Colonel Lucy Giles

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 27 December 2020

⏱️ 36 minutes

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Summary

Colonel Lucy Giles is an officer of the British Army’s Royal Logistic Corps and is currently President of the Army Officer Selection Board - the first woman to take on this role. After attending her local comprehensive school in Wincanton, Somerset, she studied Biological Sciences at Exeter University where she joined the University Officers’ Training Corps, despite having no military background herself. After what she calls a “retrospective year out”, she joined the last female-only company at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and was commissioned into the Royal Corps of Transport in 1992, which became the Royal Logistic Corps the following year. Over a career spanning more than 25 years, she has served in over 20 countries including South Africa, Bosnia, East Timor and Sierra Leone. She was the first female Officer Commanding of 47 Air Despatch Squadron, enabling operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, and in 2015 became the first woman Commander of New College, Sandhurst. She was promoted to the rank of colonel in 2018. She is married to Brigadier Nick Post, and they have two children, Jess and Alex. In her spare time, she is a marathon runner. DISC ONE: The Day That Never Comes by Metallica DISC TWO: Heart-Shaped Box by Nirvana DISC THREE: Pilate's Dream (from Jesus Christ Superstar) by Barry Dennen DISC FOUR: Love Shack by The B-52’s DISC FIVE: Street Spirit (Fade Out) by Radiohead DISC SIX: For those in Peril on the Sea, a special arrangement by Lieutenant Colonel Simon Haw MBE, performed by Band of the Coldstream Guards and members of the Guards’ Chapel Choir DISC SEVEN: Fire by Kasabian DISC EIGHT: Big in Japan by Alphaville BOOK CHOICE: A book by Agatha Christie LUXURY ITEM: A jigsaw puzzle CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: The Day That Never Comes by Metallica Presenter Lauren Laverne Producer Sarah Taylor

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds Music Radio Podcasts
0:04.8	Hello, I'm Lauren LeVern and this is the Deser Island Disks Podcast.
0:08.4	Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury they'd want to take with them
0:13.8	if they were cast away to a desert island. For right reasons, the music is shorter than the original
0:19.6	broadcast. I hope you enjoy listening.
0:41.6	My cast away this week is Colonel Lucy Giles. In 2015, she made history when she became the first
0:48.2	woman to Commander College at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst. Its motto,
0:53.1	Served to Lead, could have been written with her in mind. By the age of 25, she was commanding
0:58.6	72 men on operations in Bosnia. She has served in over 20 countries, including Iraq,
1:05.1	Afghanistan and Northern Ireland, excelling in a field that is 90% male. Her extraordinary
1:11.6	success wasn't easy to predict. Her family had no military connections and at school,
1:16.4	the career's advice included becoming a hairdresser. Now as a senior female officer in the British
1:21.8	Army, an institution which she describes as evolving in its attitudes, she says, I hope I can
1:28.0	act as some kind of role model for some of the soldiers and officers out there. Showing you can be a
1:32.4	mom, you can marry a person that has a busy job and you can try and hold on a job yourself as well.
1:37.9	If that's role modeling, I embrace it. Colonel Lucy Giles welcomed to Deser Island Disks.
1:43.4	Thank you. It's absolutely fantastic to be here. So Lucy, you've had a long career in the Army
1:48.0	and you're currently president of the Army Officer's Selection Board. That's another role that you
1:52.4	are the first woman to hold. What qualities do you look for in an officer? Mental resilience is
1:57.6	really important and the ability to get home with people in your team is also a critical skill.
2:05.2	The foundation of our training at Sandhurst is to build upon that. So we always start with
2:10.8	quite intense few weeks where you don't go out of camp, etc. And that's for us to be able to
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