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 1979, and the presenter was Roy Plumlee. This week our castaway is the actor Peter Barkworth. You are a music lover, you play the piano.

Yes I do. Have you found that useful in your acting career?

Not a great deal, I played the piano quite a lot in

Telford's change and I have played the piano several times in plays. So just as something

else I can do it has been a help.

Have you a big collection of records?

Yes, but I don't seem to have bought any lately.

And I think it's because, I suppose as one gets older, there seems to be more and more to do and also my energy

level is less than it used to be and I like a rest in the afternoons. I don't want that rest to be accompanied by Gramophone Records because

I would have to get up and change them over.

Well, what's the first one you've chosen for the island?

It's Elgar's First Symphony. I think this might make me a bit tearful

because it is so very, very English and it would make me very homesick. But it is also very beautiful music,

especially I think in Scholte's performance. It's the best performance of it I've ever heard because he makes the music live and breathe in a way that no other conductor has ever done, I think, even from the very first bar. The Oh, The The The opening of Elgar's first symphony in A-flat, George Shelty conducting the London Philharmonic Orchestra.

Now, I've looked you up in Who's Who in the Theatre and one or two other reference books.

You were born in Margit. Were you brought

up there? No I think I spent six months there. I have no recollection of it at all. After

Margaret we moved to Kenton in Middlesex. And you announced at the age of five that you were going to be an actor?

Yes, I was a member of the Wolf Cub pack in Kenton and it was my first part. We put on a play called Simple Simon and I was Simple Simon. I don't remember saying to my mother,

Oh, mummy, I do want to be an actor when I grow up, but she always said to me that that is what I said when I was five.

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