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 1993 and the presenter was Sue Lolly. My castaway this week is a film director, although brought up not far from one of Britain's most famous

studio, Shepperton, he learned his craft not in the cinema but at the BBC. He began by directing

documentaries, eventually becoming head of the BBC's documentary department.

Then having transferred his talent to the big screen, he achieved great success with only

his second feature film, Point Blank, starring Lee Marvin. That was in 1967. Since then he's added to his

reputation with a string of distinguished films among them Leo the

last, deliverance, and of course the much-loved recreation of his own wartime childhood, hope and glory.

He is John Borman.

John, had you nursed the idea of making hope and glory for years, was it one of those very personal projects that you couldn't do until you were established?

Yes, I always wanted to do it and finally I thought at the time would come, you know, too. But you had terrible trouble raising money for it, didn't you?

People thought it was too domestic, too cozy,

too British perhaps.

Yes, it seemed like a small film,

and the budget was quite high because I wanted to build

this street and recreate the

the Blitz which was quite a big operation really for an intimate story. This caused

the finances to look at it you know and think well this you know this is a very small film

and this is a big budget and they didn't want to do it.

Why did you need to create it was Rose Hill Avenue car short and way where you were born

why did you need to to rebuild the whole street? Well I went back to Rose Hill

...