Dame Felicity Lott

B, you're so beautiful.

You know, all the words of those.

And my mother had a lovely voice and she used to sing...

One fine day, un bel day from Puccini's whatever that's from.

That's right.

Yes.

There was a field at the bottom of the garden and a railway that ran along the line at the bottom of that field.

And it was, in my memory, very happy.

There was always music at home.

They were always rehearsing something downstairs when I was going to sleep or trying to...

I took quite a long time to arrive.

They got married in 1941, I think.

And I turned up in 47.

And my mother had a little girl to dress up and she used to enter me for dressing up competitions.

No.

He had a jolly hard start, my dad, because he was sent off to the railway workers' orphanage in Derby, which was pretty hard in those days.

It was actually a good school.

They had school uniform and they had great discipline.

He told stories about coming down and breaking the ice in the wash basins and swapping around the crusts of bread.

It was quite Dickensian sounding.