Bernard Levin

Speaker 10:00

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 seven, and the presenter was Michael Parkinson.

Presenter0:29

A critic once described our castaway as the most remarkable journalist of our time. He said, and I quote, he's the journalist par excellence, the purest living example of the English species. Few who have followed his career, particularly those who read his column in The Times, would disagree with that assessment. He is Bernard Levin. Bernard, knowing of your great love for music, would music in fact be the companion that you'd most require on a desert island?

Bernard Levin0:54

It would be one of the two. I would have to have the printed word. And I'm very glad you're allowing me the Bible and Shakespeare to start with. But certainly music would be absolute essential. I don't know what my life would be without music.

Presenter1:03

Don't know.

Presenter1:06

And how d how do you arrive at your choice?

Bernard Levin1:08

Voice of record. Are they all

Presenter1:08

Boom.

Bernard Levin1:09

O favourite piece They're obviously favourite pieces in in many ways, but they've all got some particular quality. I suppose that they all appeal to me very deeply, that's the first thing. They aren't associated, or most of them aren't anyhow, with particular episodes of my life, but they've all they're all certainly associated with with very deep things in my life, feelings, senses, qualities, etcetera. What about the first record then?

Bernard Levin1:38

Well, first of all, Mozart plays a very considerable, and indeed consistently growing, part in my life. I once said that all life is an exploration of Mozart, and what I meant by that is the deeper you go into Mozart, the deeper you go into life and what life is for, and what life means to you, and what your own life has done and not done, etcetera.

Bernard Levin1:56

And this particular item is is a perfect illustration of that, because the magic flute from which it comes uh works on two levels, the divine and the human. And uh the one couple goes to heaven and the others the other the human, the earthy humankind, uh remain behind and don't don't aspire to heaven.

Bernard Levin2:14

And this is where the two meet.

Bernard Levin2:16

Pamina, who enters with her hero Tomino into the highest realm, meets Peppagheno, the man in the the other, the earthy couple, but the point at which they meet is love. And this duet is about human love, not divine love, that comes later in the opera, but human love. And I swear that if you put this on the British record on sus uh and made somebody listen to it who knew not a word of German on the one hand and had never heard of the magic flute on the other, they would know that what these two characters are singing about is love.

Speaker 42:56

Felit one gold miss male tree.

Speaker 12:57

Uh

Bernard Levin2:57

Uh

Speaker 12:57

Oh, I know that.

Speaker 43:07

The meet to feel ist the vibration We're in war and war, standing here in the world.

Speaker 13:19

Oh man

Speaker 43:24

Yeah.

Speaker 43:25

Me a bunch of

Presenter3:48

That was a duet from Act One of Mozart's The Magic Flute, sung by Pilar Lorenga's Permina, Herman Perez Papageno, and Sir George Schulte conducting. Bernard Lemon, do you come from a musical b

Bernard Levin3:58

Background at all.

Presenter3:58

Yeah.

Bernard Levin3:58

No, not at all. Um my family wasn't musical.

Bernard Levin4:02

But in uh in those days, and and I imagine it still continues, Jewish mothers without any money, which was the definition of my mother, always believed that their son was destined to be the next Haifetz or Yehudi Menuin.

Speaker 14:11

Uh

Bernard Levin4:16

And I suppose every one in fifty thousand was. Anyhow, I was not. And I was taught the violin very badly indeed, hated it. And the moment I could, I struck and refused to go on practising any longer. And it very nearly poisoned me for music forever, because I thought, this is music, I don't want any part of it. And I accidentally stumbled upon music at school, my public school. Then, my word, I made up for lost time. What about going back on this on this background? Humble beginnings, were they? Yes, very much on the wrong side of the tracks. Camden Town. Camden Town's gone up in the world these days. I can tell you. It wasn't like that when I lived there as a child. What was it like? Oh, it was a very poor neighbourhood indeed. But indeed, I do remember, it's not just retrospective sentimentality. It was, you know, the old thing about the poor, it's what the poor, what helps the poor, it was. We were a kind of collective and we all knew that we were all living on the on the edge of or living on very, very thin ice indeed, because, you know, things like illness and were catastrophes in there, absolute catastrophes. Families could be ruined overnight. And so there was a kind of camaraderie among the very poor physical facilities and surroundings. I don't think it it harmed or marked me.

Presenter5:28

Wh where did the family come from in the first place?

Bernard Levin5:30

My grandparents came from Russia. My mother was born in England. My grandparents came from Russia at the turn of the century, the great wave of émigrés from Tsarist persecution.

Bernard Levin5:43

and my grandfather, whom I knew well,

Bernard Levin5:46

I he died when I was eighteen and I was a very young eighteen that and I hadn't really realized till it was too late that what I should have done was sit him down with a tape recorder well there weren't tape recorders in those days, but a stack of notebooks and pumped him from all the s the stories of the his of the home, the way they lived in in Russia, because it was just at that time, my g when I knew my grandfather, that that way of life was dying out forever.

Presenter6:08

Can we have another choice of record?

Bernard Levin6:11

Well, the next one, anybody who knows me at all will or anybody who's every read me will know that there has to be Wagner in this programme. Now, what is interesting is that if I'd been doing this programme fifteen years ago, I would not have chosen the bit now. I mean we still loved it, it's from the Master Singers, but The Master Singers is the only one of Wagner's operas which is entirely human.

Bernard Levin6:32

It's it's absolutely human.

Bernard Levin6:34

It takes place over only two days and everybody in it is has his feet planted on the ground and it's a and it's a story of after all most most operas and dramas are of love triumphant over hidebound restriction and and Wagner was using it symbolically about his own struggles to get his music played and appreciated. But in this there is no darkness at all. There is a villain but he's a comic villain. There is no darkness which heaven knows there is in all his other works in one way or another, darkness and death and deep terrible things welling up from the subconscious. But in this there is nothing. It's sunlit throughout, including the scene that's played in the middle of the night.

Speaker 17:11

Okay.

Bernard Levin7:15

And this uh particular piece, the quintet, which is one of the loveliest pieces of music I know by any composer, is where the five main characters in the third act, when the when the action is moving to its climax, all express simultaneously their thoughts, uh their feelings and their emotions, and it pours out in this glorious sound.

Presenter8:34

That is a quintet from Act Three of The Master Singers. Bernard Levin, you mentioned there the the effect that Wagner has on you and the the w the way that it it uh it's a way of expressing emotion which you find difficult to to express. Have you ever sort of thought back on on why this is in you, th this difficulty in expressing emotion?

Bernard Levin8:51

Hard to say. I have. It's something I've worked at in recent years and it's become very, very much easier, thank God. But where it comes from, I don't know. I had what is technically known as a broken home and maybe that contributed. Well, obviously it contributed in some way. It must have done. But you can't go back and rewrite the past. You've got to start from where you are, whatever happens. I've made my peace with myself and as I say, it's now this problem is very, very much more controlled. Well, not controlled, that's the wrong way of putting it. I'm very much more able to express my feelings.

Presenter9:25

But how how inhibiting has it been? Very, very.

Bernard Levin9:31

It has

Bernard Levin9:32

It is here I am uh at my age still unmarried and I've had plenty of opportunities. Something obviously I'm uh me something in me must have drawn back every time, obviously. I mean it um it's not a g great source of sorrow to me that I'm not married. I I don't think this is my waste of my life, but it's obviously part of that. You come to terms. Life is a is in a sense a a matter of coming to terms with what you can't do and what you can do. The the interesting, surprising and wonderful thing about life is that although frequently you say, well that I can't do, and I better stop thinking I can, and then gradually it changes and that's has it's it's done that uh with me.

Presenter10:10

Yeah.

Bernard Levin10:10

And I Yeah. I'd be guessing that are you God parent of lots and lots of children. I have eight godchildren, five of them all grown up and three of them a new generation, which is wonderful. I guess I have uh

Bernard Levin10:21

And I have I'm a sort of honorary uncle to many more. Let's have another choice of record button, please.

Bernard Levin10:27

Well, the next one is Schubert. I have to have Schubert. I don't think what would life be without Schubert? And what's more, I believe that if Schubert had never been born, we would still we'd go about being puzzled, thinking there's something wrong, something missing from the universe. And then I know what it is, Schubert. And this is Schubert is whatever else he is, is the greatest of all songsmiths. And he wrote over six hundred of the things. This is one of his sunniest songs. He's he there are a lot of songs with darkness in it. A lot of his music has darkness in it. But the great thing about Schubert is that he knew

Bernard Levin10:59

I think more than anybody else in the world, possibly even more than Mozart, and certainly as much as Mozart,

Bernard Levin11:06

that as I once put it, nothing bad matters and everything good does, and that's Hubert for you, and particularly in this song, which is a song of the movements of the Son of the Muses, and he's he's out in the country, you might say, and feeling very light hearted indeed.

Speaker 411:23

He's a pretty swindler, what cry of fright of him that is of a bounty, what cry of right of him, that is of a bounty.

Speaker 411:39

Then we derinde, as you felt and finders, Obliger Ring we sing.

Speaker 411:48

There's two for balls of black fish, the sky for me

Speaker 111:49

Oh, something like that.

Speaker 411:52

Taste my mind or man wool

Speaker 412:02

Stenzole Fliger or Triangus.

Speaker 412:13

See you.

Speaker 412:15

No and he knows what we should

Speaker 412:21

All that literally the house.

Bernard Levin12:24

Incidentally, although there is nothing tragic in that song...

Bernard Levin12:29

There is a tragedy attached to the singer, because Fritz Wunderlech is wonderful tenor.

Bernard Levin12:34

died very young indeed, I think more or less at the age of Schubert, and in a tragic accident the the stage he was on the operating stage, the stage collapsed and he was killed in the accident, and a great loss that lovely voice was to the world.

Presenter12:49

Benna, let's go back to now your your your childhood and growing up in in Camden. I mean, what was the ambition of the young Levin?

Bernard Levin12:54

Uh

Presenter12:55

It's what do you want to be?

Bernard Levin12:56

Oh, I wanted to be a politician, did you? Next uh it was a university teaching I was thinking of, being a Dom, and I dropped that fairly sharply. Then I didn't really know what to do, or what I wanted to do, more to the point, and I slid sideways into

Presenter13:09

I found that extraordinary because, I mean, there there's such a zest in your writing and there's such a natural skill and there's such a, of course, too, an enthusiasm for it that that it would seem to be a sort of natural wealth spring in you.

Bernard Levin13:19

Yeah, it wasn't. It wasn't. I don't know where it came from. Um it may have been there already and uh and gradually it uh came to life. Or possibly it because I couldn't do anything else, I had to become a journalist. And uh if if a man cannot uh succeed at any honest or demanding trade, that's more or less all he can do. So I've done it. Yeah.

Presenter13:38

What what were the start, what are the beginnings of th this uh this career?

Bernard Levin13:41

Started in actually I started in the BBC uh in radio, doing a a kind of news commentary programme, writing a script for it that is.

Bernard Levin13:50

And from there I went into magazines, and from there into national newspapers, and here I am.

Presenter13:56

I suppose it was The Guardian and writing about television that first gave you sort of first eminence, wasn't it, in

Bernard Levin14:01

Well, I first came to any notice when I became the political correspondent of The Spectator.

Presenter14:07

Oh, that was before, was it?

Bernard Levin14:08

Was it before? Wait a minute, wait a minute. They they ran concurrently for a time. That's right, they ran concurrently. The Guardian one was was the first in time. And that was because it was very bizarre, because when commercial television began in this country in nineteen fifty five,

Presenter14:08

It wasn't even f

Presenter14:09

It would be too late.

Bernard Levin14:23

The Manchester Guardian, as it was then, was then published entirely in Manchester, and only had a small London office for things that had to happen in London. And so the television critic in Manchester literally couldn't see I T V'cause the the w the Manchester station hadn't opened. So we split it. They asked me to become the the London T V critic. Then when Birmingham opened, which was the next one, for some anomaly or other, I could see Birmingham and she couldn't.

Bernard Levin14:47

And then when the managed one finally opened, she could see all television. By then we'd got it split like that. And so very odd idea. I did all the I T V and she did all the B B C and I stuck there for two and a half years and it very nearly killed me because if you think t some television is bad today,

Bernard Levin15:03

On both channels, all channels, and some television, my word is bad today, but if you think back to what commercial television was in its earliest days, you wouldn't believe it possible.

Bernard Levin15:13

Another choice of record, please, brother. Well, the next one is also fun.

Bernard Levin15:17

It's full staff. Again, it's one of those stories with a with only a cardboard villain, not a real one.

Bernard Levin15:23

And this is when he's reminiscing, Falstaff is reminiscing about his childhood when he was page to the Duke of Norfolk. And the whole point of it is he said he was so slim and tiny he could go through the eye of a needle. And look at me now, and Falstaff with his huge belly going on before him. And also I wanted this particular recording because Garant Evans, a marvellous, wonderful baritone and dear friend who retired not very long ago from the operatic stage after many years of delighting audiences including me, he is the Falstaff on this record.

Speaker 115:59

I'm gonna get it.

Bernard Levin15:59

Okay, I don't get the video.

Speaker 116:09

Is it a bitch hard?

Speaker 416:17

So I wouldn't care if you're dealing with your

Presenter16:23

But you mentioned that talking about uh or writing about television for a living, but I mean in the sixties of course you had a chance of making a living performing on television. Indeed, you were with that wonderful show, That Was the Week.

Speaker 116:30

Business.

Presenter16:32

Uh you start on that. L let's talk about that for a while. I mean it it seemed to me that

Presenter16:37

A lot of television nowadays, you look back at it, is is in fact disappointing. But I think that s show still has a quality that's lacking in a lot of shows today. Would you agree?

Bernard Levin16:45

Uh

Presenter16:46

Uh

Bernard Levin16:46

It may be so. I have always set my face against looking back in that sense. People still talk about that programme a great deal, I may say. It must have had a huge effect. Well, it did. We know it had a huge effect. It had a huge effect on television, for instance. Things were done on television after it that were not thought of before. So it was in that sense trailblazing. I enjoyed it. Uh I must say that ever since then, when every six months or so when it happens, some

Bernard Levin17:12

television producer rings up and says, We are thinking of doing a Saturday night satire programme. I wonder if you'd be interested. I put the phone down so hard I've sprained my wrist several times. Um as Heraclitus said, you cannot step twice into the same river.

Bernard Levin17:28

Anyhow, it was fun. It was huge fun. We were a lovely team. We all got on well together. And we amused the nation every Saturday night. Or most Saturday nights,'cause sometimes we didn't uh bring it off.

Presenter17:39

Since when, of course, you've you've it seems to me you've you've very carefully avoided overexposure on television. You've rationed your yourself, haven't you?

Bernard Levin17:46

Yes, I have. I think, first of all, there's a lot of programs I invited I just don't want to do, and that's all there is to it.

Bernard Levin17:53

Secondly, you're quite right. It it you i this phrase overexposure is a real thing. People do get sick of this man's face. Curiously enough, you'd think, well in that case, why don't they get sick of his words in print? Well maybe they do, but certainly not to the same extent. I think it's when the man's in your room, which is after all what people feel that on television, you finally get to if you see him day after day after day, you think, well get out of the room, will you?

Presenter18:19

But in fact, what you've done also too, quite cleverly, I mean, you've you've combined television with your enthusiasms, haven't you? One notably Walking. You did the series about Hannibal where you did. Yes, I did.

Bernard Levin18:27

Well yes there is.

Presenter18:29

Is it still one of your greatest?

Bernard Levin18:31

It is indeed I am I'm not a countryman. Indeed I am urban man personified. I I get scared in the country. First of all, the noise of the birds going tweeter, tweeter, and the leaves rustling, I can't get to sleep.

Bernard Levin18:43

So give me deep carcinogenic diesel fumes and a ring of pavement beneath my heels and I'm happy. But I love walking in towns. I love walking in London. I'm a Londoner born and I love the city, still deteriorated though it has and so I do do a great deal of walking. I would like to do more.

Bernard Levin19:01

Let's have another choice of record, please.

Bernard Levin19:04

Well the next one is a fairly familiar aria from Puccini, but Turin Dot. Turin Dot is really the only Puccini opera I can still stand. I gave up Madame Butterfly after the first couple of hearings. Then I gave up La Boem. I've now given up Tosca. I will only go to Tosca if there's some great new soprano or tenor promised and I'll try it. I find that that Puccini is very easily exhaustible.

Bernard Levin19:28

unlike the greatest composers. But it's very entertaining stuff, undoubtedly. Now this, Johnny, first of all, it's the only one I can still stand, as I say. Second, this particular recording is one of the most stunning things I've ever heard on a record. And third, it is well that is why it is so stunning by Eva Turner.

Bernard Levin20:45

It just takes your breath away, doesn't it? It really does. You think those those three repetitions of the of that last phrase higher each time the third time you can't believe your ears in the old phrase. You see no throat, ordinary human throat, could make such glorious sounds.

Presenter21:01

She could. Let's talk about about travel now, because that's another of your great consuming passions, isn't it? Whether be on foot or or whatever. You've in fact just brought out a new book called To the End of the Rhine, which is also going to be a T V series on on Channel Four. Tell me about this this journey. I mean, what what decided it?

Bernard Levin21:17

Well, it was

Bernard Levin21:19

When I did the Hannibal's Footsteps book and T V series, I wanted an encore and I didn't think I could follow another hero's footsteps. So I've thought of various possibilities and then I happened upon the Rhine. Now the Rhine is a river I've loved all my life. I've travelled a great deal of it and I know much of it very well indeed, and much of it also not at all, and bits in the middle which I know slightly. So it was very and it's a very, very varied river. It's got everything. It's got it it's got enormous quantities as well as qualities of history.

Bernard Levin21:50

Legends by the thousand.

Bernard Levin21:52

The Wars of Religion.

Bernard Levin21:54

Wine, wonderful wines along the Rhine. Music, a great deal of music. Uh it and it's very, very varied. Let's have another choice of record, please, man.

Bernard Levin22:04

Well, obviously I have to have Beethoven.

Bernard Levin22:06

And uh my word, that's a difficult choice. Curiously, al b though I've loved Beethoven all my life, when you're young you fall in love with Beethoven and you never fall out again, you can't. But when I when I was young it was obviously the symphonies and the concertos that uh and the and the overtures that blazed in me.

Speaker 122:21

Blaze

Bernard Levin22:23

As the years go by I have moved more and more towards Beethoven's chamber music, and particularly the quartets, and the string quartets, and his piano sonatas. There are endless depths in them. You can't you could never in a million lifetimes you couldn't exhaust what they say to you.

Bernard Levin22:40

And this one, the Waldstein sonata, is one to me one of the most profound and moving of all his piano works, of all his works indeed.

Bernard Levin22:49

And I particularly wanted this recording by Alfred Brendel, because I think Brendel is now the finest living exponent of Beethoven. He did, a couple of years ago, he did all 32 piano sonatas in a series of seven recitals at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, and I went to every one of them, and it was a marvellous experience. It refreshed one's life, quite literally.

Bernard Levin23:12

And this from the The Slow Movement, one of his most profound and beautiful oh, curiously enough, it was his second choice. He wrote a slow movement with which he wasn't satisfied, not because it wasn't any good, but because he didn't think it fitted really with the rest of it. And so this is, so to speak, the replacement movement.

Presenter24:30

Bernard, can I talk a bit about the point in your life where you opted out of journalism and for 18 months and you sort of went away and refreshed yourself? Why did you do that?

Bernard Levin24:40

Oh, that was wonderful. That was the most wonderful thing I ever did and the most sensible, possibly the only sensible thing I've ever done. I was exhausted in every possible sense of the word. I was displeased with my work. I was uh stale.

Bernard Levin24:55

And I thought there's only one thing to do, and and I thought first what there was to do was to cut down the amount of work I did.

Bernard Levin25:02

Uh which is a very obvious and sensible thing for people to do, work very hard and do a great deal.

Bernard Levin25:06

uh if only because of the ever looming coronary for people of my age and activity. And then I thought, no, there's a trap in that. If I cut down, then it'll creep up again and I'll be back where I started and it really isn't enough. So I took a deep breath and quit everything, all my journalistic work, completely.

Bernard Levin25:24

I think I only wrote three pieces and two of them were obituaries in all the time I was away. And I also the other thing I spotted was that if I set a term to it, if I said I'll do it for six months or a year,

Bernard Levin25:36

Then as if I said a year, then after one month had gone by there was only eleven left, and then ten and the and the prison door was shutting again. So I said to myself, I will stay away as long as I feel like, and when I feel the juices flowing again, I'll come back to journalism. And that's precisely what I did. And it lasted exactly eighteen months. And it was marvelous.

Speaker 125:43

It's

Presenter25:54

And what did you do in that time?

Bernard Levin25:55

I did a great deal of nothing. I realized I had not done nothing for 25 years at least. I had not sat on my sofa doing nothing. In the occasions when I did sit on my sofa in those 25 years, I was either reading or I was listening to music, but I wasn't doing nothing. Nothing was the thing I found most hard to do. Work is important, and if you like your work, you love your work, as I do, until I got this choked feeling. It's important, of course it's important, and you must take it seriously, but you must not believe that we're on the earth to do our work. If you are, if you're Beethoven, then you are on earth to do your work, obviously, but I'm not. Most of us aren't. Work is important.

Bernard Levin26:34

for all of us in many ways, but it isn't the only thing in life and I don't even think it's the most important thing in life and shouldn't be.

Presenter26:41

Uh

Bernard Levin26:41

Another

Presenter26:41

Let's choose a

Bernard Levin26:42

Reco, please.

Bernard Levin26:43

Well, this is not music at all, it's words. It's a sonnet of Shakespeare, my favourite sonnet in fact.

Bernard Levin26:49

And it's uh read by John Gilgood.

Bernard Levin26:53

And I wanted this because drama on radio I think never really comes off successfully, but of course poetry does immensely successfully.

Speaker 427:03

My mistress's eyes are nothing like the sun.

Speaker 427:07

Coral is far more red than her lips red.

Speaker 427:11

If snow be white, why, then, her breasts are done If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.

Speaker 427:19

I have seen roses, damask, red, and white, But no such roses see I in her cheeks.

Speaker 427:25

And in some perfumes is there more delight Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.

Speaker 427:31

I love to hear her speak, yet well I know That music hath a far more pleasing sound.

Speaker 427:38

I grant I never saw a goddess go My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground.

Speaker 427:45

And yet, by heaven, I think my love is rare

Speaker 427:49

As any she belied with false compare.

Presenter27:54

What do you think uh Sir John Gilgard like Beethoven put on earth to work?

Presenter27:58

Yes, I think he was. I think he was. Only you listen to that, he must have been, mustn't he? What about the the view that you have of us? I mean, you you've spent a lifetime writing about the world, observing it, um, writing about your prejudices and your and your passions. What what what kind of overall view do you have of it? I mean, is it optimistic or?

Bernard Levin28:17

Oh yes, I'm I am an eternal optimist. Absolutely certain that the world is the right way up. When you look at the world and the horrors and terrible things that happen in the wars and the murders and the tragedies and the

Bernard Levin28:30

Poverty and um you'd think the man must be mad to be an optimist in this. But he is. This man, at any rate, is an optimist. Mad or sane. I believe that there is a meaning and a purpose in the universe and that we are all part of it.

Bernard Levin28:43

I have no religious faith in the sense that I don't adhere to any creed or church, but I'm quite certain that the world is not an accident, the universe is not an accident, and nor are we. And we do have a kind of duty. Even if we're not like Beethoven or John Gielgud put on earth to do our great creative work, then we still do have a duty. We have a duty to understand what life is about. And if that's oversimplifying, but that's the way I believe it. And because I believe that, I believe that the whole thing is moving very slowly and with enormous backward steps to a higher and higher plane. And I'm an optimist because I believe I once said, and to my astonishment, my stupefaction, that what I said was immediately challenged by a lot of people. I once said it seemed to me the most obvious and true statement I could possibly make other than twice two equals four. I said there are far more good people in the world than bad ones. Now that seems to me to be self-evidently true, but more to the point, it seems to me tremendously important. It that can't be an accident or a coincidence. I don't believe, anyhow.

Bernard Levin29:47

There are far more good people in the world in the world than bad ones. The bad ones, some of them are very, very bad indeed. But but whoever's in charge leaves us to work out our own salvation, and I think we do.

Presenter30:00

Final choice of record, madam, please.

Bernard Levin30:03

Well the last one is from Handel. It's from the Messiah which I think is in curiously in a sense underrated. It's very very popular but people enjoy it as the great oratorio particularly at the appropriate religious season. But the fact is that I think it's one of the most profound and marvellous pieces of music in the entire canon and I know that my Redeemer liveth which is the aria I've chosen from it. In part three you know it's the most familiar perhaps in the whole work apart from the hallelujah chorus and it's a precious and beautiful thing but but this particular recording I wanted the Kiritakanawa singing it because I might as well make no bones about it. I'm raving mad in love with her and I always will be.

Speaker 431:02

Yeah.

Speaker 431:03

Fish far

Speaker 431:31

I really live, and that he shall stay.

Presenter31:55

Bernard Loving, you're finally now on your desert island. Would you enjoy it, do you think?

Presenter32:00

Uh f

Bernard Levin32:01

First of all, it would have to be a very lush desert island, because I would have to be able to reach up and pluck the fruit from the tree for my lunch, because I'm incapable of catching anything, or setting a trap, or taking a fish, or anything of that kind. And secondly, it would have to be a very temperate climate, because I'm equally incapable of doing anything with my hands. I couldn't build even the simplest hut of palm fronds, so I would have to lie out at night. So those two things are absolutely essential.

Bernard Levin32:28

I wouldn't say I would enjoy it, but I could be content there, because I've always been drawn.

Bernard Levin32:33

Uh something in me has always been drawn to solitude and I could um live alone without uh without despair.

Presenter32:39

You have the records as a company. You have to imagine that a tidal wave comes along and it wipes away seven records. You're left with one of the eight that you've chosen. Which would that be?

Bernard Levin32:47

I'm going to cheat. I want another different record. But don't worry, I'm not demanding another I want a record of Pellias and Melisson by Debussy because I hate that work so much. I'll be glad to see it swept away in the tidal wave with everything else.

Presenter32:50

Corporate

Presenter33:02

And what about the the book? You have the works of Shakespeare and the Bible. What's the book to be?

Bernard Levin33:08

I'm afraid it's going to have to be the Red Guide Michelin to France, so I can dwell upon the great meals I've eaten in France and plan, uh, if I ever get off the island, the ones I shall then eat.

Bernard Levin33:21

And what about thee? Luxury object

Presenter33:23

Uh

Bernard Levin33:23

Inanimate. The luxury object is a laptop, as I believe it's called, battery-powered, very extensive word processor. And the reason I want that is that if I stayed on your island for 40 years, I might, only might, by the end of it, work out how to work the damn thing. Thank you.

Presenter33:44

Yeah.

Speaker 133:51

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