Dame Norma Major

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 21 May 2000

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Sue Lawley's castaway this week is Dame Norma Major. In her book on the Prime Minister's residence, Chequers, she revealed how Neville Chamberlain would spend time measuring the girths of his favourite trees, and how Ramsay MacDonald chopped wood every morning dressed in plus-fours. She herself was uncomfortable there, and she remembers the loneliness and stress of being the country's First Lady. She says her love of music, and her work for charity helped her through the tough times.

[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]

Favourite track: Norma by Bellini Book: Nine Tailors by Dorothy L Sayers Luxury: Solar laptop

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello I'm Krestey Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive
0:05.0	for rights reasons we've had to shorten the music.
0:08.0	The program was originally broadcast in the year 2000 and the presenter was Sue Lawley. My cost away this week is a wife and a mother. 30 years ago she met a man at a
0:35.9	GLC election count took him to the opera where he fell asleep but nevertheless
0:40.3	married him six months later. He became Prime Minister and she was
0:44.4	pitched into public life where as she recall she was regarded as an MP, a social
0:49.3	worker and a counselor all rolled into one. The resilience she learned as the child of a
0:54.7	widowed mother came to her aid. Through her personal qualities and her
0:58.6	professional abilities, she's written a successful biography of Joan Sutherland, she won round those who'd been inclined
1:04.6	to patronize when she first entered the portals of power.
1:08.1	I dislike, she said, being fawned upon by the sort who, were it not for my husband's job would think of us as nice little people.
1:16.0	She is Dame Norma Major.
1:18.0	Resilience is the word I think Norma that you had to have in spades to cope with what happened to you.
1:24.0	Limelight not your natural habitat?
1:27.0	No, no, I'm essentially I think a backroom girl.
1:30.0	You've always said that about yourself, haven't you?
1:32.0	Backroom girl.
1:34.0	Backroom in amateur dramatics, backroom at school.
1:37.0	Always.
1:38.0	I don't think I'm a natural leader.
1:40.0	I'm quite happy to be part of a team.
1:42.0	But natural wife of leader. I'm quite happy to be part of a team.
	...

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