Rt Hon David Steel MP

Speaker 10:00

Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Disc's Archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen eighty five, and the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Speaker 30:30

Our castaway this week is a politician.

Speaker 30:34

He's been the youngest MP.

Speaker 30:36

the youngest member of the Privy Council,

Speaker 30:39

He's leader of the Liberal Party.

Speaker 30:41

It's David Steele. David, you have many interests.

Rt Hon David Steel MP0:45

Music one of them. Music is one of them. Alas, not cultivated enough. I have a very small collection of records at home, but I listen a lot to music in the car. I do a lot of driving, and I I have a small collection of tapes. Have you any musical skill? Can you make a pleasant sound? Skill would be an exaggeration. I can make an unpleasant sound. I mean, I I play the piano.

Speaker 31:00

Yeah.

Speaker 31:05

Yeah.

Rt Hon David Steel MP1:05

And I've just been rem

Speaker 31:06

reminded of something. You're the Deputy Assistant Organist in Your Parish Church.

Rt Hon David Steel MP1:12

Yes, I think that's um a dizzy height. It's a very very small church, and I'm about third or fourth on the list of those who can be dragooned into playing. Are you often called on? About um half a dozen times a year.

Speaker 31:20

I won't

Rt Hon David Steel MP1:24

Hymns, of course, are quite easy to play.

Rt Hon David Steel MP1:26

And I play them very badly. But that's about my level, if you understand that. You have no wire.

Speaker 31:30

played repertoire of volleys.

Rt Hon David Steel MP1:32

I'm afraid. Afraid not no, they are very, very simple.

Speaker 31:34

Uh

Speaker 31:35

You have eight disks, just eight, for this desert island for an indeterminate time. Did you find it?

Rt Hon David Steel MP1:41

Very hard to choose.

Rt Hon David Steel MP1:43

Yes, quite hard, because of a lot of things I would like, obviously, to take with me, and um I just have to take out a representative selection, but uh it means leaving a lot behind that I love.

Speaker 31:52

What's the first one?

Rt Hon David Steel MP1:53

Yeah.

Rt Hon David Steel MP1:54

The first one is one to remind me of the borders of Scotland, and again from all of the music of that area I could take so much. I hope you're not going to think this is going to be a sad collection, but the first one is rather sad. It's the Flowers of the Forest. And this was a lament for the loss of so many of the Lowland Scots at the Battle of Flodden. The forest was Ettrick Forest, the area that I represent in Parliament. And in particular, in the town of Selkirk, so many of the young men went off to the Battle of Flodden in 1513, and only one came back. And this is a lament about the flowers of the forest that are all weed a war.

Speaker 42:43

Let the young mercen lasses are lifeless before dawn.

Speaker 43:07

Oh name.

Speaker 33:26

The tragic lament The Flowers of the Forest sung by Eileen Cameron.

Speaker 33:32

Yeah.

Rt Hon David Steel MP3:32

Now you are indeed a Scot. Born whereabout? I was actually born in Kirkcoddie, just across the further forth from Edinburgh.

Rt Hon David Steel MP3:41

And my father was a minister in a mining parish in Fife, and we moved about Scotland quite a bit. I spent most of my life in Edinburgh.

Speaker 33:47

One of a lot

Rt Hon David Steel MP3:48

Large family? Yes, I'm the oldest of five and brought up in the Mance. Right, the son of the Mance. But the Mance was in Kenya for several years. That's right. The Mance moved round Scotland, and then my father went to minister to the Scots population in the three East African territories of Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika, based on Nairobi. My family lived there for eight years, and I lived there for four. This was in the troubled times of the Malma. It was. It was a very rough time. It was the start of the transition to independence, and it was a period of great social and political turmoil.

Rt Hon David Steel MP4:22

As a youngster, what was your ambition? Did the church attract you? Yes, it did at one time. I mean, when I was in my mid-late teens, I thought briefly of going into the church and teaching. Now, some people might say, Well, perhaps being a member of parliament is a strange combination of all these things. I I like to draw a parallel between the parochial work of the parish minister and the constituency work of a member of parliament. There are parallels there. Somebody once said, You're nothing but a glorified social worker. I took it as a tribute rather than a condemnation.

Speaker 34:55

You came back from Africa to prepare for university. You didn't see much of your parents, obviously, as a youngster.

Rt Hon David Steel MP5:02

No, I was actually separated from my parents for four years. I saw my mother once in that period when she came home to visit us. I think nowadays children of people who are serving overseas are usually flown out for holidays under various uh arrangements, but certainly the the church couldn't afford that at the time. So uh myself and my next brother were sent home to school and um we depended on ourselves and on the goodwill of our various relations.

Rt Hon David Steel MP5:28

Let's have your second record. Well, the second one takes me back to those school days in Kenya because I happened to be at school with Roger Whittaker, I mean, at the same time. But neither of us knew each other. And I was asked on many interviews about being at school with Roger Whittaker, and he's been asked many times about being at school with David Steele. And we'd never met until suddenly last year we bumped into each other in a television studio and we both looked at each other and agreed that we'd given phony answers all through the years to this question because neither of us has the faintest recollection of the other. But yet we were, we know, definitely at the school at the same time. And I thought he's got a nice new album out of all about Kenya, which is a beautiful country. And this song, I'm Back Where I Belong, could apply to any country you like, but in his case, of course, it applies to his native Kenya.

Speaker 46:13

Bum bang

Speaker 46:14

Bang bang

Speaker 46:16

I'm back where I belong.

Speaker 46:19

I'm back with all the folks I knew, where the call of home is strong. I can see the world has changed you. I can see it in your smile. But you're really just the same, my friend, so I'd like to stay awhile.

Speaker 36:38

I'm Back Where I Belong recorded by Roger Whittaker.

Speaker 36:42

So to

Rt Hon David Steel MP6:43

To Edinburgh to George Watson's School. Yes, and that's where I started to take an interest, if you like, in public affairs in their broadest sense, because being thrown back on my own resources, I wasn't any good at the things that it's convenient to be good at, like rugby and hockey or cricket or anything like that. So I took up an interest in the literary and debating society. And although I wasn't at that stage contemplating in any way going into politics, I think an interest in editing the school magazine and in taking part in and chairing debates developed an interest in public speaking and current affairs.

Speaker 37:17

And then you moved on to the university

Rt Hon David Steel MP7:19

Uh Uh Uh

Speaker 37:19

City of Edinburgh.

Rt Hon David Steel MP7:20

To read for an all-purpose arts degree. An all-purpose arts degree, followed by a law degree, which was a strange combination which I don't think any longer exists in the Scottish universities, but it was a five-year MALLB course. So it was quite a long stint at university, which I thoroughly enjoyed. In Scottish law, of course. In Scots law, naturally, yes. I was a very bad student, I have to confess, because I was too interested in student politics and indeed party politics. I was developing my interest in that, and found that much more absorbing than the dry Scots law, I'm afraid.

Rt Hon David Steel MP7:52

Yeah.

Speaker 37:52

Among the people you liked at that time and who influenced you was William Douglas Hume, playwright, man of the theatre. You became interested in in T V and and and radio. Was that Yeah.

Rt Hon David Steel MP8:03

Shut up.

Speaker 38:03

I mean Uh Okay.

Rt Hon David Steel MP8:04

Not really. I didn't have any close connection with him. What I do remember is that his was the first public meeting that I ever addressed, as distinct from school events and student events. And I remember it was a quite terrifying occasion in a school room in the South Edinburgh constituency where he was contesting as a candidate. And I was brought in as a sort of young student speaker, you know, to hold the fort till the candidate arrived. And there must have been a packed audience of at least twenty-six, I would think. And he was a great character. And I suppose I was starting to get interested in the sort of drama and theatre of this kind of world and the broadcasting and reporting of it as well. I wrote an editorial, I remember, in the school newspaper for which I got into a certain amount of trouble, recommending parents to vote for William Douglas Hume.

Rt Hon David Steel MP8:52

You were very active in student politics. Who made you a Liberal? I don't think any one person made me a Liberal. I became a Liberal almost by accident. That sounds terrible now, looking back on it. But I joined the Liberal Society at Edinburgh University, as many students join different political societies, without any deep sense of conviction, but really by process of elimination, I felt more comfortable there. And the more I listened to visiting speakers and the more I met Liberals, the more I became convinced that this was the political movement for me. And I think two people influenced me considerably: John M. Bannerman, who was a great noted Scottish rugby player, but was also chairman of the party in Scotland at that time, and who had so very nearly come into Parliament several times, and of course Joe Grimond, who at that time was the relatively new leader of the Liberal Party and became rector of the university, and so I knew him quite well. It was at the university, of course, that you met Judy, your wife. That's right, and it was actually at a dinner that Joe gave one time as as rector, where he rather impishly sat us next to each other because he knew that we didn't get on very well. That was the start of something big. She was reading law.

Speaker 310:00

Yeah.

Rt Hon David Steel MP10:00

Yes, she is in fact a qualified solicitor, which I am not.

Speaker 310:03

Right, well that's a private argument. Let's have record number three.

Rt Hon David Steel MP10:07

Well, record number three I've chosen simply because I like it. It's one of the tapes that I've been listening to recently in my car.

Rt Hon David Steel MP10:14

And it's the Saintson Third Symphony. I think the reason I like it is that in the second movement, if I can have some of that on the programme, is the massive introduction of the organ and, I think, two pianos into this symphony. It's very unusual and very dramatic.

Speaker 311:30

part of the second movement of the Saints' third symphony.

Speaker 311:33

The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra conducted by Louis Fremeau,

Speaker 311:37

with Christopher Robinson playing the organ.

Speaker 311:41

What happened to your television and radio ambitions, David? You were

Rt Hon David Steel MP11:45

Well with the BBC for a while, what do you think? Yes, it was a very short and undistinguished career. What happened was that after the 1964 election, which was my first election attempt to get into Parliament, I was fighting a fairly safe Conservative seat and having narrowed the majority, I then had to find gainful employment. I had in fact been working for the Scottish Liberal Party for two years since I left university. You'd been Assistant Secretary? Yes. It was a useful nuts and bolts office job in that it let me see what the sheer mechanics of politics were. So it was very enjoyable. But that had gone on longer than any of us had intended. It was supposed to be a year for the run into the election. It was delayed. So I did two years there. And then after the election, the BBC in Scotland asked me, because they had seen me around, I got to know a lot of people, obviously, in broadcasting. And I was interested in a possible career with the BBC. So they gave me a six-month contract. And that was when Magnus Magnusson left BB Scotland to come south to join the BBC Tonight team. And everybody else moved up one rung up the ladder, and I came in on the bottom rung of the ladder.

Speaker 312:07

I left you.

Speaker 112:24

Yeah.

Rt Hon David Steel MP12:50

But that career was cut very short because I'd only been working for a couple of months on the weekly current affairs programme in Scotland when the MP in the constituency I just fought died very suddenly and unexpectedly, so there was to be a by-election. And the BBC wouldn't allow me to continue working for them, so I had a few months off in which the BBC had to pay me under the contract, and therefore I was able to work away getting the constituency ready for the by-election that came the following spring.

Speaker 313:17

Yes, you were a a local expert in running by elections.

Rt Hon David Steel MP13:20

I'd had quite a lot of experience at running them, including the famous one where Alec Douglas Hume had come back into the Commons in Kinrosson, West Perthshire, and that gave me experience of tackling this sort of widespread, scattered constituency and all the problems that that involved, and it stood me in very good stead when I came to fight my own.

Speaker 313:37

How much later was that?

Rt Hon David Steel MP13:39

It was only a couple of years later, because that by-election was 1963 when he became Prime Minister. It was a most extraordinary campaign, because there was the Prime Minister fighting as a candidate in a by-election to come back into the Commons. As Liberals, we were actually in second place. We had a great triumph. But the organisation was utterly chaotic. And the press conferences in the morning were actually bigger than the public meetings at night, because people were turning up from all over the world to see this spectacle.

Speaker 314:05

You decided to stand yourself for a constituency in the borders. This wasn't your your native heath, was it?

Rt Hon David Steel MP14:12

No, it wasn't. I had already been adopted as a candidate for Edinburgh, an area I knew well, and I'd been working away there for a couple of years. But the Liberal candidate in the Borders had resigned. There there had been a fallout between him and the local constituency. And there was a vacancy there, and it was a seat with a a long radical tradition, going back to the reform bill and the period of Gladstone and Lloyd George.

Speaker 314:34

I I've been looking at your book about the the borders, those marvellous photographs. We'll talk about that later. Well, that whole area looks rather a lost cause for a radical candidate.

Rt Hon David Steel MP14:44

Well, I know it does. O on the surface, you've got all these stately homes and uh plenty of dukes and earls around, and it was indeed in Conservative hands for a very long time. But nevertheless, underneath the surface, there was a deep rooted radical tradition, and there was a big Liberal vote there. I mean, it was in second place in the days when that was very, very rare. And what was needed was uh some fresh organization and some modern campaigning and uh frankly a younger candidate and a new approach and that was why I was drafted into the constituency. And I built on what was already there, which was very good basic material, but not properly cultivated.

Speaker 315:17

Did you

Rt Hon David Steel MP15:17

Uh

Speaker 315:17

Uh

Rt Hon David Steel MP15:18

have big guns against you.

Rt Hon David Steel MP15:19

Yes, we had great fun during the by-election campaign. It was very exciting. We had enormously large public meetings in the border towns. I mean, I remember George Brown, for example, who was Foreign Secretary at the time, actually spoke to more people in one night at three public meetings than actually voted Labour at the end of the day. I mean, it was that sort of excitement. And I had almost all the recently defeated Conservative cabinet traipsing round the constituency. So it was a very exciting campaign. What was the betting?

Speaker 115:38

Yeah.

Rt Hon David Steel MP15:50

The betting was against, except by the local bookies. Now this is a very interesting interesting point to note, that local bookies in by elections are always a better guide to what's actually happening than the great bookmakers sitting in London. I wasn't allowed

Rt Hon David Steel MP16:05

To be told what was going on. As a young candidate, I was very much coseted and protected by senior people in the party. They knew what was happening, and there were the usual private opinion polls and so on. I was never allowed to be told that, in fact, in the last week, it looked as though we were going to coast home comfortably, as we did, but it was clearly thought that it would be very bad for me to be told this, so I wasn't told. What was your majority? 4,700 and something. It was quite respectable.

Rt Hon David Steel MP16:29

Record number four. Record number four is to have some fun, I think, on this desert island. Life in the House of Commons can be fairly dreary, and one of the things that lightens it is the possibility of going off after the ten o'clock division to somewhere like Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club, where I'm a member. And the only embarrassing thing is you keep bumping into Conservative ministers there. But it's a very, very nice place for a couple of hours' relaxation before turning into bed. And I go there now and again, and one of my

Speaker 416:50

Right.

Speaker 116:50

It's a

Rt Hon David Steel MP16:58

regular visits is uh in the Christmas period when George Melley is singing. So I'd like a George Melley record. I think I'd like uh Let's Do It with um John Chilton and the Feet Warmers.

Speaker 417:08

Don't slow Sue hang down from twigs to it, though the effort is great.

Speaker 417:15

Sweet guinea pits do it Buy a couple and wait the world admits Bears in pits do it Even picking easies at the writs Do it Let's do it Let's fall in love

Speaker 417:32

Let's do it.

Speaker 417:34

Let's do it. Let's fall in love.

Speaker 317:39

George Milly with John Chilton and the Feet Warmers, let's do it.

Speaker 317:43

So, David, an MP at twenty six.

Rt Hon David Steel MP17:46

Youngest in the House. Yes, and coming in at a by-election is quite nerve-wracking because if you simply come in at a general election, you join the queue and you sign the book and you take your seat along with everybody else. If you come in at a by-election, you actually have to stand at the bar of the house, always after Prime Minister's question. So the House is crowded, people are there looking at you, and you have to walk forward and bow and walk forward and bow three times, take the oath, sign the book, all in front of these people. And for somebody at my age, it was really quite a nerve-wracking experience. And of course, you didn't have the backup of a big party. How many liberal members were there? I made it ten. I made it into double figures. There were nine others. Well, you had to have two sponsors, which reduced the number who could sit and cheer to seven. And the newspaper reports of these seven trying to raise the roof in the House of Commons at the time were really rather entertaining. I remember years later when one of my colleagues came in at a by-election, we had rather more members by then, and he too was the youngest.

Speaker 318:18

How many

Rt Hon David Steel MP18:41

And I watched him standing there and as I was sitting in my seat I thought I knew exactly how he felt. And Ted Heath, who was sitting in front of me, turned round and said, Which school did you get him out of? and I thought, I bet they made exactly that kind of a remark in nineteen sixty five.

Speaker 318:54

I'm sure they did.

Rt Hon David Steel MP18:54

I mean

Speaker 318:56

The mechanics of this life. You continue to live at Ettrick Bridge, naturally, in your constituency, in the borders. Yeah.

Rt Hon David Steel MP19:03

And you're back and forth to Westminster every week? Almost every weekend I get back to the borders. Occasionally, of course, because of international visits or or commitments elsewhere in the country, I can't get back. But I would say on average I'm

Rt Hon David Steel MP19:15

back home three weekends out of four, even if it's only for one day. And I make a point of doing that because it I think it's the only way to keep in touch with a constituency that is both large and scattered and a long way from London.

Speaker 319:30

You've recently celebrated your twentieth year in the house.

Rt Hon David Steel MP19:35

When did you become leader? 1976, summer of 1976.

Rt Hon David Steel MP19:39

And now the record, we've got to number five.

Rt Hon David Steel MP19:42

Well this one is Andrew Lloyd Webber's variations which I think is just again something I like. This particular one features his brother Julian playing the cello and the one I've chosen is the last one, the twenty-third variation. It's modern music but it's I think absolutely wonderful, intricate and most fascinating to listen to.

Speaker 320:33

Julian Lloyd Webber is soloist in Andrew Lloyd Webber's Variations on a Theme of Paganini.

Speaker 320:40

David, you must have made hundreds and hundreds of speeches.

Speaker 320:45

What was your best success? What was the time you got your feet and really slayed them?

Rt Hon David Steel MP20:51

Well, it depends on what you call success, because I can remember particularly um important speeches for me which were in a sense failures. I remember one

Rt Hon David Steel MP21:01

At Edinburgh University is the one that Judy always recalls when I opposed in the Student Representative Council, unsuccessfully, a motion which was attacking the University's decision to pull down the lovely George Square. And I was against pulling down the square. But the Student Representative Council, I'm afraid, supported the University's decision, and so my speech was, in a sense, a lost cause. And then there were other ones. I remember the day of the vote of confidence, which brought about the Leblab Pact in the spring of 1977. That was in the House of Commons. I don't like speaking in the House of Commons, and I don't think I make particularly good speeches there. It's a very odd place, and of course, by the time they get round to me, everybody's rushing out for tea anyway. So it's not a place I speak in very often. What are the acoustics like for the speaker? What's he getting back to him? The acoustics are really quite good, but it's a very chummy place to speak in. But it's not, I think, a place for great speeches. I mean, the ones in which I

Speaker 321:48

Very cool.

Rt Hon David Steel MP21:59

Do a lot of work and take a lot of trouble over are the speeches I make to the annual conference. And the one which I was most satisfied with, whether it's a success or not for others to judge, was my very first one in 1976 when I sought to say to the Liberal Party, well, you know, we've been around for a long time, got a great history, great tradition, but we really ought to start thinking about bringing liberalism back into the processes of government, and that may mean some elements of compromise on the way. And there was a demonstration in the middle of my speech because I was talking about coalition and the purists didn't like it, and people held up placards, and the whole thing came to a halt in the middle. I mean, I'll never forget that. It was a moment of almost sheer terror, but it was a very high point. And there were a lot of column inches for liberalism. Indeed. And in the end, that argument won through. And of course, since then, we had the Lib Lab Pact, we've had the alliance with the SDP, and the Liberal Party is now back in the national consciousness in a way which in the 1940s and 50s it was beginning to disappear altogether. Another record reader.

Rt Hon David Steel MP23:01

Well, because of my background, I'm particularly enthusiastic about church music and organ music. And one of my pleasures as leader of the party, one of the delights, there are many compensations for some of the awful things I have to put up with, but one of the delights is attending the great national occasions at Westminster Abbey and the

Rt Hon David Steel MP23:22

V E celebrations, of course, are very much to mind in that connection, but this next record is is actually a recording taken from Princess Anne's Wedding, and it's the anthem from Handel's Oratorio Sampson, Let their Celestial Concerts All Unite.

Speaker 423:58

I feel so desperate.

Speaker 424:04

Midfield is to come to night Miss Miss Mr. Clumpton's Orumize.

Speaker 424:28

Heaven is all sunset, praising and as long in standing.

Speaker 324:43

Let their celestial concerts all unite From Handel's Oratorio Sampson.

Speaker 324:49

A recording from the marriage service of Her Royal Highness Princess Anne and Captain Mark Phillips at Westminster Abbey.

Speaker 324:58

We mentioned very briefly just now your new book, that coffee-table book, David Steele's Border Country.

Rt Hon David Steel MP25:05

When did you adopt the border country? Well, I adopted it, or it adopted me. It really was a sort of love affair, I suppose, in 1964. When I spent that summer, if you remember Alec Douglas Hume having become Prime Minister, he announced rather unusually that he would go on till the end of the Parliament and that there would not be election there for until October 1964. And that meant that quite unusually in British politics we all had notice of when it was going to be. And I spent the whole summer, and it was a very beautiful summer in 1964, going round this scattered constituency, the only one incidentally at the time, which covered three counties, Roxburgh, Selicho, and Peebles, and getting to know all the villages and all the towns, and just marvelling at its sheer beauty and its variety and its history and its literature. It was the stamping ground of Sir Walter Scott and of John Buchan, of James Hogg, Theatric Shepherd. And that was really when I first fell in love with it.

Speaker 326:00

And you've got some excellent photographs by Charlie Waite.

Rt Hon David Steel MP26:03

Yes, I hadn't met him. He was commissioned by the publisher and when he came up and he used to come into our kitchen we'd discuss what he was going to do. You'll notice there are hardly any people in the book. It's it's all landscape because he is a landscape photographer. And he used to go and sit for up to four hours in one spot on the heather waiting for the right cloud to come across. And of course the result is absolutely stunning photography. But it it's very much his view and interwoven in that we've put the historical and literary texts.

Speaker 326:30

We've got to your seventh record.

Rt Hon David Steel MP26:33

Some years ago we went on a visit to Bulgaria, and the capital, Sofia, is actually rather a dull city, but suddenly in the middle of the city there is the Alexander Nevsky Church. We went into the church, it's a cathedral really.

Rt Hon David Steel MP26:47

And there was a choir singing, and it was the most beautiful unaccompanied singing I've ever heard, and I commented on it so often that they gave me a recording of this choir, and this particular track is in fact the Paternoster, Our Father, sung in Bulgarian by a bass and a choir, unaccompanied.

Speaker 427:06

Is podominas bladikor So there's no verdiosus veti prize mati de la

Speaker 427:19

The best levels of the global deal

Speaker 427:44

He dressed me on their soul.

Speaker 427:53

Thus God keeps on me awful.

Speaker 328:05

The Lord's Prayer sung in Bulgarian by the Bulgarian Archipella Choir.

Speaker 328:11

Now we're going to take you from the borders to a desert island.

Speaker 328:15

Yeah.

Rt Hon David Steel MP28:15

Do you think you could live off the land?

Rt Hon David Steel MP28:17

This was the question I've been dreading you going to ask all through the programme, because I think I would have the greatest difficulty, and I hope it doesn't destroy my political image for good, but I think I would be thoroughly incompetent. Could you build a shelter? I could try. Nothing I've ever built has survived.

Rt Hon David Steel MP28:33

How's your fishing? My fishing's not bad. I could manage that. Improvised tackle, of course. Yes, I've done that. I mean, I've actually done that at home with the children in the River Ettricks. I think I would survive on that. What I would do with the fish when I got them is another matter. I mean, I can't cook. That's the trouble.

Speaker 328:48

Well, raw fish the Japanese do all right on it.

Rt Hon David Steel MP28:52

Disgusting.

Speaker 328:52

Ha ha ha ha ha.

Speaker 328:54

What about a scape? Could you make a craft of some sort a raft even?

Rt Hon David Steel MP28:59

I think it would break up. That's the trouble. I think I'm doomed to stay there. I mean, I I really am very bad with my hands. I was bottom of my woodwork class, so you'll realize that we were in real trouble here. So, I'm going to go to the next one.

Speaker 329:08

So you've never done anything

Rt Hon David Steel MP29:10

Never had time to. They gave me up as a hopeless job. I think I'm going to be there for a long time. Your last record, Edward. You'll have detected, I think, all through these records that I like loud, noisy, joyful music of whatever kind. And my last is simply Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, and in particular from it, the Ode to Joy in the Last Movement, which not only is wonderful music with the four soloists, the choir, the symphony orchestra, but also has connotations because it's been adopted very much as the European anthem.

Speaker 429:40

I'm not sure if I can do it.

Speaker 429:59

Oh yeah!

Speaker 430:17

This is the first time.

Speaker 330:23

An excerpt from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, a recording conducted by Leonard Bernstein.

Speaker 330:28

If you could take only one disk out of your eight, which would it be?

Rt Hon David Steel MP30:32

I think it would have to be the last one, the ninth uh symphony of Beethoven, simply because it covers all the moods that I think have existed in all the other records.

Speaker 330:41

And one book, you already have the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare.

Rt Hon David Steel MP30:45

Well, it would be self-indulgence to take m my new book on the border so that I could look at the pictures and think of home, so if I'm not allowed that

Speaker 330:52

To your lot.

Rt Hon David Steel MP30:52

Oh, you are not

Speaker 330:52

Am I like that?

Rt Hon David Steel MP30:55

Oh, I see. All right. Well, I'll I'll be self-indulgent, but if I weren't I suppose I'd be much more useful to take a do-it-yourself manual in view of my earlier confession.

Speaker 331:03

That sounds very useful. And one luxury to take with you something of no practical use whatever.

Rt Hon David Steel MP31:09

Well, I don't know if you'll allow me to take this, because you might say it is of practical use. I would like you to send me with the largest possible cathedral organ.

Rt Hon David Steel MP31:18

I would have a lovely time learning how to play the organ properly, but you would make me promise not to live under it, I suppose.

Speaker 331:24

Well, you'd also have that very useful box that it arrives in.

Rt Hon David Steel MP31:28

Now that's a thought.

Speaker 331:30

We'll have to discuss this at some length, David. I'm not sure about it at all. In the meantime, thank you, David Steele, for letting us hear your Desert Island Discs. It's been a great pleasure. Goodbye, everyone.

Speaker 131:48

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