Enoch Powell

Speaker 30:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

Speaker 30:08

The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen eighty nine.

Speaker 30:11

And the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:27

My castaway this week is a politician, a poet, and a classical scholar.

Presenter0:32

He was a member of the House of Commons for thirty seven years, first as a Conservative and then as an Ulster Unionist. Always admired for his intellect and eloquence, he never held high office. On issues such as the common market, Northern Ireland, and immigration, he expressed opinions which alienated him from many of his colleagues. His isolation, however, often seemed to be a source of strength.

Presenter0:55

His lack of office never undermined his influence.

Presenter0:59

Now, seventy seven, he can look back on a career in which he has been criticised as an extremist and hailed as a sage.

Presenter1:07

Whichever view you take, there can be no doubt that he has remained true to himself, Enoch Powell.

Presenter1:13

Not always true, though, mister Powell, to the name your family knew you by best. You were called John throughout your childhood, weren't you?

Enoch Powell1:20

That's right. Yes. I was given two baptismal names after my respective

Enoch Powell1:27

Grandfathers

Enoch Powell1:29

But um the reason why Enoch superseded John is really a very um

Enoch Powell1:35

mundane one, and it's one which nobody would have guessed.

Enoch Powell1:39

I had ambitions in my teens to be a classical scholar, and I saw myself producing the definitive edition of Thucydides.

Enoch Powell1:48

rather a presumptuous attitude for a schoolboy.

Enoch Powell1:52

And one day, it must have been when I was sixteen or seventeen, I came across a copy of the Classical Review, in which an article on Thucydides had been written by an Oxford scholar by the name of J U Powell.

Enoch Powell2:05

Heavens said I to myself, we shall be confused. I must differentiate myself from this fellow, whoever he is, who is writing about Thucydides. So for the first time I spelt Enoch in full, and that became my cheque signature, and that became my permanent signature.

Presenter2:21

Well, now how do you view the idea of being cast away on a desert island? Do you view it with relish or or dismay?

Enoch Powell2:27

I think it's cruel of you to do this and probably leave me there for the few remaining years of my life.

Enoch Powell2:34

It's a cruel fate because man is a social animal, and to take him and put him with whatever conveniences and commodities in isolation is an affront to his humanity.

Enoch Powell2:46

and in selecting music for your purposes I have selected that to which I would look for long enduring

Enoch Powell2:55

pabulum on which I could feed both my intellect

Enoch Powell3:00

and my emotions.

Presenter3:02

What is the first of your music pieces?

Enoch Powell3:05

Well, it's bound to be Wagner.

Enoch Powell3:08

I w as far back as I can remember, I've been under the influence of Wagner, and I wrote poetry under the influence of Wagner, and I was saturated with Wagner in my earlier years, though no longer.

Enoch Powell3:20

And the r the ring after all

Enoch Powell3:23

Is a gigantic work in the sense that a whole cycle.

Enoch Powell3:28

of thought and of events, a moral cycle and an intellectual cycle, is lived through as you witness and hear it, so that that would be something to live on. So

Enoch Powell3:40

I'd like to hear something from

Enoch Powell3:43

Each of the four parts of the ring.

Enoch Powell3:46

And from the first part, from the Rheingold, I would like to hear.

Enoch Powell3:52

The entry of the gods into Valhalla

Enoch Powell3:54

the moment at which the hollowness of the achievement of the gods is exposed by the Rhine maidens drawing attention to the fact that it's all based on a fraud, it's all based upon deceit, so that the plot and the moral plot of the ring is laid down

Speaker 44:23

Its right has been the McDougan as called the Spark Convention.

Enoch Powell4:29

Ah, Canvas Cannon College!

Speaker 44:38

Hey, you're gonna connect!

Speaker 44:42

Here he must night in Neverhall!

Speaker 44:48

A scold and nice creeks!

Presenter5:15

The entry into Valhalla from Richard Wagner's Das Rheingolt with the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Sir George Schulte.

Presenter5:23

You were, I'm sure, mister Powell, a very bright child. Did you constantly carry off all the school prizes?

Enoch Powell5:29

I'm afraid so.

Presenter5:30

Both your parents were teachers, weren't they?

Enoch Powell5:32

Both my parents were teachers professionally, yes, and my mother was my first teacher.

Enoch Powell5:38

I can remember standing by her as she worked in the kitchen, and she had the alphabet uh on the walls.

Enoch Powell5:46

fixed up on the walls, and I can also remember her rewarding me for reading from Standard Three readers by a story out of Standard Four readers.

Enoch Powell5:56

But she was the person who first taught me Greek.

Enoch Powell5:59

for she had taught herself Greek in her youth.

Enoch Powell6:03

in uh Newport, Shropshire, at the at the college there.

Presenter6:07

Were you popular at school?

Enoch Powell6:09

I wasn't conscious of being unpopular, and certainly I enjoyed the company of my

Enoch Powell6:15

Schoolfellows

Presenter6:17

Did you have a nickname?

Enoch Powell6:18

Well, I had to nickname it the

Enoch Powell6:21

secondary school, which I attended before I went to King Edward's Grammar School, and that was scowley powley, owing to my habit of frowning.

Enoch Powell6:29

which I think I probably still have.

Presenter6:32

Why do you think you frown so much?

Enoch Powell6:34

Everyone has uh facial habits and characteristics, and mine was a contraction contraction and furrowing of the brow.

Enoch Powell6:43

I needn't explain it or apologize for it further.

Presenter6:47

I presume it was then without question that you would go up to Oxford or Cambridge?

Enoch Powell6:52

To go with a scholarship or bursary to Oxford or Cambridge was a natural expectation of those in the upper six former King Edward's Birmingham.

Presenter7:01

And in your case it was Cambridge, it was Trinity College, to read Greek, and indeed to win a double first. Shall we leave you there for a moment and have your second piece of music?

Enoch Powell7:11

I am going to indulge myself.

Enoch Powell7:14

with something really human.

Enoch Powell7:16

with the spring song in the Valkure.

Enoch Powell7:21

Where

Enoch Powell7:23

as Sigmund and his sister.

Enoch Powell7:25

are together. The door bursts open

Enoch Powell7:28

And there's nobody there.

Enoch Powell7:30

And Siegmund says it is the spring that has burst in.

Speaker 47:34

Interstirma wish and informable.

Speaker 47:40

In build and leash and lift and lance Of linden lift and light and leaf

Speaker 47:51

You wonder me, and dear sick wicked, and what you value to me signot and

Enoch Powell7:57

Bye, little time.

Enoch Powell7:59

Uh

Speaker 48:03

Right, yes, letter lofts I know.

Enoch Powell8:03

Ah

Speaker 48:08

The single geflines are seasoned.

Speaker 48:15

What if thou have

Speaker 48:21

I

Speaker 48:23

Water brilliant warming a bloom and kind of sprouts that springs I'll grow

Presenter8:34

Siegmund's Spring Song from Richard Wagner's Die Walcure, sung by James King with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Sir George Schulte.

Enoch Powell8:43

Isn't that a wonderful expression of the truth that Attic's climax

Enoch Powell8:48

Human affection and human love.

Enoch Powell8:51

has this sense of being in tune with nature, surrounding nature. It's marvellously expressed and conveyed in that song.

Presenter9:00

Can you remember, mister Parr, when you first fell in love?

Enoch Powell9:07

Yes, I remember that.

Enoch Powell9:09

But I am not telling.

Presenter9:11

But you've written about it in your poetry, haven't you?

Enoch Powell9:13

Yes, I've written about it.

Enoch Powell9:15

So I don't need to tell.

Enoch Powell9:18

I have written about it therefore in the way in which it should alone be written about.

Presenter9:24

So there are times when your heart has ruled your head.

Enoch Powell9:29

I'm not sure that my head is ever wholly.

Enoch Powell9:35

intellectually controlled.

Enoch Powell9:37

I think the power behind my use of my intellect is of an emotional character.

Enoch Powell9:44

And I think that there's a strong pent up

Enoch Powell9:47

Force of emotion.

Enoch Powell9:49

which drives me even when I appear to be most in search of a logical answer to an intellectual question.

Presenter9:57

We left you just now at at Cambridge, and I don't want to entirely leave you there. Can we just talk about the time when you were there? Um can you describe what kind of young man you were then? Were you studious or or social? Were you ambitious or?

Enoch Powell10:11

Absurdly studious.

Enoch Powell10:14

I used to observe

Enoch Powell10:17

My contemporaries.

Enoch Powell10:19

who were nearly as good as I was at Latin and Greek, and wonder how it was that they had so much else as well that I hadn't got, which was no doubt one of the reasons why

Enoch Powell10:30

My elder daughter was put down for Eton before she was born, because I believed that they had brought something from school.

Enoch Powell10:38

Besides a knowledge of Latin and Greek syntax, which I hadn't brought,

Enoch Powell10:42

And it took me a long time.

Enoch Powell10:44

To learn to

Enoch Powell10:46

benefit from and enjoy

Enoch Powell10:49

the society of an institution. I really only learnt it as a fellow later on, after my degree when I became a fellow of Trinity. As an undergraduate I was um

Enoch Powell10:59

A learning machine.

Presenter11:01

Which began at five o'clock in the morning, I

Enoch Powell11:04

I used to get up at five to work on my translation of Herodotus. I did an hour and a half before an early breakfast on that.

Presenter11:11

Let's have some more music.

Enoch Powell11:12

I want the forging song, because in the forging song

Enoch Powell11:16

Siegfried is asserting his independence.

Enoch Powell11:20

His teacher, the dwarf Mima,

Enoch Powell11:22

has tried to show him how to forge the broken parts of a sword together.

Enoch Powell11:28

And Siegfried says I'll never do it if I listen to you. I have to do it for myself. I have to do it in my own way. And that is the creative independence.

Enoch Powell11:39

which the forging song asserts and triumphs in

Speaker 411:50

We just realized.

Speaker 411:52

What's the most

Presenter12:43

The forging song from Wagner's Siegfried, sung by Wolfgang Windgassen with the Vienna Philharmonic, conducted again by Sir George Schulte.

Enoch Powell12:52

It was, after all, the defiant independence and self made nature.

Enoch Powell12:56

of Siegfried which Siegfried which made it possible for him

Enoch Powell13:00

to annul the curse which Vautin could not annul.

Enoch Powell13:05

And that's what I want, when you allow me again, to follow to its triumphant conclusion in the Goethe Demerung.

Presenter13:12

How much has music meant to you during the course of your life? Is it something you've played frequently, and the ring in particular?

Enoch Powell13:21

Up to the war

Enoch Powell13:23

It was enormously important. In fact, as a schoolboy, I thought that I would probably be a professional musician.

Enoch Powell13:31

But after the war I kept away from it.

Presenter13:35

Why? Because it moved you too much.

Enoch Powell13:37

I suppose I am a bit afraid of it.

Enoch Powell13:40

But also

Enoch Powell13:43

Having anticipated the war as I did from nineteen thirty four five onwards, and having regarded my existence as only provisional until it came,

Enoch Powell13:54

and having when he did come

Enoch Powell13:56

with such joy and relief

Enoch Powell13:59

taken part in it.

Enoch Powell14:01

I emerged to my surprise into a full span of human existence. It was a different world to me in that sense, that I had not lived before in a in a world other than a world terminable by catastrophe. And here was a world which went on forever a normal world.

Presenter14:19

Because you had sensed war coming and you believed you were going to die.

Enoch Powell14:22

I assumed I would be killed in it. That was a natural assumption. After all, the average expectation of life of an infantry officer in November nineteen eighteen was three weeks, and as I was determined to be an infantry officer,

Enoch Powell14:35

I assumed that that was what would happen.

Enoch Powell14:38

And I suppose I've been lastingly ashamed of myself, but it wasn't what happened.

Presenter14:42

Can you remember the moment at which you realized you were not going to die, that you were one of the survivors?

Enoch Powell14:48

Yes, it's very vivid. It was a moment in nineteen forty four.

Enoch Powell14:53

I was in India.

Enoch Powell14:54

And it was the night that the monsoon broke.

Enoch Powell14:57

And I did what everybody else does on the night that the monsoon broke.

Enoch Powell15:01

I walked out from the from under the verandah and stood in the rain and got soaked.

Enoch Powell15:07

And I suddenly said to myself,

Enoch Powell15:10

What are you going to do, then? The chances now are that you will survive. So, what are you going to do? But there will be a life, a world after the war. What are you going to do?

Enoch Powell15:20

And it happened to me as I think it happens to most people when what externally seems to be a major decision is taken. You don't actually take the decision. The decision was there.

Enoch Powell15:30

It's like hearing a knock on the door, and you open the door, and there's somebody standing.

Enoch Powell15:35

On the doorstep.

Enoch Powell15:37

And

Enoch Powell15:38

What was standing on the doorstep was, You will go into politics.

Presenter15:44

You've said since that you would like to have been killed in the war.

Presenter15:47

Why do you say that? Is that all to do with the shame and the guilt?

Enoch Powell15:50

I think this is a a sense commonly felt by those who served.

Enoch Powell15:58

but from whom life was not demanded.

Enoch Powell16:01

In the war.

Presenter16:02

But was that not very hurtful to your family, to have heard you say that?

Enoch Powell16:08

I am not conscious that my daughters were terribly shocked.

Presenter16:13

And your wife?

Enoch Powell16:14

Uh my wife, I think, who tended to take it personally. But wives do, don't they?

Presenter16:20

I think I can understand that she would.

Enoch Powell16:23

But I'm not.

Enoch Powell16:25

Thereby seeking to invalidate anything that I have done or tried to do.

Enoch Powell16:30

Or been imagined to do since nineteen forty-five. It's simply that.

Enoch Powell16:35

A mark is placed upon men not merely by service in the armed forces.

Enoch Powell16:41

but by emerging from the wall.

Enoch Powell16:44

And it's a mark which I think they bear for the rest of their days.

Presenter16:49

Shall we now then have your fourth piece of Wagner?

Speaker 417:02

Jeremy Nichols, Miss Hinton.

Speaker 417:08

Escape me boys can make goals

Speaker 417:47

Who's on the fourth of Missouri? Because we did so much more by saying what I

Presenter17:53

The Renunciation of Siegfried from Wagner's Goethe Demmerung, sung again by Wolfgang Windgassen, with the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Sir George Schulte.

Enoch Powell18:03

You see, the Rhine maidens thought he was a fool.

Enoch Powell18:07

They couldn't understand that he had done the greatest thing that a man can do.

Enoch Powell18:11

They couldn't understand that he'd solved the underlying riddle of the ring itself.

Enoch Powell18:16

that he'd broken the curse.

Enoch Powell18:19

by defying it, by giving up his own life, by throwing his life away.

Presenter18:27

You never, as I said in your introduction, um achieved very high office.

Presenter18:32

Have you

Presenter18:34

Analyze that for yourself, I'm sure you have. I mean, can you explain to yourself why a man of your intellect and your standing, who commanded so much respect, never quite achieved

Presenter18:46

the height of office that he might have expected.

Enoch Powell18:48

Well, at that level office is a lottery, and certainly the highest of all offices is more a lottery than the other offices. But at any r

Enoch Powell19:00

Stage in my career

Enoch Powell19:02

There was

Enoch Powell19:04

a price that I was not prepared to pay.

Enoch Powell19:07

For improving my chances in the lottery.

Enoch Powell19:09

And I don't say this is simply a self-description. I'm not criticising others who regard it as a game which is played for office, and where the

Enoch Powell19:20

considerations, the governing considerations, are of success in the game. I have no objection to people who play a game and play it according to the rules. But my disposition was, in the last resort, I suppose, to make my own rules.

Presenter19:34

It must nevertheless have been and perhaps still is.

Presenter19:38

A source of enormous frustration to

Enoch Powell19:40

No it doesn't must.

Enoch Powell19:42

You're not talking to a frustrated man.

Enoch Powell19:45

You're talking to a man who admittedly

Enoch Powell19:48

Lost his place.

Enoch Powell19:51

in the assembly where for thirty seven years he had been happy and in that sense fulfilled.

Enoch Powell19:57

But you're also talking to a man who, in losing it, has missed his constituency more than he misses the House of Commons.

Enoch Powell20:04

and who is finding to his astonishment

Enoch Powell20:08

That is, mind remains active, acquisitive.

Enoch Powell20:13

Critical?

Enoch Powell20:15

and defiant as his years decline.

Presenter20:21

We'll pause there, shall we, and have your fifth record.

Enoch Powell20:25

Well, certainly I did give you rather a surfeit of Wagner, and I am not suggesting that I would wish to live with nothing but Wagner on my desert island. I would want to go back

Enoch Powell20:36

Behind Wagner, to where Wagner came from, I would particularly want to.

Enoch Powell20:41

take plenty of Beethoven with me, and I would take it for pleasure

Enoch Powell20:46

As well as for

Enoch Powell20:48

Its connection.

Enoch Powell20:50

With Wagner and the music drama. But first of all, for pleasure, and I want something from the Pastoral Symphony, please.

Presenter21:55

The final movement of Beethoven's Symphony No. Six in F major, the pastral, with the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Carl Birm.

Presenter22:03

I'd like now, Mr. Powell, if we may, to talk about the speech for which, for better or for worse, you are most famous, and that of course is your nineteen sixty eight speech on immigration. You were calling for the immediate reduction in numbers of immigrants coming into Britain and for the repatriation of those or many of those already here.

Enoch Powell22:24

That was official policy of the Conservative party at the time.

Presenter22:28

Then why were you sacked by Ted Heath for saying it?

Enoch Powell22:30

Because he didn't like the fact that it had been heard.

Enoch Powell22:33

It was the tone, not the content. He never claimed that the contents were incompatible with the policy of a party. He disliked the tone.

Presenter22:42

He said it was racialist in tone.

Enoch Powell22:43

He disliked the tone. It's significant that the word tone was used, and after all we're talking about a musician.

Presenter22:51

It's perhaps not surprising he didn't like the tone. He talked about the indigenous population not being able to find hospital beds to give birth to their children.

Enoch Powell22:59

I didn't say that.

Enoch Powell23:01

You're not quoting.

Enoch Powell23:04

You're saying what you think, I said.

Enoch Powell23:08

You will not find that.

Presenter23:11

They found their wives unable to obtain hospital beds in childbirth, their children unable to obtain school places, their homes and neighbourhoods changed beyond recognition, their plans and prospects for the future defeated.

Enoch Powell23:25

Yes, I'll stand by all that.

Enoch Powell23:28

It was a description of

Enoch Powell23:30

the circumstances in which many hundreds of thousands of people were already living, and many more hundreds of thousands were shortly to find themselves living.

Presenter23:41

Would you have said it if the people who were using up those places and destroying those hopes and aspirations of the indigenous population would you have said it if the people coming in were Italian or French, that is to say, did not have different coloured skin?

Enoch Powell23:55

Uh yes, indeed.

Presenter23:56

So you you would deny?

Presenter23:59

the attack that people often make against you that you are racist.

Enoch Powell24:03

Well, I always invite them to define the word.

Enoch Powell24:06

If you define it, I'll say yes or no.

Presenter24:06

If I differ from the

Presenter24:09

I would presume that it would be, in this case, some one who was not desirous of having people living alongside an indigenous population because of the colour of their skin.

Enoch Powell24:22

Well, if it turns upon colour.

Enoch Powell24:25

Then I shall return a negative.

Enoch Powell24:27

But for the rest of your question, I do not believe that, for example, the Indians wish to see forty million Europeans moving into the Republic of India, into the Union of India.

Enoch Powell24:39

And that's the relative proportion.

Presenter24:42

Going back specifically to the um the um rivers of blood speech, as it was called, nineteen sixty-eight.

Presenter24:48

Really the thrust of your speech was, if one can describe it as almost an apocalyptic vision.

Presenter24:55

of a nation in turmoil because of the growth of immigrant communities, a tremendous upheaval and an eventual overrunning of the one by the other.

Presenter25:06

Of the indigenous by the immigrant.

Enoch Powell25:07

Something which can only accurately be described as civil war, yes, and I still regard that as the prospect.

Presenter25:14

So you have quite obviously no regrets whatever about making that speech. Even though, as Michael Foote has written, he wrote without it, without that speech, the Tory kingdom would sooner or later have been yours to command. You had, he said, all the shining qualities that the others lacked.

Enoch Powell25:33

Well, that's very nice of Michael to say that, and I'm an admirer of Michael Foote's, and I was sufficiently an admirer to suppose that he would make a great success of being leader of the Labour Party. I was sorry and disappointed that it didn't work out that way, and I think he would have been disappointed as to his prophecy and prediction if that speech had never been made.

Presenter25:56

Shall we have some more music?

Enoch Powell25:58

What I would like to hear again is the moment in the Ninth Symphony in which Beethoven moved from music into words, because that's a great moment in the history of European culture, and it's a great moment in human history, the transition from the musical.

Enoch Powell26:19

from music and dancing to words and poetry.

Presenter27:26

Part of the final movement of Beethoven's ninth symphony with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and chorus conducted by Hans Schmidt Isserstedt.

Presenter27:35

You um going back to your career, you shocked your colleagues yet again in nineteen seventy four when you left the Tory party on the common market issue, and you advised people to vote Labour. You, um a high Tory, as I think you would um admit that.

Enoch Powell27:52

Well, they shouldn't have been shocked. They were only shocked because they hadn't been listening.

Enoch Powell27:57

They hadn't been listening to me saying for years there are some issues which override party.

Enoch Powell28:02

and one issue which overrides party is the independence of a nation.

Enoch Powell28:06

which I believed then and believe now, though I had been joined by others in the meantime.

Enoch Powell28:11

is endangered, indeed is sacrificed by Britain being part of the European Economic Community.

Presenter28:17

But why couldn't you have just demonstrated that, your opinion, by leaving the Tory party to go on and to s and to advise people to vote against the party that you had grown up in and believed in?

Enoch Powell28:28

Well, here was I, no longer a candidate, no longer a cons member of the Conservative Party, which I had ceased to be when Parliament was dissolved on the eighth of February and I said to myself during that campaign

Enoch Powell28:40

In which the Labour Party, you will remember.

Enoch Powell28:43

was placing before the electorate a manifesto of which the implementation would certainly have taken Britain out of a European economic community again.

Enoch Powell28:53

It seemed to me that I had to say to the electors, You now have a choice.

Enoch Powell28:57

And if you've value the choice.

Enoch Powell29:00

Which parliamentary elections give you, then you will take it by taking at face value what you are offered.

Presenter29:07

You then did something else later that year, in nineteen seventy four, which was seen as extraordinary at the time. You decided to go and stand for Parliament as the Member for South Down.

Enoch Powell29:17

Well, I didn't actually decide to go and stand there. What happened was that the Alster Unionists came to see me and said.

Enoch Powell29:26

Will you come and join us? They said you've supported us and helped us during the last Parliament when you didn't need to, when you were a member for an English seat. Now we're in a hung Parliament, with great opportunities open to us, with eleven members in this Parliament. We need your help.

Enoch Powell29:43

You won't leave us now, will you?

Presenter29:45

So it was love of the Unionist cause, not love of the House of Commons, that made you do it, was it?

Enoch Powell29:50

Well, I wouldn't have accepted the invitation to stand if I had hated the House of Commons but I would not have I did not seek the invitation, and the invitation came to me as a consequence of the way in which I had spoken and acted and voted.

Enoch Powell30:06

during the Parliament which ended in february seventy four.

Presenter30:10

Let's have your seventh piece of music.

Enoch Powell30:14

It's Beethoven again.

Enoch Powell30:16

And you know

Enoch Powell30:17

His music was better than his politics.

Enoch Powell30:21

In listening to and enjoying Fidelia.

Enoch Powell30:23

One enjoys it as music without natural necessarily assuming that Beethoven in politics would have acted up to what he is saying in Fidelia.

Speaker 431:16

I know I got me

Presenter31:33

The Prisoner's Chorus from Beethoven's Fidelia with the Philemonia Opera and Chorus conducted by Otto Klemperer.

Presenter31:40

Your image, mister Powell, is a is quite a stern one, a frowning one, as you were saying earlier. A slightly sinister one on occasions, if I may say and yet you are patently a man of great romanticism, and great passion, and great wit. Do you find, as you go about your business, that people have the wrong impression of you?

Enoch Powell31:59

people and particularly children.

Enoch Powell32:02

react quite favourably to me. I get on well with children, and they evidently get on well with me.

Presenter32:09

I wonder how your family would describe you. I mean, do they think of you, do you think, as the old tyrant, or are you the doting grandfather?

Enoch Powell32:15

Or both. Oh, tyrant, they could not have thought me to be.

Enoch Powell32:20

If there is a tyranny in the household, it doesn't come from the father's side.

Enoch Powell32:25

And then it is a mild tyranny.

Enoch Powell32:28

Uh no, I don't believe it.

Enoch Powell32:31

In retrospect.

Enoch Powell32:33

My two daughters will regard me as having been overbearing.

Presenter32:39

And how would your wife describe you?

Enoch Powell32:42

There must be

Enoch Powell32:45

adequate reasons for tolerating someone as she has tolerated me for thirty seven years.

Enoch Powell32:51

There must be some compensation.

Presenter32:54

Shall we have your last record?

Enoch Powell32:56

I'd like to end with something.

Enoch Powell32:59

Good, and I'll explain to you in a moment in the sense in which I'm using the word good. I want to hear the aria.

Enoch Powell33:06

In Native Worth and Honor Clad from Haydn's Oratorio of the Creation. I enjoy it because

Enoch Powell33:15

When I hear Haydn, I always feel that I'm in the presence of a good man, a person of a good moral, religious character, and I do enjoy being with Joseph Haydn.

Speaker 433:56

Ah Leban I cherry

Speaker 434:01

Don't back up.

Speaker 434:03

In the race.

Presenter34:23

Francisco Arisa singing the aria In Native Worth and Honor Clad from Haydn's Creation with the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Herbert von Carrian.

Presenter34:33

Is it possible for you to say which of those eight pieces of music you

Presenter34:37

prefer to any of the offers.

Presenter34:40

It's very difficult.

Enoch Powell34:40

Well, you're putting me up against difficulty, and I daren't grab the ring as a whole, so I think I've got to settle for the supreme moment in the ring, and that is Siegfried's renunciation.

Presenter34:52

The Goethe Dimeral.

Enoch Powell34:53

In the Goethe Demrung.

Presenter34:55

And um a book we would like to know from you. You've got the complete works of Shakespeare, and you've got the Bible.

Enoch Powell35:02

Yes. I don't know which Bible I've got, though.

Presenter35:05

Well, I think you can choose.

Enoch Powell35:06

Oh, thank you because I will need a Greek Testament.

Enoch Powell35:10

I will need a Greek Testament in order to continue to apply my mind to it.

Enoch Powell35:15

And you can only do that in Greek, the language in which it was written. And I suppose that if I am opting for a Greek New Testament, I may as well opt for a Hebrew Old Testament, for I would flounder around in that helpless way. And I don't flounder in Greek, but I flounder in Hebrew.

Presenter35:33

But beyond that there's no other book you'd like to have.

Enoch Powell35:36

No, I shall be satisfied with those.

Presenter35:37

Right. And your luxury.

Enoch Powell35:40

I want I believe it's technically called a smoker.

Enoch Powell35:43

You put fish into it, and it comes out a smoked fish. Now I reckon there's some chance on your magic island that the barracuda makes a mistake and flops down on the beach, and I would be able I would like to be able to smoke it, for I have an absolute passion not merely a passion for fish, but a fa passion for smoked fish. I could eat fish at every meal. There must be something about the genes derived from a remote period in humanity's history, when we lived by the seashore and lived only on fish. Anyhow, the genes lodge powerfully in me. So a smoker, please.

Presenter36:17

All right, you shall have one. I suspect it's slightly against the rules, but I feel I can't deny it. Thank you very much indeed, Enoch Powell, for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Speaker 336:33

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For more podcasts please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.