Charles Jencks

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.

Speaker 30:22

Uh

Presenter0:35

My castaway this week is the architect and writer Charles Jenks. In the seventies, he called Time on Modernism, describing it as dogmatic and soul-crushing. He plotted its demise to the minute. A cultural critic, much of his own work has been in landscapes, forming sweeping, sculptured hills and double helixes in soil and grass, inspired by the structure of DNA and set amid gardens influenced by the forms of the universe. And, if that all sounds a bit esoteric, he's best known as one of the principal forces behind Maggie's centres, inspired by his late wife. These are practical, beautiful buildings designed by world-class architects, where anyone affected by cancer can find support and help. And you say, Charles Jenks, that architecture is the ultimate public art. Explain that to me.

Charles Jencks1:25

Well, you have to see architecture all the time if you're in the city. Most people look at their feet, but actually it's forced on you. And architects have to decide what they're going to symbolize and bring to the consciousness. Therefore, they have to figure out what's important, what to express. And for me, it's not only nature, but the larger picture of the universe.

Presenter1:47

Do you actually think it really is that important, the sort of buildings we find ourselves in? What what effect do you think it has upon as if they are bad buildings that are badly designed?

Charles Jencks1:55

Bad buildings do have a negative effect on cultures that are impoverished, prisoners, for instance, or hospitals. So the negative case is easy to prove for certain kinds of building types. The positive case is much more difficult. It's a framer. It's like a picture frame, the building. And if it's not working well, then it has a depressive effect.

Presenter2:16

Architecture, like most other disciplines, is highly competitive. We see right now, if we if we walk through our capital city, London, the Shard beginning this enormous building, about three hundred metres high, I think it is going to be the tallest building in Europe. We see it change the skyline and change the relationship of all the buildings around it. What do you think of that sort of competitive architecture of people who are driven to build the the tallest and the biggest?

Charles Jencks2:38

Well, you're quite right that today particularly architects are competing over the iconic building. I prefer the Gherkin as a building. I mean, it's a skyscraper. It's really world class. The Schard is the biggest in Europe, but not as great.

Presenter2:54

And you prefer the Gherkin Waika because it's not so thrusting, it's not quite as as sort of challenging and and maybe um aggressive as the shard is.

Charles Jencks3:02

It's beautiful at many scales. The shard is rather crude by comparison. So it's not that the aggression in fact, they're both aggressive. All skyscrapers are aggressive.

Presenter3:12

Yeah, R um suddenly comes to the forefront of my mind that skyscrapers probably are mostly designed by male architects, am I right?

Charles Jencks3:20

Yes, absolutely. Well, there there are very few female architects who get the chance. Um Zaha Hadid is the only one really who gets a chance to do a large building and her things of course undulate. So you're you're right to see a sexual connection. My my view is that the best architects are hermaphrodites. They have female and male characteristics.

Presenter3:39

That's a whole other programme. And and so this sort of arms race with tall buildings then, you know, we see it, you know, in Paris there's going to be a taller one soon, and then in Moscow I think again a a taller one. Does it tell us something about the human race that there is always this need to somehow state their case, to reach further, to be seen, to to achieve something?

Charles Jencks3:58

I think there is an arms race. And architects are in this double bind. They're forced to perform and to compete to perform. And therefore, they go out way out on the limb and come up with ridiculous one liners that people hate. So they're more failures as tall buildings than they're successes.

Presenter4:16

How much ego do you think is bound up in architecture?

Charles Jencks4:20

By necessity, a great deal. It's a bit like the art world today with Damien Hearst. You know, you can't if you really want to make it big, your ego has to be powerful.

Presenter4:30

And timering, maybe.

Charles Jencks4:31

Thing, Maple.

Charles Jencks4:32

And towering, yes.

Presenter4:34

At that point, let's have some music then, Charles Jenks. Your first track today, what is it, and why have you chosen it?

Charles Jencks4:39

It's Harley Simon's You're So Vain. I've chosen it because, of course, as architects are so vain, and male architects particularly, it symbolizes that me generation of the 60s, where I come from, and the architectural profession. And it's sung beautifully by Carly.

Speaker 34:59

Me several years ago when I was still quite tiny.

Speaker 35:06

When you said that we made such a pretty pair And that you would never leave But you gave away the things you loved And one of them was me I had some dreams There were clouds in my coffee Clouds in my coffee

Presenter5:34

That was Carly Simon, and you are so vain. So let's talk for a moment, Charles Jenks, about your own house. I read one article that described it saying that you entered through a well, maybe it's a door, maybe it's not a door, you call it a cosmic oval. What's that?

Charles Jencks5:49

It's an oval space which has about twelve doors on it, and they form an oval tilted towards absolute south, and each door has a theme of the universe written on it. So it sets the themes of the h of the cosmic house.

Presenter6:04

The door that you come in through to reach the cosmic oval, is it right? It's got two handles?

Charles Jencks6:10

Yes, indeed. Um I all my doors have two handles. Uh if you look at the human body, it's it's symmetrical. And if you look at a door, you and you put two handles in a symmetrical place and you get used to it, then you look at all other doors as deprived with only one handle.

Presenter6:30

I mean, obviously, you know which handle to use, but a stranger in your house would just be in a perpetual state of confusion.

Charles Jencks6:32

Yeah.

Charles Jencks6:36

Um you get to know qu pretty quickly and the handles that are used usually get more polished in if they're brass, you know. But you're quite right, I often have to show people where the bathroom door is.

Presenter6:47

And once you get into the bathroom, now we're on the subject. The loo has two flushes, is that right?

Charles Jencks6:52

That's right. And uh above the loo uh is our series of pictures, um postcards, and they tell you which one to flush, but there's a finger pointing to the the one that you should flush.

Presenter7:03

Now, I wonder I I've I haven't seen pictures, I've I've only read descriptions of your home, but I I'm I'm thinking, I mean, is it very, very plain and simple? Is it sort of monastic and John Pawson like? Do do we are there any knick knacks around?

Charles Jencks7:18

Well, you could say that I'm not a minimalist and so, yes, it is a maximalist house, not a minimalist house. But there are moments in it where it is very simple. My wife, my late wife Maggie, kept saying, Well, one room should always be with nothing in it, and that was her office, as it turned out. She said, Symbolism stops at my door. And I agreed with her that, you know, you can over design.

Presenter7:45

Symbolism stops at my door. What a wonderful phrase. Um I know one architect whose wife spent twelve years trying to convince him to get a comfy sofa. I mean, above all else, is it the aesthetic? Would I just be seeing a very white plain space with nothing around, no sort of china or ornaments, or family photographs?

Charles Jencks8:03

Well, yes, in the stairway you would. It's it is, you know, uh highly abstract and without any ornament at all except this this structure is a solar staircase with fifty-two steps and each step has seven parts. But it functions extremely well. And in there's a case where it is all resolved. That's what you hope for. If you go into the kitchen, on the other hand, there's a lot of ornamented surfaces with because it symbolizes the summer, Indian summer, that functions.

Presenter8:32

Let's have some more music, Charles. Uh we're on your second piece of the morning. Tell me a little bit about this. Why have you chosen it, and what is it?

Charles Jencks8:39

Well, it's Mozart, of course, uh my favorite composer.

Charles Jencks8:43

And it's a duet from Cosy von Tutti, which has the female and the male voice in Antiphon. It's a wonderful dialogue, if you like, of a passionate man and a resisting, virtuous woman. And his passion slowly breaks down her virtue. And it's so moving. I heard it a lot with Maggie and today with Louisia, my wife. It's very postmodern, actually, if you think of it, because postmodernism is about multiple voices and each one answering the other. It's about dialogue.

Speaker 39:18

O de tour gour.

Speaker 39:34

Eskina Laomimor.

Speaker 39:59

Yeah.

Presenter10:20

Rennie Fleming and Frank Lopardo singing the duet in a very short time from Cosi Fantuti by Mozart, with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe conducted by Sir George Schulte. So let's take a little trip back, Charles Jenks. You were born at the end of the thirties. You grew up in Connecticut. What are your early memories?

Charles Jencks10:38

My earliest memory is of Westport, Connecticut as a two-year-old, three-year-old, playing in the s in the living room with my father's two grand pianos there.

Charles Jencks10:49

I would always hear my father's music. He was a composer and a pianist. And he was independently wealthy, so he didn't have to work. When I was uh born he was he had retired from playing publicly, more or less, and started composing, so I must have heard his music.

Charles Jencks11:07

a a lot, um, up to the age of twelve when I went away to school.

Presenter11:11

You say, um, independently wealthy. Where had the family m money originally come from?

Charles Jencks11:16

It went back way back, but in the nineteenth century one of our ancestors, Francis Haynes Jenks, invented the safety deposit box, and that came into its own in the eighteen fifties and a lot of money with it.

Presenter11:30

And your mother was a painter, she was an artist too.

Charles Jencks11:33

She painted. She was brought up as a scientist. Her father was a famous biologist and statistician. For instance, in the twenties, smoking, he discovered that smoking gives you cancer and published these results, gave up smoking himself. He showed, and this is prohibition, he showed that if you have one drink a day, it can be actually good for you. And of course, the temperance societies in America wrote attacks on him. But he stood his own, and he was a very strong-minded man.

Presenter12:04

Did he distil his own during Prohibition?

Charles Jencks12:06

Yes, he was a great friend of H. L. Mecken, and they both had stills in the base of their house. And my mother described when she was a young girl walking home from school, and she could smell her house from three blocks away and she would be very embarrassed and take a route on her own. He he he gave me whiskey apparently uh at at one year's he he was a very, you know, as I say, strong willed man.

Presenter12:27

What a little nip of it in the milk, was it? A little nip. Yes. Old Scottish tradition as well, I can tell you. Um and so your older sister grew up to be a sculptor. As we know, your life has been devoted to architecture. Do you think that you were

Charles Jencks12:28

A little nip.

Presenter12:38

Just really imb imbibing the creative spirit that your your parents uh made in in your home life.

Charles Jencks12:45

Yes, absolutely. I think that uh my whole background on Cape Cod, where I spent the summers, was among artists, um great artist colony.

Charles Jencks12:54

But I suppose my uncle was an architect, so and my great uncle I was named after was a a great architect and landscape architect. So I was over determined to end up in architecture.

Presenter13:03

And can you paint me a picture? I'm thinking that Cape Cod in the the late thirties and through the forties and fifties must have been as close to idyllic as as life really gets. Tell me about your summers there.

Charles Jencks13:14

You know, in America, you have three months plus in vacation time. So.

Charles Jencks13:19

It's a kind of violent opposition which I think is built into American life between creative play in the summers and uh hard reality in the winters.

Presenter13:28

Let's have some more music, Charles. We're on your third choice of the morning. T tell me about this.

Charles Jencks13:34

Well, this is uh a work of my father's composed during the war, Second World War, when one of his friends had been killed.

Charles Jencks13:40

It's a very sombre piece, but it shows his uh kind of music. It's piano music and it's uh atonal, it's modernist, he was a very strong modernist.

Presenter14:43

Marcia Michulac playing part of the third movement of sonata number two for piano, written by your father, Gardner Jenks. So when you were twelve then, you were sent away to boarding school. I mean, that's more unusual in America than it is in in sort of parts of English society, certainly, but that had always been the expectation.

Charles Jencks15:02

No, actually it it was a last moment decision of my mother, I think, to send me off. And I went to a place called Brooks School. I didn't like it. At that time I was the the height I am now, which is six, two and a half. And I walked in the school and I was met by a prefect who took an instant dislike to me and and uh pummeled me, beat me up. That was my welcome to Brooks. I don't know what I had done wrong except grow too quickly. You know, they said the weed grows faster than the oak. That was their comment to me. But I turned around and and ended up enjoying it a great deal.

Presenter15:37

And what do you think your parents' expectations for you were? You know, you say the family was independently wealthy, your your parents were both creative spirits, and yet they did end up choosing, you know, quite a conventional school to send you to. What did they want you to do?

Charles Jencks15:50

That's a v interesting question. I don't think they had a scenario for me, and nor do I have for my children. I think they had light touch regulation. So they didn't try to do more than give me opportunities and encourage me.

Presenter16:06

So you studied at Harvard. First it was English, then it was architecture. Then in 1965 you came to London. What were your first impressions?

Charles Jencks16:15

I came in 1964, but in 1965 I came back with a Fulbright scholarship. The Beatles had just taken over British culture, in a sense. In the 60s was in full swing. There was a terrific shift. For instance, I was at the Architectural Association. When I walked in in 1964, it was a gentleman's club and everybody wore a tie. But when I came back in 1965, the gentlemen had all left and people were tieless. It was the effect of the youth culture of the 60s. So it wasn't the England I had expected, but I enjoyed London terrifically, and I've stayed ever since.

Presenter16:51

So more music then, Charles Jenks. Um the fourth of your choices today.

Charles Jencks16:56

Well, this is a piece that my father played to me after he could see that I wasn't loving modern his atonal music. So he used to play me various things, but this one, The Great Gates of Kiev, by Muzorski, he would play with great brio, and it's very dramatic, very pictorial.

Charles Jencks17:16

And martial music. So it it moved me. And he always would play it when when I was in a bad mood. So he would use music for the emotions. That was his theory, you know.

Presenter18:13

The Great Gates of Kiev, from Pictures at an Exhibition by Mazorsky, performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by John Pritchard. So, Charles Jenks, in 1976 then, you wrote a book that became very influential. It was called The The Language of Postmodern Architecture, and in it, rather intriguingly, you put a date on the death of modernism. You were very precise. You said Modernism died on July 15th, 1972, at 3:32. How on earth did you come to that conclusion?

Charles Jencks18:42

That was the shot heard round the world or seen on television. It was the blowing up of a modernist housing estate in St. Louis called Pruitt Argo. People have to live in mass housing, the poor do, and they deserve to have their own tastes and way of life incorporated by the architect. Photographs and movies of it blowing up were seen around the world, and I saw this as the death of modernism, which happened in architecture in a way that didn't happen, let's say, in the other arts, let's say music.

Charles Jencks19:16

I think architecture has to be popular. Postmodernism is having it both ways and designing every building twice, once for the public and once for yourself. It's politically wrong to do less.

Presenter19:27

But you'll be aware that when it comes to most public housing these days, what what most people want, and indeed what there has been a return to in many instances, are fairly traditional houses with a front door and a back door and a bit of garden and probably even a fence separating you from your neighbours. Now that can't be very stimulating to somebody like you.

Charles Jencks19:47

Yes, but uh you shouldn't try to uh make other people, especially the poor, live in your art. The artistry and the invention are less important than um the codes of the inhabitants. So it depends on the building type, but I think museums by all means, uh skyscrapers, uh you know, for the shard, you can have much more individual aesthetic expression.

Presenter20:11

I'm quite surprised, really, to hear you say this, Charles Jenks. I didn't have you up as a sort of flag waver for Poundbury, the the the Prince of Wales little housing development. Are you, surely? Surely not.

Charles Jencks20:21

No, no, but I don't think that's eclectic. That's kind of still born revivalism. You know, I I applaud the Prince's um programme of having

Charles Jencks20:31

A difference for housing and for towns. So I think it's a great idea, Poundbury. But the way it's been realized is a kind of mawkish cliché of symbols.

Presenter20:43

Let's have some music, Charles. What's next? We're on your um fifth disc.

Charles Jencks20:47

For me the voice.

Charles Jencks20:50

is very musical and poetry. So I can think of nothing more poetic and musical than Hamlet. When I came to Britain I saw Richard Burton perform in it, and Burton's Hamlet is incredible. His voice was so strong and dramatic. It's really a little bit over the top, but I think it's pure music.

Speaker 421:12

Hold, hold my heart. Anew, my sins grow not instant old, but bear me stiffly up. Remember thee! Aye, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat in this distracted globe. Remember thee! Yea, from the table of my memory, I wipe away all trivial fond records, all sores of books, all forms, all pleasures past that youth and observation copied there, and thy commandment, all alone, shall live within the book and volume of my brain, unmixed with baser matter, yes, by heaven.

Presenter21:45

Richard Burton, in part of the ghost sequence of Hamlet, in John Gilgood's production from nineteen sixty four. So you were teaching at the Architectural Association, Charles Jenks, and one of your students was Maggie Keswick. What was striking about her?

Charles Jencks22:00

Maggie had a terrific facility to draw, and she had started designing clothes. She ran a boutique called Anikat, which is very popular in the 60s. And she came into architecture hoping to expand her horizons. She was trying to do something more serious. We went out and looked at a lot of different architecture, and I was her teacher. So through the discussions with her, I could see a different way of looking at architecture. I could see how much more complex it was than the way I'd been taught.

Presenter22:36

And so your first marriage ended. You married Maggie. And and is it right that it was she who first sparked your interest in landscape architecture?

Charles Jencks22:44

In a way, yes, she did. She was uh very involved in Chinese gardens and and started writing a book on it, and I helped her write that. So her interest in Chinese gardens and my interest in postmodernism led to our working together, and we collaborated and we became a very close team.

Presenter23:02

And one of the most personal projects that you collaborated on was you must have had a very understanding mother-in-law because you decided with Maggie to take over your mother-in-law's garden and really abandon the British tradition of romantic gardening. You know, Capability Brown would have been spinning in his grave, I expect, if he'd seen what you came up with. It was it was lots of complex structures. I I mentioned in the introduction these double helixes and these DNA sequencing patterns and so on. Can you describe it briefly to me what you did with the garden?

Charles Jencks23:30

Well, we decided uh to use a theme of the universe as a background. And first of all, we designed these waving curves called soliton waves, which are unique kind of wave. Um and then she got cancer, so she had to drop out of the design. But uh we did design together the lakes and the mounds. And the mounds I did a double helical mound.

Charles Jencks23:54

and a series of other landforms. That's where I started landform design.

Presenter23:58

Um you had two teenage children then at the time and of course there's nothing to anchor you more in reality than than teenagers who are powering their own way through life with all their demands. How how did you as a family manage the teenage years along with uh your late wife's illness?

Charles Jencks24:14

Well, that was a big problem for b for us both. And Maggie decided to say nothing about her the importance of her condition that was too explicit unless the children asked the question. That was her philosophy. When they're ready to ask, then I'll tell them anything they want to know. And we stayed with that. And I think there's never a right way to do it. But it was a really hard time for her, and for me, too.

Presenter24:46

Let's have some more music then. What are we going to hear now?

Charles Jencks24:48

Well

Charles Jencks24:49

Well here this composition done by an American, named after our Garden of Cosmic Speculation. It's a piece which does in music what I'm trying to do in landscape, which is to take ideas and translate them into another form. So it's very pictorial. A soliton wave is what I've chosen. And the waves that go through the garden are picked out by the the music.

Presenter26:20

Soliton Waves from the Garden of Cosmic Speculation by Michael Gandalfi, performed by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and conducted by Robert Spano, and that piece of music was inspired by the garden that you designed, Charles Jenks. Your late wife, Maggie, then, she died in 1995, and her significant legacy has been Maggie's centres. These, for people who've used them, will be almost havens, really, for anybody who has cancer. And we'll talk about them specifically and how they're designed in a minute. But I want to talk about.

Presenter26:51

The reason that they even came into existence. When Maggie was dealing with her diagnosis, she said that.

Presenter26:58

Um the atmosphere within the hospital was so

Presenter27:01

grim and joyless that in her words patients would arrive relatively hopeful, soon to start to wilt and that was simply by virtue of the weight of the environment around them.

Charles Jencks27:13

Absolutely. You were put in a very small room and you would see people opposite you who had cancer as you waited, kind of like waiting on the death row. And she and I both thought the architecture could be better. And that was the origin of what became Maggie's Centers. She was ill for the the final cancer that did her in was she fought off. She had a two to three months death sentence. She was told she would die in two months. And we did everything to fight against that. And it was through that experience that of her fighting and outliving it by two years, which led to the Maggie Centers. It's not just a medical problem, it's a social problem. How you tell the children, how you tell your boss. So the idea came from her experience of these last two years.

Presenter28:09

Your late wife said a very profound thing. She said, Above all, what matters is not to lose the joy of living in the fear of dying. Was she able to engage that strategy herself in those last two years of her fight?

Charles Jencks28:23

Yes, she was. Um but when she first had uh the diagnosis of death, she did curl up to die.

Charles Jencks28:30

And uh

Charles Jencks28:31

She had to overcome that. It was knowledge which changed her partly. And one must never forget that you know you have to fight for your life, especially within a big National Health Service. You have to find out what are some of the treatments. And then once she was in a fighting mode,

Charles Jencks28:49

Her personality really changed, and the idea of setting up these centres really became the leading thing in her last year of life.

Presenter28:58

There are lots of people who who find that the language that surrounds cancer difficult to deal with, and it's a contentious subject. I mean, you've often used the word they're fighting. People will say, well, actually, I'm not fighting a battle and that somehow

Presenter29:11

You'll know this to you know to imply

Presenter29:14

That if I lose the fight, I somehow have not been participative in my own recovery, I haven't wanted it enough. How would you respond to that?

Charles Jencks29:23

Well, you're absolutely right. Fighting is a very bad metaphor because when you have cancer, you know, there's many things which you have to do aside from the struggle. And above all, as Maggie said, not to l lose the joy of living. So the best attitude toward it is both to care a great deal and to not care at all. Those people who who can go in and out of both feelings often do the best if you're looking at longevity.

Presenter29:54

We'll have some music, Charles. Um your seventh disc, what is it?

Charles Jencks29:59

It's a wonderful lament in Purcell's Dido and Aeneas. It's Dido's Lament. I sang this when I was at school. I didn't sing, of course, her role, but I sang a rather ridiculous part of this opera. And it's a very poignant one of Remember Me, it's Dido's asking to be remembered.

Presenter31:21

Jessie Norman singing When I am Laid in Earth from Dido and Aeneas by Purcell, with the English Chamber Orchestra conducted by Raymond Leppard. Um so, as I say, Maggie died in nineteen ninety five and the first centre opened.

Presenter31:33

The following year, the first one was in Edinburgh. I read them described somewhere as um the atmosphere being far more coffee morning than cancer ward, but the fact is they are staffed by people who are highly trained and are able to very practically help advise and support families and indeed individuals dealing with cancer.

Charles Jencks31:51

We offer lots of different kinds of service. One is one-on-one counseling. But I think the greatest thing we offer is the cancer patients helping themselves. So group meetings around the kitchen table are very important. We give them advice on where to get a loan. All sorts of social advice. And we do it in an ambience of really interesting architecture.

Presenter31:56

But

Presenter32:13

And what about Maggie herself? Do you think she'd be surprised to find that there now so many centres, and indeed that they have her name across the door?

Charles Jencks32:20

She would be annoyed at the name, I think, because she was a modest person.

Charles Jencks32:25

I think she would love the architecture, and I think what she did, she said a very surprising thing, that the riskiest thing.

Charles Jencks32:33

in her battle was deciding to try to live.

Charles Jencks32:37

But she did have that switch. Remember, she started curling up to die, and then suddenly, after two months, she said.

Charles Jencks32:44

Well, if we're going to go down, let's go down fighting it.

Presenter32:46

Um

Presenter32:47

A lot of people then find it difficult, Charles Jengst, to imagine a life beyond what they have suffered when when they're bereaved. Did you think that

Presenter32:56

The years beyond would mean you would be alone. Did you ever think you would marry again?

Presenter33:02

Yeah.

Charles Jencks33:02

Mm.

Charles Jencks33:03

Well, for the first year and a half, I was too upset to think about marrying or not marrying. And then suddenly the burden lifted. I don't know why, but it happens. And I met Louisa, who actually was in the same school as Maggie. I met her through her lecture series. She had lunchtime lectures with top scientists and others, and I went along and listened. But I hadn't any thoughts one way or the other.

Presenter33:35

And um for decades you've been a visiting professor at the University of California in Los Angeles. You've written a stack of books throughout the years. Are you is um there's no sign of you slowing down, is there? I can you seem very dynamic to me.

Charles Jencks33:47

Well, I'm doing I've moved to less writing and more design. My daughter I Lily and I have formed a group called Jenks Squared, Jenks to the Second Power. I often say that she's the power and I'm the square. And uh but we work together and it's really uh it's a lot of fun uh to work with your daughter.

Presenter34:07

And what about your sons? What do they do?

Charles Jencks34:09

And my son John is uh just finished a film, uh just shot it. Uh he's in London and uh he's now editing it. And my other two boys uh from Pam are out in the Far East. One is in Shanghai, married to a Chinese woman, and the other one in Vietnam, uh married to Vietnamese. Uh I'm very lucky to have four children who are enjoying life and I don't try to micromanage them, just as my parents don't tr didn't try to.

Presenter34:38

Let's go to your final piece of music then, Charles Jenks. Uh your eighth choice of the day. What is it?

Charles Jencks34:43

Well, it's my favorite piece of music, Stravinsky's Rites of Spring, which I think is really important. Change music. I think you've got to turn up the amplifier when you listen to it. It is it's about it's a cosmic piece for me. It's and I think for Stravinsky, it's you can really feel nature roaring back in the spring.

Presenter36:04

Part of the Rite of Spring by Stravinsky, performed by the Concert Gerbau Orchestra of Amsterdam, conducted by Sir Colin Davis. I'm going to give you the books now, Charles. You get the Bible, the complete works of Shakspere, and you're allowed to take another book. What will it be?

Charles Jencks36:18

Yes, I would take um something that I read and it had an influence on me in 1964, Arthur Kessler's Act of Creation, the Act of Creation. And I met Kessler in London just about that time, and I was very impressed by the way he describes creation as a mixture, as a hybrid, pulling together different frames of reference.

Charles Jencks36:42

I would well like to read it again to see how much is still true and important.

Presenter36:47

Right, that's your book then, and you're allowed a luxury. What will that be?

Charles Jencks36:51

Well, I would like to take a recent invention, a three D printer, which can print anything. You you may have heard of them like the regular printers, but they spit out resin or plastic or whatever it is, whatever material that you can put in the printer.

Speaker 436:59

But the

Charles Jencks37:05

You can print anything from it, internal organs or even a little plane, an airplane, so I could escape.

Presenter37:11

Well, you see, the internal organs I was there, the plane I'm not so sure about. We'd have to limit you on your capacity to print. But I think as long as you didn't print a plane or a boat, you can have it. Um and if I were to force you to pick just one of the eight discs, which one would you like?

Charles Jencks37:26

Well, I think it has to be the Stravinsky, um, because there's so much difference in it. You know, it goes from passion to smooth lyrical qualities to folk aspects. It really performs the whole human condition, and I can't think of a better piece.

Presenter37:43

Okay, it's yours. Charles Jenks, thank you very much for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Charles Jencks37:47

Thank you, Christy.

Presenter38:25

You've been listening to a download from the BBC. You'll find more information on the Radio 4 website: bbc.co.uk slash radio four.