On Sunday, 21 September 2003, Breakfast with Frost featured an interview with Andrew Lloyd Webber.

On Sunday, 21 September 2003, Breakfast with Frost featured an interview with Andrew Lloyd Webber

Please note "BBC Breakfast with Frost" must be credited if any part of this transcript is used.

Victorian art, even today, divides people.

DAVID FROST: Now for 30 years the composer Andrew Lloyd Webber has been collecting paintings, sculpture and other works of art.

Until now they've mainly been seen by family and friends but from this weekend the collection, said to be one of the finest in the world in private hands, is on public display for the first time.

The exhibition of more than 300 pieces is on at the Royal Academy in London and it reveals the depth of Andrew's interest particularly in pre-Raphaelite Victorian art. And Andrew is here right now.

You've had some of the best reviews of your life, not for a show, it's a show, not for a theatre.

ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER: We've had some very good reviews and we've had some bad ones. But the funny thing about Victorian art is that even today it divides people - there are people who still can't stand it, there are people who are passionate about it like me.

It's just great fun for me to see the whole thing together because they're split up between London where I live, and in the country where I live, and suddenly seeing them all together of course I'm seeing them in a completely different light myself.

DAVID FROST: Really, as well. Are your favourites still the same or have some paintings crept up on you in this process?

ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER: One or two have crept up on me. One or two have crept down on me. But the excitement really is to be able to see whether any of the ideas that I had were right or wrong - for example the link between Picasso and Burne Jones.

I would have rather liked them to have hung the blue Picasso that we have in the midst of the Burne-Joneses just to have been controversial. Instead he hangs with Munnings, and of course is probably even more controversial.

DAVID FROST: Well let's have a look at one or two of the actual paintings there - flashing up now on your screen. Fiammetta, now that was a dramatic acquisition wasn't it?

ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER: Well Fiammetta had disappeared from this country and I managed to track her down. I knew there were only about five major Rossetti oils left one would ever get hold of and I knew it had gone to America.

Then I discovered it had gone to Washington and then I discovered who bought it back in 1963 or four I think it was, and so we found her. She's an interesting picture because Rossetti very often did several versions of the same thing.

This is an example of one that he didn't and I find it a bit, I find it an extraordinary thing, you know the angel of death above her head and it's a sort of with the poem, the bottom bit which we haven't got on the screen at the moment, but the whole thing is like a complete vision.

DAVID FROST: It's a stunning picture. Well we've got one other, I have here, is it one more Rossetti coming up right now.

ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER: Now that is a picture which is in fact it's called Snowdrops but it's in fact a version of Prosperine, which is one of his most famous images.

It was cut down, this one, because the bottom half of the picture was damaged and instead of it being with a pomegranate, it's Janie Morris, of course, who was his great muse, it's, as you can see with the snowdrops.

DAVID FROST: Very powerful.

ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER: Very strong, and that's the sort of picture that divides. You either love it or you don't.

DAVID FROST: That's right. Now obviously the bulk of the pictures are the pre-Raphaelites, the Victorian pictures, but then there are one or two other surprises along the way. You mentioned there in fact Picasso, we'll come to that in a minute, but first of all we have your most famous Canaletto.

ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER: Yes, the Horseguards. I kind of regard this, it's sort of in the whole tradition of social paintings. Of course this was Canaletto's calling card, as it were, when he arrived from Italy, and he painted this to show what he could do and to get commissions. Well he obviously could do rather well.

It's a, I think it fits completely alongside, for me, some of the images that I've got like the images of the public bar by Henshaw and other things because it's, it's social painting. It's the commentary of its time. Even the silly picture that I got by Ronnie Wood that hangs at the moment, which is not finished yet of, you know, the ivy, I kind of regard the whole thing in the same, as part of the same movement. DAVID FROST: And you mentioned Picasso and there's that absolutely striking Picasso.

ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER: Yes. The funniest remark in the exhibition I thought on Tuesday night was somebody who said why have bought a portrait of Nicholas Hytner. But that, I don't have the picture that shows the link between Burne Jones and Picasso that I would like, sadly, you know, I just don't, but it's fascinating to me that Picasso did admire Burne Jones and he did go, he wanted to come to Britain to see him but never got that far. But he did get to Paris where he saw a couple of pictures, one of which is in the exhibition, which is called The Fall of Lucifer.

DAVID FROST: As you develop more and more collections, are you going to stick to the Victorian period or are you going to come right up to modern art? Or does modern art, is modern art not for you really?

ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER: This exhibition was supposed to be in 2007, and then the Royal Academy had a hole because of the Middle Eastern war because it was going to be an Egyptian exhibition this autumn and they asked me to sort of plug the gap. In fact I had planned to do it later because I wanted to show some of the other directions that I am going in now.

But we went, we decided that really it wasn't ready and that it would only confuse everybody if I started showing German expressionist pictures or some of the inter-war and indeed war-time Jewish art that I've got, which again, I mean may be part of the narrative of the kind of painting that I like, but does show the different direction. I think unless something really fabulous came up that was Victorian, I mean really fantastic, I think I'd say I've done that.

But, as they always say about it, it was Nicholas Pevsner wasn't it who said when you've finished the monumental work of the buildings of England, he said gentle reader it's the second edition that counts. So hopefully it will be the second show.

DAVID FROST: That's an exciting thought. And what about the other thing you talked about, a day we hope will be long delayed, but after you've gone, what do you want to happen to your collection?

ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER: I have a great affection for my home at Sydmonton where I've had an arts festival now for very nearly 30 years and all my new, all my new works have started there in some shape or form, or, you know, some kind, and I very much would like to have Sydmonton put into a point where the pictures could be displayed.

I don't know quite how we do them because Sydmonton is actually very much a family home, so we probably would have to build something but I'd like it to be there.

I don't want it to go to some museum because, look, we know how the pre-Raphaelites divide and I can just see some curator, you know, in 70 years time saying none of this lot is ever going to go on show. So I'd like it to go somewhere where I know it will be on show.

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