Sir Adrian Boult

Speaker 20:00

Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Disc's Archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen seventy nine, and the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Sir Adrian Boult0:31

Our castaway this week is a most distinguished one, and I'm visiting him in his home, where he's in the process of celebrating his ninetieth birthday. It's Sir Adrian Bolt.

Sir Adrian Boult0:42

Now, Sir Adrian, you're allowed this meagre eight discs on the island. Would you prefer to have scores? Oh, I never thought of that.

Sir Adrian Boult0:50

I think that's rather a good idea.

Sir Adrian Boult0:53

But uh I've r been thinking very hard about the re records, so perhaps we'll leave it like that. Well with records it doesn't mean that we can all share them. Yes, well there's that.

Speaker 20:59

Yeah.

Speaker 21:02

Yeah. Good job.

Sir Adrian Boult1:04

Now what's the first one you've chosen? In 1914, just before the war, the First War, Richard Strauss came to London.

Sir Adrian Boult1:12

and he conducted a programme of his own works, The Three Early Tone Poems.

Sir Adrian Boult1:18

Well, of course th th they were then only just new. We call them the early ones now. But uh those three and the Mozart G minor symphony.

Sir Adrian Boult1:28

And they told me in the orchestra that

Sir Adrian Boult1:31

He spent the first

Sir Adrian Boult1:34

Three quarters of an hour.

Sir Adrian Boult1:36

rehearsing his three pieces. Then they said, L now let's get to business. And he spent the next five hours rehearsing the Mozart.

Sir Adrian Boult1:45

It was a most lovely performance.

Sir Adrian Boult1:47

Alas I'm afraid that nineteen fourteen performance wasn't recorded, but we do have a record of Strauss conducting the Mozart G minor in nineteen twenty eight.

Sir Adrian Boult2:55

part of the Mozart Symphony No. forty in G minor.

Sir Adrian Boult2:59

K550, the Berlin State Opera Orchestra conducted by Richard Strauss.

Sir Adrian Boult3:05

Did you have any kind of plan in in choosing these records?

Sir Adrian Boult3:09

Well, I have rather a peculiar plan.

Sir Adrian Boult3:11

I felt that on the whole, having heard the Mozart, we needn't really

Sir Adrian Boult3:18

go in for a lot of things that we know very well.

Sir Adrian Boult3:22

And I thought I would rather like to be introduced on my desert island to a number of works that I hardly know.

Sir Adrian Boult3:31

And the next four are to be all works which I haven't heard much before, though I probably have done them once or twice, but have rather forgotten about them.

Speaker 23:37

The light

Sir Adrian Boult3:42

Whereabouts were you born, Sir Agent? I was born in Chester.

Sir Adrian Boult3:46

My father was a business man in Liverpool, and they were living in Chester just at that time.

Sir Adrian Boult3:51

We were all ill there and we migrated back to the Liverpool side very soon after. You showed musical talent very, very early in life. Were your parents particularly interested in music? Well, yes, my father was interested in in a gentle way and sang a bit. But my mother would probably have been a professional if she'd been strong enough. It said that you were picking out tunes on the piano when you were only two and were reading music at the age of four. That sort of thing. And began composing it at the age of seven.

Speaker 24:12

The tool

Speaker 24:18

It has.

Sir Adrian Boult4:21

I'm afraid that is true. I'm glad to say I stopped composing at the age of about seventeen or not much after.

Sir Adrian Boult4:29

And of course, being near Liverpool, there were opportunities to hear some fairly good concerts. They were very good, very good indeed. You had some quite ordinary school days. You went to Westminster. Yes. You were in the shooting aid at Bisley. I was, yes.

Sir Adrian Boult4:43

And then up to Oxford, you stroke the Christ Church second boat. There you are, there's my tie, Leander. Yes.

Speaker 44:49

The anthem.

Sir Adrian Boult4:50

Was it a successful season?

Speaker 24:51

Was it a success?

Sir Adrian Boult4:53

Well, um

Sir Adrian Boult4:54

We had a a a very nice time at Henley, though we were badly beaten by our first four. It was our own first four, so we didn't mind so much. And King George and Queen Mary were were watching.

Sir Adrian Boult5:08

So it was a a a nice occasion.

Speaker 45:08

So

Sir Adrian Boult5:10

And of course you played a considerable part in the musical life of the university. You were reading music and what was your other subject?

Sir Adrian Boult5:18

History was my main subject, but I'm afraid I left it after a year. Hugh Allen, of course, was mainly the person to get at get at me and say

Sir Adrian Boult5:27

You're wasting your time reading history, you much better spend all your time doing music.

Sir Adrian Boult5:32

When you came down from Oxford, you went to study at at Leipzig. You were able to work with Nikisch.

Sir Adrian Boult5:38

Not actually to work with Nikki.

Sir Adrian Boult5:40

I had met him when I was about sixteen in London at at a lunch party, and he said that he was going to give up the Conservatoire then.

Speaker 25:48

Then

Sir Adrian Boult5:49

within a few months, but that he hoped he'd go on at the Gavanthaus and would be very happy to give me passes for his rehearsals and so on. But he never taught at the Conservatoire while I was there. He'd handed over to Hans Zitt the

Sir Adrian Boult6:06

handling of the uh conducting glass and so on.

Sir Adrian Boult6:10

But I saw a l a great deal of his work.

Sir Adrian Boult6:13

And I

Sir Adrian Boult6:15

actually got my sense of technique from watching him.

Sir Adrian Boult6:21

Do you remember when you first conducted

Sir Adrian Boult6:24

um an orchestra in public.

Sir Adrian Boult6:27

What is it?

Speaker 26:27

What oh yes.

Sir Adrian Boult6:28

Uh my first concert was just before the Fourteen War.

Sir Adrian Boult6:32

In a place called West Kirby, where we lived then. That was in on the Wirral, on the Birkenhead side of Liverpool.

Sir Adrian Boult6:39

And we had about oh twenty-five or thirty members of the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. Well, what would nowadays be called a chamber orchestra.

Speaker 26:47

Well

Sir Adrian Boult6:50

And they came and we did a little programme. That was the only time, until just before the end of the war, 1918, when I was able to give four concerts in Queens Hall.

Sir Adrian Boult7:00

I think it's time we had your second record. What's that to be? This is one of the less well known ones. Yes. This is a work that I I'm very proud is dedicated to me, but I've not had the opportunity of doing it much.

Sir Adrian Boult7:14

Rubra's Second Symphony.

Sir Adrian Boult8:15

Part of Edmund Rubra's second symphony, the New Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Vernon Handley.

Sir Adrian Boult8:22

Now a very early success of yours was to conduct the first performance of The Planets by Gustav Holz. There was a bit of trouble about getting the parts copied in time, was there? Oh, yes, uh you see, it was all done at a frat frantic rate.

Sir Adrian Boult8:37

Um

Sir Adrian Boult8:38

He came into my office, I remember.

Sir Adrian Boult8:40

Oh, it must have been in October.

Sir Adrian Boult8:43

The Balfour Gardener, bless his heart, has given me a parting present, and I am being sent to Luxalonica.

Sir Adrian Boult8:50

And I've got to entertain the troops there. And th th this parting present of Belfort Gardeners consists of Queen's Hall full of the Queen's Hall orchestra for the whole of a Sunday morning.

Sir Adrian Boult9:02

And we're going to do the planets and you've got to conduct

Sir Adrian Boult9:05

I think it was just fully scored by them.

Sir Adrian Boult9:09

But that was all. And we had about six weeks to get the whole I think Miss Gray was the high mistress of St Paul's there. She was rather a generous person. And I think most of the girls spent their next few weeks copying parts and what the s what schooling they did, I've no idea. Of course Holst was music master of St Paul's Dale school.

Speaker 29:29

I suppose you're still heavy.

Sir Adrian Boult9:31

And um so we got the parts copied. As soon as the each thing thing was copied, it was sent to me and I tried to stuff it into my poor old head. And um we had the performance somewhere about, I think, the middle of November, quite soon.

Sir Adrian Boult9:45

You conducted a season with the Diagolev Bally. Did you have temperaments to cope with? Plenty. Oh, yes, plenty.

Sir Adrian Boult9:54

I I remember when Anserme, who from whom I had taken over,

Sir Adrian Boult9:59

They came back the following summer.

Sir Adrian Boult10:01

He said, How did you get on at the Agelev? I said, Perfectly. I had a row every fortnight. Exactly the period I found necessary at Diagilev.

Speaker 410:09

Yeah, good.

Sir Adrian Boult10:11

Yeah.

Sir Adrian Boult10:14

You also had a bit of trouble getting your money, I believe. Yes, I'd quite forgotten that. But somewhere about the third week, I think, I sent a message to Diagilev to say that I was going home after the second ballet there were always three, you see. I was going home after the second ballet unless I got some money. So in came D'Agilev into my room.

Sir Adrian Boult10:33

and began emptying his pockets, oozing ten pound notes and sovereigns and every blessed thing from every pocket. And that was Byagilev's bank. He never he never banked his money, but he always carried it about. When were you offered your first orchestra?

Sir Adrian Boult10:49

Oh, that was later.

Sir Adrian Boult10:51

It was about chum

Sir Adrian Boult10:53

Three or four years after I'd started at the college, let us say about twenty two or twenty-three

Sir Adrian Boult10:59

Birmingham came along, and so I went to Birmingham for six years, and after that of course it was B B C.

Sir Adrian Boult11:05

What is break at this point for your third record? Watch that to be.

Sir Adrian Boult11:09

The third record is The Bliss Meditations on a Theme of John Blow. Another close friend of yours, so Arnold Bliss. Yes, a very close friend.

Speaker 211:16

Uh

Sir Adrian Boult11:18

And he dedicated his colour symphony to me, and I know that well. So I thought I'd take a work which I'd done less often. And I have only conducted this once, and that was in Moscow at a concert, where it made a great impression. But it is, I believe, many people think it's Bliss's finest work. And this is the meditation on a theme of John Blair. Yes.

Sir Adrian Boult12:43

Meditations on a theme by John Blow, composed by Sir Arthur Bliss. The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Hugo Rignold. Now, you were conducting the City of Birmingham Orchestra, Sir Adrian. Then you were called away to the BBC. This was before your your contract had ended at Birmingham, in fact. It was, yes. I planned to stay at least ten years in Birmingham. I thought...

Speaker 212:57

Yes, we

Sir Adrian Boult13:05

I wanted to have the orchestra a whole time employment. And of course in those days it was only six months. They used to break in the summer. Break in the summer and go off to Scarborough and all kinds of places and come back in such a condition that it took one month before they played decently again.

Sir Adrian Boult13:24

Yeah.

Sir Adrian Boult13:26

And and two years later you you were invited to form the BBC Symphony Orchestra of of a hundred and ten players. Did you know that was in the wind when you took the post of director of music at the BBC?

Sir Adrian Boult13:39

Uh no. No, I wasn't invited to form the orchestra.

Speaker 413:39

Uh

Sir Adrian Boult13:43

I was already a member of the Music Advisory Committee.

Speaker 413:45

Yes.

Sir Adrian Boult13:45

and I was invited to become I remember Sir John's Wreath saying,

Sir Adrian Boult13:50

I don't care whether you play the comb or the penny whistle, but you're being engaged to direct my music.

Sir Adrian Boult13:58

And so I went to Direct Piece Music. And that was the...

Sir Adrian Boult14:03

First of january, nineteen hundred end.

Sir Adrian Boult14:07

Thirty.

Sir Adrian Boult14:09

Well

Sir Adrian Boult14:10

The orchestra was in the air by then.

Sir Adrian Boult14:13

And we planned a series of, I think it was thirty s twenty-eight concerts in Queens Hall, quite a lot in in Queens Hall that winter.

Sir Adrian Boult14:23

of which I did

Sir Adrian Boult14:25

About half, or rather less than half.

Sir Adrian Boult14:27

And it wasn't until after that season.

Sir Adrian Boult14:31

That wreath said to me, They tell me that you seem to make the orchestra play as well as most people. Perhaps you will take it on.

Sir Adrian Boult14:38

And I took it off.

Sir Adrian Boult14:41

You had the responsibility of of guiding the orchestra through the war years. That must have been very difficult indeed. Well, we had problems, of course. The

Speaker 214:47

Well, we had

Sir Adrian Boult14:50

The people on high reduced the number of the size of the orchestra to somewhere below ninety, I think, and uh we lost uh various people. But we get got a lot done and we got a lot of new works done too.

Sir Adrian Boult15:06

We've got to record number four. Watch that to be.

Sir Adrian Boult15:10

That is the song cycle by my old friend Gerald Finzi.

Sir Adrian Boult15:16

It's called Earth, Air and Rain.

Sir Adrian Boult15:19

And uh it I've never heard it, but uh John Carroll Case has sung it a good many times, and I'm very much looking forward to hearing him quite often, singing what I know will be very beautiful songs.

Speaker 315:40

When I set out for Lioness A hundred miles away, The rhyme was on the span, And the starlight lit my lonesomeness When I set out for Lioness A hundred miles away

Speaker 415:49

Uh

Speaker 316:15

What would be chance at Lioness While I should sojourn there? The prophet just declared Nor did the wisest wizard guess

Sir Adrian Boult16:31

John Carroll Case singing When I Set Out for Lioness.

Sir Adrian Boult16:35

From Gerald Fince's Earth and Air and Rain.

Sir Adrian Boult16:40

Now, thirty years ago you were more or less forcibly retired from the BBC because you were too old.

Speaker 416:45

Yeah.

Sir Adrian Boult16:48

That is true.

Sir Adrian Boult16:49

Eyeballs?

Speaker 416:49

Eye walls.

Sir Adrian Boult16:51

So you went off to the London Philharmonic Orchestra, where they certainly didn't find you too well. Well,.

Sir Adrian Boult16:58

I remember it was about two days after I'd left the BBC, we started our round. And in those days the London Philharmonic Orchestra was a real collection of carpetbaggers. And night after night we

Speaker 217:10

Night of

Sir Adrian Boult17:12

went to different places um near London and came back at midnight and

Speaker 217:14

They are

Sir Adrian Boult17:17

Somehow or other pulled ourselves together and did it again the next day.

Sir Adrian Boult17:21

It was a real wartime adventure that.

Sir Adrian Boult17:25

But twelve.

Sir Adrian Boult17:26

I made a lot of good friends and uh enjoyed it quite much, though of course it wasn't quite the beauty of the V V C.

Sir Adrian Boult17:34

orchestra, but he became very good. I think John Britchard came next and he didn't he was busy in Liverpool for, I think, a couple of years. So I d I didn't cease in any hurry to to work with the LP O and since then of course I've known them a great deal and they've done practically all my recordings.

Sir Adrian Boult17:54

I think it's time we had.

Sir Adrian Boult17:56

Your fifth record, what's that to be?

Sir Adrian Boult17:58

My fifth record is your BBC man, Robert Simpson.

Sir Adrian Boult18:03

and Simpson has written several.

Sir Adrian Boult18:06

Very fine symphonies and

Sir Adrian Boult18:09

I had the honour of recording the first of them, so I'm going to choose the third.

Speaker 218:15

Uh

Sir Adrian Boult18:16

which was recorded by my

Sir Adrian Boult18:18

Colleague Horenstein?

Sir Adrian Boult18:20

And

Sir Adrian Boult18:21

I hope will also be enjoyed.

Sir Adrian Boult19:24

Part of Robert Simpson's third symphony, Jascha Horenstein conducting the London Symphony Orchestra.

Sir Adrian Boult19:31

And after the LPO, of course, you you you freelanced.

Sir Adrian Boult19:34

I freelance.

Sir Adrian Boult19:35

There is a a story of

Sir Adrian Boult19:38

You were conducting in Vienna, and there was a query about, I think, two notes in the score, and it was a Mozart work. W will you pick up the story from there? Oh, that was with the uh Vienna Philharmonic.

Sir Adrian Boult19:52

And um

Sir Adrian Boult19:54

They played, they slurred the first two notes of the slow movement of the Mozart G minor.

Sir Adrian Boult20:01

And, as you know probably, each part of the orchestra takes the the the two notes and slurs them and goes on and and and and uh the next people do it and and so on the next people do it.

Sir Adrian Boult20:12

And as I heard these slurs...

Sir Adrian Boult20:16

I said um to the leader, Professor Arnold Rosset.

Sir Adrian Boult20:21

was leading for us. I said, Is he is that how you uh usually play the these first two notes?

Sir Adrian Boult20:27

Because Bozart's I knew that Bozart's manuscript.

Sir Adrian Boult20:31

which is uh the s um facsimile of it that you can you can buy, um, they are separated and not slurred at over at all.

Sir Adrian Boult20:40

So uh he said, We do what the conductor wants. I said, It doesn't m matter what the conductor wants. We want to know what Mozart want. Will you please send somebody upstairs to look at the manuscript? Because I knew the manuscript was in the library upstairs. And the orchestra was so amused that a foreigner should remember that they

Speaker 420:58

Yeah.

Sir Adrian Boult20:58

manuscript was in the in upstairs that uh that they sent me a nice little

Speaker 421:01

Death.

Sir Adrian Boult21:04

Letter, open letter with all their signatures. I think that's absolutely charming. That was the story. Send for the manuscript. Send for the manuscript, yeah.

Speaker 221:08

Yeah.

Speaker 221:09

That was the story.

Speaker 221:12

That is a tip.

Sir Adrian Boult21:15

Record number 6.

Sir Adrian Boult21:16

Record number six is Herbert Howell's.

Sir Adrian Boult21:20

Hemdus paradisi, if you pr pronounce it in in the Italian way. It's really just a requiem and it du uses the words requiem eternum, but it has uh some English versions of the Psalms in it and is altogether a very beautiful work.

Sir Adrian Boult22:37

Part of the Hymnlus Paradisi by Herbert Howells.

Sir Adrian Boult22:41

A performance conducted by David Wilcox.

Sir Adrian Boult22:45

Do you enjoy gardening?

Sir Adrian Boult22:47

I'm afraid my back's too long for gardening. As it is for so many people. And fishing. Have you ever done any fishing?

Speaker 222:53

And fishing every

Sir Adrian Boult22:56

I caught one miserable trout once.

Sir Adrian Boult23:00

A very small one, and I put him back. These are really exploratory questions to find out what kind of time you're going to have on your desert island. We're not going to be so heartless as to maroon you completely alone. We'll let you have a companion. But you'll have to do your whack of the of the chores. Can you carpenter?

Speaker 223:12

But you'll have

Sir Adrian Boult23:17

Yes, I have.

Sir Adrian Boult23:19

That book book rest I I actually made myself. Well done. So a little light carpentry and we'll put you in charge of the record player. Light carpentry. And I shall probably break the record player before I'm done with it. Record number seven, what's that to be?

Sir Adrian Boult23:37

I remember very well after a grand

Sir Adrian Boult23:41

day of um

Sir Adrian Boult23:43

Twenty fifth. Jubilee.

Sir Adrian Boult23:46

King George the Fifth came to the microphone, and he began in his lovely, gruff voice, My very dear

Sir Adrian Boult23:54

May we have that?

Sir Adrian Boult23:56

How could I fail?

Sir Adrian Boult23:58

to be most deeply moved.

Sir Adrian Boult24:02

Words cannot express

Sir Adrian Boult24:04

My thoughts and feelings.

Sir Adrian Boult24:08

I can only say to you

Sir Adrian Boult24:10

My very dear people.

Sir Adrian Boult24:13

said the Queen the Nine,

Sir Adrian Boult24:15

Thank you.

Sir Adrian Boult24:17

From the depths of our hearts.

Sir Adrian Boult24:20

For all the loyalty

Sir Adrian Boult24:22

And may I say

Sir Adrian Boult24:24

The love

Sir Adrian Boult24:26

with which this day and always you have surrounded us.

Sir Adrian Boult24:34

I dedicate myself anew to your service for the years that they still

Sir Adrian Boult24:43

Be given to me.

Sir Adrian Boult24:46

His Majesty King George V on the occasion of his Jubilee.

Sir Adrian Boult24:51

When did you first start recording yourself?

Sir Adrian Boult24:54

Well, the Diyagilev season.

Sir Adrian Boult24:57

That we spoke about was very soon after the First War. I think it was.

Sir Adrian Boult25:03

nineteen nineteen.

Sir Adrian Boult25:04

And uh in those days the EMI was very much governed.

Sir Adrian Boult25:10

by a very bright little man named Fred Guisberg.

Sir Adrian Boult25:14

He was an extraordinarily able musician.

Sir Adrian Boult25:18

And he spotted that some of the

Sir Adrian Boult25:21

Ballets that we were doing were musically useful.

Sir Adrian Boult25:27

And so he came to me at once at that time, as as soon as the season was over.

Sir Adrian Boult25:33

and ask me to do records of the good-humoured ladies and of the boutique Frontasque.

Sir Adrian Boult25:41

These of course were were the days of acoustic recording. Absolutely, the very first days it was the the conductor was perched up on a on a sort of shelf in the room.

Sir Adrian Boult25:51

Sitting on a sitting on a sort of

Sir Adrian Boult25:54

Mantelpiece.

Sir Adrian Boult25:55

and half the orchestra had their backs to them, and were looking in a looking glass and that kind of thing. There was no there were no basses at all, no string basses at all. The the whole bass line was done by one tuber.

Sir Adrian Boult26:08

Uh and uh when the when a real tuber was wanted, uh they had to get a second.

Sir Adrian Boult26:14

But they were all packed into a t small room and it was quite a an experience. And I did quite a number of records for them after that. You've just recorded the planets for the fourth time. Is it really the fourth time? I didn't know that. Oh, so so our expert said. Really?

Sir Adrian Boult26:31

Well, what am I to say about that? Well, obviously you would like it. Yes, obviously. Uh actually I remember I was told that the planets were selling very well in America.

Speaker 226:36

Yes, obviously.

Sir Adrian Boult26:42

And I imagine that it is the kind of music that everybody likes really. It's it's easy to to digest.

Speaker 226:51

Mm-hmm.

Sir Adrian Boult26:51

even when it was modern. people could understand it fairly well. Have you ever kept track of of how many works you've recorded?

Sir Adrian Boult27:00

Well, I haven't exactly, but I know pretty well wh uh I I can tell you probably if there's anything I haven't done. Is there any particular one that that is a a great favourite of yours?

Sir Adrian Boult27:14

Well, I was very proud of doing the nine Vaud Williams symphonies.

Sir Adrian Boult27:20

And I think that and the planets perhaps might be

Sir Adrian Boult27:25

About the top?

Sir Adrian Boult27:27

And now we come to your last record. What have you saved till the end?

Sir Adrian Boult27:30

One of the uh composers whom I feel has been very sadly neglected lately is Hubert Perret.

Sir Adrian Boult27:37

who was writing magnificent music when I was

Sir Adrian Boult27:41

A boy, really.

Sir Adrian Boult27:42

And um

Sir Adrian Boult27:44

I must say, I think I was glad is

Sir Adrian Boult27:49

amongst the most splendid pieces of music I know.

Speaker 227:51

No.

Sir Adrian Boult27:52

And so we are going to finish with I Was Glad.

Speaker 428:29

I'm not going to try and do it for me.

Sir Adrian Boult28:53

Parry's setting of I was glad when they said unto me

Sir Adrian Boult28:57

the choir of King's College, Cambridge, and the conductor Philip Ledger. If you could take just one disc of that list of eight, which would it be?

Sir Adrian Boult29:05

I think I should have to have my my motes out.

Sir Adrian Boult29:08

Write Mozart, number forty.

Sir Adrian Boult29:11

And

Sir Adrian Boult29:12

You are allowed to have one luxury with you on the island.

Sir Adrian Boult29:16

Well, I imagine it it's going to be in the south, isn't it, my island? I think so.

Sir Adrian Boult29:22

Then there'll be a very, very tropical sun. I must have a hat of some kind, nice Panama hat. And you might fill it with um

Sir Adrian Boult29:30

Oh, barley sugar or something nice like that. You shall have a dozen Panama hats of different colours, all full of barley sugar. That'll be very nice. Thank you very much. And one book apart from the Bible and Shakespeare, which are already on the island, and we don't allow big encyclopedias.

Speaker 429:36

Wolf.

Speaker 229:36

Yeah.

Speaker 229:38

Uh

Sir Adrian Boult29:47

Might I have Pilgrim's Progress again? Pilgrim's Progress, of course. Thank you very much. And thank you, Sir Adrian Bolt, for letting us hear your desert island discs. And on behalf of so many people, congratulations and good wishes on your 90th birthday. Thank you very much indeed. It's most kind of you to say all that. I've enjoyed it very much. Goodbye, everyone.

Speaker 230:16

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.