Caroline

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.

Presenter0:28

My castaway this week is the countryside campaigner the Countess of Cranbrook.

Presenter0:33

Both protester and promoter, Caroline Cranbrooke is a champion of independent shopkeepers, farmers, and small-scale producers.

Presenter0:40

But as matron of the awkward squad, she's probably best known for her part in taking on supermarket Goliath Tesco and winning. At first glance she may seem an unlikely folk hero, but her pedigree more than hints at a character well suited to meeting obfuscation and resistance head on. The daughter of two spies, she says she is like a rat, living under the floorboards and popping up in the most unexpected places. You did say that, didn't you? I did, yeah. It's not the way we're used to a Countess being described, or certainly hearing her describe herself. Is that the key to successful campaigning, then? This this subversive element of people not quite knowing when you're going to poke your nose into their business.

Caroline1:20

I think that's part of it is is being there, but I think also

Caroline1:25

In my own life it's being very reasonable, I think, being practical and reasonable and commonsense. I think this is one of the things that has driven me.

Caroline1:33

throughout. And also I have a great sense of the importance of fairness. And I do find that by being reasonable and fair and popping up in these unexpected places, one does have a chance of perhaps influencing what is going to happen.

Presenter1:48

You've led a very, very varied and rich life, and we're we're going to talk about it in some detail later. Among the things you've done, you've worked with the zoologist Desmond Morris, you spent many years as a a farmer, and in recent years you've taken on this public campaigning role. Have these changes come either

Caroline2:05

Yeah.

Presenter2:05

Easily to you.

Caroline2:06

Uh

Caroline2:06

They've come very easily. I've never planned my life, but life seems to lead me where I need to go. I've had a very happy life. I've had a wonderful family, and I've lived all my life off and on in the countryside. And the greatest influence, probably throughout my life, was the nanny we had, who was a really, really exceptional woman called Diddy, who took us out into the countryside. She showed us the flowers, the animals, gave us the names of the flowers. And one of my most vivid memories of Diddy is galloping through the Welsh lanes with a tiny little wickerwork pony cart, a tiny pony, and she was like Beau de Sieur. She was whipping on this little pony, and we were going to buy butter from illegal black market butter from one of the hillside farms.

Caroline2:50

And she was the person who really set the scene of being interested in the countryside, interested in what was growing and everything about us.

Presenter2:59

Let's uh listen to your first choice today then. What's your first disc?

Caroline3:02

My first choice is a wonderful song. It's the Song of the Plains. It's sung by the Red Army Choir and it's My Fields, O My Fields. And I loved it as a child. I loved horses as a child, and I loved this record particularly because you can hear the horses' hooves, but it is a wonderful record as well.

Presenter4:17

The Red Army Chorus and Band and Song of the Plains. So, Caroline Cranbrook, you were born in London in nineteen thirty five. Tell me what family life was like.

Caroline4:28

Family life, my most memorable time when one's sort of conscious of of life really was during the war. I saw very little of my parents to start with. Both my parents were in MI six, and so we spent most of our time with our grandparents, my brother and I, in Lincolnshire and in Wales.

Presenter4:44

Uh you said very matter of factly that both my parents were in MI Six. I mean, did you know at the time that mummy and daddy were spies? Of course not, of course not. And they when did you find out?

Caroline4:52

Yeah.

Caroline4:53

Well, um it was interesting. My mother went to Bletchley, was um was schooled in spying in Bletchley. My father was a serious spy, I think, and I don't know when he was recruited. My mother had a a little suitcase which was called Secret Inks, and I always thought this was a joke.

Caroline5:08

and it had a false bottom in which she kept secret inks, apparently. And my father had a great sense of humour, and I always thought this was just a little joke. I have since discovered from a friend who's in MI six and retired that in fact she was a great expert in secret inks.

Presenter5:22

You say you didn't see very much of your parents. I suppose, given the very privileged circumstances that you were brought up in, that was quite normal, to really have your primary relationship with your nanny.

Caroline5:31

Uh

Presenter5:31

Uh

Caroline5:32

I think yes, and particularly during the war, because they were n were not there, and they were both posted to Portugal, and they must have decided that it'd be a nice place for us to go, and so we moved to Portugal. And a new person came into our lives, who was our governess called Lucille. And she again was a great, as it were, adventurous. She used to take us out into the countryside. She took us to all the fiestas. I remember she took us in this little old tram, and we'd go rattling through the countryside, this little group of about half a dozen or so children, and I remember meeting the King of the Gypsies with his black goat.

Caroline6:06

At a great fiesta of gypsies. But I think she also set the scene of my life very much in that she was very interested in language. She taught us Portuguese and French. We had to speak Portuguese one day and French the next. She was a wonderful dancer. She taught us how to dance. And she loved singing and she collected songs. And so I think again my interest in folk song, in music,

Caroline6:31

And getting out into the countryside and finding things out. So I think this again was very important in my life.

Presenter6:36

You said in that first track that you could hear the sounds of the horse's hoofs, which is one of the reasons you you've chosen it. When did you learn to ride?

Caroline6:42

I can't remember. I mean, I was probably put on a horse in a in a little basket chair. In fact, I was when I was probably about eighteen months old.

Caroline6:49

And I remember when I came back to England, and then of course we saw a lot of our parents, but we used to go um for the weekends and our holidays up to Lincolnshire where my father's parents lived, and I had a nice little pony called Snowball there. And I remember on my mother's birthday as a lovely surprise for her, I took the pony up the back stairs to our nursery, which was quite high up, and that was very easy. The stairs went round and round, and the pony obligingly walked up.

Presenter7:15

You were you leading the pony?

Caroline7:17

Oh yes, oh yes, yes. And I left him in the nursery and then ran to my mother and said, I've got a lovely surprise for you. Come and see what I've got in the nursery. So there was the pony, lugubriously looking out of the window, and it took us about three hours to get it downstairs again.

Presenter7:31

Tell me about your next piece of music, then, what have you chosen?

Caroline7:34

The next piece is from Barce Matthew Passion. It's O Sacred Head Sore Wounded, and it is a wonderful, wonderful uh piece of music. Why I would like to have it is it was very important to my parents. They both sang in the Bar Choir every week, and I remember my father used to come back having

Caroline7:55

performed in the Matthew Passion, having sung in the Matthew Passion, absolutely drained at lunch time, and I associate this very much with my parents, and it is a most fantastic piece of music.

Speaker 48:43

God's shame is here.

Presenter9:08

O hapt volblut und wunden, O sacred head now wounded from Bach's Saint Matthew Passion.

Presenter9:13

So, Caroline Cranbrook, you describe what sounds like an incredibly idyllic childhood. I'm wondering about given how passionately you talk these days about food and food production, what are the food memories from your childhood? What would you have eaten in the nursery?

Caroline9:29

Rabbit mostly.

Caroline9:31

In the war, living in the countryside, meat was very short and there were an awful lot of rabbits. Disguised in various ways, Phillet rabbit looked like chicken. My brother was very sentimental, would not eat it, and would only eat it if he thought it was chicken.

Presenter9:46

When you were eleven then, you you were sent to boarding school and it was quite an unusual boarding school.

Caroline9:51

It was an appalling boarding school and I was sent there for very much the wrong reasons because I was very horsy and my father thought well she might as well learn about horses and it was run by a trio of ladies, one of whom was a serious alcoholic and bit by bit the staff started leaving and in the end I was teaching biology and geography at the age of fifteen. A friend of mine, Bridget Hart Davis, was also teaching. And I remember when a school inspection came we were made up to look like teachers, look adult. I mean it was an absurd situation and it became so intolerable I wrote to my parents a very long letter describing the horrors of it all and saying I must leave and it it became too much and I simply ran away from it.

Presenter10:33

And given your experience is not altogether positive, as we've heard, at boarding school, did you send your own kids away to boarding school?

Caroline10:40

No, we didn't. Uh I think the old tradition of the upper classes sending their children away at eight to boarding school was terrible. Luckily we that didn't happen to us.

Presenter10:49

And so I mean, given that you parented very differently, d do you regret that you didn't have a more direct relationship with with your own parents?

Caroline10:56

Yes, I do, intensely. And I also regret very much they died um fairly young, and so

Caroline11:03

I never really got to know them in a way, and I have a theory that you never are on a level with the previous generation until you've got children of your own. They died just at the point when I married, and I I just regret that so much. They never saw our children really, and they did just see them, two of them, but um

Caroline11:21

It's a great regret to me that.

Presenter11:23

What what are your strongest memories of your parents of the time that you did spend with them?

Caroline11:28

Well, we used to do wonderful things. We used to go camping um in the Alps. That was tremendous fun, but it was also pretty awful, and it would turn me against camping, I have to say. So waking up in a soggy tent and trying to wash in a stream. But um no, that was that was tremendous fun, actually. And so that that is a good memory of my parents.

Presenter11:47

And what sort of person was your mother? I mean, she sounds quite exotic, really, the the secret ink and all that.

Caroline11:53

My mother was an extraordinarily competent person. Um she was very beautiful and she was also a very literally hands-on person. She could do anything. Um she could rewire the house, she could

Caroline12:05

do the garden. Both my parents were tremendous gardeners and th that again has been a huge influence because I absolutely love gardening and that's one of my passions.

Presenter12:14

Let's take a break for some music then. Tell me about your third disc to day.

Caroline12:17

My third disc is Sena Juranak singing in I Domineo. I think it was Einstein even who said that only a genius like Mozart could produce a piece of music like this, but only once in his life because it was so exceptional. And this is Sena Juranak singing in a remarkable production in 1951 at Glineborn, and I think she had the most wonderful voice. And I think this particular piece where Ilya, the daughter of King Priam, is on the island of Crete and thinking about her lover Adamante and saying, I hope the breezes will take my love to him.

Caroline12:53

It's a beautiful piece.

Presenter13:54

Dana Uranak singing Ilias Aria Zefferetti Lucigneri from the second act of Mozart to Domineo recorded live at Gleinborn in nineteen fifty one.

Presenter14:03

It's the case, isn't it, Caroline Cranbrook, that you won scholarships to both Oxford and Cambridge. You were clearly a bright button.

Caroline14:11

I was very surprised, you won't believe this, but I was scarcely aware that I was actually being entered for these university examinations. I was there very much as a stable runner for another girl. And so But she was thought of as the bright one, wasn't she? She was thought of as the bright one, and I really didn't know whether I was coming or going, but to my amazement I did get in and I I went to Cambridge. You went to Cambridge and studied history or something? I studied history. Newnham was extraordinary then and there were only two bit girls' colleges there and it was like a girls' school. There were no men allowed in the college until lunchtime, no men after ten o'clock, I think it was. You weren't allowed out of Cambridge without special permission from your tutor. It was a very strange atmosphere, so different from what it happens now.

Presenter14:33

He went

Presenter14:57

And this was the 1950s. How how did you look? Con conjure me up a picture.

Caroline15:01

We looked absurd, really. We

Caroline15:04

We had these long bunchy skirts with lots of petticoats and rather thick stockings and rather sort of heavy make up and w looking back on it, um it's extraordinary b h how how we looked. But we we had a very good time. Is it true?

Presenter15:20

Yeah. at the party that Ted Hughes and Sylvia Platt met at.

Caroline15:24

I think I was. I it was very electrifying and and Sylvia Plath and a friend whose name I can't remember they were both at Newnham with me, and they were such a refreshing sight, and she wasn't at all depressed at that time, and they l both looked like

Caroline15:39

advertisements for fresh young Americans, and they instead of wearing these ghastly bunchy skirts, they wore sort of neat little

Caroline15:47

cotton skirts and climsoles and white bobby socks and I remember in the breakfast queue there's these two girls just laughing away together and I was just thinking this is a different world.

Presenter15:57

What did you think you were going to do with your first class education, I wonder? Because you know, you say you rather sort of fell into to Cambridge, you weren't really expecting that to happen, and your your father had sent you to a school where really the principal preoccupation seemed to be learning to ride.

Caroline16:10

What I wanted to do then was to work with refugees. And rather luckily, I think I failed to get a job with je refugees when I left Cambridge. And I I then went to work at the London Zoo. You also worked with

Presenter16:24

With Desmond Morris, whilst you were there. What what were you doing with him?

Caroline16:27

Well, that was a most fascinating job. Solly Zuckerman, who then ran the zoo, he wanted to start a book, a journal for zoos. So he asked Desmond and me to start this zoo yearbook. So we published articles from all over the world of zoos, of architecture, of breeding, anything to do with zoos and zoo animals. Desmond and I worked together for two years and then I was allowed to carry on on my own with this yearbook. And it was a great formative period in my life because the London Zoo then was, I'm sure is still, but then was a most wonderful community. And it was there that I learnt the fun of being in a community. Tell me about your next piece of music then. My next piece of music is Harry Lidbetta singing Take This Hammer and this particular song has remained with me all my life. I could sing it to now. I sing it in the car when I think I'm going to sleep and it always wakes me up. It's a fantastic piece of music.

Speaker 317:28

Make his hammer.

Speaker 317:31

Carry to the captain Take his hand And carry to the captain Hanging animals

Speaker 317:45

Coming to the captain

Speaker 317:50

You tell him where I'm gone.

Presenter17:57

Lead belly and take this hammer. So, Caroline Cranbrook, your husband is the magnificently named Gaythorne Gaythorne Hardy. He is the fifth Earl of Cranbrook, and he was named after

Presenter18:07

His great-great great great great grandfather. Is that right?

Caroline18:10

Gay Gaythorne is is is a family name and um he is I I first met him when I was seventeen, we knew each other at Cambridge and um

Caroline18:20

Uh he then went to work in the Far East. He's a tropical biologist and h his great interest is the b birds and mammals of of South East Asia. You moved to Malaya as it as it then was. Tell me about early married life.

Presenter18:35

Uh

Caroline18:35

That was wonderful. We lived in the jungle, um, fifty miles outside Kuala Lumpur, but in the real jungle it was so beautiful. We had a tiny house on the edge of a hillside with a river at the bottom of the garden where we did our washing and also swam. And then the sounds of the hornbills, the argus pheasants, the bulbuls, the crazy noises of the insects, and mist just drifting up, because it's very, very humid. And it was absolutely blissful at that time. And that's, of course, where our eldest child was born. Jason was born at that time.

Presenter19:10

Literally born in the middle of the jungle. I mean born in

Caroline19:12

No. My husband thought it would be very interesting f if I actually did have it in the jungle with the aborigines, the b um the local people, and it would be very interesting to see what they did. But um luckily I went to quite a nice hospital in in in Kuala Lumpur.

Presenter19:26

And how much help did you have? W were you sorry?

Caroline19:28

Surrounded by servants and nannies and cooks? They were these local people, the local uh tribal people. There are about six or seven indigenous groups in in Malaw, and the people who helped us in the house came from one of these groups, and two or three girls used to come and help. I would go into Kuala Numpeto's clinic, and I would h have to take somebody to carry the baby, because I was driving, and then the person who was carrying the baby had to have a friend, or maybe even two friends, and we'd arrive in KL.

Caroline19:58

these smart air conditioned places and my my girls would usually be barefoot with flowers around their hair and probably sort of necklaces of nappy pins and I used to feel rather inferior when I saw these elegant white ladies with their nanny popper nannies and I'd go home feeling a little bit um uh depressed by all that but um it was a wonderful wonderful period there that in my life. Tell me about your next piece of music. My next piece of music is from one of Benjamin Britton's operas, The Little Sweep, and it's The Kettles Are Singing. Now my family had a very close connection with Benjamin Britton and Peter Peirce. My mother-in-law was chairman of the Aubra Festival, which was of course the music festival started by Ben and Peter. And they were close friends of the family. And this particular opera, The Little Sweep, was written about the Gaythorne Hardy family. And my husband's name is there, his sisters, his cousins, the place names, they're all there. It's about stories of a little boy, a chimney sweep, who's sent up the chimney and he falls down into the nursery.

Caroline21:04

And there he is surrounded by all these little children who want to clean him up and save him. And this particular song, The Kettles are Singing, is uh as they are wanting to clean up the little boy.

Speaker 421:16

Bettles are singing like this summer loves. The fire is ringing, the shower stops. The children run fire to get on their window for washing and drying. The swim boy they ring

Speaker 421:34

Hurry upstairs to the nursery home, Where old Prince Best to keep signing his bum.

Speaker 421:43

Conscious tools strong in with this to the punking with devils to the pumpkin with sand

Speaker 421:50

Oh, what's the good sound?

Speaker 422:07

Sometimes I don't need

Presenter22:13

The Kettles are singing from Benjamin Britton's The Little Sweep. So, Caroline Cranbrook, it was, what, a little over thirty years ago that you took over?

Presenter22:21

Your um husband's farm, essentially. He inherited the title, you inherited this estate with farmland, and you ended up farming it. How how do you

Caroline22:28

Did you coke? Well this was about in, I suppose, nineteen seventy six. And I I got into it because one day um I was going down to the farm where I kept my horses and the cowman said, Have you looked at the cows lately? And they were starving, they were literally starving and we had a very bad farm manager at the time who had failed to order any food for the winter.

Caroline22:49

And so I started getting interested and then I started sort of looking things up in books and talking to the f the farm workers. And I got to understand the land in many ways. And one of the things I used to do was count the number of seeds coming up in the field, because from the number of plants you are growing, you can then adjust how much fertilizer and whatever you need to put on it. And so I literally crawled over practically every field on the farm.

Caroline23:19

So I d I really did it right from the bottom. Teach yourself farming.

Presenter23:22

Teach yourself how much

Presenter23:25

And so this great connection that you form, not just with the land, but with the people who worked the land and with the wider community, I want to spool forward with that in mind to the end of the nineties when you were very much part of this community and had been for a few decades. And Tesco said that they planned to build this sort of out-of-town superstore, really, on the edge of the nearest town, Saxe Mundon. And why did that get your goat?

Caroline23:51

Well, again, I've been very much aware ever since I'd come to Suffolk that there were huge numbers of of small shops still, and all the market towns still had their bakers, their fishmongers, their butchers, grocers. These all stocked a lot of local food. And I thought, well, if this big supermarket is going to come in, it will undoubtedly result in many of these little shops closing down. And what will the effect this be on the

Caroline24:15

On the local food producers. And so I then went and interviewed every shop selling food I could find. And I then did a database to see where they were getting their food from. And to my amazement, they were sourcing their food from nearly 300 local and regional food producers. I discovered something which is so obvious but nobody'd ever pinpointed before, which is virtually all food businesses start small, and you cannot start a small food business unless you've got small outlets. It's no good going to one of the big supermarkets and saying I've got fantastic chili jelly or something. They say, well, you know, go away. So I realized that if this superstore went in, it would have a huge impact right across the board.

Presenter24:56

It is an interesting story, and I want to talk to you about it more, but first let's hear a piece of music. Before we do that, what's your next track?

Caroline25:04

My next record is Humphrey Littleton and playing Panama Rag. I'm almost an obsessional dancer. I'm far too old. It's a rather disgraceful sight, probably, seeing somebody my age.

Caroline25:15

rocking about on the dance floor, but

Caroline25:17

My memories of Humphrey Littledon are of dancing and dancing, and I adore his music. I love playing it. I have a huge collection of his seventy eight records, including Panama Rag, and we played them all the other day on our ancient wind up gramophone and um

Caroline25:33

It still evokes the same response. I think I'll probably die on the dance floor dancing, to the horror of everybody.

Presenter25:39

Good way to go though.

Presenter26:39

Humphrey Lyttelton and his band and Panama Rag. So Caroline Cranbrook, you've described how you went about gathering all of this information about local food production, about how local shops were supplied, about the chain and how it worked with tiny suppliers, and the enthusiasm of local buyers for buying locally in your area.

Presenter27:00

You describe it as a sort of food web, really. You you seem to be one of the first people to identify that as a system that worked.

Caroline27:10

I think perhaps I was. I'm sure if everyone says something like that, there's always somebody else who's done it that done it first. But I think nobody had pinpointed before that this importance of small shops as a seed bed, really, as a seedbed for new food producers. But it also led me on to realise how tremendously important these small shops are s socially, as the heart of the community. These shops are very much the eyes and ears of our community. And for this reason, they are tremendously important, I think.

Presenter27:42

And so you and fellow campaigners saw off, Tesco. They didn't build their out-of-town.

Caroline27:47

They didn't. I mean, everybody always says it was entirely due to me. It was not. I think I was useful to the local council in providing the evidence that of the impact it would have. But the fact was they had already commissioned a study to establish what the retailing need in their district was, and they'd employed some consultants who had looked at each of the market towns, and their conclusion was we did not need a superstore, and it was for this reason that

Caroline28:11

The supermarket was turned down.

Presenter28:13

Uh

Caroline28:13

So there isn't a a super

Presenter28:14

Per store there, but there is one just twenty-five minutes away, and people will say, Well, if it's not going to be in your backyard, it's going to be in someone else's. That you know, in the end, the consumer will decide, and the consumer likes to be able to buy.

Presenter28:24

Sometimes things in bulk, but certainly things that are cheaper, especially now more than ever, and that's something that these tiny local shops simply can't provide.

Caroline28:32

Well, funnily enough, they can, you know. I mean, I buy all my bulk stuff from the local shops. They get it for me from the local Cash and Carib.

Caroline28:41

There there is a conflict here, I think, but at the same time want is not the same as need.

Caroline28:47

And my I am not against supermarkets per se. They are essential to our modern way of life. I have never campaigned against Tesco itself. What I campaign against is too large su supermarkets, too many supermarkets, which in fact push out everything else.

Presenter29:06

And locally then, right now, how are things with the local shops? Have many of them managed to survive?

Caroline29:11

Well, that is the fascinating thing. I did my original survey in'ninety six.' I then went back again in two thousand six to see what had happened in the absence of a superstore. And it was remarkable. A thousand flowers had flourished. And so we had more food producers, we had more shops, all going against the national trends.

Presenter29:30

Let's take a break for some music then. Tell me about it's it's track seven we're on now.

Caroline29:34

This is Beethoven's piano concerto, number four in G major.

Caroline29:38

I've always loved the piano. My father, every day, who's a musician, used to come back home from the bank where he worked and used to practise for at least an hour. And so the piano was always part of my early life. Now recently I've got to know a very good friend called Christian Blackshaw who is a wonderful pianist, plays around the world. And he plays with such clarity, such eloquence. And this is a piece I have heard him playing, and it moved me tremendously. This particular piece is something which takes one beyond oneself.

Speaker 430:35

I'm not sure.

Presenter31:11

Christian Blackshaw playing the end of the first movement of Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4 in G major.

Presenter31:17

So Caroline Cranbruber, you're clearly not a lone voice. You know, there are we see even television channels running series now about how we choose to buy the food that we eat and whether chickens should be reared in a certain way. And we have food authors writing entire books indeed about the the origins of meat and how we choose to buy the meat and how we should cook it and trying to get us back in touch with the way things used to be forty, fifty, sixty years ago. Do you get the feeling that in these credit crunch times your time and their time has come, that people are actually listening?

Caroline31:49

I do completely agree with that. And also, I think in a way the consumer is a head of government. And I think another reason, a very profound reason, which is

Caroline32:00

Looking for food, preparing food, is hardwired into our whole psychology. And we've been hunter-gatherers for hundreds of thousands of years. We've only been shopping in supermarkets for about thirty. And I think this actually is a very genuine lack that people are beginning to feel, that there is something fundamentally wrong about being so separated from food, from the countryside.

Presenter32:25

I'm glad you brought up hunting and gathering, because of course on this little island that I'm sending you to, you're going to have to do all of that yourself. I can't imagine it's going to pose any problem for somebody like you, for a coper.

Caroline32:30

Yeah.

Presenter32:36

You'd be fine, won't you?

Caroline32:37

Well, I'm very keen on gardening, and having experienced the jungle a little bit and lived in the countryside, I I think I might be able to cope, but I would miss companionship. I would miss my family, I would miss my friends, and I certainly miss talking on the telephone, which I love doing.

Presenter32:50

And how much do you find time for family life now, w when you're so busy with all of your research and projects and organisations?

Caroline32:57

Well, all our three children are obviously not at home. Um

Caroline33:02

Our eldest Jason is an artist and a food campaigner.

Caroline33:08

He's in Borneo at the moment organizing a food festival there. My daughter is a landscape designer. My youngest son, Argus, is an architect uh specializing in traditional techniques. My husband and I we we cook together every evening and um we we work hard at different things during the day. We garden together and we we cook together.

Presenter33:29

Do you have grandchildren?

Caroline33:30

Got two two grandchildren so far, yes, two two little boys.

Presenter33:33

I'm maybe rather romantically imagining you giving them the same

Presenter33:38

Uh fascinating little lessons about the countryside and plants and flowers and animals that your nanny did. Do you plan on doing that?

Caroline33:43

Well I I I would hope to do that. They're they're a little bit young at the moment. The oldest one, Jack, is just about two. But um I've got a who a lot of strawberry plants um coming up for him for for the summer. So I th I think that's going to be his introduction.

Presenter33:58

Tell me about your final disc then.

Caroline33:59

Uh

Caroline34:00

My final disc is famous in the farming world, the local farming world, a a song called To Be a Farmer's Boy. And when we used to employ more people on the farm, I used to have wonderful harvest suppers, and at the end

Caroline34:15

One of the people who worked for us used to get out his little accordion and used to sing, and the one song everybody wanted was to be a farmer's boy. We have lost so much by losing the knowledge, the oral traditions, and it is so important to keep these alive.

Caroline34:31

Yes, father, do the daughter cried, While the tears rolled down her cheek.

Caroline34:39

For those that would work'tis hard to want, And wander for employee Don't let him go, but let him stay, And be a farmer's boy, And be a farmer's boy.

Presenter34:59

Charlie Stringer and to be a farmer's boy. So, Caroline Cranbrook, I'm going to give you two books, and you're allowed to take one. I'll give you the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare, and what book are you going to take to accompany them?

Caroline35:10

Uh

Caroline35:11

I'm going to take Dorothy Hartley's Food in England.

Caroline35:15

This is an incredibly useful book. I had it with me when I was living in the jungle in Malea, which I suppose in a way is a moderately dry run, very, very damp there, for the desert island. But it not only describes the history of food in England, but also has the most wonderful wood cuts showing you how to make an oven out of hay, or how to skin a rabbit, or how to gut a pig. And I think it would be extremely useful. And I I find it a great solace in Malaya too when I was sort of missing my English home life and I would sort of sit there reading about these ancient ways of

Caroline35:51

cooking apples or whatever it was.

Presenter35:53

Uh

Caroline35:54

its viewers, and a luxury

Presenter35:55

Two.

Caroline35:55

Well, a luxury. I would thought I would take a knife, but I think you're not allowed to something as practical as that. So what I would really like to take, I think, is some.

Presenter35:59

You're not.

Caroline36:03

I don't know where this exists sort of waterproof paper and uh Indian ink and a pen so I could write things down. At my age I might start forgetting.

Presenter36:13

You may have that. And if you had to choose just one of the eight tracks.

Caroline36:17

I think it'd be the St. Matthew Passion. It's so uplifting, it's so moving, and I think one would always discover something new in it.

Caroline36:25

Well we wouldn't get bored by it.

Presenter36:26

It's yours. Countess Cranbrook, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Caroline36:31

No, it's been great fun and thank you.

Presenter36:39

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists Archive.

Presenter36:43

For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four