
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

7,639 Listeners

1,046 Listeners

379 Listeners

5,520 Listeners

1,799 Listeners

1,763 Listeners

1,049 Listeners

1,979 Listeners

488 Listeners

73 Listeners

69 Listeners

46 Listeners

54 Listeners

51 Listeners

56 Listeners

300 Listeners

3,177 Listeners

1,003 Listeners

720 Listeners

1,002 Listeners

119 Listeners

46 Listeners

67 Listeners

650 Listeners

26 Listeners