Hello I'm Krestey Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.

For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

The program was originally broadcast in 1992,

and the presenter was Sue Lolly. My castaway this week is an ambassador of the Anglican Church. He became a familiar figure in

Britain in the 1980s when he helped negotiate the release of British hostages, first in Iran and

then in Libya. His tall frame and bearded face seemed to epitomise

unassuming British calm in the tortuous world of Middle Eastern politics.

But in 1987 things changed. While trying to engineer the freedom of men held in Lebanon,

he was taken hostage himself. He spent nearly five years as a prisoner, much of it in solitary confinement, and he was frequently beaten.

He was finally released and came home at the end of last year, when, though physically weaker,

his courage and resilience were still there for all to see. He is of course Terry

wait. How hard is the process of rehabilitation Terry is it a very difficult path

to tread back to normal life?

Well it has its difficulties.

One of the things that surprised me is how long it's taken to get physically well again.

I came out and I felt a bit groggy and I went to the REF station at Linham for a good medical

check out and I thought that would be over in a few weeks but in fact it's taking several months to get

physically strong again. But being in solitary confinement for so long it

certainly didn't seem to us when we saw you when you first arrived back on

British soil at RF line to have affected your thought processes at all.

You were incredibly lucid, incredibly articulate,

you had a sense of humor, there was no bitterness in what you said,

...