Hello I'm Kirstie Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.

For Wright's reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

The program was originally broadcast in 1983 and the presenter was Roy Plumley. On our desert item this week is the novelist Malcolm Bradbury.

Professor Bradbury, have you ever daydreamed about being a Robinson Crusoe?

No, I haven't. I teach Robinson Crusoe in my classes and I always present him as a rather unfortunate figure

who is stranded on a capitalist desert island and forced to scrape a living from the soil.

And I've never been good at that sort of thing myself,

so on the whole I'm happy where I am.

Apart from the allegory, if it was real,

could you endure it?

I don't really think I could. I have a dreadful feeling I'd curl up and die to be honest.

Would a very limited amount of music help? It would. It would indeed.

Is music important in your life? Yes it is, but I can't say that I have a good musical education.

I use music for reinforcement and support.

But you don't perform? I don't perform and I never have. Do you have a lot of records at home?

Their house resounds with records, but they're mostly not mine. My children are avid users of technology and they listen to a great deal of music. Most of my records

are still the records that I had when I was about 25.

You keep all the old ones? Oh I do. Right back to Tarragood. Yes. Did you have any plan in choosing

your aid? Yes, I decided that I would display not that part of my musical listening which has to do with the records that I ultimately like that's to say

classical records but those which have played some part in moments in my life or are connected with moments in my life

that I still want to hold on to, having a dreadfully bad memory, and being delighted that there

are signal systems like music that help bring things back.

...