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 1995, and the presenter was Sue Lawley. My castaway this week is a Duke. He was born in Northern Ireland and spent an idyllic childhood on the banks of Loechern in County for Manor.

But education in the English public school system and the comparatively early death of his father swept all that away. By the age of 19 he was managing

one of Britain's greatest estates at 27 he owned it. Today he's one of this

country's richest men, owner of 300 acres of prime London property, an estate in Cheshire,

some of Scotland, shopping malls in Los Angeles and other interests in America, Canada, Australia,

and the Far East. The responsibility of these

possessions affects him keenly. I never think of giving up, he says, I can't sell.

It doesn't belong to me. He is Gerald Cavendish-Grovener, sixth Duke of Westminster.

If it doesn't belong to you, Gerald, who does it belong to?

Well it belongs to my family. It's part of my heritage as anything else is part of one's heritage

whether it be a building or whether it be green fields. In the context of

eternity, if I'm lucky I might live on this earth for 70 years, That estate has been with us for 3, 4,

5, 600 years. So I'm only a mere flicker in the process of time and the process of

history. But apparently you didn't even want to be that flicker. You were a

reluctant heir, weren't you? I think I was. I had this wonderful childhood in

Northern Ireland. I was quite happy and contented to have lived there all my life. I knew what I wanted to be, I wanted to farm,

and take it really rather gently, I thought. And then because my uncle had no children,

sadly his eldest son did die at a very early age,

it was rather forced upon me.

And I didn't actually know that I was going to inherit all this until about the age of 15.

...