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 1979, and the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Music Our cast away this week is the television naturalist and zoologist David Attenborough.

David, there's no secret that you're a musical sort of chap because you've appeared on Face the Music. What instruments do you play? Well, I play the piano. I play only a few pieces, but very, very badly. And you also play the guitar, I'm told. Oh, yes, even worse. But I get a lot of pleasure out of playing a piano, actually.

Have you played in public?

Not knowingly.

What's the first one you've chosen, the first disc?

Well, the first disc I've chosen is a piece of handle.

I actually feel that I know something about this problem of taking eight discs away for a desert island.

I don't take eight discs.

I regularly take, though, 40 hours, because I have a...

40 hours on disc?

No, on cassette.

But I have a small briefcase, well, a reasonable size briefcase,

and it carries a cassette player and 40 hours of cassette music and headphones, stereo headphones.

And I've been doing this for about 10 years, so I now know what pieces actually last

and what pieces you really need on a desert island.

And I reckon one of them, when you really feel low, is this piece of handle.

It comes from one of the Shandos anthems, of course, the Lord is My Light,

and it's about dancing with joy.

The Lord is my strength and my shield

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