Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Desert Island Discs
Presented by Michael Parkinson
Agony aunt who wrote Woman magazine's problem page for 38 years as Evelyn Holme, answering readers' problems from acne to abusive husbands.
Eight records
I was a great fan of Eileen Fowler. And I did exercises to her records for years.
Won't You Buy My Sweet Blooming Lavender?
a memory of my old gran, who was born in eighteen sixty five. And I remember her singing this to me in her cracked old cockney voice
Brandenburg Concerto No. 3, first movement
English Chamber Orchestra, directed by Raymond Leppard
this is a serious one. And actually, of course, I could have quite easily chosen Bach, Mozart and Beethoven for the whole lot
Renata Tebaldi, with Richard Bonynge
My husband during the war was stationed in a little Italian village for almost a year, a village called Yaci, and it was the birthplace of an Italian composer called Pergolese. And we became awfully fond of the things that Piergolese had written, among them some lovely little Italian love songs
The Shepherd on the Rock (Der Hirt auf dem Felsen)
Elly Ameling, with Guy Deplus (clarinet) and Irwin Gage (piano)
this is a testimony of friendship. My husband and a great friend of his used to sit and listen to records, and when I became a friend of both of them, I was allowed to listen to the records too. And this is one that is a celebration of friendship.
Sinner, Please Don't Let This Harvest Pass
I must have a a good hearty male voice. And in my first job, next door to the house in Buckingham Street where I lived, lived Paul Robeson. And I actually saw him walking up and down like an ordinary human being. And he was a splendid looking person. And his voice is magnificent.
The keepsakes
The book
The biggest atlas in the world
unspecified
because I can read maps like a book, and I want it to be an atlas with all the routes and the roads marked on it, of every country and continent in the world.
The luxury
a little rose bush (Ina Harkness)
my greatest pleasure has been planting a few things, and they actually flowered for me... Roses, you can't beat a rose, so something like an Ina Harkness with a nice smell, I'll take that.
In conversation
Presenter asks
How has all that emotion and anxiety, albeit second hand, affected you and your life over the years?
I think very largely to Although I'm I am emotional to distrust emotion, because what you do In an emotion what you do in anger, or indeed what you do in grief, or what you do when overwhelmed with fright, are very unreliable actions. I think what I've learnt about emotion is that you were given a brain in order to think about your feelings. And it's quite a difficult process. But that's what I've learned about emotion, and that's the things that people have done emotionally have very often been things that they've bitterly regretted afterwards.
Presenter asks
How are you going to cope on this desert island? Has all of this vicarious living taught you to find peace with yourself? Will you be all right alone?
Oh yes, I'm all right alone. Largely because I don't feel particularly alone. I mean, I notice that scientists have just realized what most of us have all known forever, and that is that the world is a living entity. And I mean, even if I didn't have any sort of religious faith, I would feel I was a part of a living world. Which doesn't make me alone.
The recording
Timestamps play the recording from that turn
Speaker 1
Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.
Speaker 1
The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen eighty eight, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.
Presenter
My Castaway this week is a woman who spent her professional life listening to the problems of the nation, from acne to the menopause, from the misery of a savage husband to the despair of unrequited love. They all landed on her desk. For thirty-eight years, Peggy Makins attempted on the problem page of Woman magazine to provide answers where there were some, comfort where there were none, because she was perhaps the most famous agony aunt of them all, Evelyn Holme.
Presenter
Peggy, thirty-eight years coming up with the answers. You must be the wisest woman in Christendom. No, no, no, very very foolish most of the time. My family would give you a whole list of my foolishnesses. Now, how has all that emotion, that that anxiety, albeit second hand, how has it affected you and your life over the years? I think very largely to
Presenter
Although I'm I am emotional to distrust emotion, because what you do
Presenter
In an emotion what you do in anger, or indeed what you do in grief, or what you do when overwhelmed with fright, are very unreliable actions.
Presenter
I think what I've learnt about emotion is that you were given a brain in order to think about your feelings.
Presenter
And it's quite a difficult process. But that's what I've learned about emotion, and that's the things that people have done emotionally.
Presenter
have very often been things that they've bitterly regretted afterwards.
Presenter
It must have been a terribly depressing job, though, that. I can't imagine you rushing to work in the morning thinking, Oh, this is going to be fun. Oh, no, no, no, I didn't think that. It wasn't in that sense depressing, because
Presenter
Once I started answering these problems, I was able to laugh at them before I ever saw them, but when I saw them you couldn't laugh at them any more.
Presenter
That th that wasn't funny.
Presenter
But then you see I've usually laughed at me because I mean I am basically a figure of fun.
Presenter
How are you going to cope on this desert island, then? I mean, has all of this vicarious living taught you to find peace with yourself? Will you be all right alone? Oh yes, I'm all right alone. Largely because I don't
Presenter
feel particularly alone. I mean, I notice that scientists have just realized what most of us have all known forever, and that is that the world is a living entity.
Presenter
And I mean, even if I didn't have any sort of religious faith, I would feel I was a part of a living world.
Presenter
Which doesn't make me alone.
Presenter
Will you be staying on this island for long? I've no idea. I'm quite a good swimmer, so if I can see anything I'll probably strike out towards it. Let's hear your first record. Oh, well, my first record, very important, is an exercise record. I was a great fan of Eileen Fowler.
Presenter
And I did exercises to her records for years. I did mine in the living room downstairs, and my husband was doing his in the bedroom upstairs.
Presenter
And we met in a silent, bad tempered breakfast.
Speaker 2
Uh
Speaker 2
So here we go. We're all ready to swing left and right and left and clap. And swing left and right and left reach and clap. Right, left and right reach out and clap. Swing left, right, left
Presenter
As young as you feel with Eileen Fowler. I can remember my mother doing that, but you always used to well, she always used to bump into the bed, didn't you? Yes, yes. Well, you see, I did it in the living room, so I bumped in into the sideboard.
Speaker 2
Yes.
Presenter
Very practical choice, Piggy. But you are a very practical but I mean you're a coper, aren't you?
Speaker 2
Good job.
Presenter
Yes, I've had to do things as I once I I had my palm red and somebody looked at my square fingers and said, You're a worker and I thought, What an awful doom But in point of fact, yes, I I do do things as well. But you were a bit of a problem child.
Presenter
I think I must have been a most ghastly problem, child, because the first thing was that I absolutely hated being a girl.
Presenter
Because, you see, I was my grandparents had had three daughters. All of them my grandfather felt was a, you know, a nasty, second rate sort of thing to have. He didn't realise it was his fault that he had girls.
Presenter
and two of them had the weakness to die before they were twenty one. My mother was the only one left. And then my mother produced a child who had, of course, was going to be the first grandson, and it was me.
Presenter
So grandad removed the golden sovereign that he'd got already for a boy, and substituted a ten shilling note because it was a girl.
Presenter
And I'm afraid
Presenter
I felt being a girl was a nasty slur.
Presenter
Your mother then produced the baby brothers, and you hated them.
Presenter
I hated the first one. I didn't really know I was jealous. I just knew that I felt awful. This made you really rather a complicated little person.
Speaker 2
This made you really
Presenter
I was cross-grained.
Presenter
I wasn't prepared to accept any or any of the conventional beliefs.
Presenter
I wouldn't believe that girls were less strong or less brainy.
Presenter
Which of course they are on the whole.
Presenter
And
Presenter
I grew up.
Presenter
thinking that that um
Presenter
If women could get out of marriage, you know they would.
Presenter
How wrong man can be. So at this stage, Peggy Makins planned to be a spinster. Oh, yes. She planned never to have children.
Peggy Makins
She planned never to
Presenter
It's not exactly the uh description of an agony aunt in the making, is it? No, it isn't, and it was the last thing I wanted to be.
Presenter
When it happened that I became Evelyn Holme by accident, I kept it as as dark a secret as I possibly could because I thought it was so shameful. We'll hear about that in a moment. Let's hear your second record.
Speaker 2
Uh
Presenter
Oh well, my second record is a memory of my old gran, who was born in eighteen sixty five.
Presenter
And I remember her singing this to me in her cracked old cockney voice because she used to hear it.
Presenter
in the mornings round where she lived in I think it was Bethnal Green in those days.
Presenter
and it was a cry of London.
Peggy Makins
Won't you buy my sweet blooming lavender?
Peggy Makins
Sixteen brown chest for a penny
Speaker 2
Just for a th
Peggy Makins
Won't you buy my sweet blooming lavender?
Peggy Makins
Sixteen brunches are a family
Peggy Makins
You buy one.
Speaker 2
But what?
Peggy Makins
You buy it twice, it makes your clothes smell very nice.
Peggy Makins
Won't you buy my sweet blooming lavender?
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Peggy Makins
Sixteen branches for a penny.
Speaker 2
Won't you buy my sweet blooming lavender sung by
Presenter
Elsa Lanchester. So here we have this rather miserable little girl, introverted, unsure of her role in life why, indeed, she's here at all. I mean, was there any place for God in all of us? I was very busy, sort of thinking what a nasty
Presenter
person God was. I realized I suppose when I was a bit older, I realized that the God that I was refusing to believe in was was one I'd manufactured myself. You know, I'd I'd made the figure, like you might make a guy force.
Presenter
and that there was some sort of ruling power.
Presenter
And sometime in the teens I thought, Well, these people who seem to know about God, you know, they all seem to have done it through prayer. And I thought, Well, I don't really believe in God, but I can pray.
Presenter
in a sort of thorough spirit of of um despising myself for doing it even.
Presenter
And of course the first
Presenter
The time I remember getting an answer to prayer came as such a shock.
Presenter
It was when my mother was very ill.
Presenter
dying, in fact, of cancer, and I was trying to run her business.
Presenter
running my own business, and I remember coming out of her bedroom one morning and thinking I'd got too much on my shoulders and I really couldn't you know, it it was all to them and my brothers.
Presenter
And there was a war and
Presenter
I remember sort of thinking, This is all too much for me, really, you know.
Presenter
And
Presenter
I didn't know, but of course that was actually a prayer. That was a real prayer. That wasn't anything intellectual. It was straight out of the heart. And was it answered? Absolutely. Bucket of cold water over the head. What exactly, it said coldly, is wrong with you?
Presenter
You're young you've got a great deal to do.
Presenter
Isn't it your mother?
Presenter
Who is rarely?
Presenter
facing something difficult.
Presenter
Why did it bring me up short?
Presenter
And I thought, Oh, yes, that's how prayers are answered.
Presenter
'Cause I'd rather sort of
Presenter
The soft arms.
Presenter
There practically never is a soft answer.
Presenter
Let's have another record.
Presenter
Yes, I think that that perhaps some
Presenter
leads on natural I'm a Quaker, you see, but but uh
Presenter
I'd love some church bells.
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Presenter
Peal of twelve bells at Canterbury Cathedral.
Presenter
Well, now, Peggy Makins, you wanted to be a journalist, and aged fifteen you wrote to the Daily Express. Oh, yes, and the Times, and the Daily Mail.
Presenter
And the News Chronicle?
Presenter
Daily Mir No, I didn't write to the Daily Mirror. I rather despised the tabloids, even in those days, so I read them, of course. Why did you want to be a journalist?
Presenter
Well, because I'd written ever since I could hold a pen or pencil. I had written in exercise books, I'd written stories, and I'd written
Presenter
Articles. The world must have seemed then a very promising place for women in a way. I mean, in the in the early thirties. Well, although there was the Great Depression now, you've got women in Parliament. Amy Johnson had flown round the world.
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Presenter
True enough. You see, I thought then that we'd got the door open, and all we had to do was push and of course as I was firmly of the opinion that the moment women had got other things to do they would stop getting married.
Presenter
and having children, and they would all flood into the new
Presenter
Opportunities, you know, the new professions.
Presenter
I really did have left out of me, I think, the kind of hunger for children which is as natural, I think, to most women as a hunger for food. Because, of course, at that stage, if you weren't married or planning to be married when you were twenty-two, you were virtually on the shelf. Well, yes, absolutely. And I certainly wasn't planning to be married at all.
Presenter
I was busily doing my best to
Presenter
dislike and spurn the entire male sex. But of course I've always adored men really. I don't understand them at all. I I think they're the most fascinating, peculiar luxury, you know, to have about the place. They're so decorative.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Presenter
Let's have another record.
Presenter
Yes, this is this is goes back to my you know, my teens. Well I I liked dance music. We didn't have pop in those I it wasn't called pop, but I loved Jack Payne. And he was on the B B C four P M every day.
Presenter
And any old thing of Jack Payne's will do me.
Peggy Makins
Don't you eat this kind of meat? No I ask you very quantidually in cheap
Presenter
Yeah.
Speaker 2
H
Presenter
Yeah.
Speaker 2
T-Suite, Jack Payne and His Orchestra, recorded in 1927.
Speaker 2
So, Peggy, there you are, aged twenty one
Presenter
One, in nineteen thirty seven, you, Peggy Makins, were subbing the problem page of woman and hating every moment of it. You thought it lowered the tone of the magazine. Well, I thought it did. Because I thought they showed women in such a poor light. I thought it they showed, you see, that women couldn't manage their lives, that they needed to help to ask this this anonymous character how to cope with their husbands, boyfriends, brothers, parents.
Presenter
Employers and and obviously I thought, well, any sensible woman can obviously cope with all those people and you know.
Presenter
Yeah.
Speaker 2
Why was it called Evelyn Home?
Presenter
Because the first person who wrote for it was a Viennese psychologist whose own name couldn't possibly be revealed because if it had been, she would have been.
Presenter
knocked off the ranks of the professional psychologists. So she made a name which was supposed to be psychologically perfect for a problem page. And the Evelyn was supposed to be the Eve, the temptress, the sexy side of woman, and the home's what every woman wants.
Presenter
And I said it was so bogus that nobody would believe it, but they didn't take any notice of me.
Speaker 2
Uh
Presenter
And why was it always tucked in the back of the magazine as if it half wasn't supposed to be there? I can remember opening it up. No, but they all were. They all were. No, no, no. It was a perfectly good reason. It's because of the reader, and you'll see them to day in the public libraries, the reader who always opens everything at the back.
Speaker 1
Look at the old
Presenter
So you put at the back of your publication something that was going to rivet the attention.
Presenter
And you have a look at any almost any magazine, not only women's magazine, and you will find that the on the back page there is something that is going to hold the attention. I thought it was'cause it was a bit naughty. I mean, when I was little and I used to read it, particularly sometimes you used to just print answers and not the questions. Yes, we came out four or five weeks after the actual
Speaker 2
When I was little and
Presenter
date of doing the letters. And it was the only way we had of getting to people, let us say, who had V D.
Presenter
or girls who were already three or four months pregnant, and there was nothing to say except, for goodness sake, get to your doctor.
Presenter
And if it intrigued the other readers, well, that was a good thing.
Presenter
But if you disapproved of it all so much, how did you come to take it over? I mean, you became Evelyn Holmes. It was some.
Speaker 2
It couldn't be
Presenter
Thrust upon me when our psychologist and her husband.
Presenter
had the chance to go to America where they had a practice waiting for them.
Presenter
She stopped doing the page, and I had been her sub. I'd looked after the back page.
Presenter
And my editor said to me
Presenter
Very psychologically correctly. You're far too young, aren't you, to look after that page for a bit.
Presenter
And I was so furious at being it being suggested that at twenty one I was too young.
Presenter
But I remember sort of saying, Well, I think I might be allowed to try to do it.
Presenter
Miss Greave, who's my editor's name.
Presenter
And whereupon she agreed very rapidly, and said, Well, you'd better get on with it, hadn't you? Because we're waiting for the copy.
Presenter
And I was caught.
Presenter
And it was my own weakness.
Presenter
And thirty-eight years later, you were still doing it. That's right. Let's have your fifth record. Now, this is a serious one. And actually, of course, I could have.
Presenter
Quite easily.
Presenter
chosen Bach, Mozart and Beethoven for the whole lot, but this is a Brandenburg concerto.
Presenter
Part of the first movement of Bach's Brandenburg Concerto, No. three, The English Chamber Orchestra, directed by Raymond Lepard.
Presenter
Well, there you were, Peggy Makins. You were evil in home, twenty one years old. But help was at hand, because um you fell in love.
Presenter
Well, I didn't fall in love until I was twenty three, actually, and I fell I really did fall in love. It was exactly thinking it over it really was like falling into a large bath of warm lemon jelly.
Presenter
No's all sweet.
Presenter
Auto opens.
Presenter
I was working in my mother's pub. We had a pub in those days. And
Presenter
It was the first time that I'd met lots of men. And, you know, pubs then were much fuller of men than they were of anything else. And so, as it were, one had a choice. But, um
Presenter
But I this was a curly haired young man.
Presenter
with horn rimmed spectacles, tall and thin.
Presenter
Well, he kept my quotations. You see, he was able to talk books.
Presenter
And he knew Shakespeare better than I did. At the same time, he was an athlete.
Presenter
And
Presenter
An outdoor boy and all the sorts of things that I really thought I rather despised and found I didn't, you know. And he was just a character, and I loved him.
Speaker 1
Could only he was
Presenter
Now these were the war years. What were the most common problems that you um listened to? Well, I think they were problems arising a very you see, sixty percent of the problems were always marital problems. In the war years they were problems of separation.
Presenter
But very often still in the war years there were problems of
Presenter
finance, of what to do about children.
Presenter
of homes, not having them and
Presenter
Perhaps not being able to cope with the home you've got. But hasty marriages, illegitimacy? Yes, oh lots of hasty marriages, lots of illegitimacy.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Presenter
Hasty marriages of course came home to roost later.
Presenter
Lots of hasty love affairs.
Presenter
You see, during the actual war I never ever told anyone either to get married or not to get married. They told me what they wanted to do. And all you could do was to say, Well, if I were in your place, I would think about this.
Presenter
Do you know?
Presenter
Let's say
Presenter
a couple had begotten a child. He was going to go should they marry.
Presenter
Say, well, it is it was a very bad thing to have an illegitimate child. I mean, in those days, it did show up.
Presenter
Tato stigma.
Presenter
Yes, it was a stigma, and also you didn't get a a wife's allance if you weren't a wife.
Presenter
So you said, well, you know, here are things to be said for marriage.
Presenter
And you also did say, if you are going to sleep with a boy, do remember you'll probably have a baby, because that was the case in those days.
Presenter
Kind.
Presenter
A lot of girls really did think that it couldn't happen to them. And as time went on through the forties and the fifties and the sixties, w were there, during those years, taboo subjects for your column? Well, not exactly taboo. I mean, not awkward, but the the unusual subjects, homosexuality, lesbianism.
Presenter
perversions of various kinds.
Presenter
They really didn't come up very often. If they did come up, they came up in the private post, and you were able to answer with a private letter. So you didn't have to print them very often. You also, of course, used to answer with some wonderful euphemisms. Well, we needed some, because when we began in'thirty seven' we had a lovely Chief Sub, she's now dead.
Presenter
And she had come from a very prim original women's magazine. We we were, for instance, never allowed to use the word bottom. Never. It always was the lower edge or the hem.
Presenter
And we certainly couldn't use the word breasts. We could say breast, but not breasts. That was quite and of course bust was oh, bust, yes, you could say bust, yes, yes. And I think the of course, you know, at one stage our heroines were never allowed to drink anything but cider.
Speaker 1
Thias.
Presenter
You also used to talk about a particular habit. Oh, certainly, masturbation, yes. I remember, curiously enough, I remember the first time that word was ever said on the air. It was on a Woman's R programme, and I was part of a panel.
Presenter
And a woman JP, rather famous at the time, actually enunciated the word.
Presenter
Your sixth record, please, Peggy.
Presenter
Now this is special.
Presenter
My husband during the war was stationed in a little Italian village for almost a year, a village called Yaci, and it was the it was the birthplace of an Italian composer called Pergolese.
Presenter
And we became awfully fond of the things that Piergolese had written, among them some lovely little Italian love songs, and I'd love one of those.
Peggy Makins
We sweethos our speed, so burgeoned us.
Peggy Makins
Oh, Lord of thee, mighty, for thee I know they do all.
Peggy Makins
Who's he hippie?
Peggy Makins
I'm not sure.
Peggy Makins
Most values of Jana, Matima. Most of us, say so Jana, Ah devil.
Presenter
If You Love Me, by Pergolesi, sung there by Renata Tibaldi, accompanied by RICHARD BONNING.
Presenter
What do you think now of some of the um agony columns we read? Do you not feel sometimes they're written more to titillate than to comfort? Well, it'll depend where they're published. I mean, if they're published in in what is going to be a a sexy tabloid,
Presenter
or a sexy Sunday, then they've got to be sexy. People do have
Presenter
sex problems. But in a woman's magazine, on the whole, the problems are wider, they're more domestic, they're to do with everything, not just sex. But do you think it's wrong to use people's problems to uh entertain?
Presenter
Well, I can't say whether it's wrong or not, and I don't know really whether they entertain. They certainly.
Presenter
interest people. I think if you deliberately hype them up
Presenter
with big headlines and things of that kind, then possibly.
Presenter
You're cheapening the whole idea. But at at the same time, if you're giving some good help.
Presenter
Then maybe the one thing cancels out the other. Now, of course, today we have abortion on demand, we have easy access to birth control, we have an acceptance that couples can live together without being married, they can have children without being married. What do you think of all of those developments? Do you approve?
Presenter
Well, it's not really a question of approving. These are things that have happened because of various discoveries. I mean, they discovered a a birth control pill instead of using equipment. They've
Presenter
Made divorce easier because the old methods of getting a divorce were plainly ridiculous. I mean, when you had to sort of fake.
Presenter
you know, a night in Brighton to sort of prove that you really disliked each other intensely. What I think I've learned as I've grown older is that people do find
Presenter
marriage very difficult. It's something that that demands a tremendous effort, and today people aren't prepared.
Presenter
To make quite that much effort because there isn't quite as much at stake. In the old days, if you got a divorce and you were a woman, you had three young children.
Presenter
You were going to be extremely poor.
Presenter
And
Presenter
People were going to say she couldn't keep her man.
Presenter
Today they simply say, Well, she has a very good job. She's perfectly able to look after her children.
Presenter
Her ex-husband is going to say it too. So he is not going to make the same effort to keep her, and she isn't going to make the same effort to keep him. Another record, please.
Presenter
Oh yes now this is a testimony of friendship.
Presenter
My husband and a great friend of his used to sit and listen to records, and when I became a friend of both of them, I was allowed to listen to the records too. And this is one that is a celebration of friendship.
Presenter
It's The Shepherd on the Rock by Schubert. It's a lovely sort of trio of voice and and instrumentalists, and it reminds me of all our friends and our youth.
Presenter
And
Presenter
Oh, you know, here's
Presenter
To the past.
Peggy Makins
It's tears and time.
Peggy Makins
Won't a see, won't you see now?
Speaker 1
Wanted to see you.
Peggy Makins
I must keep it dreamy for you.
Peggy Makins
She does agent for the delivery of
Speaker 1
Sage and for the daily heaven.
Presenter
The Shepherd on the Rock by Schubert, part of a performance by Elie Ameling, with Guy de Plus, clarinet, and Erwin Gage, piano.
Presenter
Well now, Peggy Makins, you're in your seventies, and you tell me that you're looking forward to death. I certainly am.
Presenter
I can't think of anything that thrills me more.
Presenter
No.
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None.
Presenter
I think this is largely through what you might, in my case, laughingly call a life of prayer.
Presenter
and a very strong feeling of of everyone's being very much held in the hand of
Presenter
more than held in the hand of God, being part of the hand of God.
Presenter
And also the awful feeling that really nothing stops here, that we've all got something else to do.
Speaker 2
But do you feel you've done everything you've got to do here?
Presenter
No, no, probably not. I mean, that's why I'm probably still here. There is some other thing that I've got to do. I'm I'm annoyed about it, because it would have suited me very well indeed.
Presenter
To die much earlier. I always wanted to die young. It always struck me that to die before you got old and decrepit.
Presenter
Was a gift. And it it I know it sounds a a gruesome sort of thing to say, but I don't mean it, so I am not sorry for anyone who dies.
Presenter
I'm awfully sorry for the people.
Presenter
who mourn them, who miss them.
Presenter
That I know about. I know about grief. But I feel that to die is a culmination of of living. It's it's the next thing.
Presenter
And you also believe in euthanasia.
Presenter
Well, I think you know, I look about occasionally and I think of f you think of the paragraphs in the papers about all you young people supporting with your work, all us old people.
Presenter
And I know that there are a great many of us who would very gladly.
Presenter
Nip off
Presenter
If we had the opportunity.
Presenter
while we are still enjoying it.
Presenter
And I wouldn't stop anyone. I wonder then, Peggy, if if you're alone on this desert island, you'd bother to fend for yourself. I mean, you could have a Oh, I'm much too interested in food and drink.
Presenter
Yes, I like Oscar Wilde, when in despair I d I take nothing but food and drink. And as I'm constantly in despair.
Presenter
I mean, I eat and drink far too well. So you won't be hoping on the island for a sort of nice, quiet, private death? Oh, yes, I wouldn't mind that. I mean, I'd assume I don't like pain. I mean, I want to suffer. You see, I was brought up on two islands, Robinson Cru well, three islands. Robinson Crusoe's family Robinson and a lovely thing called Coral Island by RM Ballantyne about three boys on a on a desert island.
Presenter
I'd enjoy a bit of it anyway, and I yes, I I'm reasonably practical. I mean, I c I know when to come in out of the rain.
Presenter
There'd probably be a cave or something.
Presenter
Shall we hear your eighth record? Yes, and I must have a a good hearty male voice. And in my first job, next door to the house in Buckingham Street where I lived, lived Paul Robeson. And I actually saw him walking up and down like an ordinary human being. And he was a splendid looking person. And his voice is magnificent. So I don't really mind, but I would like...
Presenter
A spiritual which is not too familiar.
Presenter
because he sang spirituals like an angel.
Peggy Makins
See a praise don't let his heart
Peggy Makins
August
Peggy Makins
In our please don't let this harvest earth.
Peggy Makins
And uh
Peggy Makins
My God is a mighty man of war.
Peggy Makins
My God is a mighty man of
Peggy Makins
My God is a mighty matter.
Peggy Makins
In a
Peggy Makins
So let's
Presenter
Sinner, please don't let this harvest pass by Paul Robeson. Will that do, Peggy?
Presenter
Yes, that'll do nicely. And are you going to choose one of these records? Because you see seven of them are going to be swept away from you. Which one would you like? Yes, I've thought about that really hard, and and
Presenter
The obvious choice would be the Brandenburg, but I'm not going to make it.
Presenter
I am going to choose the church bills.
Presenter
Church bells sounding out across this wonderful desert island. Yes, yes, would bring me.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Presenter
Back to
Presenter
Well, the greatest reality.
Presenter
Now, as everybody knows, you have the Bible with you, and you have the complete works of Shakespeare.
Presenter
What other book would you like us to give you?
Presenter
I don't know whether it exists, but I want the biggest atlas in the world, because I can read maps like a book, and I want it to be an atlas with all the routes and the roads marked on it.
Presenter
of every country and continent in the world. Is there such a book? I don't know that there is, but there are beautiful and wonderful atlases which give you both the political boundaries and the contours.
Peggy Makins
And
Presenter
And all they very often throw in things like weather maps. And that would be wonderful. Pour over it and dream. I can go back to Europe.
Speaker 2
That would be wonderful.
Presenter
Or I can adventure in Asia where I've never been. So
Presenter
And you'll
Speaker 1
And you Your luxury
Presenter
Repair.
Speaker 1
Yes, that's how I
Presenter
Yes, that's how I thought.
Presenter
I want to take.
Presenter
A little rose bush
Presenter
Why do you want to do that? Well, because one of the greatest pleasur I'm a shocking gardener, and I always fought my husband about the garden. I was gardener's mate with my teeth gritted.
Presenter
But, since I've had a tiny garden of my own, I moved away from our big garden.
Presenter
My greatest pleasure has been planting a few things, and they actually flowered for me.
Presenter
And so
Presenter
Roses, you can't beat a rose, so something like an Ina Harkness with a nice smell, I'll take that.
Presenter
You shall have it. And Peggy Makins, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.
Speaker 1
You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.
Presenter asks
Why did you want to be a journalist?
Well, because I'd written ever since I could hold a pen or pencil. I had written in exercise books, I'd written stories, and I'd written Articles.
Presenter asks
What were the most common problems that you listened to during the war years?
Well, I think they were problems arising a very you see, sixty percent of the problems were always marital problems. In the war years they were problems of separation. But very often still in the war years there were problems of finance, of what to do about children, of homes, not having them and Perhaps not being able to cope with the home you've got. But hasty marriages, illegitimacy? Yes, oh lots of hasty marriages, lots of illegitimacy.
Presenter asks
What do you think of the developments like abortion on demand, easy birth control, acceptance of cohabitation and children outside marriage? Do you approve?
Well, it's not really a question of approving. These are things that have happened because of various discoveries. I mean, they discovered a a birth control pill instead of using equipment. They've Made divorce easier because the old methods of getting a divorce were plainly ridiculous. I mean, when you had to sort of fake, you know, a night in Brighton to sort of prove that you really disliked each other intensely. What I think I've learned as I've grown older is that people do find marriage very difficult. It's something that that demands a tremendous effort, and today people aren't prepared. To make quite that much effort because there isn't quite as much at stake.
Presenter asks
But do you feel you've done everything you've got to do here?
No, no, probably not. I mean, that's why I'm probably still here. There is some other thing that I've got to do. I'm I'm annoyed about it, because it would have suited me very well indeed. To die much earlier. I always wanted to die young. It always struck me that to die before you got old and decrepit. Was a gift. And it it I know it sounds a a gruesome sort of thing to say, but I don't mean it, so I am not sorry for anyone who dies. I'm awfully sorry for the people who mourn them, who miss them. That I know about. I know about grief. But I feel that to die is a culmination of of living. It's it's the next thing.
“I think what I've learnt about emotion is that you were given a brain in order to think about your feelings.”
“I felt being a girl was a nasty slur.”
“I've always adored men really. I don't understand them at all. I think they're the most fascinating, peculiar luxury, you know, to have about the place. They're so decorative.”
“I always wanted to die young. It always struck me that to die before you got old and decrepit was a gift.”
“I'm much too interested in food and drink. Yes, I like Oscar Wilde, when in despair I take nothing but food and drink. And as I'm constantly in despair, I mean, I eat and drink far too well.”