Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.

For Wright's reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

The program was originally broadcast in 1980, and the presenter was Roy Plumley. This week are cast away as the author Derek Tangy. Now Derek you've already left the

early belly of London for the delights of the Cornish countryside. How would you

feel about taking things a step further and being marooned on a tropical island?

Well, I was marooned once upon a time on a tropical island, yes, near Tahiti.

And, well, I had to leave it. I left in Ronicano circumstances. I had to continue on a trip around the world and suddenly off the island appeared a yacht of millionaires and their daughters and they gave me a lift to

suva and I got away from this island but this is a strange thing although physically I

got away from that island, mentally I never did.

And I started looking as soon as I got back to civilization for an equivalent island, and I was lucky

enough one day to find this spot in Kormel which is near Nans End.

How important is music in your life?

Emotionally it's had tremendous importance ever since well I suppose I was about a

child of eight I was being brought up I was brought up in Cologne how was that well my

father was in the army there and both my mother and father were very, very fond of music and they used to take me to the

clean opera house which was of course one of the famous opera houses in Germany.

And I used to go there three or four times a week

and of course I never understood a word anybody was singing,

but I got tremendously excited.

You're choosing a record to remind you of those days.

Yes, I was a fairly lonely boy and I used to invent friends and one of the friends I invented was the Shepherds boy who sings a fragment of a song at the beginning of Act 3 in Troska and he's out there

dawn is breaking over Rome, looking after his flock of sheep.

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