Hello I'm Krestey 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 the year 2000 and the presenter was Sue Lawley. My castaway this week is a soldier. He's been in the army since he was 18, first at Sandhurst, then in the Welsh guards and after that in the SAS.

He's seen active service in Aiden, Amman, Malaysia and East Africa. He's commanded his regiment in Germany

and Northern Ireland and so ascended to high command. Throughout all of this he's stuck firmly

to the view that his job is to do good and fight for his country and his beliefs.

Blimpish rhetoric, however, has no place in his vocabulary.

He's a thoroughly modern general, straightforward, thoughtful, and very much alive to the political nature of his

soldierly role.

Generals, he reflects, don't need to be liked, but it helps.

He is the chief of the defense staff, General Sir Charles Guthrie.

But I've heard tell Sir Charles that grown men have known to tremble under your gaze.

Coffee cups rattle in their saucers after dinner.

Well I haven't noticed that happening myself, but I suppose it could have happened.

I think that it's no bad thing if generals sometimes show a bit of steel but there's no real

magic formula about being a general some people do it one way some people do it

in another way but you don't lose your temper do you? Some people do it in another way.

But you don't lose your temper, do you?

Again, I read this. You don't ever lose your temper. Is that true?

No, I don't think I do lose my temper, but I think people are aware when I want something done.

How do you do it if you're not raising your voice?

Are you looking daggers? Are you coloring up?

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