David Lloyd Jones

Speaker 40:00

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

Speaker 40:05

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

Presenter0:31

This week, our castaway is a musician, he is Artistic Director of Opera North, David Lloyd-Jones.

Presenter0:38

Now you're cast away for an indeterminate period on a desert island with just eight disks.

Presenter0:43

If you had a choice which you haven't, I'm afraid would you prefer discs or scores?

Presenter0:48

I think discs. I think I spend long enough with scores.

Presenter0:53

Well there you are. You've got your eight discs under your arm. What's the first one you're going to play?

David Lloyd Jones0:58

Well, in choosing these records I had to come to some kind of decision.

David Lloyd Jones1:03

And the first decision I took was that I couldn't possibly choose eight records just as favorite pieces of music. For a performing musician it's almost impossible to think of a mere eight favourite pieces.

David Lloyd Jones1:15

So I thought I'd find

David Lloyd Jones1:17

eight records that would help to remind me on this desert island of the things that I most missed in my normal life here in Britain. And in no particular order

David Lloyd Jones1:29

One of the things I would miss was humour. I do appreciate humour. I hope I dispense a little of it myself.

David Lloyd Jones1:37

Now we know that humour is a very hard thing to express in music.

David Lloyd Jones1:41

So what I would like is a piece of music that would get the next best thing to humour, which is wit.

David Lloyd Jones1:47

And to me about the wittiest piece of music ever written is the overture to Beatrice and Benedict by Berlias, so I would like that perhaps in a performance by Colin Davis.

Presenter2:59

Part of the overture to Beatrice and Benedict, that's uh the Berlioz version of Much Ado About Nothing.

Presenter3:06

Played by

Presenter3:08

The London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Colin Davies.

Presenter3:11

David Lloyd-Jones, I suggest that you might have a Welsh background. Yes, were you born in Wales?

David Lloyd Jones3:17

Yeah. Now I was born in London.

Presenter3:18

Yeah.

David Lloyd Jones3:18

Yeah.

David Lloyd Jones3:19

Both my parents are a hundred percent Welsh. Both are well speaking.

David Lloyd Jones3:24

And I spent most of the war in Wales, in very rural Wales in fact.

Presenter3:28

You speak Welsh.

David Lloyd Jones3:29

I did while I was there. Sadly I came back to England, I suspect, about a year too early, i. e. when I was about eight. I think if I'd been there a year longer I would have kept the Welsh I was speaking fairly freely at that time.

Presenter3:43

Was there a lot of music in your home as a child?

David Lloyd Jones3:45

No, none, really.

David Lloyd Jones3:47

I said that I spent the war there, and I did. I spent it in a very primitive farm, without electricity or gas, hardly running water, with my mother and sister while my father was in London. And my mother is much more literary than musical, so I actually heard no music whatsoever.

David Lloyd Jones4:05

And I can remember the very first minute in which I heard a piece of classical music, and I was eight at the time. Where was it? It was in Chobham, a little school in Chobham, outside Woking, and it was the magic flute overture. And that had an instant impact, it was. Instant.

Presenter4:20

Instantaneous.

Presenter4:22

Now, you went on to Westminster School. How does Westminster rate as a musical school?

Presenter4:27

It

David Lloyd Jones4:28

It was very musical at that time. It's limited by the fact it's a rather small school, something like three hundred and fifty boys.

David Lloyd Jones4:35

And of course where music is concerned, numbers help. But it it had a very marvellous head of music at that time, a Sheffield-born composer called Arnold Foster, who many generations of boys there will remember. And he, in addition to teaching me the piano and harmony theory,

David Lloyd Jones4:55

helped to form a number of my musical tastes, I think.

Presenter4:58

Was it while at school that you discovered Russian music and literature, which mean so much to you?

David Lloyd Jones5:04

Yes, it was, and again it was largely because of this man, Arnold Foster.

David Lloyd Jones5:09

He had been a pupil of Vaughan Williams and was very much into, as they say, folk music, and of course an awful lot of nineteenth century Russian music, especially the music composed in St. Petersburg, is very folky. So he was very, very fond of the nationalists of Rymsky and Borodin Mazorski and performed quite a lot of it with the school orchestra and with the school choir.

David Lloyd Jones5:31

And he was always urging this on me, and it didn't take a lot of urging. Was it at school that you began to learn to speak Russian? No, it wasn't. That was during my time doing national service. I was lucky enough to spend eighteen months on the Russian course, the language course. Well, that was very handy for your interests. Well, enormously so. It couldn't have been a better way of spending what would otherwise have been a very barren two years.

Presenter5:54

After national service you went up to Oxford, where you mixed up in university musical activities.

David Lloyd Jones5:59

Yes, I did a certain amount in the university as a whole, but I also did quite a lot in my own college. I formed an orchestra and a chorus.

David Lloyd Jones6:10

The leader of the orchestra, it makes me smile now to think of it, was Dudley Moore. Oh.

David Lloyd Jones6:14

who was uh very efficient.

Presenter6:16

Pretty efficient.

David Lloyd Jones6:17

I'm sure. Very efficient. He was a very good fiddler and as much of a character then as he is now.

Presenter6:17

Uh

Presenter6:23

Your second record, please.

David Lloyd Jones6:25

Another thing I would miss on a desert island, I think, is the seasons, as we have them in Great Britain.

David Lloyd Jones6:31

And uh Christmas time is a very attractive time of year. I would very much like the Pastoral Symphony, which opens part two of Bach's very wonderful Christmas Oratorio, a favourite work of mine.

Presenter7:45

The opening of the Pastoral Symphony from Bach's Christmas Oratorio, a performance conducted by Eugen Joachim. What happened to you when you graduated?

Presenter7:54

Yeah.

David Lloyd Jones7:54

I was very lucky. I went straight.

David Lloyd Jones7:57

That is to say, the week I got back from a holiday.

David Lloyd Jones8:01

to join the music staff of the Royal Opera House Covent Garden.

Speaker 18:04

Mm-hmm.

David Lloyd Jones8:05

This is not something that normally would have happened because I'm a very indifferent pianist, but fortunately I was good enough to help to coach a revival of Boris Godunoff, which they were doing, and which of course they were doing in Russian at that time. There were a limited number of people.

David Lloyd Jones8:21

who could do that, and it so happened that they'd heard of my name and phoned me up and said would I be interested in doing this? So I spent a marvellous autumn in nineteen fifty nine working at the Royal Opera House and uh preparing this entire revival with Boris Christoph.

David Lloyd Jones8:38

Then off food

Presenter8:38

Uh

David Lloyd Jones8:39

You went up to Liverpool. You worked with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, didn't you? Yes. I was able to jump in at the deep end, as it were, orchestrally, by helping John Pritchard, who was extremely kind to me and to a number of other aspiring conductors at that time.

David Lloyd Jones8:54

rehearsing the so called musica viva concerts he was giving there of modern music.

David Lloyd Jones9:00

And so the very first piece of music I ever conducted with a professional orchestra was the Weiburn Six Pieces Opus Six.

Presenter9:08

Uh

David Lloyd Jones9:08

But The E

Presenter9:08

Easiest set of people.

David Lloyd Jones9:10

I think that's

Presenter9:10

Don't you think?

David Lloyd Jones9:12

As I was so determined I think I could have written them out at that time, I really got to know them extremely well.

Presenter9:18

And you worked with the new opera company? What was going on there?

David Lloyd Jones9:20

Yes, the New Opera Company was a very enterprising group of youngish people.

David Lloyd Jones9:27

all of whom have gone on to big and better things since.

David Lloyd Jones9:30

I worked with them as a chorus master and as a conductor. In fact, I conducted the premieres of two modern British operas while I was with them. They were only one performance each, by the way, but they were performances.

Presenter9:43

What did you have in mind? What were you aiming at? Was it opera that interested you most from the start?

David Lloyd Jones9:50

Now I wouldn't say that. I've always been equally drawn to opera and to the symphonic repertoire.

David Lloyd Jones9:58

But I'm extremely fond of the theatre, of the straight theatre, as well. I've always been passionately fond of theatre, so I suppose it was only natural.

David Lloyd Jones10:06

that I should go towards the opera house. And of course the other thing is that an opera house needs more conductors, more chorus masters, repetiteurs, more aspiring conductors than a symphony orchestra.

Presenter10:21

Let's have your third record. What's that to be?

David Lloyd Jones10:24

Well, another thing that I would miss on a desert island is of course women, and, of course, most of all, my wife.

David Lloyd Jones10:31

And to me there's no piece of music that sums up everything that is marvellous about women.

David Lloyd Jones10:37

than the Willow song and Ave Maria from Verdi's Otello. It seems to me that the dramatic situation

David Lloyd Jones10:44

The character of Desdaemona

David Lloyd Jones10:47

The music itself and the sheer quality of the soprano voice make it one of the most sublime things, and it seems to me to encapsule all that is wonderful about women. I would like to have

David Lloyd Jones11:00

The Willow Song and Ave Maria, sung by Margaret Price, if possible.

Presenter12:06

part of the Ave Maria from the last act of Verdi Zotello.

Presenter12:10

Margaret Price with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Sir George Shulte, and I'm sorry that there was no time for the Willow song as well.

Presenter12:20

As well as Russian opera, you're devoted to the French romantics Massonet and Co.

David Lloyd Jones12:24

Yes, I've always been extremely fond of them from the very start of my career.

David Lloyd Jones12:31

I was very lucky in that, at the time when Brian Dickey was the artistic director of the Wexford Festival,

David Lloyd Jones12:37

I went there four times and three out of those four operas were the very sort of rep that you've just been talking about. And I've since done a number of studio broadcasts of French opera and a lot in the theatre.

Presenter12:52

And of course, uh apart from your studio broadcast, you've done some operas on television. Quite a number, in fact.

David Lloyd Jones12:58

Yes, I've been associated a great deal in my career with television opera.

David Lloyd Jones13:03

First of all, as an associate conductor, which means that, as you know, they have the main conductor with the orchestra in one studio.

David Lloyd Jones13:11

and the associate conductor with the singers in the other.

David Lloyd Jones13:14

And then I conducted quite a few myself. I was the main one, as it were, with the orchestra.

Presenter13:20

Yeah.

David Lloyd Jones13:21

did uh Eugene Anyegin and more recently

David Lloyd Jones13:25

The Flying Dutchman and Hansel and Gretel. And let's not forget the Count of Luxembourg. Oh, no. I greatly enjoyed that. Partly because I didn't know a note of it before I started the assignment.

Presenter13:35

Yeah.

David Lloyd Jones13:36

That must have been fun.

Presenter13:36

Great fun. And of course, let's not forget that you did Brokofiev's War and Peace. Now, where was that?

David Lloyd Jones13:43

This was at Sadler's Wells. It was actually at the Coliseum, but it was with the Saddler's Wells Company, that is to say, before the company renamed itself English National Opera.

David Lloyd Jones13:54

I was very lucky in that my debut with Saddlers Wells was again a Procoffeof opera, The Love of Three Oranges.

Speaker 114:00

Hmm.

David Lloyd Jones14:01

which was a a natural, as it were, for me, and was a particularly amusing and inventive production, very good cast, so it got me off to a very good start there.

David Lloyd Jones14:12

And when they decided to embark on the mammoth project of staging the first British production of Prokofia's War and Peace,

David Lloyd Jones14:22

I was very flattered to be asked if I would conduct that as well. And happy, I'm sure. Very happy indeed.

Presenter14:29

Now your next piece of music is Russian.

David Lloyd Jones14:31

It is.

David Lloyd Jones14:33

It is Russian because one of the other things I would miss, of course, on the desert island is children. You have three, I believe. I have a trio, yes.

David Lloyd Jones14:42

And I suppose some music that I associate more than almost any other with children.

David Lloyd Jones14:49

is Tchaikovsky's quite wonderful, Faberge-like Nutcracker ballet, and I would like a disc that contained as much of the Nutcracker music as possible.

Presenter16:02

Part of Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite, and Tal Dorati conducting the London Symphony Orchestra. Now we were talking about your early days with the English National Opera Company. You were assistant to the artistic director, if I remember first of all.

David Lloyd Jones16:16

Yes, I was. This in a way stemmed from those T V operas, because I was associate conductor on some of the early ones to Charles McKearras.

David Lloyd Jones16:27

And when he became musical director of Saddlers Wells, later English National Opera, he asked me if I would go and become the assistant music director there, which I was very happy to do.

David Lloyd Jones16:40

And I spent something like seven very happy years there, conducting an enormously wide repertoire of all sorts.

Presenter16:48

Was there already talk? Of a normal

David Lloyd Jones16:51

Northern Branch

Presenter16:52

Yeah.

David Lloyd Jones16:52

Was it in anybody's mind? It was. There had been quite a lot of chat about it, and the earliest chat centred the opera company in Manchester for a start and I think envisaged a company that would just give two operas a year, i.e. a closed season of, let us say, a month.

David Lloyd Jones17:12

That was the initial idea.

David Lloyd Jones17:15

But I don't think that appealed to the Arts Council, who were very instrumental in this whole project, because it was n simply not going to solve the problem that they had.

David Lloyd Jones17:26

which was providing the north of England with enough opera product. And this is why gradually this scheme evolved of starting a new company and, most important of all, starting a permanent company, that is to say a twelve month a year company, which had its own orchestra, its own chorus, its own administration.

David Lloyd Jones17:49

Well, in a word, a proper company. It was decided to switch from uh Manchester to Leeds. Why was that? Really because of the theatre. At that time Manchester itself was trying to make up its mind which of the two big theatres there, the Opera House and the Palace, was going to be extended and refitted.

David Lloyd Jones18:08

and there was quite a debate going on.

David Lloyd Jones18:11

However, it was then realized that right in the middle of the north of England, bang in the middle, served by railways and motorways, was Leeds, with its marvellous Grand Theatre and Opera House, as it is called.

David Lloyd Jones18:23

Built in eighteen seventy eight, superbly suited for an opera company, to be the home of an opera company.

David Lloyd Jones18:29

Just the right number of seats, something like fifteen hundred.

David Lloyd Jones18:33

which could be further adapted.

David Lloyd Jones18:36

and which would provide the ideal venue for a new Northern Opera Company. And it was the start at full blast. That's right. It was just to come into existence and immediately start performing and touring, of course. That was the whole point of it. It was a touring opera company the year round. How long were you given to get it going?

David Lloyd Jones18:56

Not very long, really. I suppose after an awful lot of

David Lloyd Jones19:01

On, off, on, off, hot, cold.

David Lloyd Jones19:03

The

David Lloyd Jones19:05

Final.

David Lloyd Jones19:06

OK was given, I think, in about September 1977. To open when? To open in November 1978.

Presenter19:14

Just every year. You had to form a brand new orchestra, a new chorus. This must have meant hundreds.

David Lloyd Jones19:20

and hundreds of

Presenter19:20

Boardish

David Lloyd Jones19:21

Yes, it did. I personally listened to over three hundred orchestral auditions. This is in addition to all the singers, both principal and

Presenter19:27

Mm-hmm.

David Lloyd Jones19:29

Chorus

Presenter19:30

Now you had to get your own workshops and and uh scenery docks and all that going, which was obviously you you couldn't do. How many operas did you propose to do a year?

David Lloyd Jones19:40

Yeah.

Presenter19:40

Yeah.

David Lloyd Jones19:41

We had to do really twelve. I think for the sake of the audience and also for the sake of the performers, you need to do at least

David Lloyd Jones19:48

Twelve operas a year, and it was clearly going to be an impossibility to do.

David Lloyd Jones19:53

twelve new productions. So that was why you were still tied to the English National Opera. This was the reason, really, that in being linked with the English National Opera, indeed a part of it, hence the original name of the company, English National Opera North,

Presenter20:08

Yeah.

David Lloyd Jones20:08

The idea was that we would be able to borrow the most suitable productions from them, the ones that suited the size of the theatre, and even some of the principal singers, who came and sang with us, and we had a marvellous time for some two years collaborating

David Lloyd Jones20:25

With the Coliseum, who were most generous in their help to us. They're already very overworked, getting their own shows on, but they were very good to us.

Presenter20:32

and after only two years you felt you could be completely independent.

David Lloyd Jones20:35

It was a little longer than two years, as a matter of fact. It w it was somewhere in the middle of the third year, I think it was. But yes, it was quite clear from both sides that this was the time that we'd envisaged from the very start.

David Lloyd Jones20:47

when the two companies would go their separate way, but a special relationship between the two companies would nevertheless continue to exist.

Presenter20:55

But you were able to stick on the posters Opera North.

David Lloyd Jones20:57

That's true. Yeah.

Presenter20:58

Yes. Let's have your next record.

David Lloyd Jones21:01

One of the other things that I would greatly miss on a desert island, as I already hinted, is the theatre, and in particular Shakespeare. I've always been a passionate Shakespearean, and one of my favourite pieces of music is Elgar's Falstaff. This would combine at least three things in my memory, so I should like some of the latter half of Elgar's Falstaff conducted by Sir Adrian Bolt.

Presenter22:30

Part of Elgar's symphonic study Falstaff, Sir Adrian Bolt conducting the London Philharmonic Orchestra.

David Lloyd Jones22:37

How many weeks in the year do you stay in Leeds? Something like eleven or twelve.

Presenter22:40

Yes.

David Lloyd Jones22:41

That is performing in Leeds. Of course we're there much more rehearsing,'cause we do all our rehearsals in Leeds before we move into the Grand Theatre, in outside rehearsal places.

Presenter22:51

During the time when you're out in the country, when you're on tour, you can let the theatre, of course.

David Lloyd Jones22:55

Yes, it's not ours in in the first place. We only sublet the theatre. The Grand Theatre Leads is run by its own Board of Management and its own manager. So uh we only take it for the periods that we need it.

David Lloyd Jones23:10

Let's have another record.

David Lloyd Jones23:12

Something else that I would miss on a desert island would be the feeling of belonging to the great European tradition of civilization, with all its achievements and products.

David Lloyd Jones23:26

In terms of music, it seems to me that few composers have refined their technique and written with more sensitivity and style and subtlety than Debussy.

David Lloyd Jones23:40

and I should like to take his sonata for flute, viola, and harp.

David Lloyd Jones23:45

three instruments which I'm particularly fond of, by the way, which seems to me to be a perfect example of all that is subtle and refined in European civilization.

Presenter24:57

The Debussy Sonata for flute, viola, and harp played by members of the Melos Ensemble.

Presenter25:04

Now after all this hard work you had to get down to at Leeds, I suppose you had to push into the background your interest in Russian opera, but you are indulging it just a little in the current season.

David Lloyd Jones25:17

Yes, I didn't have to push it into the background.

David Lloyd Jones25:20

I suppose I could have swamped the scene with it, although don't get the impression that it is just I who choose the repertoire.

David Lloyd Jones25:29

But the fact is that in our four first seasons we have not done any Russian opera at all.

David Lloyd Jones25:34

and it seemed ripe for something important, and a work I've always had a great interest in and belief in.

David Lloyd Jones25:43

is the curiously neglected masterpiece of Borodin Prince Igor. It was a slightly flawed masterpiece because it had other hands fiddling with it. Precisely. It is a flawed masterpiece in that it is unfinished.

David Lloyd Jones25:58

Uh he hacked away at it for something like seventeen years, both the libretto and the music.

David Lloyd Jones26:05

But when he died rather suddenly it was unfinished in both those respects, and so Rimsky, Korsakoff, and Glazonov had to come in, look at the sketches, look at the manuscripts, and prepare an edition, quite often composing music of their own.

David Lloyd Jones26:22

to fill missing gaps, certainly orchestrating great chunks of it.

David Lloyd Jones26:27

Generally putting the thing in order.

Presenter26:29

Uh

David Lloyd Jones26:29

Which they did with enormous skill. Now, what have you done? You've got to work on it. You've amended the libretto. I wouldn't say that, no. All that I've done is really just to look at it again, because I have access to certain libraries in Russia and have an interest, a kind of side i interest in these things. You've handled the original paperwork, have you? Oh, I have indeed, yes. I won't say all of it, but I should think a good

Presenter26:49

Nope.

David Lloyd Jones26:54

three quarters of the manuscripts of Prince Igor I've had in my hands and uh looked at and uh more than that I didn't have copies of them. So I thought it would be interesting, and it was certainly timely to just see what Rinski and Lazanov had done.

David Lloyd Jones27:10

Not to undo their good work, but just to go over it again and see if they'd missed any points, missed a whole lot of dynamics.

David Lloyd Jones27:18

Missed bars of music even.

David Lloyd Jones27:20

And so I've gone over the whole opera from this point of view.

David Lloyd Jones27:24

and also with the producer Stephen Pimlott, have prepared

David Lloyd Jones27:28

A New Singing English Translation

David Lloyd Jones27:31

Record number seven

David Lloyd Jones27:34

This is

David Lloyd Jones27:35

again, something to do with living in Britain.

David Lloyd Jones27:40

I think I would miss very much a feeling of the English countryside.

David Lloyd Jones27:45

which I've become increasingly fond of as the years go by. And also combined with that, I think it very exciting being alive

David Lloyd Jones27:56

In the

David Lloyd Jones27:57

nineteen eighties with all that is going on.

David Lloyd Jones28:00

and musically speaking, of course, to me the outstanding creative figure.

David Lloyd Jones28:05

who is still living, is Sir Michael Tippett.

David Lloyd Jones28:09

I should very much like, to remind me of all these facets, uh to take his ritual dances from the opera The Midsummer Marriage.

Presenter29:19

The ritual dances from Tippett's The Midsummer Marriage, John Pritchard conducting the orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.

Presenter29:27

David, you talked about your love of the seasons and and the outdoors.

Presenter29:32

The outdoors is where you're going to be on your desert island.

Presenter29:35

You obviously have open air interests. Have you camped out?

David Lloyd Jones29:39

No, nothing. Yeah.

Presenter29:40

Like that.

David Lloyd Jones29:40

Do you know? I think my open air interests really confined to a little gardening.

David Lloyd Jones29:46

Yeah.

Presenter29:46

Yeah.

David Lloyd Jones29:46

Where You will have some of that to do too.

David Lloyd Jones29:49

Could you build a shelter? Yes, I could, funnily enough. Uh I really think I'd be quite good at that. I used to be quite handy in my very early teens with carpentry and electricity and all that sort of thing.

Presenter30:00

Mm, that that's encouraging. And you could grow food?

David Lloyd Jones30:03

That?

Presenter30:03

Yes. Know anything about small boats, navigation? No.

David Lloyd Jones30:07

Very Paul, my wife's very good at it, but uh that wouldn't be a help, would it? Would you try to get away? I don't think so. To be perfectly honest, I don't really like the sea.

David Lloyd Jones30:18

So, uh, the more inland I am, the happier I am. Per perhaps that's why I'm so happy in Leeds at the moment.

Presenter30:25

Right. You couldn't get nearer the middle than that, could you? Precisely. Record number eight, your last record.

David Lloyd Jones30:31

This would be the last and in some ways the most obvious thing that I would miss on a desert island, which is music itself.

David Lloyd Jones30:40

And

David Lloyd Jones30:41

No piece of music, I feel, can sum up that whole concept more than Schubert's Ninth Symphony, the Great C Major.

David Lloyd Jones30:49

I would like to take that as the one

David Lloyd Jones30:53

example of music on my desert island, preferably in a performance by Bruno Walter and the New York Philharmonic. I think they've recorded it because I remember a most wonderful performance given by them at the Edinburgh Festival many years ago.

Presenter32:08

Part of the last movement of Schubert's Ninth Symphony in C major, the great Bruno Walter conducting the New York Philharmonic. If you could take just one of the eight discs you've played us, which would it be? It would be the Schubert. The Schubert Ninth.

David Lloyd Jones32:22

Yeah.

Presenter32:22

Yeah.

David Lloyd Jones32:23

and one luxury to take with you.

David Lloyd Jones32:25

Well, I don't think I'm particularly given to luxury more than anybody else, but without

David Lloyd Jones32:32

Wanting to sound churlish about it, I honestly think if I could only take one luxury I'd prefer to take none.

Presenter32:37

Hello.

Presenter32:38

Oh, all right. You don't have to.

Presenter32:41

And one book, The Bible and Shakespeare, are already on the island.

David Lloyd Jones32:45

Well, I I would in fact read the Shakespeare a great deal, and also the Bible. It's about time I looked at that again.

David Lloyd Jones32:53

So as a complete contrast to those two, I'd like a book that combines chattiness with some thought-provoking ideas.

David Lloyd Jones33:01

And I'm very fond of the so-called journals of the Gonkhur brothers.

David Lloyd Jones33:07

Jules and Edmond

David Lloyd Jones33:09

Du Goncourt. I'd like to take their journal.

Presenter33:12

Right, the Goncourt Journals, and thank you very much, David Lloyd-Jones, for letting us hear your Desert Island Discs.

David Lloyd Jones33:19

It's been a pleasure. Thank you.

Presenter33:21

Goodbye everyone.

Speaker 433:29

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