Reflecting on Legacy and Future

Hello, I'm Lauren Verne and this is the Desert Island Discks podcast from BBC Radio four. Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book, and luxury that they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. For rights reasons, the music's shorter than on the original broadcast, but you can find a version with longer music tracks on BBC sounds. Listeners will also get access to episodes twenty eight days earlier than everyone else. I hope you enjoy listening My castaway this week is the artist Peter Leayton, known as the Grandmaster of Gass, he's a founding father of the British Studio Glass moveovement, which is carved out, or should that be blown out? a niche in contemporary art that now belongs to this ancient material His work has been exhibited and acquired by some of the world's finest museums, and his collectors include Sir Elton John and the late Duchess of Kent. He was born in nineteen thirty seven in Prague, where his father worked in a glass factory, but when Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia, his family fled to Britain, settling in Bradford, where he followed in the footsteps of his friend David Hopney at their local art college He trained as a ceramicist before falling in love with glass making when he saw a demonstration at a summer workshop. He says, How lucky can you be? To do something you really love, working in an extraordinary material with special properties and myriad possibilities, creating things that thankfully people sometimes decide they need to enhance their lives Peter Leayton, welcome to Desert Island Disks. Thank you so much. It's really a pleasure to be here. We're delighted to have you. We've got to start with the appeal of glass, PetC. You've described it as an extraordinarily seductive material. What is it that you love so much about it? It is truly a magical material material which is fluid onene moment and Solid at another I'm talking about glass blowing in particular. there are lots of other techniques, another way of working casting and slumping and spending and pulling out millions of miles of fiberre and exploring possibilities with it. It just appears endless. We'll be talking about your studio in London, which you've run for many years now, and you still encourage the public to come and watch you working there and at eighty eight, you're still spending two or three days a week there working in the studio What keeps you going back? Well, you know, I've got far too many ideas. I'm not going you know, I'm running out of time it's the truth of the matter. I've got lots and lots more to do It's a labor of love Because it's not a way to make a fortune We do have a really nice gallery and a very, very nice studio and it is incredibly rewarding when people walk into our gallery and their jaws drop and they. God, I had no idea you could do all this with glass. And of course, we're going to be here in your disks today, Peter. You've chosen your music for us. Is that important to you? Is it something that influences how you work? Well, there's usually music on in the studio. I have to say that, sometimes to the point where we need to tone it down a bit and thinking about this program. I mean I'm just so blown away by Creative, people are The glass world is relatively small, you know, that's our kind of bubble When you think about how many creatives there are operating in the world, you know makes it a much better place Well, I think we should get started on that note. thenen tell us about your first choice today, Peter. Disk number one. What is it? A, yes, George Formby when I'm cleaning windows. As a kid growing up in Bradford, I used to go to a Saturday morning film club George, my brother and I used to go. And one of our heroes was George Formbey. He was just incredible. I remember Being a jockey in one of these films and He just raised our spirits Two overcrowded flats have been, sixteen in one bed I seen with the lodger tucked up in between. When I'm leaning windows All soldiers ever die, they say, Though I don't want to pass away, I kick the bucket every day. When I'm cleaning winds, through working at such dizzy heights, I dream about my job at nights, I polish my wife's thing a bit heights and think I'm clean in windows George Bnby and When I'm Cleaning Windows. I mean, a few of his tracks have got a good double onendre going. Were you aware of that? Peter? No, not then, but it's a bit naughty, I agree. And I do actually like that. I like that cheeky northern bit. So let's go back to the beginning, Pete. You weren't born in Bradford, As I mentioned, you were born in Prague, nineteen thirty seven to Fritz and Edith You and your parents escaped are actually one of the last trains out of the city in nineteen thirty nine. You would have been tiny. Do you remember anything about the journey? I don't remember the journey. I do remember arriving in London. How old what have you been I was ch in a bit We caught the last train out in August, arrived here at the end of August and war was declared a few days later. So it was a narrow escape would I get together with my family all, you know, when I think about my family at all, you know, I just think, what a miracle They were heroic And what did your mum and dad tell you about? them having to make the decision to leave? I mean, how did it all happen So My parents were Austrin My dad was my dad, we call him Freddie actually was working for a Czech glass company. He wasn't a glassmaker himself, although when I took up glass many years later he was very tickled. And the way it happened was that my grandfather was a TB specialist. He had a sanatorium a place called Semmering, which is south of Vienna He'd already been put in jail. What was he put in jail? For being Jewish, I suspect Luckily for him, he was also a freemason. And apparently, as I understand it The warden of that particular place was was also a freemason and they managed to he managed to get out somehow and he managed to leave with his wife and Come to Britain He became the city pathologist in Bradford And he managed to send coded messages to my parents in by that time in Prague There is a tale that the family do know how they were queueing up to get their paper stamped with hundreds, maybe even thousands of others And an SS man comes approaches them and says I said to my dad, whatat are you doing here? My dad was rather was fair, blonde, almost, and it didn't look characteristically Jewish You know, he assumed he wasn't Jewish. So he said, why are you Yeah And my dad said, but I'm here with my wife and we're ceing for papers and The officer said S me showh me the papers you've got already and he noticed that something was missing So my mother really dynamic woman. she was off like a shot, you know, she zoomed across town. She left my dad in the quebe and he moved up towards the front by the time she'd got back She charmed whoever she needed to charm to get the requisite stamp. and got back as my dad arrived at the front and they They got out at all was a total miracle. How did life start to cool here when they arrived in Britain? They didn't immediately go to Bradford. I think they were in Surrey first on. They were they were butler and madeaid to some really kind family who The men. in gobling. I do remember being treated very well by their kids who were older. and then Bradford was the next place to go, you know, because my grandfather was already there. and Dad was what they called an undesirable alien and he was interned for a while. He joined the army. He was in the Pioneer Corps Anyway, he survived. That was an amazing thing and after the war he came back to Bradford, but things were They were obviously trying to adapt to a new environment and difficult to be Austrian in Britain during the war, they chose to anglicize your surname They did. Our name was Lurvy Anyway, they chose Link and I suspect it was opinion. telephone book. I don't know. I never did actually know why. How do you feel about your surname, about being a laton Oh, I like it a lot. We're very happy to be lateent There's quite a clan of us now. We're well over forty. And George my brother went on to become quite a well known actor My sister, Viv got an MB for her work setting up schemes projects for people with learning difficulties that sort of thing And that's all because Edith and Freddy managed to get away. We My wife, Anne and I were in few years back and we hadd been to the Jewish cemetery, and I'd been to there's an exhibition in a tower there It was full of children's drawings that were done in Terezenchlat And I Remember being terribly terri incredibly moved thinking you know, there but for the grace of God. Peter, let's have some music. It's time for your second choice. Well, on that note, I want to play Jacqueline de Preay. playing Kong Nidre. It's a composition by Max Braw My first wife, Tessa and I were at Windsor Castle sharing a relative from Australia around and We heard this incredible music coming from St. George's Chapel and we went and investigated it and discovered that it was Jacqueline Du Preay with Daniel Berenbam and that there was a concert that evening and we were able to get tickets. This is a traditional Jewish prayer this piece. What does it mean to you? It's the prayer that's sung on the eve of the Day of Atonement, which is the most Holy day, if you like, of the Jewish calendar It's the day when you H if you like for all sins during the past year, your sins against God, that is The translation of Colnidra is all vows. so you of abbrogate all vows that you've made and o my mind, it's a very beautiful Song. So this is Cole Nidy. pererformed by Jacquelinda Prave. Yeah. C Niday by Max Brook performed by Jacqueline Du Prey with the Israel Pharmonic Orchestra conducted by Daniel Barrenboy Q quite powerful to hear that, I think. Yeah. Where did it take you? Well, it made me think about these millions of Jews that were Jon annihilated during that war And of course it also made me think about what's going on at the moment. which is so tragic, you having lived through the Second World War. I never imagined we'd be back there on the brink again, you know, it's just u It leaves me speechless, really So Peter, tell me about life in Bradford. As you mentioned, you and your parents moved up, encouraged by your grandfather, Victor. Did the Jewish community in Bradford help your mum and dad find a sense of belonging there? Did they feel part of it Yes, they did And I'm really glad you answed that because we weren't particularly religious My grandfather went to the reform synagogue We went to the Orthodox synagogue, but only largely because peopleople that my dad worked with were there I don't love religion, organized religion at all. In fact, I'm pretty negative about it. What matters is the sense of community. and I have to say the community then were good to us. They helped us where they could I mean, my parents, my mother in particular was quite a proud woman, so she didn't want to accept charity as it were. And she worked incredibly hard She was involved in fashion and she Maged fashion shops. Entrepreneurial and creative by the sounds of. Yes, she was she was very creative. one of her first Ventures was to create a hand knitting business, a hand knitting service And she designed as well. She was a designer. She designed for some of the local factories like Listers Mill, which Wh was a huge mill that I passed on my way to school every day. It must have been very instructive for you watching her. I wonder what you learned from that because you know there she is starting up on her own, doing creative work a lot like you would in years to come Yes, I think I think the truth is I took that a little bit for granted. She was just such an amazing personersality, you know, You wouldn't expect anything less Iose is how I would view it My dad was much quieter. He was quite a patient person, a rock really He allowed her to be who she wanted to be because He slogged away in a You know, in the admin of a textile factory for years and years and years, probably all his life at a job he didn't really enjoy. in order to let Edith my mth bllossom, as it were She sounds remarkable and obviously, you know, the source of your creative streak. But I know that was very much encouraged by your grandfather. He loved the fact that you were interested in art. I know you've got an artwork of him. You've actually immortalized him. Tell me about it Art at school was really very stimulating It was really dull Dultifying Grandad was great scholar of Goethe and Schila and he had a fantastic library. You could barely move in his study And he went to any concert he could. He was great supporter of for ballet And he's to take me along Eventually I ended up in art school And I asked him to sit for me and actually that was a really, really nice experience. We He was a Victorian gentleman. He was very reserved or perhaps even strict in a certain kind of way working with him over a period of time Meling his head wasn' of really nice way of getting to know him better And what did you make it? or did you cast it in? I modeled it in clay and eventually I did have it cast in bronze and I'm so glad I did. And even the bronze head lay around for a long, long time and I only got it mounted, had it mounted? No. a year or so ago and it sits in our house now to on a headad from time to time. I'm really, really glad to H it And actually it's pretty good like because it's not bad. All right, Piza, it's time to make some room for the music. It's your third choice today. What are we going to hear next? I had to do national service. I thought I might get away with not doing it. It was scraping towards the end, but that wasn't to me And literally just before Christmas In nineteen fifty six I was called out So I went to the RF and eventually after horrors of basic training, I ended up in what was called a movements unit in South Hampton in the docks I'd Growing up in Bradford, which is what in those days was such a dirty place. builduildings were black from the smoke of the factories We experienced Wst smogs, you can imagine. I mean pea supers You really couldn't see your hand in front of your face. It was that bad Getting Southampton was different. It was it was clean is white It was a revelation that I didn't even notice cities like that existed So I went to a Dave Brumbeck concert in the City hall newew building, brand new building and And actually I will track I've chosen I would have liked to have chosen God rest ye merry gentlemen played it, but apparently never recorded it. because He was playing that during the concert and there was a pause During the pause Beelt toer chimed And it was just that perfect moment for them to chime. and the whole audience erupted just a wonderful, wonderful moment. moment has stuck with me So Dave Brubeck playing takeake five D No Dave Brubeck and takeake five. So Peta Lyon, tell us a bit about your life at school. You passed the eleven plus and you went to Bellevue Grammar schoolool in Bradford. What kind of pupil were you P stream I went to Bellevue because I wanted to play football at the grammar school, the Bradford Grammar School, which was the school to go to They didn't play football. They only played rugby Be I hadn't been at Bellevue very long before I fell in love with rugby, so I somewhat regreted. I mean, it was a stupid decision, wasn't it? So you turn the grammar school just for the love of football? Yes, I chose my school because I might not have got in at the other school. That was where Hockney was And we became friends through my best friend at the school, David Johnson. He knew David. Yeah, you've often said about David Hockney that you've often followed in his footsteps in one way or another. He was probably my first contact with an artist or seeing somebody working as an artist. I mean, he would draw wherever he was and We have this to Scotland Awesome hitch hiking and sleeping where we could He was drawing all the time Even then you didn't have any aspiration to be an artist, and you ended up working a steady job in the woooolen trade in Bradford Tell me about that My father approached by a distant relative with this wonderful opportunity to maybe become the guy who would take over his business eventually. And this was what we you famemistically call the heavy wooen industry, but it was actually the rag trade We would get bales of rags from Eastern Europe or from wherever and they had to be sorted So there were ladies sitting in rows cutting, chopping away bits of cotton and I was a man so called managerial trainee. And this is when you were sixteen something? was sixteen or seventeen at that point Now, initially I was very excited about it soundly rather good. That was what kids did in Bradford, you know, they went into textiles It was I mean, it was crazy. The dust was mad. The way we packed The rags was we would get into bales, climb into bales, which were hanging from the ceiling, empty bales and somebody would shovel the rags in and you would stamp them with your feet into the corners and No mask, no nothing. The dust was I would have been dead decades ago if I'd stayed there. And thank God, I got out. You did, and you left and spent a year in Israel with a youth movement called Habanim, which I think that was quite a pivotal time for you. Tell me about it Yes, it was. it was. I, as I said, we weren't a religious family in any sense You know, the thought that these people whom I was a part, not by choice actually, were being annihilated left right and centre during the war and had nowhere to go and had no home. So I ended up joining a Zionist youth movement called up on him, the builders I went to Israel for a year to learn how to become a youth leader I must say that that was a time of great idealism and sacrifice to build something I feel I feel for my friends and L, I may even have family there Oh reggardless, Crent awful situation is existential They are fighting for their own survival And yet I'm not altogether happy with the proportionality of the responses and In fact, I'm very unhappy and I you know, and I Having been a refugee, I feel for refugees whoever they are I worry about Ukraine all the time, And I am absolutely Gobs smack. If I can use that expression, that we find ourselves back here again. It changed your life the year that you were there. In many ways, yes, while I was in Israel I took classes, I went to the local art school Batalel in Jerusalem And I was taken under the wing by a painter called Lonot He was very encouraging and I just enjoyed being with him and around him After our stint in Jerusalem had ended, we went to work on Kibots and I I got myself some paints and some boards and went out painting Iermmon in Syria and And then I came across a novel called Lust for Life by Erving Stone aboutout Van Gogh and Just I found it very inspirational. and I thought, yeah, why don't I do this? Why don't I go to our college? Well, I think that's a great moment to go to the music before we find out what happened next. Disc number four What's it gonna be? Disc number four is Bob Dylan blowing in the wind I did a couple of years at Bradford At College following on from David Horney. and then I went to London to the Central School of Art and Design, which had a really excellent ceramics department There was a guy and he had a little ukule or miniure guitar or something or rather. He would sit cross legged on the wedging bench where we kneaded the clay day after day, hour after hour and he would play he would sing blowing in the wind I could have chosen any one of a number of Bob Dylan songs, but this takes me back to days at the central schoolool which were important. How many seas must the wide do sail? f she sleeps in the sand? Giz and how many times must the cannon balls fly For therefore Re a band. Y for my friend He's blowing in the wind Y there is a blowing me in the wind Bob Dylan and blowing in the wind So Peter Leayton, you were sharing digs with your younger brother George. So you were at the Central School of Art and Design and he was at Rada. He became, as he mentioned, a very good actor. So your parents, they'd wanted nice secure jobs for the two of you. they had an actor and an artist on their hands. Were they supportive Oh, they were supportive. I mean dad always wanted money in the bank, having lost everything. Of course. Security was incredibly important Edith had no such So while you were studying, you also ran a stall on Potobella Road to supplement your grant a ceramic stall. Was that where you learned the sales pitch that you need to have as an artist?? I guess it must have worked because it's part of the course at the central We went and spent a month in Stoke on Trend, you know, learning industrial techniques And while I was there, I discovered a man who had a house full of antiques you want to sell them. So I little bit at a time And I did manage to get a stall down Portabbella Road On one occasion, this woman She and a friend came by one Saturday morning And they needed a present for someone Tessa, who became my wife eventually, persuaded her friend, who's called Liz Taylor Buy something from me subsequently a month or so later They were having a party And they've arranged for all these guys to come down in her Mini Basaal. from Birmingham party but it started snowing And suddenly the people from Birmingham weren't coming and they lastast minute very short of men for this partarty So Liz said T Tess. Well how about that guy we met down Portabbeillo Road? Can't you track him down She remembered I was a student central. She rang the office and this owner. We don't give messages to students You could try the student telephone And I happened to be passing in the basement of a building, central stud the ceramics was in one building and the rest of the art college was in another building. And I was on my way to sculpture or something which was in the basement and the phone rang And a voice on the other end said, I'd like to get a message to a student I said Oh, apartment is the h And she said sculpture. I said, o, I'm not in that department. I don't think I can help really. She said, No, no ceramics. I said, Oh. Ceramics. o. I'm in ceramics, I could pass on the message Who is it you want to speak to? She said, Well, Peter Layton So I said speaking. and that was the beginning of our romance. And that was that for the two of you So you graduated in nineteen sixty five, you went to the states to teach ceramics. I did. Firstly in Iowa and then in San Francisco, how did those new campuses compare to London? Was it a different attitude? a different mood? Oh very, very much so. The central school It was run by the caretaker You know, and when he came around at five PM Jangling his keys, you knew he had to get out. was when I went to Iowa It was open twenty four hours and the caretaker would come in and have a cup of tea at three in the morning. pass the time of day with whoever was there. students were so motivated And obviously, you know, I mean, some incredible cultural changes happening in America at that time. You were in California during the height of the counterculture What did you and Tessa make of that? I mean, what do you remember about San Francisco?, It was a marvelous time to be there. It was buzzing. Certainly well on the music scene I would say. We did go to the filmmall. I was literally right beside She Morrison of the doors. So I would have liked to have had them, but Another group that I particularly like with Jeff's an airplane and So I've chosen White Rabbit, Grace Slick, singing White Rabbit by Jeff Snirple How of you go chasing rabbits And you know Tanama Lka. Soking pa has has given you call Oh Alison She was just small Jefferson airplane and white rabbit. Peter, it was while you were in the states that you started to work in glass. How did it happen? I was teaching ceramics at the University of Iowa during the mid sixties and someone came to our campus, someone who'd been at the original symposium where this whole studio glass movement began And we set up a little workshop over a weekend justust to excite these students, get them interested in the class making And of course, I got excited too built the studio and few days. prrimitive, you can bet It was really the blind leading the blind and it didn't take very long for me to burn myself very, very badly. I dropped a tool and As I picked it up, I rolled molten glass over the back of my hand and I wasn't aware of the pain. It wasn't painful. I could just smell this wonderful cooking smell and and then I realized it was me. so you know I threw my precious piece into the bin and ran for the students' union nearby and the chef there to where they had anything for a bad burn and he sprayed my back of my hand with something miraculous and there no scars anyway, but it I thought that was the end of my care. So it was nearly over before it had begun. Absolutely. it really was. It was, but it's a seductive medium I was just hooked, I taught all over the place in ourt collegge' ceramics but I couldn't really get glass thing off of my mind. So you'd got the bug. I got the bug When you returned to Britain, you started London glass blowing in a derelict towage workors. It's now been going for fifty years, but your first glass studio was actually in the remote Scottish Highlands. How did you end up there So I taught in the States for three years. It was a really exciting place to be I was doing really well there too. of really major shows Coming back to England was a real comeum down I arrived back in the middle of Wilson era There weren't that many jobs available. It wasn't a great time economically And I survived by lecturing about America, what I'd seen in America colleges all over the country showing slides of fantastic work that was going on in the states To make a go of it, you had to be teaching in two or three different colleges. As a student, I'd done some work experience pottery in place called Moran ne Malleig overlooking Sky. In the Highlands beautif. In the Highland, West Highland. It was a very beautiful spot They had a pottery there and it was going derelict persuade them to Let me have it. tried to restore it as best I could, considering I hadn't much in the way of funds. and I would go there in the summers with students from from the various colleges I taught at and we'd make pots. but prodroucing pots six hundred miles from London packing them up and getting them there in one piece was a different matter. It didn't work out that brilliantly. But one of the things I did do was run a summer school where we had a small glass blowing studio. I built a tiny glass blowing studio there And that was so exciting. So at that point I thought, yeah, I really want to do this glass thing Okay, Peter, it's time for your next piece of music please. Tell us about it It's the Valley and it's a Lu concerto By that time, Tess and I beginning to grow apart. She had had number of pregnancies and They hadn't worked out In nineteen seventy five, thank God One of those worked and I Sam Bart, my eldest son Dorn It was pretty hairy when he was born. I mean, you know, he came out blue, got hung upside down in the Delivery room and until he shrieked. It was It felt like a interminable period, but Tess had gone through an awful lot And one of those subsequent pregnancies, it was on off, on off all the way to term almost And then she had to stay in bed for months, months, months and she felt her body had really let her down and she was in quite a bad way. but During that period, we saw Leis onon de Paradis, which is a mime a film P, I'm Sean Louis Barrow. She became interested in m She set up a group call Th three women They were very successful and they did quite a lot of touring and I was looking after Bar both during her illness while she was off Anway, It just took us in different directions. so things weren't working out as well as they I would have liked. During that time, we went to Australia to see She has a sister And they lived on the outskirts of Sydney in a for home mostly glass I would get up early in the mornings. and listened to this Lute concerto, feeling quite sorry for myself, I have to admit. But in the most beautiful surroundings And I would listen to this day after day Part of the Lgo from Vivaldi's Lute concerto in D major performed by Paul Odette and a Parley of instruments conducted by Peter Holman Peter Layton, your work has been described as abstract, but it's sometimes been political too. One of your early glass pieces was called Container Ethhic, and it confronted, among other things, the Arab Israeli conflict. How do you represent something like that with glass? That was two empty jars, large jars. Identical jars. One said Jew and the other said Arab with blood running It's actually ceiling wax, but's there to represent blood running from the rim. And you see that they're identical and that there's really nothing compare to my way of thinking, we're all humans. It doesn't matter what religion, particularly what religion we are. You know, why can't we live peacefully together An piece in that series was a whole series of shelves with about fifty jars Again, empty jars labelled with the country where there was conflict. I was lucky enough to be invited number of times to the Czech Republic The first time I went at nineteen eighty two That was where I first made my first cloud pieces And then I went in and I created glass telling So the work was beginning to be a little subversive at that point And then finally, in ' eighty eight We were given this large factory and a team of people to work in where is And I created a pyramid two and a half meters tall It was made up of House bars Firstly, I had no idea whether the bars themselves would survive because they have to be what's called a knel. They have to be cooled slowly generally speaking, but this was a factory that generally speaking was making wine glasses. Not huge glass pyramids. Not huge glass pyramids. These bars were a couple of inches thick. I had no idea and it was a long tunnel. put them at one end and hope that they would come out at the other Which they did. I was very pleased with myself for having managed to engineer that Let's have some more music, Peter. It's time for your seventh choice today. What are we going hear I've great love of Leonard Cohen, both as a poet and as a singer And I couldn't manage to include both him and Nina Simone another great love. On the advice of Danny Leayton, one of my nephews works in music. he so I happen to know the version of Suzanne which is sung by Nina Mone, I'd never heard it before So I thought that was brilliant to be able to combine those two. so I chose that And you want to travel with her And you want to travel l And you know that she will trust you or you touched her perfect body with your m Yeahes So good, Nina Simona and Suzanne. So pe' el lateent, nextxt year, big year for you you're going to be ninety. I am. Are you're handing the reins of the studio over to your daughter, Sophie and her husband Tim. Yeah How do you feel about the idea of letting go Well, I'm really, really glad that the studio is going to set to continue with Sefie and Tim Tim's incredibly talented glass artist And Sophie is incredibly talented too.'s primarily a brim maker I hope to continue, if I'm still going strong, I hope to continue making sense of exploration I'm a beach comomber from way back and I'm alwaysarch so I'll be good on the island Yeah, you'll I be plenty of fllotum and jetum there for you All sorts of things for me to look at, you know, I' I a great pebble. A lot of my inspiration comes from pebbles And I've never found the perfect pebble. You know, you think you've got it, and of course then you're on to the next one. and it's a bit the same with of glass making, you know, you think you've got it and then no I can change that a bit or I can improve that a bit. So on to the next one So Peter, on your desert island, what will you miss the most Well, I miss my family most of all. They We're a creative bunch. My son Bart's a filmmaker Sophie and my younger son Ben, he's He works in television. he's working, he works in film too I have seven grandchildren and they're all incredible They're just the best. As we're thinking about life as a castaway and you know looking back on your life as you have been today, what legacy do you hope that your work leaves behind? Is that's something that concerns you Studio glass movements has really taken the place of the industry, the industryes Dpleted, to say the least God from two when we started up to about we're around twenty at the moment, which is bigger than. any factory in the country, I mean And in ' ninety seven I got people together at the leather market where my studio was then and we created the Contemporary glass Society And it now has about a thousand members Even studio Glass is having a difficult time of it because courses are closing The National Glass Centre in Sutland is due to close too see that go is very painful And the range of work being done by people in this country it's amazing People's jaws drop when they walk into our gallery and see, you know The amazing things that people can do with glass. We'll let you have one more disk before you go to the desert Island, Peter Lateon your final choice today. What is it? Right, Yes. So I've chosen an Audi Elegy for the Arctic and I've chosen it partly because My wife, Anne, become totally, totally obsessed with the piano. This is one of the pieces she has played that past months, quite a lot, and I do love it. And how long have you and Anne been together Tess and I broke up in the early eighties Very, very sadly died subsequently. She was literally on the way to her honeymoon. She and her new husband And they were driving to the airport. with a couple of relatives and We think that the driver had a blackout hour something went wrong and they drove off a high level flyo and of course That was the end of that. enormous, I mean, incredible sadness. So Bart was there giving his mother away, One day and then a week later we were following the Cortege. I gave the eulogy and It was truly tragic moment So during that time, I went to a number of courses, one of which was the S training It was extremely valuable for me And and apart from anything else I met An there, Together we've created two beautiful kids, Sophie and Ben So that was silver lining We got married after thirty years. We'd both been married before and had thought that was N room and then we had this lovely, lovely wedding in a deconsecrated chapel in Kingston So yeah, we've been married about ten years. And so Aanud is for her. Ayanaudi is really for her. The other aspect of that is seeing a clip of a Naudi with a grand piano on an ice flow floating in the Arctic He's playing this music in front of a glacer and Huge lumps are just falling into the sea as he plays And I am so concerned. I'm so worried. We seem to have learned nothing. you know, The climate situation' worse than ever. When are we going to come to our senses? Elegy for the Arctic So Peter Leayton, I'm going to cast you away to the island. I'm giving you the books to take with you, the Bible, the complete works of Shakespeare, and one more book of your choice. What's it gonna be The book I'd like to take is called The Choice. It's by Edith Egger She was an Auschwitz survivor taken as a sixty year old and had the most horrendous time you had to dance for Mglele to save her life. She survived, barely, barely survived But she did and subsequently became a very well famous clinical psychologist And the choice is about how we respond to any given set of circumstances We can react or we can respond positively If I'm feeling down on the island I could refer to her Time and time again. That sounds like the perfect choice. It's yours. You can also have a luxury item What are you gonna go for? Right, Well, if you'll allow it Fairly recently I was given By B, they were going to go and live abroad. They gave us digital photo frrame and you have an app. Friends and family have the app And they could send photographs to this frame And I'm so enjoying it. Every so often I look at it and there'll be a One of my grandchildren on there or several of them. I love that idea that you know you can have a digital photo frame that in real life that people can send send images to, but we can't have a communication device on the island. I can give you a digital photo frame loaded up with as many photos as we in that case, I'll have that Yeah that ss perfect. Okay, I'll go with that Okay, we'll make sure that we've got every single photo we can get on it. Thank you. And finally, which one track of the eight that you've shared with us today would you save from the waves first, Peter I think I'll take the Ninas abone oice Peter Layton, thank you very much for letting us herear your desert Island dis. Oh, thank you for having me. It's been really pleasure to be here Hello, It was lovely chatting to Peter, and I hope he's happy on his island with his pebbles and his digital photo frame. We've cast many artists away over the years, including Peter's friend David Hockney. There's also the sculptor Anthony Gormley there, along with Cornelia Parker. You can hear their programs if you search through BBC Sounds or on our own Desert Island Dcs website The studio managers for today's program were Tim Hefer and Emma Hart, the executive production coordinator was Susie Royls, the content editor was Mugabi Turia, and the producer was Tim Bano. Join me next time where my guest will be the actor, Anna Maxwell Martin