Lord Healey
Desert Island Discs
BBC
4.3 • 14.3K Ratings
🗓️ 14 June 2009
⏱️ 35 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Kirsty Young's castaway is the Labour peer and former Chancellor of the Exchequer, Denis Healey. As a politician, he was known for his sharp intellect and biting oratory and now, as he approaches his 92nd birthday, those skills are still very much in evidence. He talks of his regret that his lack of ambition meant that he did not push himself further in politics but, he says, it is better for people to wonder why he wasn't Prime Minister than to wonder why he was.
[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]
Favourite track: The Cavatina from String Quartet No.13 in B flat Major by Ludwig van Beethoven Book: The Faber book of English verse by John Hayward Luxury: Very big box of chocolates including nougat.
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 2009. My cast away this week is Denis Healy, he has lived a momentous life. At the very center of British politics since the |
| 0:35.8 | mid-1960s his intellect and oratory have guaranteed him a place in history. |
| 0:40.8 | A brilliant student after Oxford he joined the army and his experiences during |
| 0:45.6 | the Second World War concentrated his ambitions towards politics. Yet there is so much more |
| 0:51.4 | to his existence than affairs of state. |
| 0:54.0 | Travel, music, art and poetry have provided sanctuary along with a marriage lasting 64 years and counting. |
| 1:02.0 | Politics has never been my whole life, he says. |
| 1:05.0 | Without a refuge in nature and the arts, |
| 1:08.0 | my persona would have taken over from my personality. |
| 1:12.0 | Your persona, Denis Healy, that's a very interesting choice of words, |
| 1:16.0 | sort of identifying that you did assume a role in politics. Do you think it would have engulfed you then if you hadn't managed to step back into other areas? |
| 1:26.0 | Oh very much so, yes. |
| 1:28.0 | Politics is about power and if you're only interested in politics it weakens you as a personality |
| 1:37.8 | enormously in my opinion. Politics must only be a small part of your life and people who have no interest |
| 1:46.0 | except politics who have, for example, no interest in the arts are very, very bad |
| 1:51.0 | politicians like Magi Thatcha. |
| 1:55.0 | The cultural life that you have led then that has always happened in tandem with this |
| 1:59.5 | vigorous political life that you've been involved with. How much do you think it's informed |
| 2:05.2 | your politics? How much has it shaped you as a politician? I don't think that music or |
| 2:10.0 | the arts have shaped my politics, but I think my real life is in the arts rather than in |
... |
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