Kate Mosse

Presenter0:01

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio Podcasts. 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.

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My castaway this week is the writer Kate Moss. She's known for her best-selling historical novels. Her 2005 Breakthrough Labyrinth sold 5 million copies, was translated into 38 languages, and made her, as she puts it, an overnight success at the age of 45. On the page she's an adventurer, taking her readers on epic quests, interweaving her lifelong loves of history and landscape with page turning action. She is, she says, not nearly as intrepid as her heroines, though she is on a lifelong quest. She's made it her mission to champion women's stories. She was enjoying a successful publishing career when she co-founded the Women's Prize for Fiction, and she's been the driving force behind it for almost 30 years.

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She also writes forgotten women back into history through plays, short stories and non-fiction like last year's Warrior Queens and Quiet Revolutionaries, a dictionary of a thousand women who helped create the modern world. And like every adventure, it always starts with a single step. She says, My most inspiring research comes from my feet. I walk around in a place that inspires me and dream about the book for months.

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Kate Moss, welcome to Desert Island Distance. It's lovely to be here. So let's start with you in full flow, Kate. It's a fantastic day's writing. What does that look like? It's a very early start. When I'm researching, I'm out and about and I can do lots of other things. But when I'm actually writing, even though my books are mostly really long, I'm a sprinter. So I write, as my mum used to put it, Christmas all raining. And I start every day at about half past three, four in the morning with a strong coffee. I've never weaned myself off sugar. And it's that moment, that kind of liminal time of the day when you're in a house where everybody else is asleep and you see the light coming up and you start to hear the first birds singing. And that's the time for me, the writing. So I would write from

Kate Mosse1:56

It's not

Kate Mosse2:18

One of them

Presenter2:39

Well, until I'm needed, I start writing about Hoppers 3, and I'm a carer, so that could be any time between 8 and 11 for my mother-in-law now, and previously for my wonderful dad. And obviously, before that, for children, you know, but they're more predictable in a funny sort of way. Tell me a little bit more about this research on foot, then. You've described exploring a place on foot as inviting the whispering of the landscape. I love that. So it starts with a place telling you its stories. Yeah, always. I mean, I grew up in Sussex, and I've had a long love affair with Cocasson in the southwest of France, and more recently with Amsterdam and with the Canary Islands. And it's that there are some places I love.

Kate Mosse2:45

Yeah.

Kate Mosse3:04

Telling you its story.

Presenter3:19

But they're silent to me. There's no story there. And then other places, it's as if when you're walking along the path, that sense of all the people that have walked the path before you, and all the people that will walk the path long after you're gone. But then there is that idea that it is like a whispering. It's like wind. It's like

Presenter3:38

There's a story here for you, Kate, and it's always that conjunction of landscape, history and mystery and place in the idea that this story can only be told and set here.

Speaker 43:44

Hmm.

Kate Mosse3:49

Here.

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It's time to get started on your music, Kate. Eight tracks to take to the island. What's your first choice today? Morning is Broken, sung by Kat Stevens. And I am absolutely sure that this is my earliest actual memory, which is mine, not one that I've been told by my parents or teachers. And I can remember very clearly standing in the school hall at infant school in a smocked summer dress like you did in those days and white knee-length socks and those black Mary Jane shoes, or maybe they were blue, I can't remember, and singing that hymn in assembly. I love it because

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That is still how I feel.

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When I wake up in the morning, whatever's happened, whether you're in good times, bad times, you're feeling sad about things or thrilled about things, that moment when you just look out.

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And there are the trees, and they've always been there, and the grass is there, and you do hear the first blackbird singing. And I still have that sense of.

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It was a pretty amazing world.

Speaker 44:51

Nin has broken

Speaker 44:54

Okay.

Speaker 44:55

Like the first morning.

Speaker 44:59

That bird has spoken like the first bird.

Speaker 45:08

Praise for the sea, praise for the morning, praise for them springing, fresh from the wild.

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Yusuf Kat Stevens and Morning is Broken. So Kate, you were born in Chichester, 1961, the eldest of three sisters, to Richard and Barbara, and you say it's the childhood you might have read about in 1960s books. How so?

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They were

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Those parents, they were just wonderful.

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And my dad went to the office. He was a lawyer and he was home at quarter past five every day and we all sat down at half past five and talked about the day and had supper. So I'm picturing the parents from the tiger who came to tea. Yes, but I am. I was that girl because I was the eldest and then my sister's very close together. There was never any doubt that the thing that mattered was

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Our little family unit. And when I was much older, you know, I discovered that my Ma had had some really bad experiences with pregnancy. And I had been nearly gone the way of other children who hadn't made it. You were born very, very prematurely. And the only reason I made it was because my ma started, it all started to go wrong when she was in.

Kate Mosse6:20

Very

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Hospital. Not only was that

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Traumatic, of course, for my poor Ma, but it was also why my dad, who was a very traditional English gent, but at the same time he was completely hands-on in a way that fathers weren't. He was there when you were born. He was called and he held me first because my ma was unconscious. Him being present at the birth, very unusual. Very, very unusual. But it meant that the first five days of my life, it was touch and go for both my ma and for me. And there was my dad, and of course, it made sense because I thought everybody's fathers did all of these things. He changed nappies, we did everything together. He was like a much more modern father.

Kate Mosse6:43

Well he was a queer

Kate Mosse6:49

There we go.

Kate Mosse6:55

Uh

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And of course as I got older I realized that a lot of my friends that their fathers really had very little to do with them, and they certainly didn't do any of the domestic things. But for my dad and my mum, there I was, and I'd made it. And I think that's part of it. I felt all of my life

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unconditionally loved.

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Kate, it's time for your second piece of music today, disc number two. What are we going to hear next and why have you chosen it? This is a song by Nancy Sinatra called These Boots Are Made for Walking. Now my parents had an old-fashioned wooden turntable in the sitting room and they didn't have a lot of records. They had a few Beatles records, they had a few classical records and they had this one album, Boots, by Nancy Sinatra. And my ma had a pair of legs, blimey. She didn't wear mini, many skirts, but she at the same time could pull that off in a way that I have never been able to. And she loved this song and so did my dad. And of course, when I've looked at some of the videos, I thought, oh my god, it's very much of its age. But at the same time, it's just that brilliant introduction. And then the way it just kind of clonks down and it starts, the boots start to click. And it is, without realising it, of course, a women's empowerment song. It's like, you know what? You've been mucking about and all of the ones you've been a messing when you shouldn't have been a messing. And my mum would put it on and my sisters and I would jump around in the sitting room to it doing terrible, you know, pans people dancing.

Speaker 48:34

You've been a messer. Well, you shouldn't have been a messer.

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And now someone else is getting all your best.

Speaker 48:45

These boots are made for walking.

Speaker 48:48

And that's just what they'll do.

Speaker 48:51

One of these days these boots are gonna walk all over you.

Speaker 49:02

Yeah.

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Nancy Sinatra and these boots were made for walking. So Kate, life at school, how was that for you? I liked school. I was that annoying child that sat at the front and whose arm was always permanently up in the air. So were you top of the class then? No, I was

Speaker 49:12

Go

Kate Mosse9:17

So

Presenter9:20

I worked hard. It wasn't that I was the top of the class, actually, but I did always work and I loved doing a project. So, like, you know, even colouring in round the outside, you know, I liked all of that sort of stuff. And I went to a very big comprehensive school, and there were 2,000 girls, and there were some really cool girls, and there were some very sporty girls, and there were some, you know, and I was just kind of. I was kind of a quite geeky girl. I did a lot of music.

Kate Mosse9:41

Just kind of

Presenter9:46

And but you play the violin and the piano. But I would go in early so as to avoid being, you know, caught by the cool girls and go home late to avoid being caught by the cool girls who had now been joined by cool boyfriends, everybody hanging around the bus station.

Kate Mosse9:46

But I see we're playing

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Nobody fits in.

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Everybody thinks that they're the one that is different, but nobody quite knows who they are. And it takes you a while to discover that actually all the people that are doing all of these things and smiling the most and seem the most popular maybe aren't very happy with that either. And I think it's just

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It was a slow time, the 70s, and it gave me time just to quietly grow up and find out who I was. It's time for your third disc, Kate. What do you want to take with you to the island next? Station to Station by David Bowie, the title track. I think all young people spend a lot of time in their bedrooms in their teens, imagining a much bigger world, imagining emotions that you have never really felt, worlds that you really can't possibly imagine, and you sing along to these words and they mean nothing, really, but you know all the words. But David Bowie was a very constant presence all the way through my teenage years. And Station to Station in particular, I can remember I used to put it on every morning and it was winter and I don't know what year it was. Maybe I was 16, maybe I was 15. And that very slow build-up as you hear the train just rattling along. It's not actually a train, of course, and then building up to the introduction of the character. Now, I didn't know any of this at the time, but of course, now I know at Concept Album, the idea of taking on a persona. The thing about Bowie, I would say, is that he just was a genius in that sort of way. And it's what I think.

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music and plays and theatre.

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obviously, and novels and everything can do, which is create an entire world. And of course, it's ten minutes long and it was exactly the amount of time that I would put it on in my bedroom that it took me to get my school uniform on, get my bag sorted. When the track was finished, down I went for breakfast.

Speaker 411:55

Return of lovely and white jewel, throwing dots in lovers' eyes.

Speaker 412:07

One magical moment except just the stuff from where dreams are whoa.

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David Bowie and station to station. So after school, Kate, you spent a year in London temping before going to Oxford University to study English and you were the first in your family to have that kind of education. Did it live up to your expectations? I loved it and I'd never been to Oxford until I went to have my interview. It was just an image from, you know, all of those films and books and stuff like that. But I just had always wanted to go there. And my lovely dad, when he took me up for the interview, and he just said, remember, he said, if you walk around looking as if you belong here, people will think you do.

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And it was a brilliant piece of advice. Was it right? Yeah. The thing that I learned when I got there was that what matters.

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is that you're supported and that you're loved.

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That's it.

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If you have that, then you can give anything a go, and if it doesn't work out, you can do something else. It's the great Samuel Beckett phrase, which is always misquoted, but the bit that's missing is the bit that matters. And it's try again, fail again.

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Never mind.

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Fail better.

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And if you have, you know, if you're supported by your family.

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then you can give anything a go because you know that if it doesn't work out, then you'll do something else and that will also be fine. Following university, you went into publishing. What was the ambition? What was your dream back then? No ambition at all. Everything that I've done has been

Presenter13:57

something's come along and I've taken advantage of it or not, rather than having a plan. So because I had been temping in London, in those days that's what happened. If you were a girl and a young woman, you did a secretarial course and people went and had secretaries in the way that there isn't that kind of entry route anymore.

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And I had temped in publishing companies before, a particular company called Hodder and Stoughton. And so I went back there when I finished because I didn't know what I wanted to do. Most of university, I was doing theatre and discovering feminism. But neither of those seemed a plausible career choice, as it were. So I just went back to temping and went to temp at this same company, Hodder and Stoughton. And somebody's secretary was leaving, and they said, you know, I was there in reception. They said, do you want a job? So I said, okay, yeah, I'll do it because I don't know what I want to do yet. And when it came to discovering feminism, was that in the classroom or outside of it? When I got to university, I discovered that there were groups. You know, people sat and went in my day, it was consciousness raising groups, CR groups, and that idea that people don't have equal opportunities. And I hadn't had that experience really as a girl growing up in the family that I'd grown up in.

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So I started to become active in terms of just thinking about it. You know what it what's the the other F word? Well, it's fairness. That's it. It's about surely anybody, whoever they are, should be able to

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Do what they feel that they can do, regardless of what they look like or where they come from or who their parents are and all of that sort of stuff. And so for me, feminism became a very important part of my university experience. And I went to Greenham Common a lot because it was quite close by and took part. It was the first time I'd ever taken part in marches, you know, Reclaim the Night marches and all of these things. And it just became a framework of how do you what my parents always did, which is

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You make a contribution. You try to

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expand opportunities for yourself and for everybody else.

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Kate, we've got to make time for the music. What's your fourth track?

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I love the idea of music in particular as a driver for change and a way of engaging people who might not otherwise be engaged. And so, the next choice is Walls Come Tumbling Down by the Style Console. And this was very much part of protest music. I used to love the 70s protest music, and I loved the 80s protest music. I think this song, Paul Weller's Voice, DC Lee's Voice, and that really idea that you know, change things, you know, stand up and be counted, don't be a bystander. And this is one of those epic banging, you know, it starts with that fantastic sort of Hammond organ at the beginning. Brilliant song.

Speaker 416:38

So strong me I am gonna try to make this work

Speaker 416:45

A spillion layers down in the third. Cause you beats can't change. Yes, wows can tumbling down. Spike consistent more, cause humanity is far more fall. Lights go out, wows come tumbling down. Yes, they do, yes they do, yes they do, yes I do.

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The Style Council and Walls Come Tumbling Down. So let's talk protest, Kate. In nineteen ninety six you were one of the founders of the Women's Prize for Fiction, originally known as the Orange Prize, still going strong twenty eight years later. But it didn't receive an entirely rapturous reception when it first started life. How do you remember that time?

Speaker 417:12

And

Kate Mosse17:12

Back

Presenter17:26

When we announced that we were getting, in the end, it was millions of pounds of sponsorship. I thought everybody who loved amazing books would just think it was brilliant, genuinely. I was very naïve. It didn't occur to me that it would be seen as a political act or an anti-male act. You know, because for me, feminism is about men and women together. We built the world together, we can change the world together, we can make the world fairer together, men and women together. But it was interpreted absolutely as an anti-male thing. And I gave my very first speech announcing this prize was going to happen. It was at the ICA in London. And honestly, thought it was going to be like a Bruegel painting, that everybody was going to throw their hats in the air and cheer. And a tweedy arm went up at the back of the hall. And I didn't know any journalists then, so I didn't know who this person was. A man was attached to the tweedy arm, and he said, Are you a lesbian?

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And that was the first question asked on record about the Women's Prize. And I mean, my answer was no, are you? And then everybody laughed, but it was an indicator. And then so for the next five months, it was just permanent attack, really. And there were two things. One was

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If women were any good, they'd win the real prizes.

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Now the only thing that you can do with that kind of comment is you need to have your facts straight. And the facts were very straightforward that 60% of novels published were authored by women, 75% of novels published were bought by women, yet fewer than 9% of authors ever shortlisted for literary prizes were women. So there was just a clear disconnect. And the turning point was at the first award ceremony. And I'm not shy about going to introduce myself to people or, you know, doing all of those things.

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Iris Murdoch came.

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And it's the only time in my life that I have been too shy to go and introduce myself to someone. But I can remember thinking.

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Okay, Iris Murdoch is here and therefore everything that's happened over the previous five months, I don't care.

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It's time for your fifth choice today, Kate. What's it gonna be? Well, obviously I had to have a big old feminist banger, didn't I?

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In the end, I've gone for I Will Survive by Gloria Gaynor. Everybody hears that piano, sort of the you know, the arpeggio right at the beginning, and everybody knows. And it's from Disco's at School.

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There could be nobody on the dance floor. That starts, and every single girl, and lots of the lovely boys straight on the dance floor. And of course, it is like, you know, you thought you'd do me down. I'm back now, I'm stronger than ever. And you sing all these lines, having no experience of love or loss or being betrayed or any of these things. But it's just one of those bangers. And when I was doing my one-woman show,

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I had a playlist, a preset playlist in the wings. And for the rest of my life now, whenever I hear Gloria Gaynor, I will be thinking, oh, this is the moment that my microphone gets put on. And I would stand in the wings every night and have a little dance.

Kate Mosse20:19

Cause you're not welcome anymore.

Kate Mosse20:24

Weren't you the one who tried to hurt me with your vibe? Did you think I'd crumble?

Kate Mosse20:29

You think I'd lay down and die on

Kate Mosse20:33

I will survive.

Kate Mosse20:35

And as long as I know how to love, I know how to stay alive.

Kate Mosse20:39

I've got all my life to live, and I've got all my love to give, and I'll survive.

Kate Mosse20:45

I was the best

Kate Mosse20:47

Uh

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Gloria Gaynor, and I will survive. So K Moss, your novel Labyrinth, published in 2005 and set in Carcassonne, was a bestseller. It's a time-shift Grail Quest, set in the Middle Ages and in present-day France, and it reached number one in the charts, something that I imagine every writer dreams of. You'd written four books already. Did you have a sense that you had a hit on your hands before it came out?

Presenter21:15

No, you don't even really believe that anybody who isn't your mum is going to read it. It's that kind of thing. And also, I'd been writing it in my spare time essentially, and it had been going on for a really long time. So it was one of those things, particularly with our friends in Gakassan, people go, you know, eight years on, how's the novel going, Kate? Great. You could see they were thinking she's deluded. The game changer was the paperback, and it was being on the Richard and Judy Show.

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And so I can remember very clearly, it was January, it was five o'clock in the afternoon, and my daughter, who I it must have been ten, I suppose, I was right, said,

Kate Mosse21:41

Yeah.

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Mum

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We're going to watch it with you. Do you think you need a glass of wine? I think I do need a glass of wine. Thank you for everyone. And we sat there on the floor, leaning against the sofa, with the television on, holding hands. I had my son one side, my daughter the other side. My husband was at work. And we just sat there because they were young, but they understood that this was something.

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It was absolutely extraordinary. The power of that show at that time. The book went to number one the next day and it stayed there for six months. And it was that moment. And I will probably never have that moment again, but I've had it once. I've written better books than Labyrinth. But even now, when I'm traveling about, always somebody will come up with a copy of that book and tell me that they went there for the first time last year or they went on honeymoon. And now I'm traveling all over the world to other countries and meeting readers all over the world and I will enjoy it for as long as it lasts. And luckily I've been able to carry on. It's time for your next track, Keith. Well, I very much enjoy what I always think of as the dreamy.

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Fantasie Ecle atmosphere.

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of the late eighteen eighties and nineties and nineteen tens. And France was produced these extremely amazing composers, and one of them, of course, was De Bussy, who I adore, but Ravel,

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Second Piano Concerto in G, The Second Movement. It's his love letter to the piano.

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I've spent a lot of time in the last fifteen years

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with older people and people at the end of their life.

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And this piece of music is one of those pieces of music which I kind of feel

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Is the sort of piece of music that's in the background at the end of life? Gentle.

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True.

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Poignant.

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Complete.

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Part of the second movement from Ravel's second piano concerto in G major, performed by Marta Argoric with the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Claudio Abado. Kate, one of your most recent books, An Extra Pair of Hands, was about the years that you've spent as a carer, firstly to your father and now to your mother-in-law, known to everyone in Chichester, I think, as Granny Rosie. And of course, what you've done is out of love and it's rewarding, and it's a privilege to do that for someone, but it is incredibly tough, as many listeners will, of course, know. What made you sure you wanted to take that role on?

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Oh, that's such an interesting way of um

Presenter25:16

Asking it because I'm not sure.

Presenter25:19

That it ever felt like there was a choice. It just seemed like, well, this is what needed to happen, rather than it's a choice to do it. And it was.

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An extraordinary thing, because particularly with my dad, I was very, very close to my dad and very, very close to my mum. My dad was a quiet man. When he died, we had hundreds and hundreds of letters, most of them using the word he was a real English gentleman, and telling me things that he had done for them that never heard of. Never boasted, he never talked about things. He just was a quiet revolutionary, my dad. He just got on with things. Very unassuming. He left me a list of the hymns he'd like and the prayers he'd liked, and then the bottom, which still brings tears to my eyes when I think about it, he just put the thank you at the bottom.

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Now my ma, she didn't want to talk about anything like that.

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Of course, and your mother-in-law, Granny Rosie, who you currently care for, she's in her mid-nineties now, and you grew up knowing her. You and your husband were at school together and dated when you were very young. I wonder about the decision to write about caring, because we don't hear carers' stories a lot, but there are so many people out there who are in that role. The reason I did it is precisely as you say, that carers are

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everywhere and invisible.

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A woman has a 50-50% chance of being a carer by the time she's 59.

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And a man the odds aren't until there may be seventy five, which

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Caring organizations think probably means that husbands care for wives and partners.

Speaker 426:52

Yeah.

Presenter26:53

And women care for everybody else. And because it's women, it is the lowest paid of all the statutory benefits. And without women, the whole of social care would collapse. And it matters because every government has promised to deal with this and has not. And so that was part of my decision to do this. And I obviously have support. My husband and my brother-in-law and also my sisters step in. My children are incredible in this area as well. So I'm not doing it on my own at all. Many people are. I would say that it gave me.

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With

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Both my mum and my dad.

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I had time for conversations with them.

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that I wouldn't have had otherwise.

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And Granny Rosie became a complete media star during lockdown. She was absolutely brilliant. My daughter filmed her playing her piano out on the street for Clap for Care. During Clap for Carers, she would accompany and it went viral. It went viral. And she was on all these shows. She was on Good Morning Britain and Lorraine and all of these things. And Granny Rosie has recorded her own funeral music.

Kate Mosse27:48

Yeah.

Kate Mosse27:51

It will

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And it will bring the house down. Her her singing and playing. Wish me luck as you wave me goodbye.

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Okay, let's take a minute for some music.

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Your next track, what's it going to be? Well, the next track, I so tried not to do this, but it would have just been dishonest for me not to choose ABBA's Dancing Queen because for me, this is the ultimate multi-generational women dancing in the kitchen song. And for my 50th birthday party, it was the first one, and some friends had got their hairbrushes and we had hired those costumes and we did the whole thing. And for my 60th, my daughter organized this incredible night, and my son compared it. And the first song again was Dancing Queen. And there it was, I was dancing with my son, and my daughter, and Granny Rosie.

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Burning up the dance floor in her wheelchair, she's the dancing queen.

Speaker 429:09

Who's she that girl?

Speaker 429:13

Watch Betsy digging the dancing queen.

Speaker 429:25

Drive died and the lights are low

Speaker 429:29

Looking up for a place

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ABBA and Dancing Queen will dedicate that one to Granny Rosie, I think. So, Kate Moss, you're a visiting professor of contemporary fiction and creative writing at the University of Chichester. I wonder what your best advice is to aspiring writers? This is allegedly attributed to Pucasa near the end of his life. A student once said to him, you know, why do you still go to your studio every day?

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And he said, When inspiration arrives, I want it to find me working. That's the point. You don't always feel in the mood. You don't always feel that the words are going to come, but you go to your desk every day.

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You treat it seriously, and often it's a complete catastrophe. People forget if they saw any of our first draft compared to the books that are published, they'd be thrilled, you know. And everybody who wants to write has got time to write. You haven't got time to write that novel if you're doing a million other things and you're working and travelling and caring and whatever it is. But you do have time to write the description of what steam looks like coming out of the kettle. And if you do a tiny bit of writing every day so your muscles are ready for it, it means that you take away the fear of the blank page, the blank screen, so that when you do have time to sit down and write that novel or that biography or that history, you're ready to go.

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I'm about to send you away to your own desert island. How will you cope with the isolation? It's not straightforward, isn't is it? Would I be able to cope on my own? Yes, because I would get on with it.

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Would I want to? No.

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If I

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Couldn't have my son and my daughter and my husband, and now my grandson.

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And other family members and friends, there wouldn't be much point for me, actually. I would miss people and I would be lonely. So I d I don't think I would enjoy being cast away on the island. Well, you'll have your discs to keep you comfortable. And you can have one more before we send you away. What's it gonna be? Your final choice today? Well, my final choice, of course, has got to be one for

Kate Mosse31:26

That would

Presenter31:35

My husband.

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We met at school when we were fifteen.

Presenter31:39

We were together for a couple of years and then we went our separate ways and then extraordinarily and truly we met on a train out of the blue, having not had any contact with each other for

Presenter31:50

Eight years, I think, and it was very straightforward, that we'd been right in the first place.

Presenter31:56

And we've been together ever since.

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So we've known each other now.

Presenter32:01

More than forty-five years. And Gregg, he is still

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The boy who rewrote the lyrics to Elton John's Your Song when We Sat by a Stream in Fishbourne where I grew up that boy is present in the man that, while I was doing my tour, drove half way across the country so that I could always come home on my day off. And so the song is

Presenter32:23

Wonderful.

Presenter32:24

A song by Jacques Brell called La Champson des Vieux Amont, which is about two lovers that have been together for only twenty years. They're babies compared to us. But the song is of course we've had our storms and of course we've had this, that and the other, but from the first light to the end of the day, I still love you. You know that I still love you. So this is for Greg.

Speaker 432:45

Bien sur mous desoral chaux.

Speaker 432:50

Fratent de mour, c'est la mour fall.

Speaker 432:55

Mi le foie tu parit tun bagange.

Speaker 433:01

Mi le foie ze prime na

Speaker 433:04

Four

Speaker 433:06

I chaque me souvien, dans c'estus chambs sombier sau, des colar, des vie e tempre.

Presenter33:17

Jacques Brell's La Champson de Vieux amonde.

Presenter33:21

So Kate Moss, the time has come. I'm going to send you away to the island. I'm giving you the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare. And I know this is going to be very tough for you. You can take one other book. What's it going to be? Well, do you know, actually, oddly, it isn't. And T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets has been a sequence of poems that have kept me company for all of my kind of grown-up life, if you like. It's a sequence of poems that

Kate Mosse33:30

Ta-da!

Kate Mosse33:32

Good luck.

Kate Mosse33:45

If you

Presenter33:48

can be read in any single way.

Presenter33:51

and mean a different thing at any moment.

Presenter33:54

But I think that if I was on my own, therefore, to have

Presenter33:58

You know, some of the beautiful lines, you know, In my beginning is my end, and you know, words slip, slide, perish, decay, cannot stand straight. You know, there's just so much beauty in the language, and description in the language, and thought and philosophy, and you know, religion is not faith, and this is a poem of faith.

Presenter34:19

And I think that I would be in reflective mood and I would be thinking of all

Presenter34:25

All the things that had happened in my life and would be very much looking out for the ship on the horizon to rescue me, but for Quartettes it is the perfect meditation on what it means to be human.

Presenter34:38

It's yours. You can also have a luxury item. What are you going to take? I decided I would take a jukebox, a kind of Wurlitzer. You can only have your 8 discs, but there's no reason we can't stack them up in a jukebox. Exactly. It is a beautiful kind of mechanical, magical idea. Absolutely. And it's that pressing of the button, you press the letter, and then you press the number, and you watch it fall down. Absolutely. And I would remember.

Kate Mosse34:50

Exactly.

Kate Mosse34:55

That's true.

Kate Mosse34:57

You press the letter.

Kate Mosse35:00

I might

Presenter35:02

All the people that I'd listened to the music, the theatre of the Duke box, would be what I needed. I would feel that all those ghosts were there with me still and they would help people my island, and that is what I would need. Well, then that is yours. And finally, which one track of the eight that you've shared with us today, Kate, would you save from the waves if you had to?

Presenter35:23

Even coming on the train here this morning.

Presenter35:26

It was undecided. But you know, in the end, I think probably I would choose the Revelle because

Presenter35:35

That sense of quietness, of

Presenter35:39

completion in that piece of music. The idea of the full stop. I think if I was on the island I would be thinking, you know, if I'm not getting off this island

Presenter35:50

I'm gonna just gently, quietly

Presenter35:52

fade away and I think the Revelle would be that piece of music.

Presenter35:57

Kate Moss, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs. Thank you.

Presenter36:25

Hello, I hope that Kate's happy on her island playing with our Duke books. There are more than 2,000 programmes in our archive, which you can listen to, including many writers who've been cast away. There's Kate Atkinson, Deborah Levy, and Maya Angelou. You can find their programmes if you search through BBC Sounds or on our own Desert Island Disc's website. The studio manager for today's programme was Sarah Hockley and the producer was Sarah Taylor. Next time, my guest will be the actor, Stanley Tucci.

Speaker 337:19

Jason Manford here. And I'm Steve Edge. We just wanted to tell you about our new podcast from Radio 4 on BBC Sounds. Best Men, it's called. And it's all about one of the most important jobs a fella can face in his lifetime, being a best man. We were each other's best men, weren't we? So we know all about the pressures of this honorable but daunting and all-consuming role. In this podcast, we'll be meeting the people who've succeeded in helping their best pal through the most important day of their lives. And crucially, those that have failed. Hearing some unbelievable stories of stag do disasters, of speeches that have silenced the room, and about friendships that were never quite the same afterwards. We'll also be trying to help those going through this particular trauma over the coming months, as well as exploring the importance of that special friendship between Best Man and the group. And hopefully having a bit of a laugh along the way. It's a bit like a good wedding. You will not want to miss it. So give it a listen. And you can subscribe to Best Men right now on BBC Sounds.

Speaker 438:14

Uh

Speaker 338:14

Um