Lady Warnock

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 4 December 1988

⏱️ 38 minutes

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Summary

The castaway in this week's Desert Island Discs is a philosopher, academic and mistress of Girton College, Cambridge; but Lady Mary Warnock is perhaps best known for her work in the public arena, on committees looking at a wide range of ethically-controversial subjects, including embryo research and animal experimentation.

[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]

She'll be talking to Sue Lawley about these difficult areas and also her early days as an academic when she was also bringing up five children. Throughout her life, music has also been a dominant theme and she'll be carrying out the difficult task of choosing eight records to accompany her to the desert island.

Favourite track: My Beloved Spake by Henry Purcell Book: The Last Chronicle of Barset by Anthony Trollope Luxury: Pen and paper

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello I'm Krestey Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.
0:05.0	For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.
0:08.0	The program was originally broadcast in 1988 and the presenter was Sue Lawley. My castaway this week is a teacher and a philosopher, a brilliant classicist, she became an Oxford
0:36.5	Don, the mother of five children, and then headmistress of a high-powered girl school. Her clarity of mind, combined with her sense of
0:45.1	humanity, have made her a natural choice for many public committees and it's
0:49.6	perhaps in this capacity that she's achieved most recognition, in particular as chairman of the inquiry
0:55.1	into the ethical questions surrounding test two babies. She's the mistress of Gerten College, Cambridge.
1:01.6	She is Baroness Warnock of Week in the city of Winchester.
1:05.4	It's a wonderful title, Lady Warnock, isn't it? I like it, yes.
1:09.0	Very much. That all makes you sound very serious and academic, which of you are but would you describe yourself as a blue stocking?
1:16.0	I certainly was a blue stocking if that means someone who was interested very much interested in academic work when I was an undergraduate.
1:25.0	But I suppose, no, not wholly. I mean, I spent an awful lot of my childhood listening to Radio
1:30.2	Luxembourg and riding horses. So I don't think that's blue stocking work really.
1:35.0	But did you spend an awful lot of your time at university discussing existentialism until 3 o'clock in the morning?
1:40.0	Good gracious, no. I sat with my head down slogging through my work not
1:45.0	talking for anybody much there's quite a flamboyant streak in you too isn't I mean you
1:49.2	had a or have a reputation in Oxford for being a bit of a dresser? Well that's very nice I hope
1:55.4	that's true but I certainly always loved clothes yes disastrously I mean I'm a great
2:01.0	buyer of clothes really.
2:03.0	What sort of clothes?
2:04.0	Well, I always have a fantasy about how I'm going to be asked out to wonderful lunch parties.
2:08.0	I hardly ever go out to lunch actually, but there's always this thought that in this dress I shall really look marvelous.
	...

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