Hello, I'm Krusty 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 1978, and the presenter was Roy Plumlee. Our cast away this week is Britain's first prospective woman Prime Minister, the leader

of her Majesty's opposition, the right honourable Margaret Thatcher.

Mrs Thatcher how important to you is music?

It's what I go to when I want to take refuge in something completely different,

when I really want to get away from worries. completely different

when I really want to get away from worries and go from the very logical life that I've lived

and I've always been trained to live really to a different depth of experience.

You play the piano, don't you?

Yes, but I don't play any longer.

I didn't get time enough to practice and I couldn't bear hearing myself play badly.

Or what happens to you after a time is you never learn anything new.

You go on playing the things which you learned as a young person and never play anything new.

So I'm afraid I just don't play at all now.

One day when I've retired, I'll take it up again.

You used to sing too? Not solo parts. All my family were musical. My father had a lovely bass voice and therefore we were accustomed to singing at home. We had to make our own entertainment and amusements in

those days and we did. So I used to join choirs and I joined the bark choir when I was

at Oxford and loved it. Well now to the records. What should we hear first?

Well, I'm going to play first. The one that I always go to first, if I get to the country for the weekend,

and I just want to get away from politics, I go straight to the record player and I put on the

Emperor Concerto, Beethoven. The The Oh, The The The closing passage of Beethoven's Emperor Concerto, Alfred Brendle as soloist with the

...