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. Our castaway this week is a writer and a member of a celebrated family, Miss Jessica Mitford.

Could you adapt yourself to loneliness, Miss Mitford? You're on this island. You don't know how long for?

I think I'd rather hate it, actually.

Unless I had a few records.

You have eight. Does music play a big part in your life?

I'm afraid not really. I only like pop music. I'm not really musical.

What's the first one you've chosen to take with you?

After the ball?

Why do you choose that? Well I try to choose things

that were various parts of life. After the ball was a tremendous song to us. We

used to sing it around the piano. My mother played all those kinds of

songs like I'll sing these songs of Araby and songs of her childhood you see and

so we sort of grew up with them.

After the dancers leaving, after the stars were gone, many our heart was aching if we could read them all

Many the hopes that were shattered

after the ball.

After the ball. After the ball sung by Flory Ford. You were the fifth of the sixth Midford

sisters, the daughters of Lord and Lady Reedsdale. Life when you were young was

a country house one wasn't it with a London house for the season? Yes mostly country though

especially for us children and did you go to school? No we won't lie out my mother was

...