Professor J K Galbraith

Speaker 10:00

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

Speaker 10:05

For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music, the programme was originally broadcast in 1982, and the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:30

Our castaway this week is a writer, academic, economist, and a former United States Ambassador, Professor John Kenneth Galbraith.

Presenter0:39

Professor Galbraith, could you endure loneliness for a long time?

Professor J K Galbraith0:43

The whole idea doesn't appeal to me at all. I'm not especially gregarious. I can get along with my own dismal personality for a little while.

Professor J K Galbraith0:51

But I would hate to endure it for any length of time. How much does music mean to you? Music is something that uh I'm sorry to say passes me by. Do you sing or whistle? I mean, do you like to hum tunes? I do when I'm all by myself, but when I'm with anybody else I'm promptly told that I must stop it, because whatever I do is deeply offensive to someone else's ears. I'm sorry about that.

Presenter1:15

Now how did you set about choosing just a few, just eight records to take with you for a long time on a desert island?

Professor J K Galbraith1:22

Well, I had to listen uh at some length to my wife because uh she thought some of my selections first selections were rather sordid.

Presenter1:30

Take her advice?

Professor J K Galbraith1:31

I always do. If I don't take it the first time, then she repeats it. So this is a family choice. So it's a family choice.

Presenter1:35

So this is a family.

Professor J K Galbraith1:38

But also, to be serious,

Professor J K Galbraith1:40

I picked out things which I've enjoyed and which had some meaning for some part of my long past life. What's the first one? It's the Sky Boat Song. Why do you choose it?

Professor J K Galbraith1:52

My family come from that part of Scotland. My great great grandfather was born along the shores of the Crudden Canal.

Professor J K Galbraith2:00

in seventeen seventy one and

Professor J K Galbraith2:03

Died in Canada in 1874, 103 years later.

Professor J K Galbraith2:08

migrate until he was in rather advanced years.

Professor J K Galbraith2:12

and he moved to a solidly Scottish community in uh Western Ontario,

Professor J K Galbraith2:18

Many people from the part of Ontario where I was born

Professor J K Galbraith2:22

went back to what they called the old country once in their lifetime, and they were always a bit disappointed. It wasn't as pure a distillate of the clans as uh in Canada.

Presenter2:35

Well, let's listen to your choice, and let's listen to the sky boat song.

Presenter3:36

The Sky Boat Song by the Glendorel Highland Pipe Band.

Presenter3:41

So you were brought up as a farmer's lad in Western Ontario.

Presenter3:46

But you weren't really happy in that life.

Professor J K Galbraith3:48

I was incredibly happy to get away from the repetitive, tedious, and no doubt very healthy life of a Canadian farm. Mhm. I developed at a very early age

Professor J K Galbraith4:01

a very deep aversion to manual labor. Yet in spite of that you went to college to study Study agriculture.

Presenter4:07

Yeah.

Professor J K Galbraith4:08

That was because in my time uh

Professor J K Galbraith4:10

Studying agriculture was the cheapest form of higher education there was. It was heavily subsidized.

Professor J K Galbraith4:17

So the Ontario Agricultural College, to which I went,

Professor J K Galbraith4:21

was um

Professor J K Galbraith4:22

Just a marvel of economy.

Professor J K Galbraith4:25

Yeah.

Speaker 34:25

Uh

Professor J K Galbraith4:25

A hundred or two hundred dollars a year, at the most.

Professor J K Galbraith4:28

And uh always considered it one of my uh

Professor J K Galbraith4:32

Primary achievements. Can I say one word in my own pra praise?

Presenter4:35

Greatest.

Professor J K Galbraith4:36

I made it from the Ontario Agricultural College as a student.

Professor J K Galbraith4:41

to the faculty of Harvard in three years. I always considered that my most rapid movement. And I look back on that exercise in egregious upward mobility with some pride.

Presenter4:52

But at Harvard you weren't lecturing on agriculture.

Professor J K Galbraith4:54

I did originally lecture on agricultural economics. Did you? I was in the process of making the transition.

Professor J K Galbraith5:01

from animal husbandry in Ontario to economics at Harvard. And that was a way station. When was your first visit to Great Britain? I came first to Great Britain on my honeymoon. We were married one night in September and sailed the next day.

Professor J K Galbraith5:17

On the Cunard line.

Professor J K Galbraith5:19

And I spent a year at Cambridge, a year seeking out the great Messiah, John Maynard Keynes. Oh, that was the year Keynes had his first heart attack.

Professor J K Galbraith5:29

So uh my search was not entirely successful. He was one of your gods as a as a young economist. Oh, no question. No question. Still is.

Presenter5:38

Yeah.

Presenter5:39

Your second record, what's that?

Professor J K Galbraith5:40

Yeah.

Professor J K Galbraith5:41

Oh, I want California. California.

Presenter5:42

Doorny.

Professor J K Galbraith5:43

Here I come.

Presenter5:43

Why do you choose this song?

Professor J K Galbraith5:46

Well, the happiest uh

Presenter5:46

Well the happiest

Professor J K Galbraith5:48

Among the happiest years of my life

Professor J K Galbraith5:51

were spent at uh Berkeley.

Professor J K Galbraith5:54

I must tell you that uh Berkeley, California,

Professor J K Galbraith5:58

in the nineteen thirties and to this day is in some ways the complete university town. The university and the city, which is small, are coterminous, melded together,

Professor J K Galbraith6:13

The location is simply beautiful, looking out over the Golden Gate.

Professor J K Galbraith6:19

And uh the climate is also very nice.

Professor J K Galbraith6:22

And the intellectual life of Berkeley and the ac the academic life as well as the political life in the nineteen thirties as later was something which simply captured your whole soul.

Professor J K Galbraith6:36

And I loved it.

Presenter6:37

Yeah.

Professor J K Galbraith6:38

And to celebrate

Presenter6:38

Rated.

Professor J K Galbraith6:39

Uh

Presenter6:39

California, here I come.

Presenter7:11

CALIFORNIA, Here I Come, by Ray Noble in his orchestra, a memory of the University of California, one of the five universities with which you are closely associated.

Presenter7:22

It was when you left Berkeley with a PhD in, I think, nineteen thirty four.

Presenter7:28

You went to Washington and worked for a while in the then new Roosevelt Administration. In due course you became a speechwriter for President Roosevelt.

Professor J K Galbraith7:36

That was very much later. I wrote or helped write speeches in uh nineteen forty. And that was my first real experience in a career or a craft to which I've devoted a good deal of attention in over a lifetime.

Presenter7:49

Which President has most carefully worked over your speeches and made them his own?

Presenter7:55

Well

Presenter7:56

Uh

Professor J K Galbraith7:56

In the case of the Roosevelt the Roosevelt speeches there was a hierarchy, and I was at the bottom of it along with others. And we sent up drafts and they went through

Professor J K Galbraith8:06

More machinery before they got to FDR himself.

Professor J K Galbraith8:09

Hello the drama

Professor J K Galbraith8:12

of those speeches was Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Professor J K Galbraith8:15

we discovered that three Republican leaders,

Professor J K Galbraith8:18

were opposing him on most of his legislation.

Professor J K Galbraith8:22

A man by the name of Griffiths Johnson made that discovery.

Professor J K Galbraith8:25

And so we mentioned the names of the three, Martin, Barton, and Fish uh Joe Martin and uh a man by the name of Barton and a man by the name of Hamilton Fish.

Professor J K Galbraith8:38

And uh when Roosevelt got that,

Professor J K Galbraith8:42

He simply rolled out those names, you know, to the same residents as Wink'em, Blink'em, and Na, and who, he said, stood against the legislation that I sought for agriculture.

Professor J K Galbraith8:55

Martin, Barton, and Fish and that became one of the slogans of the campaign. Well, this was done by the President and it was not done by us.

Professor J K Galbraith9:05

Uh to answer your question, uh the man who concerned himself most meticulously with the speeches that were given to him was Adley Stevenson. And I became

Professor J K Galbraith9:17

so much in the tune of Adley Stevenson's speech making that to this day when I write a speech for myself, it has the same balanced sentences and the same resonance as the Stevenson speeches.

Presenter9:30

Well, going back to Roosevelt days, America entered the war and you took a very important job. I didn't take it, I was given it.

Professor J K Galbraith9:38

Yes, in the spring of 1941, before we were in the war, I was put in charge of prices, price control.

Professor J K Galbraith9:46

And that was, I think it's fair to say, one of the more influential jobs of the wartime administration. Yeah. Th that kept down inflation to a considerable extent.

Presenter9:56

Uh

Professor J K Galbraith9:56

Oh, there's no question. The economic policy of uh both Britain and the United States in World War Two were marvels.

Professor J K Galbraith10:03

They were a marvellous uh demonstration of how

Professor J K Galbraith10:06

Quickly one can turn a peacetime economy to wartime purposes, which I hope we never have to do again.

Professor J K Galbraith10:12

I'm not enthusiastic about that.

Presenter10:14

Mm-hmm.

Professor J K Galbraith10:15

And also, how rigorously a wartime economy can be managed. Let's have another record.

Professor J K Galbraith10:23

Well, I suppose we should defer in some musical way to my university, where I've been for

Professor J K Galbraith10:30

But uh

Professor J K Galbraith10:31

Nearly fifty years to Harvard. And what shall we hear from Harvard?

Professor J K Galbraith10:36

It's the basic Harvard song which all Harvard men sing with uh varying degrees of affection.

Speaker 310:43

Where Father thy sons to thy jewelry throne, And with blessing surrender.

Speaker 311:00

By these festival rights, come the days that is past, to the age that is great to be.

Presenter11:14

Fair Harvard by the Harvard Glee Club, who else?

Presenter11:17

Right, the war was coming to an end, and you were sent to Europe on some very interesting

Presenter11:23

investigational work, i in particular on the effects on Germany of strategic bombing.

Professor J K Galbraith11:28

Yeah.

Presenter11:29

And you came to some very surprising conclusions about that.

Professor J K Galbraith11:32

Yes, this was a voyage of great discovery, and I still to this day remember the excitement. I remember the excitement particularly when one of the most distinguished of my colleagues on the enterprise, Nicholas Kaldor, now Lord Kaldor,

Professor J K Galbraith11:47

first began to unfold the notion from the statistics that we were gathering was one night in Munich.

Professor J K Galbraith11:54

that the Germans had never really efficiently organized their economy until very late in the war and that the German economy in nineteen forty forty one

Professor J K Galbraith12:05

although its capacity was much greater, was in most lines of munitions producing less than was being produced here in the United Kingdom. An incredible discovery at that time. Nobody imagined it.

Professor J K Galbraith12:17

The Germans had relied on the Blitzkrieg.

Professor J K Galbraith12:20

They would um have a great attack.

Professor J K Galbraith12:23

use up their stockpiles of munitions and uh then

Professor J K Galbraith12:27

have a pause before their next campaign to replace them.

Presenter12:31

and you decided that the Allied bombing had actually helped the German war.

Professor J K Galbraith12:35

Well, that would be going too far. But there were times when the effect of the air attacks, the great RAF air attacks on Hamburg,

Professor J K Galbraith12:44

destroyed the center of the city and released a lot of people who were bank clerks, uh restaurant waiters and working in nightclubs and so forth. Released them to the munition industry. But I don't uh no, I don't want to go so far as to say it helped.

Professor J K Galbraith13:01

But there were big offsetting factors to the losses.

Professor J K Galbraith13:05

And uh there were some industries the German aircraft industry produced

Professor J K Galbraith13:10

More aircraft after it was attacked than it did before.

Professor J K Galbraith13:16

You were present, of course, at the German surrender.

Professor J K Galbraith13:18

I was present at the uh

Professor J K Galbraith13:21

Well, there were several surrenders. There was one in France and there was one in Berlin.

Professor J K Galbraith13:27

And then there was a final surrender in Flintsburg when the last remnants of the German government, uh the Dernitz government, were taken into custody. I was up there, yes. Yes. Which of the Nazi leaders did you interrogate yourself?

Presenter13:37

Uh

Professor J K Galbraith13:41

In interrogation teams, most of them.

Professor J K Galbraith13:44

Goering, Keitel, Jodel.

Professor J K Galbraith13:47

Uh ribbon trough.

Professor J K Galbraith13:48

And of course the most important of all, Albert Speer, some of the

Professor J K Galbraith13:53

lesser ones like Funk, but uh at one time or another

Professor J K Galbraith13:57

In the spring and summer of uh nineteen forty five,

Professor J K Galbraith14:01

I was engaged in the interrogations of of all of them of any significance.

Presenter14:07

Another record, number four.

Professor J K Galbraith14:09

Well, let's talk a little bit about uh the economics.

Professor J K Galbraith14:13

And I suppose the proper theme for that would be uh

Professor J K Galbraith14:16

I got plenty of

Presenter14:17

Mm.

Professor J K Galbraith14:18

Yeah.

Presenter14:18

It's a rather cynical remark. Which particular period and and sphere of economics?

Professor J K Galbraith14:23

Well, I've had two occasions when I've been deeply involved with this.

Professor J K Galbraith14:28

One during the Depression years

Professor J K Galbraith14:31

And of course, in the times when I've been

Professor J K Galbraith14:34

occupied with the problems of the poor countries as we probably should call them, not use these euphemisms like third world or south or less developed countries.

Professor J K Galbraith14:46

Um the English language was meant to be used, you know, with a certain bluntness. Right. I got plenty of nothing.

Speaker 314:53

Oh, I got plenty or nothing, and nothing's plenty for me. I got no car, got no mill, I got no misery.

Speaker 315:07

Oh folks with plenty of plenty Got a lock on their door Afraid somebody's a going to rob em while they're out of making more

Presenter15:22

The voice of Robert McFerrin from the soundtrack of the film version of Porgy and Best.

Presenter15:28

You've done some policy making for the Democratic Party. I share the confusion of the average Briton about American politics. To most of us, the platforms of the Democrats and the Republicans seem pretty much the same. Can you give us a a quick, easy guide?

Professor J K Galbraith15:43

I noticed that emphasis on quick. It's always something to remind a Harvard professor that he must be brief. And that's a question that could evoke one of my 55-minute lectures. Just to say in a word, you're perfectly right, that in the 30 years following World War II, by the time the rebuilding was well underway, say at the beginning of 1950,

Professor J K Galbraith16:05

Through into the seventies,

Professor J K Galbraith16:07

There was a consensus that was broadly accepted by the Republicans and the Democrats, overall management of the economy, improvement of the public services.

Professor J K Galbraith16:16

Uh

Professor J K Galbraith16:18

welfare help of various sorts, protection for the poor.

Professor J K Galbraith16:22

Now, I should have to tell you I think there is a difference. I think that the

Professor J K Galbraith16:27

For the first time, the Reagan administration has brought in an ideological commitment that

Professor J K Galbraith16:35

reverses or attacks much that was a part of the what we will one day call the consensus years. So while your statement is admirably correct, it is slightly obsolescent. I hope that won't hurt your feelings. Not in the least.

Presenter16:53

In nineteen sixty one, I think it was, mister Kennedy invited you to be United States Ambassador in India. How long were you

Professor J K Galbraith17:00

I was there for two and a half years. I was there just through the Kennedy time. I came back.

Professor J K Galbraith17:05

a few weeks before the President was killed. No, I'd been there on a couple of occasions before and I'd done a lot of I think quite a lot of reading about India and I had even been teaching at Harvard about the problems of uh Indian development as well as the other

Professor J K Galbraith17:24

Poor countries. You were fascinated, I believe, by Indian painting. Oh, fascinating vibe. That that goes back to my first trip there, acquaintance with a brilliant student of Indian painting, Mohander Singh Randawa. We are the joint authors of one of the well, what was at one time one of the well-regarded books on the subject, Indian Painting, the Scenes, Themes and Legends.

Professor J K Galbraith17:49

That's the

Professor J K Galbraith17:50

Only book I must tell you, my dear fellow, that uh I ever wrote that evoked no adverse political comment of any kind. Right. What's your next record? We'll see if that evokes any.

Professor J K Galbraith18:02

Well, let us go on from the contemplation of the poverty of the early days of the New Deal and of the rural South to something better, and to one that to this day, speaking as a Democrat, one can't go to a political meeting without hearing.

Professor J K Galbraith18:20

However extravagant the thought, that's uh happy days are here again.

Speaker 318:26

Are here again. The skies above are clear again. Let us sing a song of cheer again.

Speaker 318:37

Happy days are here again.

Speaker 318:41

All together shout it now. There's no one who can doubt it now. So let's tell the world about it now. Happy days are here.

Presenter18:56

Happy Days Are Here Again, recorded in 1930 by Jack Hilton in his orchestra.

Presenter19:03

The major constant in your very varied career has been your writing. You've written upwards of twenty books on economics and allied subjects.

Presenter19:12

Which ones are important to you?

Professor J K Galbraith19:13

If I had to be pressed, I would say that I I wrote one book and quite a lot of others.

Professor J K Galbraith19:19

the book to which I attribute the greatest personal importance, and I think it's fair to say that the readers and critics have shared my

Professor J K Galbraith19:27

Shared my view it's not always that they share the favourable view of an author was the the new industrial state.

Professor J K Galbraith19:34

where I attempted to, I think with some success, to show the way in which the modern economic system has moved on from the fragmented classical market structure to a system that is dominated by a relative handful of great corporations. And then I went on to look inside the corporation.

Professor J K Galbraith19:56

at the nature of the institution which has now come to dominate economic society. I think it's fair to say that that book had something to do with moving

Speaker 320:01

Uh

Professor J K Galbraith20:05

Are they uh

Professor J K Galbraith20:06

uh economics profession away from its fanatic involvement with the competitive market, the classical market, somewhat in the direction of mod the modern reality of great corporations, great trade unions.

Presenter20:19

Yeah.

Presenter20:19

Your autobiography, A Life in Our Times, came out last year. A long book and the only autobiography of recent years with no pictures in it. Was that for any advised reason?

Professor J K Galbraith20:31

Yes, it wasn't so long ago, just last August, here in England.

Professor J K Galbraith20:35

Uh I did not think there was anything.

Professor J K Galbraith20:39

in my life

Professor J K Galbraith20:41

that was improved or made more comprehensible by uh pictures. What would they have been? Hell, they would have been pictures of Galbraith with uh Senator McGovern whom I supported and Senator McCarthy whom I supported.

Professor J K Galbraith20:55

Pictures uh with uh President Johnson perhaps. Pictures would have done great things for my vanity, and I'm certainly sensitive to my own vanity, but uh they wouldn't have done anything for the reader, and as a very practical matter, uh they would have added substantially to the cost of the book.

Presenter21:14

You must have achieved something of a record. Your literary and academic work have gained you nearly forty honorary doctorates. Can anybody else match that that you know?

Professor J K Galbraith21:25

Well, one of my great friends and uh neighbors, my closest friend over the years, is uh Professor Arthur Schlesinger.

Professor J K Galbraith21:34

The historian for the great Roosevelt Historian.

Professor J K Galbraith21:38

and he once told me that he had a couple of honorary degrees, and I was totally barren I had none.

Professor J K Galbraith21:46

So I set out, whenever I had an invitation after that, to make sure

Professor J K Galbraith21:50

that I had at least one more honorary degree than my great friend and neighbour.

Professor J K Galbraith21:54

And in the process uh I think probably I overdid it. Uh I I rather like standing up before a crowd and having that hood placed over my shoulders.

Professor J K Galbraith22:06

But uh as Chesterfield said about sex, the pleasure is uh temporary.

Professor J K Galbraith22:13

Tell me about What about your writing dis When do you You write? Where Do you write what time of Yeah. Oh, I'm uh compulsive on those matters.

Professor J K Galbraith22:22

I

Professor J K Galbraith22:23

Go to work around nine o'clock in the morning and work until I get tired. That used to be late afternoon. Now it's late morning.

Presenter22:30

Are you a fluent writer?

Professor J K Galbraith22:31

No, I write.

Professor J K Galbraith22:34

Put it aside for a day or two.

Professor J K Galbraith22:36

Discover how appalling it is, literally how appalling I work it over.

Professor J K Galbraith22:41

And then I revise it and then I restructure it. And on the fifth revision, it begins to seem to me tolerable. And I've said many times that it's in the fifth revision that I put in that note of spontaneity that my critics all comment on. Yes. We've got to record number six.

Professor J K Galbraith23:03

This had great meaning.

Professor J K Galbraith23:05

for all of my generation.

Professor J K Galbraith23:07

It was from the great age of musicals in New York the greatest of them was Oklahoma.

Professor J K Galbraith23:13

And

Professor J K Galbraith23:14

On the morning that World War Two came to an end. I wasn't there, I was in Europe.

Professor J K Galbraith23:19

But living on Riverside Drive, every one heard the Riverside Church with its great bells, and what was it playing? Oh, what a beautiful morning

Professor J K Galbraith23:30

and it was answered by the shrieks of the freighters in the river.

Professor J K Galbraith23:36

And to this day, there are people who remember that.

Professor J K Galbraith23:41

and tell it, and they always do so with the tears coming to their eyes.

Speaker 323:46

There's a bright golden haze on the meadow. There's a bright golden haze on the meadow.

Speaker 323:55

The corn is as high as a elephant's eye.

Speaker 324:01

And it looks like it's climbing clear up to the sky. Oh, what a beautiful.

Presenter24:17

Oh, what a beautiful morning sung by Alfred Drake as he sang it in the original production of Oklahoma.

Presenter24:24

In this country, Professor Galbraith, many people came to know you about

Presenter24:28

Five years ago, I think, when you did a long television series, The Age of Uncertainty. Whose idea was that?

Professor J K Galbraith24:35

This was the idea of the team that did Ascent of Man with Jacob Bernowski.

Professor J K Galbraith24:41

And uh I think it was primarily the inspiration of a really very great figure in the history of television, Adrian Malone.

Presenter24:49

Thirteen hours a lot of time to fill.

Professor J K Galbraith24:51

Oh, it was wonderful. I enjoyed

Professor J K Galbraith24:54

As did my wife that whole experience. It took off and on for three and a half years.

Presenter24:59

Yeah.

Presenter25:00

I looked up the corporation statistics. A hundred and seventy hours of material were shot to be reduced down to only thirteen.

Professor J K Galbraith25:06

Yes. Uh I learned also a lot about the mechanics of television. You do it.

Professor J K Galbraith25:13

and uh it isn't quite satisfactory. You do it again, and it's uh evident that you haven't smiled properly at the end. You do it four more times, at on the sixth time an airplane goes over and that has to be shot again.

Professor J K Galbraith25:28

And then you do it twice more, and then the cameraman examines things and says there's a hare in the gate.

Professor J K Galbraith25:34

and the whole thing has to be given up.

Professor J K Galbraith25:37

And somebody then says, I think the first one was the best.

Presenter25:41

As one who has watched many countries slide down and climb out of difficulties, how do you think this country is doing? Are we now on the road to recovery?

Professor J K Galbraith25:52

I wouldn't be optimistic about the uh economic prospect either under uh

Professor J K Galbraith25:58

President Reagan or Prime Minister Thatcher.

Professor J K Galbraith26:01

I have long felt that the old

Professor J K Galbraith26:06

and I would even say archaic conviction that you can solve problems by monetary policy.

Professor J K Galbraith26:13

and that there is constructive action in cutting services, public services including those for the poor, that those things do not work.

Professor J K Galbraith26:24

On the other hand,

Presenter26:24

Yeah.

Professor J K Galbraith26:25

I have a certain amount of advice that I would give to my friends on the Liberal left, too. Right. Well, would you like to give it rather briefly? And I respect it.

Professor J K Galbraith26:39

Ah, you are very wise.

Professor J K Galbraith26:41

I do not believe that it is possible to run a modern economy without a strong affirmative incomes and price policy, that this is the the natural consequence of an economy of large corporations and strong unions and of a declining market power.

Professor J K Galbraith27:01

and that one must begin then by tying down the price and wage structure, and then having a vigorous expansion underneath.

Professor J K Galbraith27:12

and that the relative success of the German and the Austrian economies and the Japanese economies since World War two has been the result of the recognition of this necessity.

Professor J K Galbraith27:22

and that we in the English-speaking countries have been lagging sadly behind.

Professor J K Galbraith27:28

Right. How's that for Brevity? Splendid.

Professor J K Galbraith27:31

Shortest economic lecture you will ever have. Don't don't run this risk with any other economist. Right, let's get back to music and desert islands. What next? Ah.

Professor J K Galbraith27:41

one that is marvelously evocative of the two campaigns in the nineteen fifties of Adley Stevenson and which still comes up

Professor J K Galbraith27:50

as a Democratic theme song.

Professor J K Galbraith27:52

Can they

Professor J K Galbraith27:53

Political version, it was Get Me to the Polls on Time.

Professor J K Galbraith27:59

But in the original version from My Fair Lady, it was Get Me to the Church on Time.

Presenter28:06

I'm getting married in the morning Ding-dong, the bells are gonna chime!

Presenter28:15

Pull out the stopper, let's have a whopper, but get me to the church on time. I got to be there in the morning.

Presenter28:26

Spruced up for looking in me prime.

Presenter28:31

Girls, come and kiss me. Shall I you'll miss me? But get me to the church, John.

Presenter28:38

Stanley Holloway, get me to the church on time.

Presenter28:42

What are your hobbies, Professor Galbraith? I'm not sure that I have any. What I'm getting at is how you're going to manage on this desert island. Have you ever done any camping out? Fishing? Certain.

Professor J K Galbraith28:53

Uh

Presenter28:54

Not.

Professor J K Galbraith28:54

Uh Uh

Presenter28:55

Uh

Professor J K Galbraith28:55

sailing. And nothing fills me with such dismay as talk about the subculture of the sea, of

Professor J K Galbraith29:05

uh propellers and sheets in the wind and things of that sort. You wouldn't try to escape. Certainly not.

Presenter29:09

Indeed.

Presenter29:11

Yeah.

Professor J K Galbraith29:11

Well

Presenter29:11

I'm not going to give you your castaways badge. I don't think you're going to be much good there. Let's have your last record. What's that to be?

Professor J K Galbraith29:18

Tales from the Vienna Woods Johann Strass conducted by Leonard Bernstein.

Professor J K Galbraith29:25

I suppose I picked that out partly because uh the conductor is a friend of

Professor J K Galbraith29:30

Mine, a friend of ours?

Professor J K Galbraith29:32

partly because I represent one of the most unsuccessful episodes in his career.

Professor J K Galbraith29:38

I have the same birthday.

Professor J K Galbraith29:41

As Professor Schlesinger, who was mentioned earlier in this program,

Professor J K Galbraith29:45

and at a birthday party a year or so ago in New York he composed a a duet, a special piece of music for us.

Professor J K Galbraith29:54

and he rehearsed us for half an hour.

Professor J K Galbraith29:57

And I can only tell you that uh it was one of the greatest failures in musical history.

Professor J K Galbraith30:03

We tried it.

Professor J K Galbraith30:05

And we were

Professor J K Galbraith30:07

Strongly encouraged not to finish. So the performance was never complete.

Presenter30:12

Yeah.

Professor J K Galbraith30:12

To every

Presenter30:12

But he's shy.

Presenter30:14

Yeah.

Presenter30:15

So we're now going to hear Leonard Bernstein conducting Tales from the Vienna Woods.

Presenter31:17

Tales from the Vienna Woods, the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. If you could take only one disc out of the eight you've played us, which would it be?

Professor J K Galbraith31:26

Oh, I have no doubt about that. I would take uh Oh, what a beautiful morning

Professor J K Galbraith31:32

The cheers went up.

Presenter31:32

Okay.

Professor J K Galbraith31:33

Yeah.

Presenter31:33

And you're allowed to take one luxury, one object of no practical use, which would give you pleasure to have.

Professor J K Galbraith31:40

Would

Professor J K Galbraith31:41

Oh, I shouldn't take my typewriter, uh even though I had no hope of anybody ever reading it.

Professor J K Galbraith31:47

I wouldn't know how to spend a morning unless I uh turned my s attention to that typewriter. And uh tell me, is there electricity on this uh Oh, solar batteries, yes, that's all right. Oh, well then I would take my old electric typewriter to which uh I become

Speaker 131:58

Uh

Presenter31:58

Oh, well then I would

Professor J K Galbraith32:04

deeply attached my closest association with any inanimate object. And we'll give you a good supply of

Presenter32:10

Paper. And one book apart from your basic ration of the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare.

Professor J K Galbraith32:17

I have no doubt about that. What I would do is construct a book especially for the purpose. I would put in a certain amount of trollop, a couple of things from Evelyn Waugh and some Tolstoy, and uh make a huge big book which would keep me going for several years.

Presenter32:34

Anthology

Professor J K Galbraith32:35

Uh

Presenter32:35

That's right, yes. And thank you, Professor John Kenneth Galbraith, for letting us hear your Desert Island Discs. Well, it's been a great pleasure to be here. Thank you. Goodbye, everyone.

Speaker 132:54

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