Hello, I'm Kirsty Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons, we've had... To shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in 2009. Castaway this week is the countryside campaigner, the Countess of Cranbrook. Both protester promoter Caroline Cranbrook is a champion of independent shopkeepers, farmers and small-scale producers, but as... Of the Awkward Squad, she's probably best known for her part in taking on supermarket Goliath Tesco and winning. Glance she may seem an unlikely folk hero but her pedigree more than hints at a character well suited to missing obfuscates.

And resistance head on. The daughter of two spies, she says she is like a rat living under the floorboards and popping up in the most unexpected... Places. You did say that, didn't you? I did, yes. It's not the way we're used to a countess being described or certainly hearing her describe herself. Is that the key to success? Campaigning then, this subversive element of people not quite knowing when you're going to poke your nose into their business? I think that's part of it. There, but I think also in my own life it's being very reasonable, I think. Being practical and reasonable and common sense. I think this is one of the things that has driven me. Throughout and also I have a great sense of the importance of fairness and I do find that By being reasonable and fair and popping up in these unexpected places, one does have a chance of perhaps influencing what is going to happen.

You've led a very, very varied and rich life and we're going to talk about it in some detail later. Among the things you've done, you've worked with the zoologist Desmond Morris, you spent many years as a farmer and in recent years you've taken on this public campaigning role have these changes come easily to you? I've come very easily. I've never planned my life, but life seems to lead me where I need to go. I've had a very happy life. I've had a wonderful family, and I've lived all my life. Life off and on in the countryside. And the greatest influence probably throughout my We had was a really, really exceptional woman called Didi, who took us out into the countryside. She showed us the flowers, the animals, gave us the names of the flowers, and one of the most vivid memories of Didi is... Galloping through the Welsh lanes with a tiny little wicker work pony cart, a tiny pony, and she was like Burdasir, she was whipping on...

This little pony and we were going to buy butter from illegal black market butter from one of the hillside farms and she was the person who really set the scene of being interested in the countryside, interested in what was growing and everything about us. Let's listen to your first choice today then. What's your first disc? This choice is a wonderful song. It's the song of the plains. It's sung by the Red Army Choir and it's 'My Fields, Oh My Fields' and I... I loved it as a child, I loved horses as a child, and I loved this record particularly because you can hear the horses hooves, but it is a wonderful record as well.

Army Coruscant Band and Song of the Plains. So Caroline Cranbrook, you were born in London in 1935. Tell me what family life was like. Family life... My most memorable time when one was conscious of life really was during the war and I saw very little of my parents to start with. Both my parents were in MI6 and so we spent of our time with our grandparents, my brother and I, in Lincolnshire and in Wales. You said very matter-of-factly there that both my parents were MI6. Did you know at the time that Mummy and Daddy were spies? Of course not, of course not. When did you find out? It was interesting, my mother went to Bletchley, was schooled in spying in Bletchley, my father was a serious spy I think.

And I don't know when he was recruited. My mother had a little suitcase which was called Secret Inks, and I always thought this was a joke. And it had a false bottom in which she kept Secret Inks, apparently. My father had a great sense of humor, and I always thought this was just a little joke. I have since discovered from a friend who's in MI6 and retired. That in fact she was a great expert in secret inks. You say you didn't see very much of your appearance. I suppose given the very privileged circumstances that you were brought up in that was quite normal to really have your primary relationship with your nanny.

During the war because they were not there and they were both posted to Portugal and they must have decided that it would be a nice place for us to go and so we moved to Portugal and a new person came into our lives who was our governess called Lucille and she again was a great, as it were, adventurous. She used to take us out into the countryside, she took us to all the fiestas. I remember she took us in this little old tram and we'd go rattling through the countryside, this little group of about half a dozen or so children children and I remember meeting the king of Gypsies with his black goat at a great fiesta of gypsies but I think she also set the scene of my life very much in that she was very interested in language. She taught us Portuguese and French. We had to speak Portuguese one day and French the next. She was a wonderful dancer. She taught us how to dance.

And she loved singing and she collected songs and so I think again my interest in folk song, in music and in getting out into the countryside and finding things out. So I think this again was very important in my life. said in that first track... You could hear the sounds of the horse's hooves, which is one of the reasons you've chosen it. When did you learn to ride? I can't remember. I mean I was probably put on a horse in a little basket chair. In fact I was when I was probably about... 18 months old. And I remember when I came back to England, and then of course we saw a lot of our parents. We used to go up for the weekends and our holidays up to Lincolnshire where my father's parents lived. And I had a nice little... Called Snowball there. I remember on my mother's birthday, as a lovely surprise for her, I took the pony up the back stairs to our nursery, which was quite high up, and that was very easy.

The stairs went round and round and the pony bludgingly walked up. Were you leading the pony? Oh yes, oh yes, yes. And I left him in the nursery and then ran to my mother and said, I've got a lovely surprise for you. Come and see what I've got in the nursery. So there was the pony, lugubiously looking out of the window. And it took us about three hours to get it downstairs again. Tell me about your next piece of music then. What have you chosen? The next piece is from Bas Matthew Pashman. It's O Sacred Head, Sore Wounded. And it is a wonderful, wonderful piece of music. Well, I would like to... To have it is it was very important to my parents. They both sang in the bar choir every week and I remember my father used to come back having performed in the Matthew Passion, having sung in the Matthew Passion, absolutely drained at lunchtime and I associate this very much with my parents and it is a most...

Fantastic piece of music. ♪ His praise the name of sin ♪

You describe what sounds like an incredibly idyllic childhood. I'm wondering about, given how passionately you talk these days about food and food production, what are the food memories from your childhood? What would you have eaten in the nursery? In the war, living in the countryside, meat was very short and there were an awful lot of rabbits, disguised in various ways. Phyllis the rabbit looked like Jesus. My brother was very sentimental, would not eat it and would only eat it if he thought it was chicken. When you were 11 then, you were sent to boarding school, and it was quite an unusual boarding school. It was an appalling boarding school, and I was sent there for very much the wrong reasons. Because I was very hoarse here, my father thought, well, she might as well learn about horses.

And it was run by a trio of ladies, one of whom was a serious alcoholic, and bit by bit the staff started leaving. In the end I was teaching biology and geography at the age of 15. A friend of mine, Bridget Hart-David, was also teaching. I remember when a school inspection came we were made up to look like teachers, look at adults. It was an absurd situation and it became so intolerable. My parents a very long letter describing the horrors of it all and saying I must leave and it became too much and I simply ran away from it. And given your experience is not altogether positive as

we've heard at boarding school. Did you send your own kids away to boarding school? No we didn't. I think the old tradition of the upper classes sending their children away at eight to boarding school was terrible. Luckily that didn't happen to us. And so given that you parented very differently, do you regret that you didn't have a more direct relationship with with your own parents? Yes I do intensely and I also regret very much they died Fairly young and so I never really got to know them in a way and I have a theory that you never are on a level with the previous generation until you've got children of your own. They die just at the point when... Married and I just regret that so much. They never saw our children really and they did just see two of them but it's a great regret to me that. What are your strongest memories of your appearance of the time that you did spend with them? Well we used to do wonderful things, we used to go camping.

In the Alps that was tremendous fun but it was also pretty awful and it would turn me against camping I have to say so waking up in a soggy tent and trying to wash in a stream but no that was that was tremendous fun actually so that that is a good memory of my parents. And what sort of person was your parents? I mean she sounds quite exotic really, the secret ink and all that. My mother was an extraordinarily competent person. She was very beautiful. And she was also very literally hands-on person. She could do anything. She could rewire the house, she could do the garden. My parents were tremendous gardeners and that again has been a huge influence because I absolutely love gardening and that's one of my passions. Let's take a break for some music then. Tell me about your third disc today.

This is the third disc of Senor Jodenach singing in 'I Domineo'. I think it was Einstein even who said that only a genius like Mozart could produce a piece of music like this, but only once in his life because it was so exceptional. This is Sena Yurinak singing in a remarkable production in 1951 at Glinebourne. And I think she had the most wonderful voice. And I think this particular piece where Ilya, the daughter King Priam, is on the island of Crete. And thinking about her lover, Adamante, and saying, I hope the breezes will take my love to him. It's a beautiful piece.

Dana Urenac singing Ilia's Aria Zeferetti Lusinieri from the second act of Mozart to recorded live at Kleinborn in 1951. It's the case, isn't it Caroline Crambrooke, that you won scholarships to both Oxford and Cambridge. You were clearly a bright button. I was very surprised, you won't believe this, but I was scared. Aware that I was actually being entered for these university examinations. I was there very much as a stable runner for another girl and so... Was thought of as the bright one was she? She was thought as the bright one and I really didn't know whether I was coming or going but my... I did get in and I went to Cambridge. You went to Cambridge and studied history? I studied history. Was extraordinary then and there were only two and a bit girls colleges and it Like a girl's school. There were no men allowed in the college until lunchtime, no men after 10 o'clock. I think it was... You weren't allowed out of Cambridge without special permission from your tutor. It was a very strange...

Atmosphere so different from what happens now. And this was the 1950s. How did you look? Conjure me up a picture. Really. We had these long bunches skirts with lots of petticoats and rather thick stockings and rather sort of heavy makeup and looking back on it, um... It's extraordinary how we look. But we had a very good time. - Is it true that you were at the party that Ted Hughes-- Sylvia Plath met at? I think I was. It was very electrifying and Sylvia Plath, a Whose name I can't remember, they were both at Newnham with me and they were such a refreshing... Sight and she wasn't at all depressed at that time and they both looked like advertisements Fresh young Americans and they instead of wearing these ghastly bunches skirts they wore sort of neat little cotton skirts and plimsolls and white

socks and I remember in the breakfast queue these two girls just laughing away together and I was just thinking this is a different world. What did you think you were going to do with your first class education I wonder because you know you say you rather sort of fell into Cambridge you weren't expecting that to happen and your father had sent you to a school where really the principal preoccupation seemed to be learning to write. What I wanted to do then was to work with refugees and rather luckily I think I failed to get a job with refugees. Left Cambridge and I then went to work at the London Zoo. You also worked with Desmond Morin. Whilst you were there, what were you doing with him? Well that was a most fascinating job. Solly Zuckerman, who then ran the zoo, he wanted to start a book, a journal for zoos. So he asked Desmond... And me to start this zoo yearbook. So we published articles from... All over the world of zoos, of architecture, of breeding.

To do with zoos and zoo animals. Desmond and I worked together for two years and then I was allowed to... Carry on on my own with this yearbook. It was a great formative period of my life because the London Zoo then was, I'm sure it is still, but then was a most wonderful community. That I learnt the fun of being in a community. Tell me about your next piece of music then. My next piece of music is Harry Lydbetter singing Take This Hammer. And this particular song has remained with me all my life. I could sing it to now, I sing it in the car when I think I'm going to sleep and it always wakes me up. It's a fantastic piece of music.

belly and take this hammer. Caroline Cranbrook, your husband is the magnificently named Gathorn Gathorn Hardy. He is the fifth Earl of Cranbrook. He was named after his great-great-great-great-great grandfather, is that right? Gaythorn is a family name and he is... I first met him when I was... I was 17. We knew each other at Cambridge. He then went to work in the Far East. He's a tropical biologist and his great interest is the birds and mammals. Of Southeast Asia. We lived in the jungle, 15 miles outside Kuala Lumpur, but in the real jungle it was so beautiful. We had a tiny house on the...

Edge of a hillside with a river at the bottom of the garden where we did our washing and also swam. And then the sounds of the hornbills, the argus pheasants, the bull bulls. The crazy noises of the insects and mist just drifting up because it's very very humid and it was absolutely blissful that time and that's of course where our eldest child was born, Jason was born At that time. Literally born in the middle of the jungle. No, my husband thought it would be very interesting if I actually did have it. In the jungle with the Aborigines, the local people. It would be very interesting to see what they did. Luckily I went to quite a nice hospital in Kuala Lumpur. And how much help did you have? Were you surrounded by servants and nannies and cooks?

There were these local people, the local tribal people, there were about six or seven indigenous groups in Malaya and the people who helped us in the house came from one of these groups and two or three girls used to come and help. I would go into Kualunumpa to a clinic and I would have to take somebody to carry the baby because I was driving. And then the person who was carrying the baby had to have a friend or maybe even two friends. We'd arrive in KL, these smart air-conditioned places. And my girls would usually be barefoot with flowers around their hair and probably some necklaces of nappy pins and I used to feel rather Inferior when I saw these elegant white ladies with their nanny, proper nannies, and I'd go home feeling a little bit depressed by all that. It was a wonderful, wonderful period though, that, in my life. Tell me about your next piece of music. My next piece of music... Is from one of Benjamin Britten's operas, The Little Sweep, and it's The Kettles Are Singing Now...

My family had a very close connection with Benjamin, Brit and Peter Pears. My mother-in-law was chairman of the Alba Festival, which was of course the music festival started by Ben and Peter. And they were close friends of the family. And this particular opera, The Little Sweep, was written about the Gaythorne Hardy family. And my husband's name is there, his sisters, his cousins, the place names. All there. It's about stories of a little boy, a chimney sweep, who's sent up the chimney and he... Falls down into the nursery and there he is surrounded by all these little children who want to clean him up and save him and this particular song that

The petals are singing as they are wanting to clean up the little boy. The petals are singing like they're summer lost. The fire is drinking, the shower is crossed. The children run, flying, to get to their children, For washing and drying, to sleep, why they riddle.

The kettles are singing from Benjamin Britten's The Little Sweep. So Caroline Cranbrook, it was what, a little over 30 years ago that you took over your husband's... Farm essentially he inherited the title you inherited this estate with farmland and you ended up farming it Well this was about in I suppose 1976 and I got into it because one day I was going down to the farm where I kept my horses and the carman said have you looked at the cows And they were starving, they were literally starving, and we had a very bad farm manager at the time who had failed to order any food for the winter. And so I started getting... Interested and then I started looking things up in books and talking to the farm workers.

I got to understand the land in many ways and one of the things I used to do was count the number of seeds coming up in the field because from the number of plants you are growing you can then adjust how much fertilizer and whatever you need to put on it. I literally crawled over, practically, every field on the farm. So I really did it right from the bottom. Teach yourself, I think. And so this great connection that you form not just with the land but with the people who work the land and with the wider community, I want to spool forward with that in mind. To the end of the 90s when you were very much part of this community and had been for a few decades and Tesco said that they planned to This sort of out-of-town superstore really on the edge of the nearest town Saxe-Mundon. And why did that get your goat? Well, again, I was very much aware ever since I'd come to Suffolk. There are huge numbers of small shops.

Still and all the market towns still had their bakers, their fishmongers, their butchers, grocers. These all stocked a lot of local food and I thought well if this big supermarket is going to come in it will undoubtedly result in many of these little shops closing down and what will the effect this be on the on the local food producers. And so I then went and interviewed every shop selling food I could find and I then did a database to see where they were getting... Their food from and to my amazement they were sourcing their food from nearly 300 local and regional food producers. I discovered something which is so obvious that nobody had ever pinpointed before, which is virtually all food businesses start small and you cannot start a small food business unless you've got small outlets. It's no good going to one of the big supermarkets and saying

fantastic chilli jelly or something. They'd go away. So I realised that if this superstore went in it would have a huge impact right across the board. It is an interesting story and I want to talk to you about it more but first let's hear a piece of music before we do that. What's your next track? My next record is Humphrey Littleton and playing Panama Rag. I'm almost an obsessional dancer, I'm far too old, it's a rather disgraceful sight probably seeing somebody my age rocking about on the dance floor but my memories of Humphrey Littleton are... Of dancing and dancing and I adore his music. I love playing it. I have a huge collection of his 78 records including Panama Rag and we played them all the other day on our ancient wind-up gramophone and it still evokes the same response. Die on the dance floor dancing to the horror of everybody. Good way to go now.

I'm feeling good.

And his band and Panama Rag. So Caroline Cranbrook, you've described how you went about gathering all of this information about local food production, about how local shops were supplied, about the chain and how it worked with tiny suppliers and The enthusiasm of local buyers for buying locally in your area. You describe it as a sort of food web really. You seem to be one of the first people to identify that as a system that worked. I think perhaps I was. I'm sure if everyone says something like that there's always somebody else who's done it first. But I think nobody had pinpointed before that this... Importance of small shops as a seed bed, really, is a seed bed for new food producers. Led me on to realize how tremendously important these small shops are socially as the heart of the community.

The stops are very much the eyes and ears of our community, and for this reason they are tremendously important. And so you and fellow campaigners saw off Tesco, they didn't build their out of town. It didn't. Everybody always says it was entirely due to me. It was not. I think I was useful to the local council in providing the evidence of the impact it would have. Was they had already commissioned a study to establish what the retailing need in their district was and they'd employed some consultants who looked at each of the market towns and their conclusion was we did not need a super store and it's for this reason that the supermarket was turned down. There isn't a superstore there, but there is one just 25 minutes away. People will say, Well, if it's not going to be in your backyard, it's going to be in someone else's. In the end, the consumer will decide, and the consumer likes to be able to buy sometimes things in bulk, but certainly things that are... Cheaper especially now more than ever and that's something that these tiny local shops simply can't provide.

Enough they can you know I mean I buy all my bulk stuff from the local shops they get it for me from the local cash and carry there there is a conflict here I think but at the same time want is not the same as need and my I am not against supermarkets per se. They are essential to our modern way of life. I have never campaigned against Tesco itself. What I campaign against is too large supermarkets, too many supermarkets, which in fact push out. Everything else. And locally then, right now, how are things with the local shops? Have many of them managed to survive? Well that is the fascinating thing. I did my original survey in '96, I then went back again in 2006 to see what had happened in the absence of a superstore and it was remarkable. A thousand flowers had flourished and so we had more food producers, we had more shops, all going against the national trends. Let's take a break for some music then. Tell me about...

Track seven we're on now. This is Beethoven's piano concerto number four in G major. I've My father every day, who was a musician, used to come back home from the bank where he worked and used to practice for at least an hour. And so the piano was always part of my early life. Now recently I've got to know a very good friend called Christian Blackshaw. Who is a wonderful pianist, plays around the world, and he plays with such clarity, such eloquence. and this is a... I have heard him playing and it moved me tremendously. This particular piece is something which takes one beyond oneself.

Christian Blackshaw playing the end of the first movement of Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4 in G major. So Caroline Cranbrook, you're clearly not... A lone voice. You know, we see even television channels running series now about how we choose to buy the food that we eat and whether chickens should be reared in a certain way and we have food authors writing entire books indeed about the origins of meat and how we choose to buy the meat and how we should cook it and trying to get us back in touch with the way things used to be 40, 50, 60 years ago. Do you get the feeling that in these credit crunch times, time and their time has come that people Are actually listening. I do completely agree with that and also I think in a way the consumer is ahead of government and I think another reason, a very profound reason, which is looking for food, preparing food is hardwired into

whole psychology and we've been hunter-gatherers for hundreds of thousands of years. We've only been shopping in supermarkets for about 30 and I think this actually is a very genuine lack that people are beginning to feel that there is something fundamentally wrong about being so separated from food from the countryside. I'm glad you brought up hunting and gathering because of course on this little island that I'm sending you to you're going to have to do all of that yourself. I can't imagine Going to pose any problem for somebody like you for a coper you'd be fine won't you? Well I'm very keen on gardening and having experienced the jungle a little bit and lived in the countryside I think I might be able to cope but I would miss companionship I would miss my family I would miss my friends and I certainly miss talking on the telephone which I love doing. And how How do you find time for family life now when you're so busy with all of your research and projects and organisations?

All our three children are obviously not at home. Our eldest, Jason, is an artist and a food campaigner. He's in Borneo at the moment organizing a food festival there. Otto is a landscape designer. My youngest son, August, is an architect, specializing in traditional techniques. My husband and I, we cook together every evening and we work hard at different things during the day. We garden together and we cook together. Do you have grandchildren? We've got two grandchildren so far, yes, two little children. I may be rather romantically imagining you giving them the same fascinating little lessons about the countryside and plants and flowers and animals that...

That your nanny did. Do you plan on doing that? Well I would hope to do that. They're a little bit young at the moment. The oldest one, Jack, is just about two. But I've got a lot of strawberry plants coming up for him for the summer. So I think that's going to be his introduction. Tell me about your final disc then. My final disc is famous in the farming world, the local farming world, a song called To Be A Farmer's Boy and we're... When we used to employ more people on the farm, I used to have wonderful harvest suppers and at the end, one of the people who worked for us used to get out his little accordion and used to sing and the one song everybody wanted was to be a farmer's boy. We have lost so much by losing the knowledge, the oral traditions and it's... It's so important to keep these alive. Yes, Father do, the daughter cry, When the tears roll down her cheek.

For those that would work 'tis hard to want, ♫ And wonderful employee, don't let him go, but let him sta- ♫ And be a farmer's boy, and be a farmer's boy Bye. Stringer and to be a farmer's boy. So Caroline Cranbrook I'm going to give you two books and you're allowed to take one. I'll give you the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare and what book are you going to take to accompany them? I'm going to take Dorothy Hartley's Food in England. This is an incredibly useful I had it with me when I was living in the jungle in Malaya, which I suppose in a way is a moderately dry run, it was very, very damp now. For the desert island but it not only describes the history of food in England but also has wonderful woodcuts showing you how to make

of oven out of hay, or how to skin a rabbit, or how to gut a pig. Extremely useful and I find it a great solace in Malaya too when I was missing my English home life and I would sort of sit there reading about these ancient ways of cooking apples or whatever it was. It's yours and a luxury too. Well, actually I thought I would take a knife, but I think you're not allowed to do something as practical as that. You're not. So what I would really like to take, I think, is some, I don't know whether this exists, sort of waterproof paper, and Indian ink and a pen, so I could write things down. At my age I might start forgetting.

You may have that. And if you had to choose just one of the eight tracks? I think it would be the St Matthew Passion. It's so uplifting, it's so moving, and I think one would always discover something new in it. We wouldn't get bored by it. It's yours. Countess Cranbrook, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island Discs. No, it's been great fun and thank you.

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk/radio4.