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 first castaway of 1989 is Britain's most senior religious leader.

He was born into a family far removed from church affairs.

His mother was a hairdresser.

And Oxford education was interrupted by the war in which he commanded tanks and won the military

cross. He still has a reputation for calmness under fire and has never been afraid of making plain his views on

controversial issues in which he thinks the church should be involved.

He is the most Reverend Robert Rundsey, the 102nd Archbishop of Canterbury. Your Grace you are, I believe, a lover of travel and exploration, so being cast away to an exotic corner will not be purgatory for you.

No, not at all, I do enjoy travel.

I'm much influenced by places and by the fascination of people of every sort. should miss those on this desert island.

Do you like being alone?

Yes I like some periods alone and it's good for me to be alone, but I have to say that I doubt whether I would

survive easily without company because I suspect that I am by nature an extrovert and a gregarious character.

What about holidays? Do you go on holidays in the sun? I mean can an archbishop slip into his bathing

draws on a kitchen? Oh yes, I try to play. an archbishop slip into his bathing drawers?

Oh yes, I try to plan that very carefully because I don't get much in the way of days off,

you know, and the pressure is very considerable. It's a matter of seeking anonymity.

And in Kent, for example, where I like to be beside the sea sometimes, I have a friend who

is ready to come to Dimchurch Beach with me and we go to the

water side with me in a straw hat and dark glasses. Then I quickly whip off the

straw hat and the dark glasses and make for the sea and he's

...