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 1992, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Music My castaway this week is a shopkeeper. He runs more than one. In fact, at the last count, there were 475 of them. But he's not a remote figure.

After Oxford, he entered the family firm and learned how to rash a bacon and pat-butter,

and so worked his way up to become chairman. That was 23 years ago. Since then, he's presided

over phenomenal growth, and today his company is the most profitable retailer in the country.

Some of those profits have been spent in the national interest. He and his family are devoted

to the arts, and most recently they endowed the fine new extension to the National Gallery

in London. He's the chairman of Sainsbury's Lord Sainsbury of Preston Candover. So you're very

happy, are you, to be called a shopkeeper, Lord Sainsby. That's how you perceive yourself. Absolutely. I boast of being a shopkeeper when asked what I do. And I've enjoyed the trade, and I have great respect for those in the trade who do well, and I'm proud of being a shopkeeper. You're the fourth generation of your family in this, aren aren't you? That's right. My great-grandfather, who started the business, with one shop and the legendary £100 in a very small dairy in Drury Lane in 1869. What did he tell? Well, he sold mostly dairy products. It was a very poor street in those days, a poor market street and a lot of the

goods were sold out on the pavement. And I think the interesting thing is that what he started

in a very important way is still going on, because he started with a twin objective of having

better quality than anyone else in Drury Lane and having at the same time as low or lower

prices than anyone else.

And he multiplied and multiplied, didn't he?

I think by the outbreak of the First World War, there were 115 shops.

Oh yes, but originally, you know, his ambition was simply to have one for each of his children.

So that was a start of the expansion.

But what I think is interesting is that he was

unique and what he was trying to do in those days because lots of people tried to have the cheapest

prices and lots of people tried to have the best quality. Very, very rare. Did people put

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