Eliza Manningham-Buller

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller. She has recently stepped down as Britain's top spy-master - or more correctly, the Director-General of MI5. She took the helm in the months after the attacks of 11th September 2001 in America and steered the service through a time when the nature of the terrorist threat facing Britain changed enormously and new measures were introduced to counteract it.

She concedes that MI5 has to rely, in large part, on information that is 'patchy and incomplete' and that ultimately the service will always be judged 'by what we do not know and did not prevent'. In her first ever interview, Dame Eliza talks gives her recollections about the day when Britain was targeted by suicide bombers, describes what lay behind her own departure from the service and reveals how her mother's role during World War II fuelled her own interest in public service.

[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]

Choices

1.

Johann Sebastian Bach

Sarabande from English Suite No 2 in A Minor

Soloist: Angela Hewitt

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2.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Requiem in D minor - Kyrie

Orchestra: Les Arts Florissants

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3.

The White Stripes

I Just Don’t Know What to Do with Myself

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4.

The Rolling Stones

Street Fighting Man

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5.

Castaway's favourite

Franz Schubert

String Quintet in C major - 1st movement

Soloist: Douglas Cummings Orchestra: Lindsay Quartet

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6.

Soweto String Quartet

Millennia

Composer: S Khemese/M Mnguni/R Khemese/T Khemese

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7.

Ella Fitzgerald

Do I Love You?

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8.

Ludwig van Beethoven

Symphony No. 7 in A major

Orchestra: Berlin Philharmonic Conductor: Carlos Kleiber

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Book

The Rattlebag: An Anthology of Poetry by Ted Hughes

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Luxury item

Large supply of pencils and pens

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