Russell Harty

Speaker 20:00

Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen eighty one, and the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:28

Yes indeed. This evening I'm speaking to you from the Ideal Home Exhibition at Earls Court, which seems singularly crowded. I'm on a sort of open stage surrounded closely on three sides by those who've paid to come in, and my guest is the noted Mr. Russell Harty. Now Russell, I'm sure you're used to being surrounded by people. You're a gregarious chap. Could you take isolation on a desert island? At this precise moment in my life, yes, surrounded by a lot of people, I'd welcome a brief respite on a desert island. But if you're asking me seriously, could I survive for long? The answer is for about a day if it were a Hebridean island and two days if it were the Caribbean. You're not an island man. No, not at all an island man. Totally gregarious. We know that you're of a musical disposition because we've heard you play the piano. In fact, we've seen you play the piano. There could have been no deception.

Presenter1:19

Now you have to survive with just eight discs. Did you find it hard to choose? I found it hard to choose the eight. No I didn't. I found it easy to choose the eight discs that mean something to me at this moment in my life and have meant bits and pieces of extraordinariness in my past life. But if I were here, if the ideal home exhibition is still going on next week, no doubt three or four of my choices may be different. So you have no set plan? No, it's flowing.

Russell Harty1:46

Yeah.

Speaker 31:46

No, it's flowing.

Presenter1:48

Right, what's the first one you've chosen? Well, the first piece of music is a piece by William Wharton, and it's music from the Henry V suite, the music he wrote for Laurence Olivier's film. And the reason why I've chosen this is because when I was about 12 years old, living in Blackburn and working on Blackburn Market on a Saturday, I once went to the Rialto Cinema in Blackburn, which I now pronounce Rialto, to see Shakespeare's Henry V, directed by Olivier. I was so bowled over by this performance on a Saturday afternoon that I came out of the fifth cinema, went back to the market store and said to my mother, please can I have another two shillings to go and see the next house, which begins at ten past six. And she said, we have better things to spend our money on, go and ask your granny. And I had a very generous grandmama who gave me another two shillings, and I went to see Henry V and my eyes were very, at that time, widely open.

Presenter3:12

A short excerpt from William Walton's Film Music to Olivier's Henry V.

Presenter3:18

Now Russell, you're a Lancastrian. You said you're from Blackburn and your father sold fruit and vegetables and you helped him. Willingly? Very unwillingly. Very unwillingly. I was pressed going into helping with the tea jugs and the coffee jugs and I could never work out change properly. Decimalisation was an immense relief to me because I couldn't work out pounds, shillings and pence or even weights and measures terribly well. And I dare say I lost my mum and dad quite a fair amount of money.

Russell Harty3:28

Very good.

Presenter3:48

And what else have I found out about you? You used to go to the music hall with your father every week to the Blackburn Grand. Who were your favourites? Well, my favourites were Nat Mills and Bobby. And I played Bobby to Nat Mills two weeks ago, which is a great joy for me. And I once saw Charlie Chaplin. This is driving back a bit in in the midst of history. And I once saw Hetty King.

Russell Harty3:59

I know

Russell Harty4:04

Uh

Presenter4:13

Where did you see Charlie Chaplin? At the Grand Theatre, Blackburn. He was making a sort of a Christian charity comeback in about 1937. Did he do an act? Yes, he sort of waddled across the stage and threw a stick around, and his moustache was there. Did you go to the straight theatre too? No, never at all. My first venture into straight theatre was at Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School, Blackburn, where I played the part of the villain in the Tempest. And the Evening Telegraph of Blackburn said that my performance bore no relation to anything else that was going on on the stage at that moment and was a cabaret turn of its own and a terrible distraction to the rest of the people who were there for a serious purpose. Was that after you had taken your elocution lessons with the Mrs. Marks or before?

Russell Harty4:13

How did you s

Russell Harty4:17

Yeah.

Presenter4:58

I didn't really want to talk about my elocution lessons because they were, I think they cost three shillings an hour and clearly had no effect at all. My sister discovered that there was a bedroom upstairs with a very bouncy bed and that if it wasn't your turn to be elocuted, you could go and bounce on the bed. So for three shillings we bounced on a lot of beds and kept our bad accents. Now you belonged to a gang. Where did you meet? Oh we met in the two places. We met in the arid shelters which were very smelly places because dogs used them a lot and uh we had a little gang of our own there and we used orange boxes for furniture and we had deep and dark initiation ceremonies. Who was the leader? Zach was the leader. Zach?

Speaker 35:39

Hmm.

Presenter5:39

Erik Fazakali was our leader, a tall, distinguished, quite silent man, and he had a helpmate called Koopar, who was the initiation leader. And he was the person who lit candles and dripped hot wax down your neck. And if you screamed, you were not allowed to be in the gang, and if you were brave, you were up there fighting. You were very popular socially. I mean, you used to tie doorknobs together of neighbouring houses. That's called knick-knacking now. Are we allowed to say that? Yes, of course you are, yes. Knickknacking, is when.

Russell Harty5:54

And if you

Russell Harty6:09

Yes, of course you will.

Presenter6:12

Two front doors were together in a in a terraced row. Uh you would secretly on an October night tie the two front doors particularly if you didn't like the people who lived there you tie the doors together with rope and then you bang hard on each door and run away and hid over a garden wall and watch the meds fight to get out.

Russell Harty6:14

Uh

Russell Harty6:27

Right now.

Presenter6:29

And you challenge each other with dares to do outrageous things. What was your best contribution? I I can't talk about that because they were sort of

Presenter6:39

minor adventures into into incipient sexuality. Yes. And I think at twenty-five minutes past six at the Ideal Home exhibition you wouldn't want to hear a little bit more of that anymore. Let's avoid that. Uh now you went to the grammar school. Was it your idea to go on to university?

Russell Harty6:43

Yes.

Russell Harty6:48

Yeah.

Presenter6:56

It was a kind of drift, don't you know? I mean, all my friends were clever, and a lot were cleverer than I, and they were all going off to Oxford and Cambridge. And it never entered my head that I should not do that. And when I actually passed an entrance exam into Exeter College, Oxford, my mother and father yawned a little and said, oh dear me, we're going to have to buy him a teapot, because you had to take a teapot with you, and some clean sheets. You had Sapphire Scholarship to Cambridge, which you failed, but you got one to Oxford in a spirit of settling the second best. What's your next record?

Russell Harty7:08

Yeah.

Russell Harty7:21

It's

Presenter7:30

Thank you very much. I presume that you went to another place, did you? You did. My next record is uh a record of George Formby singing when I'm cleaning windows because when we first got posh at home and my father bought our first motor car, we used to go out on a Sunday afternoon. They would we would all sit round at the table at lunchtime on Sunday and say, Where shall we go this afternoon? And my mother would say, Let's go and look at Beraldine. Now, Beryldine was George Formby's and Beryl Formbyth's house at Lithamston Downs. And we got into the car on a Saturday on a Sunday afternoon and drove over and looked at a pile of Accrington brick.

Speaker 37:35

My

Russell Harty7:35

Uh

Presenter8:04

On the front at Lytham, stayed there for half an hour, gazed at this stuff and then came back again. So I'd like to hear George singing when I'm cleaning windows.

Russell Harty8:12

Now I go window cleaning to earn an honest bob

Russell Harty8:16

For a nosy parker, it's an interesting job. Now it's a job that just suits me. A window cleaner you would be if you can see what I can see when I'm cleaning windows. Honeymoon in couples too. You should see them villain coup. You'd be surprised at things they do when I'm cleaning windows.

Presenter8:38

George Formy.

Presenter8:39

Now Russell, you were at Oxford, Exeter College, reading English. What were your extracurricular activities? Were you a rowing blue or anything like that? Do I look like a rowing blue or anything like that? No, I was not a rowing blue or anything like that. I joined the union, but I was too afraid to speak there. I also joined AUDS, which is the Oxford University Dramatic Society. And my chief distinction in that August body was in fact to be in charge of the seating for Patrick Garland's Henry V in Moreland College Garden. It worked official to it? Yes, people seemed to stay on the seats and the seats stayed on the podium. So I acquitted myself rather nobly in that dramatic field.

Russell Harty9:14

Well done.

Presenter9:19

What did you do when you graduated?

Presenter9:22

Well, I thought it would be a jolly good idea. Like, I've I've always been a kind of following sh a sheep like person and all my friends again went into broadcasting and applied for jobs at the BBC and I applied for a job at a new television firm called Granada.

Presenter9:37

And they offered me a job. They said you can have you can become an assistant floor manager in a television studio for £420 a year for three months only.

Presenter9:47

Now all my life I'd been taught that I should get a sound and a sensible job and that I should have a pension involved and I should go into something sensible. I mean at the age of twenty-three I used to lie awake at night worrying about my pension. So I turned down this this worrying job in Granada Television and went to become a schoolteacher than which there was nothing safer.

Speaker 310:06

Yeah, yeah.

Presenter10:08

Mm-hmm. Well

Russell Harty10:08

Uh

Speaker 310:08

Uh

Presenter10:09

Well, I taught for a short period of time in Blackburn at a a school called Blakey Moor, which was, Roy, very, very rough indeed. I mean, we had decane to keep any kind of silence, and a lot of boys at the end of term, as a kind of jeux d'esprit, used to poison each other with bits of rat poison that lay around the school hall to get rid of r of the odd rodent in the ocean.

Speaker 310:30

Results.

Presenter10:32

And that was not. It was quite a jolly experience, but it was a tough school.

Presenter10:37

But you felt you could move on to something better. I felt that I was wafted to uh a kind of nirvana when I applied for a job at the school in probably called Giggleswick, which is in North Yorkshire, where boys backed away when I peered. I appeared in a shining bombazine gown. And people sort of said good morning and stood against the wall and kind of they didn't curtsy but they did the next best. They bowed. Now you taught English and drama. Was there a drama tradition in the school or did you start it? No, it was it I started it. There was no tradition at all. It was a very hearty H-E-A-R-T-Y school and drama was c considered to be a very sissy occupation and I had a fairly tough fight to get drama onto a board. What did you do in the holidays?

Presenter11:20

In the holidays, I went I came to London nearly every holiday and spent a lot of time pretending I was a member of the BBC. And I sat in the canteen with all the mates I was at Oxford with who had moved on to Breather Things. And I sort of nodded at Stratford John's a lot. He pretended I was part of the establishment. Did he nod back? No. No. What a shock. Well if he did, he'd gotten used to me being there by the third holiday. You taught for a while in the United States? Yes, that was a very odd thing. Some friends of mine came from America, some people I knew in America, came to watch me teaching at Giggleswick, and one of them said, you'd be rather good in America because you're slightly dotty in the classroom. Why don't you go and teach in America for a while?

Russell Harty11:40

True.

Russell Harty11:58

Modern choice

Presenter12:01

And I thought I'd never get there. And eventually people said, you must go and have a year off and go there. And it was a very, very wild experience for me because I was teaching 19, 20, 21-year-old people, boys and girls, and people who were very skeptical. It was a sharp, bright Jewish community in Manhattan. And if you said, you know, Virginia Woolf walked into water with stones in her pockets, they would say, Excuse me, Professor Hardy, do you know this is an actual matter of fact? Were you on the scene? Are you telling us the truth? Let's have another record. We've got to number three.

Russell Harty12:18

And you

Presenter12:35

Number three takes me slightly back to Oxford and it's a recording of Berliotz's Nui d'Été, a particular song called Villanella. And all the people who are slightly cleverer than I was at Oxford used to play this. It was a very voguish kind of record in 1955, six and seven. And it brings back warm May Oxford nights, particularly my second year when I had no work to do and a lot of pleasure ahead. And it's called Villanella.

Speaker 313:06

Convie drain la sis auber, condon despara les foi tour milenos iro maverre, tour que leguer auvoir Sou mis igre non di pere.

Russell Harty13:20

Hey yeah.

Speaker 313:37

Monsieur Roosevelt

Speaker 313:56

In my source, I swore to see what the bones.

Presenter14:04

Villanelle from L'In Mi Dete by Berlioz, Janet Baker and the new film only orchestra conducted by Sir John Barberoni. Now you had this obsession with the BBC. In fact, you did walk the hallowed corridors of Radio 3 as a producer. Yes, but a very frightened producer. It was my first job. And we used to have the most awful meetings every Wednesday morning in a room in the Bowers Broadcasting House where you each were required to comment on the other's weekly output. And these were very frightening meetings. I don't know whether you've ever been to them, but everybody criticises and attacks the work you have done. And you're supposed to be very up to date. And I remember one morning the chairman, who was Howard Newby, saying to me in my turn of discussion, what did you think about Devlin? It was about the time the Devlin report came out. And he said to me, do you have any views on Devlin?

Russell Harty14:37

I love it

Russell Harty14:40

Criticized.

Presenter14:59

And I came out with the only line I could think of at that moment, which was, it's his mother I feel sorry for. And there were a lot of sort of people didn't know whether to laugh or resign, but it put my stock up by half an inch. Yes, well done. What was the very first broadcast you did yourself, uttering at the microphone? The fir well was in fact, this may surprise you because I don't think it's recorded anywhere, was in fact reading letters from pained husbands in woman's hour. Woman's hour. When Marjorie Anderson wanted a letter from a pained husband reading out, they sent me down to the bowels of the BC and I read out pained basing station. Lunch in the basement first. That's right, that's right. You didn't stay on radio very long.

Speaker 315:06

Single jump.

Speaker 315:08

Design

Russell Harty15:26

You weather Marchery Anderson, what did it

Russell Harty15:29

Reading out

Presenter15:40

I was actually wooed out of radio by Humphrey Burton.

Speaker 315:44

Yeah.

Presenter15:44

Uh he was starting a new arts program uh for London Weekend Television and he wooed me away from a kind of general

Speaker 315:52

Got it.

Presenter15:54

Yeah, but I did it behind the cam I stood behind the camera and if I were talking to Roy Plumney I would not you know no no viewer would see me they would hear a piping voice and you you looking off camera and I'd be behind asking you a question. Was this modesty or were you doing as you were told? I was doing as I was told and it was modesty. Another record.

Russell Harty15:57

Yeah, but I did

Presenter16:19

Another record well

Presenter16:20

Prison, at this very moment I want to be cooler than I am. I'm actually very hot in the Ideal Home exhibition. And I want to be reminded of winter, which is my favourite season. And if I'm on a desert island in the usual place, I suspect it r really will be torrid. And I would like one of the coldest pieces of music that I know, which is a carol and is in the bleak mid-winter.

Speaker 317:01

If I would share, I would pray and I.

Speaker 317:28

Oh Lord, I glad I believe.

Presenter17:43

In the Bleak Midwinter, sung by the choir of King's College, Cambridge, conducted by Sir David Wilcox.

Presenter17:49

And winter, I was saying, is my favourite period. I live in part of the year, which is nearly always winter, in the north of Yorkshire. And it will remind me of all the daft things that happened there, because like two winters ago, I don't know if you remember, we had a particularly severe time, and all the oil in my tank froze, so I had no central heating or any warmth. And the snow fell deeply and I couldn't get the car out of the garage. And I was down to my last piece of bread and decided to put it into the toaster, which is near the kitchen sink. And as the toast actually finished, I saw it from the far side of the kitchen pop up out of the toaster and fall into the wet sink. So I was beleaguered in North Yorkshire in the snow with no heating and wet toast. And whenever I hear in the mid-winter, it will remind me quite strongly of that.

Speaker 317:56

Yeah.

Presenter18:39

That is one of the saddest stories I've ever heard. Now, getting back to your career, you you had a success in Aquarius and eventually you were offered your own interview show. You were put into the field in opposition to a Mr. Parkinson. Yes.

Presenter18:54

Same sort of show, but you ask more piquant questions. Well, I read that I ask more piquant questions. I'm never aware, as I'm sure you're not. Well, it's my observation. I think your questions are more piquant than Parky's. Do you? Yes. Would you write that down and sign it for me? Yes. It's a dangerous trade. There was a Miss Jones who clouted you about the head. Yes, there was.

Russell Harty19:12

Yes.

Presenter19:17

It was ev it was danger th danger more dangerous than even Miss Jones knew about, because if we'd gone on for another four minutes I would have clouted her round the head.

Presenter19:25

And there was a Mr. Stardust who refused to shake hands with you. Have you found out why?

Russell Harty19:29

Uh

Speaker 219:29

Pendle from

Presenter19:31

Uh I th I th he he eventually became not a close friend, but a reasonably warm friend and said to me privately, It was nothing to do with you personally, it was to do with the fact that I wear these knuckle dusters and it would have hurt you if there had been an electrical charge in the studio.

Russell Harty19:45

Yeah.

Presenter19:46

And a Miss Rita Hayworth who wouldn't talk to you.

Presenter19:50

Well she would talk to me. She said she said yes and no for fifty-five minutes. But I mean not non-stop fifty-five minutes. No no no. I said when required. When required. She said yes and no.

Russell Harty19:56

But I'm a

Russell Harty20:00

Uh

Speaker 320:00

Get it.

Russell Harty20:01

Oh well that

Presenter20:05

Let's have uh another record.

Presenter20:08

Well

Presenter20:09

I've chosen a piece of Prokofiev, which is currently my favourite listening. You know, I have periods that uh when I would listen to one piece of music endlessly until I've worked it through my system. And at the moment this piece of music, which is from the ballet Romeo and Juliet by Prokofiev, is well into my system. If we listen to a little bit of it, it's the dance with mandolins. I shall tell you afterwards when we've heard it why exactly it's stuck in my groove.

Presenter21:32

The dance of the mandolins from the Prokofiev Ballet Suite, Romeo and Juliet, the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by André Preven. You're going to tell us why. Yes, I'm... my warm and good friends Hugh and Jones Stalker who are my colleagues at Gigglesick have a house in the west of Scotland and I go and stay with them every August time and there is nobody for nine miles the nearest house is nine miles and there is a there's no electricity there's no running water there's no gas there's nothing it's very primitive but he does have a big machine that's run by batteries that will play music to the hills and Prokofiev last summer rocketed round the hills and came back at us and has ingrained itself very deeply into me at the moment and it will remind me of those spacious August nights when we're listening to music and sipping a little dry sherry sounds gorgeous now going back to your interviewing career rather early you had an ordeal with a group called the who did you realize at the start that you were heading for trouble not at all i thought they were a group of well-behaved lads who would answer every boring question that i gave them and i had a clipboard and a list of questions and i started to go through you know the the i was going to say you know the boring questions like when did you first realize you were going to be an interviewer that kind of question the kind of question you do not ask Roy. And about halfway through, clearly, boredom was written all over their faces. And I heard behind me sounds of shirts being ripped and torn, expensive silk shirts. And I turned round and Pete Townsend was ripping Keith Moon, the late Keith Moon's shirt, and Roger Daltre was ripping somebody else's shirt. While I was persisting in these lunatic questions, like, you know, which one of you writes the music and which one of you writes the words. When they'd finished ripping their shirts, they all stopped and there was a dreadful silence in the studio. Not like it is now with this noise here. And they all looked at me and pointed and said, there is one person here whose clothes are still intact. And of course I foolishly looked over my shoulder to see who this person was and then they got me. They threw me onto the floor. They took a lot of my clothes off, threw my shoes away. And I was still holding onto the clipboard and saying, but what was your most successful concert? Half naked. I mean, I was half naked, not for sure. It was very decent of them to leave you the clipboard. Now, after you had risked your life in such programmes for a number of years, London Weekend showed a lack of appreciation by putting you in a less rewarding entertainment called Saturday Night People.

Russell Harty23:13

And they finished

Speaker 323:29

See who does

Presenter23:56

Less rewarding for me or for the nation or for you? It struck me less rewarding for all of us. Well, I think I didn't enjoy it as much as I did because what I was doing was being the celebrant with a pair of knockers. Now, by that, I mean that there were two other people called Janet Street Porter and Clive James whose object was to knock people and I tried to celebrate people and it's a difficult if you've ever tried to celebrate in the middle of that kind of pair, it is a hard job and it was not my cup of tea. No. Now you had your revenge by moving back to the BBC, all about books you did, and I hope you'll do some more. And now you're doing what? Two talk shows a week, one from London, one from Manchester, which means you're handy for your North Yorkshire hideaway.

Russell Harty24:25

Yeah.

Presenter24:40

And a midweek radio show. You're a very busy boy. Yes, well I'm not doing all those together at this precise moment. I've finished the twice a week television shows and I'm now only engaged at five past nine of a Wednesday morning.

Russell Harty24:50

And

Presenter24:55

In a quieter circumstance in Broadcasting House.

Presenter25:01

Well, I'd thought of all the music that I've I've actually had introduced in the programmes that I've done, and there have been lots of people like Sarah Vaughan and Cleo Lane and Victoria de Los Angeles and you name them and they've sung things. But the one thing which is the bizarrest thing I ever supervised was a little lad from St Paul's Cathedral Choir called Paul Felix who sang My Way and I would like to hear that to remind me of that odd, odd, bizarre night.

Speaker 325:31

I've laughed and cried, I've had my fear, my share of losing And now as tears subside, I find it all so amusing to think I do not mad. And may I say not in a shy way.

Russell Harty25:54

Uh

Speaker 326:06

Oh no, know that you are doing that fine.

Presenter26:17

The choristers of St. Paul's Cathedral featuring Paul Phoenix. Now, Russell, you're a national celebrity. Everybody recognizes you, as indeed you must have noticed in trying to make your way about this exhibition. Do you enjoy it?

Presenter26:31

I do when I'm with other people, and when I'm walking through the exhibition with you, who also

Presenter26:37

are a recognizable figure. I quite enjoy that moment of recognition. I'm very happy about it when people come up to me and say, hello, how are you? and shake me by the hand. And I don't even mind if they say, you know, the thing you did last night was bloody awful, I couldn't bear it. What I can't bear about recognition is when people stand in a corner and put their hand up to their mouth and whisper and talk about me in such a way that I feel rather prickly about that. And if I'm on my own, I will sort of undertake every kind of disguise and put glasses on and a flat cap and a moustache and walk with a limp rather than be red. That ginger beard is a beauty.

Russell Harty27:01

Yeah, yeah.

Russell Harty27:09

No more.

Russell Harty27:11

Right.

Presenter27:14

Now, you're a a literary chap. You're fascinated by books, all sorts of books. Now, what about the written word? We know you do a column in a Sunday paper. What about hard covers?

Presenter27:24

What do you mean, writing them or reading them? Writing them. Well, I keep starting. Weidenfeld and Nicholson commissioned me to write some short stories. Have you done them? And I keep doing two and then one and then another two and keep sending them in and th they say do another two or do another three. And it's a long slow process and I really do wish that I I don't I say I wish that somebody would give me a year off or I would take be brave enough to take a year off and sit down and finish it and then I'd have to face myself with the awful truth that it may not work.

Russell Harty27:41

Yeah.

Russell Harty27:50

Sit down.

Presenter27:54

And you'll become a diarist, I hear, in the steps of James Agott, Arnold Bennett.

Presenter27:59

Well you you you graced me with it with a with a uh uh a high genealogy there, but I can only do that if I can get the permission of the people who have to appear in the diary, of whom you well may be one. And uh maybe people have to hop the twig before I finish that. You have my permission already and will you choose another record? I will choose another record. Um I owe a great deal to the funniness and the warmth of my my mum and my dad. My father died about seven or eight years ago. My mother is very chirpy and very alive. And presuming that she will not go with me to this desert island to make apple pie and hot pot, I will need something that warmly reminds me of her and him and I chose that very rather sad I will n I will need a good cry so when I listen to If You Were the Only Girl in the World, I'll be thinking about my mum and my dad and having a bit of a weep with the Kleenex.

Speaker 328:53

For where the only girl in the world And you are the only girl

Speaker 329:07

Nothing else would matter in this world

Speaker 329:16

Lovely

Speaker 329:24

That's the name for the

Speaker 329:28

Nothing to marry.

Presenter29:33

Violet Lorraine and George Roby from a 1916 show, The Bing Boys, up here. Now, the desert island scene, are you good with your hands? Would you be alright as a castaway? No, no, no, there'll be no way I'd be alright. I can't make anything. I can make I can put sentences together and paragraphs together, but I can't build huts or install central heating or hang pictures or anything of that nature, so I would not be a good castaway. Can you fish?

Russell Harty29:43

No, no, no.

Russell Harty29:57

Can you

Presenter29:59

I have once fished in Scotland. Successfully? Yes, I caught a trout up with my first cast. Well done. And I wound it in so far that it stuck out of the top of the rod, like a flag.

Russell Harty30:01

Successful.

Presenter30:09

And the the man who was teaching me said, why don't you climb up the rod and stab it? Would you try to escape?

Presenter30:15

No, I wouldn't. I would lie in Fester.

Presenter30:17

Right. All right, your last record. What's that? Well, I want something to to uh remind me of Britain and something which is very grand and something which is will call me to attention when my my mind and my thoughts are wandering and something which will give me exercise and when I hear this music I shall have to stand bolt upright and salute and it is, believe it or not, the national anthem.

Presenter31:30

Sir Edward Elgar's arrangement of the national anthem, much appreciated here at the Ideal Home exhibition, played by the new Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Philip Ledger with the Cambridge University Musical Society. If you could take only one disc.

Presenter31:45

I think it would be in the bleak midwinter because I presume s again that it would be very hot and I would cool down to that. And one luxury?

Presenter31:53

Well, I've

Presenter31:54

I want to take with me, and not for the reasons you shall imagine, a mirror.

Presenter32:00

Well, what's the other reason?

Presenter32:04

I want to take a mirror for lighting fires, Roy, and for sending flashing messages to passing ships. And you call that a luxury? Yes, I call that a luxury. Well, we haven't time to argue, so you've got it. And one book apart from the... Could I take a flagpole with me, do you think? A flagpole. Yes. And the Union Jack. And run up when I play Gotziki, with a mirror attached to the bottom of it. No, no mirror. And one book apart from the Bible and Shakespeare. I'd like to take with me a large book called Whitaker's History of Craven, which has beautiful pictures and a magical 19th century text all about the country in Yorkshire where I live. I've never got to the end of it, and that will keep me occupied and fill me with a happy memory.

Russell Harty32:11

Yeah.

Russell Harty32:15

Or

Russell Harty32:26

Uh

Presenter32:41

We'll have it handsomely bound for you, and thank you, Russell Hardy, for letting us hear your Desert Island dissipation. Thank you. Goodbye, everyone.

Speaker 232:46

Thank you.

Speaker 232:54

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