Don McCullin

Speaker 10:00

Hello, I'm Kirstie 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 1984, and the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:29

Our castaway this week is a photographer, but he doesn't take glamorous pictures in a studio. He specializes in the semier side of life, and in particular in war. It's Don McCullen.

Presenter0:42

Don, you've travelled the world pretty extensively. Have you ever visited a desert island?

Don McCullin0:47

Yes, I was marooned on a desert island as an exercise which the Daily Telegraph, who I worked for at the time, they thought they'd cast away two people and see how we did. You weren't alone? I was with another man, a writer, who was a lobby correspondent, and uh we stayed on the island for two weeks. Was it all right?

Presenter1:03

I mean, what sort of equipment had you got?

Don McCullin1:05

Well, we were allowed to land with the half a gallon of water and a few fishing hooks and some line but, frankly speaking, between you and I it was a nightmare.

Presenter1:13

Where was the island?

Don McCullin1:14

A small island in the Caribbean that belonged to the Cobb family, the the racing John Cobb, and and they allowed us to use the island on the condition that we didn't chop down the palm trees where the cocoanuts were growing. Did you have any music? We had no music apart from the sound of the sea, which uh in the end became very monotonous.

Presenter1:32

Is music important in your life?

Don McCullin1:34

It was important from my early youth because in my house we didn't have much furniture. We had a scrubbed kitchen table because we weren't very well off. But we had acquired an old wind-up grammophone, one of those things on four legs that uh looked like an old gas cooker. And my mother was very fond of opera music. I don't know where she inherited this uh little piece of teeny culture into our poor little house, but uh it rubbed off on me a bit and we bought one or two seventy eights.

Presenter1:49

Yeah.

Presenter2:03

What's the first record you've chosen?

Don McCullin2:04

The first record I've chosen is the Bühling Nürsem Dolme from Tournendot and it's a very moving record and I think it was very persuasive as a piece of music to my time of life. I think it was about fourteen years of age. We had a few other funny old records like the Ink Spot singing and one or two other funny old things, but this record was the beginning of me taking mu music seriously.

Presenter2:24

Yeah.

Presenter2:32

What's most your love?

Presenter2:37

Oh, see, as you are.

Presenter2:47

Uh

Presenter3:32

Josip Jörling Nessam Dormer from Puccini's Turendad.

Don McCullin3:38

You are a Londoner, are you Don? Yes, I was born in St Pancras Hospital, and my family moved to Finsbury Park, which is in North London.

Presenter3:46

Were you an only child?

Don McCullin3:47

No, I had a sister. We were both evacuated during the war and she never came back. My mother allowed her to be fostered and she stayed there and uh I came back and then there was another brother born into the family. Did you know real hardship? Well I knew nothing but hardship. My father was never employed seriously. He had a chronic chest problem and uh I watched him dying year by year and he did actually die when I was at the age of fourteen. So I thought that everything was stacked up against me socially and mentally and spiritually and I I felt really low about the whole fact that I was living. I I thought it was a tragedy to be living under those circumstances.

Presenter4:25

You were evacuated, you say, when war broke out. You would have been, what, four or five then?

Don McCullin4:29

Five, yes. I was evacuated and I was the reluctant evacuee. I was sent back and then I was sent off somewhere else and I I went to Lancashire, which was very hard. I mean, the north of England I've always felt bred a harder breed of people.

Presenter4:36

No.

Presenter4:44

So you came back when the war was towards its end and you went to school in London.

Don McCullin4:49

Well, I I used to attend school, but I didn't it wasn't a very serious approach to getting an education. You were actually intimidated by the other boys not to do well and to be as thick as what they were. I mean, it was a street environment, and a schooling didn't really mean very much, and I can't really say I had a formal education.

Presenter5:06

But you did eventually get a scholarship.

Don McCullin5:08

Well, I got what they call a trade art scholarship, which was in fact to a place in Lime Grove, opposite the BBC, curiously enough, and um I went there to study art.

Presenter5:14

I'm curious.

Presenter5:18

What did that course lead to? How long did it last?

Don McCullin5:21

Well, it didn't last very long because my father his death was untimely and it interrupted the possibility of me going on and so I had to leave school and then I I went to work because my mother needed income and I mean I I went to work and my first job I got paid one pound fifty in today's money for a week's work. I used to work on the train as a dining car cabin boy who washed up the plates and dishes.

Speaker 15:33

Yeah.

Presenter5:43

But that got you about the country.

Don McCullin5:45

Yes, it was a kind of breakout really from the ghetto area of North London and Finsbury Park. Let's have your second record.

Don McCullin5:52

My second record is Benjamin O'Geelee, again my mother's influence, and she, strangely enough, actually took me to Saddler's Wells to see an opera one night, La Bo Im, and it's totally unheard of from people of our little background to have trooped into Saddler's Wells. I mean it's a place where people came from other districts of London to go. And the record of Geely singing the prologue to Paliarchi is a very moving record, and um I seem to be quite happy in these gloomy kind of musical scenes, and uh this is why I've chosen this record.

Presenter6:33

And report.

Don McCullin6:43

And all

Don McCullin6:44

A glorified.

Don McCullin6:54

And they come.

Presenter7:25

Gili singing the prologue to Ippagliacci.

Don McCullin7:29

How long did you stay on the trains? I stayed about a year and a couple of months and I had a nasty accident. Somebody was demanding ice and I used a knife and it slipped and I was almost fingerless and so I I never went back to the railway. I travelled around and I used to find myself arriving in cities in the evening, northern cities, dark and satanic cities, and I used to wander the streets and I was fifteen years of age, two hundred miles away from my territory.

Presenter7:55

How did you operate? Was there a hostel there for you or did you have to get get digs for the night?

Don McCullin7:58

No. In the evening I used to go back to the railway sidings where I slept in a hostel, between incredibly crisp white sheets with a matronly, motherly person who looked after the dormitory. What was your next job? I got a job as a messenger boy in Mayfair, which was incredibly kind of to the extreme of not only where I lived as a boy, and I used to walk down Barclay Street catching glimpses of myself in shop kind of glass fronts and p adjusting the kind of cuff of my shirt sleeve and and felt that I was moving up. You know, I mean there's one thing about our society, it lets you know where you belong or where you hope you're gonna go. And um Mayfair had a certain amount of enchantment in those days. If you weren't run over by a Rolls-Royce, you were scorned by a Commissioner who thought you were just too near to a famous hotel doorway or something, so.

Presenter8:47

Was this um messenger job offering any prospects to you?

Don McCullin8:52

Not really, not much. I I was also expected to mix colour because it was where they made cartoon animated films and un unbeknown to them I'm colourblind to a large degree. And then you went into the RAF?

Presenter8:52

Yeah.

Presenter9:03

You will call it.

Don McCullin9:03

Reluctantly again, because it was another journey into the world of authoritarianism and I I didn't particularly want to be bullied around and chased around and um I shot a terrific line to the RAF Selection Board because I I didn't want to go into the infantry because I thought it was degrading to be chased around and carry rifles and things. So I I smarmed my way into the RAF with no intentions of of being a a contributor to the RAF. I just wanted to get in, keep my head down and then I mean they weren't offering very much, one pound twenty a week or something.

Presenter9:33

So what job did you settle for?

Don McCullin9:34

Well, I went to the photographic section where I was given a broom and I I became the kind of broom waller.

Don McCullin9:41

And I was expected to sweep up and mix chemicals, three or four hundred gallons of chemicals at a time, and uh I immediately rebelled against that and and was really basically a nuisance to the RAF. Did you go abroad? Yes, I requested to go to the Far East and they sent me to the Middle East, which was the place for taming rebellious people and it wasn't a likable posting and uh I wound up in the canal zone for a year.

Presenter10:05

Uh

Don McCullin10:05

Yeah.

Presenter10:05

Still sweeping up.

Don McCullin10:05

Still sweeping up and making chemicals. And then somebody said, look, don't be thick about this. Try and take the RAF trade test as a photographer and then you'll move up one. But I have a very bad memory recall. I mean in my mind, this day I can call images like a computer bank. My mind has ten thousand images to do with visual photography and and the aspects. But when it comes to reading a book and that I can read a page and forget the very thing I've read. It's terrible. I took the RAF trade test as a photographer and I failed. And so I was sent down to Kenya for the last six months of my duty to work on the Mau Mau operation and I used to print bolt process photographs of jungle. They used to photograph the jungle before they bombed it and things like that. So basically I was part of the war machine in those days.

Presenter10:50

Were you interested in the actual process of photography? Did you have a camera?

Don McCullin10:54

Towards the end of my RAF time I had a camera because I earned a little more money and I got uh a camera, but I used it. I wasn't very, very serious about it really. It was just a way of doing my two years, keeping my head down and then looking forward to being released.

Don McCullin11:08

Record number three. I've chosen Paul Robeson because he's somebody I admire very much. And I have to say that a man living in those times, being black, and the suppression that was exercised against the black people in America is one of the most vilest records of humanity and injustice. And there's a man who by the sheer talent and the beauty of his voice, he came out. That was his way of fighting, his way of giving. I mean, even with all that was against him and his people, he still gave us so much without prejudice. And he he left this lovely record of Old Man River, which is very, very beautiful.

Presenter11:50

Man Riba, that old man Ribber, he mustn't know some

Presenter12:00

But don't say nothing, he just keeps rollin'.

Presenter12:06

He keeps on rolling along

Presenter12:16

Paul Robeson singing OLD Man River from Showboat. So, Don, you were out of the REF. You had got some experience and a camera. What did you do next?

Don McCullin12:27

Well, to be honest, I pawned the camera because I couldn't see any future for it, and I bought a motorcycle. And my mother was very kind. She redeemed the pledge of five pounds, and I got the camera out. And I used to go around photographing the boys I went to school with, who didn't do very much. They used to hang around street corners. And one day I said to the boys who were waiting to go to the cinema, it was the done thing on Sunday afternoons, and I saw an old derelict building. And I said, Jump up there, I just want to shoot this picture of you. And they did so. And it must have been a blessing for me to have got the notion to do that and for them to cooperate, because that photograph was seen by a picture editor on the Sunday Observer. And he looked at me and gave me a very long stare and said, I like this picture. Will you do more? And I'm going to use them. And they did, and they sent me a cheque for fifty pounds, which was the most enormous amount of money I've ever had. Did they offer you any further work? They offered me encouragement. And then the Berlin Wall was built a couple of years later. And I rang them up and said, I'm going to Berlin. And they said, well, you know, why? And I said, I want to go. And they said, well, we can't send you. And I said, well, it doesn't matter. I've bought a ticket. And with my last twenty quid and my ticket, I arrived in Berlin. And in those days, it was still very much a John de Carrier kind of atmosphere. It was like the the spy who came in from the cold and they were building the wall. It was quite extraordinary.

Speaker 113:17

Rather have

Presenter13:50

And you did a photo story of of the way the wall was being built and what was going on.

Don McCullin13:53

They were actually putting brick on brick and people were fleeing. And with the very oldest fashioned of camera equipment, I I had the audacity to go with my last piece of savings.

Presenter14:03

And nobody had thought of doing this story in in the middle of the day.

Don McCullin14:05

Well the world's press was looking at it but I mean in those days they didn't respond as quickly as they do today by sending armies of people and television people. It was very much a kind of you know just trickle along and have a look. So I went and um I took it by the scruff of the neck and I came back to England and they saw the pictures and they used them and I won an award for the pictures and they gave me a contract. A full-time contract? No, it was a two day a week contract, but it was a a great breakthrough. And what sort of jobs did you do? Well then I started to educate myself in my trade. I started travelling around England, doing portraits of distinguished people and going to mining uh disputes and things like that.

Presenter14:41

You want to photograph the war.

Don McCullin14:43

War in Cyprus. I mean my feet were just off the ground when they said, Would I go? Of course I'd go.

Presenter14:52

I mean this was a

Don McCullin14:58

Well, I got a paid ticket by then, you see, and also it was an international job, a huge story, and there I was, and I went there, and I'd never seen any bullets fired in anger. And um I just did it. I just fell on my feet and went straight in at the Deban and did it. Yeah.

Presenter15:13

Your fourth record

Don McCullin15:14

My fourth record is Samuel Barber Adagio for Strings and it's conducted by Leonard Bernstein in this case. And it's uh a very moving piece of music and the reason I've chosen it because that when I started my photography I used to print my own pictures and I still do. And the dark room is a very lonely place. And the kind of pictures I have to print makes you an even more lonely person because they're very tragic and I mean they are the extreme end of civilization. I mean in fact no civilization in some respect. And when I play this music and I print these pictures, I inject a lot more into the pictures and a lot more of me that are in the pictures. And I don't need any inspiration but this this music certainly makes me believe in what I'm doing.

Presenter17:01

Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings, played by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Leonard Bernstein.

Presenter17:09

So you were off on your first visit to a war zone. There were horrors to photograph. Were you squeamish to start with?

Don McCullin17:16

I've never been squeamish because I felt that with my background and the war and other travels in my military service that I was hard enough to be able to take what I was about to see. And yet, strangely enough, the first day I went to a village, which was dawn in the morning, and a British soldier came up and said, Do you want to see something? And I said, Yeah, and he said, Well, come with me. And he showed me the first dead civilian who'd been murdered by an opposing faction. I looked at the man's feet before I looked at the wound that had killed him, and then I had reservations about suddenly why am I here? You know, what am I going to how am I going to cope? And then when I got over that, he said, go into that house, there's some more dead people in there. I went into the house and I knocked on the door first, and I had no and I opened the door and there were dead people inside and I shut the door very quietly. And I tried to keep as much dignity as I could. And yet, basically, I was a very novice human being. I was in the midst of a nightmare. And suddenly the door opened and women and people came in. And one of the men that was dead was the newly wed husband of this woman who was crying. And I needed to pull together all the resources of my composure to try and identify myself with the outrage that they also were suffering.

Presenter18:38

Did you use a camera?

Don McCullin18:39

I use my camera. I have a way of moving. I have a way of looking and expressing, looking all the time for consent, so that I would meet their approval. I mean, if anybody came into my house and I had my dead relatives, they would never get that consent or approval. They'd certainly get the short uh shift, you know. So I knew I was dancing on very thin ice.

Presenter19:00

Cyprus, Vietnam, Lebanon, you name it, and you've been there. Which was the worst campaign, as as far as you were concerned? Where did you have the worst time?

Don McCullin19:09

Well, I always think there was a worse place. I mean, I went to Africa during the Civil War and I was one of the trustees who was allowed back in, because the Biafrans had their people they didn't like and those they liked. But I walked into a school one day and saw 800 children dying, and I saw a child die in front of me, and I saw children in the most appalling condition. And these are the innocent people of the world. They don't ask to be politically aligned to one party or the other, beaten and starved. And a little boy came up and put a really filthy hand into mine, and I was destroyed that day. I had to pull myself really tight together to hook in to myself as a photographer and shoot pictures. And I was so angry that I went through that hospital and I gleaned off the most appalling statements that you could slap on the word humanity. And I really thought that I'm not going to mess around. I'm really going to give it to people between the eyes. Because this country at the time had factions that were for and against Biafra, politicians and people like that, people in the street. And I didn't care about who was this and who was that. I just wanted people to see those pictures of those children.

Presenter20:17

Uh To get the stuff back, you can't send photographs over.

Don McCullin20:21

Well you can air freight photographs, but then I'm very touchy about that because I think I've risked my life and I've done this and I've done that and I've persuaded people to allow me the privilege to shoot those pictures. There's no way I'm going to let them leave my breast. I keep them close to me and I travel with them.

Presenter20:21

Well you

Presenter20:37

We've got your fifth record. What's that?

Don McCullin20:39

Well, I like the power of this man's voice, this Bulgarian singer. His name's Boris Christophe, and uh I don't know much about this record, but um I like the way he goes through this duet and um and also the language of French. Again, I listen to French radio, I don't understand a word I hear, but something about the French language that just liberates me away from myself sometimes, and and that's why I've chosen this record, and it's in French.

Speaker 121:14

Yeah.

Presenter21:14

Uh

Presenter21:16

Peace of Yaa.

Presenter21:23

Love.

Presenter21:29

Sender.

Presenter21:32

With war, dormant long.

Presenter21:39

A vote for Terde Cedar.

Presenter21:48

Language

Presenter22:06

An excerpt from the first act of Gunno's Faust

Presenter22:10

Boris Christoph with Nikolai Gedda.

Presenter22:14

As an example of your devotion to the job,

Presenter22:18

In Cambodia I believe you got shrapnel wounds in the legs. You were taken away with other wounded in the back of a truck.

Presenter22:24

And, wounded as you were, you sat there clicking your camera.

Don McCullin22:27

Well, the fact is that um I was thrown on this lorry unceremoniously and I was grateful to be alive because the man who was hit with the same shell there was two other men actually started manifesting all the signs that he wasn't going to make it back to the hospital and it was coming to dusk and I I wanted to take my mind away from the wounds in my leg which weren't uh horrendous but they were certainly giving me cause for uncomfortableness and I was deaf because my eardrum was blown and uh th I was in deep shock and I I propped myself up in this lorry as it was going back, sneaking its way through the suburbs of Nom Penh. And it was curious that as we went under the verandas of houses, people who were just looking over their verandas suddenly saw this wagon of red and bloody carnage going by, with this European sitting in there with a camera.

Presenter23:16

It was more or less a conditioned reflex, was it? I mean, you'd got a camera and this was action and

Don McCullin23:20

There was still some light left and uh the man next to me, his protestations of trying to survive his life, they didn't make it. I mean, he was kicking my legs, which wasn't helping. And uh I I j I just took a picture of him sitting up with a last protest and then he died and

Presenter23:36

Was that the only time you've been wounded, Doc?

Don McCullin23:38

No, two years ago I fell off of a roof in a gun battle in Salvador and I shattered my arm and and broke all my ribs and and I laid in a house for twelve hours because they couldn't get anybody to me and I was in the most appalling agony. But in many respects I I won't say this is good for me, but uh it certainly takes you into yourself. I I started thinking'cause I I was lying awake in that room listening to the gunfire going on around me. And one really starts thinking about one's life and, you know, and lots of things about yourself and uh I think it's important not to photograph other people's misery and pain without knowing what pain's all about.

Presenter24:15

You are technically neutral, and you have to stand by sometimes and watch hideous cruelty, and it must be difficult to protest. You have no

Presenter24:25

I

Don McCullin24:26

I've seen men who've been selected for execution and I've made protest and try to stop that procedure and I know I'm on a losing wicket and I tried this in Beirut a few years ago and they told me to go away and mind my business and I said, Well, it is my business and you know it's it's too terrible to see men pleading. Those eyes will haunt me for the rest of my life. I don't have my nightmares at night, I have them in the day when my mind's very active and I can be divorced one minute from something and terribly and cruelly, I might add.

Don McCullin25:01

Destroyed by memories of days like that in my life. I've seen it all too many times, and there's nothing I can do.

Presenter25:07

Let's have some more music.

Don McCullin25:08

Well, I think having said that, I'll have to call upon our dear old friend Noel Card. I mean, after all, I do feel very sad about the world even now. So this wonderful record of Merred Dogs of Englishmen, I mean, the lyrics in this record, every word is wonderful, and uh uh he is a wonderful man actually, and uh I envy his life and I envy his wit.

Speaker 225:29

Mare, dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun. The Japanese don't care to. The Chinese wouldn't dare to.

Speaker 225:36

Hindus and Argentines sleep firmly from twelve to one, but Englishmen deter stars, yesterday.

Speaker 225:43

In the Philippines they have lovely screens to protect you from the glare. In the Malay states there are hats like plates which the Britishers won't wear. At twelve noon the natives swoon and no further work is done. But ne'er dogs and Englishmen go worked in the midday sun.

Presenter25:58

Noel Card, Mad Dogs in Englishman.

Presenter26:01

Don't know what?

Presenter26:03

As a photographer hasn't been confined to war or even to newspaper work. You've done a lot of photography for for exhibitions and of course for your own books.

Don McCullin26:11

I used to live on a farm. For the last twelve years I've lived in the country and I've got the most compelling desire to be the best English landscape photographer. I've also started photographing flowers and uh I I suppose in a way that my conscience is telling me to visit other aspects of life, visit kinder aspects of life. And uh flowers are very beautiful. Undoubtedly we couldn't live without flowers, particularly English people. And uh we live on an island where it's metallic light is all around us from the the kind of reflection of the sea and so I live in the best part of the hemisphere to do these things.

Speaker 126:30

Yeah.

Presenter26:45

This is a switch because you've taken a lot of photographs in this country in the past. You did a memorable book of photographs, Homecoming.

Presenter26:54

which contains little for our comfort, they are mostly photographs of the sick and the maimed and the despairing.

Presenter27:00

Don't people object, do they mind when you photograph them? Do you have to get their permission? What what's the ethics of

Don McCullin27:07

Uh

Presenter27:08

This one.

Don McCullin27:08

The ethics uh as regards, shall we say, war, for an example, people when they've been injured or they're in deep shock. Their minds are oblivious on occasions. I mean, sadly, I photographed a woman in Beirut last year and she was very cross and she punched me. And God knows she was entitled to punch me more than once, but she didn't. And that woman walked round the corner and I went back to the hotel and one of the other correspondents said, You know that woman that was cross with you, well, a car bomb went off and killed her. So I wished in a way the woman would have punched me ten times as hard, just to somehow exonerate my misjudgment that day. I mean that's a day of my life I'm not going to forget because I misjudged my timing and I was

Presenter27:49

And I was wrong. What's your present occupation? What are you up to at the moment?

Don McCullin27:53

Well, I'm going off to America, to California, and I must confess I don't really want to go. I work for a newspaper, and they're assigning me to go to California because of the hullabaloo of the Olympics, and quite frankly, I couldn't care less. Because when I know how much money it's going to cost to stage the Olympics, I've got nothing against sportsmen. I think of all that money being put to much better use.

Presenter28:15

We've got to record number seven.

Don McCullin28:17

Well, it's Kathleen Ferrier singing What is Life? And I mean that's a good question as far as I'm concerned, because I'm confused about that. But nevertheless, this woman's voice is I think she's one of the greatest singers that we've ever produced, and uh I find her voice very haunting in a way.

Don McCullin28:42

Uh

Presenter28:52

We want to live.

Presenter29:11

Kathleen Ferrier singing What Is Life from Glux, Orpheus and Eurydice.

Presenter29:16

You talked about your brief spell on on a real desert island.

Presenter29:21

That was a a rather hectic two weeks. Could you manage? Obviously you've done so much gliverwhacking under difficult conditions that you could cope.

Don McCullin29:29

Well, there are unforeseen torments like mosquitoes, dehydration. We had a raincoat and we caught some rainwater. That's the big problem. We could only drink literally a cup of water like that a day. And um I caught the most enormous fish which we cooked because we had one box of matches and we had to keep a constant fire, so plenty of driftwood. But we left climbing the palm trees too long because we were too weak and so therefore we had to join a load of sticks together and poke th the non-reluctant coconuts down. And then we we gathered some things called sea grapes, which are like cherries with a furry skin.

Speaker 129:41

Yeah.

Don McCullin30:08

But we knew we could get off, you see. We put a red flag up when we capitulated. And Andrew, my colleague, said his chest was playing up and he was asthmatic. And then he blamed me, and then we blamed each other. And then in the end it was time to leave. So up went the red flag and overcame the speedboat.

Presenter30:25

Your last record.

Don McCullin30:26

Uh

Presenter30:26

Uh

Don McCullin30:27

My Last Record is again another very solitary piece of music, Camille Saint-Son, and it's symphony number three. It's an organ piece with Daniel Barabine and uh I I like this record because it it really sets the mood that my heart sinks to on more than too many occasions. That's good for me. But nevertheless, it's a kind of music that keeps my path treading the way I want to go.

Presenter31:50

An excerpt from the third Saint Sans Symphony.

Presenter31:53

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra directed by Daniel Barenboim, with Gaston Lites playing the organ.

Presenter32:00

If you could take only one disk Don out of the eight you've played us, which would it be?

Don McCullin32:04

Undoubtedly I would

Presenter32:05

She was the last record. And if you could take just one luxury with you to the island, one object of no practical use whatever, somebody to look at, to touch.

Don McCullin32:15

But it's funny you should use the word look at because I've given this serious thought because I would like to have taken a mosquito net or a pillow. On the other hand, I would like to keep in touch with myself and I've chosen to take a mirror because I could analyse myself each day. I could psych myself out and I could probably talk to myself. It would give me comfort to think there was another human being around because I believe there's a lot of two people in in us. I mean I don't think we're just one person and and also I could use the mirror for practical reasons as well. In case a ship came by I could use it to reflect us.

Presenter32:49

Well let's just stick to the luxury. Yes, I see. That's being aware of. You'll talk yourself out of getting that mirror. And one book. You already have the complete works of Shakespeare and the Bible.

Don McCullin32:55

Mev

Don McCullin32:56

Yeah.

Don McCullin33:00

I would like very much to request a year's bound copies of the of the Times newspapers. Which year? Oh, I didn't expect that question. That's very tricky. I I think I would take any year, because I I like the the idea. And of course by the time I got to the end I would have forgotten what I read in the beginning. I could start again.

Presenter33:06

Which

Presenter33:18

Write a bound volume of Issues of the Times, and thank you, Don McCullen, for letting us hear your Desert Island Disc.

Don McCullin33:24

It's a pleasure. Thank you very much, Roy.

Presenter33:26

Goodbye everyone.

Speaker 133:34

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