David Owen

Speaker 20:00

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 20:08

The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen eighty eight, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:27

My castaway this week is that most intriguing of politicians, a lost leader.

Presenter0:33

He captured the public imagination at the age of thirty eight when he became one of the youngest foreign secretaries in history.

Presenter0:39

High office, however, did not command his everlasting loyalty to the party which had promoted him, and seven years ago his belief in the need to find new ideas and new policies led him into being one of the founder members of the Social Democratic Party.

Presenter0:54

Here, too, an eminent position was not enough to keep him in the fold. Once more his principles meant he had to break with his colleagues.

Presenter1:02

This week he's fifty years old, the leader of an SDP which holds only three seats in the House of Commons, and his chances of gaining power look decidedly uncertain.

Presenter1:13

He is, of course, David Owen.

Presenter1:15

Doctor Ain, happy birthday.

David Owen1:17

Thank you.

Presenter1:18

How does being dismissed to a desert island rank as a birthday treat, I wonder?

David Owen1:21

Trees are wonderful.

David Owen1:22

Well, I think I'm going to enjoy it. I've uh

David Owen1:26

Always had a deep love of the sea.

David Owen1:28

And I'm not afraid of my own company. Uh

David Owen1:32

I think I will dislike being lonely, and I'll constantly want to try and sail away on any passing log and tie a shirt on it almost. I think I'll try and escape.

Presenter1:43

Are you a natural loner, do you think?

David Owen1:45

No, I I think I love my

David Owen1:48

Family and friends close friends too much.

Presenter1:51

So escape is on the cards, but in the meantime you could cope. You're a practical chap.

David Owen1:56

Yes, I could certainly feed myself and look after myself.

David Owen1:59

Uh I think I'll miss no women, miss uh humour, miss music, I suppose.

Presenter2:06

That I mean, that is the one problem, it seems to me, because you you do suffer from the most dreadful indecision. Despite weeks of notice, you took ages to reduce your records down to eight.

David Owen2:15

It's down to eight.

Presenter2:16

What was the problem?

David Owen2:16

Yeah.

David Owen2:17

Well, I think um well I first of all started wanting many too many pieces from my favourite uh composers and then I sort of felt well let's just go for what I really have loved and have meant something to me because I think one of the things I'll want is to relive my life and past experiences and some of the records that I've chosen will uh sort of trigger off a whole series of memories and uh it's it's deeply sentimental and uh highly personal, my choice.

Presenter2:47

Why not? Why not? Shall we hear the first one?

David Owen2:50

Elgas

David Owen2:52

the best, I think, British composer.

David Owen2:55

And since I can't have lots of his work, I've chosen the Enigma variations because that will give me a sort of

David Owen3:04

poppy ready of much of his style and skill.

Presenter4:00

Part of Elgar's Enigma variations played by the London Symphony Orchestra under Sir Adrian Bolt.

Presenter4:07

Doctor Wang, can we talk just for a moment about your image? Because it seems to me to be a a bit of a a double edged business. You're you're allowed to be glamorous and good looking, but at the same time you have to accept the adjectives arrogant, abrasive, ruthless, vain. Is there any truth in in those? The latter ones, I mean?

David Owen4:23

I'm sure there's truth in it. I don't think any criticism is uh without truth. I think you have to live with that. I would say to everybody, we have to take somebody warts and all. We have a tendency to want people's good points and then not have their deficiencies. But I a lot of it is a caricature and you get used to it.

Presenter4:41

But the interesting thing with you is that every time anybody meets you for real they come back saying, Good heavens, he's much nicer than I thought he was going to be

David Owen4:48

Yeah.

Presenter4:48

Yeah.

David Owen4:49

I suppose that's uh quite common. It comes back to me. I think it's uh it's the caricature people

David Owen4:57

One of the dangers of being, as I probably was, overpromoted, uh is that you do spark off a hell of a lot of jealousies.

Presenter5:05

But you've learned to live with the uh it it doesn't hurt so much any more.

David Owen5:08

Yes. I think people forget that I've always had this deep, abiding love of medicine. I went into politics virtually by accident, and I have undoubtedly, I suppose, taken greater risks because of it, because I've had the security that I can always go back to medicine, which I love, earn more money, and achieve a great deal of personal satisfaction.

Presenter5:29

Now you were born, uh, as we said, fifty years ago, in nineteen thirty eight, just before the war. What sort of a family were you born into?

David Owen5:37

Well, my father was a family doctor in Plymouth, where I was born.

David Owen5:41

And my mother was a dentist, though she wasn't working then, but she w came went back to dentistry during the war.

David Owen5:49

My father went off as soon as the war started, in fact even before the war was declared, because he was in the Territorial Armies, uh Royal Army Medical Corps. And I have one sister who started by being a nurse, and then became a social worker and is and is now a psychiatric social worker.

David Owen6:05

in Plymouth and I'm very close to her and we're a very close family and always have been.

Presenter6:11

And you you were sent off to Wales for the war?

David Owen6:14

Yes, well what happened was my mother they needed her to work, and she said, Well, look, I can't work with two very young children.

David Owen6:20

unless I have the sort of back up and support of my relatives and they're all in Wales, so I'll go and work in Wales. And then I went and stayed with my grandfather in the uh Vale of Glamorgan. And I suppose that's the happiest period of my life really. I adored my grandfather. He had a profound influence on me. He was a clergyman. He was blind from a very young age.

David Owen6:43

And he was by any imagination just a wonderful person for a young boy to know.

Presenter6:50

Let's hear your second record.

David Owen6:52

Well, that, I suppose, is she a nostalgia. But there is something about Wales the here, the longing.

David Owen6:59

It infuriates me lots of things about the Welsh and uh Wales, but I am Welsh and I know I am and when we go back to Wales there's an expectancy about it and when you leave there's a sadness, so I've chosen there'll be a welcome.

Presenter7:16

Is that the song will be for when

Presenter7:41

We kiss our way.

Presenter8:06

We'll keep a welcome in the hillside sung by the Morriston Orpheus Choir, conducted by Oyvin John.

Presenter8:14

So off you went, David Owen Toot, to Abergavenny, where you developed a taste for pickled onions and cheese.

David Owen8:20

It stayed with me.

Presenter8:22

but no Welsh accent.

David Owen8:23

I had a terrific Welsh accent to the age of five. I swore in Welsh, and I could even speak some Welsh in the village school in Landau, and it's all gone, sadly, but it can come back quite quickly.

Presenter8:36

So you went to the little local school and and your grandfather, who as you say was a clergyman, was this enormous influence on you. What did he teach you?

David Owen8:44

Oh, I think he taught me about life. I mean

David Owen8:48

I think he must have sparked an interest in Christianity. He was one of the most human men.

David Owen8:56

I think

David Owen8:58

At every uh sort of aspect of my life has been influenced by him. He was a man of learning, uh I mean quite remarkable academic distinction when you realize that he was blind.

David Owen9:10

I taught me how to read.

David Owen9:13

He taught me how to take the knocks of life and come back uh smiling.

Presenter9:17

You were sent to boarding school, weren't you, in in in Berkshire?

David Owen9:19

Yes, I went to um Bradfield College.

Presenter9:23

And they called you Dahlia.

David Owen9:25

Well, that's'cause I'm D A L O I suppose that's one of the

David Owen9:30

Uh problems you have, I suppose, of being at that stage good-looking young boy.

David Owen9:36

I used to fight anybody who'd call me that.

Presenter9:38

Another record, please.

David Owen9:40

Well, the next record is from Pinafore. I love Gilbert Sullivan. We sing it at the top of our voices in the car, on boats. I can sing it on by myself, on a boat.

David Owen9:50

And the reason I've chosen this record is it it then would have been imma unimaginable that I would ever become a politician.

David Owen9:57

and be answering to the whips, and also that I would become, as I suppose I did in a very minor way,

David Owen10:04

The ruler of the Queen's Navy, because I became Navy Minister, which wasn't, of course, anywhere near as powerful a position as the First Lord of the Admiralty. But you were the Minister responsible for the Navy at a very young age, in nineteen sixty eight to nineteen seventy. I loved it.

David Owen10:20

I've always had a great affection for the Royal Navy, despite abolishing their grog, the rum ration.

Presenter10:26

The run rash

David Owen10:27

And so I thought we'd so have this.

Presenter10:29

Yeah.

David Owen10:29

Yeah.

Presenter10:29

You're not going to sing it for us.

David Owen10:30

I do think so.

Speaker 210:33

I grew so rich that I was sent By a pocket borough into parliament. I always voted at my party's core, And I never thought of thinking for myself at all. I never thought of thinking for myself at all. I thought so little Uh

Speaker 110:48

They rewarded

Speaker 210:50

Yeah.

Speaker 210:51

By making

Speaker 110:52

I mean the road of the Queen's Navy.

Speaker 210:54

You're so young getting born in feed by making him the ruler of the Beastley!

Speaker 111:01

Now landsmen all, whoever you may be, if you want to rise to the top of the tree, if you're

Presenter11:06

Soul is affected.

Speaker 111:07

Tool office tool

Presenter11:09

To be guided by this golden rule.

Speaker 111:15

Uh

David Owen11:15

Lose.

Speaker 211:16

To your desks and never go to sea

Speaker 211:20

And you all may be rulers of the Queen's Navy.

Presenter11:35

When I Was a Lad, from HMS Pinafore by Gilbert and Sullivan, sung by John Reed with the New Symphony Orchestra of London, conducted by Isidore Godfrey.

Presenter11:45

Doctor Owen, how are you going to keep fit on this island? I mean, you as a doctor must be a keep fit fanatic.

David Owen11:45

Ben

David Owen11:51

Well, I my family always would roar with laughter at this, because I actually have quite a lot of difficulty in keeping my weight down, but I because I'm tall, people think of me as being very slim. I would swim a lot.

Presenter11:52

I believe.

David Owen12:04

And uh I know I should jog, but I won't. I might shin up the odd tree to try and see if I could see a boat on the horizon.

Presenter12:11

But I thought you were once elected, or not very long ago, body beautiful by somebody.

David Owen12:15

I know. I lived off it all Christmas, body of the year. It's absolutely and caused my wife great anger. She was just about to insist that I uh took some weight off.

Presenter12:19

Yeah.

Presenter12:28

Tell me about your your university years, because you went off to Cambridge to read medicine, Sydney Sussex College. Were you politically active?

David Owen12:37

No, I never joined the political party.

Presenter12:39

I thought you nearly became a liberal.

David Owen12:41

Well, that was only to get in to the Liberal ball and you had to be a member of the Liberal Party, good Liberal tactic, in order to come in. And we managed to push around and get in without being members of the Liberal Party. Well, I think the most interesting thing out about Cambridge was

Speaker 212:53

Yeah.

Speaker 112:53

But I think

David Owen12:58

The Humanist Society with EM Forster Great Saint Mary's Church with Mervyn Stockwood

David Owen13:04

the debate, the ideas. I became very interested in ethical, moral, theological questions. And I think it was just a ferment. It was a very interesting time, great controversy. Many of us wanted to go off to Hungary. Hungary had just been uh

David Owen13:21

brutally raped really by the Soviet Union and has left me, I suppose, always sceptical about this uh belief that the Soviet Union is about to make dramatic radical changes. I'm I'm more cautious I think even now with Glasnost and Pistroika than some people about the uh I don't forget Hungary, Czechoslovakia.

David Owen13:43

Berlin.

David Owen13:44

And I don't forget what has happened just recently in Poland. So

David Owen13:49

let the proof of the pudding be in the eating. It was a time also of humour. I mean that's when um people the Beyond the Fringe, Jonathan Miller was at Cambridge at that time, that whole s group of people who then

David Owen14:04

Came on.

Presenter14:05

And if you were anything like the medics I knew at university, you drank rather a lot of beer.

David Owen14:09

Yes, I was president of a drinking club called The Loot Lunatics. I I mean, I led a pretty riotous medical student life. I can't say I was a tremendous scholar. I played a lot of games, rode, played rugger.

Presenter14:21

Let's have your fourth record.

David Owen14:23

Well, I've chosen for this, I'm going to be desperate to laugh. I mean, you know, this is, I think, an essential part of it on this island. And I've chosen a piece from the Secret Policeman's Ball, which was done for Amnesty International, and it has Peter Cook and John Clees. John I know well and like immensely. Peter Cook, I loved his skitting Beyond the Fringe on If Only I Had My Latin, which was actually a problem for me. I had to get to Cambridge through General Classics. But it's also slightly medical student humour. I hope people like it.

Speaker 114:54

Did you know that you've got four miles of tubing in your stomach?

Speaker 115:01

I said, did you know that you've got four miles of tubing in your stomach?

Speaker 115:07

No, no, I didn't know that, no.

Speaker 115:10

It's a good thing I'm here then.

Speaker 115:14

Aren't you interested in your intestines? Not particular. Well, you should be, because if you didn't have your intestines, you wouldn't be able to digest. And then you'd look a bit of a fool.

Presenter15:25

John Klees and Peter Cook in the sketch Interesting Facts from the Secret Policeman's Ball.

Presenter15:32

David Owen, your wife, Debbie, is is American. How did you meet her?

David Owen15:36

I met her on the first evening I was in the United States, uh gone over on a parliamentary delegation to look at the uh

David Owen15:47

presidential primary elections in in fact to go to the New Hampshire primary which was uh very uh

David Owen15:54

interesting at that particular time.

David Owen15:56

in the spring of nineteen sixty eight.

Presenter15:59

And you had a a rival for her affections, one John Pardot.

David Owen16:02

Bonjon parter, yes.

Presenter16:04

How did you see him out?

David Owen16:05

Well, I I started talking loudly about John's wife and his family.

David Owen16:12

But we've always been good friends and um

David Owen16:16

Uh she seemed

David Owen16:18

the the most attractive girl in the room and I wanted somebody to show me New York.

Presenter16:22

It was quite a whirlwind romance, really.

David Owen16:24

It was really, as we hardly we'd seen each other, I suppose.

David Owen16:27

continuously for only about a fortnight uh before we got married at the end of that year in in America in December.

Presenter16:35

Is it true that she once said she'd never marry a doctor or a politician or an Englishman?

David Owen16:40

I think it is absolutely true.

David Owen16:43

Uh but she didn't too see, she married a Welshman.

Presenter16:45

And I see

David Owen16:46

And lapse doctor.

David Owen16:48

And I leave it to you to decide what my fate is as a politician.

Presenter16:52

We shall talk about it in a minute. You're going to have a an awful lot of trouble, I suspect, doing without her on the island, aren't you?

David Owen16:58

I am, yes. So I've chosen a record which was it w reminds me of her. I mean, it's the um Little Brown Jug from the Glen Miller story. I love that film. I the tears stream down my face when you see her listening to the band playing this tune, knowing that her husband has uh

David Owen17:19

Been killed because his plane disappeared over Germany during the war.

David Owen17:23

And it reminds me of Debbie because it's a big American brassy band and she loves to dance and she's a brilliant dancer. And it's only really with a big band and an absolutely clear beat that I can go on the dance floor because I've got two left feet. And so Glen Miller can make me dance.

Presenter18:40

Glenn Miller Orchestra playing Little Brown Jug.

Presenter18:43

But how how did you come, I still don't quite understand to give up medicine, which you loved so much, which your parents wanted you to to study and to follow and to be a great success in, and switch across into politics? How did that happen?

David Owen18:55

Well, I fought a seat uh for Labour in North Devon, uh Torrington, and nobody, you know, that wasn't serious. Uh why I took the seat on to this day I can't really understand, except I was always worried about becoming a medical vegetable and seeing doctors completely absorbed in medicine and not even reading the newspapers. So the idea of r running this seat, which you didn't have to go down much more than sort of once a month, into a lovely part of Devon, um I thought well

David Owen19:24

keep me sane. And so I agreed to fight. So I fought the sixty four election. And once then I suppose it was logical. The next thing I was asked to fight, uh put my name forward for my own home constituency in Plymouth.

David Owen19:37

I was very naive. I said okay, and I never really thought I'd win. I mean, in retrospect, I should have realized that it was quite likely t that I would have won in nineteen sixty six.

David Owen19:47

And hey, Presto, I won it, and uh suddenly politics started. I went on working as a doctor for two years until I went into the government.

Presenter19:54

But very quickly you were promoted, as we've heard, you became Navy Minister in the late sixties, and then you'd only been in politics at Westminster for ten years in nineteen seventy six when you found yourself number two to Tony Crossland at the Foreign Office, and then suddenly the call came that was to make you number one.

David Owen20:13

Yes, it was absolutely staggering. Um I mean, uh Jim Callahan says I really went as white as a sheet when when he told me that he wanted me to be Foreign Secretary. I think he thought that he wanted some fresh

David Owen20:26

I think he'd watch me quite closely as Minister of Health, but we weren't close friends. I really do not know.

Presenter20:37

You, as you say, went as white as a sheet. You were stunned. You went home that night to your wife. I mean, w what did you do? Did you sit there and say, My God, you'll never guess what's happened?

David Owen20:45

Well, I I told her, and then we did think through how do you cope with a very young family and

David Owen20:51

The sooner we

David Owen20:53

My eldest boy was ill with uh suffering from then from childhood leukemia, which fortunately now the doctors have learnt how to cure. And we decided first thing that we weren't going to go into any of these houses that the Foreign Secretary can live in. We'd stay in our own home, which was the first major decision which Debbie made and was absolutely right. And that did allow us to keep the family together.

David Owen21:19

And I suppose one just thought through I thought through what to do about then Rhodesia. It was no use avoiding that subject it was absolutely a major issue, and it would have to take a good deal of my time.

David Owen21:31

Oh, it was they were great days. What being Foreign Secretary very young did

David Owen21:37

Make

David Owen21:38

A difference in the sense that I was about a year into being Foreign Secretary, I began to step out of the normal political ambitions and you began to see things, and I think it happens to everybody who holds that office, in a wider perspective. You see the big, great issues that face the world, not just Britain. And I did lose some of my overriding ambition. I don't you see the limitations of being Prime Minister apart from anything else. Arguably at times you make more decisions and more immediate effect than almost than Prime Minister.

David Owen22:10

I'm not sure that's the case now, with Prime Minister Power concentrated so greatly. But

David Owen22:16

It certainly gave me the

David Owen22:18

the moorings, if you like, to be able to withstand the the policy differences with the Labour Party that emerged a few years later.

Presenter22:25

Let's have a sixth record.

David Owen22:28

Well, I've uh chosen

David Owen22:32

uh a record from the Beatles. I had great difficulty choosing which one, I may say, because I've always liked their music. And I eventually settled for Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds because the boys loved this when they were young. We had great difficulty in making a decision as to what we should call our daughter.

David Owen22:53

And it was uh Gareth and Tristan, really, who chose her name. They said Lucy.

Presenter22:59

See in the sky with them

Presenter23:04

The sea in the sky with them

Presenter23:14

The in the sky remember

Presenter23:19

Look me in the sky.

Speaker 123:22

Uh

Presenter23:25

The sky

Presenter23:29

Lucy in the sky with diamonds from the Beatles.

Presenter23:33

David Owen, you feel, as we all know, fiercely protective about the Health Service, not just as an ex-Health Minister or as a former doctor, but also, as you mentioned just now, as a father, because your son, Tristan, has received long and dedicated treatment from the NHS.

Presenter23:49

Um, he you said developed leukemia when he was really very tiny, didn't he?

David Owen23:53

Use three, yes.

David Owen23:55

and was under treatment for ten years, really.

David Owen23:58

I mean, there's a great deal of criticism of the press invading people's privacy. The press always knew it couldn't be hidden from my constituents. In fact, we had an announcement in the newspapers to explain it. And Fleet Street left me alone for year after year after year. And only recently

David Owen24:15

Have we felt able to talk about it? And it came out and we rather resented it when it came out a few years ago.

David Owen24:22

And what was interesting was how many people were pleased and it gave them hope. And I think Tristan's always understood now that

David Owen24:31

because I people report things about us, other families with this problem suddenly realize that you can get through it, and he's been readier for it a little bit to be talked about, but not too much.

Presenter24:43

Hm. But um you were never tempted to jump the cues in the NHS to to buy private medicines.

David Owen24:51

They were pretty reasonable. Come on, they didn't treat me like everybody else. I but I would go to uh Great Ormond Street, which is a Marvis hospital, and uh

David Owen25:01

Wait.

David Owen25:02

Oh, little in turn. Yes, I would be in the queue. But uh they knew when I had to go to a Cabinet meeting or something like that. But I would sit there with my Cabinet papers and Red Box and plant some other things as first as Minister of Health and then as uh Foreign Secretary. And as far as it was humanly possible treated people treated as as a normal family.

Speaker 125:08

Oof.

Presenter25:21

You are obviously very much a a family man, and if I may say so, a very balanced, optimistic kind of person. You seem to be.

Presenter25:30

rather detached from politics in a way. Is that a problem?

David Owen25:33

Well, I don't think you can say that. For the last year I have sought to keep

Presenter25:36

See me detach.

David Owen25:38

the option of the SDP open for the people of this country. After all, it's up to them if they want us to stay in politics. But I didn't think it should be closed down just by a few party activists who have always been hell-bent on merging. And I think the creation of a fourth party, after all, it's the

David Owen25:58

The only new national party we've had this century apart from the Labour Party, the idea of giving it all up was because we hadn't become the government of the country in seven years, we'd even so managed to get a bigger centre vote than ever before by working with other parties. So I have fought to keep the SDP. You don't hear much about me because the press have decided I'm not flavour of the month, but I go around the country talking to people, building up the party. I mean it's not been easy to save a party. It's been saved by its members.

Presenter26:22

Yes, mm-hmm.

Presenter26:26

But unlike so many politicians, my point really is that you don't seem to be politics do not seem to be your whole life.

David Owen26:35

Oh, yes, I've got passionate interests in a lot of other things. I read a lot.

David Owen26:43

Give me a boat and a wind and away I'll go and uh

Presenter26:46

That's what we're trying to do.

David Owen26:48

Well you're not allowing me to stay away from this island.

Presenter26:50

Yeah.

Presenter26:51

Seventh record.

David Owen26:53

Well, the seventh uh record

David Owen26:56

I mean, quite honestly, one's going to get desperate for a woman on this island. And uh I thought w what really sensual that record? And I went through all all the normal ones, uh Edith Piaff, um, Dori Prevan. I've ended up with choosing Lottie Lenya.

David Owen27:14

singing uh from the Thrapani opera.

David Owen27:18

I think she has a magnificent voice. I remember falling in love with it.

David Owen27:23

And literally the voice, not the person, she wasn't a great beauty at the Royal Court Theatre when I heard it when I was young in the early sixties. I think it's a haunting melody and it will

David Owen27:35

Just fill in that other longing that's going to be there on this island.

Speaker 127:41

Unschmul Maya blight frach munde.

Speaker 127:47

And Somancha.

Speaker 127:54

Uh

Speaker 227:54

Um seingel ka de vekimesa dienmanica.

Speaker 128:02

Yeah.

Presenter28:07

Lotte Lenia singing Mac the Knife from the Thropni Opera by Court Vile.

Presenter28:13

David Owen, I know you get cross when people call you a Thatcherite, but you you have on occasion said that you admired the Prime Minister. Um a heady mixture of whisky and perfume, I think you said.

David Owen28:25

That was, I said, back in 19

David Owen28:30

The seventy-eight.

David Owen28:31

And it was reported in the Daily Mirror. It was said to be the first dirty trick of the campaign.

David Owen28:39

Somebody went to see her, she was then Leader of the Opposition, and said, You can't be really upset about this, surely you ought to be flattered, young Foreign Secretary And I'm told that she blushed and said she was, which I think is good for her and it also shows that all this stuff about people saying everybody's angry or politicians' reactions are very often markedly different from what their press people say. Mrs Thatcher has been a formidable figure in British politics and to deny that is to deny fact.

David Owen29:09

Also she has been part of a recovery in Britain's economy and in our self esteem.

David Owen29:19

and for that she deserves, and will get, tribute from history.

David Owen29:25

Unfortunately, there's another side of it, like she has her warts, and her warts are that she has divided the country, she has damaged the public services which are used by the majority of the people of the country, the vast majority, the health services, the education services. And there's been an insensitivity in dealing with people who can't help themselves, people who are disadvantaged and who are poorer and not able just to stand on their own feet. And that insensitivity is something I find very objectionable.

David Owen29:59

But you can't deny the achievements.

Presenter30:02

She has of course let slip the odd compliment about you too. Um

Presenter30:06

And there are inevitably people in the land who would like to think that one day you might become a Tory, you might join the Tory party. Are you prepared to use the word that politicians rarely use, which is never?

David Owen30:18

Yes, I've said I will never be a Tory.

David Owen30:21

I mean, it isn't the end of the world for me if my political life is over. I don't actually think it is. Something tells me something is going to turn up. There's lots of things to do in politics other than just be Prime Minister. Influence and power are closely related. You hope to exercise power again, but it's not the end of the world.

Presenter30:40

But you can only exercise power in a democracy by working from within a party.

David Owen30:45

That's why the SDP is a party, as it was always created to be a fourth party. There was never any intention of joining the Liberal Party. After all, all of us could have joined the Liberal Party. It clearly would have been better and more honest, actually, for some people to have joined the Liberal Party before the SDP was created.

Presenter31:02

all of which you will be able to sit on the island and contemplate quietly to yourself, and think about where you might have gone wrong, or where you might still be about to go right.

David Owen31:11

Yes, I think you time for reflection. You've obviously made mistakes in underlife. So as I do it, I'll choose a piece from my favourite composer, Mozart. And this is I agonized over. I wanted Jeannie Zuckerman playing the flute because we know her and Pinky Zuckerman playing the violin or both of them together. I wanted Dennis Brain's horn concerto. I've ended up with a piece my uh father-in-law, who sadly died, gave to Tristan when he was only seven, and he fell in love with Mozart. And I think this small piece from one of the piano concertos is uh the quintessence of Mozart.

Presenter32:57

Part of the slow movement from Mozart's piano concerto No. twenty one in C, played by Ilana Verred with the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Juri Segel.

Presenter33:08

Well, now, which record of the eight, doctor Owen, would you be most determined to hang on to?

David Owen33:12

When I started this programme it was going to be Elgar, and I fear I can't listen to that and not say it's going to have to be Mozart.

Presenter33:19

And your book. You have the Bible, as you know, and you have the complete works of Shakespeare.

David Owen33:25

Um I love poetry and from a quite early age I've been collecting my own anthology.

David Owen33:31

There's a French poem, All Our Secrets Are the Same, and I think this anthology.

David Owen33:38

ought to be called really All Our Secrets. So it's what I've put together.

David Owen33:42

And I couldn't be without that.

Presenter33:45

And your luxury.

David Owen33:47

A hot bath

David Owen33:48

I love relaxing in a bath and I think the thing I'll object to most in this island is sand everywhere and I want to go and have a bath and to have a nice long hot bath so I can stretch out and sit there reading my anthology and moving the taps with my toes and topping up with endless hot water.

Presenter34:10

You'll need a rack to prop the book on.

David Owen34:12

Well, I'll held it in my hands, but it'll probably s fall into the bath. It won't be the first time I've left the bath with papers uh absolutely wet. In fact, I've even come back with cabinet papers crinkled and uh

David Owen34:26

Obviously having been immersed.

Presenter34:29

Wonderful. We'll even throw in some bubble bath if you like.

David Owen34:32

Couldn't mind.

Presenter34:33

David Owen, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

David Owen34:36

And you

Speaker 234:45

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