Hello, I'm Kirstie 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 1995,

and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

My cast away this week is a writer and an academic. His most famous book, The Name of the Rose,

was made into a successful film starring Sean Connery. The author, however, is hardly

a populist for the last 25 years. He's been professor of semiotics at Belonio University,

and his output was mainly academic before he turned to novel writing at the age of nearly 50.

He's written two other fictional works, Foucault's Pendulum, and most recently, The Island of the Day

Before. The ease and his journalistic writings in his native Italy have earned him the title

of the most famous intellectual in the world. He is Umberto Eco. It's an extravagant title,

Umberto, the world's most famous intellectual. Do you like it? Is it tightly enjoyed?

I didn't invent it. But do you like it? Do you enjoy being called such a thing?

Not particularly because a famous doesn't mean merit. But do you enjoy your fame?

If you mean that I enjoy to be read all over the world, yes, otherwise, why one should write?

If you mean to be recognized, I thought, no, I don't. I would prefer to have a more private life,

but in a sense, my books are my children. So I have to work for my books.

And if I have to pay a certain price in losing my privacy, that is done for my books.

But also, I know you've written in one of your newspaper columns, you wrote once about how many hours

a day you had left for your own thing, like conversation, shopping or six. I think it came down to

about an hour a day. Yes, and it's a heavy price. Yes, unfortunately, I made my two kids before.

But is it true that after the success of the name of the Rose, you actually went back into academic

life and you said, look, can we not talk about it again? Can it not be mentioned?

...