BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne, and this is the

Desert Island Disks podcast. For right reasons, the music is shorter than on the original

broadcast. The presenter is Roy Plomley. I hope you enjoy listening.

On our Desert Island this week is the novelist and playwright, Henry Cecil. Mr. Cecil,

how well could you endure, Lenvinist? Well, I like my own company. I must admit, but

I think I would probably have too much of it on the Desert Island. What would you be

happiest to have got away from? Noise. The noise of traffic. The noise of two and a

people talking. Is music an interest of yours? A very great interest. Did you have any

plan of campaign in choosing your eight records? Yes, I thought carefully about how I should

live if I could on a Desert Island, and how I should best be able to entertain myself.

And I've had to leave out a fantastic number of things I would dearly have liked. You

will find there's no Brahms, no St. Baleus, no César Frank. Oh, there's so much that I

would have liked to have. What's the first one you've chosen? I've chosen one of the

late Beethoven quartets. It's up to 130. And if you would be kind enough, I would like

to hear the fifth movement of it, the Cavattina, because I think this particular movement

of this particular quartet is one of the loveliest things in all music. It's the only one that

affects me emotionally. It would remind me of my wife. It might even make me feel that

she was with me.

The opening of the fifth movement of the Beethoven quartet in B flat opens 130, played by the Amadeus

Spring Quartet. What's your second record? Under Milkwood, because I feel I want to have

somebody talking there. I'm very fond indeed of the English language and in particular

of the way Dylan Thomas wrote it.

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