
Sign up to save your podcasts
Or


Kirsty Young's castaway week is the aviator, inventor and arts patron, Sir Torquil Norman.
He comes from a family where derring-do is in the DNA - his grandfather was a pioneering airman, his grandmother an adventurer and his father also a keen pilot.
Torquil ended up in the toy trade where the skills needed were, he says, a close attention to detail combined with the outlook on life of a seven year old. He was, he admits, perfectly qualified. In retirement he set about his biggest project - he bought a disused railway engine shed and raised tens of millions of pounds to safeguard its future as a venue for performing arts and a centre for young people.
Record: Nobody Knows You when You're Down and Out - Bessie Smith
By BBC Radio 44.6
128128 ratings
Kirsty Young's castaway week is the aviator, inventor and arts patron, Sir Torquil Norman.
He comes from a family where derring-do is in the DNA - his grandfather was a pioneering airman, his grandmother an adventurer and his father also a keen pilot.
Torquil ended up in the toy trade where the skills needed were, he says, a close attention to detail combined with the outlook on life of a seven year old. He was, he admits, perfectly qualified. In retirement he set about his biggest project - he bought a disused railway engine shed and raised tens of millions of pounds to safeguard its future as a venue for performing arts and a centre for young people.
Record: Nobody Knows You when You're Down and Out - Bessie Smith

7,663 Listeners

1,062 Listeners

385 Listeners

5,478 Listeners

1,799 Listeners

1,755 Listeners

1,048 Listeners

2,085 Listeners

2,000 Listeners

75 Listeners

70 Listeners

53 Listeners

58 Listeners

3,203 Listeners

730 Listeners

1,034 Listeners

104 Listeners

91 Listeners

841 Listeners

414 Listeners

48 Listeners

158 Listeners

81 Listeners

482 Listeners

26 Listeners