Hello, I'm Krestey 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 1989, and the presenter was Sue Lolly. My castaway this week is a politician and a writer, the son of a South Wales minor,

he first entered the House of Commons more than 40 years ago

and rose to hold high office, Chancellor of the Exchequer and Home Secretary twice in the Labour governments of the 60s and 70s.

But then he left British politics altogether to become this country's first president of the European Commission.

Four years later he returned, the time had come he thought to form a

completely new party. All this however is not the career of a straightforward political

heavyweight. His intellectual credentials have earned him

the chancelorship of Oxford University, and his love of literature and fine wine have always

given him a distinctive, some would say, superior air.

He is of course Roy Jenkins or more properly Lord Jenkins of Hillhead who, despite rumors

far prefers, I think, a good burgundy to a claret is that not right?

No that's not really true. I quite like burgundy but I don't know anything about it.

I presume that the origin of you and the claret is really to do with the fact that you enjoy

conviviality good conversation good company yes I suppose I do enjoy talking

talking sometimes over meals not always talking not or not wholly seriously more than any other

relaxation talking in a conversational sense not not speech making I've never

tremendously enjoyed speech making and not cocktat not

cocktail party going, which I presume four years in Brussels would have finished off.

I managed to avoid that even in Brussels.

I avoid it very much if I can.

...