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 1992, and the presenter was Sue Lolly. My castaway this week is a botanist, he's already had a taste of what it might be like to live on a desert island

while working in the Amazon rainforests a supply plane crashed

leaving him and his colleagues without food for eight days.

On another occasion he nearly died when he caught malaria

and got lost in the jungle.

None of this, however, has deterred him.

He knew he wanted to be a botanist from the age of nine and four years ago he took

over the top job in his profession. He's the director of the Royal Botanic Gardens,

Q Professor Gillian-Prince. Gillian, is it?

It is.

It's a Gallic name that comes from the Isle of Sky that's very common there.

And there's a mountain called Scuna Gillian, and my parents had their honeymoon there.

And France?

France is originally a Welsh name, Aprance.

And as far as I know, my predecessors came more from Devon and Cornwall rather than Wells.

But your friends call you Ian?

Yes they do.

Now you've sampled as I said at a desert island experience, marooned in the Amazon rainforest for eight days with no food.

How did you cope?

Well I think I do well on a desert island because of that experience.

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