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 1982, and the presenter was Roy Plumlee. Our castaway this week is a writer, academic, economist, and a former United States Ambassador,

Professor John Kenneth Galbraith.

Professor Galbraith, could you endure loneliness for a long time?

The whole idea doesn't appeal to me at all.

I'm not especially gregarious.

I can get along with my own dismal personality

for a little while, but I would hate to endure it for any length of time.

How much does music mean to you?

Music is something that I'm sorry to say passes me by.

Do you sing or whistle?

I mean, do you like to hum tunes? I do when I'm all by myself, but when I'm with anybody else, I'm promptly told that I must stop it. Because whatever I do is deeply offensive to someone else's ears.

I'm sorry about that.

How did you set about choosing just a few, just eight records to take with you for a long time on a desert island?

Well, I had to listen at some length to my wife because she

thought some of my selections, first selections, were rather sorted.

Did you take her advice?

I always do. If I don't take it the first time then she repeats it.

So this is a family choice. So it's a family choice. But also to be serious, I picked out things which I've enjoyed and which had some meaning for some part of my long past life.

What's the first one?

The Sky Boat Song.

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