Hello, I'm Christy Young, and this is a download from the Desert Island Discs Archive.

This edition may be slightly different from what was actually broadcast, but it is the

only version we have. It comes from the British Library's Radio Collection. The recording

didn't contain the guest's 8 music choices, so we rebuilt the original show by using disks

from the BBC Gramophone Library. For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music. Full

details can be found on the Castaways page on the Desert Island Discs website. The

programme was originally broadcast in 1980, and the presenter was Roy Plumley.

The Road Not Our Desert Island, this week, is the writer William Trevor. How much does

music mean to you? It hasn't meant a tremendous amount to me, in a very old-fashioned way

and I know what I like, but music hasn't meant as much to me as, for instance, the visual

arts or literature. Have you any skill yourself, do you play an instrument?

No, I did once, I think, take a piano lesson when I was a small boy. Only one? Yes, I think

it was a very unmalodious occasion and ceased forth with. Do you sing? Again, there was one

singing lesson, and it wasn't a success. Do you play discs a lot? Not a great deal, no.

Not great? Well-working, well-copied, I think, or anything like that.

No, I once read in a magazine that I did my writing while listening to Mozart and drinking

clarinet late at night. This is quite untrue, I don't and I didn't. It sounds an ideal life.

Well, it sounds very good, but in fact, at last it's totally false. No, Mozart, no clarinet.

Not late at night, no. What's your first record? Shubat. String Quintet in C, the beginning

of the second movement. Why? Because I felt that the first record should possibly be the one

which I would like to hear very early in the morning at dawn on my disadvent, and this one

seems to me to be absolutely perfect for that.

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