Lord Annan

Speaker 40:00

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 40:08

The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen ninety, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:29

My castaway this week is a well, what is he? His list of achievements is considerable, but they don't make it easy to define the man. He was born on Christmas Day, nineteen sixteen, bang in the middle of the First World War. He won a scholarship to Cambridge, where he fell in love with university life. The Second World War found him in the War Cabinet office, after which he went back to his old college King's and eventually became its provost at the age of thirty nine. He could have stayed there until he was seventy. Instead, he left for academic life in London, combining it this time with the duties of a public servant.

Presenter1:06

Those of us in this business know him as the man who gave his name to a famous report on the future of broadcasting. We therefore have something with which to define him. To the outside world, however, he's perhaps best characterized as a perfect example of a very British kind of person, historian, academic, public servant and man of duty. He is Noel Annan.

Presenter1:29

Christmas Day baby, Lord Annan was that the the cause of some misery as a child? Did you get one present instead of two?

Lord Annan1:34

No misery at all. Absolutely marvellous. Everybody was rejoicing on the day of my birthday. It uh has always been perfectly all right as far as I'm concerned, being born on Christmas Day. And I had a very happy childhood. I was very lucky.

Presenter1:48

You said before now that yours was a rather unintellectual family. Can that be true?

Lord Annan1:54

Not entirely in the sense that my mother read regularly all the best-selling novels of the day, and my father read a detective story every night, and there were in the drawing-room, of course, the complete works of Shakespeare and the complete works of Kipling. But it was not a family life in which we naturally went to concerts, to galleries, or anything like that. All that.

Lord Annan2:18

I discovered at Stowe. And you know, it is, I don't say it's the best of all schools in the world, but it certainly is one of the most beautiful. And.

Lord Annan2:28

I've had a luck, wherever I've been, has been on the whole a beautiful place to live in.

Presenter2:33

And you've chosen some very beautiful music, so shall we have the first one? What's it to be?

Lord Annan2:38

Well, I thought actually I might talk about something which was very characteristic in my family love of France. My mother, although American, was educated in France and Germany, and my grandmother always used to um

Lord Annan2:55

Invite her grandchildren

Lord Annan2:57

to visit her in a villa which she took each year in Bieritz.

Lord Annan3:02

And of course it was a tremendous experience, that you know, crossing the Channel, of course, and then arriving in Paris, and then, by oneself, on the train going by night down to the south of France.

Lord Annan3:17

And you heard

Lord Annan3:19

That mournful hooting during the night as the train went on its way, and it used to stop at stations like Poitiers, and you peeped through the window, and there was a tap marked Au nonpotable, and there was the barrow boy who came past the window, with that mournful voice saying Siga cigarette liqueur.

Lord Annan3:45

and it would trail away into the distance. And finally one reached Biritz, and there was one grandmother and a marvellous breakfast with croissants and coffee, and one used to bowl down into the city, into the town, in a fiacre.

Lord Annan3:59

And I've chosen

Lord Annan4:01

A well-known French popular song, about the Fiatre.

Lord Annan4:06

and what goes on sometimes in the fiacre.

Speaker 14:11

Damn sorry, ya, da, halleludia, hobble, du fiacrunde d'am sorrédie, au chuet l'en, c'est von marie, ya ple beuz voin nud gachet, ya dia halludia, hob la, ya ple beuz voin nud gach, dandens sans sous escochet.

Speaker 14:30

A fiacro les trotino, jeune na faiti cruche blanc, a fiacroil estro dinon.

Speaker 14:39

The paint and push it long

Lord Annan4:41

Yeah.

Presenter4:42

Jean Sablon singing Le Fiacre. I missed what was going on in sight. What was going on?

Lord Annan4:46

Ah, that's a secret.

Presenter4:49

I shall listen again. Can we talk for a minute about your um your prep school? You were um packed off to an an establishment in Seaford, I think, when you were eight years old. What sort of regime was it?

Lord Annan5:01

It was entirely Philistine.

Lord Annan5:04

There were two things which were taught tremendously well. One was the Christian religion, and the second thing was Latin.

Lord Annan5:11

And very severe it was, too, because if you in the top forms, if you made more than one false concordance, you know, it didn't make the the adjective agree with the noun, or something of that kind, and you got the the gender wrong.

Lord Annan5:25

You were beaten. It was meant, of course, to make you um never do it again. But of course one did, because I was absolutely I am notoriously inaccurate by nature, I am afraid.

Presenter5:35

So it was a cruel business, really, then, Prep School, wasn't it? By the soundless.

Lord Annan5:40

I think many people who went through a prep school at that in those days look back on it with

Lord Annan5:46

feelings of apprehension, as well as sometimes with a kind of affection for old times and people whom they friends they made there, and perhaps still see.

Presenter5:56

Then you went on to your public school, to Stowe, where where you shone. You were head boy and you um sang and you played rugger for the first fifteen. Di did you shine academically, too?

Lord Annan6:08

Yes, uh in the sense that I mean I got an award to kings, but

Lord Annan6:13

Not nearly as much as some other, much cleverer people than I. And of course, that is the lovely thing that we.

Lord Annan6:21

did have an enormously self educating effect on each other. But we were so lucky, you see, because we had you mean it was at the time of the Depression.

Lord Annan6:32

And a lot of young men who'd just come down from the university couldn't find jobs. What did they do? They went in for schoolmastering.

Lord Annan6:39

And I had a brilliant history tutor. Another person who taught me at that time was George Rudy, the well known Marxist historian of the French Revolution and early nineteenth century England. He was a r real splendid person. He used to make one read Emil und di Detectectiva in German. You know Emil and the detectives. And of course it is a Marxist interpretation of the banking system. You can look at it that way, at any rate. But of course it's a wonderful children's story. So there was a lot of imaginative teaching.

Lord Annan7:09

And it was a wonderful place to be at.

Presenter7:11

Shall we have your second record?

Lord Annan7:14

Well, the thing I chose, actually, I've chosen.

Lord Annan7:18

As an example of the sadness in some of eighteenth-century poetry.

Lord Annan7:25

The melancholy side of it. I've chosen a movement from.

Lord Annan7:29

One of Mozart's piano concertos.

Presenter8:29

Alfred Brendel playing part of the second movement of Mozart's piano concerto No. twenty seven in B flat major, with the Vienna Folks opera orchestra conducted by Paul Angerer.

Presenter8:40

So off you went to Cambridge, Lord Annan, to to King's College, which was somehow just what you'd been looking for. Can you define what that was?

Lord Annan8:49

Well, I don't know that I'd been looking for it, because I'd seen it so often as a boy, when I would be taken there by my father, and very often with American friends of his, to who show the place to. And but when I got there, um, of course I came up against

Lord Annan9:06

real teaching, in the sense that I'd been stimulated enormously at Stowe, but it was at King's where I was really put through things and made to realize that a lot of the things that I wrote and said were simply repetitions of other people's views, and I hadn't thought them through, and I didn't realize what I was really saying.

Lord Annan9:28

On the other hand, the other thing which King's was particularly marvellous about was the relations of the Dons with the undergraduates, in which the line at King's was, well, we're we don't, we're just a little further along the road and they were real friends in the sense that they didn't make any difference between the generation at all, and one called the tutor of the college by his Christian name.

Lord Annan9:52

A thing absolutely unheard of in my father's time, of course. It was the great liberal college in Cambridge.

Lord Annan10:00

But by liberal I don't mean politically but anything. Politics wasn't much thought of in King's. We weren't very interested in that. What we were interested in were personal relations and general ideas.

Presenter10:13

You said there wasn't a a lot of political activity at at King's, but nevertheless this was the the Cambridge or or had just been, wasn't it, of Antony Blunt and the Apostles and KGB recruitment. Did you know anything of all that at the time?

Lord Annan10:25

No, not a thing. Nobody did.

Presenter10:27

You knew Guy Burgess later, though, did you?

Lord Annan10:28

Yes, indeed. Who didn't?

Lord Annan10:31

Did he ever

Presenter10:31

Did he ever try to recruit you?

Lord Annan10:34

No, no, no. I he knew perfectly well that I was not that way inclined, as they say.

Presenter10:41

But did you and your contemporaries ever ever spot him as a spy?

Lord Annan10:45

No, he was far too unreliable, a haywire, dirty, brilliant.

Lord Annan10:53

We didn't think of spies as being like that at all. I mean, the Philby type is much more understandable, and indeed nobody could believe at one time that Burgess Sky Burgess had ever been a spy.

Lord Annan11:05

But he was, and he was, I think.

Lord Annan11:08

Responsible probably for

Lord Annan11:10

Seducing, if one can use that word, Anthony Blunt.

Lord Annan11:14

to um throw in his lot with um passing information to the Russians.

Presenter11:19

Let's have your third record.

Lord Annan11:22

This, of course, it brings me to the whole question of the war.

Lord Annan11:27

I've chosen, as a matter of fact, for my next record,

Lord Annan11:31

Some to call Binny Hale.

Lord Annan11:33

Singing

Lord Annan11:35

Room five hundred and four. Now I've chosen this because that was a song which I think many people had a real experience of of the one week when they were on leave, the one week in the hotel with the girl they'd just married, and then off to the Middle East or to the front.

Speaker 411:52

We turned the key in the door We had been to was to the front

Speaker 412:04

That kind of thrill can't happen twice And who could bog in all the paradox In room five hundred?

Presenter12:20

Binnie Hale singing Room Five Hundred and Four and Memories of the War.

Presenter12:25

But what about before the war broke out, Lord Annan? You felt very strongly, and still do, I think, about the policy of appeasement.

Lord Annan12:33

I think that

Lord Annan12:34

What I did feel then

Lord Annan12:37

was a sense of terrible rage.

Lord Annan12:40

Against Neville Chamberlain.

Lord Annan12:42

I've never really lost it. I know perfectly well that history will be revised and

Lord Annan12:48

Future generations may see the whole thing differently. But to me he was an obstinate blinkard.

Lord Annan12:56

conceited

Lord Annan12:58

Leader

Lord Annan12:59

who refused to be warned about the dangers, and who went on with his policy of appeasement far longer than people think.

Presenter13:08

You've written not just of your rage about that, but of your and your contemporaries' hatred for him at the time.

Lord Annan13:14

Well, yes, I fear. Uh that was so.

Presenter13:17

Have you ever felt such a hatred for anyone else in your life?

Lord Annan13:20

No, no, not ever again in politics, really.

Lord Annan13:24

Um I think that some people have that kind of hatred to day for Margaret Thatcher.

Lord Annan13:30

She again has got this tremendous personality, much greater than Chamberlain's.

Lord Annan13:36

but also inspires feelings of great loyalty, which certainly Chamberlain inspired, but also of great hatred.

Lord Annan13:45

It's a very fascinating and interesting thing about leadership.

Presenter13:47

Why do you think she inspires that great hatred?

Lord Annan13:50

Oh, I think it's because people feel she's bossy, people feel also that she has, in fact, challenged most of the assumptions of my own generation.

Lord Annan14:02

And people don't like suddenly understanding that perhaps all the things that they've really run their life on, their beliefs, are being overthrown, challenged, despised, derided, all the rest of it.

Presenter14:15

So it's the old guard who feel that for her, is it?

Lord Annan14:18

Oh.

Lord Annan14:19

No, I wouldn't say that. I think there are a great many of the young guard who feel it as well. But she's a very remarkable woman, and you cannot get away from it, whatever your feelings are about her.

Lord Annan14:32

You have to acknowledge that she is a remarkable leader.

Lord Annan14:37

And I suppose that

Lord Annan14:39

People felt that.

Lord Annan14:40

About Chamberlain.

Presenter14:42

You had, I think, um what you might call a rather exciting war. Um you ended up at the centre of power, as I was saying earlier on, in the War Cabinet office. What did your work involve exactly?

Lord Annan14:53

We had to advise.

Lord Annan14:55

through the Joint Intelligence Committee, the Chiefs of Staff, and hence the War Cabinet on what Hitler was going to do next.

Lord Annan15:04

What?

Lord Annan15:06

Kind of opposition

Lord Annan15:08

The Allies could expect if they landed at Ancio, if they landed at Salerno, if they landed, of course, in Normandy.

Lord Annan15:16

What would happen in Italy if they came out of the war? You know, that was the kind of problems which you were dealing with, and of course in the Far East and the Middle East as well as the theatre of war.

Lord Annan15:27

And of course, when the war ended, I was in Germany and there for eighteen months I was part of the political division, and that's to say, supervising the growth of democracy in Germany, looking at the political parties, trying to help them get together and and produce the kind of democratic set up that we have in Germany today.

Lord Annan15:49

And I thought I'd choose for my next record, just as I chose something to illustrate France, my other great love in Europe is Germany.

Lord Annan15:59

And this is Greeter Keller, singing one of those German songs so well publicised very often by Lotta Lenia. But I chose Greeter Keller because this is one which her name was very much connected with, Liebes Geschichten.

Speaker 416:15

Click Der Z

Speaker 416:18

Oh the creek there's in here.

Speaker 416:23

Gate a scoot owl.

Speaker 416:27

Or am it my fat siton?

Speaker 416:32

Lie bes ge fichten, Berlaus.

Speaker 416:41

Deshrike the slavery.

Presenter16:49

Greta Keller singing Liebesgeschichten.

Presenter16:52

It must have been very confusing for a young man what were you? twenty nine, not quite thirty, w when you came out of the end of of the war, in which you'd played obviously a very central and stimulating part. Almost impossible to decide then what to do with your future. How did you decide?

Lord Annan17:07

Oh simply the easy I took the easy way out. There was the fellowship at King's. So I went back to it.

Presenter17:15

And then ten years later, of course, you were appointed provost of kings at the age of thirty nine the boy provost, they called you which meant that you could have stayed there for the next thirty one years, until you were seventy. Why why didn't you stay on?

Lord Annan17:27

Well, it would have been very bad for the college, and I don't think it would have been very good for me. I should have become.

Lord Annan17:33

A notorious old abuse. Um

Lord Annan17:36

But you know

Lord Annan17:38

I realized at the time that that was inevitable.

Lord Annan17:42

I would have liked to have stayed there rather longer.

Lord Annan17:44

But in fact, when the opportunity came to move to London.

Lord Annan17:49

I thought I must take it.

Presenter17:51

You've said since that um

Presenter17:53

when you got to London and you became Provost of University College, and indeed went on to become, of course, Vice Chancellor of London University as a whole. But you you've said since that your old King's training kept coming up behind you and saying, You're betraying us. What do you mean by that?

Lord Annan18:10

I suppose I meant

Lord Annan18:12

that once I got to London

Lord Annan18:15

I became much more an administrative animal. I became much more somebody who was running things.

Presenter18:23

Do you think your friend EM Forster understood your move?

Lord Annan18:28

Well, he was there at the time.

Lord Annan18:30

And he, of course, was one of the

Lord Annan18:33

Gurus of my life

Lord Annan18:36

Of the very older generation, he and Keynes, of course, were great influences.

Lord Annan18:42

And Forster would not have approved.

Lord Annan18:45

No question about that.

Lord Annan18:47

Sometimes when, for example, in the college I have said, Look, we've got to face the fact more people have got to be educated in universities and kings we ought to expand.

Lord Annan18:59

and Fauster wrote me a very severe letter, in which he said

Lord Annan19:02

I don't approve of your

Lord Annan19:04

Massively democratic ideas.

Lord Annan19:07

Kings exists to educate civilized individuals.

Presenter19:13

But did the move for you signify a desire to give something to society, to enhance society in some way, to have an effect upon society, which perhaps for twenty years sitting in kings you might have felt you hadn't?

Lord Annan19:26

I hope I didn't have such pompous feelings. You must forgive me if I say that's true, because I I don't I've never been tremendously affected by the idea that what I'm going to do is going to change things for the better.

Lord Annan19:42

I sometimes think that I might change an institution for the better, but society, that's too big a thing.

Lord Annan19:49

And I have to say in my life that in higher education

Lord Annan19:54

that many of the things that I tried to achieve I totally failed to achieve.

Lord Annan20:00

And it's a matter of reproach to me that that is so, and it means that I couldn't swim against the tide strongly enough.

Presenter20:08

But you tried.

Lord Annan20:09

Certainly.

Presenter20:10

Let us pause there for record number five.

Lord Annan20:13

The next record which I'd like to choose is connected with Cambridge because when Mennic opened the Arts Theatre at Cambridge, he invited all of us undergraduates who were in the hostel which was next door to it and who'd been kept awake night after night by the hammering in order to get the theatre open on the right night.

Lord Annan20:33

And he invited us, very characteristically, to attend the opening, and the opening was given by Saddlers Wells Ballet, which of course became the Royal Ballet, and that was how my association with Ballet began.

Lord Annan20:46

And if I have to choose a record, of course, from ballet, what could it be but?

Lord Annan20:51

from Swan Lake, where Siegfried and Odette leap to their death in order to free the Swans from the spell of the wicked mugician.

Lord Annan21:03

And here it is, where the theme of the wicked magician in the minor key

Lord Annan21:09

suddenly changes in the end into the major key as they sail away in their swan chariot.

Presenter22:09

The End of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, played by the Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Gennady Rodjestvensky. You must be best remembered, after all, Lord Annan, for your report on the future of broadcasting, published when nineteen seventy seven, wasn't it? That must have been a a job and a half.

Lord Annan22:27

It took us two and a half years, a bit more.

Presenter22:30

Sixteen stones in weight of evidence, I think.

Presenter22:34

What what impression did you form of broadcasting then? I mean, it was of course dominated by the BBC because you proposed the fourth channel, didn't you?

Lord Annan22:41

We proposed the fourth channel, but we were very careful to say it must not be an IT V two. It must be a separate organisation.

Lord Annan22:50

And a lot of our recommendations on organization were terrifically rubbished when it came out, as all reports are.

Lord Annan22:58

But you know a great many of them actually passed into being.

Lord Annan23:03

But the funny thing is that the two chapters which were much praised at the time on sex and violence and bad language was one, and the other one was on current affairs and news and impartiality they were the ones which, though praised, I think were neglected by the broadcasters.

Presenter23:20

So is that why you think this problem of impartiality remains today, thirteen years on, it is still very much an issue?

Lord Annan23:26

It's always going to be there.

Lord Annan23:29

The people who are there.

Lord Annan23:31

to ensure that there is due impartiality are the authorities. They're the ones who have got to do it. And I think that this Government, as any other government, accepts this. But I think that the broadcasters ought to watch it a bit more because you only got to go and attend or hear some of the things that were said i in the conservative party conference which i did not like the sound of

Presenter23:55

Indeed. I mean, it does seem that the BBC is perhaps under stronger attack than it ever has been when you listen to what was said at the Tory Party Conference. And obviously, although you've criticised the BBC in your time, you you believe in the fundamental concept of it. Do you fear for its future, for its survival?

Lord Annan24:13

I don't fear for it, because I do believe that it is a great British institution.

Lord Annan24:19

admired throughout the world, and any government which really set itself to break up the B B C and abolish public service broadcasting from a licence fee, I think would

Lord Annan24:33

Well, of course it could do it, but it would run into enormous criticism.

Lord Annan24:39

The trouble with the BBC, I think, in par in the past has been that it has tried to do too many things.

Lord Annan24:47

Breakfast television, we must do it. Local broadcasting, we must do it.

Lord Annan24:51

Whatever it is, me too and this, I think, has put too great a strain on the licence fee.

Presenter24:58

No government would, as you say, be so unpopular as to demolish the BBC, but how it can undermine it is to reduce its licence fee, reduce its income, and that's how a government would do it. Should it be a problem?

Lord Annan25:08

Yes, I think this is true. And I think that um the B B C ought, as it were, to have a list of priorities, I'm sure it has of the things which, if necessary, it must shed.

Lord Annan25:19

I believe that the BBC, first of all, is vital to decent broadcasting in this country.

Lord Annan25:28

But where to

Lord Annan25:29

is why what it does is always going to be scrutinized much more by politicians and by critics than perhaps the output of the commercial network.

Presenter25:43

Record number six.

Lord Annan25:45

Well, it's very appropriate to that I should choose this record, considering what we've been talking about in reg relation to the BBC.

Lord Annan25:52

is the famous duet between Don Carlo and his great friend Rodrigo, in which

Lord Annan25:59

They sing

Lord Annan26:00

together about the importance of standing together politically in the name of liberty. And liberty is the thing that broadcasters need if they're to do any good work.

Speaker 426:18

Oh then a warless yesterday.

Speaker 426:36

Ready on a

Presenter26:49

Carlo Begonzi and Dietrich Fischer Diskar singing part of the duet from the second act of Verdi's Don Carlo, with the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, conducted by Sir George Schulte. Obviously your your music is going to stand you in very good stead on the island, Lord Allen. But what about the practicalities of life? How are you going to cope?

Presenter27:07

All by yourself.

Lord Annan27:08

Oh, I shall be terribly bad. I am no good at anything, can hardly open a tin. Well, you know, uh there it is. I shall have to put up with it, and um I shall solace myself with whatever I am allowed to have on the island.

Presenter27:21

But no danger of your being bored, I suspect.

Lord Annan27:24

Never. I've never been bored, I think, in my life. I've always got something going on inside my head, though not necessarily anything very important.

Presenter27:32

You you obviously have a terribly optimistic temperament. Do you wake up every day um with a sense of anticipation?

Lord Annan27:38

but certainly not with a sense of depression.

Lord Annan27:41

I'm very lucky.

Lord Annan27:43

I'm such a lucky person.

Lord Annan27:45

Lucky in health, lucky in love.

Lord Annan27:48

Lucky, on the whole, you know, in my life.

Presenter27:52

Let's pause there for some more music.

Lord Annan27:55

Well, this I've chosen because um of my time in Germany.

Lord Annan28:02

You know I said that I was there after the war, and then I had the great fortune, good fortune, when I came back after the war, to marry someone who was a member of a great famous German family called the Ulsteins, who ran uh the great liberal press and uh a liberal publishing house, great intellectual force in Weimar, Germany.

Lord Annan28:27

And in the seventies it was the hundredth anniversary of this firm. Of course it had been taken over by Springer by then.

Lord Annan28:35

But he very nobly invited the family to come back and celebrate.

Lord Annan28:40

And of course I say come back, because of course they had fled from Hitler, many of them.

Lord Annan28:46

And

Lord Annan28:47

They returned to this gathering.

Lord Annan28:51

And speeches began, but there was also the strings of the Berlin Philharmonic there.

Lord Annan28:57

And they played this very familiar tune.

Lord Annan29:02

And you'll see here when you hear it why it was so familiar to these.

Lord Annan29:08

emigres who had returned.

Lord Annan29:10

And as these exquisite strains filled the air, I saw tears running down their face.

Lord Annan29:18

in the case of many of them.

Lord Annan29:21

And I thought

Lord Annan29:22

How

Lord Annan29:24

Tragic it is that

Lord Annan29:26

People love their country.

Lord Annan29:28

and then are rejected by it in the way that these people had been.

Lord Annan29:33

And yet how good

Lord Annan29:34

Of them to return and feel still

Lord Annan29:39

That there was something

Lord Annan29:40

Precious.

Lord Annan29:42

From their early days.

Lord Annan29:45

precious to them, and indeed something which they honoured.

Lord Annan29:49

even though the horrors of the Holocaust had overtaken their generation.

Presenter30:45

Part of the second movement of Haydn's Kaiser Fartet, played by the Amadeus Quartet.

Presenter30:50

You say in your book, Our Age, that your age's greatest failure was that you produced manifestly unsuccessful leaders. Do you include all post war leaders in that?

Lord Annan31:02

Well

Lord Annan31:03

I'm talking of course about politics here. People were motivated

Lord Annan31:09

By the very highest ideals. They wanted desperately, my generation, to end

Lord Annan31:16

The

Lord Annan31:17

Internecciance Strife between Labour and Management

Lord Annan31:21

And all I can say is that it didn't work.

Lord Annan31:24

Then again

Lord Annan31:26

Many of us who came out of the war, and particularly after myself, who had been in Germany and everything, did believe, I think, that we ought to have a new

Lord Annan31:34

Feeling about your

Lord Annan31:37

But we didn't, in fact, go into Europe.

Lord Annan31:40

Our greatest mistake.

Lord Annan31:42

was not joining at the Messina conference.

Lord Annan31:47

and signing the Treaty of Rome. It was an appalling error.

Lord Annan31:53

You know.

Lord Annan31:54

At the time when we could have gone into Europe.

Lord Annan31:58

Of course there was no great surge to do this. In fact, if you'd asked people, they'd have been against it. Leadership means

Lord Annan32:07

Understanding, having a feeling.

Lord Annan32:10

for what the future is going to be. It's not just reacting to public opinion. If we reacted to public opinion, we'd still be hanging people in public.

Presenter32:20

Your last record.

Lord Annan32:22

Well, my last record.

Lord Annan32:24

It reminds me of the occasion when I first heard

Lord Annan32:28

Arturo Toscanini Conduct Beethoven's Seventh Symphony. Now he took this symphony at a speed.

Lord Annan32:36

which the great German conductors Furtwängler and Co. would have thought absolutely horrifying.

Lord Annan32:42

And indeed the second movement, which is a dark movement, was, it seemed to me, far too much like some brisk waltz. But in fact, when it came to the last movement, it was thunderous the pace, the vitality, the absolute passion which came into that conducting, and I can see the old man now standing with his feet wide apart in order to keep his balance, sawing away at the orchestra, and driving them on and on and on into a perfect frenzy. And when, of course, he finished

Lord Annan33:15

The whole house leaped to their feet.

Lord Annan33:17

and cheered him to the echo.

Lord Annan33:20

It is my favorite symphony by Beethoven.

Lord Annan33:23

one which was the first I ever knew as a boy.

Lord Annan33:26

and which to me is one of the most moving of musical experiences.

Presenter34:33

The end of the final movement of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony played by the NBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Arturo Toscanini, and that was recorded in nineteen fifty one. I take it that that's the record you'd insist on having above all the others, yes?

Lord Annan34:46

That's it.

Presenter34:47

What about the book? You've got the Bible, and you've got Shakespeare.

Lord Annan34:50

Either the Iliad in

Lord Annan34:52

Greek and English, because I don't know Greek, but I might teach myself Greek.

Lord Annan34:57

if I had it there. But if that's not allowed

Lord Annan35:01

Then I would take the most perfect of all novels, short though it is.

Lord Annan35:06

Togeniev's Fathers and Sons.

Presenter35:09

You should decide which would you prefer to have.

Lord Annan35:11

I think I shall take the Iliad.

Presenter35:14

Right.

Presenter35:14

and a luxury.

Lord Annan35:16

Oh, Bath Essence.

Lord Annan35:18

Because it's the one thing which is a real luxury on a desert island where the only kind of water available is the sea.

Presenter35:27

Well, you shall have your bath essence, and I hope you enjoy it. And I shall say no, Alan, and thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Speaker 435:42

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