Don McCullin
Desert Island Discs
BBC
4.4 • 13.7K Ratings
🗓️ 10 March 1984
⏱️ 35 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Don McCullin has won an enormous reputation for his photographic coverage of the many wars which have torn the world apart in the last 20 years.
In conversation with Roy Plomley, he talks about his exceedingly dangerous career and about his travels, which have even taken him to a desert island, and, in light of this experience, he chooses the eight records he would like to have for a prolonged island sojourn.
[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]
Favourite track: Symphony No 3 in C Minor by Camille Saint-Saëns Book: One year of issues of the Times Luxury: Mirror
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello I'm Kirstie Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. |
| 0:05.0 | For Wright's reasons, we've had to shorten the music. |
| 0:08.0 | The program was originally broadcast in 1984 and the presenter was Roy Plumlee. Our castaway this week is a photographer, but he doesn't take glamorous pictures in a studio. |
| 0:35.4 | He specializes in the seemier side of life and in particular in war. |
| 0:40.8 | It's Don McCullen. Don, you've travelled the world pretty extensively. |
| 0:45.0 | Have you ever visited a desert island? |
| 0:47.0 | Yes, I was marooned on a desert island. |
| 0:49.0 | As an exercise which the Daily Telegraph, who I worked for at the time, |
| 0:52.0 | they thought they'd cast away two people and see how we did. |
| 0:55.0 | You weren't alone? I was with another man, a writer, who was a lobby correspondent, and we stayed on the island for two weeks. |
| 1:02.0 | Was it all right? I mean, what sort of equipment? and we stayed on the island for two weeks. |
| 1:03.0 | Was it all right? |
| 1:04.0 | I mean, what sort of equipment did you go out? |
| 1:06.0 | Well, we were allowed to land with the half a gallon of water |
| 1:08.0 | and a few fishing hooks and some line. |
| 1:11.0 | Frankly speaking, between you and I, it was a nightmare. |
| 1:13.0 | Where was the island? |
| 1:14.0 | A small island in the Caribbean that belonged to the Cobb family, the racing John Cobb, |
| 1:20.0 | and they allowed us to use the island on the condition that we didn't |
| 1:22.9 | shop down the palm trees with the coconuts were growing. |
| 1:25.3 | Did you have any music? |
| 1:26.7 | We had no music apart from the sound of the sea, which in the end became very monotonous. |
... |
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