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 1997, and the presenter was Sue Lolly. My castaway this week is a sculptor. His works are to be found all over the world and one of them,

boy with a dolphin next to the Thames in Chelsea, is now one of London's landmarks.

Famous people from the Queen to Paul Daniels and Sir Thomas Beachham have modeled for him.

And we touch an example of his work nearly every day. He designed the hands on the back of the 50pence piece.

Now 70, he studied zoology at Cambridge and giving art school a wide

birth devoted the rest of his life to becoming a naturalistic sculptor. I try to tell

the truth lovingly he he says, never be little nor ridicule nor caricature.

He is David Wynne. The result is, David, that all your pieces are very strong and really very beautiful whether it's a naked figure

or wild animals or the portrait bust.

Your intention then is to is to celebrate living forms is it?

Yes I see the role of sculpture in the world in the

civilized world as something that will remind people of heaven really remind people of another order of reality were all's beauty

and all's truth and I think that's what art is about I know I'm out on a limb but I thought that when I was a boy and I think it now.

Have you ever sculpted anything ugly?

Depends what you call ugly. I've sculpted a gorilla with his hackles up if people

think it's ugly. I don't think there's anything... But you don't do? No I don't think

there's anything ugly in the real world.

And conversely then do you always fall in love with everything you sculpt?

Yes, yes, I'm afraid so. I really do.

Does that include the Queen? She was wonderful, yes and well I can remember her I said do

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