Professor Sir Jeremy Farrar

Speaker 40:01

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts.

Presenter0:04

Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast. Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. And, for rights reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast. I hope you enjoy listening.

Presenter0:44

My castaway today is the medical scientist Professor Sir Jeremy Farah. He's director of the Wellcome Trust, the UK's largest, richest medical research charity. A specialist in infectious diseases, it was the arrival of the HIV infection when he was a young neurologist that persuaded him to move into public health and focus on emerging epidemics. He's lived and worked through many since, in a career that's taken him all over the world. SARS, bird flu, dengue fever, Ebola, Zika, and now coronavirus. Through each crisis, he has striven to help those affected and to facilitate groundbreaking research. He's now lending his expertise to the SAGE Committee and the UK Government's vaccine task force in the fight against COVID-19. He was knighted for his services to medicine last year, but his stellar career was by no means a certainty. As an aspiring student, he found a place at medical school by literally going door to door until someone let him in. Now, after a lifetime at the front line of medicine, he's a believer in the benefits of becoming comfortable with and effective during periods of uncertainty. He says, there are no rules, there are no textbooks to follow here. These are judgment calls made in the very best faith, but in tremendous difficulty. Professor Sir Jeremy Farah, welcome to Desert Island Discs.

Professor Sir Jeremy Farrar1:59

Yeah, thanks.

Presenter2:00

Very much in

Professor Sir Jeremy Farrar2:00

Yeah.

Presenter2:00

Indeed. So let's start with a breakthrough then. You are, as I mentioned, currently a member of the Sage team advising the government on COVID nineteen. What's your reaction to the news that not one but numerous vaccines are on their way?

Professor Sir Jeremy Farrar2:12

Oh, it's fantastic news. Yeah, I've always said that to get out of this horrible pandemic, we have to change the fundamentals of the infection. We have to change the way the virus works. And we can do that through locking down and behaviour change, but they are horrible to live through. And we all know that the way to change this is through science, through diagnostics, through treatment, but particularly through vaccines. And the news of the last week is incredibly uplifting after months of really hard work and, of course, living through what has been a horrible time.

Presenter2:43

And unfortunately, obviously, we've seen loss of life here for our medics in the UK.

Professor Sir Jeremy Farrar2:48

We have, and we have around the world, and we have during every epidemic. And these are incredibly brave people. They're doing their best in the most professional way. And it's a tribute to all of them that they put aside their own personal safety in a way in order to look after patients and their families. And it's a remarkable profession, the whole healthcare professions, I think.

Presenter3:08

Now, as well as your work and your own personal story, you're going to be sharing your discs with the program. Tell us about your first disc today. What are we going to hear?

Professor Sir Jeremy Farrar3:16

So the first disc is Under the Boardwalk. This is a cover version, I think, from The Rolling Stones and originally from The Drifters. But it's, I think, my first musical memory, it was my sister, Jane, who tragically died far too young of lung cancer, despite being a non-smoker. Lung cancer in women in particular is still going up, I'm afraid, and we don't really understand why. But this was a 1960s hit which blared out from her bedroom, and she was a great fan of The Rolling Stones. And like so many of these discs, it's all about love and romance.

Speaker 23:49

When the sun beats down and when the tar bombs

Speaker 23:58

And your shoes get so hot, wish your tire feet were fire.

Speaker 24:05

Under the board wall

Speaker 24:09

Down by the sea, yeah.

Speaker 24:14

Wanna plank it with my feelings as we ride

Professor Sir Jeremy Farrar4:22

Under the ball

Presenter4:24

The Rolling Stones and Under the Boardwalk. So Sir Jeremy Farrow, for the past seven years you've been Director of the Wellcome Trust and you've got £750 million a year to use to invest and support scientific and medical research around the world. How disruptive has COVID-19 been for the research that you're funding and the scientists who are working?

Professor Sir Jeremy Farrar4:44

It has been disruptive. The scientific community have been nothing short of extraordinary in the last 10 months. People who have never thought about viruses or infectious diseases have lent their scientific expertise. People have worked across borders, across countries. Despite sometimes the political barriers to doing that, scientists have just gone on and do it. Go back to the phone call I had on the 31st of December from an old friend who works at the China Center for Disease Control, the public health authority for China, to warn me about something to the release of the genome of this virus on the 10th of January, all the way through to the sharing of knowledge about the vaccines this week. It'd be nothing short of extraordinary. But I think what we do have to do is make sure that the people who have been through this, who may not be in infectious diseases, that their careers are not damaged by this, that they will continue to have their careers. And when they go back to their own work, they won't be hurt by having given the weight of their scientific knowledge to this space and make sure that we look after them as they come through this.

Presenter5:42

Today, of course, everybody is very much focused on the vaccine, which is on its way. It's in the headlines again as we're speaking. The question of who gets it and when obviously follows its arrival. You've pushed against vaccine nationalism, I know. Can you tell me a little bit more about what that is and why you're against it?

Professor Sir Jeremy Farrar5:59

These are global public goods, I believe. There is no way through this pandemic unless all countries are through it. We can't start, especially as a trading nation of the UK, we can't start rebuilding our economy unless all countries are starting to rebuild their economies. And so I think that the idea that you would have a vaccine and you'd keep it to yourself as a country makes no sense scientifically. It won't bring the pandemic to an end. And it also makes no sense morally, in my view. These are truly global public goods. Perhaps the best definition actually of what is a global public good. And I think over the last few years, we have flirted as a world with nationalism in many different ways. And I think for this, we need to be absolutely sure that we're committed to not just making it available to ourselves, but that we're also making it available equitably and fairly to the world, because this is a world resource which the whole world needs, not just one or two countries.

Presenter6:54

You of course have got years of clinical experience dealing with serious diseases like bird flu and SARS. I wonder what lessons you learned from those times that have come in most useful during COVID nineteen?

Professor Sir Jeremy Farrar7:07

The first one is they're scary. I mean, they really are terrifying. I remember at the start of SARS-1, and indeed again with bird flu, although this did not prove to be true, you're dealing with something you don't understand. You do take on a real degree of humility. You're in the face of the power of nature. And you can do so much as a doctor or a nurse. It makes you question your whole professionalism. It makes you question why you're there and why you're in the hospital looking after people. It's frightening. And you have friends and colleagues who get sick, and you have friends and colleagues that die. And again, it's why I have such respect for healthcare professionals. But the other lesson I learnt in all of those is don't act slower than the speed of the epidemic. It is no point saying we've acted faster than usual and we got there in six months if the epidemic has taken two weeks to get going. So make the decisions you can in good faith with the best evidence you can, but don't wait until you've got all of the data because by the time you've got all the data, it's too late.

Presenter8:08

It's time for your next piece of music. Tell us about disc number two. What is it and why are you taking it with you to the island today?

Professor Sir Jeremy Farrar8:14

I spent most of my early life, indeed most of my later life, not living in this country. This was a memory really from living seven years in Libya, in Tripoli, where our only contact with the outside world was the BBC World Service. It was the only contact. If you wanted to make a phone call, you had to go down to the post office in the centre of Tripoli, and you were there for about six or seven hours, and you might be lucky to get through. So your only contact was through the radio, shortwave radio, which crackled and crackled and crackled. But the signature tune of these just stayed with me all my life. The World Service news, even more importantly for me, the sports roundup, which always used to come on at quarter to eight every evening. And I was desperately listening to who won the football matches or the cricket matches. And if you missed it, you know, you had to wait another five or six hours till the next version. And it dominated your life, these shortwave radios. This is London.

Presenter9:32

The World Service Lilly Bolero theme for memories of your time, Jeremy Farrer, living abroad. So you're the youngest of six children and you were born in Singapore. What kind of upbringing did you have?

Professor Sir Jeremy Farrar9:43

I didn't come to this country really until I was a teenager. We emigrated to New Zealand when I was a child. But my mother, who was always the sort of forceful one of the family, I hate to say this because I've got a lot of friends in New Zealand, but found New Zealand in the late 60s quite chauvinistic. And she was an artist and slightly bohemian. And the bigger issue was we lived next door to this glue factory, which I still remember. If I could choose a song which gave you the smell of a glue factory, I would choose it. And the school my father was going to be a teacher in hadn't been built. And so my mother, who sort of ruled the family really, said, Look, we're not having this. So we all got on a boat. And so when I first came to Britain, I came by boat. And then we left Britain soon afterwards to go and live in Libya. I don't really have anywhere that I call home in my younger life. You know, I often used to think wistfully of those people that had been brought up in a city or town and knew it very well. I didn't have any of that, but I gained in other ways, I guess.

Presenter10:36

So tell me a little bit more about your mum. I mean, we're glad to forego the glue factory, but we do want to hear more about her. She's Anne, she's an artist, and your dad, Eric, was a teacher. How did they meet?

Professor Sir Jeremy Farrar10:45

My father, he was part of the British Expeditionary Force that went to fight in Europe in 1939 and was captured just outside Dunkirk in the spring of 1940 and was a prisoner of war in a German prison camp till the end of the war in 1945. And he came back to Britain then, hadn't been able to go to university, came back to Britain then, and he was given a lift debriefing because I think he'd escaped from prisoner of war camp or something. And my mother had been a driver during the war. She had driven these huge American people carriers from the ports in Scotland down to the south coast in 1943 and 1944, preparing for the invasion of Europe and VE Day. And so they met, she was driving my father for some debriefing. He was an enlisted soldier. He wasn't an officer, but he had some information about the prisoner of war camps in Germany. So they met like that, and being two amazing romantics, actually, they were married actually, I think, a few weeks later or so. And my eldest brother was born well before, I think, nine months of gestation happened. So obviously, you know, sex wasn't invented at the latter part of the 20th century, and they went on to have six children. My parents were just two itinerant people, adventurers, travelling around the world for many, many years.

Presenter12:03

For now we'd love to hear your third desk today. What's it gonna be?

Professor Sir Jeremy Farrar12:07

It takes me back to Libya, really, and I have such an affectionate spot for Libya. One of my greatest regrets, actually, is in the window of opportunity when it was safe to do so. My mother and I and others didn't go back to Tripoli because it is a really beautiful country and it's a tragedy to see what happened. But the house we lived in was next door to a mosque. And five times a day, particularly at about 5 a.m. in the morning, I remember being woken up for years listening to the Adhan at the mosque ringing out. And I'm not religious, but I find this is tremendously graceful. And I have a very strong feeling of the need for faiths and countries to come together. And this one really reminds me of my time in Tripoli, Libya.

Speaker 212:50

And

Speaker 212:52

Oh, won't be born.

Speaker 213:03

And workbond.

Speaker 213:16

Shirullah.

Presenter13:23

The Atan call to prayer.

Presenter13:26

So, Sir Jeremy Farrell, you moved around a lot when you were a kid, to say the least. How did all of that affect your schooling? What kind of student were you?

Professor Sir Jeremy Farrar13:33

I was a really good student.

Professor Sir Jeremy Farrar13:36

Until the end, my father was a teacher, so you couldn't get away without trying to do well at school. But then, through my latter years at school, which some of it was then in this country, in the UK, actually, again from my father, inherited a reasonable ability to play sport. And I was playing an enormous amount of sport in the latter years at school. And there's no doubt that I neglected some of those studies and probably wasn't good enough either, is the truth. And so, having been pretty good at sport at various levels and being head of the school and all of those sorts of things, I then hit this brick wall, which was I didn't quite fail, but I might as well have done, failed my A-levels. And, you know, that was as an 18-19-year-old. And that comes as a pretty big shock. And I had to resit them, and then I had to knock on doors in London around universities a year later. But I used to wake up with nightmares thinking, I've got to do my bloody A-levels again for years. So it's only in the last year or two that I've got over that, actually. It's amazing the scars. But it also.

Presenter14:35

Hopefully not. I think they're gonna l you you you won't have to revisit them now.

Professor Sir Jeremy Farrar14:39

It also shows you, you know, there are late developers, there are people that come to it late, there are people that have bad days. And I just hope we haven't lost as a world the ability to let people have a second chance in education because I do worry it's become so pressured. And to be able to say that you failed your A-levels and things turned out okay, I think if that inspires a single other individual who listens to this, I'd be thrilled.

Presenter15:03

Knocking on doors, your second chance, it was literally going door to door. Tell me how you got your place at uni.

Professor Sir Jeremy Farrar15:09

It was a different world then, of course, but my sister was working then as a nurse in London. And she said, Don't bother applying through the what you've got to do is you've got to go around all the medical schools in London, knock on the door, and say have they got a place. And I went around all of them, and they all said no, of course, because the world doesn't work like that, except one. And a character called Robin Forrest, who is still alive and still well and still in contact with, opened the door and said, Oh, you must be here for the interviews. And I said, Making it up, yeah, actually, I am. And obviously, people have been written to, and I got a place at medical school, and I'm eternally grateful.

Presenter15:43

It's time to take some more music. This is disc number four. What are we going to hear and why?

Professor Sir Jeremy Farrar15:47

So Disc 4 actually is a poem, Ulysses. Part of it was always hanging in every single house I lived in, in the toilet of every house. When you have an English teaching father, the ways he finds to excite you about literature is really innovative. And every toilet I can remember going back to Cyprus and New Zealand had poetry on the walls of it, just snippets of it. And this was one of them. And actually, an element of it is now the introduction to my PhD. Not that anybody's ever read the PhD since I wrote it. It tells a fascinating story. It's one of my father's favourite poems. And the interpretation of it, you know, is open to you.

Speaker 216:28

I am a part of all that I have met.

Speaker 216:31

Yet all experience is an arch wherethro Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades For ever and for ever when I move.

Speaker 216:41

How dull it is to pause, to make an end, To rust unburnished, not to shine in use, As though to breathe were life

Speaker 216:51

Life piled on life were all too little, and of one to me little remains.

Presenter16:56

Simon Russell Beale reading part of Tennyson's Ulysses and Sir Jeremy Farrell. I could see his words on your lips throughout that entire piece. What does it mean to you?

Professor Sir Jeremy Farrar17:07

He's read it beautifully. To me, that speaks of curiosity, of being inspired, of not fearing the edge, of not being content with what we know but asking what we don't know. I remember having big arguments with my mother. I think science is like an artist faced with a blank canvas at the start. You've no idea where it's going to go, but you can dream.

Professor Sir Jeremy Farrar17:30

And you can dream about what's on it. And I think it's that sort of sense of excitement and inspiration and curiosity that I find so exciting and inspiring.

Presenter17:40

You're obviously pushing research forward with the welcome trust, but I know that you also said not long ago that what drives you is also meeting the challenge of what's happening on the ground and responding to people who need help. How does that bifurcation work, that focusing on what might be possible maybe thirty, forty years down the line, while also responding to the urgent needs of the present moment?

Professor Sir Jeremy Farrar18:01

You have to try and make the world a better place in the time you have available. But you've also got to think there will still be challenges 20, 30, 40 years from now. And some of the major advances will be made through blue sky research that's being done today, with no real sense of where it's going to impact in 20, 30, 40 years' time. You know, stem cells are now a huge part of medicine. But the first work was done by a character called John Gurden because he was interested in these funny cells and he had no idea that they were going to lead to where they are today. The same with people working on monoclonal antibodies, which are going to be a major treatment for Ebola and COVID-19 and many other areas. You can't strategize discoveries like that. That is because good people working in a rich environment, by rich, I mean culturally rich, not wealthy, and they're allowed to dream. And I would like now being in a funding body welcome to try and push us to liberate those minds, to free them from the short-term thinking of just chasing grant after grant after grant and bring some of the sort of hope and dreams and idealism of science back to bear so that it is the excitement of pushing back the boundaries of uncertainty that I love and thrive in. But also making sure that part of what we do

Professor Sir Jeremy Farrar19:20

We have an Ebola vaccine, we have a COVID vaccine, and that is needed not in 20 or 30 years' time, it's needed next week. And I think you can bring these two together. Time some more music. What are we going to hear next? So, the next is music from reminds me of my time in Edinburgh, which was really where I learnt medicine, frankly. And I huge debt to the doctors I worked with there and nurses who really taught me about medicine. This is my Duncan Chisholm. I used to play squash every Sunday morning with my brother and some of his cronies in Edinburgh. And we used to always go to this pub called Sandy Bells after playing squash. It used to be by the Royal Infirmary. And there was always Scottish folk music playing in the back of the bar. This music I think is haunting. It comes from an album called Farah, which I don't know why Strathfarrah is named that in Scotland. It's no relation to me, certainly. It's just so haunting, and it's so much at the heart of, I think, of Scottish, Irish, Celtic, Welsh music and culture.

Presenter20:51

Duncan Chisholm and Mully Crochley.

Presenter20:55

Sir Jeremy Farah, a major part of your career was spent in Vietnam, and there you were director of the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit in Ho Chi Minh City. What kinds of diseases were you seeing there?

Professor Sir Jeremy Farrar21:07

It changed a lot during that time because Vietnam has gone through

Professor Sir Jeremy Farrar21:12

A dramatic change, and that's reflected in public health as well. So, in the early days, a huge amount of malaria, which, of course, Vietnam played such a critical role in changing the way the world sees malaria with the coming of traditional medicines that have been the most powerful anti-malarial drugs. So, it changed over the time. Malaria got less because of the progress, but other things like HIV and tuberculosis, and particularly dengue and other viral infections became much more common as Vietnam went through urbanization and development.

Speaker 221:36

Uh

Presenter21:36

Take a fever.

Presenter21:43

Tell me about the outbreak of SARS that happened during your time there. What do you remember?

Professor Sir Jeremy Farrar21:47

It was actually over a course of about a year there was SARS and then followed very quickly by bird flu and obviously very different but that year or so was a very challenging time. Carlo Ibani was a WHO doctor working in Hanoi and he started to notice in this hospital that not only were some patients coming in with this horrible infection of their lungs, but nurses and doctors were getting sick as well and in fact some of them were dying. And Carlo phoned me up at the start of this and he worked on malaria. He wasn't necessarily doing that much clinical work and wondered what to do. And I didn't know what to say really other than look after yourself. And he did the most unbelievable thing. He effectively, with the Vietnamese authorities, closed the hospital to allow nobody else in or out and actually therefore meant that Vietnam did not suffer from what would have been a devastating epidemic, as did China, as did Hong Kong, as did Singapore, as did Toronto, of course. Just a remarkably brave thing to do. And tragically, he lost his life and left a young family and partner who survived him. And then a few months later, I remember, I think perhaps the best clinician I've ever worked with, somebody called Trantin Heehan, he went to see a young girl who had a severe infection and went back anyway to a pet duck that she'd argued with her brother about and buried. And then she was so upset, she dug it up again and reburied it and cuddled it and kissed it in its reburial. And she was the first patient with H5M on bird flu. But I was there, Hean was there bringing this stuff back on a sample back on the back of his motorbike. And my wife was there, who is brilliant in the laboratories in a way I would never be. And between us, we made the diagnosis of a new animal influenza. And yeah, that was a terrifying time because we have no idea that it was going to cause a global pandemic or it would die away.

Speaker 222:52

And uh

Professor Sir Jeremy Farrar23:41

Within six months of SARS dying away and your friends dying, you know, again, that's a moment I will probably never forget. I remember staying in the hospital actually for two or three weeks after that because we didn't know what we were dealing with. We didn't know if this was going to pass from this young girl to Hian or myself or Christiane or anybody else. And of course, you know, months later you learn all of this, but at the time, you don't know.

Presenter24:05

It's time for disc number six. Jeremy, what's it going to be and why have you chosen this today?

Professor Sir Jeremy Farrar24:09

This is a very special one because Christiane, my wife, and I, we met in 1994 when I was really struggling with my PhD. I didn't seem to make any progress in Oxford. We met in Greece at a conference, actually, but she was actually a very successful researcher working in Vienna. And we conducted a long-distance relationship from what, 1994 through till 1998, when she came to live in Vietnam. I'm not an expert in opera at all, but she is. She's incredibly organized. And the weekends we used to have in Vienna or indeed in Oxford were all amazingly organized. And this was, I think, a beautiful piece of music from an opera we went to see early in our romance in 1994.

Speaker 224:59

No more sin.

Presenter25:49

Part of the Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves from Verdi's Nabucco performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus conducted by Sir George Schulte.

Presenter25:58

Jeremy Farrett, we're currently in the second wave of this pandemic and of course we've talked about the light at the end of the tunnel, which is so exciting, but there are a lot of people who are still going to be struggling with both with the uncertainty that's happening in the moment and then also the impacts that they're kind of looking at and worrying about of this pandemic. You've lived to work through many health crises. What advice would you give to them?

Professor Sir Jeremy Farrar26:21

There's light at the end of the tunnel. I think we always knew there would be. It's got there quicker than I thought it would. I didn't think within a year we would have the sorts of results we've seen in the last week or two with the vaccine and the drugs, therapeutics and the diagnostics. We've got a difficult few weeks ahead of us, but there is hope at the end of the tunnel. There is light there. The world won't suddenly revert to normal when spring comes next year, but it'll look a lot more like normal than it does today.

Presenter26:47

The Wellcome Trust's mission is to improve human and animal health. And I wonder how important that second part is, because I feel like sometimes it gets lost. Tell me about the interconnectedness of those two ideas.

Professor Sir Jeremy Farrar26:59

We're seeing that playing out now with COVID. You know, it's been talked about for many years. You cannot really separate human and animal health. They're interlinked in every society. Of course, they're interlinked when bats and other mammals come across and have viruses that come across into humans like COVID, indeed like Ebola. But they're also linked to nutrition and the way the environment works and the ecology. So instead of thinking, I think, of separate fragments here again, it's about bringing the human and the animal health communities together, not one dominant over the other. Too often, the human health community has been dominant over the animal health community in terms of funding, in terms of opportunities. And I think when you bring interfaces together, you've got to bring them together because what they can both add to each other. I would like to see that being front and center of how we come out of COVID and we think about public health in general as both a, yes, a human and an animal influences. No matter how powerful we think humanity is, nature is unbelievably powerful. And I think that's, for me, the biggest lesson of 2020.

Presenter28:03

It's time for your next disc. What's it gonna be?

Professor Sir Jeremy Farrar28:05

7 Seconds by Yosa Nador and Nena Cherry. This takes me back to after my PhD, a year in San Francisco. Before that, I was working in Melbourne in Australia for a year and again had my eyes open to how medicine and public health works in a different country. And this was a song which I didn't know either of these two artists beforehand, but I took from Melbourne back to Oxford and then I took it on to San Francisco. And it's just a beautiful duo. I do love duos. I think it's the romantic in me that thinks two people coming together can do better than either of them can do on their own.

Speaker 228:40

Ulma San

Speaker 228:48

Limette de Sama Sou, I'm sick in Berkeley.

Presenter29:12

Seven seconds, Yusundor and Nenacheri. So, Jeremy Farah, it's time to cast you away now. Obviously, in day-to-day life, you're someone who's always busy, always in demand, and dealing with very stressful work. You know, how we can find solutions in the face of sometimes catastrophic situations. How easy do you find it to switch off?

Professor Sir Jeremy Farrar29:32

I would say I find it incredibly easy, but but I know at home they would say it's almost impossible. What does that look like? I'm not a great person for lying on a beach, although I do love beaches. I do like to be active when I'm relaxing. And I particularly love team sport. I've never been any good at individual sports. And I love team sports where you are part of something bigger. And, you know, cricket and rugby have been the two sport loves of my life and hockey.

Presenter29:38

Okay.

Presenter29:57

No team sports on the island sadly.

Professor Sir Jeremy Farrar29:59

No, but I've got a special way around that.

Presenter30:01

Oh, okay. What do you think you'll find to occupy yourself without giving away any requests that you might have later?

Professor Sir Jeremy Farrar30:08

The three loves of my life, really: my wife, my family, my profession, and sport.

Presenter30:13

That is for you.

Professor Sir Jeremy Farrar30:15

Um

Presenter30:15

Um

Professor Sir Jeremy Farrar30:16

That's four, you're right.

Presenter30:18

I mean, I'm not the scientist here, but

Professor Sir Jeremy Farrar30:21

But sport is pretty special and whatever happens on this desert island, I would need to be able to do some sport and find a way to do that despite the fact I'm on my own.

Presenter30:31

Okay, interesting. Are there any aspects of being marooned that you might be quite looking forward to? A chance to switch off perhaps?

Professor Sir Jeremy Farrar30:40

No, none, actually.

Presenter30:42

Okay, okay, just checking. With all your travelling, I am, though, imagining that you'll find it easier to settle in than some castaways might. Is there a trick to that?

Professor Sir Jeremy Farrar30:50

Yeah, I think that that is true. Circumstances, whether it's be, you know, in New York or in London or in the Democratic Republic of Congo over last Christmas or Rwanda or wherever, you've been in enough different circumstances, some of them frightening and some of them beautiful and some of them both together. I hope that makes you adaptable. I'm not a great cook, but I think I'd be okay on a desert island, yeah.

Presenter31:12

And what's the secret to feeling at home or finding a home?

Professor Sir Jeremy Farrar31:16

Well, maybe it goes back to the fact that you never really felt you had a home anyway. Maybe that regret that you never had that when friends and people did. I think it helped actually, you know, in our family life that Christiane from Vienna and me from the UK were then living in a third country for most of our time. You know, I think somehow that's an advantage. The the children were brought up in a third country which was neither of our countries and in some ways and you know Vietnam was an amazing place to live for so long. Maybe that helped in some ways.

Presenter31:45

What kind of perspective does it give you that you might not otherwise have?

Professor Sir Jeremy Farrar31:49

It allows you both to enjoy the moment, because you're not sure how long you might be there for, but also it allows you to going back to Ulysses, it allows you to be part of all that you have met. You're a bit like a magpie. You take a little bit of everywhere you are. It does mean that you don't perhaps belong somewhere, but then you are perhaps a product of all of those things through that arch that travels that unseen world.

Presenter32:16

One more disc then before we cast you away, what are we gonna hear and why?

Professor Sir Jeremy Farrar32:20

Vietnam really is such a special place in my heart. Actually, my mother went there in 1964 when Saigon, as it was called then, was the center of the universe in some ways. And we lived in Singapore then, and the shopping in Singapore was awful, but Saigon shopping was brilliant. And so she used to hitch rides with the American military on a plane and used to go shopping in Saigon. So Saigon has been sort of part of my.

Professor Sir Jeremy Farrar32:44

background since the early sixties and had such a profound influence on me, the the grace of Vietnam and everything that goes with it. So this is a song, and I'm afraid I'm a real softy really. This is another romantic song. It's Love Under Moonlight by the Kak Chi Ensemble from Hanoi.

Speaker 233:19

Oi ai goi ma

Presenter33:32

Love Under the Moonlight, the Cacti Ensemble. So I'm going to send you away to the island now, Sir Jeremy Farrah. I'm giving you the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare to take with you. You can also have a book of your own choice. What would you like?

Professor Sir Jeremy Farrar33:44

It's an anthology of poetry which was my father's favourite book. It's called Other Men's Flowers by Wavell, who was a soldier during the war, but very broad educated and minded, and it's a beautiful anthology. And my father gave me this book before he died, and I've always kept it very close.

Presenter34:03

You can have a luxury item to take with you as well, what would that be?

Professor Sir Jeremy Farrar34:06

So the luxury item would be a cricket bowling machine because I'm stuck on this island and there's one thing I would love to achieve which is I've always found myself falling over when I play a certain stroke at cricket. It's been a failing since I was a child and I would love to be able to practise on this desert island with a bowling machine and perfect that shot so that when I came back

Presenter34:10

Because I'm still

Professor Sir Jeremy Farrar34:27

I would actually be able to get some runs.

Presenter34:29

Does the machine exist or am I going to have to invent it?

Professor Sir Jeremy Farrar34:32

No, no, it exists and I can give you the order form for it and the cricket balls that come with it.

Presenter34:33

Okay.

Presenter34:35

Yeah.

Presenter34:37

And for any cricket aficionados who are desperate to know what is the particular stroke that makes you fall over.

Professor Sir Jeremy Farrar34:42

I was always getting out leg before wicket because I was falling over playing a clip through mid wickets and it's still a weakness today, but I'll get it perfected in the years on the desert island.

Presenter34:49

Oh.

Presenter34:53

Absolutely. Well, we've got to sort that out. And finally, if you had to save just one of the eight disks that you shared with us today, which would it be?

Professor Sir Jeremy Farrar35:01

It would be uh Love Under the Moonlight because it it is just so much of Vietnam. It's a love story. Uh it's a it's a very strong woman in charge of their love affair who waits under the stars for her lover to come and uh it's just beautiful music. And Vietnam changed me and uh

Professor Sir Jeremy Farrar35:19

That would be my favourite.

Presenter35:20

And it's yours. Professor Sir Jeremy Farah, thank you very much for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Professor Sir Jeremy Farrar35:25

Thank you so much.

Presenter35:40

Hello there. I hope Jeremy's very happy on his island and manages to crack that cricket stroke and doesn't hit too many balls into the sea. Always a risk. We've cast many doctors away over the years. They include Dr. David Knott, Dr. Henry Marsh and Professor Dame Carol Black. You can hear their programmes if you search through our Desert Island Discs Programme Archive or BBC Sounds. Next time my guest will be Minette Batters, President of the National Farmers Union. I do hope you'll join us.

Speaker 436:15

Hello, I'm Felicity Finch. You may know me better as Ruth in the Arches.

Speaker 436:21

Sorry to delay the pleasure of your podcast, but I'd like a quick word in your ear.

Speaker 436:26

After a year like no other, many people are facing homelessness this winter.

Speaker 436:31

The 2020 BBC Radio 4 Christmas appeal with St Martin in the Fields is more urgent than ever.

Speaker 436:38

This year Saint Martins has supported hundreds of rough sleepers in London and awarded over four thousand six hundred crisis grants to get people into accommodation and provide basic essential items in every part of the UK.

Speaker 436:53

Your gift could give someone the key to home this Christmas.

Speaker 436:58

Please support the BBC Radio 4 Christmas appeal with St Martin in the Fields by donating online on the Radio 4 website.

Speaker 437:06

Whether you're a long-standing donor or this is your first year, thank you.