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 1988 and the presenter was Sue Lawley. My castaway this week at first glance appears to be in the classical mold of the English

conservative politician.

His father and grandfather were both MPs.

He was an Eaton scholar, president of the Cambridge, and took a first in history.

But he's also written a string of popular thrillers, vows that one of his favourite television

programs is Dynasty, and perhaps most surprising of all, has managed to remain loyal to is has prevented him from achieving high office. He is the Home Secretary, the right

Honorable Douglas Heard MP.

Mr. Heard, it seems to me that the problem with being Home Secretary is that everybody

thinks they can do your job better than you can.

We all know about it.

Indeed, I'm not starved of advice.

The problem is not that you don't know what to do because there are millions of people

writing to you every year telling you exactly what to do because

everybody is his own her own home secretary. Not everybody thinks they can be

chance at Exchequer but I think most people think they can be home secretary and probably a better one than me

so you've got all of us breathing down your neck and the whole of the cabinet breathing

down your neck as well yes they don't breathe quite so heavily because on the

whole they know enough about it to know it isn't quite so easy.

Well I want to talk to you about your job in more detail in a moment but let me ask you first.

I mean you must be going to enjoy leaving all of that behind you and escaping to the island?

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