Anne Tyler

Presenter0:01

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Presenter0:46

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.

Presenter1:26

My castaway this week is the novelist Anne Tyler. She's critically acclaimed as a master of the art of everyday lives of middle-class America, and her 23 novels include The Accidental Tourist, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, and Breathing Lessons. Her stories have been adapted for the stage and screen and earned her prizes, including the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and the Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence. Family life has been the recurring theme throughout a 50-year career, and her adoptive home city of Baltimore has been her setting. As a child, though, she grew up in the mountains of North Carolina, in a Quaker commune where her parents had settled in search of a more peaceful life. At the age of three, she began inventing narratives to lull herself to sleep, and she credits this isolated upbringing as having the most profound influence on the writing that was to come. She says, It seems to me often that I'm sort of looking from a window at something at a great distance and wondering what it is, but I'm not willing to actually go into it. I would rather sit behind the windowsill and write about it. Anne Tyler, welcome to Desert Island Discs.

Presenter2:39

Well, thank you.

Presenter2:41

You say you prefer character to plots, and quite often your characters surprise you. How do they do that?

Anne Tyler2:47

Often, when I begin, it's almost as if I'm forcing them into situations. I'm moving them around like puppets. And then this moment will come, usually when I'm busy with their dialogue, when suddenly they take over. And I've been known to laugh aloud when one of them says something. And it's not that I'm laughing at my own joke, it's that they said something. So in that sense, they're leading me. It always takes a while. I start by feeling, oh, this is very artificial, what I'm doing. But then when they come alive, it's just sheer joy.

Presenter3:23

And those surprises, those laughs, can you think of any examples that readers might recognize?

Presenter3:29

Yeah.

Anne Tyler3:29

No, not offhand. I hardly remember my own books. You know, I feel like a mother cat who.

Anne Tyler3:35

passes her grown kitten in the street and doesn't know it's hers.

Presenter3:40

Endurance is a quality that's often overlooked in literature because it's not showy or exciting, but you do celebrate it, many of the people in your books, and just keep going, no matter what. What is it about that quality that appeals to you as a writer?

Anne Tyler3:56

I think it's the most moving quality.

Anne Tyler3:59

In human beings. Sometimes I'm just astonished at the day-to-day endurance that humans show. I'm not talking about.

Anne Tyler4:08

huge heroic endurance, but just getting through lives that sometimes don't seem as if much will come of them, but people keep on trying. And for me, the plot is sort of well, the passage of time, that's always good for a plot, but also just watching how

Presenter4:27

People cope.

Presenter4:29

It's time to hear your first disc today and what are you going to take with you to the island? I'm choosing dark.

Anne Tyler4:34

Barbie's Castle, as sung by Chris Christofferson. That's a song that's a story. And I read somewhere not long ago that if you ask most people what would keep them going if they were bedridden and with no hope in life anymore of anything more than what they were going through right then, what would sustain them? The answer is usually, I would listen to music. That would be enough. And whenever I hear that, I think, well, I like music, but I don't think that would be enough for me. And then I think, what would be story? Just.

Anne Tyler5:13

What happens next? What would it feel like to be such and such a person?

Speaker 25:18

Oh, it took three

Anne Tyler5:19

A hundred days for the timbers to be raised. And the silhouette

Speaker 25:26

was seen for miles around.

Speaker 25:31

And the game

Presenter5:31

Eagles reached as high as the eagles in the sky, but it only took one night to bring it down.

Presenter5:43

When Darby's castle tumbled to the ground

Presenter5:48

Derby's Castle by Chris Christofferson. I and Taly were born in Minneapolis in Minnesota in 1941. Your father Lloyd was an industrial chemist and your mother Phyllis was a social worker. They were both Quakers and you grew up living in various Quaker communities before settling in a Quaker commune in North Carolina. How do you remember your early years?

Anne Tyler6:11

It was a probably a strange way to be raised, but when I think about it, as I look back, I think, what a really lovely childhood.

Anne Tyler6:20

We had goats in um in a goat farm. That was really how we lived when we were in the commune. And I still fall all apart. If I see a goat anywhere, I have to stop and commune with it.

Presenter6:35

Tell me a little bit more about the child we would have seen back then. Were you happy?

Anne Tyler6:40

My mother was difficult and my father was wonderful, as I'm sure many people feel about parents, one or the other. But I was raised very kindly. My mother was really

Anne Tyler6:54

Determined that we should love books, and she read to us from the very, very earliest days, which I think is important. And she encouraged me to write my little stories. I you know, all these nights when I went to bed and couldn't sleep, and I would I shared a room with my brother closest to me in age, and I would whisper stories to myself.

Anne Tyler7:16

He would shout out and say, Mamma, Ann's whispering again.

Anne Tyler7:22

But it was my way of sort of being creative and I think my parents understood there was no fuss made. They told me to be quieter about it.

Presenter7:32

Tell me a little bit more about your parents then. You said your father was wonderful. How do you remember him?

Anne Tyler7:37

He was a very peaceful man. He was a birthright Quaker. My mother had converted, and he spent his life on issues, campaigning for

Anne Tyler7:47

integration and um

Anne Tyler7:50

The whole reason we were going round to all these communes was that he was a pacifist, a conscientious objector and just so distressed about the way the world was going that he retreated in that sense, but he was an activist all his life until the day he died.

Presenter8:05

We

Anne Tyler8:05

Yeah.

Presenter8:06

Close to your mother?

Anne Tyler8:06

Uh

Presenter8:06

Uh

Anne Tyler8:08

In some ways, yes, just because she was the book person. She brought alive that side of her children, but she was a very unpredictable person, being angry unexpectedly. And one of my brothers told me once after he was grown that he remembers that when he was little, he would have to go to my mother's bedroom and peer around the edge of the door while she was still in bed to see what kind of day it was going to be that day.

Presenter8:36

And looking back now, you mustn't have really understood what was going on underneath your mother's anger at the time. But what do you think that was about?

Anne Tyler8:45

Years and years later, I guess I heard the phrase bipolar, or as they called it once, manic depressive, and I thought, you know, probably that's what we were seeing, but it it was just hard to understand at the time.

Anne Tyler9:01

Uh

Presenter9:01

It's time for your second piece of music to day, Anne Tyler. What have you got for us, and why have you chosen it?

Anne Tyler9:07

That would be This is My Father's World, which is a hymn. It's something I associate with my childhood. And on Sundays in the commune, all the children would be rounded up and go to this log cabin very near the meeting house, and we would sing songs. And in the good weather, we would sit outside on these sort of weathered boards that were the front steps of the cabin. And I have such a clear vision of sitting there basically in the bottom of this beautiful green bowl that was our valley and with a distant ring of purple mountains far, far away, and hearing the words of this song, which to my mind, it's not about God so much as about the natural world I was living in.

Presenter10:04

Yeah.

Speaker 110:04

This is my fault.

Presenter10:06

Uh

Presenter10:08

The birds their carols raise

Speaker 110:13

The morning flight the lily white

Speaker 110:18

And their makers brave.

Speaker 110:21

This is my Father's world. He shines in all that's fair.

Presenter10:27

Five ten

Presenter10:31

This is my Father's World, performed by the Siedamont kids. Antaila, you've described your education as patchy during your early years. What was school like in the commune?

Presenter10:42

Uh

Anne Tyler10:42

The school I went to was

Anne Tyler10:44

Not exactly a one-room schoolhouse, but it was a three-room schoolhouse and it had eight grades in it. And it actually worked very well for what it was, I think. But I think my mother was a little nervous that I wasn't learning enough. And so she sent away for this what's called the Calvert School System, which oddly enough is based in Baltimore. And it's often for, for instance, children of diplomats in faraway countries where there's no place to go to school. And the idea is they give you the materials and then you teach your children. The mother teaches the children.

Anne Tyler11:22

So that was part of my education. It was very advanced very quickly. We were ahead of our grades all along forever after because there was so.

Presenter11:31

When you were eleven, your family moved to Raleigh, the capital of North Carolina, and you went to a mainstream school. Was that a bit of a culture shock for you?

Anne Tyler11:40

Yeah.

Anne Tyler11:42

Yes, it was.

Anne Tyler11:44

I was in seventh grade, but I was young for my age, and I remember my first day of school there in a public school. And at the first recess, all the other little girls gathered around me. And the first thing they did was they complimented my dress in this very kind and solicitous way that made me understand immediately that I was dressed wrong. I was wearing a handmade dress with hands smocking across the chest, and they were all wearing red jeans. Red jeans were very popular and rolled up to their knees. So, you know, that was a bit of a jolt. And then this one girl said,

Speaker 112:08

Yeah.

Anne Tyler12:27

Do you have a boyfriend?

Anne Tyler12:29

And I said

Anne Tyler12:30

I'm eleven years old. And she said, I know. Do you have a boyfriend?

Anne Tyler12:35

And right then I thought, I have come to another world.

Presenter12:39

Well, haven't I?

Presenter12:40

It's time for some more music, I think. Your third choice today. What are we going to hear?

Presenter12:45

Parts of

Anne Tyler12:45

Stone, sung by the Charms. It's loud and it bursts out at you in the same way that urban life bursts out at me. So there's a line in it that says No, no, no, no. I just think it sums up that first shocking moment.

Speaker 113:03

Please, please, please rec

Speaker 113:06

And for your love of this benefit.

Presenter13:18

Uh

Anne Tyler13:25

My bills say no, no, no

Presenter13:34

The Charms and Hearts of Stone. Anne Tyler, when you were just sixteen you got a scholarship to study at Duke University in North Carolina. That is very young. How did you find life there?

Presenter13:47

Oh, I love

Anne Tyler13:47

I approached it as if I um

Anne Tyler13:51

Finally, I would be doing something different from my little quiet life. So the first thing I did in freshman year, which is early, was sign up to major in Russian, which was quite shocking for the time. It was very much the Cold War.

Speaker 114:03

Go ahead.

Anne Tyler14:07

And the Russian professor called me in and said, are you sure? And I said, yes. And he said, I just want to warn you that as he was an American and he said, as a Russian professor, I am regularly tailed by my own FBI agent. And I said, really? Oh. I don't think I ever did have an FBI agent tailing me. Or maybe he was.

Presenter14:30

He was just very good at it. So you majored in Russian, but you took creative writing classes too, and one of your teachers was the author Reynolds Price. What was your first assignment?

Anne Tyler14:41

He had us write a little story in freshman class, each of us. And when he read mine, then he just took me over after that. He would sign me up for what he called 17th century English poetry and then just quietly shuttle me over to Dr. Blackburn's class, who was the other writing teacher. And so now I know nothing about 17th century English poetry.

Presenter15:06

So that was just a cover.

Anne Tyler15:08

Yeah.

Presenter15:08

What were you actually doing? You you were just doing more creative

Anne Tyler15:11

Writing. Yes. Yes. I but I never I it wasn't as if I said, Oh, I'm going to be a writer, you know. I just thought, well, this is this is fun and I'm good at it and they they say I should do another piece, so I'll do another piece.

Speaker 115:20

Yeah, that's

Presenter15:26

I think we'll have some more music now, Anne. It's your fourth disc. What is it and why are you taking it to the island?

Anne Tyler15:32

The song called Dharaina John, Darling Dharane, sung by Shusha Gapi, it's an Iranian song.

Anne Tyler15:40

My husband was Iranian and

Anne Tyler15:43

Right after we were married, he took me to Iran to visit his family. And we were on the plane when he told me that I might like to know that there were going to be an awful lot of people at the airport to meet us. He said, you know, my whole family will come and there'll be about 300 people there. And I thought he was exaggerating until we landed and there were at least 300 people there and they were all cheering and clapping and laughing and holding giant bouquets of flowers. It was the most welcoming arrival I've ever, ever been through.

Speaker 116:15

Darene John, Darene John, Darene.

Speaker 116:22

Pedochi dom for te mijon tarine.

Speaker 116:36

I'm not sure if I can do it.

Anne Tyler16:41

Yeah.

Speaker 116:41

Bye.

Presenter16:46

Darling Daranay performed by Shushaguppi with Doncin Lamont on the flute and Baboudi on the Zaab.

Presenter16:53

And Tyler, after you graduated you took a postgraduate degree at Columbia University in New York, and then you returned to Duke where you worked in the library as a bibliographer for the Russian collection, and that was where you met your husband Taggy. As we've heard, he was Iranian, he was a child psychiatrist who became a writer himself. How did you meet, though?

Anne Tyler17:16

Friends brought him along. I thought I was going to have supper with my old friend and his new wife, and I was looking forward to a nice sort of

Anne Tyler17:27

Cozy evening, and they showed up at the door with this young man, and

Anne Tyler17:32

I wasn't happy to see him. I mean, I he was fine, but I felt like, well, wait, this wasn't the evening I planned. And you were engaged to someone else at that point, I think. I was engaged to somebody else who was up in New York at the drama school. And so I

Presenter17:39

And you were engaged to someone else.

Anne Tyler17:48

We went to supper and it was time to pay the bill and I got out my share of the money because I was not on a date and they said, oh no, Taggy will pay for you. And I was just outraged by the whole thing that, I mean, it's like they thought he was a blind date. And I said, huh. And so that is when he said his memorable first full sentence to me, which was, it wonders me why you are so hostile.

Presenter18:15

Destined to beat him anyway. Yeah, exactly. S cut to seven months later. Uh, wedding bells. And then you moved to Montreal, where Taggy started working in a local hospital. You had published some short stories by that point, and you'd started a novel that you hadn't finished. What made you pick it up again when you got to Montreal?

Anne Tyler18:16

And it's a great game anyway.

Anne Tyler18:34

Well, when we first arrived in Montreal, I couldn't get a job for six months, a a library job of any sort, and I didn't have anything to do and I didn't have any friends yet. And I thought, well,

Anne Tyler18:49

I did start a novel. I mean, maybe that could keep me busy till I get a job. And I'd actually brought it with me to Montreal in a little green vinyl suitcase that was part of a set my grandma had given me to go to college with. And we had left it by accident at the Montreal airport when we first arrived in Canada. And I said to Taggy, when we figured it out, I said, oh, never mind. It's too much trouble to go back to the airport. And it wasn't worth much anyway. And then about two months later, he had a friend coming to visit from Iran. And he went to the airport to meet him. And he said that while he was there, he just checked in at the lost baggage department and picked up my novel for me. So that's why I had it to work on.

Presenter19:35

So we owe your creative success to that fortuitous decision of his. Yes.

Presenter19:42

Thank you very much, Taggy. Time for some more music and your fifth choice today. What have you gone for and why?

Presenter19:49

That would be

Anne Tyler19:49

Un Canadienne errent, sung by Ian and Sylvia, just as a sort of tribute to Montreal and Canada and the happenstance of being forced to write a novel while I was living there.

Speaker 120:04

I'm gonna join.

Speaker 120:11

Bonnie is a fire.

Speaker 120:17

I'm gonna

Presenter20:18

Uh

Speaker 120:23

Bonnie did save while he

Speaker 120:29

Macourton Bluetooth.

Presenter20:35

Un Canadien Eron, Ian and Silvia. And Tyler, one of your enduring creative inspirations is the writer Eudora Welty. Why did her work appeal to you at the beginning, when you first discovered her?

Presenter20:49

She

Anne Tyler20:50

Uh Yeah.

Presenter20:50

Sort of

Anne Tyler20:50

Taught me what was okay to write about. I was about 14 years old when I read a short story of hers called The Wide Net. And in it, there was just a chance mention of somebody called Edna Earle, who, as she put it, wasn't a real deep thinker.

Anne Tyler21:11

The line had something to do with how Edna Earle could sit all day just pondering how the tale of the C got through the loop of the L in the Coca-Cola sign. It was like a revelation to me. I said, I know Edna Earle. I know a lot of Edna Earles. They're not heroic people. I thought you had to write about heroic people. I thought you had to have big grand events for your plot. And Eudora Walty was just...

Anne Tyler21:39

nattering on about these people.

Presenter21:41

People that were all around me.

Anne Tyler21:42

Yeah.

Presenter21:42

Ready?

Presenter21:43

If Morning Ever Comes, your first novel was published in 1964 and you were just 22 at the time. What do you think of it today?

Anne Tyler21:51

Oh, I'm embarrassed by it, as well as by the three that came after it.

Anne Tyler21:56

I I had this this theory that if you revised it was wrong because then it wouldn't be a very spontaneous novel. So I if I could buy them all up, those first four novels and destroy them, I would.

Presenter22:11

Well, that is some staunch self-criticism there, Anne. But over the years, you've learnt to go back over your work, haven't you? Yes.

Anne Tyler22:18

So I revise endlessly again and again until basically it's not until I think it's perfect, it's until I think I'll throw up if I have to read it again.

Presenter22:29

Um, it's time for some more music right now. What's your sixth choice, and and why are you taking it with you to the island?

Presenter22:35

Yeah. That

Anne Tyler22:35

That's heart of glass. Late 70s, early 80s was when I had my two daughters were teenagers, and they would.

Anne Tyler22:45

Come down stairs and they would.

Anne Tyler22:48

turn on the first thing they do is turn on the

Anne Tyler22:51

Radio that was in the dining room, and it would be blasting rock songs all over the house. And almost invariably, they would say, Listen to this, mom, this is my song, this is listen to this. And then the doorbell would ring, and they'd go out in the world, and I would be left with this music playing all through the house. And children do connect you more to the world, whether you want to be or not. In fact, when they left to go to college, we had an empty nest, I told my husband, I'm not sure I'll be able to write anymore because they were telling me what was going on in the world. How am I going to find out now?

Presenter23:31

Yeah.

Presenter23:35

We're not the best thing on the show.

Presenter23:39

Uh

Speaker 123:40

Try not to hide.

Presenter23:58

Heart of Glass by Blondie. Ann Tyler, I know that since college you've written words and phrases on index cards and you keep them in a box and use them as prompts for ideas and characters, sometimes years later. What kind of things do you record? What do you write down?

Anne Tyler24:13

Some of my index cards have whole stories on them, and some have one word. I thought about this index card just the other day because I was trying to come up with a new idea of something to write, and I looked at this card, and it said

Anne Tyler24:32

Joan's grandmother always used to say that if you lose an object, the quickest way to find it is to put an onion on your kitchen counter and walk away and it will be found. And I thought, how am I ever going to use that card? But I just can't throw it away. I just need to use it somehow. So it's still sitting there in the box.

Presenter24:52

So that's an unused card that might make an appearance in in future, do you think? Well, or else not.

Anne Tyler24:59

I think I'll go to the grave with some unused, and it kills me. I keep thinking, why can't I just use up the cards and be done? Throw away the bucks. No, it's not going to happen.

Presenter25:08

Anne, I want to ask about your husband Taggy. He died in 1997 and he was only 65.

Presenter25:15

You've often said that that your fiction isn't taken from real life, but you have written about grief. I wonder if the emotions you wrote about were taken from your own experience of loss, and if so, did did writing help?

Anne Tyler25:28

One book I wrote where a man feels that his wife has come back and is just there. The beginning of goodbyes.

Speaker 125:34

The big

Presenter25:34

And it's good guys.

Speaker 125:35

Uh

Anne Tyler25:36

Yes. It obviously was not taken from my life, but I suppose I was thinking about such things, and I don't think I properly realized about death. I had some time just spent sort of sitting there saying, so this is wait, this is how it's ending. You know, I just it was it was hard.

Anne Tyler26:01

We all were he was a wonderful father as well as husband, and we all were kind of in shock for a while.

Presenter26:09

Let's have some more music, Anne. This is your seventh choice today. What is it, and and why have you taken it to the island today?

Anne Tyler26:17

That's box while sheep may safely graze.

Anne Tyler26:20

Taggy happened to be a great lover of Bach and Mozart. He listened to them.

Anne Tyler26:26

all the time. And in about the mid 90s he fell ill with lymphoma.

Anne Tyler26:31

And at first well, first, of course, that meant he was home much more and his music was always playing, but then gradually I began to notice that.

Anne Tyler26:40

He wasn't interested in music anymore. And sometimes I would even come in and say, Oh, your Mozart finished. Let's put one on. And he would say, Oh, don't bother. And that's when I think I faced the fact that he was going to die. So in any case, he died in 1997. And about four months later, I was no, several months later, I was diagnosed with breast cancer.

Anne Tyler27:07

I was scheduled for a double mastectomy and was waiting for the surgery date when my daughter Tej, my older daughter, was diagnosed with a brain tumor.

Presenter27:18

Oh.

Anne Tyler27:18

And as it turned out, she had her surgery before I had mine. My two daughters were home for all this, so we were together. And the day of my surgery, Tej was still had a bandaged head from hers. And the three of us got ready to go to the hospital. A friend picked us up to drive us there.

Anne Tyler27:43

When we got into the car, I got in the front seat, and the two girls got in the back seat. And my friend turned the key in the ignition. And what came on, but while sheep may safely graze, I remember I didn't even turn to look at the girls, they just got very, very still. I could feel them in the back seat getting still, and I was very still in the front seat. And we just listened to that piece of music with all our hearts because it seemed like Tiggy talking to us almost. He was saying at least he knew what was happening, and he was with us.

Presenter29:18

Bark's Wild Sheep May Safely Graze, performed by the Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra, arranged and conducted by Richard Hayman. And Tyler, I have to ask how how your daughter's doing now. She's she's well?

Anne Tyler29:31

She's doing very well. She's happily married, and we're all just grateful we got through that.

Anne Tyler29:38

Uh

Presenter29:38

Thank goodness. You moved to Baltimore with your family in in 1967 and it's still home for you today. And as readers will know, it's been the setting for all of your novels ever since. Tell me about the city, because it is almost a person for you. Why do you find it so creatively stimulating?

Anne Tyler29:59

Well, for one thing, it's got a lot of character. I mean, some of it's kind of spiky, gritty character, but it's it's I wouldn't mistake it for another place. But also, surprisingly,

Speaker 130:08

Uh

Anne Tyler30:11

It's a very kind-hearted city. You you wouldn't hear the angry traffic horns in downtown Baltimore the way you would in New York. It's pretty civil and people smile at each other in the street and they stop to help each other and that's really across the

Presenter30:31

The whole city. I know that you're a fan of the television drama series The Wire, which examines modern America through the lens of your home city. What what is it that you love about it? Because it's it's very different from your own neighborhood, your own work. First of odds.

Anne Tyler30:44

Beautifully acted, it's real character. I can still practically quote the whole first episode. And it always surprises me because I watched with a group of friends. We met every week for I don't know how long in my living room to watch this. And at first, we used subtitles because sometimes, as the drug dealers were talking, we had no idea what on earth they were saying. But if you use subtitles too, we got so we pretty well knew the lingo. In fact, if somebody even now texts me and says, Are you coming tonight? I say, most deaf.

Presenter31:20

But uh

Anne Tyler31:21

It it is it it's a remarkable

Presenter31:24

Remarkable series. So you love Baltimore, Anne. And I know that you're not keen on traveling. You you're you're not one for book tours or anything like that. But of course I'm sending you far from home today. How do you imagine you'll settle into life on the island?

Presenter31:38

Yeah.

Anne Tyler31:38

I think I can handle it. I'm glad I'm being offered some music to listen to while I go through it.

Presenter31:43

But

Presenter31:44

Well, one more piece of music before you go, I think, Ann Tyler. What's it gonna be? It's number eight.

Anne Tyler31:48

Well, it's of course Baltimore as sung by Nina Simone. I've always thought that the shape of the average person's life is sort of the shape of a human eye. It starts at a small point at the beginning when there's just your little tiny world and then it widens out more and more as more happens and you move out into the world more and then it begins to narrow again.

Anne Tyler32:16

I think well

Anne Tyler32:17

I guess now I'm at that small point again at the other end of that eye shape, and

Anne Tyler32:24

Here in Baltimore, where I thought I was just passing through. I've been here more than 50 years.

Anne Tyler32:29

But it feels right that I should end up here.

Presenter32:40

Oh, the mole

Presenter32:44

Main it more.

Anne Tyler32:51

Oh

Presenter32:59

Just be

Presenter33:04

Nina Simone and Baltimore. So, Aunt Tyler, it's time. I'm going to send you away to the island. I'm giving you the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare. You can also take one other book with you. What will that be?

Anne Tyler33:17

That would be Eudora Welty's The Golden Apples. I think that if I were alone on a desert island and not seeing other human beings,

Anne Tyler33:26

Just this reminder of how funny and odd and stumbling and just unexpected human beings can be would be a perfect way to feel that I was among companions after all.

Presenter33:38

What will you choose for your luxury item?

Anne Tyler33:41

Oh, that's easy. That's going to be a giant supply of pet chow.

Presenter33:46

Uh

Anne Tyler33:46

Because I know that I'm not allowed to take an animal with me to the island, but I figure there's going to be some wildlife there. It could be

Presenter33:53

Number five

Speaker 133:53

Uh

Speaker 133:56

Yeah.

Anne Tyler33:58

A dog or cat, a goat would be very nice, but even an iguana, although I I kind of hope not an iguana, but whatever it is, I will have something to try to hand feed them with and make a friend.

Presenter34:12

Well, I hope that it will lure a recalcitrant goat out of the undergrowth for you. It's absolutely yours. And finally, which one track of the eight that you've shared with us today would you save

Anne Tyler34:16

Yeah.

Speaker 134:16

Delete.

Anne Tyler34:21

From the waves. That has to be while sheep may safely graze. I could listen to that forever.

Presenter34:28

And Tyler, thank you very much for letting us hear your desert island discs. Welcome.

Anne Tyler34:32

Well, thank you. You're very welcome.

Presenter34:47

I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Anne. Fingers crossed that she'll be able to make some friends, including that hungry goat that I hope is on the island. We've cast away many other writers, including Vikram Seth, Margaret Atwood, Marlon James and Ali Smith. You can find their episodes in our Desert Island Discs programme archive and through BBC Sounds. The studio manager for today's programme was Duncan Hannant and the producers were Sarah Taylor and Paula McGinley.

Presenter35:15

Next time, my guest will be Professor Nick Webborn, Chair of the British Paralympic Association. I do hope you'll join us.

Presenter35:24

Alright, here we go 8. 5, 6, 7, 8. Dance. It has the power to connect and to entertain. And in a new series for BBC Radio 4 and BBC Sounds, I explore the iconic dancers who have been doing just that.

Speaker 235:40

dance, it really, I think, saved my life.

Presenter35:43

Join me, Otima Wuse, as I delve into the lives of the innovators and the mall breakers who have changed dance forever.

Speaker 135:51

Gene Kelly was this working class guy that I just really connected with that.

Presenter35:54

Ultima Voosa's Dancing Legends on Radio 4 and PVC sounds.