In Impromptus today, I have occasion to discuss Desert Island Discs, the longstanding BBC program. What’s the occasion? Alice Walker was on recently, and she revealed something amazing about herself, as guests sometimes do. Desert Island Discs is the program on which the guest, or “castaway,” says what recordings he would take to a desert island. He also names a book and a “luxury item.”

The show has been going since 1942, so that’s a lot of music, books, and whatnot. As I mention in Impromptus, there is an archive at the show’s website, and searching through it can be a lot of fun. You can search by “castaway,” music, book, and so on.

I looked for some of my friends — our friends, friends of National Review. Obvious choices are David Pryce-Jones, Roger Scruton, John O’Sullivan, Robert Conquest, and Anthony Daniels. These are men steeped in music and books and civilization. Of course, they have not been on — this is a BBC show, remember. I will spare you that rant just now.

But Paul Johnson has been on. They had him just last year, when he was 83. Better late than never. As you can see in the archive, his eight pieces of music — there are always eight — included Mozart’s Ave verum corpus. (PJ — as distinguished from P-J — has recently written a life of Mozart, by the way.)

Paul also named “Crazy,” sung by Patsy Cline. You know, I didn’t know until this very day that “Crazy” was written by Willie Nelson. Am I the last to know? I happen to know this: “Crazy” is the favorite song, or a favorite song, of Ed Capano, NR’s publisher emeritus.

PJ’s very favorite, his top choice? Margaret Whiting in “Look for the Silver Lining” (Kern & DeSylva).

His luxury item, or items, are watercolor paints and paper. No surprise there. And the book? Drumroll, please. I would have thought he’d say the Bible, or the complete works of Shakespeare — but maybe he has all that material memorized. He said, “A big atlas.” That’s Johnson, actually: practical, knowledge-hungry, etc.

Mark Steyn ought to be a guest on the program. Or, as I say in Impromptus, host it. WFB would have been a perfect castaway. He did a similar show here in New York, and I have a CD of it, somewhere. If I can find the program on the Internet, I’ll link to it.

P.S. Elisabeth Schwarzkopf was a castaway in 1958. Famously, all her recorded selections were her own, save one — the prelude to Der Rosenkavalier, conducted by Karajan. But this excerpt comes from the complete recording in which she stars. You can’t say that Schwarzkopf was modest, but you can’t say she lacked musical taste, either.