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 1981 and the presenter was Roy Plumley. On our Desert Island this week is a man who's done a great deal for music both as administrator

and as a writer, the Earl of Harwood. Lord Harwood you spent your life organizing music,

presenting music, how do you rate as a performer?

Me?

You.

I would have thought a candidate for the world's most silent performer.

On instruments, I really know a performer at all my friends of course and prevent that

They say I can do quite enough by the act of speaking, but I'm a non-performer

You did learn the piano. I learned the piano as a kid and I was hopeless at it.

I was sorry I gave it up but I was pleased to give it up and I tried to learn the clarinet when I was in prison.

That went all right, it's an easy instrument, but we had an influx of new blood, shall we say, and the prison

camp I was in, and I stopped. There wasn't enough space to play it in without other people

listening.

I know you have a very big collection of records. When did you start collecting?

How early? Well, I think I started when I was really, very young. I think I bought with my pocket

money records and asked for records for Christmas and birthdays and so on.

And I was quite a serious collector when I was at school.

By the time I was about 15 and 16, I was looking in record catalogs

and in the grammar phone and so on and buying records were advertised for sale.

I was a collector.

...