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. Choosing a single Stones track is a nightmare. However I settled on this track since it combines the very best of the Stones, raw almost frantic energy combined with strains of a poignant melancholy.(Can you feel a pattern here?)

4. ‘Mr Tambourine Man’ Melanie Safka. To my mind amongst the finest of Dylan’s lyrics, delivered here with a weary sigh, you can visualize the beach and the ‘one hand waving free, silhouetted by the sea.’

5. ‘Do Anything You Want To Do. Eddie and the Hot Rods. John Peel famously stated that Teenage Kicks by the Undertones was the greatest teen record ever made. For me this track makes a far better claim, combining as it does both the raw energy of youth with a powerful ‘political’ punch.

6. ‘Hold on Hope’ Guided by Voices. An intoxicating mix of powerful plaintive lyric and orchestration that lifts the mundane into the heroic.

7. Mahler 5th Symphony 4th Movement. Introduced to me first by the film of Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice, one of the greatest short stories ever written. The sadness of this movement simply evokes ageing and loss.

8. ‘Wish You Were Here’ Pink Floyd. Again such a nightmare to choose one Floyd track. A song that breathes separation and the feeling of being bereft.

The book would have to be In Search of Lost Time. Marcel Proust. I still have only read the first volume and even that I feel I need to read again. Only a desert Island would provide the space and time to fully savour Proust’s wonderful prose.


Luxury Item, providing I can construct a rudimentary hammock, a reading lamp.

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