Sunday, November 07, 2010

In Praise of Ian McMillan on Desert Island Discs

A perfect mix of down-to-earth anecdotage and educated cultural awareness, poet Ian McMillan may be accused of being a professional Northerner, but he is a delight.

McMillan's Desert Island Discs today (Sunday 7 November 2010) was a real pleasure.

Most brilliantly, he chose Cage's 4' 33'' as his selected disc from the eight: because it would always sound different (which is true).

UK listeners can probably catch either the iPlayer broadcast, the Friday morning repeat on R4 OR download the podcast version (which limits the music but does have his great stories).

In particular I was very enamored of McMillan's mother who sounds wonderful: she was jailed during the war for going AWOL in order to marry her penpal sweetheart. Awesome and romantic.

No comments: