Hello, I'm Kirstie 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 1977, and the presenter was Roy Plumlee. This week our cast wears the author Richard Adams.

Mr Adams, have you ever daydreamed about being a Robinson Crusoe?

Well, yes, I have, and I've even realized this dream I may say

two years ago having finished a promotional tour in America I

rounded it off with six weeks in Tahiti and it wasn't just Tahiti which is the main island in the group

where you know there's a certain amount of civilization other islands in the group are very remote indeed and I spent some time on two of them,

Maria, which is just down the wind from Tahiti within sight of it.

And a much more remote island, Borora Bora, which is about 150 miles west again.

These islands are very remote.

From that experience, do you think you could endure loneliness for a long time?

I'm quite sure I could. There are great

compensations on these islands. They're not desert islands of course. They're

populated by Polynesian natives and well I mean you know they have a Chinese trader and sell you baked beans and this sort of thing

that they are very very remote indeed and you're a very long way in the blue on one of these Pacific islands. Now you have eight records to

keep you company. How much does music mean to you? It means a very great deal to me

although I'm not a trained musician. I have at various times in my life tried to play various instruments. I can play

the recorder a bit, I can play the guitar a bit, and once long ago when I was a little boy,

they even tried to teach me to play the piano.

The result is that I can read music after a fashion and appreciate something like a change of

key.

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