Hello, I'm Krestey 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 1999, and the presenter was Sue Lolly. My castaway this week is a journalist and broadcaster in a career lasting more than 40 years

he's become one of our most respected commentators, wise, authoritative and ubiquitous.

He's worked in a senior capacity for most of our country's quality newspapers and

edited a couple of its better known weeklies, the new statesman and the listener.

His encyclopedic knowledge of politics and world affairs has also been put to good use on Radio 4's The World tonight and BBC 2's news night.

He was president of the Oxford Union and might have ended up as a lawyer or a politician, but good writing claimed him instead.

The effect on British journalism has only been for the better.

He is Anthony Howard.

Someone has to be the one with a peace shooter you once said, Tony,

although you've fired more effective ammo than peas in your time.

Is that one of the reasons you chose journalism?

Yes, I think what journalism gives you is the priceless gift of independence and also the opportunity for irreverence.

Exactly. You have a natural enjoyment of debunking really isn't it?

Is it making mischief?

Wasn't it Beaverbrook who told you you should make mischief as a journalist?

Yes when I was very young I was summoned to see Lord Beaverbrook in Arlington House.

And the first remark he made to me rather appealed to me.

He sort of walked up and down.

I was sitting in the chair and he's behind my back and the kind of thing people do when

they're playing, sort of being grand. And he fired out of the corner of his mouth he said do you want to make mischief?

...