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 1977, and the presenter was Roy Plumlee. This week our castaway is a children's writer. She's the author of the naughty little sister books, Dorothy Edwards.

Dorothy, how worried are you at the prospect of loneliness on this island?

Oh, I should hate it.

I... I should hate it, but I have to put up with it, wouldn't I?

Have you any musical talent yourself? not really no no I think anything I can

play as a gramophone if I love music on what terms did you choose your eight

records oh nostalgia great What terms did you choose? Aughtalgia, great performances, what had you in mind?

Nostalgia I think and the things that are under the surface for me of the things I'm listening to.

What are the first one you've chosen?

The first one I've chosen is Smetina, the Moldahl.

What does that remind you of? Where does that take you?

Well, it's a river.

I've always loved rivers, and of course I was born near the river Thames,

and all my childhood was a matter of going backwards and forwards to places where the Thames always was.

It was as if we were surrounded by it.

And I knew it in all its moods.

I used to go along in the evening and watch the lights on the water and I can remember standing

on the suspension bridge seeing the snow falling into the dark water and melting and I remember once going with

my grandfather when the river was a terrific flood and we had to row down the high

street and he took me onto the bridge and we saw bodies of

...