Malcolm Muggeridge

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Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a download from the Desert Island Discs archive. This edition may be slightly different from what was actually broadcast, but it is the only version we have. It comes from the British Library's radio collection.

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The recording didn't contain the guests' eight music choices, so we've rebuilt the original show by using discs from the B B C Gramophone library. For Wright's 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 author, broadcaster and journalist Malcolm Muggeridge.

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Have you ever experienced prolonged loneliness?

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Yes, I have.

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But it hasn't worried me too much.

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What would be the worst thing about a desert island apart from the loneliness?

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I think simply trying to remain alive. I mean, nobody could be m less competent than I am in matters of sort of uh you know uh building a little hut or um scratching up the earth for food and generally being resourceful. What would be the best thing about being on a desert island? What would you be happiest to have got away from? Well, one thing there's no television. I mean that would be in itself absolute bliss. There's no question of turning that on. How much does music mean to you? Well it means more and more now. When I was last on your programme, how long ago was that? That was twenty-five years ago. Twenty-five years ago, yes. Well I remember sort of choosing my pieces, you know, and really not out of my own tastes entirely. But now I listen a great deal, especially in the evenings, partly because I when you get old

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French flesh.

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'Cause I'm seventy-eight now, it's quite an age. Uh reading can be very tiring and modern print

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Roy is appalling. It's getting worse and worse, harder and harder to see. I couldn't sing and tune. I c I can't even recognize a lot of music, but still I sit in the evening with great joy listening to it.

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Can you

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Any edge.

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like very much what's called secret music.

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What's the first one you've chosen for your island? Well, I've chosen a Mozart actually, which is Exultate Giubilate. And I chose it because the singing voice of the person who sings

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Kiri Tekano, isn't it?

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It seemed to me that her singing of this exultate jubilate is as near as you can get to celestial music. I think if by accident the gates of heaven swung open and you happened to hear what was going on there, it would be something like that.

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Mozart's Exultati Jubilati, a performance conducted by Colin Davis and the soloist Kiritai Kanua.

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Now, you were born just outside London. Yes, Croydon. One of quite a large family. Five boys. Where did you fit among the five? I was the middleman, too older, too younger. Your father was a pioneer left-winger. Were you brought up to accept his beliefs? Very much so. He was an early socialist, an early Fabian, particularly. Yes. And he firmly believed, and entirely convinced me, that if good men like him ever took over government, we should all live in a brotherly, peaceful way ever after. It's a nice thought.

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After being a local councillor, he became a Member of Parliament. Was that in the first Labour Government? No, in the second Labour Government. The first Labour Government, Macdonalds, in twenty-four, he got into Parliament in 1929 for what was then the biggest constituency in England, which was Rumford. You went first to the local elementary school. Were you a bookish lad?

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Yes, I always loved books. Were there a lot in the house? Quite more than you'd have found in most lower middle class uh households. And I had a sort of

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Well, I was brought up to think of writers as the cream of mankind, and of course, through the Fabian Society, when people like Bernard Shaw and Wells and people like Ed used to come and lecture in Croydon, they would come and be entertained in our modest little home. And I used to look at them, particularly I remember looking at Chesterton with absolute awe with his cloak and big floppy hat. It seemed to me that he was you know, if one could ever manage to write like that, it would be perfection. Now, you moved on to a secondary school where you won a scholarship to Cambridge. What did you read?

Malcolm Muggeridge5:36

Vast

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Nice.

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I read this ludicrous thing, I read Natural Science Tripos. Why? Well, the reason was, you see, that I was at school in the First World War, in the 1418 War. In that war, of course, all the schoolmasters were called up immediately, and they were nearly all subalterns, and a great many holocaust of schoolmasters in the early part of the and we had a pretty strange collection of people, and the only subjects, the post-matriculation subjects that were available

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were science subjects. I had no interest in it, but I had to study it because there was nothing else available. And so I went to Cambridge and I was qualified to read for a natural trans tripos, which I ought to have I hadn't a sense, I would have switched, you know. But I s soldiered on and I got about the worst degree it's possible to have. What were your extracurricular activities? Well, I was interested in politics, and what was then a very embryonic organisation, the Cambridge University Labour Party, occupied my attention. My father had a dream that I'd be a great figure in the Union, and he even paid for me to have a life membership of the Union, which he could ill afford. But I was so bored by it, I never went. What was your first job when you came down?

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Oh yeah.

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When I came down I wi went out to India to teach at a college there, a Christian college. Hadn't you had a a brief spell as a tour guard? Oh, yes. But that was purely a vocation. It brought me one colossal dividend, you know, because I met my wife Kitty.

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Oh yes.

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By see

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Really? Yes. We were in Belgium.

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And I used to have to conduct parties to Bruges and places like that. And um Kitty was living there in a villa with her father and mother in Conocha, Zoot. And I met her there, so that was a marvellous thing. But it also had an ill effect on me because it made me realize that you could know nothing about a subject whatever and still talk about it. And this is something that Helming Goodst did when I took up television, you see.

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And this is something

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Yeah.

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Well, then to India. Well, th I think at this point, before we start talking about that, let's have your second record. Right. Well, now the second one is Albinone, which I think is a very, very beautiful piece of music, very melodious. I gather that it's by no means, you know

Malcolm Muggeridge7:59

Impressive.

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certain that it's exactly as Albinone would have put it together, but if he happens to be hearing it in the Eternal Shades, I'm sure he'll be well content, because it's very beautiful.

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The Albinone Adaggio arranged or completed or whatever the word is by Chiazzotto, and it's conducted by Carlistenpach.

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Now the Indian Christian College. Was it run on British lines?

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Well, it was an associate college to Madras University. Madras University was very much run on English and so indirectly it was. But it was also a new experiment because it was run by Indians. And at that time, and it seems very strange now, but it was regarded as absolutely extraordinary to have a young English graduate on the staff of a college that was started by Indians and whose principal was an Indian, etcetera, etcetera. But it made the whole adventure for me much more interesting. What did you teach? I taught English literature, not science. I've never taught anybody any science. I believe you used to wear Indian dress. Yes, I did, yes. But it was much more comfortable. And there were no other Europeans living there, so it really was a more convenient arrangement. But there was a a European colony nearby at Cochin, and they regarded this as somewhat eccentric. And you've admitted to being a little subversive.

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Yes, I was very subversive because I took the romantic view, the leftist romantic view, that to be l free meant to be in control of the government and therefore that if only the Indians would grab the government they would become free. Well, they have grabbed the government and they haven't become free. How long did you stay in the college? Three about two and a half years. It was very enjoyable. They were extraordinarily nice people, holy people. And I used to go up to Ute Command for the long vacation.

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and wander around there with a pony in the Nilghai mountains, which was very beautiful.

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It was it was a delectable time. The only thing was that in the plains, of course, we lived in what would seem now the most fantastic discomfort, because there was no electricity, no ice, no fresh vegetables, there were none of the comforts that Europeans living in hot countries consider now essential. So it was pretty uncomfortable. And I did get a bit ill towards the end.

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Well, then a much more prosaic job as a ply teacher in Birmingham. But that didn't last long. No, that was quite a brief time. My great friend Alec Vidler, who has been a lifelong friend, who was at Cambridge with me, he was a priest in a parish in Birmingham, and I lived in the clergy house there, and then I married.

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in Birmingham. I was married at a register office in Birmingham and to a niece of Beatrice Webb. A niece of Beatrice Webb, who is four fifty four years later, I'm happy to say, still my

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Do I

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Beloved wife, splendid.

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Now, the next step, he went off to the Middle East. Yes. Well, that was partly because my father-in-law, who was an Irish

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And he felt that being a supply teacher was a pretty poor role for h the husband of his daughter. He didn't mean any harm by it, but that was his valuation, you know. And then in his eyes, to be going out to Egypt to teach was somehow better. And I went and I taught for an Egyptian school in Upper Egypt for a couple of terms, and then I was taken on at the Egyptian University in Cairo. And it was in Cairo that you really began to write, wasn't it?

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Well, I had written quite a lot before. I wrote a lot when I was in India, and I'd had some things published too.

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But it was when I began to write about current affairs.

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I started sending articles to the Guardian. And then they they invited you to join the staff. Yes, they liked these articles. And I regret to say that I got the jargon all too easily, you know, of saying that the Egyptian people will never be content with anything less than one man, one vote, based upon some conversation with a besotted um r um pashar in Groppi's cafe. You know, the way we go.

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We speak very readily and easily of the people of this country. Let's have your third record. This is by Dvorjek.

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And I'm not mad on Vorjak's music, but what I like about this record is the

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Playing of Pablo Casals. I think he's the marvellous player of the cello, and I think in this record you hear him at his best.

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Prior to the first movement of the Vorchak cello concerto, with Pablo Casals as soloist,

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and the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by George Serve.

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Now, in Manchester you settled down as a leader writer on The Guardian. You wrote a play which was produced in London. A novel was commissioned.

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You elected to go off to Moscow. Did you think that there lay the future? Absolutely. You see, don't forget, Roy, that the depression was in full swing in in Lancashire. It hit them very hard. And I thought, and I still think, that our economic system doesn't work. I must say I'm more never convinced of it today. But it seemed to me then that this was the alternative.

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And that if it was the alternative.

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Then the best thing to do would be to go there. I by this time I had one child of my family before and um live there, settle there. And I went there with that intention. Did it seem a viable alternative when you got there? I realized a profound truth which is I perhaps wouldn't have learnt unless I'd gone there, makes me very thankful to have gone there, and that is that you cannot make men good.

Malcolm Muggeridge15:47

Duh.

Speaker 315:47

Yeah.

Malcolm Muggeridge15:47

Yeah.

Malcolm Muggeridge15:57

Hello

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brotherly, etcetera., by the exercise of power.

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You have to find some other dynamic, and of course that other dynamic is the dynamic of love, which is the opposite of power. And that was what I learnt there, really. It was it was a terrific disillusionment to me to find that this place that I had firmly believed was a new way, a new civilization, as those absurd Webbs called it, but it was simply an old, old, old tyranny with every characteristic of a tyranny, and also inconceivably inefficient.

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All that came as a as a shock.

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But uh looking back, I feel that it was a piece of supreme good fortune.

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to go there because I might have spent the whole of the rest of my life blathering a lot of nonsense, like poor old Ben does, you know. How long did you stay? I say about nine months. And then I had to go. I would have stayed longer. I in journalistically speaking, I was very interested in it, but I had no proper credentials, and the Guardian were not pleased with my coverage, and they wouldn't have given me credentials. And altogether it would have been quite impractical for me to remain. Furthermore, it has to be said, and it's true, that a foreign correspondent who doesn't more or less go along with the regime, although he may be critical, go along with it, cannot survive.

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In Moscow.

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He'll find his visa taken away, or otherwise life made impossible. Yes, indeed. Well, at any rate, that Sorjoon produced a book, Winter in Moscow. Yes. This was written when I came back and with tremendous feeling, and it was rather successful.

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Griz.

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As a book.

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And it did express this bitter disillusionment.

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uh with what I thought to be.

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The realization of a of a new and better way of life was simply a hashing up of the old and wicked way of life.

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Now we can pass over a short stay with the League of Nations in Switzerland and a spell as assistant editor of the Calcutta Statesman. You've always liked to keep moving, haven't you? Well, it's a pretty lamentable thing to say, but I've never stayed in any job for more than four years, and mostly less than that. I don't know why. I just suppose in a way one would be glad not to have had to have a job, really. And then in nineteen thirty four, I think it was, you settled in London for a number of years. You did the gossip column on the Standard. Well, I was the contributor to the Londoner's Diary. It was an absolutely deluxe feature, because there were about five or six people, and we only had twelve paragraphs to produce, and they had to be produced more or less by noon, because they seldom broke the page, so that you could earn your pay between ten and twelve writing these paragraphs. Very satisfactory. And compared with most of your previous work, a fairly frivolous time, I should say. Utterly, because you were supposed to go round, you know, to s social events and all that, or to have interesting conversations with people. But I found that it was easier to make them all up, and on the whole, they were more convincing.

Malcolm Muggeridge18:52

Actually

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Well, then the war came, of course, and we'll deal with that period of your life in a minute. Let's have another record. Number four. Well, now, this is one of the four last songs of Richard Strauss. I find them immensely moving.

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They've got that extraordinary melancholy in them which is characteristic of the music of the turn of the century, between the Victorian age really and modern times. You get it in Elgar, you get it in Thomas Hardy, it's a sort of premonition.

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that this particular world is busting up. And I think in these songs it's very melodiously and interestingly expressed.

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Within the hours.

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His each of the sound

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September one of the Richard Strauss' four last songs sung by Lisa Della Casse.

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Nineteen thirty nine, then. You began the war, Malcolm, in the hastily formed Ministry of Information. How do you look back on your days at the Ministry? Was it pathetic, hilarious, frustrating?

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Yeah we won't

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I mean, I I would really literally rather do anything in the world than write propaganda. And in a way, it's more painful to write it for a cause that you believe in than for one that you don't. And that's what we were doing. You see, we were writing articles to be used in the press abroad, which would encourage them to believe that we were going to win the war. Like we'd say the Germans have no molybdenum, and I didn't even know what molybdenum was. What is it? I don't know, even to this day. But it's apparently something that's actually essential to waging a war. We say, well, they haven't got any molybdenum, and therefore the whole thing's going to conk out quite soon. You far better join our side. I mean, that was roughly speaking. I found it very it had its its comic aspects, but I was in a room with a man who'd spent most of his previous life as an official of the old League of Nations, and when I used to complain that we we had nothing to do

Malcolm Muggeridge21:47

What is it?

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He couldn't understand why. Why should we have anything to do? I haven't had anything to do for twenty years, possibly.

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Then you joined the army in field security. Yes. Um your induction wasn't at a very convenient time for you because you were finishing your book on the thirties. That's right. But I managed to finish it. In fact, I finished it off in a barrack hut, sitting on my bed and scribbling it out there.

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And then speedily you were commissioned. I suppose your most memorable exploit in your early days in field security was getting the Commander in Chief slung out of his job.

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Well, that's a bit exaggerated, but it did work out a bit in that way.

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See, what happened was we were supposed to be th looking after the security of GHQ Home Forces to which I was posted, and that was at the time when the Blitz was coming up and the invasion possibilities and all that. And we used to receive reports from the police and so on about things that might seem to have dangerous p potentialities. And one of them was that the Carr, the Commander in Chief, who was General Arnside,

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Was it outside a particular house?

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And this was reported.

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And I made inquiries in the house, and it looked a a rather kind of s sinister thing. And so a great friend of mine, who was a stepson of Van Sittart, who was then in the Foreign Office, said we'd better go and tell him.

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And so we went along and I felt rather awful really in doing it, you know. But it it seemed to me right to do in a war, and I told this uh this fact at this at this very critical moment. The the commander-in-chief was spending a lot of his time in this house. And uh the following day, well, the evening paper s the headline was Aronside sacked. Now, I don't know whether that really brought it about or whether it was just a kind of little extra thing that might have precipitated it or something like that. But certainly that's how it wasn't. It wasn't I who got him sacked, it was passing on some information which had perfectly properly come through the channel of the um

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Mm-hmm.

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And that was your job. It was my job, miss.

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And you finished the war doing liaison work with the French? With the French in Paris, yes. With the securité militaire. That's how I finished up there. And that of course was extremely interesting. I mean, one was there when Paris was what's called liberated and so on.

Malcolm Muggeridge24:34

Uh

Speaker 324:34

Yeah.

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And I found that deeply interesting and rather depressing in the

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collaboration wave, which provided an opportunity for anybody to get his own back and anybody he didn't like. Yes. And it was a sinister thing to see how much of that went on, of people informing on other French and partly perhaps to cover up their own

Malcolm Muggeridge24:56

Okay.

Malcolm Muggeridge24:57

The epio.

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Collaboration, and partly out of pure vindictiveness, it was a disagreeable thing.

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Let's have your fifth record. What shall we be? Now this is Beethoven's violin concerto. It's actually, I have to admit, the first piece of classical music.

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that I ever wholly appreciated. I mean, in a sense, it was the beginning of such education as I have in classical music, because we hadn't had this record and I realized how beautiful it was.

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The beginning of the slow movement of the Beethoven Violin Concerto in D major, Yehudi Menwin, with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. After the war you had a long spell in the United States. Two years, yes. As correspondent in Washington.

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It was very interesting, very interesting time in America altogether, because I think people have forgotten now, but America really at that moment in history was more powerful and richer than all the rest of the world put together. And one wo wondered what they were going to do

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And then you realize the terrible truth that they weren't going to do anything at all except hand out money. Which newspaper were we were in? Data Telegraph. I was their correspondent in Washington.

Malcolm Muggeridge27:08

Particular.

Malcolm Muggeridge27:10

Right.

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And you were afterwards deputy editor for a while.

Malcolm Muggeridge27:13

Yes

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From the Daily Telegraph you joined the select and illustrious band of editors of Punch. Did you make any drastic changes in the paper when you took over? Well, I did really, yes. I'm not sure they were successful, but of course it was imprisoned in the past, you know.

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in its humour and in its make up and everything.

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And it was absolutely necessary, if it was to survive, to break away from that. I don't think a lot of the things I did were necessarily a good, but they did at least break the mould and have enabled it to shape in a different way.

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And that was really the main point of of my being there. It was also a curious job in a way. I I don't think there's anything more unrewarding than trying to make English people laugh, actually. It's a very thankless task, you know. And there, particularly in this sort of place which was hallowed with its tradition and its memories, nobody ever seemed to laugh, which after all is a help if you're trying to be funny.

Malcolm Muggeridge28:09

Yeah.

Speaker 328:10

Oh, you know who I am.

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It was a weird experience. The funniest thing of all, which I've often had occasion to mention, was that you made a one d interesting discovery, which was that if you try to ridicule the people, as a proverb says, set in authority over us,

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You find that all your efforts are futile because they nearly always go and do something which is even more ridiculous than anything that you can invent, you see. And so that you're defeated completely in doing this. Like you think I'll make fun of the Archbishop of Canterbury as a good target. And then you read in the paper, The Archbishop of Canterbury, at the end of the performance of God's Pill, jumped up in his seat and shouted out, Long live God. Well, you can't think of anything funnier than that, you see. I mean, your jokes absolutely pale into insignificance by this wonderful idea of the Archbishop of Canterbury, in effect saying, Carry on eternity, keep it going infinity.

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When did your television career start? It started while I was at Punch.

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In fact, the first thing I did, which some would think was not without significance, was to do the commentary and afterwards of Billy Graham's meetings out at Wemley at Haringay, and also to interview him afterwards. And that was for this new programme, Panorama, which was just starting then, before Dimbleby came to it. And after that I was asked to work for Panorama. Well, I didn't have any idea that television was going to be the enormous influence that it has become.

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To me it was just like another form of journalism. You could be paid for writing something, you could be paid for saying something, and you could be paid for actually appearing in vision on something. But I had no idea what it would become. But um that's how it began, and after that I did fairly regular.

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Television. We got to record number six. Number six is Elgar.

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Now, again, like those songs of Strauss's, this has about it this melancholy, this melancholy that the world that we live in is changing drastically and the things we believe in are going to be challenged drastically and so on, which I note in all the best art of this period between the Victorian age and the twentieth century. And this piece by Elgar is a very good example of it. It has a beautiful melancholy.

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In it.

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The Lagetto from Elgar's Serenade in E minor for strings, The Academy of Saint Martin in the Fields, directed by Neville Mariner. Let's talk some more about your books, Malcolm. Two volumes of your autobiography, Chronicles of Wasted Time, have appeared.

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Those take you only to the end of the war. Is there going to be a third volume? Oh yes. I've been struggling with that and I haven't been able to get it quite right. But whatever happens I want to live long enough to do that.

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have a last say, and which would really be more like

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trying to give certain positive conclusions about life that I've reached. We now have, like it was, a selection from your diary, which has just appeared, and you've let somebody else do the selecting. Why?

Speaker 332:50

Why?

Presenter32:51

Well, first of all, because I didn't feel competent to do it. In a diary you you're too involved.

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And the

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temptation to to remove things that might put you in a disagreeable light, and heaven knows there's plenty of material of that sort in my diary, I imagine in anybody's it seemed to me much better. And I happened to be very fortunate in John Bright Holmes, who was a very experienced person and who had a very calm and honest and objective mind that he brought to bear on it. And therefore I thought it was much better that someone who was not personally involved should decide because it was fairly big. You see it's only about a fifth of my total diaries that has been published. So there could be another gleaning.

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Well, I mean, the whole thing is there on my shelves. If anybody when I depart this knife is interested in it, the whole story's there. Now, your faith, you've written and broadcast a great deal about your religious beliefs and ideas.

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Well, because it's the only thing that means much to me, really. I mean, it seems to me that in so far as you could say what i the pursuit that is worth while in this life it would be to discover reality.

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And of course discovering reality means discovering God, because God is only a name for reality.

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a word, that they you have to have a word, and that in so far as one could shed any light on that, then that would be the one thing that I would consider worth doing. And I have, I hope, in my writings on this subject, expressed what is meant by faith and what my faith consists of.

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We've got record number seven.

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Well record number seven is this Beethoven Trio and I happened to be sent the Beethoven Trios and there were about five of them.

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This one is actually the Archduke.

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And

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I was delighted with it.

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It was so beautifully played, particularly the cello by Jacqueline Dupre.

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Then I heard her give a radio talk.

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which moved me very deeply when she said, as everybody knows, of course, that she has been stricken with illness that it prevents her from playing but that she was so glad that she'd chosen the cello, because there weren't very many pieces in that, and she was able to remember them all and go over them in her mind.

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So I wrote her a note and said that normally I hate every form of technology, but this fact that I could through technology listen to her playing was a wonderful thing and it was a very big exception in my distaste for technology. And I think it's a marvellous thing that she was able to bear this affliction.

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without falling into despair.

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pretending to a sort of

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resistance to it, which perhaps was excessive. She took it as part of life, and that is what we're supposed to do, and she has done so supremely and sublimely well.

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Part of the third movement of Beethoven's Archduke Trio, trio number seven in B flat major, played by Daniel Barrenboin, Pinchus Zuckermann, and Jacqueline Dupre. Now you told us at the beginning of this programme, Malcolm, that you had

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Very poor expectations of being able to make yourself comfortable on this island. How would you manage about getting away? Can you navigate? Do you know anything about small boats? No, I couldn't do anything in that sort at all. All I could do would be to build the biggest, biggest bonfire I could, and hope some other boat with a competent person aboard would see it as a signal and come and fetch me off.

Malcolm Muggeridge37:31

Uh

Presenter37:46

No good at huts but reasonable at bonfires. Right, we'll leave it at that and get to your last record.

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Well, my last record is in a way a curious one.

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It is in fact the cradle, the creed.

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in the mass of the Russian Orthodox Church. And I had it quite by chance in a record of a lot of uh items, separate items, and I was enormously attracted by it. It has a sort of longing in it.

Presenter38:17

also related the fact when I was in Russia and I was in Kiev when that dreadful famine was on, and I went to church there, and I noticed the same thing in the service this absolute sort of really throwing themselves upon God and saying, Well, there's nothing we can do, we've noth no other hope, nowhere else to look except to you.

Speaker 238:45

I'm not sure if I can do it.

Speaker 239:30

Well

Presenter39:35

The Gretchaninov setting of the Creed.

Presenter39:38

By the Russian Metropolitan Church Choir in Paris, the soloist G. Pavlenko.

Presenter39:44

If you could take only one disc out of the eight you've chosen, which would it be? Oh, it would unquestionably be the first the Mozart, the Gibraltar.

Presenter39:52

And you're allowed to have with you one luxury, any one thing that you like to choose for no practical use.

Malcolm Muggeridge39:57

No.

Presenter39:58

I thought I'd like to have a beehive. Do you know about keeping bees? I do keep bees. Do you? Hm. I'm not the greatest expert around, I can tell you that, but I manage it.

Malcolm Muggeridge40:05

Yeah.

Presenter40:10

And um I thought that if I had a hive and all the necessary instruments that you require, I could keep bees.

Presenter40:19

and um perhaps build another hive like it, or improvise one, and build up a good supply of honey, and I would observe them and find them interesting. Of course.

Presenter40:31

And one book apart from the Bible and Shakespeare. The Bible and Shakespeare is marvelous that we get those, because actually we get a long way on those two books. In fact, they pretty well say everything. But in addition, if I had an edition, I would take as much

Malcolm Muggeridge40:33

So I think

Speaker 340:35

Uh

Malcolm Muggeridge40:35

Uh

Presenter40:45

Johnsonian

Presenter40:47

Dr. Johnson's writings rather than the Balswor because I know that very well and I would therefore take his writings, especially his Lives of the Poets, his Rasselas, his occasional pieces and his verses. And you would pack those into two fat volumes for me. I'll pack as much as we can get into one fat volume. Yes, one fat volume. But it'll be a good fat volume. I'm sure it will. You'll be very generous with it.

Malcolm Muggeridge41:09

That's one fat.

Presenter41:13

And thank you, Malcolm Mugridge, for letting us hear your Desert Island disc. Well, it's been a fascinating thing altogether, and I've enjoyed it.

Malcolm Muggeridge41:16

When

Presenter41:21

Goodbye, everyone.

Malcolm Muggeridge41:31

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

Malcolm Muggeridge41:35

For more downloads, please visit the Radio 4 website.