Dorothy Dunnett

Speaker 30:00

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

Speaker 30:05

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

This week our castaway is the novelist Dorothy Dunnett.

Presenter0:34

Mrs Dunnet, could you endure loneliness for a long time?

Dorothy Dunnett0:37

Oh, yes, I love it.

Dorothy Dunnett0:39

Kind of silence and time to think is something I don't have very much of, and I would prize it, yes.

Presenter0:44

Is music important in your life?

Dorothy Dunnett0:46

Yes, it is. Yes. I work to it all the time.

Presenter0:48

While you're writing.

Dorothy Dunnett0:49

Finally, it has musical wallpaper. It's dreadful.

Presenter0:52

Have you musical skill yourself?

Dorothy Dunnett0:53

I did study singing for quite a long time. I I'm the proud owner of half an L R A M. I never got the other one.

Presenter1:02

But

Dorothy Dunnett1:03

But uh

Presenter1:03

Have you appeared professionally?

Dorothy Dunnett1:05

Never nobody's ever paid me for it. No. I do have appeared on platforms. I have appeared on platforms, yes, yes, to everyone's misery, I'm sure. But very little, far too little, in fact, to overcome frightful nerves which absolutely screw me up before I start singing and I I go half a tone sharp.

Presenter1:08

But you have appeared on platforms.

Dorothy Dunnett1:24

And everything that's awful happened, so I got all my theory, all my harmony, all my melody examinations, but not the other half.

Presenter1:32

Yeah. Well, there's time yet.

Dorothy Dunnett1:34

Thank you.

Presenter1:35

You have eight records to choose for your island. Did you find that a very difficult task?

Dorothy Dunnett1:40

Yes, it was. I've got quite a lot at home. I play them all the time.

Dorothy Dunnett1:46

What occurred to me first was I should choose something really very difficult that I don't like particularly just now, and spend the time on my island learning how to like it. But I didn't think really I could manage a bit of Stockhausen or Burg, so I thought something I really genuinely liked just now would be good.

Presenter2:05

What's the first one?

Dorothy Dunnett2:06

Well, the first one was a nice antiseptic kind of antidote to a lush tropical island. It's a nice little bit from Bach, the Brandenburg Concerto's number three.

Speaker 43:00

Uh

Presenter3:15

The opening of Bach's third Brandenburg Concerto

Presenter3:19

Raymond Lepard conducting the English Chamber Orchestra. Now, you're a Scott, aren't you?

Dorothy Dunnett3:24

Half Scot, yes. My mother comes from Birmingham. She's still around, very frisky, and uh my father was Scottish. I was brought up in Scotland, though I really am a Scottish.

Presenter3:34

From where in Scotland?

Dorothy Dunnett3:36

Edinburgh. I came to Edinburgh from Fife when I was born in Dunfermline.

Dorothy Dunnett3:41

And uh came to Edinburgh and has three, but I went to school there and was brought up there.

Presenter3:45

You come from a large family?

Dorothy Dunnett3:46

No, I'm an only child. In fact, I was determined that in turn I wouldn't have only one child, I would have more than one, because I had a lovely time, a very happy childhood. But I think it makes you a bit self centred, perhaps.

Presenter3:58

And you went to school in Edinburgh as a day girl.

Dorothy Dunnett4:01

Yes, to the school Muriel Spark went to, in fact, James Gillespie's.

Presenter4:05

You knew each other?

Dorothy Dunnett4:06

No, we overlap. We never met.

Presenter4:09

What were you good at at school?

Dorothy Dunnett4:11

I was fairly well in all roundo. I I came away with a a little gold duck's medal at the end. Um the thing everybody thought I was going to do, including me, was to be an artist. But my parents, in a very Scotch kind of way, thought that meant living in a garret in Paris with a berry on my head, which wasn't actually possible since the war had broken out anyway. So they said, you know.

Dorothy Dunnett4:34

Do you want to go to university? And I said, What would I do after I got out of university? and they said, Well, you know, you'd be a teacher and I said, I don't think I want to be a teacher and they said, Well, take a safe job and do your painting in your spare time and if you find you can make a career of it, then well and good, which is what I did.

Presenter4:53

What was the first job you took?

Dorothy Dunnett4:55

In the Civil Service. I I went to Saint Andrew's House, which is the headquarters of the Civil Service in Edinburgh, and met my husband there, in fact.

Presenter5:04

Well, let l we'll move on to there in a minute. Let's have your second record. Watch that.

Dorothy Dunnett5:08

Ah, this is really a tribute to Isbel Bailey, who has this wonderful pure high voice which my singing teacher was always trying to drum into me. I was to learn many years later from a bookseller in the West End that one of my later historical novels had been specially asked for by Isabel Bailey, so I thought I must, I must hear one of her records. This is one of her most beautiful, most difficult songs to sing from Handel's Messiah.

Presenter6:35

Isabel Bailey singing Come Unto Him from Handel's Messiah.

Presenter6:39

Right, so you joined the civil service. What branch?

Dorothy Dunnett6:43

I was assistant press officer and my husband to be was the Secretary of State for Scotland's Press Officer, so we worked together at the same time I was uh studying singing and uh I also started going to study art and began in fact to do that a little bit professionally with uh a little bit of book illustration.

Presenter6:59

Hmm.

Presenter7:04

Now your husband, Alistair, Dunnett, became the editor of The Scotsman, didn't he?

Dorothy Dunnett7:09

That's right, yes. When we married, which was in nineteen forty six, he was offered an editorship in Glasgow, so we lived there for a while and uh in fact I transferred my civil servantship to the Board of Trade, where I was in an economic committee. But after ten years of that, during which I'd started painting professionally and portraits instead of book illustration, we came back to Edinburgh when he took over the Scotsman for about twenty years.

Speaker 47:25

Mm.

Presenter7:36

Of course Dunnit is a is a good Highland name, isn't it? The Dunnit Head, the most northerly part of the mainland, isn't it?

Dorothy Dunnett7:40

The most northerly

Dorothy Dunnett7:42

Yeah. Well, my husband's half Highland and half Caseness, like me, it's very handy, you know, half English, half Scotch. Case the most northerly point is called Dunnet Head. Lee lends itself to a lot of jokes, needless to say.

Presenter7:55

You gave up being a civil servant, and you have two sons now.

Dorothy Dunnett7:59

That's right, yes. We've had two boys born after we came back to Edinburgh, and one one is still at day school in Edinburgh, and one's a student in his last year.

Presenter8:11

Now before we start talking about your writing career, let's have your third record.

Dorothy Dunnett8:15

Well this is the record I use when I'm in the middle of a very tender passage uh and the door bursts open and Mango says, Where are my clean socks?

Presenter8:24

The tender passage you're talking about is something in a book you're writing, of course.

Dorothy Dunnett8:28

I should have made that plain, but I think it would apply in perhaps some other circumstances, if I could think of them. This is a very romantic piece by Stancon from one of his piano concertos. Guaranteed to get you into any sort of mood.

Presenter9:42

part of the first movement of the Saints' second piano concerto, with Aldo Ciccolini as soloist.

Presenter9:50

So there you were living in Edinburgh, married, and you decided to write an historical novel.

Presenter9:57

Why did you make that decision?

Dorothy Dunnett9:58

Well, it wasn't really planned at all. I had, of course, no full time job. I was painting professionally, portrait painting by that time. I had one and then two small boys. There was a little gap, I suppose. If there hadn't been a gap, I couldn't have written. But what really happened was I'd had a rather sudden bereavement. My father died, and being an only child, there were certain strains involved, and I escaped a lot into reading historical novels. I read an enormous amount.

Dorothy Dunnett10:28

and then ran out of the kind I like to read, which is a kind of not entirely too solemn variety. And my husband was the impresio. He said, All right, if you can't find what you like to read, why don't you write one yourself? I'd never written a novel before, but I chose a period I thought I'd like. I chose well, sixt middle of the sixteenth century.

Presenter10:45

I should

Dorothy Dunnett10:48

A Scottish

Presenter10:48

A Scottish background?

Dorothy Dunnett10:50

Well, the hero, the fictitious hero, was to be Scottish, but in fact it was planned as a series, and turned out to be six books altogether and although he came from Scotland, the books took him to Malta, and to France, and to Russia, and to Turkey, all over the place about the time of Henry the Eighth, when Mary Queen of Scots was very small.

Presenter11:09

Dis

Presenter11:10

Now you set off with part one. This was no ordinary novel. This was a long, involved work, weighing several pounds, let me say. Do you think that there was a market for s for such a long work straight away?

Dorothy Dunnett11:19

I don't think though there was a market.

Dorothy Dunnett11:23

Well, at that time now this was about nineteen sixty, twenty years ago at that time there was a market in America, and we had the name of a lady called Lois Cole, now dead, unfortunately, who had been the mastermind behind God and with the wind. She'd been a great pal of Peggy Mitchell, and it had been she, incidentally, who had persuaded Peggy Mitchell to change the name of her heroine to Scarlett O'Hara, from Pansy O'Hara. And it was she who said Right, you've got a contract, and Lois remained a very close and good friend all through the writing of the next

Presenter11:59

So in other words, I mean, you started straight off with an American publisher, but not a British publisher.

Dorothy Dunnett12:03

Well, they immediately sold the British rights to a London firm, and they were published simultaneously in Britain and America, all six.

Presenter12:11

Now you had those two small kids in the house, and also your husband. How did you organize your writing? Because you were running the house, looking after the children?

Dorothy Dunnett12:19

People always used to say,'At what hour do you start writing in the morning and do you plan your day'? The answer is,'It is awful. My whole day rests upon the programmes of everybody else. If whatever my husband is doing involves me, then that's that, and I may not know till the last moment what he is doing.

Dorothy Dunnett12:36

The children, my own sort of family, my mother, my friends, and of course the domestic running of the house, and what's left over and it's usually through the night.

Presenter12:45

Not

Dorothy Dunnett12:45

Isn't the time I have for writing?

Presenter12:47

Can you catch up on sleep when you've lost a lot during the week?

Dorothy Dunnett12:51

Yes, I'm brilliant at that. I can I can sleep for about fourteen hours at the weekend and emerge bloated but restored, and then I I set off on a diet of a few hours a day from then on.

Presenter13:03

That's a very useful gift. Let's have record number four.

Dorothy Dunnett13:06

Well, this is a Scottish opera recording because Alastair and I have been friends of Scottish opera from its very inception.

Presenter13:13

There's a story that it did in fact start in your house.

Dorothy Dunnett13:17

Well, long, long ago, Alisda and I came back from a party, and we found this little car parked outside our house, with its lights off, and somebody calling to us from the front seat. And it was, in fact, Alex Gibson now Sir Alex Gibson, the conductor and the artistic director of Scottish Opera, and a friend of his.

Dorothy Dunnett13:37

who had been waiting there for us to come home, saying so sorry, we hope you don't mind, but we want to come in and see what you think about the chances of starting a Scottish national opera.

Dorothy Dunnett13:50

So they came in and they talked all through the night, and of course it did start, and it is a marvellous it's such a friendly, very popular company.

Dorothy Dunnett14:00

They produce very fine operas, and this was one of Alex's best, I think. It was a full scale production of Der Rosen Cavalier, with Helga Dernich singing the marshalin, and right at the end there is this beautiful piece you just hear the end, I think, of the famous waltz, and then it goes into these two voices floating up higher and higher. Just listen.

Presenter15:20

The closing passage of Derosen Cavalier, the Scottish opera production, we didn't hear Helga Dernisch, but we did hear Anne Howells and Theresa Carhill.

Presenter15:32

Now you talked about going off to do.

Presenter15:34

Research. There must be a great deal of research to do.

Dorothy Dunnett15:38

Yes, yes. An awful lot of reading, and an awful lot of reading in other languages, too. I've always been terribly thankful for having languages hammered into me at Gillespie's.

Speaker 415:47

Mm-hmm.

Dorothy Dunnett15:49

You need to go abroad to pick up the local maps, to pick up the local books, and also to set the scenes, because people check up. They a lot of Americans come over every summer to Europe and actually follow Lyman's footsteps all through Europe and send me postcards from homboise saying they've met somebody else walking up the ramp of the chateau with book in hand and things. So I have to be very careful and I love travelling.

Presenter16:11

So

Presenter16:15

Lyman, your leading character.

Dorothy Dunnett16:16

That's right.

Presenter16:17

And you did in fact you you set out with the idea of writing six or seven volumes, and you did indeed do that.

Dorothy Dunnett16:23

Yes, the first one was so designed that if everybody hated the idea of a series it would stand in its own right, and the others, in fact

Dorothy Dunnett16:31

Our books in their own arts tell their own stories, but there's a continuing thread of suspense running through the six which isn't uh resolved until the last one, which was why this extraordinary influx of excitement from America occurred, because there was a cliff hanging situation between each book. The the National Park System of America apparently got hooked on it very early on, and they threatened that when Czech made the final book was published, the entire system was going to close down because they were all going to be reading it. And they got infected from the Idaho Potato Growers' Association.

Speaker 417:07

Ha ha ha ha ha.

Dorothy Dunnett17:08

who apparently had asked their staff to put in plain envelopes each of their guesses as to what the final solution was going to be, and they offered ten pounds of baked Idaho potatoes to the person whose guest came nearest the correct answer.

Dorothy Dunnett17:25

Actually nobody did guess, so when Checkmate was out and they'd read it, they sent me the potatoes. Actually they were dried, and they happened to cross with a parcel of Aunt Jemima's Pancake Mixture from my editor in America, so we had a very strange meal that night.

Presenter17:40

Some very good perks that come from all this. Now, when you were about halfway through this six volumes, quite understandably you decided that a change of pace would be acceptable. You would like to write something different now and then.

Dorothy Dunnett17:42

Who are the

Dorothy Dunnett17:52

Hm, yes. So I launched in what what in is the dolly books they're thrillers?

Presenter17:56

Dolly

Dorothy Dunnett17:56

The dollar

Presenter17:57

But don't

Dorothy Dunnett17:58

Dolly is the name of a yacht. I I should mention that I am the most non-athletic person you have ever met or are likely to meet. My husband is the reverse. So that when we married he put me through a great programme, which included learning how to sail a boat and learning how to ride a horse and to camp and to climb and to skate and things. And nowadays I find great pleasure in not doing really any of those things. I still sail occasionally. But I thought, right, let's combine sailing and portrait painting, and invent a detective who is the antithesis of James Bond. He he is really very woolly to look at, but he has a very sharp mind. He's rather funny.

Dorothy Dunnett18:39

And he sails a yacht and is a portrait painter.

Presenter18:42

What's his name?

Dorothy Dunnett18:43

His name, believe it or not, is Johnson Johnson.

Dorothy Dunnett18:46

But each book is told from the point of view of a girl who meets Johnson on his yacht or being painted or whatever. And every girl is a professional. The first one was an opera singer, and the second one was a kind of freelance cook in Ibiza, and the third one was, I think, a woman doctor in the Bahamas, and the fourth one was an astronomer.

Presenter19:08

How many dolly books of the people?

Dorothy Dunnett19:10

Five so far. I'm doing my sixth knuckle Dolly and the Bird of Paradise.

Presenter19:16

You write these fairly quickly, I guess.

Dorothy Dunnett19:17

They're about six weeks. They're very quick. I have lots of fun doing the research and they're all very much up to date.

Presenter19:23

Well, let's have another record.

Dorothy Dunnett19:25

This one is Beethoven because the nine symphonies of Beethoven were my own very first introduction to classical music, and I feel if I were deserted anywhere to have an opportunity really to listen, not musical wallpaper, not working, but really listen to the music, you couldn't have anyone better. So I've chosen Symphony No. Seven and it's conducted by Colin Davis and other Scott.

Presenter20:48

Part of the first movement of Beethoven's seventh symphony, the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Colin Davies.

Presenter20:55

Now you've finished your gigantic project of a million and a half words about the sixteenth century adventures of Lymond, but you're back with an historical novel, a new one, and you've gone further back than that period.

Presenter21:12

In Scotland still?

Dorothy Dunnett21:14

Very much so. It started in a dreadful way by my then American publisher saying, What are you going to do when Lyman's finished? Why not, he said, take a subject that everybody knows about. Why not write a book about a, Bonnie Prince Charlie, and b Macbeth?

Dorothy Dunnett21:32

And I really walked out on him because everybody in the world has written a book about Bonnie Prince Charlie and thought I Shakespeare's done the bit on Macbeth Why Father. But in fact I discovered later on that there is a very good valid set of facts about the real Macbeth, very different from the Shakespeare play.

Presenter21:53

I didn't even know his dates. When did he live?

Dorothy Dunnett21:55

He died nine years before the Norman conquest. He lived in the time of King Canute. It was just the time when all the settlement wars were coming to an end and Europe was settling down into a series of young states that was to set the pattern for mediaeval Europe. Lots of interesting wars and political situations and energetic young kings. And he was young, he was only about thirty when he came to the throne, and he ruled for seventeen years. Didn't stay in Scotland, he went to Rome on pilgrimage, and he didn't marry a nasty lady who killed people in stone castles.

Presenter22:34

And that's comforting.

Dorothy Dunnett22:35

Yeah.

Presenter22:35

Now presumably with uh a novel based in a period as far back as that, you're not so high bound by actual facts, there's not so much documentation as for a later period.

Dorothy Dunnett22:45

Well, in one way it's good, in another it's bad. I thought, well, you know, about twenty known facts, and I had to do background reading for the entire period. My reading list was seven hundred books long, I see.

Presenter22:57

Yeah.

Dorothy Dunnett22:58

But um I thought, all right, check up on the facts, and then the rest one has to fill in through probabilities. You know, you look at the strategic importance of this marriage or that battle, and you try and work out why he did it.

Dorothy Dunnett23:11

I spent two years on that.

Dorothy Dunnett23:13

Um

Presenter23:13

On the research

Dorothy Dunnett23:14

On the research, which was longer than I'd meant to, I I I signed the contract to do the book in nineteen seventy five, and I thought I'd have it out by seventy eight, seventy nine, perhaps. But at the end of two years, the awful thing was I found that the so-called accepted facts were really based on a very shaky set of premises.

Dorothy Dunnett23:35

and there began to grow up a kind of shadow of another probability that I felt was rather stronger.

Dorothy Dunnett23:41

than the one that scholars so far had thought to be the likelier premise. And that's horrific because when you're a historical novelist, you know, you're not meant to contradict the pundits. You know, it looks as if you're fantasizing or as if you're looking for a gimmick or something of that sort. So I had either to abandon the thing, forget my suspicions and just accept what was put before me, or research until I was sure enough to defend an entirely new theory.

Dorothy Dunnett24:13

Which is what I did. I I went on working for two and a half years, and when I say working, I was working seven days a week for

Dorothy Dunnett24:22

Sixteen hours a day. Literally I shut out everything from my life and said, All right, because it was so complicated. I had a family tree.

Dorothy Dunnett24:30

Taking in most of the people in Europe in the eleventh century, which was twenty-five feet long, that became too small. My whole house was occupied with calculations. It was a case of integrating information right across the board, the latest in archaeology, latest in place names, latest in linguistics, all the charter material for the whole of the north of Europe, and then looking at it and weighing up sets of probabilities. And in the end, I felt the position was strong enough to enable me to start writing the books, which took about another year and a quarter, six years or so.

Presenter25:04

Six years.

Dorothy Dunnett25:05

Hmm.

Presenter25:06

Do you think it's going to grow into further volumes or is is this it?

Dorothy Dunnett25:10

That's it. That is undoubtedly it.

Presenter25:11

Undoubtedly it, yes.

Dorothy Dunnett25:14

It's called It's a quotation from The Witches on the Blasted Heath. I try it out on American Readers and say if you know your Shakspere, you'll know what this book's about. It's called King Hereafter from All Hail Macbeth, That shalt be king hereafter.

Presenter25:29

What about the painting? Is this still going on?

Dorothy Dunnett25:32

Well, I had to abandon it um halfway through King hereafter, because I simply couldn't fit into a sitter's schedule. My own was so onerous. But no, I'll start painting again this year, I think.

Presenter25:44

Let's get back to music.

Dorothy Dunnett25:45

Well, the next record is in fact a piece of Boccarini, but I've chosen it because it's played by the cellist Murray Walsh. And Murray was a schoolboy at Watson's, which is quite near us in Edinburgh, and we had the pleasure of hearing him when he was still very, very young at the outset of his career, before he went to study in Russia with Rostipovich, and now of course is an international star. But he came to play in a little concert for us in our home with his cello, his mother accompanying him on the piano. So here's Murray Walsh with the Scottish Baroque Ensemble, playing the piece by Luigi Boccerini.

Speaker 426:22

Um

Presenter27:22

Part of the first movement of the Boccherini Concerto in G major for cello and strings, Marie Welsh with the Scottish Baroque Ensemble.

Presenter27:31

Let's go straight on to your next record. What's that to be?

Dorothy Dunnett27:34

Ah I've chosen the guitar concerto because it's to remind me of many, many frozen nights sitting in a cold car outside the studio where my two kids were being taught the classical guitar. In fact, I love the guitar, and I used to know Spain very well, and got to be very fond of guitar music.

Presenter27:52

The two sons have kept it up, have they?

Dorothy Dunnett27:54

One of them went on the piano. I don't know if that's higher things or not. The other one is still firmly attached to his guitar, I'm happy to say, and is very good at it. Um this is Rodrigo's guitar concerto concerto de Aranjuez, I think it's called, and uh it's one of the most delightful ones. I know this is from, I think, the slow movement.

Presenter29:12

Part of the slow movement of the Rodrigo guitar concerto, John Williams is soloist with the English Chamber Orchestra conducted by Daniel Barrenboyne.

Presenter29:22

Mrs. Dunnett, how are you going to manage on this desert island? Are you a capable sort of person?

Dorothy Dunnett29:28

You know, I've been married for thirty five years to a King Scout, so I think I have some of the more primitive skills.

Presenter29:38

Were you ever a guide?

Dorothy Dunnett29:40

No, I avoided that, I'm afraid.

Presenter29:44

Well, the King Scout has passed on a lot of expert knowledge. You should be able to rig up a shelter.

Dorothy Dunnett29:49

Even sail a boat.

Presenter29:50

Are you a good cook?

Dorothy Dunnett29:52

No, that is one skill I have adamantly set my face against. I can't do anything in the kitchen.

Dorothy Dunnett29:59

I can open packets of frozen food, I'm very good at that.

Presenter30:01

Good night.

Dorothy Dunnett30:04

A little bit, provided somebody does the actual assassination at the end. I should have to learn to do that myself.

Presenter30:10

Yes, you have to learn to cook them, too. Raw fish, I should imagine, is horrid unless you're a Japanese.

Dorothy Dunnett30:13

Unless you're a Japanese. The Japanese can do it. I can learn to do it.

Presenter30:18

Would you try to escape? You can sail a small boat. Could you make one?

Dorothy Dunnett30:22

I think I probably I would have a good go at hollowing out a tree trunk. That's the classic thing, isn't it? And then yes. But not until I'd had a nice long peaceful time to myself. I think after perhaps the first month I might start making preparations.

Presenter30:38

Yes, a nice long rest with with no novel to write.

Dorothy Dunnett30:42

Yes, and eight records. What could be nicer?

Presenter30:44

North.

Presenter30:45

What's your last of the eight records?

Dorothy Dunnett30:47

Well, it's something that I have written a lot of chapters to. Devorjac I love. It's wonderful, comforting music, and I have all the symphonies. But this one in particular I think is a splendid one to finish with. It's symphony number three.

Presenter31:59

The opening of Worchak's third symphony in E flat major, Istvan Kirtisch conducting the London Symphony Orchestra. Well, there are your eight records. If you could only take one of them, which would you choose?

Dorothy Dunnett32:11

Oh.

Dorothy Dunnett32:12

Terrible problem.

Dorothy Dunnett32:14

But it would have to be something one could hear over and over again, and uh the Beethoven would fill the bill. I think Beethoven's Seventh Symphony, yes.

Presenter32:22

Right. And you are allowed one luxury, any one object that would give you pleasure to have around, but is of no practical use.

Speaker 432:29

Mm.

Dorothy Dunnett32:30

Well, I nearly chose a paint box, and then I thought, no one means of providing myself with music all the time, and that would be, I think, pleased could I have a guitar.

Presenter32:40

Of course, and plenty of spare streets.

Dorothy Dunnett32:41

Thank you.

Presenter32:42

And you're allowed one book you already have the Bible and Shakespeare.

Dorothy Dunnett32:47

Well, I've made a very stuffy choice, because I think it must be a book that one could read and enjoy reading thoroughly over a long period.

Dorothy Dunnett32:57

and the one that's written in elegant English. So I've picked Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. It's so basic to the whole of Western civilization, and I'd like to have leisure to read it thoroughly, so please can I have all the volumes of Gibbon?

Presenter33:14

Right. A good long read.

Presenter33:16

And thank you, Dorothy Dunnett, for letting us hear your Desert Island Disc.

Dorothy Dunnett33:20

Thank you very much.

Presenter33:22

Goodbye, everyone.

Speaker 333:30

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