Amanda Levete

Presenter0:00

This is the B B C.

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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.

Presenter0:41

My castaway this week is the architect Amanda Levitt. Pushing against the boundaries of conventional design, she applies her creative discipline to everything from department stores to mosques. Plenty bespoke brand new structures, of course, but she's also trusted with the highly nuanced task of giving a contemporary flourish to such establishment shrines as Lord's Cricket Ground and the V and A Museum. Over the years her work has won her an international reputation and the highly prestigious Sterling Prize for Architecture, but her position at the heart of the design establishment is unlikely to have dimmed her unconventional spirit in evidence even as a teenager. She was asked to leave her well to do girls' school for sunbathing naked on the roof of the science block.

Presenter1:28

A little later she secured her place to study architecture without the requisite Maths A level, and, in spite of her portfolio, not featuring a single drawing of a building.

Presenter1:38

She says of her work

Presenter1:40

It's a competitive world. You need to be good at politics, urban planning, art history. It is hugely broad. Every time you begin a project, you enter into a new world. You come out of it changed, enriched, and so welcome, Amanda Levitt. A very demanding project is almost at its end for you, and that is you've been designing this new entrance and courtyard and gallery for the VA Museum.

Presenter2:07

Very high profile. I'm sure it has been highly demanding. How do you think it has enriched and uh changed you this time?

Amanda Levete2:14

Well, this has probably been one of the most exhilarating projects I've ever worked on. To work with an institution like the VNA, where you are working with curators and keepers who know more about their subject than anyone else in the world, is an extraordinary privilege. And there is a slow pace to the museum that I initially felt very frustrated by, but I grew to love and to savour it because for every move you make, there was forensic questioning as to whether this was the right thing to do. And it's challenging and it forces you to state the case in a much clearer and more argued way.

Presenter3:00

To walk through a completed building that you have seen from the beginning of the creative seed that you yourself have had.

Presenter3:08

To then walk through your own building. Tell me what that sensation is like.

Amanda Levete3:13

It is an extraordinary sensation. Having designed a building, having developed the drawings.

Amanda Levete3:21

Sometimes I am experiencing the building through the lens of the visual, but I think what you can never get from a drawing is that feeling of being uplifted, of being exhilarated, that feeling of light and volume that changes your mood, that lifts you. And that I think, you know, for me, that is what I strive for.

Presenter3:46

Now I have read that everyone that comes to your architectural practice in North London is at least asked and certainly encouraged to take their shoes off. That's right. I'm wondering where you stand on the practicality of spaces.

Amanda Levete3:58

I I don't wear shoes at home. It makes for a more informal atmosphere. It's a great leveller. It strips away a layer. And you know, when you come into our office and there's this big messy pile of shoes, it it speaks of the individuals in the office, but it also speaks of a sense of common endeavour and collaboration. And that goes to the very heart of the way that we work.

Presenter4:25

Just didn't want to get your nice carpet dirty. Well, it has that's a side

Amanda Levete4:27

It has that's a side.

Presenter4:28

I'd benefit. Let's go then, Amanda Levit, to your first disc of the morning. Just tell me a bit about this.

Amanda Levete4:34

My first disc really takes me back to my adolescence. I was a very heady, romantic adolescent, and I wanted to be French. I smoked Displeus, I listened to French music, and I read a lot of French literature.

Speaker 24:50

Tour lesions and fits de monarch support in the rue de Pardeu.

Speaker 24:56

Touch sons illegitimate que secret. Qu'est lesieu, in lesieux.

Speaker 25:06

Et la man, in la man, is avant, a mouaux, sans per du, l'en de man wi men moi.

Speaker 25:18

Juve circ, parles lu, la morbin, oui memoir.

Presenter5:24

Françoise Ardi and Toules Garçon et les Fille. Amanda Levitt, public spaces. Let's talk about that for a moment. You know, whether they happen to be museums or department stores.

Presenter5:35

They have a central role in our culture, and as our lives become increasingly individualized,

Presenter5:42

I wonder if you can explain to me what role you think civic spaces have in culture right now.

Amanda Levete5:48

I think there has never been a more important time to create outdoor public spaces, probably more important than buildings, because it's those spaces where relationships are formed, where ideas are exchanged, and that leads to progress. So whenever we are designing a building, when we're given a brief, we will try and take it beyond the confines of the building, creating spaces that belong to the public. So with the Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology in Lisbon, which opened in October of last year. Extraordinary sight on the waterfront facing south. Absolutely wonderful. The roof is a destination in Lisbon. It is a place that people have assignations. It's a place that joggers run over and under. The success, I think, of the Museum in Lisbon for me will be measured as much by the way in which people appropriate the spaces, outdoor spaces that we have created.

Presenter6:21

And that was opened in what?

Speaker 16:25

Yeah.

Presenter6:25

Yeah.

Presenter6:52

By way of contrast, in twenty fourteen you did this little pop-up restaurant. It was a restaurant that only sold tinned fish to its customers. Tell me about that. How did it come about? What was it like? It was called Tin Can. It was called Tin Can.

Amanda Levete7:04

Well

Amanda Levete7:06

It was called Tincap. It was kind of pretty literal. We used to go to Lisbon a lot for site visits and we came across this tiny restaurant which was a former fishing tackle shop that only sold tin fish and I just thought the notion of a restaurant without a kitchen is so brilliant and the tin fish was wonderful.

Amanda Levete7:30

And we'd lost a series of competitions and when you do a competition it's a massive financial investment and you feel very defeated. I thought, you know, this time let's just do something that would be fun. Why not open a pop-up restaurant selling tin fish? It said something about who we are. It was entrepreneurial. We ran the restaurant. We sourced the fish. We had endless tastings to get the perfect anchovy, the perfect tuna.

Presenter7:56

Yeah.

Presenter7:57

It was great.

Amanda Levete7:57

Uh

Presenter7:58

Let's have some more music, Amanda Lavie. We're going to listen to your second choice of the morning. Tell me a little bit about this.

Amanda Levete8:03

So this this is a a a piece of music that takes me back to my childhood growing up in Richmond, a fairly bohemian existence, a little bit chaotic at times. And this is a piece of music that my mother used to play a lot.

Amanda Levete8:21

Hauntingly beautiful, and it made me feel very grown up listening to it.

Presenter9:31

Bachianas Prasilieras No. five, performed there by Vittoria de Los Angeles and the French National Orchestra conducted by the composer Etor Villalobosche. Um so, Amanda Levit, as you said, you you were brought up in Richmond. You'd been born in Bridge End in the middle of the fifties.

Presenter9:47

You said uh a bohemian and sometimes chaotic upbringing. Your mother was she trained as a dancer and indeed at one point she had spent some time teaching dance to children who had been affected by thalidomide.

Amanda Levete10:00

Yes, really extraordinary work. She was very pioneering in the work that she was doing. And then she.

Amanda Levete10:08

She took dance and other arts into prisons, into institutions that had never been exposed to that kind of influence. She was a very she is a very free-spirited woman. And what was her approach to bringing up her th you were the eldest of three. I was the eldest. She and my father were very young parents, married when she was twenty-one.

Amanda Levete10:32

And I think they still had a lot of exploring to do. So it was a perhaps an absence of parenting which on one level kind of formed me.

Amanda Levete10:43

It was slightly unconventional. So g give me a look give me examples. Well, I suppose when I made the decision to leave school at sixteen,

Presenter10:45

T g give

Amanda Levete10:53

Neither of my parents thought to challenge me. There was no you know, I just said I was leaving school and off to art school and that was

Presenter11:01

That there was no discussion. And your father had a pretty conventional job. He was a merchant banker. He'd wanted, though, to be an actor.

Amanda Levete11:08

He wanted to be an actor, but didn't follow his dream, I think much to his eternal regret, and then went back into business.

Presenter11:17

Was your father somebody who, as you were growing up, spoke about the fact that he hadn't pursued his dream?

Amanda Levete11:22

No, he didn't. I just think that he would have been much happier if he had.

Presenter11:28

And the amount of freedom that you were given then, did this extend to I mean, did they tell you what time to go to bed? Did they tell you what clothes were suitable? Did

Amanda Levete11:35

Well, certainly not not what clothes were suitable. I mean, I do remember going to school in bare feet on one occasion, obviously to try and make a a point, and was promptly sent home, which was probably the reason I did it. Another time I went to school with a a sheet as a dress. I mean, it was fairly extreme.

Presenter11:57

And what were you like as a little girl? You know, if you're not being parented in the conventional sense, there's a space there. Who who was taking care of that?

Amanda Levete12:05

Um well, I was you know, being being the eldest, my kind of default mode was to to look after, and that's what I I do still to protect my brother and sister. And how old were they? My brother is three years younger, my sister is six years younger. I mean, we were you know, we were loved.

Presenter12:16

And and how old were they?

Amanda Levete12:24

And that was very important, but it it made me very independent.

Presenter12:24

Yeah.

Amanda Levete12:29

Tell me about your next piece of music then. What are we going to hear? This piece of music is all about liberation, exuberance and independence. I used to listen to this in my room.

Amanda Levete12:44

I would dance in front of a mirror. I would dance at it at parties. I still dance to it at parties. It's a wonderful, wonderful piece.

Speaker 112:51

Can I count it all? One, two, three, four.

Speaker 112:56

Get up fight, get on the

Speaker 112:58

Get up, get on up, stay on the scene, get on up like a sex machine. Get on up, get up, get on up.

Speaker 113:07

Get up, get on up, stay on the scene, get on up, I like a sex machine, get on up, get up, get on up, stay on the scene, get on up, I like a sex machine

Speaker 113:20

Wait a minute, shake your arm, then use your farm.

Presenter13:25

That was James Bryant. And Sex Machine, Amanda Levitt, you said that was you dance to it still, but memories for you of dancing as a teenager in your bedroom to that. And you know, most teenagers are characterized by

Presenter13:39

A sort of low level self consciousness. The day that you stripped off and lay down to sunbathe on the roof of the Science Block. Well, tell me a bit about that. I mean, what actually happened?

Amanda Levete13:49

You know, I was I was a bit of a rebel.

Amanda Levete13:52

It was a very academic school, and I didn't want to go to Oxford and Cambridge. And I think quite early on, the teachers probably gave up on me, and maybe I gave up on them. And I, you know, did what I wanted to do. And it was a beautiful sunny day, and it was before we knew that sun was bad for you, and I wanted a suntan all over without marks. And I didn't like biology lessons, so I thought I'd stay on the sands block roof. And the chances of being caught were pretty high. And I was just asked, What do you think you're doing?

Presenter14:26

Did you enjoy creating that disruption? Yes, I did.

Amanda Levete14:28

Yes, I did.

Amanda Levete14:30

You weren't expelled? I wasn't. I was asked not to come back after I'd done my O-levels and I went to see the headmistress and I told her I had absolutely no intention of coming back anyway.

Presenter14:40

I'm feeling very conscious that I'm coming across as a terribly uptight Presbyterian here, but it's it's a rather sort of extraordinary thing to have happened, isn't it?

Amanda Levete14:44

But it's

Amanda Levete14:48

Yeah, but you know, th this is a long time ago. I'm sixty one, this afternoon.

Amanda Levete14:54

Well, when I look back at myself, I think, yeah, that was pretty cool.

Speaker 114:55

When I look

Amanda Levete14:59

You know, in those days it was cool to be naughty.

Presenter15:02

Now it's cool to be clever. You went on then to Hammersmith School of Art. What was it about that that appealed to you?

Amanda Levete15:09

Well, I just wanted to go to art school. I wanted out of school. I did a foundation and it was a wonderful, wonderful year of exploring my creativity. And I was doing a lot of reading about history of art. And in reading about that, I discovered architecture. And it was a moment of realization because I understood instinctively that there is a kind of built-in resistance with architecture. There are boundaries that are very, very real. And I know myself well enough to know that I work best when I've got something to push against. And I thought that's for me.

Presenter15:51

And so you applied then to the Architectural Association, but you didn't have a Maths A level and you didn't have any drawings of buildings.

Amanda Levete15:59

No.

Presenter15:59

Will teeth.

Amanda Levete16:01

I think they saw that I had a certain view of the world, that I had a certain feeling for line, for form, and I think they probably saw that I was quite an independently minded, free-spirited character. And that's what I found so heartening and liberating about going to art school and then to the AA. They're looking at talent, they're looking for passion, and that's what I look for when people come for an interview in my office.

Presenter16:31

And have you ever felt yourself at a disadvantage in not having your Maths A level?

Presenter16:36

Yeah.

Amanda Levete16:36

Upsleep

Presenter16:36

Absolutely not. That'll be such a comfort to so many people. Right, tell me about your next piece of music then. We are going to listen to your fourth.

Amanda Levete16:43

This track is for my former husband, Jan. Jan's best friend from Prague trained as an architect and became a rather famous pop star in Czechoslovakia, as it was then. And this is a piece of music that we would listen to. It's a cover version of Bruce Springsteen sung by Jan's best friend. It's called My Hometown, Mojerudni Doom. But despite Jan having lived in London for 40 years, his real home was Prague.

Speaker 217:18

Below me chestnut slit.

Amanda Levete17:20

Uh

Speaker 217:20

Yes, not your civilian.

Amanda Levete17:20

As

Speaker 217:22

Nash dumb zish.

Speaker 217:27

Tata

Speaker 217:29

I'm not sure if I can do it.

Speaker 217:31

Tech Poet Hlapche Blich.

Speaker 217:35

No capsisak.

Speaker 217:38

Adami Creech.

Speaker 217:39

Tricks to double the sky.

Speaker 217:44

I suppose.

Speaker 217:46

A Buddha Shit.

Speaker 217:48

Come sevra tidmash.

Speaker 217:52

Get us where I need to

Presenter17:55

Mui Rodni Doom, My Home Town, composed by Bruce Springsteen, sung there by Pavel Bobeck. And as you refer to it, Amanda Levitt, there, you you were talking about Jan. That was uh Jan Kaplitski, an architect who you had met originally, I think, in nineteen eighty five. What were your initial

Amanda Levete18:10

Yeah.

Presenter18:11

Impressions of him when you met him.

Amanda Levete18:13

Jan was a an immensely tall, very handsome man who had a a cult following as an architect. He'd built very little, an extraordinary talent.

Amanda Levete18:25

He became a great friend, but I thought, you know, th this is somebody extraordinary. I I always found people who have left their country particularly interesting because it takes such courage, it takes such commitment to do that. Then we went to Prague. He was going to Prague and I thought I'd always wanted to go there. And at that time that there was a freeson, there was something happening.

Amanda Levete18:53

And then when we arrived in Prague, he took us to the house that he had been born in and that he'd lived in until he was thirty when he left in'sixty eight. And he stood by a tree that had been planted on the day that he was born, a very beautiful weeping Japanese maple.

Amanda Levete19:13

And that was the moment I fell in love with him.

Presenter19:16

So he was eighteen years your senior. You describe him as this very sort of charismatic, purposeful, talented man. You began a professional partnership too. What was your working relationship like?

Amanda Levete19:28

Um

Amanda Levete19:30

At the beginning, our working relationship was really great. I was working for Richard Rogers when I met him, and then I wanted to persuade him to stop teaching and to set up an office, a proper office. And I said that I would leave Richard Rogers and that we could work together. And those early years of working together were very... they were very heady. We had absolutely no money. We never took holidays. We never went out to lunch in case anybody rang and we weren't there to answer the phone. It was just the two of us for a very long time. But we got by and we got by on very little. But they were happy days.

Presenter20:12

It sounds as if, I mean, professionally in your life at the times, you say you'd been working for Richard Rogers in his practice in the late eighties, and to remind people, you know, that was architecturally, that was the hot place to be. I mean, along yes, along with Renzo Piano, they they had built the iconic Pompidou Centre in the late seventies, nineteen seventy seven. Presumably, if one wanted a job in architecture.

Speaker 120:23

I mean a lot of news.

Presenter20:35

anywhere in the world, but certainly in London, then that was the place to work. Did it feel like you had given up quite a lot to be sitting staring at Jan over the desk wondering if the phone was ever going to ring?

Speaker 120:37

Yeah.

Amanda Levete20:45

No, I'd I'd always wanted to have my own practice. That had always been my intention.

Amanda Levete20:51

And I'd learned so much from Richard, not just about architecture, but about.

Amanda Levete20:57

The importance of creating culture.

Presenter21:00

In a place, in an office. Tell me more about that, about creating a culture that enables people to be their creative best.

Amanda Levete21:08

The less structure there is, the more the office will look after itself. What it means is that people take huge responsibility, and in taking huge responsibility, you give of yourself in a way that you might not otherwise do. And to create an atmosphere that everybody feels they have a contribution to make, that they will be listened to, and that is.

Presenter21:34

It's fun.

Presenter21:34

Let's have some more music. Tell me about your next Amanda Levit. We are on your uh your fifth.

Amanda Levete21:39

Oh, my next piece is really about fun. I chose this for Josef, who is my son with Jan. And we used to dance to it after breakfast and before school. I think he would have been aged five. And I think, you know, when you work very hard and you're not always there at school gates, you have to seize your moments.

Speaker 222:01

Upsound girl, she's been living in her upside world.

Speaker 222:07

I bet she never had a backstreet guy I bet her mama never told her why

Speaker 222:14

I'm gonna try for another

Speaker 222:18

She's been living in a wide red world as long as any ball with hot blood can And now she's looking for the downtown That's what I

Presenter22:32

That was Westlife's version of Uptown Girl. You said that that was chosen. I mean, beautiful image you gave us of you and your young son Yosef as he was then dancing in the kitchen to that at breakfast time. The media centre at Lord's Cricket Ground was completed at the end of the 1990s. That had been born out of the partnership of you and your husband's architectural practice. It was this very sort of radical looking. It was a sort of white pod-like structure on a kind of pedestal thing. Is that a fair description of it? Yeah, you'll settle for that. You'll settle for that.

Speaker 122:58

Sorry.

Amanda Levete22:58

Yep, and the glass metal

Presenter23:02

It went on to win the Stirling Prize for Architecture, and as as although there were people who did decry it, many people loved it. They loved its freshness, they loved its radical approach, they loved the actual building itself. Winning the prize, a big architectural prize like that, what difference did it make to your working life?

Amanda Levete23:19

Oh, first of all, it made a massive difference to us on a very practical level. We were.

Amanda Levete23:26

almost bankrupt. It was probably the most technically challenging project I've ever worked on. And we were so focused on it for so many years that I had just forgotten to look for other work. And

Amanda Levete23:41

Actually, I assumed that people would come to us and asked us to build media centers around the world. Of course, nothing. And the bank wouldn't lend us any more money, and then we won the Sterling Prize, and I think it was twenty thousand pounds. And that kept us going for a long time.

Presenter23:57

And did the jobs come in? Did the phone start to ring more?

Amanda Levete24:00

Then the phone did start to ring. We got a call from Vittorio Radice, who's then the CEO of Selfridges, and he walked into our really rather sleazy office in Paddington, so there was kind of a room of four people. Hadn't occurred to me to get extra people sitting at desks or to sort of dress the room. People do that to make the office look bigger than it is. And you could tell that he thought maybe we weren't of a size to deal with this large project he had in mind for a department store in Birmingham. So I said, Let me just take you and your directors around the media centre, then you'll understand the complexity and you know, if we can do that, we can do anything. And it was a short competition and we won it. And winning the Sterling Prize and winning the competition for selfages happened within a matter of weeks.

Speaker 124:19

Or to sort of dress the room, yeah.

Presenter24:52

Let's have some music, Amanda Levit. We're going to listen to uh your sixth of the morning.

Amanda Levete24:57

This is a piece that reminds me of being in the office working late and it also reminds me of how supportive my office were then and how they continue to be. I've always been terrified of flying. I've turned down work in the past because it involved too much travelling. And I was asked to do a project in Venice and it was something I really wanted to do. And my office bought me a Walkman and thought that it would help me to listen to my favourite piece of music at the time. And this was the piece of music that we would listen to in the office when we were working on a competition.

Presenter25:35

And did you have it in the headphones as you took off to get it? And it really helped.

Amanda Levete25:37

Yeah.

Speaker 225:38

Uh

Amanda Levete25:38

Yeah.

Speaker 225:38

Uh

Speaker 225:40

Most your tatsi here.

Speaker 225:48

Well the nose miss me

Speaker 225:52

So, in ratidam.

Speaker 226:02

Los your cutsy

Speaker 226:06

My name is Danny's Cross Mo.

Speaker 226:10

More than a space more.

Speaker 226:14

Don't put a friendly small

Presenter26:17

Bondade y Maldare, kindliness and maliciousness, sung there by Susaria Ivara. Um tell me a little bit, Amanda Levita, about this this period in your life when it was around about two thousand three you had split up with your then husband, but you continued to work together.

Presenter26:34

I get the impression from things that I've read it wasn't an altogether amicable separation, and you have said that that working environment at the time was well, you've characterized it as highly dysfunctional. What what was the problem?

Amanda Levete26:46

Uh the problem was the the lack of communication between Jan and me. We we'd had a very um public falling out, if you like, and Jarn was a you know, he was an extraordinary man to whom I owe a huge debt and without my time with him I would not be doing what I'm doing now. But he was a very difficult man. And so we had in effect a kind of invisible Berlin wall running down the middle of our

Speaker 127:11

Yeah.

Amanda Levete27:13

Sonny office, and he would do his projects, and I would do mine. But he would

Amanda Levete27:20

without invitation, critique my projects and my team, and that that was that was tough.

Presenter27:26

Ah.

Amanda Levete27:26

Did it resolve itself? No. We tried very hard and it was clear to me that it was never going to work and so I initiated the conversation about splitting the office. I wanted to work in a much more collaborative way and it seemed the right moment. He had found personal happiness. I had to... You had remarried in 2007? Yes, that's right.

Presenter27:53

And there followed after your remarriage. It seems to me a sort of tumultuous couple of years.

Amanda Levete27:59

Well, two thousand and nine was the year that we were going to separate the office formally. We'd been talking with lawyers for two years. And Jan had gone back to Prague for the birth of his daughter with his second wife. And I was in Bangkok on a business trip with Ben, my husband. And I had turned off my phone. Very unusual for me. I I don't normally turn off my phone.

Amanda Levete28:30

And I woke the next morning to messages to hear of Jan's death.

Amanda Levete28:38

I remember it very clearly, but my focus was just on Josef and getting back to London so that I could tell him.

Amanda Levete28:46

Um and it was

Amanda Levete28:49

It it was made more difficult beca for me because I had not reconciled with Jan.

Amanda Levete28:54

And that is a regret that I will have for the rest of my life.

Presenter28:58

Yeah.

Presenter29:00

You did set up your own architectural practice. You have said in the past that that was the only time that you believe that you have experienced a fair degree of misogyny. What what form did it take?

Amanda Levete29:10

What I

Presenter29:11

Hadn't.

Amanda Levete29:11

expected after Jan's death was that the the press would be very antagonistic towards me. You know Jan was such a revered and loved figure and and I wasn't in that way. But it is the only time that I have felt that. So I felt a great need to prove myself and to prove that I wouldn't fail.

Presenter29:36

Yeah.

Presenter29:36

Let's have some more music. Tell me about your next Amanda Levitre.

Amanda Levete29:39

This piece of music is really about when I met Ben, the first night that I stayed over. I slept in untypically late. I was in an unfamiliar house and I went down the stairs and I heard this piece of music playing and I smelt breakfast being cooked and I thought

Amanda Levete30:04

And I thought, I think I've finally met the person who will look after me.

Presenter31:16

That was Ave Maria performed by Leslie Garrett with Amanda Thompson on piano. Amanda Levitt, as I understand it, principal architects, just over 80% of them, are men in the profession generally, which is a pretty sobering figure. In your own architectural practice, what's the balance?

Amanda Levete31:36

Well, I'm very proud that for the first time our gender balance has just tipped in favour of women. I've never enjoyed working more than I do now. The office has never felt as creative and productive and as happy as it does now. And I think a lot of it is to do with having a very equal gender balance.

Amanda Levete31:58

However, I've never ever taken someone on just because they were a woman, and I wouldn't do that.

Presenter32:05

You have great success. You have a very prominent role now in your own profession, and I'm sure you're asked all the time by young design students, architecture students, what's your piece of advice is for them in order to carve a successful career too. What do you tell them?

Amanda Levete32:19

You have to have passion and you have to have incredible tenacity and resilience and you have to want to hang on to ideas that are fundamental to the vision, but have the humility to abandon an idea or to take a different path if something really isn't working. And that for me is the kind of excitement of architecture. You have to have the confidence.

Presenter32:47

Dance to divert.

Amanda Levete32:48

Yeah.

Presenter32:48

I don't know if you've imagined your desert island dwelling, but you'll surely have to try to fashion one. What do you think it would look like, Amanda?

Amanda Levete32:55

Well, I love to be alone, but I love to be alone knowing that people are coming home. I will try and create shade because I don't like to sit in the sun, but I think I'm going to struggle with the idea of being alone without certainty of rescue. Tell me about your final piece.

Presenter33:16

Peace then.

Amanda Levete33:16

My final piece is a piece of music that my mother bought for me shortly after Josef was born, and it's just a piece of music that I find so complex and hauntingly beautiful.

Speaker 234:17

Yeah.

Presenter34:37

Bach cello suite number one, the prelude in G major, played there by Yoyo Ma. Amanda, I'm going to give you some books now. I give every castaway the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare, and they get to take another book along. What's yours gonna be?

Speaker 234:39

Yeah.

Amanda Levete34:49

I'm going to take Andre Mulro's Museum Without Walls. It kind of anticipated this digital age that we live in without borders. And I kind of want to plot my next move while I'm on the desert island. We'll give you that.

Presenter35:04

You're allowed a luxury, what's yours gonna be?

Amanda Levete35:06

I'd like a lifetime supply of freshly laundered linen napkins. At every meal I use napkins and it will help me feel composed. I will catch my fish, I will make a fire, I'll barbecue the fish, and I'll lay it out nicely with the napkin and look out towards the sea.

Presenter35:26

The civilising influence, then, of freshly laundered napkins are yours. Finally, which one of these tracks would you save? I will take the the Bach Cello Suite. It's yours. A medal of eat. Thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island diffs. Thank you.

Presenter36:24

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 4.

Amanda Levete36:55

This is the BBC.