Jeffrey Archer

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Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a download from the Desert Island Discs archive.

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The only surviving edition of this programme didn't contain the guests' eight music choices, so where possible we've rebuilt the original show by using discs from the B B C Gramophone library.

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For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music.

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Full details can be found on the Castaways page on the Desert Island Disc's website.

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The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen eighty one.

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And the presenter was Roy Plumley.

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This week, our castaway is the writer, Geoffrey Archer.

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Geoffrey, are you an optimist or a pessimist? Do you think you're going to be on this island a long time or a short time? Oh, very short. I shall be off by lunch time. I really don't want to go on your island at all. Um I would prefer to disappear around about twelve o'clock if that would suit you. Well, I hope you're right. But just in case you're wrong, you'd better choose eight records.

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Is music important to you? Oh yes. I I enjoy a a wide Catholic taste in music. I don't have a great deal of knowledge. Do you make music? No. I quite incapable. I I don't even dare sing in the bath.

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And what about the first record you've chosen? Well, I'd like to choose a record which for me is contemporary in the sense that the group who made this did it when I was a young man at Oxford, and it's The Beatles Help.

Speaker 31:37

I need somebody help, not just anybody. You know I need someone!

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I was younger so much younger than today I never needed anybody's help in any way

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But now these days are gone and I'm not so self-assured Now I find a change of mind I know but

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The Beatles. Now, Geoffrey, you're a Somerset man, is that right? That's right, my dear. That's exactly where I'd come from.

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Educated at Wellington School. Were the plans for you to be a soldier? I mean, that's a very.

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No, my father was a soldier and my grandfather was a soldier, but I think that the the school had already turned from being

Jeffrey Archer2:17

But

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a school that was based on the CCF and and at last believed in getting people to university. What were you good at at school?

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I ran a lot, and I acted a lot, and I seemed to avoid the classroom, although I suspicive in that way I wasn't different from many other. Well, you did get up to Oxford. To read what? I read education. And you broke the university record for the hundred yards.

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Yes, um, downhill with a long wind with a very friendly timekeeper. What was your time? The hundred yards time and it will last forever because now they do the hundred meters is nine point six. It's still standard. Well, no one runs one hundred yards anymore.

Speaker 42:56

Well

Jeffrey Archer2:57

Yeah.

Speaker 42:58

In Iceburgh

Jeffrey Archer2:58

Yeah.

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Well, you were later to run for for Great Britain.

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Did you ever better your own time? I did nine, six, three times, but I frankly wasn't good enough to be world class. I mean, if I ever ran against a really world class runner, I was two or three yards behind, which in the hundred yards terms is about a hundred yards in the mile.

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Now what about this acting you did? What did you play?

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I played Puck at Oxford.

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and several minor parts, but I was at that particular time more interested in trying to get in the British team. I always felt that if I'd wanted to act after I'd left Oxford I could do it, whereas if I wanted to run, those days were over. And Michael Rudman, who's now of course the director of the Littleton Theatre, a part of the National Theatre, offered me a part in Twelfth Night.

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and said this would be a big chance for me to be seen by the um London critics and so on. And I said no, I still was very keen to run for Britain that year and he gave the part to Michael Yorke. Oh, who did all right, wasn't it?

Speaker 43:57

Age done all right since then.

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Uh

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Won't we or a

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Ambitions

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at that time, while an undergraduate.

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I wanted to enter politics. I suppose an undergraduate really doesn't know quite how to go about it.

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I knew I wanted to be a member of parliament and I wanted to be in that side of public life, but

Jeffrey Archer4:10

And I

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At at that age, as I said, you don't really know where you're going, you only vaguely know what you want to do.

Speaker 44:16

Yeah.

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Well, we'll talk about that in more detail in a moment. Let's have your second record. My second record is again, I in this case, two geniuses in my opinion, singing a record which is virtually unknown. And why I like it particularly is because it shows the great talent of timing. It's Bing Crosby and Louis Armstrong, and you must listen to the words, Roy, very carefully, singing Brother Bill.

Speaker 34:56

Me and Brother Bill went hunting up in the woods of the Eastern Main The reason why we went up there We thought we could catch some game as me and brother Bill were hunting

Jeffrey Archer4:58

I've been

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Yeah, that's nice country.

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Hit a foundation.

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Ping Crosby and Louis Armstrong, brother Bill. Politics then, Geoffrey.

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Obviously, that's going to take time. Had you got financial resources to cover you until such time as you got into Parliament or whatever? No, I hadn't. And the strange thing was, I decided that the way to get experience would be to fight a seat on the Greater London Council, which I did. And Harold Wilson was Prime Minister, and I stood against Sir William Fiske, the leader of the Labour Council, down in Romford. And I didn't really think I had a hope in hell. I thought I would gain some experience and get a bit of inside track knowledge on how you fight an election and what it's like to be really smashed into the dust. And of course, the Conservatives won the Greater London Council election that year, 82 to 18. And I suddenly found, aged 25, I was on the Greater London Council and I hadn't intended to be. Yes, you were very young indeed to be a councillor, weren't you? I was at that time the youngest ever on the GLC, which in fact had many disadvantages and many advantages in the sense that because I was so young, people were very generous and kind and really didn't expect anything out of you at all. But then on the other hand, I really didn't have enough experience or knowledge of politics to represent the constituency well, however hard I tried. I now have discovered in later life that there is no substitute for experience.

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Is it a full-time job?

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Being a member of the Greater London Council can be a full-time job or nothing at all. It's what you make it. Of course, you're not paid, so there's every reason for some people to to explain why they don't make it full-time, but it's amazing how many people do dedicate almost their entire time. In my own case, it was at least a half-time job. How long were you on the council? I was for the three years.

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um on the Greater London Council, and had intended to do considerably more. I thought it would be a good grounding for entering the House of Commons, and that if I could fight three elections, and perhaps do nine years, and gain junior office on the Greater London Council, then possibly

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I would be ready to enter the House. I'd already started applying for seats that couldn't be won.

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and entered for the seat of Louth in Lincolnshire as a parliamentary candidate, literally looking at the people who'd entered, I could see that it was nothing more than a trip up to the constituency.

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That's a

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And, um, forget it.

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But what happened in real life was that the seat had been expected to go to John Davis, who was then head of the CBI, or I think it was recently after, and it was well known that the leader of the opposition, mister Edward Heath,

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then wanted John Davis in the house, so it was him versus anyone. And they couldn't decide between about four people, and they dropped those four and went straight down to me. So the final round was John Davis versus myself.

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Now John Davis on the final n n night.

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of the vote at the local level made a disastrous speech. He always admitted it. I mean it re really was a bad speech, and he he wasn't he was either not very well or something went wrong, and I won by one vote.

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And I must say that of all the

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gestures I've ever seen in my life. The way he lost that was among the most magnanimous things I've ever seen. He lost with great dignity. It must have been awful for a man in his position to watch a twenty-nine-year-old boy who'd had three years on the Greater London Council steal a plum Conservative seat from under his nose. Of course, he went on to become the Member of Parliament for Knutsford and to enter the House of Commons and become a minister and died tragically prematurely as shadow foreign secretary. And again, when he came in the House, which was only three months after I'd been a member, he could not have been kinder, he could not have been nicer.

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And I it's one of the sadnesses for me that he was never the British Foreign Secretary. Louth in Lincolnshire is it an agricultural constituency? Very much. It was three hundred and fifty square miles of rural area and

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A large employment from potato farmers, pea farmers, and of course I had, with Grimsby above me, where Tony Crossland was the member, I had many of his C families living in my constituency, going to work in Grimsby and going to work on the docks, but actually living in my constituency. So I had a lot of farmers and sea people.

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So there you are in the House of Commons. Let's have your next record.

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My next record is um Beethoven's Choral, conducted by Von Carrion. I particularly like this piece, because my wife sang in it at the Albert Hall under Sir Colin Davis, and therefore it would bring memories of my family, and she um does have a good voice, whereas I don't, and it would uh remind me of her as well.

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Part of the last movement of the Beethoven Choral Symphony, the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra in Chorus conducted by Carián.

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So you were a backbencher, an active one.

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I enjoyed the back benches. Of course, again, having entered the house at twenty nine, there was no hope of early office, so one sat down and tried to learn the tricks of the trade. What were your pet causes?

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Uh well, the thing I fought for most was the arts, and the particular thing that interested me most during that period was museum charges, which I led the rebellion from the back benches to quash museum charges once and for all.

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Which of course we did.

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Now you are also involved in your in your private life in playing the money market.

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In those days. Yes, certainly. In those days, um I enjoyed the stock exchange and seeing how money could work when you'd made some.

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And to begin with it went very well, and uh was very profitable, and I began to believe almost everything I touched would succeed.

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until I was advised to invest a large sum in a company

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And I not only invested everything I had, which was an act of arrogant stupidity, I also borrowed money to invest even more. And all of us, eighty two of us, investors lost between us eight million.

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How much were you down the drain for?

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Uh the worst statement that ever came through my letter box read minus four hundred and twenty seven thousand seven hundred and twenty seven pounds. How long would it have taken to pay that back on your MP salary? A hundred and thirty seven years. Have you worked that out? I did work it out, yes. I could it would take a hundred and thirty-seven years and I would have just cleared it, and that would be without interest. The alternative, of course, was was bankruptcy.

Jeffrey Archer12:07

Yeah.

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The alternative at that time was all bankruptcy, because one didn't see a way out. The sum was so large that one could not see how one could honourably borrow it or honourably raise it, and promise you could pay that person back. So what?

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So I sat down and wrote my first book.

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Just like that. Well, I couldn't get a job, Roy. The major problem with being a Member of Parliament is that basically you're unemployable. People will always say that's true of members of Parliament. But the major problem is once you've trained to be a Member of Parliament, unless you're a trained lawyer or a solicitor, you're not

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actually trained to be anything else. So after five years in the house I hadn't got a profession to go to.

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And you cannot go to a firm I mean, one or two people offered me directorships, but I had to say to them, I think in about six weeks' time I'm going to go bankrupt for a very large sum of money. And they, of course, couldn't have directors who were going to go bankrupt, or in positions of authority, quite rightly. So after about a month, six weeks, I began to realise I just wasn't going to get a job anywhere. So I sat down and wrote Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less. Which we'll talk about in a moment, record number four. Record number four is again one of the legendary artists. Again, showing that wonderful timing. It's Noel Coward telling his story of the wicked Mrs. Wentworth Brewster.

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And so startled was I by this rather magnificent

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A card spectacle.

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that I wrote this song about a respectable British matron.

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were discovered in the nick of time.

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That life was for living.

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I'll sing you a song, it's not very long, its moral may disconcert you. Sing hallelujah!

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Lowel Card, a bar on the Piccolam Arena.

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You were out of a job, Geoffrey, with an overdraft of four hundred and twenty seven thousand seven hundred and twenty two pounds. Now, you had a wife and family. You decided to write a book. Now, can one reasonably expect to make that sort of money out of writing a first novel? George. Oh, no, and of course I had absolutely no knowledge about writing. I had thought, when I wrote Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less, that if it made a couple of thousand pounds, I could put that couple of thousand pounds in the bank, and while it was there, I could then settle down to looking for a real job.

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And I had I had no idea. I assumed if you went away and spent six or seven weeks writing a hundred thousand words, it was bound to be published. So I went into the wilderness with absolutely no knowledge and probably a great advantage to have no knowledge, because most people who write books know that it's only one in a hundred that gets published, and only one in a hundred that hits the bestsellers' list. I think in many ways it was a terrific advantage to come out of the House of Commons and do something totally different without any insider's knowledge. Had you an idea in your mind? Had you been considering writing a story, a book, for some time? I always thought that the idea of four young men losing their money and then sitting down and planning to steal it back from Mr Bigg not a penny more, not a penny less would capture the public's imagination. Was this a kind of fantasy of yours, having lost all your money? Certainly the first half of the book, as I suspect with many authors, the first half of the book's autobiographical. What I hadn't realised, Roy, was that, of course, most people in this world have had some financial down crash not as much as four hundred and thirty seven thousand pounds, but some crash at some time in their life, and therefore were able to associate with my four heroes trying to get their money back. Right. How long did the writing take you? You said six or seven weeks. Did you do it in that? The first draft took six or seven weeks, but in the case of Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less, there were eleven drafts, and it took just over a year before it was submitted to publishers. Did you have an agent to help you through an editor?

Presenter16:09

The editor came later. Uh I had an agent through luck. When I was a member of the House of Commons, I was told that David Owen's wife, Deborah Owen, was an agent and a very good one, and I contacted her and asked if she'd be kind enough to represent me. And in fact, now again with no knowledge. I mean, one absolutely hit gold, because the the secret is to get a good agent. That is the secret. You don't have to worry about a good house. A good agent will find you the right house. And so the secret for a person wanting to start a career in writing is first get an agent.

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So the book hit the bookstalls as it were. Now how much of the four hundred and twenty seven thousand seven hundred and twenty two pounds were you able to pay back? Well to begin with almost nothing because the first check-in was for two thousand. But then eleven days after publication uh Warner Brothers bid quarter of a million for it. So that changed things overnight. So you resolved to write another? Well I resolved not to go bankrupt. I then reported to all the people what was happening.

Speaker 316:59

Yeah.

Jeffrey Archer16:59

So that

Presenter17:09

and was able to say to them, I will pay you off in time and of course bankruptcy proceedings were dropped and I never never even reached the court, which was marvellous. I mean, that was the marvellous first step.

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Was to have that behind me. It then took three years to pay everybody off one by one. And your second book. Had you got something in mind for that? In the case of shall we tell the President, all I had in mind was the idea of a young man, aged twenty-seven, having the biggest secret in the world. He goes out with another colleague from the FBI. He discovers that the President is going to be assassinated. How boring. Here we go again. 1,572 people a year threaten the President's life. So naturally, the FBI don't take every one of them seriously. So he and his colleague take down all the details and they go back and tell their chief. So at nine o'clock that night

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Five people know about this particular threat.

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By 9.30, four of them are dead. And the one man who knows, Mark Andrews, realizes it's no longer just another threat. The President is going to die in seven days and one hour, and he is the only person alive who knows. He doesn't know who to turn to and tell what has happened, and he knows the people who've killed the other four.

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Are now looking for him. A lot of background in American politics. You do spend much time in Washington researching all it. I think six months of that year that I've spent in Washington, you've got to be right in the middle of it. Of course, politicians are the same the world over, Roy. I've always had the theory that if you removed the six hundred people from the House of Commons and dropped them in America, and removed the six hundred people from Washington who make up the Senate and Congress and dropped them in London, it would only take five years before they'd all found their own way into the political body that represented that country. But the FBI, for example, is typically American. You couldn't fake that. No. I went and worked with the FBI with two particular agents, Mr. Nicholas Stames, who was then a senior agent and is now the deputy director of the whole of the FBI. And I lived with him for three weeks, in his car, in his office, everything he did, watching his work, so that one got those little touches that people seem to like in books, such as um an FBI man never does up his middle button. And if you see a man in a Washington street fiddling with his middle button, he's probably FBI, because always wanting to make sure they can get to their gun.

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And the other little thing I remember picking up on that particular trip is they carry in their pockets ten dimes, because they're not allowed to pick up a phone and say, This is Next Thames, the FBI, putting me through to the chief. They've got to put ten cents in and dial the same as any other human being.

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Was the second book pre-solon on the

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The results of the first one. In other words, your publisher wanted it, the public wanted it.

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I've never written that way. I've always written what I wanted to write, but the truth of the matter is, of course, that with any writer, once a book hits the bestsellers' list.

Presenter20:05

You command a certain market for your second book or your third book and so on.

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Um so in that sense, yes, there was no problem in placing the second book in the way there had been with the first, because by then the first book was in fifty seven countries in seventeen languages. So As long as they felt it was up to standard, it was going to be published. And those first two books, it has been stated, brought you in a million pounds between them.

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Yes, that's what the tax man keeps telling me in those little I get sort of thirty fan letters a week and thirty little brown buff envelopes which also make the same claim as you're making. You don't confirm or deny it. Absolutely not. Right.

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I think we got to record number five. This one is Elton John.

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singing that very remarkable song, which is a tribute.

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To Marilyn MUNRO

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Candle in the wind

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Goodbye, Norma G.

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Though I never knew you would I had the grace to hold yourself.

Jeffrey Archer21:12

Good lord, you have the race.

Speaker 321:16

What low's around to crow?

Speaker 321:20

Rolled out of the woodwork.

Speaker 321:24

And they whispered into your brain and I said you are

Speaker 421:28

Uh

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Elton John.

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A million pounds for two novels, or so we think. Now, what about the third?

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Well the third was a totally different enterprise, Cain and Abel.

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Because I had decided that I wanted to

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try something a little harder and go up from sort of two hundred and fifty page

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Thriller

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Up to A Real Saga.

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And that, of course, took considerably more research and much harder work. It took nearly two years to write Cain and Abel. Research where?

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England, Poland, and America, because it's the story of two men.

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Both born on the same day in nineteen hundred and six.

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One in a Polish forest to a gipsy born with nothing.

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1.

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to a Boston

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Multi-millionaire, born with everything.

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The research must be the fascinating part.

Speaker 422:18

The rest of the

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A lot of people think research is going into libraries and reading books, which of course you have to check your facts very carefully. But in the case of Kane and Abel, I searched for mister Kane and Mr Abel to live with them, rather than just read books about

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People who'd made a million or people who were born with a million. I've sought out two very distinguished Americans and spent my time with them watching them run their empires, because that's real research. You don't pick that up in a book. It's them that you notice the problems they have, the lives they lead, the things they do. Of course they have all the same problems and that you and I have. They're no different, except that uh during the day they probably move millions of pounds backwards and forwards.

Presenter23:00

You've also published a volume of short stories. Yes. The most recent book, Quiver Full of Arrows, is a set of short stories, which my publishers didn't want me to do. They had long said that after the success of Kanan Abel it would be wise to do a follow-up. And I said no, they had long time wanted to write a set of short stories. You wrote them as a set. They weren't magazine stories collected. Oh, no. I sat down and wrote all twelve over a period of a year and then put them together in one book. They had been accumulating over many years and had been held up because of Kanan Abel. But finally I said to my publishers, I'm determined to write these twelve short stories, come what may.

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And uh you'll have to wait for the sequel to Kane Enable. And what are you working on now? Exactly that. I have just finished the first draft.

Presenter23:45

of The Prodigal Daughter.

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which takes one of the characters out of Canenable, and therefore is not really a sequel, takes one of the characters out of Canenable, and the opening sentence is I I want to run.

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A President of the United States, she said.

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So it's the story of the first woman President of the United States. Which year does it take place in? Her attempt to gain the Presidency is in 1992.

Speaker 424:10

What's your writing discipline? Do you work early in the morning? Do you work so many hours a day? So many words a day?

Presenter24:17

It doesn't work words a day. I find that one writes what one wants to write. But from a time discipline, yes, I like to start work at seven in the morning and write until ten. It it works out about three thousand words a day, but it can be as low as two thousand and as high as three thousand five hundred. I've never been above three thousand five hundred. And then I like an hour's break until eleven.

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And then I like to correct it through once between eleven and say one.

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And then I like to take the early afternoon off.

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And then read it once more between six and eight in the evening.

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and then start again the next morning, and I find if I can keep that up for six weeks without a break, that is the discipline, because I'm terrified of stopping.

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Uh and saying, I won't do it today. I I think I'll just take a day off today. I because I always fearful that once you do take a day off, you'll never actually go back to it. So in that first three hours when you're writing your first draft, you can write a thousand words an hour. Yes, but it's probably been started by waking at about five in the morning and thinking from five until seven about nothing else except what you are going to write. It's a long thinking process. And you have breakfast, then go for a walk, and in the evening probably go to bed about nine thirty. Sound asleep by ten and awake again by five. Because I do find

Jeffrey Archer25:30

Some

Presenter25:35

For the original work, it's much easier first thing in the morning. Now, you started writing as a kind of desperate expediency to make money. It seems that you've you've got hooked on it. You're going to write on indefinitely and not for money, but because you want to. Oh, yes, certainly. That that's the case now. I wrote the short stories strictly for the pleasure of wanting uh to write them and have them published. Do you still play the market? No, I don't touch it at all now. I'm

Presenter26:03

I'm frightened of it. When you've had a downfall like I've had, I think the best thing now is just for me to keep away. And ironically, of course, if you have any money nowadays, you're wise just to put it on deposit. The return from risk nowadays is so small against what you can put on deposit, and you just sleep so much easier at night.

Presenter26:21

Another record.

Presenter26:23

My next one is the theme from the National Theatre's Much Ado About Nothing, because I love the theatre, and this particular production with Robert Stevens and Maggie Smith is one that will last in everybody's memory who saw it, and it's the theme music from that, the Zepharelli production of Much Ado About Nothing. This comes right at the end of the play, doesn't it? Yes.

Presenter27:41

The closing two minutes of the National Theatre production of Much Ado About Nothing.

Presenter27:47

Do you still live in Somerset? No. Um I live in London and Cambridge. My wife is a fellow of Newnham College, Cambridge, and my children are at school in Cambridge. You're also in West Indies some of the time, I believe. Well, I do some of the writing there. We share a house with someone out there, and I do like to get away completely when I write, because the problem i is that if if you get interrupted at all and your mind's off it at all, you go off on a tangent and do other things. Whereas if you go away completely, you can't bluff it. You are there to do the job and nothing else. How do the family take to your frequent disappearances?

Presenter28:21

I think my wife takes it very well. I mean, she's realistic about what's happening in one's career and that the book is published in more countries than just England. The children don't take it at all well. They don't understand. And they often think that I should stay at home. In fact, I remember once when I had to go over and edit Kane and Abel with the American publishers, my youngest son, who was then age four, came to me and said, Do you really have to go abroad, Daddy? Can't you stay and play football? And I tried to explain to him that this particular editor

Presenter28:50

Was a very distinguished man, and it was a privilege for me to have my book read by him and and ironed out with him. And my youngest son said, If I wrote a bestseller.

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Would you stay at home? So I said, Yes, of course. If you wrote a bestseller, I could stay home and play football all the time. And I went to bed that night. I knew I was going to New York the next day, so I was catching an 11 o'clock flight. And he woke me up at six. Now, we've all been through that feeling of one of the monsters waking you up at six. And I was just about to strangle him because I could have done with two hours more sleep.

Presenter29:20

when he was holding in his hands

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a set of papers with the alphabet in different colours on every page, stapled together. And all he said was, Uh, now you won't have to go abroad. And I took him upstairs

Presenter29:37

trying desperately hard to show him that it hadn't had any effect on me, and my six year old son was busily in the front room writing Nicholas Nickleby.

Presenter29:47

And I tried desperately to explain to him that um it was plagiarism, what the word plagiarism meant, and that if you write a bestseller, it has to be original.

Presenter29:58

And he just went on writing. He'd wrote about page fifteen.

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And I desperately went on trying to explain to him.

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Finally, I said, look, millions of people have already read this book. It's already one of the world's great stories.

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And he nodded his head, looked at me and said

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No. I went round my form yesterday. Nobody had read it.

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Our whole family's in the best solar business.

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We got to record number seven.

Presenter30:25

Record number seven, because I'm only staying on your scrubby little island for the whole morning, and therefore I have chosen what can only be described as a pop record of today. This is the record that is storming the United States at the moment. I think it's a very funny record, and one should listen to the words carefully, because it applies to everybody alive. It's Mac Davis's, it's hard to be humble.

Speaker 330:47

Oh Lord, it's hard to be humble.

Speaker 330:52

When you're perfect in every way

Speaker 330:56

I can't wait to look in the mirror.

Speaker 331:01

Calls are get better looking each day.

Speaker 331:05

To know me is club.

Speaker 331:09

I must be a hell of a man.

Speaker 331:14

Oh Lord, it's hard to

Presenter31:18

Mac Davis, it's hard to be humble. Now, just in case anything goes wrong with your plant and you are stuck on this island for a considerable period, how are you going to be able to look after yourself? Absolutely useless. And I have no intention at all of staying on the island unless you're able to move three really first-class hotels, half a dozen theatres, and most of my friends over the same day, or even just a little before, Mr. Plumley. I have no intention of going. And the answer to your question is I shall be off by lunch. If I have to swim, I have to swim. I shall just go. You're a good swimmer, aren't you? No, I can do about a hundred yards. Oh, well. I don't know where this island will be.

Presenter31:52

What about a rough?

Presenter31:53

No, I couldn't make a raft. No. No, I I no, not a hope. No. Are you a good fisherman? Useless. Never fished in my life. I think you'd better get off.

Speaker 432:02

And now

Jeffrey Archer32:02

I don't

Presenter32:05

What's your last record?

Presenter32:07

My last record is Saint John's Choir School in Cambridge, singing.

Presenter32:13

Many people, of course, have been on your programme and and talked all over the world of the King's College School. But in the truth is that the professionals tell me that Saint John's College are every bit as good.

Presenter32:26

And this is a classic example um of their work. I might say that when you phoned and asked me to be on your awful island, my son was in this choir, and I was about to tell the whole world that they would be uh hearing the choir in which my son was in, but I'm afraid he failed to turn up to two rehearsals, and he's now no longer in the choir. But I intend to still play this piece, which is called Hosanna to the Son of David.

Speaker 332:54

To the song and the strongest Jesus and Joshua's Christ Jesus.

Jeffrey Archer33:06

It will turn us off.

Presenter33:48

Hosanna to the Son of David sung by the choir of Saint John's College, Cambridge, and I hope your son will soon be back in it.

Presenter33:56

If you could only take one disc of the HU playlist, which would it be? Well, because I'm only staying in the morning. I know. So.

Presenter34:02

So I shall take help, because if you listen to the words carefully, of course, it is exactly the state I shall be in. Play it good and loud. And one luxury you're allowed to take. I shall take Concord.

Presenter34:12

Yeah, I've always always thought that was the

Jeffrey Archer34:12

Yeah, I've always always thought that

Presenter34:14

Nothing useful. Then I shall take a plasticine model of you.

Speaker 434:14

Nothing new.

Jeffrey Archer34:15

Niluk.

Presenter34:20

And one pin, and I shall go on sticking it in you to make sure that this is the last programme you ever do if I don't get off your awful island.

Speaker 434:23

Can you do it?

Presenter34:30

That's very friendly. And one book. You've already got the Bible and Shakespeare.

Presenter34:35

Well, I certainly won't have time to read Shakespeare or the Bible in one morning, so I shall take a book that I consider as a masterpiece, and is only seventy pages long, which I can do quite comfortably while I'm listening to my one record, and that is called Reunion by Fred

Presenter34:49

Which is

Presenter34:50

A wonderful book. This is Fred Ullmann the Painter. Yes, indeed. He's a very talented man. He's only actually written this one book, and it's very hard to get, but it is. For me it was one of the great books I've ever read. Reunion by Fred Ullmann.

Presenter35:03

And thank you, Geoffrey Archer, for letting us hear your Desert Island Discs. Thank you, Right.

Presenter35:09

Goodbye, everyone.

Jeffrey Archer35:19

You've been listening to a download from the Desert Island Discs archive.

Jeffrey Archer35:23

For more downloads, please visit the Radio4 website.