E P Thompson

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 one.

Speaker 40:11

And the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:32

My Castaway this week is a historian. In 1941, at the age of seventeen, he left his academic studies in Cambridge to join the army and fight the forces of fascism.

Presenter0:42

He became a Communist, but left the party after the Russian invasion of Hungary in nineteen fifty six. Nevertheless, he's remained a true English Socialist, the founder of the magazine which became the New Left Review, and an early and constant supporter of CND.

Presenter0:59

His most famous book is The Making of the English Working Class, a title which reveals a little of its author. An academic and a thinker too, someone who enjoys using history to try to tell us something about our future. He is EP Thompson.

Presenter1:15

Have you also, um, perhaps enjoyed Mr. Thompson making history as well yourself?

E P Thompson1:22

Yes, uh not as successfully as I'd have liked to have done. I mean, it's always being taken out of one's hand.

E P Thompson1:28

If you ever do succeed in making anything, uh someone else claims that it was their idea and uh

E P Thompson1:35

Uh takes it off you. Uh I mean, in a certain sense, I think.

E P Thompson1:39

Some of the gains that have been made towards peace recently are partly the result of the pressure of peace movements, but no one will admit it.

Presenter1:47

But have you enjoyed that aspect of your career, or has it been just very hard work?

E P Thompson1:53

No, I've enjoyed it very much and I don't mind hard hard work. Hard work is uh part of my nature, I think.

Presenter1:58

But how different, I wonder, would your life have been had there been no Cold War?

E P Thompson2:03

Oh, oh, I I I I I do resent

E P Thompson2:06

The months and years sometimes plowed into this sort of activity with very little result showing itself. I don't.

E P Thompson2:15

I don't wish that I hadn't done it. I would have still done it, but I do resent the loss of time and the loss of holidays, the loss of time spent with my children, and so on. Yes, and the loss of time for writing.

Presenter2:26

Well, I suppose right now we offer you a holiday on a on a desert island of of your imagination, although you travel alone. Do you do you like the idea at all?

E P Thompson2:29

And it is.

E P Thompson2:34

Uh no, I don't really. I I uh I think I'd break up if I was on my own completely.

Presenter2:38

Yeah.

E P Thompson2:38

Yeah.

Presenter2:38

Do you have a

Presenter2:40

But psychologically.

E P Thompson2:41

Yeah, I think I think

E P Thompson2:43

I think one needs company, and I I think one needs female company, feminine company. Uh I think one's an awful bore. I like to have long stretches on my own, but not that kind of long stretch, no.

Presenter2:56

What about music? Does it fill in for any of those things that you would miss at all? Would it help?

E P Thompson3:01

Oh, yes, certainly. I mean, and and

E P Thompson3:03

Music carries an amazing amount of memories as well.

E P Thompson3:07

Uh so that lots of faces come up into one's mind as you hear the music.

Presenter3:12

So what faces does the first one come to?

E P Thompson3:14

Well, this is uh Irish harp music from the eighteenth century. Extraordinary that it's been preserved so well.

E P Thompson3:22

And I've now got

E P Thompson3:24

two Irish granddaughters in County Clare, so that I'm very much more aware of the Irish traditions of music than I was. And this is Derek Bell playing Carol Ann's Receipt, which is marvellous.

E P Thompson3:40

collection of eighteenth century harp music that has survived.

Presenter4:45

Derek Bell, playing Carol Ann's Receipt. Well, now, by all accounts, you you've always been enormously popular with your students, their their radical hero. Ha have they have they been as important to you, those students, as obviously you have been to them?

E P Thompson4:54

I think

E P Thompson4:59

Oh, certainly. Yes. I I think uh the making of the English working class, which you mentioned

E P Thompson5:03

An awful lot of that.

E P Thompson5:05

came from teaching those students and listening to them and their sense of immediacy of some of that history. Some of that history of the early nineteenth century was still alive in the West Riding of Yorkshire. And it's a very West Riding book.

E P Thompson5:19

And it's Westriding but because I was teaching Westriding students.

Presenter5:23

I wonder though if you if you remained uh popular down the years with students because you remained radical. Most people, you know, b don't they begin radically and then mellow with age and move towards the centre, which you never did.

E P Thompson5:32

Magic.

E P Thompson5:34

Agent move

E P Thompson5:36

Which wouldn't be the case so much in the last five years. Well, certainly not my experience in America. Uh the the students have ceased to be radical. I mean, they're all trying to get uh into the law or

E P Thompson5:47

Yeah.

Presenter5:48

No, but in the days when you were teaching and uh for those sort of twenty five years

E P Thompson5:50

Yeah.

E P Thompson5:55

I think there was a sympathy there, yes, yes. Uh but I I've been always very strict about not mixing politics and teaching. I just don't like it.

E P Thompson6:03

I think you are in a position.

E P Thompson6:06

As a teacher, where you have a lot of influence over students, and you shouldn't abuse us, you know.

Presenter6:11

Your father was a Don, wasn't he?

E P Thompson6:12

Yes. Uh, he was a research fellow, yes.

Presenter6:15

What what was his subject?

E P Thompson6:16

End in history

E P Thompson6:18

Yes, he he was at Oxford. He had before been a lecturer in Bengali.

E P Thompson6:23

He came back from uh Bengal, where he had been uh

E P Thompson6:27

Educational missionary for about from about 1910 to 1923.

Presenter6:33

And then you were born near Oxford when they got back in nineteen twenty four.

E P Thompson6:35

1924.

Presenter6:37

Obviously there was conversation, discussion, argument in the house. I mean, books. It was a very, very middle class household, was it?

E P Thompson6:44

Yeah, I think you could say so. Middle class sort of liberal radical. Uh my father was

E P Thompson6:52

In his last years, closely involved with the Indian National Congress and

E P Thompson6:58

I remember it as a child.

E P Thompson7:01

Some of the most exciting days were when we had distinguished Indian visitors coming to stay, and I always thought that these were the important people, you know.

E P Thompson7:10

There wasn't a trace of sort of racial superiority at all, and my father always felt that he got on best with Indians.

E P Thompson7:18

I remember when Gandhi came once.

Presenter7:20

Yeah.

E P Thompson7:20

To your house?

Presenter7:20

To your house.

E P Thompson7:23

Just about the height of the sideboard. My main memory of Gandhi coming was the sideboard piled with all these fruits that we didn't didn't usually get. But there he was, and he was doing his

E P Thompson7:36

Daily stint of charcoal that's spinning in the corner of our house, and it's a very treasured memory.

Presenter7:45

Shall we have your second record?

E P Thompson7:46

Yeah, um well the second record comes directly out of these memories.

E P Thompson7:52

Recently been going up into the attic of our house, and I find an amazing hoard of

E P Thompson7:58

uh manuscripts which will have to go to one of the national libraries.

E P Thompson8:03

Including 120 letters and cards from Rubindanath Tagore, the great Bengali poet and dramatist.

E P Thompson8:11

So and he was also a fantastic songwriter. I mean his best

E P Thompson8:15

known amongst the

E P Thompson8:17

Bengali people for his songs.

E P Thompson8:20

Now this is a bit of a cheat because the song is actually

E P Thompson8:23

Tigo's version of

E P Thompson8:26

Old Nang Sain, and you'll probably recognize.

E P Thompson8:29

Some of the dune the words indeed are

E P Thompson8:35

More or less.

E P Thompson8:36

The days of yesteryear are lags on.

Speaker 18:38

Uh

E P Thompson8:40

Yeah.

Speaker 19:13

Yeah.

Speaker 19:15

Jiba Hairi Sakha Praniri Majei Murasukhukhir Katha Kabhu Prat Prabhita.

Presenter9:29

Rabindra Nat Tagore, with Purano Sedina Kata, which roughly translated means old Lang Syne. You went away, didn't you, to your father's old school, um, a Methodist school in Bath. Were you a a a challenging pupil? What sort of things did you get up to?

E P Thompson9:45

I remember once they were trying to

E P Thompson9:48

liberalize the

E P Thompson9:50

Sunday service

E P Thompson9:52

And so I put up the idea that we had a

E P Thompson9:54

voluntary chapel committee in which we agitated for chapel to be made voluntary and and had readings from Walt Whitman and things like that and went and studied uh

E P Thompson10:04

Religion in the woods and in the fields. And this was stopped. This was one thing that was going too far.

Presenter10:14

Your brother won a scholarship to Winchester, didn't he? He he was brighter than you, was he?

E P Thompson10:16

Yeah.

E P Thompson10:18

Oh yes, yes, and I was always the dunce of the family.

Presenter10:20

And then of course you went up to Cambridge to Corpus Christi when you were only sixteen to read history. Obviously you weren't the dunce you make out you were.

E P Thompson10:28

Well, uh yeah, this always surprised me. I remember sort of discussions in our house, you know, where are we going to send him, because he's not going to get the scholarship to Winchester. And then they found out that at Kingswood there was a special category in which the sons of old boys

E P Thompson10:47

Could get an exhibition more easily, and therefore it was a place that I could try for.

Presenter10:51

Good safe try and

E P Thompson10:52

Yes, that's right.

Presenter10:54

Um then you went into the army yourself. You commanded a tank squadron. Wh where did you see action?

E P Thompson11:01

Well, the main action was at the last battle of Cassino.

E P Thompson11:06

which was a very heavy battle.

E P Thompson11:08

And then

E P Thompson11:09

All the way up Italy.

E P Thompson11:12

To the north.

Presenter11:13

So you you had no moral objections to putting on uniform and and fighting fascism?

E P Thompson11:18

No, I I uh

E P Thompson11:20

I was aware of the pessimist case because

E P Thompson11:22

There is quite a strong pacifist tradition in the Methodist Church.

E P Thompson11:26

And this was found among some of the boys in Kingswood.

E P Thompson11:30

So some of my schoolfellows were pacifists. No, I uh I'm not a pacifist now, absolute pacifist, although I think it's becoming more and more a necessity for the human species to find some alternative to violence. Absolutely. But nevertheless, there are situations even still to day in which I could condone violence.

Presenter11:49

Record number three.

E P Thompson11:51

Relevant to what we yeah, what we've been talking about. Paul Robeson here is singing the Peat Box Odas. I I like to remember I think on Thy Island I'd like to remember through Robeson

E P Thompson12:04

One's rather naïve anti-racism and the hero figure he was.

E P Thompson12:08

As an internationalist and as an anti-fascist in those years. I mean, I would have got to know him when I was fourteen or so, his singing, and I heard him sing in New York later.

E P Thompson12:20

The peatbox soldiers, of course, were slave labor under the Nazis. And

E P Thompson12:28

This is their song which they which they invented.

Speaker 412:32

We are the Petebog soldiers. We're marching with our spades to the bog. Up and down the guards are pacing. No one, no one can go through. Flight would mean a sure death facing. Guns and barbed wire greet our view. We are

Presenter13:03

Paul Robeson singing The Peatbog Soldiers, a song from a German concentration camp.

Presenter13:11

So, Edward Thompson, you joined the Communist Party in nineteen forty two and remained a member for fourteen years. When did you feel the first stirrings of disillusion with it?

E P Thompson13:20

Well, quite a lot stirring the dissolution of the British Congress party.

E P Thompson13:24

From uh

E P Thompson13:27

I was for the point of joining it uh because uh it was terribly dominated by

E P Thompson13:34

The Soviet model of ideas.

E P Thompson13:37

And um

E P Thompson13:39

It was careless of precisely those

E P Thompson13:43

British traditions of democracy and activity.

E P Thompson13:46

Which, as a historian, were already beginning to interest me. So I'm trying to say that I had sort of reservations, but I didn't have the.

E P Thompson13:54

clarity or the courage

E P Thompson13:56

to really bring this as point of confrontation in my own mind.

E P Thompson13:59

I still went along with a lot of things I can now see were absolute rubbish and worse.

Presenter14:05

But eventually you had the the confidence to to to say what you really thought, didn't you?

E P Thompson14:08

Tote.

E P Thompson14:10

Well, this was in 1956, in 1956. This was the year after by Morris was published. And in 1956

E P Thompson14:17

The first thing was the

E P Thompson14:19

Khrushchev's secret speech, the unmasking of

E P Thompson14:23

The denial of almost everything the official propaganda machine had been telling us for years.

E P Thompson14:28

And also the

E P Thompson14:30

A particular issue that concerned us equally

E P Thompson14:34

was the reluctance, the lies that came from the leadership of the British Communist Party, their reluctance to have an open discussion about it all, their reluctance to come clean and say what they'd known about Stalin at the time. We felt deeply betrayed by this.

E P Thompson14:48

So we started an opposition journal, which was a discussion journal in which we had.

E P Thompson14:53

People who uh

E P Thompson14:55

Full of frustrations.

E P Thompson14:57

Opening up their hearts in the correspondence column.

E P Thompson15:02

And then the Communist Party tried to stop this.

E P Thompson15:05

Very hard.

E P Thompson15:07

After the first number, we went through three numbers. We said we were going to do this, and we always had intended. Then we closed it down.

E P Thompson15:15

And then the as it at the moment we closed it down, the Russian

E P Thompson15:23

Suppression of the Hungarian insurrection took place.

E P Thompson15:26

And so John Saville and I and Dorothy decided we'd leave the Communist Party wasn't worth going on any more.

E P Thompson15:31

But after a year

E P Thompson15:34

We started a new journal called A New Reasoner which was printed.

E P Thompson15:37

and which widened the scope.

Presenter15:39

And and of course that uh as you say was the reasoner, then the new reasoner and today it still exists as the as the new left review.

E P Thompson15:45

Yes, we merged with the universes and left review, yes.

Presenter15:47

Do you still have anything to do with it?

E P Thompson15:49

Uh only distantly, only distantly.

Presenter15:52

You've been very lucky, really, in all of this, haven't you? Because your your your wife, Dorothy, has been like-minded. I mean, together you've you've been through the struggle together.

E P Thompson15:58

Yeah.

E P Thompson16:01

Oh yes, sometimes I'm like-minded. I mean, she's very, very influential on my thought, yes.

Presenter16:07

Record number four.

E P Thompson16:09

This is uh

E P Thompson16:11

John Darland, that wonderful English composer.

E P Thompson16:16

Uh and

E P Thompson16:18

The guitar or the lute has always been sounding in our house since all my kids.

E P Thompson16:26

have played in one form or another.

E P Thompson16:30

From the days of Skiffle through groups and bands on to classical music, there's always been the sound of this sort of music.

E P Thompson16:40

In the last ten or fifteen years, quite a lot of dialand has been played in our house. Uh my son is a lutenist, one of my sons. Uh

E P Thompson16:50

And I think I'll be feeling the lack of

E P Thompson16:54

This music on the island and need it.

Presenter18:00

John Dowland's Battelle Galliard, played by Julian Bream.

Presenter18:05

What then, in your view, EP Thompson, brought about the end of the Cold War? What or who were the agents of greatest influence, do you think?

E P Thompson18:14

Well

E P Thompson18:15

Everyone has their own theories. I mean, one thing obviously was

E P Thompson18:19

The uh

E P Thompson18:21

Uh economic.

E P Thompson18:23

Burden of war production, particularly on the Soviet bloc. I mean, they just could not sustain this any longer.

E P Thompson18:29

I think also internal pressures in the in the Soviet bloc, that is, you can't run a modern society with the kind of thought controls that they had. They just had to break out of these things.

E P Thompson18:39

But in terms of the actual Cold War and the military side of it

E P Thompson18:44

I think

E P Thompson18:45

There has been a sad underestimation.

E P Thompson18:49

of the role played by mass peace movements.

E P Thompson18:52

in many parts of the world. I mean, I think these did alter the terms of politics, the art of the possible way.

E P Thompson18:58

redefined what was possible and necessary for politicians.

Presenter19:02

But how? Can you explain to me how you believe that worked?

E P Thompson19:05

Well, y you see it in the United States where the peace movement mass peace movement was much shorter than in Europe.

E P Thompson19:11

But took the form of freeze movement.

E P Thompson19:14

And this freeze movement was actually making inroads not only into the main Democratic Party, but also into the Republican Party as well.

E P Thompson19:22

And in this way

E P Thompson19:25

Reagan had to turn it round.

E P Thompson19:28

And

E P Thompson19:29

He did this by

E P Thompson19:32

Major proposals which were more peaceful in character than his policy had been before.

Presenter19:39

And what part does our own domestic history play in all of that, from the Aldermaston marches to the women of Greenham Common?

E P Thompson19:43

Automatic

E P Thompson19:44

Yeah.

E P Thompson19:46

Yeah, I I think it played a large part. I mean, there there was an amazing moment in

E P Thompson19:51

Really round about nineteen eighty one.

E P Thompson19:54

I remember going around and finding

E P Thompson19:57

very large, packed audiences in quite small market towns in the west of England and uh the West Midlands. And I remember saying that the British people only really think once every forty or fifty years, and when they do think you can hear this sort of

E P Thompson20:12

rusty noise as as the uh

E P Thompson20:15

Um

E P Thompson20:17

Coggs attorney. Well, they were thinking then.

Presenter20:19

But if the ending of the Cold War is a vindication of the peace movement, you you're only saying that explaining how it had an effect on people in the West. How did it get through? How did it make its message heard in the East? Because the East has been equally cooperative in the ending of the Cold War.

E P Thompson20:28

How did it get

E P Thompson20:31

Yeah.

E P Thompson20:32

I think uh

E P Thompson20:36

almost unremarked.

E P Thompson20:38

Political and and ideological battle was taking place within the peace movement itself.

E P Thompson20:44

That is, uh, E and D what represented those sections of the piecemeal that were determined.

E P Thompson20:49

not to be pawns, pawns of the Soviet diplomacy, sort of auxiliaries for Soviet diplomacy, which had to some degree taken place in the past. And therefore, we insisted on the autonomy, on the independence of the Western Peace Movement and its right to

E P Thompson21:08

Criticize

E P Thompson21:10

the Soviet Union as much as the United States.

E P Thompson21:13

Which we did.

E P Thompson21:15

And this puzzled the Russian leadership.

E P Thompson21:18

who were delighted to see a big Western peace movement, but who couldn't make it dance to its tune. It tried again and again. Now we know that this was reported.

E P Thompson21:27

and studied by the Soviet Politburo. It was very puzzled that it couldn't command the Western Peace Movement in the way it wanted to. And the influence of its proposals came back and

E P Thompson21:37

began to get growing support.

E P Thompson21:39

In the think tanks in Moscow these younger

E P Thompson21:42

uh Soviet citizens who

E P Thompson21:44

We're not Stalinists of the old mode.

Presenter21:47

Some more music.

E P Thompson21:48

Yes, I I I think that I'd like to

E P Thompson21:52

Have

E P Thompson21:53

The prisoner's chorus from Beethoven's Vidalio, marvelous moment when the prisoners come up from the underground.

E P Thompson22:02

And I felt those emotions in nineteen eighty nine when the

E P Thompson22:07

Czechs and the Poles and the Hungarians were all sort of freeing themselves from the past and this would encourage me on my island

Speaker 422:36

I'm the ghost, I'm the ghost.

Presenter23:22

Part of the Prisoner's Chorus from Beethoven's Fidelio, performed by the Chorus and Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Coven Garden, conducted by Bernard Heitink.

Presenter23:31

You were very ill, I believe, during the great events of of nineteen eighty nine as democracy returned to Eastern Europe. You were lying in a hospital bed with viral pneumonia.

E P Thompson23:40

Yeah.

Presenter23:40

Did that mean you you missed the marvellous moment, the opening of the Berlin Wall?

E P Thompson23:44

Um

E P Thompson23:46

I was a bit um a bit dozy and unconcentrated.

E P Thompson23:51

Uh my wife Dorothy brought brought me in um

E P Thompson23:54

Cuttings and news. So she gave me the news that's happening.

E P Thompson23:58

Um I remember.

E P Thompson24:00

I'd been on a

E P Thompson24:02

sort of life support system, a ventilator.

E P Thompson24:05

And uh

E P Thompson24:07

I think I came off it.

E P Thompson24:09

The same day that the uh

E P Thompson24:12

Uh check.

E P Thompson24:14

Sort of revolution had obviously broken through. There's no question it had broken through. So that I got my lungs back and the Czech.

E P Thompson24:23

People at Prague got their lungs back the same day.

Presenter24:26

You felt as if you were in Wencesla Square with them, didn't you?

E P Thompson24:28

Yeah, yeah.

Presenter24:29

So obviously it helped you out of your illness, I know yes. Tremendous feeling.

E P Thompson24:32

Oh yes.

Presenter24:34

Some more music.

E P Thompson24:35

Right. Uh well, I think on my island now I'm going to be terribly lonely and melancholy. And so I'll have a rather anguished piece of music to echo my mood. This is by

E P Thompson24:48

Peter Warlock, the English composer who

E P Thompson24:52

died before his promise was fulfilled, who did this amazing setting of Yeats's poem which he called The Curlew, and this is the perhaps one of the most agonising sections of it. He hears the cry of the sedge.

Speaker 425:10

In the cries in the ced, Until the axle break, That keeps the stars in their round

Speaker 425:30

And a hand a hold in the deep The balance of East and West

Speaker 425:43

And the good love is on.

Presenter25:54

He hears the cry of the sedge from the WB Yates poem The Wind Among the Reeds, sung by James Griffitt with the Hafner string quartet. It is very lowering, that, isn't it?

Speaker 426:04

Mm-hmm.

Presenter26:07

Yeah.

Presenter26:07

Um as we've said, your your best known book, you wrote in in nineteen sixty three, The Making of the English Working Class, and it remains a a basic academic text. We now of course have a Prime Minister who b believes in classlessness.

E P Thompson26:20

Hmm.

Presenter26:21

What do you think of that concept?

E P Thompson26:22

Well, I'm not sure he does. I I uh I don't want to get in too political an argument with you, but uh

E P Thompson26:28

I don't know how far by a classless society.

E P Thompson26:33

He really means the ending of

E P Thompson26:36

Deep privileges and deep divisions in the society which are structural and not.

E P Thompson26:41

uh abolished by

E P Thompson26:44

Waving a wand and talking about classlessness. I mean, one has to examine what these.

E P Thompson26:49

Deep structural divisions are, and how one could possibly overcome them.

Presenter26:53

What about mister Kinnock, having talked about mister Major? I mean, he's a man closer to your own political persuasions. I mean, do do you find things to admire in him?

E P Thompson27:03

I'm not sure that you should ask me that question on a programme like this.

Presenter27:04

Ask me that.

E P Thompson27:07

I mean, I have I have the bitterest feelings about

E P Thompson27:10

The betrayal by the Labour Party leadership.

E P Thompson27:14

Of their commitment on nuclear disarmament. I think this was one of the most shameful.

E P Thompson27:19

Pieces of uh

E P Thompson27:21

Reversal of policy. I mean, I have spoken on the same platform with Mr. Kinnock.

E P Thompson27:26

and other leaders of the Labour Party.

E P Thompson27:29

In the nineteen eighty one days

E P Thompson27:32

And was impressed by what seemed to be their complete conviction.

E P Thompson27:37

Now we have a policy invented on

E P Thompson27:40

Uh nuclear questions by Mr. Kaufman.

E P Thompson27:45

who has said that Britain will keep its nuclear weapons as long as any other nation has. So we won't be the first, but we'll be the last nation to get rid of them. But it's not actually. This is t spoken of as a Labour Party policy. Well, it didn't come out of the Labour Party Executive, Labour Party Conference. It came out of a

Presenter27:53

But it's not just

E P Thompson27:59

Howl in mister Carfin's head?

Presenter28:02

But it's not just mister Kaufman and mister Kinnock, is it? I mean Labour leadership through the ages.

E P Thompson28:07

Yeah.

Presenter28:07

have actually found that they had to espouse the multilateral course when they came up against the reality of office.

E P Thompson28:13

Well, I I I

E P Thompson28:16

I can't agree with that because I think the Labour Party would have been in a fantastically strong position now if they had ma maintained their earlier anti-nuclear position.

E P Thompson28:26

which seems to have been confirmed by the actions.

E P Thompson28:29

Unilateral in both cases of Gorbachev.

E P Thompson28:32

and then of President Bush.

Presenter28:34

Are you still a member of the Labour Party?

E P Thompson28:36

Well, you shouldn't ask me that. I just uh

E P Thompson28:39

I just haven't renewed my subscription. I haven't thrown out, but it it so happens that.

E P Thompson28:45

couple of years of illness I haven't bothered to renew it.

Presenter28:48

That's what Mr. Kinnock says, of course, about C and D he's lapsed.

E P Thompson28:51

Ah.

Presenter28:52

Ha!

Presenter28:54

Record number seven.

E P Thompson28:55

Right. Uh well there's nothing particularly relevant about this record at all, except that we want to recover from the last one with a very beautiful

E P Thompson29:05

Mozart trio for clarinet, and uh

E P Thompson29:08

And this will refresh our spirits again.

Presenter30:12

Part of Mozart's trio for clarinet, viola and piano in E flat major, played by the Nash Ensemble.

Presenter30:20

You said, E. P. Thompson, that the struggle against the Cold War has been your life's work. One can't help thinking that.

Presenter30:27

If it hadn't been there you would have found something else to fight.

E P Thompson30:30

Uh

E P Thompson30:33

Well, okay.

Presenter30:34

Uh

E P Thompson30:34

Maybe?

Presenter30:34

I mean, it's in your nature, isn't it? You're a fighter.

E P Thompson30:38

Uh yeah, and uh

E P Thompson30:41

Yeah, I think it's probably

E P Thompson30:43

uh an old tradition in this country that

E P Thompson30:47

Goes back before

E P Thompson30:49

The invention of words like socialism and communism, you know, this kind of cause committed.

E P Thompson30:55

Um Puritanism and so on.

Presenter30:57

So you still have the energy and the appetite for that fight, do you?

E P Thompson31:01

I'm not sure about energy because I've been quite ill and

E P Thompson31:04

I don't think I'm gonna fully recover my energies.

E P Thompson31:07

But uh I've got the interest, certainly.

Presenter31:11

It's just that you you have said and written on several occasions about the fact that you and your wife have been running for forty five years. One one senses in you really a desire to stop running.

E P Thompson31:20

I desire

E P Thompson31:22

Yeah, I I suppose I've been dramatizing a bit. Yeah, but I would not have uh wished.

E P Thompson31:32

to have missed the friendships that have

E P Thompson31:35

Even if one's running on the road, at least you're talking to someone all the way, and uh no, I don't think I.

E P Thompson31:41

would want association with this kind of movement ever to finish.

Presenter31:46

Vast record.

E P Thompson31:47

Let's have a

E P Thompson31:49

Cheerful song to end with.

E P Thompson31:51

Uh this is Purcell's Hark, Hark, How All Things, and it's sung beautifully by Emma Kirkby. Uh I wanted to have an Emma Kirkby with me.

E P Thompson32:03

Because we once took part not so long ago in a

E P Thompson32:07

Musicians for Peace concert. I was brought on as a unmusical celebrity. I don't know what I was playing. I think I had a hitter triangle or something like that.

E P Thompson32:16

And I was absolutely terrified because even if you're only doing something like that, you have to get it to the right point.

E P Thompson32:23

And you sometimes have to count two or three bars of silence, which I found amazing. I said these these these concert concert.

E P Thompson32:32

Professionals are fantastically skilled.

E P Thompson32:35

And Emma was there as well, and I think she she was a cuckoo or something like that, which she did, of course, with her usual professionalism.

Speaker 432:44

Hawk, hawk, hello, they did wonder. Rejoice, rejoice, rejoice, rejoice.

Speaker 433:07

Our beings in water

Speaker 133:08

It was a

Speaker 433:13

Rejoice, rejoice.

Speaker 433:24

Oh these three

Presenter33:26

Purcell's Hark, Hark, How All Things sung by Emma Kirkby. Now, if you could only have one of those eight records, which one would it be?

E P Thompson33:35

Poof.

E P Thompson33:36

I've forgotten to think about this. I think I had to have the first one now.

E P Thompson33:41

The harp, the Irish harp music, the uh

E P Thompson33:44

Can't allow me to see it because uh it's uh

E P Thompson33:48

Inexhaustible in its quiet sort of beauty. And I love the harp. Yes, I'll take that one.

Presenter33:54

Well, now what about a book? Uh you've got the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare.

E P Thompson33:59

Yeah

Presenter33:59

What other book can we supply?

E P Thompson34:00

Well, I'd like to uh

E P Thompson34:02

I'd like to take the complete poems of Blake, William Blake, because I'm halfway through writing a book on this and I might be able to go on with it with a typewriter.

Presenter34:12

Well, we've got a few problems with complete works, you see. I mean, technically you're only allowed a

E P Thompson34:14

I mean

Presenter34:17

A bit.

E P Thompson34:18

Oh

Presenter34:18

Uh

E P Thompson34:18

Uh

Presenter34:18

Uh

E P Thompson34:18

Well in that case I'd take um

E P Thompson34:23

Songs of innocence and experience, perhaps, yes.

E P Thompson34:26

Yeah.

Presenter34:27

Right. Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience. Uh and your luxury.

E P Thompson34:31

I'd like a typewriter, and I hope I c could squeeze it to get a bit of paper at the same time.

E P Thompson34:36

I had thought of a word processor, but obviously there's nothing to plug it into on an island.

Presenter34:40

I suppose you could have a solar powered one.

E P Thompson34:42

Ah but then that's too luxury.

E P Thompson34:45

Uh no, I'll I'll take an ordinary.

E P Thompson34:47

Sit up and beg.

E P Thompson34:49

Finger finger typewriter

Presenter34:50

You waggle two fingers about as you do that. You're obviously not an accomplished typist, are you? Well.

E P Thompson34:53

They're not

E P Thompson34:54

Well, I I would say I was quite accomplished. I I first uh

Presenter34:55

Well I am

E P Thompson34:59

I learnt to type when I was crossing the Atlantic at the age of five. I used to find my way up to the uh cabin of the radio operator. He used to sit me down to keep me quiet, I suppose, and give me a typewriter. Um and I type very fast with two fingers and fairly accurately.

Presenter35:16

Edward Palmer Thompson, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Speaker 435:28

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