DESERT ISLAND DISCS
Currently the BBC is celebrating its long standing radio programme Desert Island Discs, a programme the first episode of which was broadcast in 1942. The format of the programme, for those who have never listened is an imagined scenario in which a castaway, invariably a prominent person, is sent to a desert island, they have to choose eight records, one book and one luxury item, having already been provided with the complete works of Shakespeare and, rather anachronistically the bible. So in the spirit of this parlour game I give you my eight records, book and luxury item. 1. Rachmaninoff 2nd Piano concerto. The first piece of classical music I fell in love with. A wonderful evocation of the melancholy of exile and the poetry of loss. 2. ‘These Foolish Things,’ Artie Shaw, the king of the clarinet. He produced a number of versions of this song, my favourite is a instrumental studio production of 1938, full of wistful melancholy. 3. ‘Child of the Moon’ The Rolling Stones. Choosin...