Lord Healey

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 Dennis Healy. He has lived a momentous life. At the very centre of British politics since the mid nineteen sixties, his intellect and oratory have guaranteed him a place in history.

Presenter0:41

A brilliant student after Oxford he joined the army, and his experiences during the Second World War concentrated his ambitions towards politics yet there is so much more to his existence than affairs of state.

Presenter0:53

Travel, music, art and poetry have provided sanctuary along with a marriage lasting sixty four years and counting.

Presenter1:02

Politics has never been my whole life, he says.

Presenter1:05

Without a refuge in nature and the arts, my persona would have taken over from my personality.

Presenter1:12

Your persona, Denis Healy, that's a very interesting choice of words um sort of identifying that you did assume a role in politics. Um do you think it would have engulfed you then if if you hadn't managed to step back into other areas?

Lord Healey1:20

Poverty.

Lord Healey1:26

Oh, very much so, yes.

Lord Healey1:28

Politics is about power.

Lord Healey1:31

And uh if you're only interested in politics

Lord Healey1:35

It weakens you as a personality enormously, in my opinion.

Lord Healey1:40

Politics must only be a small part of your life.

Lord Healey1:44

And people who have no interest except politics, who have for example no interest in the arts, are very, very bad politicians, like Maggie Thatcher.

Presenter1:54

The cultural life that you have led then, that has always happened in tandem with this vigorous political life that you've been involved with.

Presenter2:03

How much do you think it's informed your politics? How much has it shaped you as a politician?

Lord Healey2:07

I don't think that music or the arts have shaped my politics.

Lord Healey2:13

But um I think my real life is in the arts rather than in politics and always has been.

Presenter2:20

Why, then, did you choose to pursue a life in politics that would take up so much of your intellect and vigour? Why not, instead, become a poet, or a writer, or an artist?

Lord Healey2:30

Well, I I had a chance to spend my life as a in a university.

Lord Healey2:36

I was offered a fellowship in Aberdeen.

Lord Healey2:39

But the war came and I joined the army.

Lord Healey2:42

And of course the army taught me an enormous amount about life, but.

Lord Healey2:47

The plain fact is that

Lord Healey2:50

War is made by governments and if you want to stop war, you've got to go into politics, and that's why I went into it and stayed in it.

Presenter3:00

So much to talk about. For now, though, tell me about the first piece of music we're going to hear today. What's your first disc?

Lord Healey3:06

What I've chosen to begin with is Johannes Sebastian Bach.

Lord Healey3:12

The three greatest musicians of all time, without any question, are Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven.

Lord Healey3:20

And Bach, of course, was the first of those, and that's why I chose him to start the programme.

Lord Healey3:26

He wrote wonderful piano music which I learned to play when I was young.

Lord Healey3:32

but also wrote wonderful vocal music, particularly his oratorios. And this piece, Sheep May Safely Graze, is from one of those oratorios.

Presenter4:28

Bach's Sheep May Safely Graze, performed by the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Leonard Slatkin. You mentioned there that you had learned, y as a little boy, to play piano, was it? Do you still play?

Lord Healey4:38

Was it

Lord Healey4:40

Yes. I find it m much more difficult playing than I used to, which is a shame. But now I only play if I'm certain nobody can hear me, including even Edna, my wife.

Presenter4:53

You will celebrate your ninety second birthday this year. Are you still interested in politics?

Lord Healey4:59

Much less interested than I used to be. I still follow it closely, but.

Lord Healey5:06

The differences between the parties, for example, are very, very small compared with when I was young, and they were very much based on class. And that's one reason why, of course, the number of people who bother to vote is falling at every election.

Presenter5:24

You were born then in it was nineteen seventeen.

Lord Healey5:26

Yeah.

Presenter5:26

Yes, during the First World War. So it was coming towards the the end of the Great War. H how much of a shadow did that cast on your life?

Lord Healey5:36

Well, I was only two when the war ended, the First World War. We lived on the outskirts of London in a a little wooden hut on a a little estate with cinder fars.

Lord Healey5:52

And I can just remember that period, but of course the war itself.

Lord Healey6:01

As I was only two when it ended, I don't remember at all.

Presenter6:06

Tell me about your father. What sort of character was he?

Lord Healey6:09

My father, during the First World War, was working at Woolwich Arsenal as an engineer.

Lord Healey6:18

And then after the war he got a job as head of the technical college at Keithley in Yorkshire. But my mother had much more influence on me because my father, as he was at a technical school,

Lord Healey6:30

was never home when I came back from school, because he'd just gone out to work at five o'clock.

Lord Healey6:37

My mother had infinitely more influence on me, particularly on the arts, because she was very interested

Lord Healey6:44

In poetry and music.

Presenter6:46

You did say that you believe you inherited what you called uh a brutal facetiousness from your father that he had a tendency to be quite um cruel and and distant, at least in in this kind of phrase.

Lord Healey6:58

In this kind of frame. I had a bad relationship, I would say, on the whole, on my father, partly because I saw so little of him when I was young.

Lord Healey7:09

But after he died I used to get letters very often from

Lord Healey7:13

people who'd been his students.

Lord Healey7:16

who showed me that there was a warm, very human side to him which I'd never noticed myself.

Presenter7:23

Let's take a little break and listen to your second piece of music. What have you chosen?

Lord Healey7:27

Oh, the second piece of music I've chosen is Kathleen Ferrier.

Lord Healey7:32

She was a an astonishing woman. She started singing folk songs, and I've chosen one of them. I know where I'm going.

Lord Healey7:43

And the great tragedy of her was just as she's becoming

Lord Healey7:47

well known through the radio, she died, and I think she would have been an enormous influence on British music if she lived longer.

Speaker 47:59

I know where I'm going.

Speaker 48:03

And I know who's going up with me.

Speaker 48:08

I know her love.

Speaker 48:12

To that dear knows who I am married.

Speaker 48:21

I have stockings of seal.

Speaker 48:25

Shoes of fine and green and blue

Speaker 48:30

Burns tobacco me

Speaker 48:34

And a ring for everything.

Presenter8:40

Kathleen Ferrier, and I know where I'm going. Um you're one of very few people around today who can look at the current uh financial troubles that we find ourselves in with a sense of genuine history, having been there, having seen it the first time. I'm I'm thinking of course of the nineteen thirties. Do you think we are in a worse position now than we were back in the nineteen thirties?

Lord Healey8:51

Sir.

Lord Healey8:55

Having seen it the first time.

Lord Healey9:04

the economy is in a downturn to which one can't really at the moment forecast an end. But of course, the big difference is that

Lord Healey9:16

The standard of life of people is infinitely higher than it was then.

Presenter9:21

Back then you you saw, am I right, you actually saw the Jarrow marchers o on their walk. Did that make much of an impression upon you at the time?

Lord Healey9:29

The Jarrow Marchers walked through Keithley, some of them, on the way south, and that certainly had an influence on me, but I was deeply conscious of the problems altogether, and of course people were losing their jobs all round me.

Lord Healey9:43

poverty became very widespread.

Lord Healey9:47

During the slump.

Lord Healey9:48

It had a terrible influence on the whole country.

Presenter9:51

Let's talk about university life then. You were, as I said in the introduction, Dennis Healy, a quite brilliant student. You graduated with a double first. When you first went to Balliol, did you feel at home?

Lord Healey10:03

Oh, I loved it, yes. Bailil was at that time

Lord Healey10:08

probably the cleverest college in Oxford, had the cleverest students. And then I I bec was very keen on painting and there was no organisation then in Oxford for at the arts, so I formed the New Oxford Art Society and but I also did quite a lot of painting because in those days I did a lot of painting.

Presenter10:30

You paint in watercolours, is that right? You can't say it, but I can. Your paintings are very good.

Lord Healey10:38

They're not bad.

Lord Healey10:40

But they're not great.

Presenter10:42

Yeah.

Lord Healey10:42

I think they're pretty good.

Presenter10:43

Tell me about your next piece of music, then.

Lord Healey10:46

Just before the war I went a couple of times to France and cycled round the country.

Lord Healey10:51

and went once or twice to the cabarets,

Lord Healey10:54

in Paris, near the Place Pigal. But after the war, when I was married, Edna and I used to go an enormous amount.

Lord Healey11:03

A chosen for the third.

Lord Healey11:06

Record a song by Eric Piaf. I like it among many things because when Charles a Ghoul

Lord Healey11:16

Told Harold Macmillan, the British Prime Minister at the time, that he was going to veto Britain's entry into the common market.

Lord Healey11:25

He told a friend afterwards, when I told him that

Lord Healey11:28

He looked so unhappy.

Lord Healey11:31

I felt like singing to him

Lord Healey11:33

D'Aqué Piat, Mais pluré, Villa, Jeanneuré, James Cruis.

Speaker 411:41

Aleven, Milor, vous a soira, madable, il faç for bless, c'est vous père, milor, et pour bill, vous, von pène sur monkeur, and vous piece sur na chaise, je vous conné milor, mun ma veja, mais vous, jeans que ne pie du pour, punom bour de la rue.

Presenter12:11

Edispiaf and Milor.

Presenter12:14

So from the rather, I suppose, cossetted and rarefied atmosphere of Oxford, um you went to Italy. You were directing soldiers who were landing on enemy soil there. It was, you said, very, very bloody. I'm I'm wondering what you can tell me of your time in Italy fighting.

Lord Healey12:30

Well, I was a specialist in combined operations that was assault landings involving the Navy, Army and Air Force behind the enemy lines.

Presenter12:41

So very much at the sharp end.

Lord Healey12:43

Yes, and uh w we did uh fairly easy landings in North Africa.

Lord Healey12:51

But very bloody landing indeed in Calabria at Porto Santaveni.

Lord Healey12:57

The beach, of course, was covered with mines, so we had to lay down mats to

Lord Healey13:03

prevent the lorries being blown up by them and uh

Lord Healey13:08

The Germans were retreating to Sicily at the time, and they were occupying the hills above.

Lord Healey13:14

and mortaring us all night, so I used to sleep wedged between two

Lord Healey13:20

Concrete blocks

Lord Healey13:21

on the beach, because I was beach master, couldn't leave it.

Presenter13:25

You were uh part then of a group of men who were

Presenter13:29

Entirely wrongly characterized by Lady Astor back home as the D-Day Dodgers.

Lord Healey13:34

That's right.

Presenter13:34

I I can't imagine with a a man of your character that sits very easily.

Lord Healey13:41

No, well, someone composed.

Lord Healey13:44

At the verge of a

Lord Healey13:46

song to sing to the music of Lily Marlena about Lady Aster. The last verse is a very moving one. It used to make me cry when I sang it. It was

Lord Healey13:58

When you look round the mountains through the mud and rain, You'll find the scattered crosses, some which bear no name Heartbreak and toil and suffering gone, The boys beneath them slumber long.

Lord Healey14:18

They worthily laid augers who stay in Italy.

Presenter14:28

Tell me about your fourth piece of music to day. What have you chosen?

Lord Healey14:31

Oh, well, as I told you, I was very keen on the cavaretes in Montmatre, and used to go there with Edna a great deal after the war. And my favourite singer in those days, male singer, was Yves Montan.

Lord Healey14:47

The one I've chosen is a song called Barbara.

Lord Healey14:51

which is one of my favourites by him.

Lord Healey14:54

Uh

Speaker 314:54

Rapelle toi bara bara Il plevais saint c'estur brest sau jour la Etu marches suriant et panui ravie ruiselant de sous la plui

Speaker 315:12

Ra Peltois bar bara

Speaker 315:16

Il ple vaisin c'est sur brest, et je técoroiser rue de siam.

Presenter15:24

Yves Monton and Barbara.

Presenter15:26

And I want to talk politics.

Lord Healey15:28

With you Law

Presenter15:28

What are you wrong?

Lord Healey15:28

But oh, you rotten bastard

Presenter15:30

I'm sorry about that. It was of course Harold Wilson that made you Defence Secretary. You said in your memoirs you felt like a man who, after driving his jaguar for hours behind a tractor on narrow country lanes, had finally reached the motorway. You enjoyed the the heft of that big political position, didn't you?

Lord Healey15:44

Yes.

Lord Healey15:47

I I enjoyed defence enormously because

Lord Healey15:51

It it was a thing I knew well and which I think I was particularly good at because I'd served in the army in war.

Lord Healey16:00

And I had very, very good friends in the services who were friends for life.

Presenter16:07

Do you think that's something of a a lacking, maybe even a failing in in many uh modern politicians that actually

Lord Healey16:13

But I think it's an enormous disadvantage.

Lord Healey16:17

Because apart from learning to be courageous in dangerous situations.

Lord Healey16:23

You learn the importance of two things which are vital in the whole of politics. One, interdependence.

Lord Healey16:30

and the other the importance of planning.

Lord Healey16:33

but of knowing that planning at some stage will go wrong and then you have to be very quick on your feet.

Lord Healey16:38

And I think war experience

Lord Healey16:42

brought advantages to politicians which

Lord Healey16:46

the post war politicians have not really been able to enjoy.

Presenter16:50

You yourself, as Defence Secretary, notably became something of I think it'd be fair to say even a hate figure among people in the the far left of of the party, principally because you didn't speak out against uh the war in Vietnam. You you very much took the the Allied position very seriously. I in private you did speak against it, did you?

Lord Healey17:04

Should

Lord Healey17:08

I knew.

Lord Healey17:11

Oh, I did. About against the Vietnam War. I was very much against it.

Presenter17:14

Yeah.

Lord Healey17:16

I would certainly have uh done myself a lot of good if I'd expressed my views in public, but um

Lord Healey17:23

The real problem was I didn't want to undermine the position of the troops involved in the fighting.

Presenter17:31

Do you think that's one of the things that stood between you becoming leader of the?

Lord Healey17:33

No, I don't think so. I I think the basic thing is I never wanted to be Prime Minister. Now, of course, I now regret that I didn't become Prime Minister, but at the time I didn't have the slightest ambition.

Lord Healey17:46

when I was asked to run to leader the party.

Lord Healey17:49

I didn't. I would only run for deputy leader.

Presenter17:54

When did you begin to feel regret at that, that you hadn't stepped up?

Lord Healey17:58

Oh, I would say only in recent years, in the last twenty years or so.

Presenter18:02

Do you think he would have made a good, maybe even a great, Prime Minister?

Lord Healey18:06

I don't know, but I'd rather people wondered why I wasn't Prime Minister than wondered why I was.

Presenter18:12

Let's take a break for some music then. Tell me about your fifth piece of music to day. What have you chosen?

Lord Healey18:18

Oh yes, this is the Chaufin Polonaise. I had a great friend who was at the Polish Embassy when I was an MP, called Malczysinski.

Lord Healey18:29

And they invited me to Poland several times, and I went to Wavel Castle, which is a medieval castle near Krakow.

Lord Healey18:38

And Mausinsky's brother, Vitold, played the uh heroic Polonaise.

Lord Healey18:46

And uh the three aristocracies of Poland all dissolved in tears at the end of it. The Communist aristocracy, the church aristocracy,

Lord Healey19:01

and the um traditional nobility. And uh it was a very moving experience in Leeds.

Presenter20:11

Part of Chopin's Polonaise for Piano, No. Six, in A flat major, Lerouis.

Presenter20:16

played by Vitold Maltzujinski. Um Denis Healy, you have mentioned throughout us chatting, inevitably, the the name of Edna, the woman who has been at your side for sixty three years now.

Lord Healey20:26

Yeah.

Presenter20:27

You first met as students. C can you remember the first time you saw her?

Lord Healey20:32

I don't remember the exact first time, but Edna at that time we used to call Tomato Face because she had very rosy cheeks. And we fell in love when she came to teach at a school in Keithley, the girls' grammar school, and she stayed with us when she came for the interview.

Lord Healey20:55

She got the job and then we started going out together and thank God got married.

Lord Healey21:03

And we've had an extremely happy life.

Presenter21:07

You have three children, uh a son and two daughters.

Presenter21:11

You said to me earlier on that you were not around your own father much, inevitably, because of his working schedule. Um did you make an effort, as a father of of young children, now I'm thinking, to be closer to your own children?

Lord Healey21:16

of his working schedule.

Lord Healey21:23

Yes, we did, and uh the most important single thing is that we used to go camping abroad every summer holiday and of course got to know one another infinitely better that way than any other way.

Lord Healey21:38

We started camping in Cornwall and then we camped all over.

Lord Healey21:45

France, and the Alps.

Presenter21:47

Do you think there is a single piece of advice, a a key to having a happy and long marriage, like you've had?

Lord Healey21:53

Ha ha ha ha.

Lord Healey21:54

First of all, I do the most important single thing.

Lord Healey21:58

Is you've got to give, whether you're a man or woman, to give your spouse space.

Lord Healey22:03

To live their own lives as well as the one they live with, the family. Edna, you see, was very busy with the family until

Presenter22:10

Uh

Lord Healey22:11

They left home.

Lord Healey22:13

But since sixties she's done it written as many books as I have. She's spoken all over the world. And she has the space and I have the space and that's one reason we have a very happy marriage. But we also love one another and that's the most important thing.

Presenter22:29

Let's hear another piece of music, then. Tell me about your sixth piece of music.

Lord Healey22:35

I love Mozart. He is astonishing because uh he had a fairly short life, he died young, but he wrote an enormous amount for the piano.

Lord Healey22:47

Duets, quintets, chamber music.

Lord Healey22:51

And of course he wrote them great offerings, some of the greatest in the world as well.

Lord Healey22:56

But I've chosen this one because uh I found this slow movement from this concerto.

Lord Healey23:04

Very moving and so um I've chosen it for this programme.

Speaker 423:54

Uh

Presenter24:02

The second movement of Mozart's piano concerto, number twenty one, in C major, played by Howard Shelley with the London Mozart players. So Dennis Healy were of course made Chancellor of the Exchequer in the mid seventies at a time

Presenter24:14

of incredibly demanding fiscal circumstances. Was it a role that you relished?

Lord Healey24:22

Um I didn't enjoy it the way I enjoyed defence.

Lord Healey24:26

And I found it very demanding almost every day when I was at the Treasury, when to beg the dog tired of the last words in the diary.

Presenter24:36

It is almost a uniquely lonely job, I think. When you look at Alastair Darling trying to struggle to deal with events right now, do you have.

Presenter24:47

Sympathy for the man who fights the bull currently?

Lord Healey24:49

Well, I was lucky, like Alastoung, that uh I worked for a Prime Minister who'd been Chancellor. That is an enormous advantage. But um the real problem is that you don't control

Lord Healey25:07

The world in which you have to make policy.

Lord Healey25:11

The situation you deal with is made by producers all over the world, consumers all over the world.

Lord Healey25:20

And the way people behave economically changes from year to year, according even to things like the weather.

Presenter25:29

And of course, most notably, you found yourself on the end of those world events when you had to go to the IMF and ask for, in essence, a loan from I mean, that must have been.

Lord Healey25:37

Yeah.

Presenter25:40

An unsteadying time, potentially even a humiliating time.

Lord Healey25:42

It was a very difficult period, but let's face it, I went to them because in those days the health of the economy depended on the public sector borrowing requirement, the gap between tax revenue and spending. And the estimates of that were appallingly wrong in my time. For two years, there were two billion pounds a year too high and one billion too low the next year.

Lord Healey26:14

If we'd had profit estimates, I'd never have had to go to the IMF at all. But as it was, I paid all the money back to the IMF and only to do half of what I was allowed.

Presenter26:26

What do you make of the fact that now, historically, when that period is written and talked about, it is seen as as one of the most humiliating moments in recent British political history?

Lord Healey26:37

Well, it was absolute baloney to say that. I mean, uh you join the IMF as an insurance policy and drawing on insurance when you need it. There's nothing wrong in that.

Presenter26:48

Hefty stick for the opposition.

Lord Healey26:50

Uh

Presenter26:50

Uh

Lord Healey26:50

Yeah.

Presenter26:50

Yeah.

Lord Healey26:50

Big

Presenter26:50

But they can't they can't run the economy, this labour left it off.

Lord Healey26:51

But they can't

Lord Healey26:53

No, I know that's what they said, but that was absolute baloney. And I don't think that uh the the public really believes that. I think there are many problems the Labour Party has at the moment about winning the next election, but I don't think what's happening to the economy is one of them.

Lord Healey27:13

And after all, we are doing better than any other European country, according to the IMF.

Presenter27:19

You have always been a a supporter of of Gordon Brown.

Lord Healey27:23

Yes, very much so.

Presenter27:24

Do you talk to him at all these days?

Lord Healey27:26

Not very much, no.

Lord Healey27:28

to advise a Prime Minister who's been chancellor recently.

Lord Healey27:34

about the economy is i is impossible really. I mean the economy has changed so much and so much of the economic facts are not known to me.

Presenter27:46

Let's take a break for some music then. Tell me about your seventh piece of music to day. What what have you chosen?

Lord Healey27:51

I've always been very keen on cabaret music and musical comedies.

Lord Healey27:57

But the one I've chosen, because I love the words and I love the singing by Ella Fitzgerald, is Miss Otis Regrets, which is about American society.

Speaker 428:11

Mrs. Otis regrets she's unable to lunch today.

Speaker 428:21

Madam

Lord Healey28:21

Battle

Speaker 428:24

Miss Otis regrets she's unable to lunch today

Speaker 428:33

She is sorry to be delayed.

Speaker 428:38

But last evening

Presenter28:41

Ello Fitzgerald singing Miss Otis' Regrets. So, Dennis Healy, it's what, about twenty years since you officially retired, although I know, of course, you still have your seat in the Lords. How do you spend your days now?

Lord Healey28:54

Um listening to music.

Lord Healey28:57

I started playing the piano again, but not enough. Reading above all poetry, I love reading poetry. I I enjoy my life very, very much indeed, because uh

Lord Healey29:11

My wife and family, whom we see as much of as we can, though Cressida only comes once a year over from San Francisco. And music, painting, walking, countryside, everything is beautiful round us, although Edna has trouble walking now, which is a great shame.

Lord Healey29:33

Looking at the c taking it around the country, we love it.

Presenter29:37

I wonder if now, at your stage in life, you're you're happy to allow um

Presenter29:43

Political bygones to be bygones. What's your view, for example, of Margaret Thatcher these days?

Lord Healey29:49

Well, it's changed very much because she's changed.

Lord Healey29:54

I mean, I thought she was uh frankly appalling as Prime Minister because she wouldn't listen to anybody who didn't share her views. But uh since she lost power, nobody really listens to what she has to say, poor thing. And I feel very sorry for her now, and we get on very well whenever we meet.

Lord Healey30:18

Which wasn't the case at all when she was active and I was active in politics.

Presenter30:22

What do you talk about when you meet?

Lord Healey30:25

We don't talk about things very much. I mean, we last time we met was at Leonardsleigh, which is a beautiful country garden near us.

Lord Healey30:34

and uh I gave her a great hug, and my daughter took a photograph of it, which she should have sold to the News of the World, but there you are.

Presenter30:45

Tell me about your final piece of music that you've chosen today.

Lord Healey30:48

Over the last piece of music I've chosen is certainly one of the very greatest pieces of music ever written.

Lord Healey30:57

And it was written by Beethoven at the end of his life when he was deaf and couldn't actually hear what he was writing. It's the Cavatina from one of his last quartets, and the record is an old one, which is the one I have myself and first heard it on, by the Bush Quartet. And this, I think, is as deep and profound a statement about human life as you could find. And it's all done on pieces of cats' guts on a piece of wood.

Presenter32:32

The Bush Quartet, recorded in nineteen forty one, playing the Cavatina from Beethoven's String Quartet No. thirteen in B flat major. So, Lord Heale, we come to the part in the programme where I will give you a copy of the Bible and also the complete works of Shakespeare. What other book are you going to take on to this desert island?

Lord Healey32:50

Oh, I think I'd take probably the favourite book of English verse, which is uh

Lord Healey32:56

I think the best anthology of English verse, and it goes right up to the

Lord Healey33:03

Pleasant day.

Presenter33:04

I shall give you that, along with the Bible and Shakespeare and

Presenter33:07

You are, of course, allowed a luxury. On the island what what will your luxury be?

Lord Healey33:12

Well, obviously my wife.

Lord Healey33:14

But he wants some other luxury deal.

Presenter33:17

You know perfectly well that's not allowed.

Lord Healey33:19

I think a very big box of chocolates.

Lord Healey33:22

Luggage I like, and soft sensors I love. Oh, don't, you're making me dribble.

Presenter33:29

You may have that then. And if you could take only one disk of the eight, which one disk would it be?

Lord Healey33:38

I think.

Lord Healey33:40

It's very difficult to say, but I think really it would be the cappuccina.

Lord Healey33:45

The Beethoven Cavity is the last one.

Presenter33:47

It's yours. Dennis Healey, Baron Healy of Riddleston. Thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island Discs.

Lord Healey33:53

It's a pleasure.

Presenter34:01

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