, Planctus David, over the deaths in battle of Saul and Jonathan. And one of the verses in the song is the futility of war, profitless victory, obtained in the meantime, how empty, how brief I now perceive joys to be.

Speaker 433:37

To you.

Speaker 434:02

May all

Presenter34:26

Paul Eliot, seeing Peter Abelard's twelfth century lament Planctus David So I will give you, David, the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare. You can take a book. What are you going to do?

David Suchet34:36

I I'm a very visual person and because of my love of photography, I would take a book called Magnum Magnum, a wonderful book of photographs of the twentieth century, of people, places, very evocative, so I could look at the whole the major century where I grew up and uh constantly be reminded of that and I'd uh that would be my book.

Presenter35:00

Right, it's yours and a luxury.

David Suchet35:02

My luxury

David Suchet35:05

would, I think, be my clarinet with an endless unlimited supply of reeds. I'd never get sick of the sound of my clarinet. So my clarinet.

Presenter35:16

Right.

Presenter35:18

You can have that. And and I'm going to force you to choose if the waves were to crash to the shore and wash away the disks, which one would you run to save?

David Suchet35:25

Oh, the most important of all when I fall in love.

Presenter35:30

David Suchet, thank you very much for letting us hear your desert island discs.

David Suchet35:34

Thank you.

Presenter35:42

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