Hello I'm Krusty Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.

For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music.

The program was originally broadcast in 1978 and the presenter was Roy Plumley. This week our castaway is the architectural historian Alec Clifton Taylor.

He's just finished a very successful and interesting television series, Six English Towns.

Alec, how gregarious are you?

Could you endure solitude?

Well, I'm fairly gregarious, but I think that I could endure it better than some people.

I live alone.

What would you be happiest to have got away from?

You know there's nothing that I rarely want to get away from particularly I have

arranged my life to avoid the things that I dislike for a long time and that's how it is.

Well, speaks a happy man.

How much does music mean to you?

A lot. Have you any skill at it?

No.

You don't play an instrument.

Well, I play the piano very badly. Not so that anybody else shall hear.

Did you have any plan in choosing your eight records?

Yes. I wanted things that I would never get tired of, music that I can listen to again and again and know that I'm going always to enjoy.

And what you start with?

When I started at Bait-Höoven, because I really could not live without Beethoven,

and although I've heard some of the symphonies and concertos as many times as I want to,

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