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 2009. My castaway this week is the countryside campaigner the Countess of Cranbrook. Both protester and promoter

Caroline Cranbrook is a champion of independent shopkeepers, farmers and small-scale

producers, but as matron of the awkward squad she's probably best known for her part in taking on supermarket

Goliath Tesco and winning.

At first glance, she may seem an unlikely folk hero, but her pedigree more than hints at a character well

suited to meeting obfuscation and resistance head on. The daughter of two spies

she says she is like a rat living under the floorboards and popping up in the most unexpected places?

You did say that, didn't it?

It's not the way we're used to a countess being described or certainly hearing

her describe herself. Is that the key to successful campaigning

then, this subversive element of people not quite knowing when you're going to poke your nose

into their business? I think that's part of it is being there but I think also in my

own life it's being very reasonable I think being practical and reasonable and

common sense I think this is one of the things that has driven me throughout.

And also I have a great sense of the importance of fairness and I do find that by being reasonable

and fair and popping up in these unexpected places one does have a chance of

perhaps influencing what is going to happen.

You've led a very varied and rich life and we're going to talk about it in some detail later.

Among the things you've done you've worked with the zoologist Desmond Morris, you spent many

years as a farmer and in recent years you've taken on this public campaigning role.

...