Hello, I'm Kesti 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 1990, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

I cast away this week is a, well, what is he?

His list of achievements is considerable, but they don't make it easy to define the man.

He was born on Christmas Day 1916, bang in the middle of the First World War.

He won a scholarship to Cambridge where he fell in love with university life.

The Second World War found him in the war cabinet office, after which he went back to his

old college kings and eventually became its provost at the age of 39.

He could have stayed there until he was 70.

Instead he left for academic life in London, combining it this time with the duties of

a public servant.

Those of us in this business know him as the man who gave his name to a famous report

on the future of broadcasting.

We therefore have something with which to define him.

To the outside world, however, he's perhaps best characterised as a perfect example of

a very British kind of person, historian, academic, public servant and man of duty.

He is Noel Annan.

A Christmas Day baby, Lord Annan, was that the cause of some misery as a child?

Did you get one present instead of two?

No misery at all.

Absolutely marvelous.

...