Hello, I'm Christy 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 1983, and the presenter was Roy Plumley.

My cast away this week is the novelist Rachel Billington.

Do you play records a lot?

Yes, I do, very, very loudly, too, but luckily my speakers are not against the party wall.

Do you ever play them while you're working?

No, I don't play records, but I do play Radio 3, or all the time.

It starts me off in the morning, and that's an absolutely essential part of my working life.

Are you a musician? Do you play an instrument?

No, when I was about 13, I told my parents who were totally unmusical,

at least my father was, that I must learn the piano.

None of the other children had ever learned any instrument.

How many of you?

There were eight children, and none of them had, and I did for about two years

so that I can read music.

And my, well, three of my four children are now learning instruments,

so I'm good enough to help them, and good enough, I think, to appreciate, but no more than that.

But you haven't kept up your piano playing yourself?

No, no, sadly not.

How difficult did you find it to choose just eight discs that may have to last a long, long time?

Incredibly difficult, very difficult.

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