Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.

For Wright's reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

The program was originally broadcast in 1979, and the presenter was Roy Plumlee. This week our cast weighs the historian Sir Arthur Bryant.

Sir Arthur, I'm told that you like to work to a musical background?

Yes, I always have done so.

It probably is a very bad way of listening to music and I can't say perhaps

that I do listen to it but it does help me a great deal to have a background of

classical music. Have you any musical skill yourself? None, whatever.

You don't sing or play an instrument?

Well, I sing, but we don't hardly call it musical skill.

Now what's the first record you've chosen?

Well, I would like because they've meant a great deal to me in my life

to have one of the songs of my old school hammer, which has no wonderful buildings like Eaton or Winchester

but nonetheless has this great tradition of school songs for about 60 or 70

of them altogether. And you used to sing those.

And I used to sing those and still do.

Like Winston, I go down to Harrow whenever I can to hear the song sung and sing them.

Which one are you going to take to your island?

Well, there's one called if time is up, and the words of which have always meant a great deal

to me.

They glide the months of Wovey and work and desk and toil and task, and as you fear

them, fight the soul and as you trust them pass. And some will bring me good days and some will

...