Britain’s most famous walker – author of the ground-breaking Pictorial Guides to the Lake District – was a notorious grump who found music ‘irritating’. But when he finally agreed to appear on the flagship Radio 4 show with Sue Lawley, the results were frank and fascinating. First broadcast in 1988, you can listen to it in full here – and discover a man who was in full-time work at 13, loved westerns, chips and wild-camping, and harboured a strange ambition…
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Footnote: a difficult journey to the airwaves
Negotiations went on for years and were “more complicated and protracted than those for Joan Collins or the Archbishop of Canterbury,” remembered presenter Sue Lawley before Alfred Wainwright agreed to appear on Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs in 1988. Biographer Hunter Davies claimed AW only finally agreed because the 81-year-old wanted to see Sue’s legs, and only on condition he had to travel no further south than Manchester for the recording. He wanted approval of all the question areas but took no trouble to cast himself in a flattering light in answering them, and swiftly disappeared for a fish ’n’ chip supper after the interview was concluded. The programme was originally broadcast on the 4th of September 1988.
