When you hear somebody with a speech impediment, what goes through your head? Are you immediately linking it to something deeper in their personality?

I'm a pragmatist. I'm very practical. What I do is I look at the body. I look at the breath system particularly, and I start to try and diagnose where that blockage is. It mostly is in the breath. But you have to graft at it. I'm a great I'm a bit of a plodder. I'm a bit of a donkey. You have to work something out. But if somebody has a an appalling voice or speech habit, that builds up until it becomes very critical. And the interesting thing is, a lot of actors go into acting because they have those problems.

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Presenter
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.
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For more information about the programme, please visit bbc.co.uk/slash radio four.
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My castaway this week is the renowned voice coach Patsy Rodenberg.
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Her work at the National Theatre and the R S C has spanned decades, and her students include Judy Dench, Ian McKellen, Maggie Smith, and Daniel Day Lewis.
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A shy child with a speech impediment herself, she was dispatched to elocution lessons, only to be met by a disappointed teacher who said
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Oh dear, you will never speak. Well, she proved her wrong, and then some.
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And her work's not all with famous actors, businessmen, politicians, and even criminals have been on her client list too. She says Everyone comes on to the planet with a fantastic voice, but people lose it. You don't know how good a teacher you are until you teach people who know very little. So for you, Patsy Rodenberg, what does the voice tell you about someone?
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I suppose where they're blocked.
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If you think of a a baby's voice, this amazing instrument, and then life gets to you and our habits crowd in on us, and they crowd into the body and the breath. But the good news is that the natural wants to come through you.
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But I talk about the natural voice as opposed to the habitual. People will come in, you know, with their voice is like that and they say, This is my natural voice back then. I said, No, it's your habitual voice. You have a very free, open voice if you can let go of certain things.
Patsy Rodenburg
People
Patsy Rodenburg
Bye.
Presenter
And so that must start. I mean, if we think even about our own friends as children, or our kids' friends, people's voices seem to start to change very early, don't they? Very early, yes. Some people, of course.
Patsy Rodenburg
Uh
Speaker 3
Very early, yes.
Patsy Rodenburg
Uh
Presenter
don't have that because nobody's told them to shut up.
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It's as simple as that. I mean, it's more complex, but it is as simple as that. Um, when you hear somebody specifically with a speech impediment, what's going through your head then? Are you immediately linking that to something deeper in their personality? I'm a pragmatist. I'm very practical. What I do is I look at the body. I look at the breath system particularly, and I start to try and diagnose where that blockage is. It mostly is in the breath. But you have to graft at it. I'm a great
Presenter
I'm a bit of a plodder. I'm a bit of a donkey. You have to work something out. But if somebody has a an appalling voice or speech habit, that builds up until it becomes very critical. And the interesting thing is, a lot of actors go into acting because they have those problems.
Presenter
Because they are subconsciously drawn to fixing them? Yes, right. Um one of the things you have dealt with is stage fright. I mean it occurs to me that actors are right to be frightened. I mean it's a terrifying thing they're doing. Yes, and I think every performer goes through those moments. You have to stand sometimes in the wings with somebody and you have to center them and get them going. And if they take a breath they've got a chance.
Patsy Rodenburg
Mm-hmm.
Patsy Rodenburg
Yeah.
Presenter
If they don't, they won't get on. I've heard Dame Judy Dench say that the longer she does it, the more terrifying it gets. Is that a familiar pattern? I mean, that's.
Patsy Rodenburg
Uh
Speaker 4
Yeah, I mean
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Because actually you become more famous. I remember Judy saying to me, I just realized she said everyone's come to look at me.
Speaker 4
Uh
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That's a terrifying notion, really.
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Let's go to the music, then, Patsy Ruddenberg. Your first disc of the morning is what, and why have you chosen it?
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Marla?
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I've asked for the fourth movement of the fifth. I love Marla.
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I'm really self-educated in many ways because I I had wonderful parents, but there were no books really in the house and there was no music, so I've always just discovered my own things. And I discovered this before Death in Venice, so I was very angry when everyone else discovered it. But I remember going to a concert with a mentor of mine, Ronald Eyre, the great director, like a lot of great people, very difficult, but my goodness, he taught me a lot, and I think his wisdom stays with me, and every every day I think about him in some way.
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The fourth movement of Mahner's Fifth Symphony, played by the Berlin Philharmonic, conducted by Sir Simon Rattle. So, Patsy Rodenberg, never before has the spotlight shone so brightly on your profession. I'm thinking of the King's speech and all the attention that came with it. Was that something you delighted in, or did you think it was rather an overly simplistic interpretation? No, it's very good, isn't it? Because.
Patsy Rodenburg
No, it's very
Presenter
It tells people out there that maybe you can break through. I think so many people come to me and they think that they're trapped in this problem. A lot of the treatment that we saw in The King's Speech, Bearing In Mind, of course, it was a Hollywood depiction, but it was very physical. The treatment for speech impediment was very physical that he received. Is that accurate?
Patsy Rodenburg
But treatment.
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To a certain extent, it's very visceral and sensual, the the voice. It's a it's a big activity. You need oxygen, you need blood.
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To speak well.
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The great thing about actors is that they'll do anything for you. If you say to them, Lie on the floor, do that they'll do it. But of course if you work with a politician, you can't say lie on the floor. You have to find the way in. That is your job as a teacher to enable, to empower.
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And I suppose the physical voice I started with the physical voice. I taught in prisons when I was very young. I don't know how I got in there, but it was terrifying. And I had a a big
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awakening that I realized that people also lost their voices politically and psychologically and emotionally. When you are um teaching politicians then, do you have to have uh a degree of sympathy with what it is they want to say?
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Yes and, by the way, you can't teach anybody unless you care about them. That doesn't mean to say that you're stroky strokey. No teacher should want to be liked.
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It's like parenting. If you're going to make somebody move to a place that is difficult, you do it with hopefully a lot of compassion and love, but also you have to do this. So you have to take them on. Let's talk then about the prisoners that you have helped. Can you think of a moment when you've actually reached the breakthrough? When you think there is somebody who, when I walked into this room this morning with them, couldn't look me in the eye and was either unable to articulate or unwilling, and here we are now at this point. Absolutely, and it's often with Shakespeare. I did some work on Hamlet in a top security prison, and the guy playing Claudius was a murderer.
Patsy Rodenburg
Yeah.
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And he spoke, O my offence is rank, it smells to heaven.
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And he just broke.
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I worked with a brilliant man called Doctor Murray Cox at Broadmoor.
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And he used Shakespeare all the time to actually take people into another room of understanding themselves. Do you get a sort of collective sigh of despair, though, I wonder, when you walk into a you know, I don't know how you work in prisons, but if you know, if it's a room with a few people in it and you say, Well, well
Presenter
Try reading this, or here's a bit of Shakespeare. I mean, we know that levels of dyslexia in prisons is, you know, stratospherically high. There are a lot of people there who can't even read and write their own names. But they can make sounds, they can breathe, they can start.
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opening them up themselves up.
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We can't ask people to be sensitized to others unless they're sensitized to themselves.
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Time for another disc. Tell me about our next piece.
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Okay, Sandy Denny. Well?
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Goddess
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I saw her perform.
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I was about eighteen, maybe seventeen.
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I hung around.
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Fairport Convention.
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I also was working in a library. I had two years off before I went to college.
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And I was in this building with very talented people. There was a great singer there, a writer.
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A musician.
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And it was a very clear view that I got which were people who hadn't followed their heart.
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And I knew instinctively that getting into Central was a chance that I should not
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Ruins.
Speaker 3
Wait a minute
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Sandy Denny, and who knows where the time goes, you were blissfully transported during that. Oh goodness, what a voice, eh? So, Patsy Rodenberg, let's go back then. It is nineteen fifty three. You were born in the suburbs of London, it was, yes? I was born in Pimlico.
Patsy Rodenburg
BAF
Presenter
And then we moved out when I was about four. And you were the middle of three children. What are your earliest memories of life at home?
Patsy Rodenburg
Yeah.
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I think happy. I had my Nana living with us. She was a very important feature in my life. What was she like?
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She is working class, Northumberland, very bright woman, but at the age of twelve she was apprenticed.
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as a seamstress.
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and she used to sit in her rocking chair,
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with a cigarette. She was one of those smokers that managed to get the ash w was right out there, but she would never spill it.
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And she would sit in the rocking chair sewing, saying, I hate sewing.
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And she was in her 80s, and I used to think, Oh my god, you've been doing this for 70 years and you hate it.
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And the other thing about her she was a great story teller.
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She told me filthy stories that she never told my mother. And I used to work here's a picture. I used to work for Shared Experience, Wonderful Theatre Company. They had rehearsal rooms in the Soho Laundry.
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and one day I was going to teach there.
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And my mother said, Where are you going? I'm saying, Oh, the Soho Laundry. She said, Do you know your grandmother used to wash other people's clothes in that building?
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So I used to go there thinking, My goodness, I'm lucky The ghost of my grandmother scrubbing other people's knickers in that building. So my grandmother, huge influence. And your mother? My mother, gorgeous woman. Again, working class, very bright.
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She got into a very good school in London.
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But her father?
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who had been a professional soldier, Coldstream Guard, used to stand outside Buckingham Palace, couldn't afford the uniform.
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But very bright woman gentle woman, generous, sensitive, and what I love
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Still about her in my memory is that she never moaned.
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And your father had come to Britain from Holland, yeah what did he tell you about his homeland?
Patsy Rodenburg
And what did
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Well, I've got to know a bit now. I think the war. I mean, of course, if you go through
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Occupation?
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Terrible?
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He escaped that. He came to London to train at Sandhurst as an officer.
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Met my mother, very beautiful woman, fell in love,
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Gave up Holland?
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And he did talk to you about his experiences in the war then, did he? Because a lot of that generation simply refused bits and pieces.
Patsy Rodenburg
Not really.
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I'm very delighted that uh my son now talks to him about
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The V two rockets and the V ones. So he's getting a bit more information than I got. And your father's still alive, so he's eight eighty seven. Yes. You once said, um, girls are taught to be pleasing and not to be direct. Were you taught to be pleasing?
Patsy Rodenburg
Yeah.
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I think so, but I never was. My mother used to kick me under the table. I couldn't shut up.
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I never conceded. I never conceded. It's a very interesting subject, I think, w women and their voices. I mean, I you know, women, of course, are taught not to be loud and not to be not to pretty much.
Patsy Rodenburg
Not to be not to
Speaker 3
But they are also not.
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Right.
Speaker 3
Yeah.
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I had a scene with a friend of mine in LA recently, he's got two daughters, and when they went to bed I said, You're flirting with your daughters.
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You don't want to bring up young girls of six or seven.
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That the only way they can talk to a man is by flirting. And how receptive was the father to your observation? Well, I think he's very good now.
Patsy Rodenburg
What
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He takes a lot on the chin, but he does laugh.
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As long as I can make him laugh I can say whatever I want.
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Right. Time for some music, Patsy. Um our third disc of the day. Beethoven, seventh symphony. Now we had one of those do you remember those wooden stereo things? Oh, yes.
Patsy Rodenburg
Yeah.
Speaker 3
Oh yes.
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And I remember my father sending off for a box of Reader's Digest records, twelve lp's.
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And I went through them all. Oh, my God, it was fantastic.
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And I've asked for the last bit of the fourth movement because it occurred to me, and again, I was about twelve, I was listening to it, and I got a wonderful idea that the music stopped.
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But actually it went on.
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It finishes, but it goes on in you.
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The end of the final movement of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony in A major, performed by the London Classical Players, conducted by Roger Norrington. I mentioned in the introduction, Patsy Rodenberg, that as a child you had this speech impediment. What form did it take? Well, I I still have problems.
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producing certain sounds.
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But I I it it made me very shy.
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And
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It made me very interested in the process.
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And I have a real belief that we sometimes get excellent.
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at something that we're frightened about. And I was frightened about speaking. I still am. So you had what? You had a stutter or a burden? I had a slight slut stutter, and I couldn't say my R's. I still find that difficult.
Patsy Rodenburg
I had a slight
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And
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People laughed at me.
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People openly laughed at you, you perceived it. I was teased. I mean, teasing is a great part of.
Patsy Rodenburg
Yeah.
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You have to deal with that in life, but it's not very pleasant. I don't allow
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My students to tease, you have to as a teacher.
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Keep a very safe place so people can learn.
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Fearlessly.
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It sounds very different from the elocution lessons that you yourself were given. Was that all the sort of the tip of the tongue between the lips? Yes.
Patsy Rodenburg
Well yeah.
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Mocking.
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Oh, my dear, you won't be able to do this, will you? Cruelty doesn't work. So, what was your response as a child when you were in the middle of the morning?
Speaker 4
No, I hated it.
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I asked again and again not to have to go. So did you keep going to the elocution lessons or did you manage to get into the list? Well, I went into drama lessons. I did other things really.
Patsy Rodenburg
Well I've went to draw
Presenter
And then I went to the Central School of Speech and Drama. Just just before that, though, you were sent to it sounds like quite a quite a rather posh girls' school, wasn't it? No, it was chaos of an education. As my father said to me later, Well, I didn't think a girl needed a good education. Did he? Yes. It was a private school.
Patsy Rodenburg
Did you
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I had really blue stockinged women. They wouldn't be allowed to teach today.
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But they were very inspirational. It was chaos on one level. I had a teacher who found me reading Reader's Digest. She took it away from me, she tore it up, and she said, Your brain is too good for that. That is for lazy businessmen.
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And I thought, wow.
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And of course you can't teach like that, but it sometimes you need a shock. And what about parenting, then? It's you're uh mother to a young son. I mean, some people either, I think, tend to react against they were the way they were parented or can't help themselves doing it the same way. Oh, it's a battle, isn't it?
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Is it for you?
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Well, I think
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I care that he's a very bright young boy and I don't want him to just go into the culture of watching television and doing all that stuff, but it's very easy to do all that. You have that battle all the time.
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But a brain has to be nurtured. You have to have stimulation. So I hope I'm stimulating him.
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Some more music. What are we going to hear?
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We're going to hear
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Bach's violin concerto in E major.
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Talking about Michael, he was eighteen months.
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We I was up with him at about five thirty in the morning.
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Making myself a cup of tea, and I thought I'd just put on some music, and I put this piece of music on.
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and I heard him roar with laughter.
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Joy
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And I looked at him. I thought, What is not what is he laughing at? So I turned the music off, and he looked at me.
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Focused? I thought, Oh, my God, he's laughing
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At the music, the pure joy of the music. So it's this is from Michael.
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Andrew Manzey playing parts of the opening of Bach's violin concerto in E major with the Academy of Ancient Music. You mentioned during that, Patsy Rudenberg, that your son, who is eight, is learning to play the violin. That's a brave mother who encourages her child to play the violin. He asked, did he? He wanted to.
Patsy Rodenburg
You
Presenter
Right, so he has he's artistic and musical. He's in ballet companies and he's in theatre companies, so he'll probably be a banker.
Patsy Rodenburg
Yeah.
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Do you worry do you worry about the idea that that your child might pursue a life in the theatre or in the arts? I mean, you n you know from the insight what a hard life it is.
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Look, as long as he follows his dream.
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This is very hard, and I don't really want him to say it, but I will say it for myself. I think you have to be of use.
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I want to die in harness because I don't want to be a burden. I think you should be offering. Even if somebody has to carry me, but and I can tell them a f few good stories, that will probably be enough. And so is that why, because as you say, you went to drama school, but it was quickly clear to you, was it, that the teaching was of much more importance than the acting? Yes, absolutely. I felt I could be an excellent teacher.
Patsy Rodenburg
More importance than the acting.
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And I thought it was useful. At what age?
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twenty.
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You sound like a very mature twenty-year-old at that time. I think I was probably. I s I I think I've always thought things very deeply.
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didn't know that until quite recently, that it's not what everybody does. I don't think I was very popular. I I'm sure that I was a difficult student to be with because I I wanted to do the work.
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I'm not a gossiper.
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I'm not very good at chit-chat.
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I'm working with very famous people and they say, Tell us the gossip and I say, Well, I don't know any gossip but and why would I tell you any gossip? Because if you work with somebody you get a very strong relationship, so you wouldn't let
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Anything out of the back?
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You said a moment ago that you've only learned very recently the these things o about yourself, that you know you were probably a very m mature twenty year old. W what what caused you to realize that?
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Well, I think
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Michael coming into the world.
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This joy, I call him boy of boys, joy of joys, you know, he he came into my life.
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I didn't think I was going to
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Have a child. When I was married I lost a child.
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So I didn't think I was going to have this in my life, and suddenly it's it's there. But you start to remember your own childhood.
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As he goes through things, you you go through things with him. And here's the interesting thing, of course, because um I will talk to and we all meet many uh men who have children when they're older than people normally have children. We don't often meet women who are in that situation. Do you actually feel that it is
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A richer, more useful and interesting experience because you have your son now.
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Maybe. I don't know that.
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For sure. I know that I was married. I was in a very difficult marriage and if I'd had the child that I'd lost, it would have been very bad for the child and for me. So in a way you have to see the positive.
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Time for some music. What's next?
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Daniel Evans, ex-student of mine.
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doing finishing the hat from Sunday in the Park with George.
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He's a wonderful actor, a wonderful student. He's running Sheffield Theatre at the moment.
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And I saw him do it on Broadway, and I was so proud of him because
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He stuck to the truth. You see, if you get in front of certain audiences, it can cheapen your acting. You could think, Oh, I can get a laugh out of this. And he stayed on the text, on the work, and I went out for supper with him afterwards, and I said, Well, you held on.
Speaker 4
Dizzy from the hunt.
Speaker 4
Coming from the hat.
Speaker 4
Studying the hat.
Speaker 4
Entering the world of the hat.
Speaker 4
Reaching through the world of the hat like a window.
Speaker 4
To this one from that.
Speaker 4
Study the face. Stepping back to look at her f
Presenter
Daniel Evans and finishing the hat from the London cast recording of Sometimes Sunday in the Park with George. So, Patsy Rodenberg, you mentioned a moment ago this difficult marriage. You were at the Central School of Speech and Drama and you got married to a teacher. He was twenty-five years older than myself. Right. He was very charming, very good-looking.
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uh witty he introduced me to many people.
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Alan Bennett I met through him when I was young. Ronald Eyre.
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I used to go home, and Ava Gardiner was in the apartment, so I had a sort of interesting.
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Entrance into that world. The problem, he was he was a drinker, he was an alcoholic.
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And we all know, if you live with a drinker, at at best it's boring.
Patsy Rodenburg
Yeah.
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And then it's savage and
Patsy Rodenburg
Yeah.
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I walked out, and it took me probably ten years to get over it.
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Do you remember the time when you had bank managers that would sit and have lunch with you?
Patsy Rodenburg
Oh yeah.
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And I remember this bank manager saying, I think you've got to go out and work very hard, you've got a lot of debts.
Patsy Rodenburg
Uh
Presenter
So I did. He made me laugh a great deal. So that's the problem. I think I'd read too much Bronte.
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I'd been reading The Brontys a great deal when I'd met him, and I thought
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Oh, somebody difficult, but love will change them. Yes. And of course it doesn't. Was there a moment when you realised that he wouldn't change for you? Devastating.
Speaker 4
Devastate
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Devastating because of course you can't there isn't a switch in you that goes, Oh, I've just switched off love.
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You still love somebody, but it was destroying me, and at the time people couldn't believe I I could leave him. They felt I should just carry on.
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But it was an act of survival. I just walked out. And were you uh were you drinking too? Did you end up trying? I did drink quite a bit. Um I don't think it was ever critical.
Presenter
And to be with somebody who's that much older than you and is introducing you to, I mean, the superstars of the day, say Ava Gardner was in your flat, is it true?
Patsy Rodenburg
Big
Presenter
And was she watering the plants with gin? Is that or vodka or something?
Patsy Rodenburg
Or vodka or something.
Presenter
I think they were laughing.
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Uh you you lost uh a baby and and you said that in a way, looking back on it, to have brought a child into that atmosphere would have terrible
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It was such a terrible time of my life.
Patsy Rodenburg
Yeah.
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Yes. If I say to you that you go through these things and later I would look at my diary and I would
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I taught Daniel Day Lewis in that time and I'd forgotten that, because you're just trying to do that basic thing of get up every morning.
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Oh, I've got into the shower. That's good. Yes, surviving. Surviving.
Patsy Rodenburg
Hmm.
Presenter
and to bring a child into that world would have been disastrous for the child as well.
Presenter
Let's have some music then. We're on um the sixth Sebalius the violin concerto. So it just so happened that Nadja Salerno Sonnenberg, who's a friend, was over. She's a wonderful American violinist, and she was being very funny about
Patsy Rodenburg
For bailie
Presenter
When you hear the intro as a violinist to this, Donda Ronda Rom, she said there's not a violinist in the world that doesn't break out in a sweat because it's so difficult. And I love that image because that's what I deal with all through my life. People, as soon as the beginner's core goes out, you've got to go on stage. There's no going back. But here she is playing passionate, wonderful violinist Sebelius.
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Part of the third movement of Sebalius' Violin Concerto, played by your friend Nadja Salerno-Sunnenberg, with the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas. Uh, Patsy Rodenberg, we should also reel off a few more names. I don't know if you get tired with this, but I'm sure other people won't. Uh, Daniel Craig, Orlando Bloom, Joseph Fiennes, and so on and so on, and so on. You work with a lot of stars a lot of the time. Um, does it ever overwhelm you to stand in a room with the greats? No, no. I respect people, but I can't be frightened of them.
Presenter
How can you? You can't teach people if you're frightened of them. Are they a little bit frightened of you? I hope not. Some people say they are, but I'm not at all frightening. I have tremendous respect for young people today. I think they get a bad press. But a lot of them have been trained
Patsy Rodenburg
I will
Patsy Rodenburg
Oh, I hope not.
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To think that celebrity is easy?
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So they get very mortified when I say, Well, you have to work harder.
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So you talk about Michael. If he shows me a picture.
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I'll say that's lovely. That bit is really good, but a bit of work is needed down here. But that that might be the hard thing. But that's rather unfashionable these days. We're meant to we're meant to smother them in love, aren't we? Well, it is love.
Patsy Rodenburg
Bring off.
Presenter
I mean, I absolutely unconditionally love my students. They don't know it necessarily all the time. But you're going to be disliked if you ask somebody.
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To go further. It's just like a child. If if Michael is at a restaurant and he's misbehaving, and he's spoiling the evening for everyone else, he goes home.
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and he's very angry in the taxi.
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But that's fine.
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You have to do honour there.
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Talent, and you have to ask them to honour their own talent. I can hear cheers going up.
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Near the radios around Britain, as you say, all the time.
Speaker 4
Uh
Patsy Rodenburg
Uh
Presenter
It is fascinating to talk to you about work, but I really want to talk to you about love, because you you you did find love. You've you've mentioned Michael, who was uh is your son. He was born in two thousand and three. Um tell me about the big love of your life. Antonia Franceschi, who is a brilliant
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Ballet dancer, now a choreographer.
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I was at a party in New York.
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She was with her husband.
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And we talked for maybe three hours.
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and the next thing I know is that she arrives in London.
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To find me.
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Literally that was the next thing that happened.
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A letter?
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and then she arrived in London.
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Good God. And she's exquisite and beautiful. She is the most amazing dancer. I tell you, I respect everything about her. She did the movie Fame.
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She then got offered.
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uh Hollywood deal, millions and millions of dollars, but at the same time Balanchine wanted her.
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For New York City Ballet.
Presenter
And she chose the genius as opposed to the money.
Presenter
And so she was clearly captivated by you a letter and a a journey across the Atlantic. But what did you think of Antonia the first time you met her?
Presenter
Well, I'm not a predator.
Presenter
Um
Presenter
Obviously I like men and women. That's what I found out. But did you find that out only with her? No, I'd had a few experiences before, but it when I looked at her, she's not in my league, really. She was she's so beautiful. But there was, I do remember, a tremendous connection of spirit.
Presenter
And so when she came to seek you out in London, did she sort of land on your front doorstep? Well, she she always laughs because she she met me at the stage door of the National. I came out of the stage door and she was there.
Patsy Rodenburg
Yes.
Presenter
Can you will you tell me what you said? What what what
Presenter
Yes, I remember of course very vividly. We went and we looked at the Thames.
Presenter
And I said, What are we going to do about this? and she said, Well, well, let's see.
Presenter
Let's have some music.
Presenter
Well, we're going to
Presenter
Kathleen Ferrier.
Presenter
And again I heard on the radio again when I was about ten and
Presenter
I never thought I'd heard a voice like that, and I said to my mother, Can we hear that? and sh we went and we got it, and it was full of folk songs, and a lot of the folk songs my grandmother would sing.
Presenter
In a tobacco-saturated voice. And this my mother used to sing, it's the keel row.
Presenter
And my mother used to skip around the house to this. She used to dance.
Speaker 3
As I came through Sandgate through Sandgate through Sandgate, As I came through Sandgate, I heard the lassie sing As I came through Sandgate through Sandgate through Sandgate As I came through Sandgate I heard the lassie sing We
Patsy Rodenburg
Take
Speaker 3
The hero, the hero, we'll be the hero, the poly Latin. We'll be the hero, the hero, the hero. We'll be the killer.
Presenter
That was Kathleen Ferrier and the Keel Row. You you spoke right back at the beginning, Patsy Rudenberg, about this very strong bond, very important relationship you had with your grandmother, and you've referred to Michael, your son, talking to your father about his early experiences.
Patsy Rodenburg
Yeah.
Presenter
That must be an interesting thing to see, then. Wonderful. Yes. It's wonderful. And I love the idea.
Patsy Rodenburg
That's wonderful, yes.
Presenter
That
Presenter
He is speaking to somebody who went through the Second World War. And what does grandpa make of your relationship and the he adores both Michael and Antonia. Of course he just loves beautiful women. And what I love about my father is that he's a very social animal.
Presenter
If you point him in the right direction in a party, he will wag his tail. He's very happy in that way. It must be a great relief for him to see you happy, because surely I mean marrying somebody who was twenty five years older than you, and then being in a very tumultuous relationship, must have been difficult for your parents to bear.
Patsy Rodenburg
Yeah, and then
Presenter
Yes, but of course they never spoke about it. They just
Presenter
Well, that's how people operate it. They just
Presenter
You have to get on with something.
Presenter
Do you think you'll have more children?
Presenter
No.
Presenter
So Michael's going to get all the love. He's going to get so much love. He has to we have to watch that he's not spoilt.
Patsy Rodenburg
To get
Patsy Rodenburg
Yes
Presenter
I don't think he will be, judging by your appearance and technique. Um it seems almost unbearably cruel, but I'm going to cast you away, away from Michael, away from Antonia. How how on earth will you cope?
Patsy Rodenburg
Yeah.
Presenter
We'll have to cope.
Presenter
I think I would spend a lot of time meditating and thinking and in.
Presenter
Contemplation?
Presenter
as a spiritual side that I would nurture.
Presenter
It it's it's unbearable, but there's a lot of unbearable things in life.
Presenter
I hope you leave a very positive legacy.
Presenter
In teaching. That's what you're there for.
Presenter
Let's have your final piece then.
Presenter
Bach
Presenter
Cello, sweet.
Presenter
Michael was born to this music.
Presenter
So his cry was counterpoint to Bach. Antonia choreographed to a a piece to this and danced it. So those two memories will just come will mingle together.
Patsy Rodenburg
Yeah.
Presenter
JACLEN DEPREE playing the opening of the prelude to Bach's cello suite No. One in G So, Patsy, here we are with the books, the Bible, the complete works of Shakspere, and what else?
Presenter
Well, I've gone for the biggest anthology of poetry you can get me. Right, we shall find that and we shall give it to you. And the luxury, of course. I'm not allowed my trusty Swiss army knife, am I? No. So a cup of tea. Builder's tea.
Presenter
With a mug. An endless supply. Yes. Would you like milk with that? Yes. Right, it's yours. And if you had to choose just one of these eight discs, which one disc would you pick? Well.
Speaker 3
Yeah. Yeah.
Patsy Rodenburg
Yeah.
Speaker 3
Yeah.
Patsy Rodenburg
Yeah.
Speaker 3
Yeah.
Patsy Rodenburg
Uh
Presenter
The laughter
Presenter
In um the Bach, the violin concerto, the laughter, that it would bring back laughter. It's yours. Patsy Rogenberg, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs. Thank you.
Presenter
You've been listening to a download from the BBC.
Presenter
You'll find more information on the Radio 4 website: bbc.co.uk slash Radio4.