Hello, I'm Kirstie 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 1986, and the presenter was Michael Parkinson. A castaway today is a writer whose books have short titles and exceedingly large sales.

Novels like Hotel, Airport, Wheels, the money changes have made him one of the world's best-selling

authors. In fact, it's estimated that there are at present 120 million of his books

in print throughout the world. He is Arthur Haley.

Arthur, welcome to your Desert Ireland. As a writer, do you think you might find any inspiration on it?

I'm sure of it, Michael, because I've often said that I'll work anywhere. I work in a coal cellar

if I had to. I might not like it much, but I'd go on writing an apropos desert islands in a way I've really done this because I live in the Bahamas my wife and I have our own boat a cruiser which we take down to islands or away from everything, the

exhumors particularly, we anchor and I sometimes take work with me. But now

admittedly I have a lot of luxury along with that on our boat, but it is away from it and I find I work very well in the circumstances.

You're not allowed to boat on this one, you're maroon, sir.

I realize that.

So I wonder therefore if any of the music that you choose would particularly inspire you to write any one piece that you've chosen will give you inspiration.

I think the piece that comes first of mind is the Brahms piano concerto number two, the third movement and particularly

the cello solo.

It's something that is always induced in me a mood of melonness and sentiment and I can't think of anything better to help

one begin writing. the Oh, The Oh, the Arthur, you in fact, born in England, was there any sort of literary strain in your family at all? There could have been my

dear mother who is now dead only had education until I think the age of 11 but when I was a boy she was always making up stories to tell me

when she became grandmother to our children she'd tell them stories and I'm convinced that any storytelling ability I have in me came from her but apart from that

there was no tradition in the family.

Did you in fact start writing though as a child when you were at home living in Luton?

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