Rt Hon Shirley Williams

Speaker 30:00

Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen eighty six, and the presenter was Michael Parkinson.

Presenter0:30

Our castaway today is a politician who, according to a newspaper poll, is regarded as being intelligent, determined, and straightforward. Now, given what most people think of politicians, that is indeed a rare tribute. But then, our castaway is one of Britain's more interesting political figures. She's the President of the Social Democratic Party, Shirley Williams. Shirley, welcome to our Desert Island. You came from an extraordinary background. Your mother was, of course, a writer. Your father, an academic and a journalist. Was it also a musical background?

Rt Hon Shirley Williams1:01

Yes, it was a bit, Michael. My mother's mother, my grandmother, used to produce recitals to presumably small pressed audiences in the Midlands where she lived. And my mother knew a lot about music because her brother, who was killed in the First World War, was in fact intending to be a professional violinist. So she could play very well as an accompanist to a violinist. And that side of my family was really richly musical.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams1:24

My father not so he was entirely a literary man, and so part of my mother's love of music was rather overshadowed but in her quieter moments she often used to take up the piano, and she often used to sing to the piano as well.

Presenter1:36

Did you have any musical ambition yourself at any time in your career?

Rt Hon Shirley Williams1:39

I wanted to be an opera singer. In fact, I had a passionate desire to be an opera singer rather than a politician when I was a small girl. I imagined myself standing there, you know, singing the great arias and completely and absolutely bewitching the audience.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams1:52

And so, in order to forward my career, I joined a choir, which actually happened to be the Colchist Messiah Choir, I remember, because I was living in Colchis at the time.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams2:00

And I went off to sing the Messiah, and was immediately allocated to the tenor section, which finished my musical career, because although it's nice to be a tenor, it's not an appropriate role for a woman to play, and there is no role of counter tenor that I've so far heard of, which to me was a great disappointment.

Presenter2:15

Let us now have your first choice of music then.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams2:17

Well, my first choice, which is Elgar's Introduction to Allegro, is a choice partly because it shows, I think, some of the extraordinarily sort of stormy temperament that Elgar had, and also because for me it's associated with my family and with their

Rt Hon Shirley Williams2:30

strange mixture of great patriotism and great criticism of their own country. So Elgar's introduction in Allegro, which I think is one of the most characteristic and beautiful works he ever wrote.

Presenter3:43

We mentioned that the the background that you came from, Shirley. You must have had many famous people who came to visit when you were a child. Can you remember who they might have been?

Rt Hon Shirley Williams3:52

I remember some of them, and one of them was Pandit Nehru, who was at that time a student leader of the Indian Independence Movement. And my father was on the committee of the British Association concerned with the Independence of India. Indeed, later he became a member of the famous Cripps Commission, which went out to India in nineteen forty four to discuss Dominion status.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams4:11

And as a very young child I met Pandit Nero, who to me of course was a rather remote figure.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams4:16

I also met Chief Letulli of the African National Congress, which is perhaps appropriate given the terrible times that the South African

Rt Hon Shirley Williams4:24

Blacks are passing through, and that was chiefly introduced into our family by Winifred Holtby, who spent nineteen twenty six travelling in South Africa, and indeed wrote a book about Africa called Mandoa Mandoa.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams4:36

And that wasn't the end of it. We also met almost all the political figures of the time, people like George Lansbury, who was then the leader of the Labour Party.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams4:44

and um Major Attlee, a little known figure who was not expected to become Prime Minister. And so I think it would be fair to say that a pretty fair river of both European and international political leaders flowed through our home, partly because both my parents in different ways were very much connected with the international movements, and my mother, of course, whose books were burnt at Nuremberg.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams5:07

Was particularly associated with the attempt to try to bring Jewish refugees to Britain, and so quite a lot of the refugees that she managed to.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams5:15

get away from Nazi Germany, stayed in a house on their way to being settled with other more lasting houses and homes of various kinds.

Presenter5:22

She was clearly, of course, a remarkable woman, your your mother. It's a difficult question, I know, but what do you remember best of her? What's her lasting memory you have?

Rt Hon Shirley Williams5:30

I suppose what I remember best about her was that in nineteen forty three, which was the middle of the war, when she'd already had quite a rough time because she was a pacifist, and in spite of her background as a nurse in the First World War, serving throughout the war,

Rt Hon Shirley Williams5:43

She got her fair share of critics and people who said that she should have thrown herself into the war effort and so on.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams5:48

And in nineteen forty three she went through, I think, a great crisis of conscience in which she had to decide whether or not she was going to publicly condemn

Rt Hon Shirley Williams5:56

What was then the new policy, the saturation bombing of Germany, not forgetting that for the first three years of the war the policy had been one of picking on purely military targets.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams6:05

And she finally concluded that she had to, even though she knew that that would bring a great deal of uh

Rt Hon Shirley Williams6:10

anger and abuse down on the family and on my father, her husband as well. And that duly happened. She did make a public statement. She brought out a pamphlet called Seed of Chaos. She received a telegram to say her books would never again be published in America. As a family we got endless strings of abuse, um people pushing nasty things through the post box and so on, and my father having to explain that he wasn't a pacifist, but finding it also necessary and indeed very willing to champion her and her own.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams6:37

crisis of conscience, and I remember the only ally that she had was the Bishop of Chichester.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams6:42

And between them they really went through an extremely dark period at that time, which was only actually ended when she turned out to be, along with my father, on the Gestapo Blacklist, which was finally published because it had Churchill's name on the same page. And I remember to this day the moment when, as a schoolgirl, I opened the newspapers that morning and discovered on the front page of the newspapers a facsimile of the Gestapo Blacklist. And by sheer luck, because my mother was called Britain, my father was called Catlyn and Winston Churchill began with C, there on the same page of the Gestapo Blacklist were all three of them, and the critics fell silent, and we never heard criticism, at least in Britain, again.

Presenter7:22

Let's now move to your second choice of music, then, shall we?

Rt Hon Shirley Williams7:24

My second record really reflects that time, and also reflects my mother's friendship with Benjamin Britton and Peter Peirce, with whom she went round the country.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams7:33

Lecturing and of course playing music and singing on their part in order to raise money for the movement to provide food for what was then a starving Europe, including a starving Germany. And so Britain's War Requiem, which I think is a very beautiful work and which sets to music many of the poems that to my mother meant a great deal about the First World War, I think is my second choice.

Speaker 48:13

But the old man would not throw but still he saw

Speaker 48:23

I become a standard to you, Lord. I'm one

Speaker 48:37

Yeah.

Speaker 48:50

Seven food.

Presenter8:56

Surely, at the beginning of the war you were sent to America by your parents. Was that because they had some uh dark foreboding about what might happen in Britain?

Rt Hon Shirley Williams9:05

No, it was one reason only, Michael, and I wasn't sent at the beginning of the war. I was sent at the end of nineteen forty when there were many fears of a German invasion. And this is because my parents have been tipped off that if there was a German invasion, they would be likely to be put in concentration camps immediately. And they spent one long night of uh discussion as to what they should do and came to the conclusion that they were morally obliged to stay in Britain, that they had to face whatever might be coming to them.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams9:27

but that they had no right to put their children's lives at risk, so they sent my brother and me to a family we'd never met in Minnesota, who my mother had met when she was lecturing between the wars.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams9:38

And this family had sent a telegram saying, send us your children, so they duly did. And we arrived in Minnesota after three days travelling across the North American plains and after what had been a very, very dodgy ship journey to the United States because we were pursued all the way by submarines and the ship before us, which was called the Duchess of Athol, I think, was sunk with all hands, including many children.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams10:00

So anyway, we finally arrived in the States and we had a most absolute wonderful childhood. I don't think I could have had a more marvellous childhood. I spent three years there going to um high school, or junior high school in the town of St. Paul, Minnesota.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams10:14

and being one of the very few Britons for miles around.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams10:17

And uh ever since then I suppose I fell in love with the United States. It was a country where everything was possible and everything was exciting. And I went back again, of course, in nineteen fifty two when I got a a scholarship from the Fulbright Commission to do postgraduate work after leaving Oxford.

Presenter10:32

But while you were there in this period during the war, in fact, I'm I'm writing saying that you screen tested for National Belby, didn't you? For the Elizabeth Taylor part.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams10:39

Yes, it's part of my life which I tend to sort of rather gloss over because Well, I don't really think I was cut out to be a film actress. I doubt if my looks would have lasted, and maybe they weren't appropriate anyway. But what happened was this. They were looking for the lead part in National Velvet, which was a film essentially about the Grand National. And the heroine was a a lovely blonde English girl who could ride like a dream and uh all the rest of it. And so this was the um screen requirement. And somebody had a brilliant idea of asking all the American film critics to put forward a candidate for the post.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams11:11

And I was put forward by the Middle Western film critics, which represented the States of the Middle West, and an unknown character called probably at that time Betty Taylor was put forward by the film critics of the West Coast.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams11:23

And both of us had screen tests, as indeed four or five other little English girls who could ride, were fair.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams11:29

looked reasonably pretty and so forth and could talk the English language. And I came into the short list I guess there were about four or five of us and Betty Taylor, by some strange fluke, actually won, and of course set off on the great film career that to day is represented by Elizabeth Taylor.

Presenter11:46

Let's go on to a third choice of record, perhaps something to do with the show business ambitions.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams11:50

What could be better than Guys and Dolls composed by Frank Loeser, which I remember first seeing in an absolutely riotous performance in New York when I was out there on a scholarship to Columbia University, and incidentally, of course, and inevitably decided to fall in love at that point.

Speaker 412:06

When a bum buys wine like a bum can't afford, it's a cinch that the bum is under the thumb of some little broad.

Speaker 412:15

When you meet a mug lately out of the jug, and he's still lifting platinum fal diral.

Speaker 412:24

Call it hell, call it heaven. It's a probable 12 to 7 that the guy's only doing it for some dolls.

Presenter12:34

You've had this long fascination and interest in in America, haven't you? Which started, of course, when you were so when you went over there as a child. How did it continue?

Rt Hon Shirley Williams12:42

When I took this Fulbright scholarship and worked at Columbia for a year, which was studying economics, after I'd finished at Oxford where I studied politics, philosophy and economics, I got a special field scholarship which took me round the whole of the United States to look at the trade unions and their relationship to political parties.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams13:00

And uh

Rt Hon Shirley Williams13:02

I remember that we decided, some couple of fellow students and I, to cross the United States, which was the absolute tradition of those times, in a sort of clapped out old Ford car, and that took about three weeks to cross the continent. And the very first day, this car, which cost almost nothing I mean about eighty quid by current standards,

Rt Hon Shirley Williams13:18

decided to boil. We couldn't get the damn thing to work, and we broke down in the middle of the Appalachian Mountains.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams13:24

And we went to a farm, a really very poor little farm, knocked on the door and asked for water to fill up the engine.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams13:31

And the lady, who was typically hospitable, as Americans almost always are, said, Why don't you come in and have supper? So we came in.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams13:36

And I noticed throughout supper that she was looking at us fixedly. I mean every single movement she was watching. So afterwards when I was helping her to wash up I said to her

Rt Hon Shirley Williams13:44

Excuse me, but tell me, why did you look at us? Why were you riveted by what we were doing?

Rt Hon Shirley Williams13:49

And she said, Well,

Rt Hon Shirley Williams13:51

I've only just heard of Britain and I certainly haven't heard of Belgium, she said, but uh I just wonder whether you folks in Europe had yet learnt how to use knives and forks. I thought you might still be back at the finger stage. So I realized then that the Appalachians were a very remote area of the United States. And one of the pieces of music I always associate with that, and associate generally with America, because it's so

Rt Hon Shirley Williams14:12

Fresh and so exciting, and so full of promise and optimism is the

Rt Hon Shirley Williams14:17

Composition Appalachian Spring by Aaron Copeland, who is probably one of the greatest contemporary American composers.

Presenter15:26

Shelley, was there any doubt at all when you were growing up, any doubt at all that you were going to be anything other than a politician?

Rt Hon Shirley Williams15:32

Well, once I'd got over my early ambition to be an opera singer, the other thing I thought I wanted to be was a journalist.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams15:39

And so when I finally completed my various kinds of education, I started work on the Daily Mirror.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams15:45

But I didn't really work out very well there at all. I was a human interest reporter.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams15:50

And I found it really tough going. And I began with a great clap of thunder, having got two headlines in one week. And I remember being called in by the then proprietor Cecil King, who shook my hand and said, you're going to be a great journalist. And it was one of the worst predictions in history, because within a year the mirror indicated that I was not made for this and should depart. So depart I did for the Financial Times, where I spent a very happy five years and really enjoyed myself.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams16:16

though I have no illusions about why I was hired there either, because the then proprietor

Rt Hon Shirley Williams16:21

interviewed me a sweet man I'm very fond of called Lord Droider and I still know him to this day.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams16:26

And I remember his concluding remark was, Well, you may not be any good, but at least you're cheap.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams16:30

Which I don't think was a reflection on my character, but was a reflection on the fact that in those days, of course, women were paid considerably less than men. So I managed to make some kind of career out of journalism, but I suppose.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams16:40

More and more politics was waiting for me, and my father, who had stood twice as a parliamentary candidate, had not been successful between the wars,

Rt Hon Shirley Williams16:48

in a way wanted very much one of his children to go into politics, and of course we had been brought up in the Labour Party from the very beginning. So into politics I duly went. I fought my first seat when I was twenty three, which was Harwich in Essex, and then fought it again in'fifty four.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams17:03

and finally got elected in'sixty four' for the constituency of Hitchen, which was regarded as a pretty marginal seat and was then held by a rather nice Conservative MP.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams17:12

And that's when I first got elected. But it was a long, hard struggle, and I think it's something about being a woman in politics, or was then, maybe still is, that you probably have to prove yourself more frequently, and by fighting more difficult seats, than you would if you were seen to be a reasonably promising man.

Presenter17:28

Let's have another choice of record now.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams17:30

Well, I went back to United States in nineteen sixty eight, by this time in a political capacity, because I was the Minister of State for Education and Science.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams17:39

But I was drawn back as ever to United States for a summer holiday, which turned out to be a very dramatic summer holiday because it was

Rt Hon Shirley Williams17:45

A summer holiday at the time of the famous Democratic Convention of 1968.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams17:50

And for those who are somewhat older listeners to this programme, they may remember that this was the Democratic Convention where there was an absolute outbreak of rioting with the Chicago police attacking the so-called yippies, who were a form of hippie, who had gathered in the Chicago park in order to lobby the Chicago Convention of the Democratic Party.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams18:11

And visiting that yippe settlement I got myself caught up with the attack of the Chicago police, and boy are they tough or they were in those days and I remember belting as fast as I knew how along the embankment of Lake Michigan, pursued by the Chicago police, who were wielding mace among other things, the form of uh civil gas, I suppose you'd call it.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams18:33

Luckily for me they were much fatter than I was, and never quite caught up with me. But I remembered that year, nineteen sixty eight, very well. It was the year of the so called Student Revolution.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams18:42

And I also remember the music associated with that time, and one of the more haunting love songs of the time was Scarborough Fair, sung by that marvellous team, Simon and Garfunkel.

Speaker 418:53

Are you going to Scarborough fair?

Speaker 419:00

Parsley, sleeve, rosemary and time

Speaker 419:10

Member me to one who lives there.

Speaker 419:16

She once was a true lover.

Presenter19:24

Shelley Williams, you were Minister for Prices and a Minister of Education in the Labour Government. You were tipped as a leader of the Labour Party. You were tipped as a future Prime Minister of this country.

Presenter19:35

What was it that made you dissatisfied, that made you want to break away from the Labour Party and and form another party?

Rt Hon Shirley Williams19:40

I thought you were going to say what went wrong?

Rt Hon Shirley Williams19:42

Well, what went wrong was that I found it increasingly difficult to identify with the historic political parties. I couldn't identify with the Conservatives who I'd fought all my life, but I couldn't really increasingly identify with the Labour Party. And I think that one of the

Rt Hon Shirley Williams19:56

Early seeds of the STP, one which has been very little noticed in the press.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams20:01

Was the strong support that those of us who later formed the SDP had for the European community?

Rt Hon Shirley Williams20:08

We shared mister Heath's ambition. We played a part in that ambition.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams20:12

And in nineteen seventy one, we voted against a three-line whip, which is the most serious kind of whip of the Labour Party, which ordered us to vote against entering the European Community. We all revolted. We put our careers at risk at that time.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams20:27

Now, as it happened, nobody ever cashed the cheque. We were all re-elected or kept in the positions that we had.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams20:33

And the next occasion came in nineteen seventy five when I became the

Rt Hon Shirley Williams20:37

leader of the Labour Committee for Europe.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams20:40

which was involved in that great referendum campaign, where, if you remember, the issue of should we stay in or should we get out.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams20:47

in fact, crossed all party divisions, and I found myself on platforms along with people like mister Heath and Peter Walker and Ian Gilmore, and they found themselves on platforms along with people like Roy Jenkins and David Owen and myself.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams20:59

So I think that part of the genesis of the SDP was discovering that we had a distinct position in politics which was not shared by the official leadership of the Labour Party because it was so pro-European and was not shared by the official leadership of at least it was shared by Heath, but not by his successors. So that that was a distinct position to which the final straw that was added was the worry about the Labour Party's constitutional changes to the left, which we thought were not democratic and could not be borne.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams21:27

But I guess that first move was the degree of support for Europe.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams21:32

And that brings me really to a record which always reminds me of the times I spend, particularly in France.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams21:38

Which is the lovely song cycle by Berlioz, the great French composer, called Nuit d'Eté.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams21:44

And this is Janet Baker singing The Villa Nell in that cycle as beautifully as ever.

Speaker 421:50

Conie gra la se nober, condor despari les fou Tour miles iron mavericks, tour queen aux music lending.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams22:05

Okay, and then make

Speaker 422:22

Monsieur Hootsy.

Speaker 422:32

Uh

Speaker 422:33

Only my band sing one is a morphine.

Speaker 422:41

I mars aur sacrile sord, du souve won the bonou.

Presenter22:50

Shelly Williams, during your time in in politics, what have been the best times? The ones you look back and think those were wonderful?

Rt Hon Shirley Williams22:56

Oh, two.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams22:58

One was a moment that you never can ever repeat again in politics, which is the first time you're elected, and especially if you're elected for a seat which is in the balance. Must be very boring to be elected for a safe seat, but I never have had a safe seat.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams23:12

So two occasions of that kind. First being elected for Hitchen. Very young, lots of struggles, very exciting.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams23:19

And the second time, of course, being elected as the first ever Social Democratic Member of Parliament for Crosby.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams23:25

Which overturned a colossal Conservative majority of 19,000 plus. So those were two of the very high points in politics, the kind of moments which I suppose is exactly like singing a great aria in a opera vivdi. It's the moment of heroism, of emotion, of everything, companionship, all sorts of things coming together.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams23:45

And among the very dark moments one which springs to mind was the occasion when

Rt Hon Shirley Williams23:52

Roy Jenkins Tom Jackson, who was then the leader of the Post Office Workers and I, went down to support Reg Prentice, still in the Labour Party, but about to be deselected by his constituency.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams24:02

The first part of that worst moment was being pelted with flour and soot by a strange mixture of the extremists of the right and extremists of the left, so that it was really almost difficult to be seen or heard in that tumult that took place.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams24:15

And then the postscript, an even worse moment, was of course when Reg decided to join the Conservative Party, and suddenly it looked as if his detractors were

Rt Hon Shirley Williams24:24

perhaps more justified than his supporters. And that whole episode, I think, was a pretty glum moment in politics, one of the worst.

Presenter24:32

Course, you you're quite tough, though, aren't you? I read that once you you belted a man.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams24:36

I once belted a man. Yeah, I get really angry sometimes. I don't know how tough I am, but I was in the Albert Hall and there was it was a great rally about South Africa conducted by those who were against apartheid. And I had standing in front of me a huge man. He was fast. He must have been about five feet round the belly as well as about six feet tall. And he suddenly socked my then husband over three rows of Albert Hall seats because my husband had protested about his throwing a firecracker into a whole crowd of people in the Albert Hall, which couldn't be very dangerous. They could panic and run for the doors and you could see people being crushed.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams25:09

And when I saw my husband's feet passing past my ear, I got terribly angry, and I began to sock this man systematically in the stomach. I was about three feet below him, so he socked me systematically on the head. But my head is very thick, as you might suppose, and he wasn't able to dent it very much. And eventually some stewards began to gently move him out. And I remember still his voice echoing through the Albert Hall, saying, This violence towards me is obscene, I protest.

Presenter25:35

Let's have a next choice of record, Chilling.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams25:39

Well, of course, we've been talking about destiny and the way in which luck and destiny suddenly cut across one's political career. You can't plan these things. Many of them are.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams25:48

forces that are quite beyond your control. And there's an opera by one of my favourite composers, perhaps my favorite composer opera, except for Mozart, namely Guisepe Verdi, a very political composer incidentally, who was very much involved in the Unification of Italy movement. And in his overture to Fozza del Destino, in a way he's exactly summing up in marvellous music that sense of the power of destiny which you can only ride but can't control.

Presenter27:14

Shirley, from the the the position that that you have, you travel all over the world, you're a politician of immense experience. What do you feel about Britain at present? A lot of people are very acutely depressed by what they see around them now. Are you depressed? Are you optimistic or what?

Rt Hon Shirley Williams27:29

I'm tall.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams27:30

Between a sense that

Rt Hon Shirley Williams27:32

My country's at the crossroads. On the one side we had the decline in manufacturing and the probable running out of North Sea oil sometime in the nineteen nineties, and I think the economic situation could be dire.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams27:42

And we might be fighting to maintain our democracy in the face of that.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams27:45

On the other side, I I myself believe that the coming of the Information Society could be very good for Britain. It's a creative, inventive country with a lot of

Rt Hon Shirley Williams27:54

extraordinarily able people, but with a kind of determination to be individual, which means that they don't fit well into the old fashioned industrial revolution of the assembly line and so on. And I think played right and some of the choices over the next few years are going to be absolutely critical.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams28:09

We could see a recreation of Britain, a kind of new dawn almost, providing that we make some decisions right. And there's one of those that to me is quite central. I think we will have to give a much higher priority to education and training. We cannot have a country in which 70% of people end their education or virtually end it at the age of 16. It won't do. It's not a basis in which we can compete with other countries. So give that a very high priority. Recognize we're going to go through a very tough 10 years. But recognize at the end of that tough 10 years, if we don't take the easy choices and just make ourselves richer,

Rt Hon Shirley Williams28:43

We could have a promising future. It's up to us.

Presenter28:45

and a final choice of record.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams28:48

I think there are moments in one's life when you begin to see how

Rt Hon Shirley Williams28:52

How valueless a lot of the assessments of success and failure and people's personalities and so on are. And you want to go back to.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams28:58

what in the end the real values are all about, which are about, you know, love and hope and faith and that kind of thing. And obviously in that kind of mood it's the great composers that speak to you most, and I think they often speak to you most in their slow movements. So the slow movement that speaks to me when I'm trying to get beyond the daily world of politics and the clashes and confrontations.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams29:20

One of many, but a beautifully played one, is the slow movement of Beethoven's fourth concerto, and I've chosen.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams29:26

John Lill, the great British pianist, because I think he interprets it beautifully and because his variations express the spirit in which Beethoven wrote that concerto.

Presenter30:35

Shelly, so now you're you're on the desert island. You have to face now all these questions that we ask every one of our castaways. First of all, would you be any good on the desert island in the sense are you a practical person?

Rt Hon Shirley Williams30:46

I think I'd be good. I'm quite an outdoor toughy. I still go in for camping and climbing in the rockies and that kind of thing. So I could climb trees for the cocoanuts. I could go fishing. I could build myself a camp fire. I think I could build myself some kind of shack.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams30:59

Um no, I think I'd be quite happy on my desert island, as long as it didn't snow heavily or rain too heavily.

Presenter31:05

You can swim, of course, you're a regular swimmer.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams31:06

I'm quite a good swimmer. I once spent a holiday in which I swam four miles down the Dordogne with the rather improbable.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams31:12

company of uh the author Freddie Raphael and his wife Beetle, and it was only after we climbed out after four miles that we discovered the whole river was infested with water snakes, which luckily we didn't know at the time. I think what would actually happen is that I'd settle down quite happily for a few weeks, then I'd get restless, and then I'd probably start striking out in all directions swimming to see whether I could find any other landfall which might perhaps be rather more part of the normal world.

Presenter31:37

Which book would you take?

Rt Hon Shirley Williams31:39

I think assuming I'm only going to stay on the island for a few months before I start swimming off it, I think I would take um William Butler Yeats's collected poems. I love Yeats. I think he in many ways encapsulates a lot of the dilemmas and the uncertainties and doubts of modern people. I also think he has that astonishing mixture of

Rt Hon Shirley Williams31:57

Imagination and passion and sometimes madness that constitutes Ireland.

Rt Hon Shirley Williams32:03

And uh I think he does speak a lot to uh modern man.

Presenter32:07

On one record, it assumed that seven have been washed away, which would it be?

Rt Hon Shirley Williams32:12

I think it would be Elgar to remind me of home.

Presenter32:15

Yeah.

Presenter32:15

And what about the one luxury object, the inanimate material?

Rt Hon Shirley Williams32:18

Oh, my one inanimate luxury object is obvious. I insist upon having the BBC computer, I insist upon having it linked up across these thousands of miles back to Britain, and then, of course, I have a window on the world, so I don't have to feel any sense of solitude or isolation. And I'm assuming that that will see me through the first few months, and I'll only start swimming when I've got through the whole of uh doomsday and a few other things.

Presenter32:40

You never want to leave.

Presenter32:42

Shelley Williams, thank you very much indeed.

Speaker 332:50

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