HRH The Duchess Of Kent

BBC Radio 4 Extra remembers some of the desert island castaways who we lost in 2025.

Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Kent - cousin to the Queen Elizabeth the Second - is castaway by Sue Lawley.

After a lifelong devotion to music, she will be whittling down her choice of eight tracks with great difficulty.

Now Patron of the Leeds Piano Competition and the Yehudi Menuhin School, as well as President of the Royal Northern College of Music, the Duchess of Kent studied music herself until she was 25.

Her Royal Highness talks about her love of music, her Yorkshire childhood and her prolific work for charity.

Katherine, Duchess of Kent, died on 4th September 2025 aged 92.

DISC ONE: Mitsuko Uchida - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Keyboard Sonata No. 6 in D major, K284
DISC TWO: Philharmonia Orchestra - Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6 in B minor “Pathétique”, 2nd movement
DISC THREE: Francis Jackson - The Tuba Tune
DISC FOUR: Yehudi Menuhin and George Enseco with the Paris Symphony Orchestra - Johann Sebastian Bach’s Concerto for Two Violins in D minor
DISC FIVE: Placido Domingo and the London Symphony Orchestra - Giacomo Puccini’s Che gelida manina (Your tiny hand is frozen) from La Bohème
DISC SIX: Jacqueline du Pre and the London Symphony Orchestra - Edward Elgar’s Cello Concerto in E minor, 3rd movement
DISC SEVEN: The Beatles - Maxwell's Silver Hammer
DISC EIGHT: The Swedish Radio Chorus, the Stockholm Chamber Choir and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Ave verum corpus

CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: The Swedish Radio Chorus, the Stockholm Chamber Choir and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Ave verum corpus

BOOK CHOICE: A do-it-yourself manual

LUXURY CHOICE: Lamp with solar batteries

Producer Olivia Seligman

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Christmas Eve 1989.