Conrad Anker

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 Climber Conrad Anchor. Some of us choose a life in I.T. or event planning.

Presenter0:42

Conrad Anker has opted to swing from a nylon stepladder nineteen thousand feet up a cliff, with a dose of trench food and a wedge of stale cheese for supper. It may seem an odd way to spend one's life, but it's his way. One of the world's elite climbers, he's credited with a long list of first-time ascents. He's also summited Everest three times. During one renowned climb there, he discovered the icy corpse of the legendary George Mallory, who'd perished, along with Sandy Irvine, as they tried to scale the peak in nothing more than hobnail boots and tweeds back in nineteen twenty four.

Presenter1:17

When he isn't exploring the far corners of the world's wilderness, he's at home in Montana, with his wife Jennie, the widow of his best friend, Alex Lowe, killed by an avalanche that narrowly missed Conrad himself.

Presenter1:30

He says of his life

Presenter1:31

Most people are so risk-averse. The world is full of couch potatoes. We climbers should get government stipends for keeping the risk-taking gene pool alive. Well, there is risk-taking, and most of us calculate our risks, and then there's the life that you live, Conrad Anker. Um I've seen some of the film. All of it made my stomach churn of some of the things you tackle. Um how much risk is too much by your standards?

Conrad Anker1:57

Too much risk is when you feel that you can't turn around and you can't control it anymore. But it's what I love to do. And on my days off, I go climbing. I just love that playing with gravity and interaction with rock that's millions and billions of years old. That connection I have with my partners of trust and reliance. And I couldn't live without it.

Presenter2:21

When Mallory and his team went out to attempt to conquer Everest in 1924, on the list of the things that they carried with them were four cases of fine champagne. You yourself.

Presenter2:32

Aren't quite so well equipped when you go out. What kind of things do you carry to eat and drink?

Presenter2:36

Food

Conrad Anker2:37

probably isn't what it was like in 21, 22 and 24.

Presenter2:41

They took foie gras as well.

Conrad Anker2:42

Yes, it was a very lavish expedition, and they marched in overland from Darjeeling, 400 porters, donkeys, mules, yaks, and so very formal. They would wear suit and tie to dinner and quote Shakespeare to each other. And nowadays, you're clad head to toe with petroleum-based products, plastic boots, nylon shells, down feathers inside. But food, we now know more about nutrition and the importance of hydration. So climbers at altitude really can focus on those things. What's for dinner most nights then? When I'm in the mountains, it's all about the weight of the food by how many calories you have in there. So things like salami, olive oil, martzipan, chocolate, Nutella, potato chips. I love that stuff. And then you just charge up on it. When you're really hungry, those calories are wonderful.

Presenter3:33

Okay, it's time for the music then. Your first disc this morning, what are we gonna hear?

Conrad Anker3:37

It's by the Rolling Stones and it's Gimme Shelter and it brings me to being in the mountains because when you're out there and you're doing a climb and it's four or five days in a row and every night you have to find a place to sleep. Whether it might be scratching something out of the ice or hanging from a piton on the side of a granite cliff, you have to find shelter.

Speaker 44:17

He's got the shadow, he's got the shadow in one, two.

Speaker 44:25

It's not the shot.

Presenter4:27

That was Rolling Stones and Give Me Shelter. Going into that, Conrad Enker, you spoke about literally looking for shelter wh when you're on a great climb and and that you will pitch a tent anywhere. I have seen on film your tents

Presenter4:39

Pitched actually, I mean, l literally vertically. How do you sleep in that?

Presenter4:44

That's what they look like to me, is it not?

Conrad Anker4:45

Yeah, it's a portal edge and so you have an aluminum frame with a nylon bedding on it and you use your climbing hardware to clip it into the cliff and midway up an overhanging cliff you can set up camp and sleep in there. And I love after a day of being outside you and your buddies pile in there and you're all stinky and you've just got that taste of adrenaline in your mouth and you're just like, wow, here we are. We're living life.

Presenter5:10

Do you really sleep? Do you oh yeah.

Conrad Anker5:10

Oh yeah. You're out there twelve, seventeen hours, nineteen hours climbing. And so when you do fall asleep, it's deep, sound, fast sleep for four or five hours.

Presenter5:21

Tenzig Norgay described the gale on the upper slopes of Everest as the roar of a thousand tigers. I'm wondering i mean, often it must be

Conrad Anker5:28

Be too noisy to sleep. Yeah, when you're on Everest and you can be six thousand feet below the summit. I've had too many nights where the tent just flattens on my chest and then pops back up and then the wind is just ripping and anything that isn't secured is gone. When the wind is like that I don't sleep.

Presenter5:45

You said that when you're in there and you're all stinky after a day's climbing and you're there with your good team, your friends who you trust and who you would trust with your life, literally, it makes you feel alive. When you're l living a day like to day, you know, you're walking down a big high street in the centre of London, you're sitting here having a glass of water

Presenter6:01

Does it all seem very dull?

Conrad Anker6:03

No, I'm always alive. Life is it's just amazing. I mean to be in London, to walk where we've been and see the architectural highlights. And I was in the British Museum yesterday and saw the Egyptian and the Greek collection there and the school children looking at them. And yeah, every day is I live in the moment, so I'm psyched.

Presenter6:23

Ah yes. Okay. Well, that's interesting. So this idea that that in in your work and in your life you're constantly able to use the well worn phrase now, touching the void, you know, going to the places that most of us will will never see, and in our worst nightmares would never want to see. The fact that you've experienced that makes everything more vivid for you, does it?

Conrad Anker6:38

It does. And I mean some people are like, why are you doing this to yourself? But when you've done that, then you have an appreciation for people that are hungry, or people that are living on the street, or the 80% of this planet that's pretty much living on a pound a day. So you have empathy for other people when you've seen how tenuous life can be.

Presenter6:58

What about the environmental impact now? You know, Everest, in a typical year, how many people will attempt to climb Everest?

Conrad Anker7:04

There's probably 500 people this spring on the south side of Everest, another 200 people on the north side of Everest, so 700 people and then the staff of Nepalese and Tibetans to support those people. So yes, Everest is the one lightning rod of mountains where everything that's bad happens up there, everything that's good can happen up there. But it's not exploratory climbing, the type of climbing that I really enjoy.

Presenter7:31

Time for some more music, Conrad Anker. We're going to hear your second choice of the morning. Tell me about this.

Conrad Anker7:37

This is The Wolf, and it is performed, written by Eddie Vetter. And it's this great story about a young man who leaves home and gives everything away and he goes out to see what the world is. And for me, one part of it is that when I got out of high school, I just disappeared. I think I sent my mom and dad one or two postcards, but I wanted to see the world and experience it. I wanted to be responsible for myself. But moreover, what it sounds like, it's just so haunting and evocative of being in really wild places.

Presenter8:45

That was Eddie Vedder with The Wolf. So, Conrad Enker, you were born in nineteen sixty two in San Francisco, and your mother said that you began climbing in the womb. What does she mean by that?

Conrad Anker8:55

Well because the family roots where we're from is uh Central California and it's about twenty minutes outside of Yosemite National Park. And so I was in the womb and they hiked around the rim of the valley and so that was my mother's joke. But my parents, along with my three siblings and my grandparents, we would load up in donkeys and we'd go on these two week

Conrad Anker9:17

backpacking trips in the high countries of the Sierra as we were young and that was really where I got the introduction to it. Is I thought this is what everyone did on vacation is you would grandpa would load up the pickup truck and you'd drive out there and we'd get fish and eat the fish and and it was always this wonderful time. Do you remember your first climb? The first climbs we did were peaks and rubble hills, but then at fourteen roped climbing.

Presenter9:43

Would you have had a helmet on? Would you have people sort of making sure you're safe? Or was it a kind of wild free climb that you did it?

Conrad Anker9:48

It was with a mentor and someone that showed me the ropes. It was oval carabiners and brown one inch webbing and sort of this brotherhood of being out in the woods. And if you were a good backpacker and a good woods person, then the next step was climbing. Did it scare you? No, it was always just like

Conrad Anker10:08

And but I would always scamper around and climb in trees and when you see children outdoors they don't have that that fear of

Presenter10:15

Now, you see, you're a parent to three kids, and I know that I can't imagine you're the sort of parent who looks at their kids doing things that most parents think are dangerous and says, Stop, don't, you just let them do it, right?

Conrad Anker10:26

Yeah, they're gonna learn.

Presenter10:26

Yeah.

Conrad Anker10:27

With risk in our family and having lost Alex at a young age, they're very cautious. They're all very grounded. And I mean, I'm more concerned about them driving too fast than I am if they're going to go out and go skiing or something like that, because I trust their judgment on that. One of the things I always say is: well, the slower you drive, the less fuel you use, and the more music you can listen to.

Presenter10:49

And on that note, let's listen to some more music then. We're on your third. Tell me about Disc Three. What is it? Wha why have you chosen this?

Conrad Anker10:56

Franz Josef Haydn, Troma Concerto, and E-flat major.

Conrad Anker11:00

I love classical music and every day we listen to it, whether it's at dinner or when we're doing homework, and it's very much a part of my life. And Haydn is one of the best composers, and having played trumpet as a youngster in school and knowing how difficult it is, it's just a wonderful thing.

Presenter12:21

That was the opening of Haydn's trumpet concerto in E flat major, performed there by the English Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Raymond Lepard, with Wynton Marsalis on trumpet. And and is it true your father actually played trumpet?

Conrad Anker12:33

Yep, my dad loved the trumpet and he was a concert master in the service. So he.

Conrad Anker12:38

Drove supply trucks and was in the band, and he loved the trumpet.

Presenter12:43

And he wanted his son to learn the trumpet too, but I'm guessing when it came to doing your scales or being outdoors, which one was

Conrad Anker12:49

I wanted to go out and catch frogs and be a kid and I was a a pretty hyperactive kid, so the outdoors were a good way to to figure out what to do with that energy.

Presenter12:49

I want

Presenter12:50

Yeah.

Presenter12:58

Yeah, we have a name for that now, of course, don't we? Hyperactivity or ADHD disorder. Do you think you would have fit it into one of those boxes if you

Conrad Anker13:01

Yes, water.

Conrad Anker13:04

Yeah, classically.

Conrad Anker13:07

But my parents were like, okay, no medication, no sugar, and just make sure he exercises and he falls asleep at night. And it's interesting, my sister, my oldest sister, who was great with me, and she now works with adult ADHD people. And she was like, I'm like the textbook person for that. But I've found that climbing for me is that's my therapy because I have to live in the moment. If I make a mistake, I'm going to break my leg or something worse. And so when I'm there, I've got to make that move. I've got to have the equipment. And the fact that there's risk involved with it makes me be in the moment. And that is a great thing.

Presenter13:44

When you are climbing, of course, you're not just focusing on your own uh safety. You you can at times, you know, literally through the equipment be holding another person's safety, another person's life in your hands. Wh where do you get the confidence to do that?

Conrad Anker13:57

From the equipment, knowing that it's going to work, knowing the systems that you can build into it, and then if someone belays me and they catch my fall, then I have that trust in them. And then we will go back the other way that they can trust me with the rope. And that's a pretty important thing because getting dropped by a climber, that's our parlance for someone that lets go of the rope, and the rope whizzes down, and the person hits the deck. Worst case scenario, they become an angel. Best case scenario, they crack a leg or hit their head.

Speaker 414:19

And you speak right.

Conrad Anker14:27

Interaction between humans, I think, is priceless. When we get together, we are a team. And it's not anyone else, it's not other humans that we're competing against. So if you can imagine, Kirsty, if you and I decided to go climb the north face of Iger, we would be a team. I wouldn't.

Conrad Anker14:44

And here it is, we're up there. You and I are the team because we have to work together. And the adversary is gravity, it's the rock that we're climbing on, the weather, our preparedness, all those things. So when you come away from it, you've really it's a great human emotion.

Presenter15:00

Yeah.

Conrad Anker15:00

That's

Presenter15:00

Let's have some music. What's next?

Conrad Anker15:02

Next is Fur by Blitz and Trapper, and this is a Pacific Northwest band. They're out of Washington State, so it's kind of what it's like in Montana.

Speaker 415:13

Yeah, when I was only seventeen

Speaker 415:18

I could hear the angels whispering.

Speaker 415:24

So I drove into the woods And wandered aimlessly about Until I heard my mother shouting through the fog

Speaker 415:34

It turned out to be the howling of a dog.

Presenter15:39

That was Blitzentrapper and Fir. So tell me, Conrad Anker, a little bit more about this Everest expedition in nineteen ninety nine. The the objectives were twofold. What were they?

Conrad Anker15:49

Yeah, it was 60 years to 2013, so May 29th, 1953, that Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay made it to the summit. And getting back down is a successful ascent. But the question was, could Mallory and Irvine have made it to the summit on June 8th, 1924, and then returned and then perished in the clouds, the snow that enveloped the mountain? It was known in the mountaineering circles that there was an English dead on the mountain. And we knew from historical records that it must have been Sandy Irvin or George Mallory. We departed for the north side of Everest, and our goal was to

Conrad Anker16:26

Climb Abarist, and then also to look for the body of one of these English explorers.

Presenter16:31

So you decided on a particular morning that you were gonna sort of fan out across this part of the mountain, and f for some reason.

Presenter16:39

You took a slightly different route. Just explain your thinking and what was going through your mind when you tracked off on your own.

Conrad Anker16:45

I stepped up over a small rise and I looked over to my right and there was this.

Conrad Anker16:53

Matt White

Conrad Anker16:56

Something.

Conrad Anker16:58

And I knew immediately this was one of the pioneering English climbers. It was a dry, snow year, the wind had taken the snow off the mountain, and the body was exposed. And climbers are going to use the very best equipment. And in 1924, it was seven layers of wool and silk and leather boots. And that was the clothing that was on this body. And initially, we thought it was sandy urban, but upon inspection, we found a

Conrad Anker17:32

A tag that was sewn into his collar that said G. L. Mallory.

Conrad Anker17:38

A very

Conrad Anker17:40

sombre moment on the side of the mountain, within seven hundred feet of the summit of Mount Everest.

Presenter17:51

Seventy-five years after Mallory and Irvine had lost their lives on the mountain, you are you are standing there. What do you do? You touch the body.

Conrad Anker17:59

You you call people over.

Conrad Anker18:01

The other climbers came down. They were higher up, and we had a moment there.

Conrad Anker18:06

performed a committal service at the request of the family. We read the hundred and third Psalm and then did what we could to uh inter his body, to bury it.

Presenter18:18

When the looks passed between you and your team.

Presenter18:21

That must have been a hugely significant moment.

Conrad Anker18:24

Yeah, we were

Conrad Anker18:26

We were just shocked and we probably didn't really realize the impact it was going to have in the climbing and exploration communities. It it shed light into who George Mallory was, but it was also very controversial.

Presenter18:45

He was not carrying uh the picture of his beloved wife, and he had carried that with him on his journey up Everest, and had promised that he would put it at the summit, and that picture was no longer with him, which is something which has led many people to conclude that that man reached the summit. What do you think?

Conrad Anker19:05

It's a wonderful story and I have a tremendous amount of respect for George Mallory and who he is and what he was able to do. But given the difficulty of the climbing above that and the location of his body and the fact that

Conrad Anker19:23

he had been seen by Odell in the vicinity of the first or second step, it's hard to place him on the summit. So maybe he left his photograph at the point where they turned around.

Presenter19:37

We're going to talk a little bit more about this discovery and much of the discussion is, as you said yourself, some of it highly contentious and controversial that it threw up after some music. It's time for some music. Now, tell me what we're going to hear next then, Conrad.

Conrad Anker19:49

Del Tit Nu. This is a track by a young artist from London and I had it with me in 2012 when I summited Everest and it just brings the emotion of being at the summit of the world looking out over a sea of clouds and I would play it for my Sherpa friends and they would get this like ear-to-ear grin and be like, yeah, we really like it. Because there's no lyrics. It's just a great melody, a really nice riff. And to me, it says, I'm in the mountains.

Presenter20:51

That was Adio and Delta New, and it brought smiles, as you were saying, Conrad Anker, not just to your face when you're up there on the mountains, but to the Sharpas that are helping you with so many of your climbs. So the response then, you mentioned a moment ago that there was a good deal of controversy that was stirred up by the response to this discovery that you and your team had made. Mallory's daughter was reported to be upset. Sir Chris Bonington objected to the publication of photos of the body. Joe Simpson described the team as grave robbers. How do you respond? How did you respond to all of that?

Conrad Anker21:26

It was a tough thing. I was 36 at the time and my life and my identity was climbing. And I think the problem arose from the manner in which the photographs were released. And they went out to the highest bidder. And in this case, it was the tabloid press.

Presenter21:48

Was that up to you? I mean, I

Conrad Anker21:48

T

Conrad Anker21:49

It wasn't my decision. And we had a conversation at camp, and it was.

Conrad Anker21:56

My two cents was to hold the information back, contact the family, and then once we're out of Tibet to then have a press release, maybe bring the families in, but to slow it down. But at this point, the Internet was taking off, and with the send button, it sort of went out to the world. In hindsight, yes, the release of the information could have been handled in a more delicate manner.

Conrad Anker22:27

What we do as humans is all generationally passed on from one to the next, and figuratively I'm standing on the shoulders of all those that came before me in the climbing world, and George Mallory was certainly one of them. He paved the way, set the standard, and then it came to Hillary and then Messner and all the subsequent generations of climbers, and we're all collectively part of this. At the same time, if you are a high-altitude climber, you are going to see bodies. You're going to have to make peace with death and mortality. And if this brings that conversation in a modern context, then that might be a good thing.

Presenter23:11

Um, tell me about living at high altitude. Is there a spiritual aspect to it for you?

Conrad Anker23:17

I'm not religious in any sense. And being in the wilderness, being on the top of a mountain or the side of the mountain, that is my cathedral. And that's nature in its purest and finest form. And I define that by not having right angles. And if we look outside in the city, all the buildings have right angles. There's glass, there's plastic, there's cement, there's hewn stone, all these things. But if you go out in the woods or you go to Hyde Park and you look at a tree and everything has curves, I mean, there are exceptions to this, obviously, but when I'm outdoors, I get my spirit recharged. And that, for me, is the spiritual connection to it.

Presenter23:56

Let's have some more music then, Conrad Anker. Tell me what's next. We're on your sixth choice of the morning.

Presenter24:01

Yeah.

Conrad Anker24:02

This is The Battle of Evermore by Led Zeppelin.

Presenter24:05

Why have you chosen this?

Conrad Anker24:06

I Love the Mandolin, and it's an acoustic song by Led Zeppelin. It brings to mind the album cover. It was this old grainy photograph of an old man carrying sticks, and then you opened it up, and it was like this black mountain with spiraling up. I was a young guy when it came out, and it is another song that brings the emotion of being in a high, remote, wild, cold, inhospitable place.

Speaker 424:36

I hear the forest of thunder down in the valley below.

Conrad Anker24:37

This

Speaker 424:42

I'm waiting for the angels of Abylo.

Speaker 424:48

Apples all run the valley roller season happiness

Speaker 424:55

The ground is rich from tender care Repay, do not forget No, no dance in the dark night Listen to the moment I stir

Presenter25:10

The Battle of Evermore by Led Zeppelin. There. So 1999, Conrad Enker, was to prove a pivotal year for you. As we know and as we've heard in detail, you you you found Mallory's body on Everest. Later that year you were climbing with your very good friend and climbing partner Alex Lowe and there was an avalanche and Alex was killed in that avalanche. You yourself barely survived. Can you tell me a a little bit of what actually happened?

Conrad Anker25:34

We were in Tibet to climb Shishapangma, which is a 8,000 meter peak, and this huge avalanche high up cut loose and then came down. And we ran for our lives. David and Alex were buried in it. And there was a big white cloud of snow crystals in the air, and then it cleared and settled, and they were gone.

Presenter26:05

I've seen a photograph of you being carried, I think, on a stretcher. You look barely alive yourself. What were your injuries?

Conrad Anker26:13

I suffered uh lacerations to my head and a cracked rib. At the last moment I laid down and put my ice axe into the glacier to hold myself fast, but even then I was picked up and thrown probably ninety feet.

Conrad Anker26:32

It was it was the worst moment in my life because here is climbing. It's a great thing and we always extol all the virtues and everything like this and my best friend is gone leaving behind three young children and a widow. And where do you start? How do you pick up the pieces?

Presenter26:52

How did you?

Conrad Anker26:54

Jenny and I were close and brought closer because of the avalanche and both of us were

Conrad Anker27:03

suffering. Jenny through the loss of her husband and the father of her three sons and I was going through survivors' guilt and compounded with the whole

Conrad Anker27:15

Mallory story that had just happened five months earlier and I was like, gosh, had I done something really wrong? And was this some sort of

Conrad Anker27:27

cosmic, karmic retribution. But we grew to love each other and we have we've been married now for 12 years and Jenny's a wonderful woman and the three boys are now 24, 20 and 17 and we are a really close family and we've done the best we can to honor Alex in our day-to-day life and to be good humans.

Presenter27:47

Um

Presenter27:54

Um, Conrad, to day is the first time I've met you. You seem like a very nice man, but it surely must have been a huge decision for Jennie to t to marry you. She lost her first husband to the mountains. The idea that she embarks on another marriage with somebody who's as devoted as her first husband to her.

Conrad Anker28:08

And it was, um, yeah, really difficult. Jenny is a she's a saint for her strength and understanding and being able to accept another climber in there. But by the same measure, there was probably no one

Conrad Anker28:23

I was more alike than Alex, and we had the same values.

Presenter28:29

Time for some music. We're on your sevenths. What are we gonna hear?

Conrad Anker28:33

This is Blind Faith, and this is a

Conrad Anker28:38

This is the song that goes out to

Conrad Anker28:42

Everyone that I've lost out there, Alex and Muggs, and Kevin and Seth, and I mean the ones that are really close, and then anyone that's been in this.

Presenter28:52

Uh

Conrad Anker28:52

That's you.

Speaker 428:54

Come down off your throne and leave your body alone.

Speaker 429:00

Somebody must change

Speaker 429:06

You are the reason I've been waiting so long.

Speaker 429:11

Somebody holds a key

Speaker 429:15

Well I'm really I'm just thank God

Presenter29:24

That was Blind Faith and Can't Find My Way Home and you said during that Conrad Anker that it was a p it's a particularly significant song for you. You you wanted to pay tribute to some of the people very close to you who you've lost. And and I said to you while the music was on there, Given who you've lost, have you ever thought about putting a stop to it, about giving up climbing? And the look in your eyes you can't imagine a life without climbing.

Conrad Anker29:45

You can't im

Conrad Anker29:47

It um it's what I do, and it's this dance with gravity on the the most unexplored parts of our planet. I'm just drawn to it. But if something were to happen to me that I couldn't climb, if I would learn to play an instrument or I would learn to I would do something else. I realize that it's a gift to be where I am and to have been able to do what I do, but it's not my whole identity.

Presenter30:13

And during my research, the world class climber that you are, of course, stands out very clearly. It's interesting that fellow climbers say and I was reading that they say, when you suggest a project, your energy is infectious, but they kind of hope you won't call them back.

Presenter30:28

You know, because they people can't really say no to you. If they're offered a climb with you, they kind of

Speaker 430:28

You know, because

Conrad Anker30:33

have to do it. But you know, if you don't have success then you it becomes a something that you can't let go and it it haunts you at night. Why did we turn back? What would we have done different? And whether it's a a boulder problem or just using your hands and feet and your rope as a safety net, all those things are really

Conrad Anker30:52

Motivational to climbers. Regardless of what aspect of climbing that you do, you want to improve your own performance.

Conrad Anker31:01

We're got a trip planned here this coming June with Max, our oldest son. We're going up to Denali and

Conrad Anker31:08

The final song that we're sharing is Old Man by Neil Young, but this is a remix by Red Light King. And when I was 24, I had a spray-painted blue Ecano line that I drove up to Alaska, and we did this great climb, and it was just wonderful. I'm 50 now, Max is 24, and there's that theme in there that what I've done, I'm passing on to the next generation. And the other part that makes it special is I love Neil Young thing, but this is a more modern version, so it pays tribute to the past, but it hints at the future.

Speaker 331:43

Everything that I needed, that got it from the old man With the nights like a dream, he drove the red light bandit And the grease on his hands was the way he commanded And the life he demanded, it kept us all in a struggle When he ruled with his fists, it kept us all out of trouble Even though we would leave, he rolled us hard on his sleeve By the way that he walked, he taught me how to believe

Speaker 332:05

Oh man, look at my life and I

Speaker 432:09

Take a look, take a look Old man, look at my love

Presenter32:16

That was Red Light King and Old Man, a remix there of the Neil Young song, Old Man. So I'm going to give you Conrad Enker um traditionally we give people uh the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare to take to this island, and you're allowed to take another book of your choice. What will it be? The Complete Works of Jack London.

Speaker 432:19

Man.

Presenter32:31

Oh, okay. We'll allow you another complete works then.

Presenter32:35

I do give castaways a luxury. I get the feeling that of all the castaways we've ever had, you're one of those that probably doesn't need a luxury, but you're allowed to take one anyway. What would you like?

Conrad Anker32:43

It would be the rope and rack, and that is what I use to climb with. Okay. And I just hope the desert island has a cliff.

Presenter32:47

Okay.

Presenter32:49

I will. Just for you, we'll make one. And which one of those eight tracks that we've heard today, which one would you save?

Conrad Anker32:58

I would save the Haydn. It was um just that I mean, it was what the classical music, the Baroque time, what they were creating at that time was just it fascinates me. And everything is subsequent to that, and everything owes something to that early music.

Presenter33:15

Okay, we'll give you that. Conrad Anker, thank you very much for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Conrad Anker33:20

It's been an honour to be with you.

Presenter33:30

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.