Jon Snow

Presenter0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Discs from BBC Radio 4. For rights reasons the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.

Presenter0:10

For more information about the programme, please visit bbc.co.uk/slash radio four.

Presenter0:34

My castaway this week is the newsman, Jon Snow. For the past twenty one years he's been the face of Channel Four's nightly bulletins. Along with his patent enthusiasm and vigor for dissecting the day's stories, he's noted for his natty line in neckties and socks.

Presenter0:50

Prior to the cosy certainties of the T V studio he was a correspondent in East Africa, Rome, and Washington.

Presenter0:57

In his time, he's been thrown into a stinking Malaysian jail for aiding illegal immigration, has made it behind guerrilla lines in El Salvador, and interviewed everyone, from the Pope to Monica Lewinsky. Not bad going for the son of a bishop. I do have quite a strong sense of justice and injustice, he says, and I think it's forged by being a privileged boy, colliding with the harsh realities of the outside world. So, John Snow, even after so many years in the job, do you think you still have quite a a sharp sense of injustice?

Jon Snow1:26

I'm afraid I think I do, and and it's it's often the villain of the piece. It's a it's a difficult thing to keep sorted.

Presenter1:33

And what about being uh objective and neutral? Do you think are are they the same thing as being objective and neutral?

Jon Snow1:38

No, I don't think any human being is neutral. I think it's impossible to be neutral about anything. But I think you can attempt to be objective and you can attempt to be balanced. But I think one of the things you have to accept is that you can look at something and you will take a view on it, and that is the natural human condition, and I suffer from it.

Presenter1:55

Um watching Channel four News, it's notable, I think, watching it, that you you you have a different attitude from most news anchors, you know, who sort of sit there a little blandly behind the desk and deliver the lines and try not to be involved. You sometimes seem really quite involved in the stories you're telling people about.

Jon Snow2:12

Well, I think I and the viewer are on a journey. We're on a kind of adventure. We are together trying to find out what on earth's going on, and I feel very engaged in that.

Presenter2:22

And what about it's unfortunate too, you will know from many years of being on television that people often uh leave watching a news bulletin remembering what the weather is, the sports scores and also what the the news anchor was wearing. Your ties are a feature.

Jon Snow2:35

Yes, I was told you must never wear bright colours on television. I was also told that I looked rather dull on our brightly new reconstructed set some years ago, and I thought, well, there's a bit of a rebel in me anyway, so I will wear something very bright. And they worked, and actually they've caught on.

Presenter2:53

D do pe people send you the tie system?

Jon Snow2:54

No, thankfully not. I mean, because they never get it right.

Presenter2:57

You have roamed around the world eighty-five countries, is that right, that you visited throughout your working?

Jon Snow3:01

That sort of thing, yeah. That sort of thing.

Presenter3:03

But when you were in El Salvador, you found your name on a on a death list. Didn't make you want to get the first plane home.

Jon Snow3:11

No, um because m it was a bit of a badge of honour to have your name on a death list. You felt you'd really arrived. You know, the thing is you used to put a you used to put the wardrobe against the door, so that you would at least hear the clang when the gunman came for you in the night. And one night there was a tremendous banging about, and I shouted from my dormant condition, Get out, get out!

Jon Snow3:31

And then within a few moments, somebody was going down the corridor saying, Earthquake! Earthquake! We were all out like bullets. But that's all it was.

Presenter3:39

And wasn't it the case that at the same time that you were in El Salvador reporting was about the same time as your your partner was pregnant with your first child? Did that not make you think when you saw your name on the death list might be the responsible thing to do to return home?

Jon Snow3:52

You know, I think the the thing about reporting is that it it's extremely painful leaving home.

Jon Snow3:58

And then once you have, and once you're in the arena,

Jon Snow4:02

That's where you are. And although you think of home and you think of the the coming child and the rest of it, in the end the thing which is absolutely obsessing you is trying to get to the root of the story.

Presenter4:12

Tell me about the first choice today then. What's your first yes?

Jon Snow4:15

Well, my my first choice is I I don't think you could possibly survive on a desert island without Bach. And so uh as I'm also a coral fiend as well, um St John Passion.

Presenter5:27

The opening of the St. John Passion by Bach with the Bath Collegium Stuttgart, conducted by Helmut Rilling. You've said, John Snow, that one of the most striking things about the disasters you've covered is the clinging smell of the disaster. You take it with you as you travel home. Tell me more about that.

Jon Snow5:45

Incredibly true of Haiti in particular. There is a smell of disaster. It's about death, it's decaying human bodies, it's about sewage, it's about dust, it's about filth hanging in the air, and it clings to your clothes and however much you wash them. You usually have to throw stuff away when you come back, and very often you throw stuff away before you come back. You lose all sense of a world that is not disaster-stricken. And of course you're very tempted to actually do some rescuing. When I went to the floods in New Orleans, we just happened to have the wit to get hold of a flat-bottom boat through the yellow pages and get it delivered as we arrive.

Presenter6:24

And you were one of the you were one of the first people to actually have a boat there.

Jon Snow6:26

We were one of the first people to have a boat. It's an absolutely unbelievable thing. We'd flown all the way from London and we had a boat. And of course we were going out to film. But you couldn't possibly film people screaming from their housetops, begging to be rescued. So you actually had to down tools and start pulling people onto the boat. And you would try and get your cameraman to shoot things, which avoided it looking as if you were on some kind of mercy mission. But I was told by my first foreign editor, never touch anybody, never hold a baby, always keep yourself physically detached from what you're reporting. And he's absolutely right.

Presenter7:01

Um cynicism and sort of emotional detachment pretty common in newsrooms, pretty common in people who've worked in newsrooms for years. Do you do you find yourself uh sort of sounding a bit wet behind the ears sometimes w around the people you work with? Do they say, Oh, John, don't be so bloody idealistic?

Jon Snow7:19

No, I think it you know, emotion is a very difficult thing when you're a reporter, and in a very odd sort of way you owe it to the viewer to be honest about what the emotional impact of something you're looking at really is. It's a difficult thing to explain, but in the modern age where it's possible to get pictures from every corner of the earth and and to weave together an account of something you weren't actually at, when you are at something and you do actually experience grief I mean, I cry on location. That does happen, you know, and it's a good thing it happens. Because if it doesn't, you bottle it up and you come back bonkers. But I think you have to allow the viewer to know not crying on camera or anything like that, but you have to let the viewer know that this is an overwhelming emotional experience. This is an overwhelming human catastrophe, and it isn't without consequence.

Presenter8:10

And have you found as you've gotten older and more experienced that you become actually more rather than less emotional about things?

Jon Snow8:16

I think once you have children, particularly once you have small children you know, m mine were born more than twenty years ago but once you've had children you do see the suffering

Jon Snow8:26

of your own children in a sense, expressed in the eyes of of of what you're reporting.

Presenter8:31

Indeed. Let's have some more music then. Tell me what we're going to hear now. Disc number two.

Jon Snow8:36

Well this is Eric Clapton and Leila. It's a coincidence that my own eldest daughter is Leila, anyway she's spelt differently and she was informed by a Persian Leila rather than a Clapton Leila. But when I was at university this was the absolute heyday of the greatest of British rock of all time.

Speaker 38:56

What'll you do when you

Speaker 39:06

But what's too long?

Speaker 39:09

You know it's just a foolish cry

Speaker 39:23

I don't want to be in my

Presenter9:27

Eric Clapton and Layla. So, Jon Snow, you were born in nineteen forty seven, it was, in Sussex. Your father, a clergyman and a headmaster. Uh was he was he a stern figure?

Jon Snow9:38

I I suppose these days you would say he was, yes. Not without humanity, but he was a a pretty daunting figure. He was extremely tall, six foot seven, and pretty big with it. Very large shoes, so fourteen, fifteen, which of course strike a child more than they would strike an adult because you're nearer them.

Presenter9:48

Right.

Presenter9:53

Yeah.

Presenter9:54

How tall are you?

Jon Snow9:55

I'm only six foot four. You're only six foot four, I'm right.

Presenter9:58

For him, right. And so what did he expect from you were one of is it three boys? Uh

Jon Snow10:01

One of three boys, the middle of three boys, he was an intellectual. I mean, he could read the Bible in Greek and Hebrew. He was a very devout Christian. He didn't really expect devout Christianity from us, but he expected performance from us. Prayers every morning, in which we would stand in descending order of age, with my mother next to him, but the cook and the sort of houseman who was her husband at the end of the line. I never quite understood the batting order, but there it was. And Grace at every meal. Chapel, certainly when I was not at boarding school, 6.30 every Sunday evening. And it was there, incidentally, that I got my first taste of politics, because I detected this strange man appearing at the back of the chapel. And my father said, I'll introduce you to him next week. And he said, Jonathan, this is Mr. Harold Macmillan. He's the Prime Minister. Do you know what a Prime Minister is, young man? Are you married to the Queen?

Presenter10:41

What do we

Jon Snow11:03

He roared with laughter and said, No, no, no, no, I'm a Conservative politician, and I run the country. And with that he got into his uh humba super snipe at the back of the chapel, away outside, and drove off to Birchgrove, his sumptuous villa in Ardingley Village. Um and that was it. What I didn't know then, of course, was what I know now as a seasoned hack, was that his wife, Dorothy, was off with that old rogue Boothby having a torrid affair.

Presenter11:31

And were you were only you were six when you and it made you want to be what be a a a a politician or be a prime minister?

Jon Snow11:32

And it makes

Jon Snow11:36

No, no, I wanted to be a Conservative politician, and I certainly wanted to run the country. I thought, what a great idea And you get to get a car like that, and a house like that. I mean, um, you know, the moon is all that's left.

Presenter11:47

As long as you don't get a wife like that. And your mother you've said, you've written that her married life was dedicated to my father's every need.

Jon Snow11:55

Absolutely, a hundred percent. And many women in that age that was true.

Speaker 312:00

Ha ha.

Jon Snow12:00

But I think in her case even more true, because she thought it was a modern miracle that he'd married her. He'd proposed to her uh during the Second World War. They'd only been together for six weeks. He'd proposed, and she said, Well, I I think I think there's something you ought to know before before we go any further. I don't have my own hair. She had suffered alopecia totalis at the age of thirteen when sitting an exam for the Royal College of Music. And um he said, Oh yeah, oh I think I need twenty four hours to think about that.

Jon Snow12:30

She thinking, well, that's the end of my world. That's the only man I'm ever going to get. And he comes back and says, well, I don't think it needs to make too much difference. And that was it.

Presenter12:38

Right. And and did it then was he aware of the equal inequality in the relationship, or because of the time that they were married that was never an issue, do you seem to

Jon Snow12:46

Absolutely oblivious, and oblivious of what baldness meant to a woman at that time. She'd become bald at thirteen and had worn a bonnet until she was eighteen because her parents couldn't afford a wig. And um I think she had suffered hugely and it went right to the very centre of her soul, this insecurity around it.

Presenter13:07

More about your mother in a second, because she was an extremely talented musician herself. Let's have some music before we hear about your mother. What are we going to hear now?

Jon Snow13:10

Yeah.

Jon Snow13:15

Well, this is a pretty apt moment to bring in Herbert Howells, who incidentally taught my mother composition at the Royal College of Music. But that's not really why I'm choosing. I'm choosing it because it is emblematic of my life at Winchester Cathedral. Aged eight, I won a choral scholarship to Winchester Cathedral, and this was one of the pieces I used to sing.

Speaker 313:39

My spirit of rejoicing by my Saviour

Speaker 313:47

We are

Speaker 313:52

The morning is my pay is forever.

Speaker 313:59

It's all made.

Presenter14:34

The Collegium Regale, part of the Magnificat by Herbert Howells, sung by Wells Cathedral Choir, with Rupert Gough playing the organ led by Malcolm Archer.

Presenter14:43

Back then to your mother, John Snow, I say she was a very interesting character because she was this talented uh musician, but but also because she'd lived with being bald since she was thirteen. Di was she very protective of you and your brothers? Did she worry for you? Did she worry what the future held? What sort of childhood you were?

Presenter15:00

Having

Jon Snow15:01

I'd say she was a a worrier. I mean, the thing about my mother was that she

Jon Snow15:06

However retiring she might have been as a result of of of being bald and wearing a wig and her own insecurities, she played the piano like an absolute demon. You know, she was a brilliant classical pianist, and I was absolutely spellbound by it. I mean at the age of five and six I would begin to pick up harmonies as she was playing and and sing with her and she would love it. Do you still sing now?

Jon Snow15:30

In the bath.

Presenter15:32

Is that it? You're not member of a choir or anything?

Jon Snow15:34

No, you know, the trouble is the day job is at the very moment when choirs are rehearsing. I'd love to sing in a choir. But I do do it yourself things. I've done the odd one at the Sheldonian and I do occasionally in the Albert Hall, but pretty rare.

Presenter15:45

And you say she wasn't protective, but I had read that she you weren't allowed to go to Woolworths, you weren't allowed to go to the cinema, you

Jon Snow15:50

I think that's much more standard of that age. In the post-war era, certainly of that social order, had a big misgiving about Woolworths, for example. Open suites, suites that weren't wrapped, mustn't touch any of them. Cinema was a place you would catch diseases. So I never saw a film till I was twelve or thirteen.

Presenter16:03

Uh

Presenter16:10

And is it the case that your father thought you were a lazy dunderhead?

Jon Snow16:14

Certainly Dunderhead probably lazy, yes. The problem was that the things I was excited about were not things that excited him. He was excited by Latin, he was exc excited by Greek, and I was completely useless at both. And my problem at school was that I just wasn't interested in the things that people were interested in teaching me.

Presenter16:33

And e even though this was the nineteen fifties, it does sound a lot more like the nineteen twenties that your father was living in. Do you think he had s he was a man slightly out of time with his generation?

Jon Snow16:42

I

Presenter16:42

I think

Jon Snow16:43

He probably was, but you know, the the fifties was still a this is what made the sixties so exciting, because the fifties was a pretty dim.

Jon Snow16:51

Age, you know. I mean, the new look was about as exciting as it ever got, and I don't even remember that.

Presenter16:55

And so you you say the things that you were interested in and indeed the things you were good at were not the things you could pass exams in. You did s did you set up the school newspaper when you were ten?

Jon Snow17:03

Did, yeah. I set up the uh Daily Trumpet. There was only one copy of it, but it was circulated round the school. It had advertising, unpaid for by the people that we advertised, but cornflakes and all sorts of things like that. And it had articles. It was a lot of fun. Can you remember what your first big story was? I can't, but I have got a

Presenter17:19

Copy of it somewhere in some attic. Worth probably worth unearthing that, I think. Give yourself a laugh. And tell me then about the next piece of music. What are we going to hear?

Jon Snow17:24

Yourself.

Jon Snow17:28

This is something which, despite the fact that I'd done voluntary service overseas in Africa and absolutely fallen in love with Africa, I thought Africa was utopia until I got to Central and Latin America. And I think this piece of music kind of expresses everything that you are bombarded by in Latin America. It's romance, it's life, it's vitality, it's poverty, it's grief. It's just this amazing piece of music.

Speaker 317:56

I still want it all the long time.

Speaker 318:10

Every Christmas Christmas!

Presenter18:26

The Twelve Cellists of the Berlin Philharmonic and Chicolin de Bachin with Julian Banzo. You've said that you have, Jon Snow, uh something of a lefty image, in your own words, a bloody public school Pinko liberal. I'm wondering.

Jon Snow18:39

Well, that's what Dennis Thatcher called me. Oh, did he? Well, he called me a Pinko-liberal.

Presenter18:42

Do you think that that perception then and and obviously now been widely disseminated because I picked it up in something I read?

Presenter18:48

It must surely have influenced your your working life.

Jon Snow18:52

You see, I don't really think I am a left idolist. Some people that I work with would say uh he's the most conservative man in the newsroom, in a small C. And in many ways I am very conservative. I mean, listen to my choice of music.

Speaker 319:04

Yes.

Jon Snow19:04

So I I don't think I am. I think I'm somebody who questions.

Presenter19:07

You see, I think maybe you're trying to claw it back a bit because I I heard that you were um you were while you were at IT N and you had this soaring career, you were in Washington, you know, that is always one of the top jobs, but the top job after that, being political editor, that you didn't get the political editor's job because you

Jon Snow19:15

Do that.

Jon Snow19:18

B

Jon Snow19:19

But you

Presenter19:22

Yeah.

Jon Snow19:22

No, I can tell you why.

Presenter19:22

No, I can tell you why. Because it not to do with the miners.

Jon Snow19:25

It was a problem. But you see, this was nothing to do with leftism. This was to do with compassion, if you like. I was in Washington, so I was well detached from what was going on in Britain. And somebody sent me a note saying, Listen, you really must help because there are these miners' families who are all suffering dreadfully and they need money, and we're having an appeal. And I supported it. And of course, didn't realize how utterly divided the whole country was over the miners' strike, and fell headlong into a pit of vipers.

Presenter19:31

Hmm.

Presenter19:58

But surely you must have been highly aware, certainly coming from the background that you came from, you were saying you're a cook and you know there was a a houseman round the house, you know, you came from a very privileged background that in a way everything is sort of political in the end, isn't it? If you extend your hand in such a highly politicised and incendiary uh situation as the miners strike, you're going to be perceived in a certain way.

Jon Snow20:05

Yeah.

Jon Snow20:06

Privileged back.

Jon Snow20:20

Well, naivety takes many forms, and and I would think that if you asked any of my bosses they would all say his central problem is he's a bit naive. I'm not conventionally

Jon Snow20:32

Politically left or right. There are some positions I think some people would say I was rather right wing on, and and others that I'm left wing.

Speaker 320:39

Yeah.

Presenter20:39

Yeah.

Jon Snow20:41

I don't know. I mean I'm quite interested in discipline, in in in in in young people growing up in in reasonably conformist conditions. Um you know you can't compartmentalize me. I'm I'm where I am, which is simply somebody who questions.

Presenter20:58

Okay, let's let's talk about Uganda. You went on a trip to Uganda when you were just you were a teenager then.

Jon Snow21:03

I was nineteen, yeah.

Presenter21:04

Yes. What took you to Uganda?

Jon Snow21:05

Uganda. This was my gap year. What really took me to Uganda was trying to impress my father. I wanted to tell my father that I really was, you know, a bit of an achiever. It was a massive experience because here was this conservative boy who'd never met ethnic minorities really, had never really lived other than in the countryside of Sussex. I was suddenly 250 miles from Kampala on the banks of the Nile. You had to cycle 15 miles to get the mail. I was grievously homesick, and if I'd had email or a mobile phone, I would have said, Mum, come and get me.

Presenter21:40

And did it impress your father?

Jon Snow21:42

I I think it did. I mean, I remember shaking his hand at the garden gate as I left, and thinking this might be the last contact I'd have with him, because he was older. You know, there'd been no such thing as a kiss or anything like that. That was the as good as it got. But I think it did impress him that I had the guts to go. And then, frankly, once I did settle

Jon Snow22:03

I had entered the best experience I'd ever had. It was absolutely incredible.

Presenter22:09

Time now for some music, then, Jon Snow. What are we going to hear?

Jon Snow22:13

Well, very much in mind of of A Love of Africa, I think Orchestra Berbab, Uru Horas uh pretty well sums up the beat.

Jon Snow22:23

The Voice.

Jon Snow22:25

that amazing nocturnal atmosphere where there's no electric light, but there are paraffin lamps burning and people dancing and a kind of vibrant community life.

Speaker 422:40

Madras descend.

Speaker 422:42

I can see

Speaker 422:51

All position

Speaker 422:53

I consider

Speaker 422:57

I'm not sure if I can do it.

Speaker 423:01

Luaidinos

Speaker 423:04

Loire, y panos.

Presenter23:07

That was Orchestra Baobab and Utro Auras. Some of your encounters, Johnson, almost read as if they leapt from the pages of a novel. You you swam out to a British ship in the Iran Iraq war. Serbs have shot at you in the Kosovo conflict and and you encountered Idi Amin.

Jon Snow23:23

did encounter Edi Amin. I'd only ever become a journalist because I wanted to find a way to get back to Uganda. And within weeks of uh becoming a journalist I was sent back to Uganda uh to cover Edi Amin now wreaking havoc in in Uganda.

Presenter23:38

You were sitting as it opposite Idi Amy on a private plane.

Jon Snow23:42

I mean I

Jon Snow23:44

Do we need the

Jon Snow23:46

I had good access to Uganda. I could come back and forth, and one day he said, I want to take you to my village and he bundled us onto his French-donated Presidential plane. He he was wearing a Texas Rangers uniform with a Stetson, which quickly fell down over his head after he took over. It was pretty s pretty certain he was asleep.

Jon Snow24:06

And I I looked down, and there was a holster between us, um, hanging off his belt, with a gun in it.

Jon Snow24:13

And I thought to myself, Should I shoot him?

Jon Snow24:17

And then I thought, Is the gun loaded?

Jon Snow24:20

Is he asleep? And in any case, what happens when you ha fire a high velocity pistol into a very fat man? Does it ricochet around inside the girth, or does it go right through, through the fuselage, and we all go after it the size of a pea? And I'm afraid in the end it's down to me, I think, that he died a peaceful death only five or six years ago behind a smoke pool on um in Jeddah.

Presenter24:41

You've said of one of your other great risky pursuits, which was interviewing Mrs Thatcher, which you did many times over the years, and it was always a failure on my part and always a huge success on hers.

Jon Snow24:52

Absolutely true. I mean, she she was impossible to get one past. I saw loads of her, especially in Europe when it was a very angry time with Europe and Britain was always on its own. You know, you'd go in and she'd say, Oh, John, how lovely to see you And then you'd know that old Bernardingham was at the shoulder thing, John Snow, frightful bastard, Prime Minister. Then the camera would roll and you'd say, Prime Minister, here we are again, absolutely one against the rest. Is that really a sensible way to pursue uh diplomatic relations with Europe? What a perfectly stupid question And I'd find myself sort of slapping the bat of my hand and thinking, You stupid boy, how have you got yourself into this mess? And by then, of course, she was kicking me all over the room. I mean, you know, she just ha could completely dominate an interview.

Presenter25:38

And unlike other Prime Ministers, I would expect, you've written that you could almost hear the crackling of her tights as she crossed and uncrossed her legs.

Jon Snow25:45

She was very early into lycrotites and they would scream as she crossed and uncrossed her legs.

Presenter25:47

Right.

Jon Snow25:54

And you could never quite forget that she was a woman.

Presenter25:56

Right. And before, just to rewind a little, before you had become this uh professional reporter, you had gone to Liverpool University and you were kicked out.

Jon Snow26:05

I was kicked out. I'd gone back from VSO absolutely charged with kind of African liberation and the university I went to had big investments in South Africa and we urged them to disinvest. Well of course they told us, you know, to take a jump. And so we occupied the Senate building for six weeks. And then they picked off ten of us afterwards and said time to go.

Presenter26:29

Tell me about your next piece of music then, Jo.

Jon Snow26:31

Well, my next piece of music is very filmic, it has to be said. And one of the sort of lurking desires of any television journalist is that he's really liked to set his reports to music. And Pat Matheny and his band write particularly filmic music. And this piece, The Truth Will Always Be, is something I used of migrant South African workers setting off at three in the morning for the three-hour trip to work, for the nine-hour day and the three hours coming back.

Jon Snow27:00

And there was something

Jon Snow27:02

eerie about the exhaustion, the exploitation.

Jon Snow27:06

And the poverty.

Jon Snow27:07

of the people slumped in the bus.

Jon Snow27:10

as we drove with them to work.

Presenter27:42

Pat Malcini, and the truth will always be. Jon Snow, now I said that you've travelled eighty-five countries or so throughout the years that you've been a journalist, a broadcast journalist. You've also been father to two girls now in their twenties. Were there ever times when they were very young, and I I'm guessing you probably did miss the odd birthday party or the Carol concert and so on, when they gave you a hard time about that, or you found it particularly hard?

Jon Snow28:06

I think it was very, very hard when they were very young. Um but of course in fact by the time my older daughter was six and my younger daughter was three I'd started a Channel four News and so I was living a much more stable existence.

Presenter28:19

Was that one of your reasons for getting into the studio?

Jon Snow28:22

I'd like to say it was.

Jon Snow28:24

Why don't we say it was? Probably was. But it was partly because it was a job, a wonderful job, which although I still wanted a report, in the end I knew if I turned it down I'd never get offered it again.

Presenter28:36

You and your partner, Madeleine, the mother to both of your children, are no longer together. I'm wondering how much this life I mean, it is notorious within news circles that cameramen and editors who are foreign correspondents and work abroad so much that it's very difficult to keep relationships together. Do you think work played a part in that?

Jon Snow28:54

Again, you know, it'd be easy to blame it, wouldn't it? I mean, it it would get me off the hook. But but to be honest, um I I I she was very supportive and and a wonderful mother, so she enabled me to travel.

Presenter29:08

And are either of your daughters following in your footsteps? Are they interested in the world of intrepid journalism?

Jon Snow29:12

No, they don't they don't seem to be touching it with the barge pole. Uh no.

Presenter29:13

They don't

Presenter29:17

Righto, let's hear your next piece of music. What are we gonna hear?

Jon Snow29:21

Well this is um Mara Carlyle, who is a a remarkable singer of the now.

Jon Snow29:28

And what's also remarkable is that she has been a staff member at the New Horizon Youth Centre, which is the day center where I worked after I was sent down from university and where I'm still chair to this day. I had no idea that we had in our midst the most amazingly accomplished singer. And she's a lovely person and a friend, but just spellbinding in this.

Speaker 330:04

My heart

Presenter30:19

Loving soul.

Presenter30:24

That was Mara Carlyle and Bull Face in Provence. So you were married, John Snow, for the first time in March. Congratulations. How do you like being a husband?

Jon Snow30:34

It's a nice experience.

Presenter30:35

Is it?

Jon Snow30:35

Hmm.

Presenter30:36

What do you like about it?

Jon Snow30:38

Well, it it's

Jon Snow30:40

It's nice. I mean, were it not for the tabloid media, I'd go into more detail. But to me, in all conscience, you know, having been stitched up a good few times in my life, I don't think I'm going to feed them with any more.

Presenter30:45

But to be

Presenter30:51

Right, I've got you. And um you've scooped a number of Royal Television Society awards for reporting. You've twice won RTS Presenter of the Year, all very prestigious. I'm thinking your father couldn't accuse you any more of being a lazy dunderhead.

Jon Snow31:05

Dear old thing, just before he died in nineteen seventy seven in our village in Crofe Castle, he was walking along the street and he saw the local manager of the bus company.

Jon Snow31:15

And he said, Have you seen my boy?

Jon Snow31:17

And the poor startled man said, I'm sorry. My boy, on the television. The poor man sort of got on with his job. But I think therefore that indicated that in the last year of his life, w when I actually made it onto news at ten, um, he knew and was proud.

Presenter31:33

Did he did he ever tell you? Did he ever say that? And that's that's pretty.

Jon Snow31:36

He couldn't tell me, but you know, it was not the way he was, but I did sense it.

Presenter31:41

And what about your mother? Has she ever put a warm arm around your shoulder at any point and said to you well?

Jon Snow31:46

Well done, mate. Oh, um mummy was overpoweringly happy with me.

Presenter31:50

What's she?

Jon Snow31:51

You know, that that that um I was still musical and still speaking and um doing it for money.

Presenter31:57

Right. Uh there's one thing I worry about just before I send you to the island. I worry about you on the streets of London on your bike.

Jon Snow32:04

Hmm.

Presenter32:04

How many years have you been cycling?

Jon Snow32:06

It's such a liberating thing, you know. I all my life I've cycled I mean all my adult life. Every day I cycle. It gets me from A to B and it enables me to do the day I do. You get people shouting at you, bawling at you, and others, dispatch riders, coming up alongside and say, Jon Snow

Presenter32:23

Oh.

Presenter32:25

I imagine on this island, then, you're going to make a pretty good fist of it, aren't you? I don't think you'll be intimidated by the uh the poisonous snakes or the crashing waves.

Jon Snow32:33

I am not good with my own company.

Presenter32:35

Right.

Jon Snow32:35

Um, I'll miss people dreadfully. But I'm perfectly good at surviving. Yes. No, I could build a shack. I I can do anything. I'm extremely, you know, hands on. I don't have any problem with that at all. And I I think I could find things to eat and all that. But I would miss people desperately.

Presenter32:53

Tell me then about your final piece.

Jon Snow32:55

My final piece is an absolute beauty. It's it's completely irreverent, uh mass by Rossini, which has got syncopation and a real uplift. And again, it's something when I'm on my way to report. On come the headphones, up comes the curier from Rossini's Piti MS Solinelle.

Speaker 334:02

Jesus.

Presenter34:17

The Curier from Rossini's Petit Mess Solinelle, performed by the Michel Pique Mall Vocal Ensemble, led by Michel Pique Mall. So we come to the time then, John, where I'm going to give you the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare. What's your other book going to be?

Jon Snow34:32

My other book is Lincoln Team of Rivals by Doris Cairns Goodwin, and it is the book that Barack Obama took with the Bible with him into the White House. And the reason I choose it is it is the most uplifting book that I've read in the last

Jon Snow34:48

two decades. I mean absolutely sensational book about a period of utterly troubled American history in which a truly wonderful man prevailed by doing deals with people who hated him, people who were his rivals, and bringing them to love him, to work with him, and to resolve America's crisis.

Presenter35:07

We shall give you that book. And the luxury, then?

Jon Snow35:10

Well, I was very torn by the luxury because I'd really love to play the piano fabulously well and goodness knows all those hours on the island I could really get to it. But I'm afraid it has really got to be a set of watercolours and a forever amount of paper. Once you're trying to paint a picture, particularly if you paint landscapes, you get completely lost in it. Nothing else matters.

Presenter35:32

Okay, that's yours. And i if the waves were to crash to the shore and threaten to wash away the disks, which one would you be running to save?

Jon Snow35:39

I take the Rossini.

Presenter35:41

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

Jon Snow35:44

Thank you, Kirsty.

Presenter36:32

You've been listening to a download from the BBC. You'll find more information on the Radio Four website bbc.co. uk slash radio four.