Conrad Black

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 ninety four, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:29

My Castaway this week is a newspaper proprietor. The son of a wealthy Canadian businessman, he was schooled from an early age not in conventional education, where he was notoriously insubordinate, but in the art of corporate warfare. He bought his first share at the age of eight. At the age of thirty-five, he was chairman of one of Canada's largest conglomerates.

Presenter0:50

Nine years ago he transferred his attentions to this country, buying the Daily Telegraph at a knock down price and turning it into a hugely profitable newspaper. He enjoys the power and influence his acquisition has brought him. As his editor says, he simply adores being a tycoon. He is Conrad

Presenter1:10

Why did you buy the telegraph, Conrad Black? Was it as much to gain position here as it was to make money?

Conrad Black1:16

No, I had really no interest at all in position here.

Conrad Black1:20

I bought it because I was interested in the business, had been in the business for many years, the newspaper business.

Conrad Black1:26

had read a good deal about um newspaper owners in this country and elsewhere, and my idea was that it was an intersection of what could be commercially

Conrad Black1:36

Very advantageous with what could be interesting. What was interesting to me was.

Conrad Black1:41

working with the writers and with the editorial product. I was not in that mold and am still not in it and not likely to join it, for which there is some precedent of people who come from other Commonwealth countries here with their coattails trailing out behind them, seeking position in this country. I I'm not doing that.

Presenter1:58

But but it was, nevertheless. I mean, inevitably the ownership of the Daily Telegraph an entree into the British establishment, wasn't it? I mean, it it gives you a direct line to our politicians, into the heart of our politics.

Conrad Black2:10

Yeah, I don't think that's the establishment suit. I mean, I wouldn't have thought that I was particularly an establishmentarian figure, but that it confers some potential influence in this country is certainly true.

Presenter2:20

And there are preferments to be had, aren't there?

Conrad Black2:22

Absolutely. Indeed, the lot of a newspaper owner in London is a notoriously agreeable one, and indeed we are treated, I think, with probably more deference than we deserve as a group, but as a beneficiary of that it would be hypocrisy of me to complain of it.

Presenter2:36

What kind of preferments are there? I mean, you immediately, when you came here in 85, met Mrs. Thatcher. I mean, you came to know her very well, didn't you? Did you?

Conrad Black2:42

There you are.

Conrad Black2:43

Well, that is not altogether surprising. I think that's not unlike what would occur in other countries. But in this country,

Conrad Black2:50

You have a national press and the influence of the London morning newspapers ramifies throughout the country. That is not something North Americans are much familiar with. There is also in this country a tremendous interest by the media in the media.

Conrad Black3:06

In a way that tends to make personalities out of the newspaper chairman, whether on their merits they deserve it or not.

Presenter3:11

But there there is also, and this is my point, a tremendous interest on the part of politicians in the newspaper owners because they recognize what a great power you wield. And what I'm putting to you is that you enjoy that c kind of communication, that kind of courtship, don't you?

Conrad Black3:27

I don't particularly enjoy dealing with politicians in every aspect, but if you're asking me if I enjoy

Conrad Black3:35

uh the influence implicit, particularly when a Conservative government is in office in this country and being the proprietor of the Daily Telegraph. I suppose I do, but I wouldn't wish that to be meant as meaning that I'm capricious about it. Uh the fact is this industry in positions such as the one I hold

Conrad Black3:52

are historically in this country and elsewhere replete with examples of people who have succumbed to raving megalomania. And I think I could defend myself against the charge of having done that. Uh

Presenter4:02

Yeah.

Conrad Black4:02

Yeah.

Presenter4:02

Let's talk about music in your life. How important is it to you?

Conrad Black4:06

It is not fundamentally psychologically important to me. But uh like everybody, or virtually everybody, and surely everybody who comes on this programme, i I do associate various bits of music with pieces of my own past, but I cannot sit here hand over heart and tell you that uh I would uh become a a shrieking lunatic if I did not hear one note of music for a week or something like that, as as many people, including my wife, would do.

Presenter4:34

What's your first record then for your desert island and what's the association?

Conrad Black4:38

The first one is from Beethoven's Emperor Concerto. I thought I had to have Beethoven's. And the Emperor Concerto struck me as a time of great hopefulness in his career, and great hopefulness in Europe that Napoleon would make something of the French Revolution. Not being the most sophisticated analyst of music, I I find excessive instrumentation a bit complicated, and I th I think that this is uh uh a powerful and relatively simple piece, and that uh it reminds me of my admittedly not, as you uh suggested, overly distinguished days as a student, in this case of music.

Presenter6:18

Part of Beethoven's Emperor Concerto played by Rudolf Serkin with the New York Philharmonic conducted by Leonard Bernstein.

Presenter6:24

We mentioned the Daily Telegraph, but of course you also own the Sunday Telegraph, and a few years ago you bought the Spectator, which is not something anyone does to make money. I mean, it loses money, doesn't it?

Conrad Black6:35

Not any more.

Presenter6:36

But it's also

Conrad Black6:37

We're profitable now.

Presenter6:38

Is it, just about?

Conrad Black6:38

Just about? That's not particularly why I bought it. No, no, it is. It's profitable.

Presenter6:42

So why why did you write also because it's influential again?

Conrad Black6:45

Not really. I bought it uh to get access to the pool of exceptionally talented writers.

Conrad Black6:52

Which, if we handled the relationship correctly, would enable us to cycle some of these people into the Telegraph newspapers. And this has happened. Charles Moore was the editor of The Spectator, he's now editor of the Sunday Telegraph.

Presenter6:59

Hmm.

Presenter7:03

So you've got three important editors under you, as it were, the Daily Telegraph, the Sunday Telegraph, the Spectator. How much do you seek to use the influence that you have with them and into those newspapers to propagate your own views?

Conrad Black7:16

Very little. In the first place they are all uh j broadly speaking conservative newspapers and I am broadly speaking a conservative person.

Conrad Black7:25

In the second place, I find that in this sort of thing your choices are either to take no interest in the editorial product, as the late Roy Thompson did, take no interest in it.

Conrad Black7:36

take an absolutely overbearing interest, as the late Bob Maxwell did, in which case you might as well not have editors, and you won't get any serious editors to work under those circumstances.

Conrad Black7:44

engage in the rather frequent changes of editors that Mr. Murdoch has at the Times.

Conrad Black7:50

Or, as Lord Rothermere has done, and as we do.

Conrad Black7:54

install editors that in general you are going to agree with to

Conrad Black7:58

to minimize frictions. But there are some, okay?

Presenter8:01

Well then do you fall out often?

Conrad Black8:02

Not often not often but sometimes.

Presenter8:05

But what do you fall out over?

Conrad Black8:06

Do that.

Conrad Black8:07

In the case of Charles Moore, I I sometimes think that he has been too hard on the present government.

Conrad Black8:12

And in the case of Max Hastings, I think that he occasionally allows the feature section to be a little more politically correct th than than I consider to be appropriate for our readership or representative of them or or or or than or than I myself would like. But these aren't fallings. These are marginal fine tuning differences.

Presenter8:25

But it's a more

Presenter8:29

These are marginal

Presenter8:31

And that's you reacting to what is already published. When and how often do you intervene before the event?

Conrad Black8:37

Only on three occasions have I and on two of the three occasions

Conrad Black8:43

It was not in a manner that differed with the editors at all. I I intervened over the

Conrad Black8:50

The air raid on Libya, where I disagreed with our Daily Telegraph editor. I thought that we could not take a position that would give aid and comfort to Colonel Gaddafi, and we could not advocate a policy that would, in fact, make the alliance with the United States impossible. The other two were in the latter days of Mrs. Thatcher as the Prime Minister and Conservative Party leader, where I did not disagree with the editors, and we took the position together of maintaining loyalty to her right to the end. And finally, it was on Maastricht, where we did suggest to Mr. Major and Mr. Hurd as they went off to Maastricht, that they should feel free to come back without a treaty unless they had one.

Conrad Black9:29

that they were sure was in the national interest.

Presenter9:31

But these were always your personal views which in the end obtained.

Conrad Black9:35

On the last two points I did not encounter any disagreement with the editor.

Presenter9:39

But do you think it's right to use that power with

Conrad Black9:40

Yeah.

Presenter9:41

Dear?

Conrad Black9:42

Yeah.

Presenter9:42

Why?

Conrad Black9:43

Editorial department is not the sole

Conrad Black9:47

uh to use the American expression stakeholder in a newspaper.

Conrad Black9:51

The readers are important, the investors are important, the advertisers are important.

Conrad Black9:55

And i nobody but the owner or the owner's representative can reconcile the different interests that are

Conrad Black10:02

inevitably out play and so do newspapers.

Presenter10:05

You implied earlier on that you told Charles Moore to lay off the present government a bit, or you felt he should, anyway. Um but you don't personally hold the present Prime Minister in great esteem, do you? You uh you've been pretty dismissive about him in your autobiography. You accuse him of relying on a Baldwin-esque shilly-shallying pleasantness. It's pretty damning.

Conrad Black10:25

No, I didn't think it was Dammy, and I gather that uh Baldwin is somewhat to my astonishment having a a bit of a revisionist comeback, but

Conrad Black10:33

In the first place I didn't

Conrad Black10:35

Tell Charles Moore to lay off him. I I urged upon him a little more civility, and I have done on a couple of occasions. In the second place, while I have considerable respect for the Prime Minister, I think he is both unlucky and, if I may say this without being too patronizing, not obviously the repository of all the leadership aptitudes that you would wish for for the holder of such a great office. But I think he's a fine man doing his best.

Presenter11:03

This have record number two.

Conrad Black11:05

I am um somewhat of a devotee of patriotic American songs.

Conrad Black11:10

And indeed I am notoriously pro American, not uncritically so, and I know that this flies in the face of a good deal of sentiment in this country but the spirit of American liberty is one that has inspired the masses of the world

Conrad Black11:25

And so I just cited the

Conrad Black11:27

Battle hymn of the Republic, be whatever your

Conrad Black11:30

Listeners may think of it, they can well imagine that it was not music to the ears of the people of the Southern States as the Union Army tramped through Georgia and into Virginia, singing it.

Presenter12:44

The Battle Hymn of the Republic sung by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Let's talk about your your childhood. It was your father, a a wealthy businessman, who tutored you very hard and early on in in the stocks and shares and corporate warfare and so on. It was a very serious business for you right from the start, wasn't it?

Conrad Black13:00

Yes, but it not in that tutorial way th uh and that structured way that what you've just said would imply. He would refer to

Conrad Black13:09

the news of the day, including in particular corporate or commercial news, in a way that made it interesting. Which is not easy to do. I mean, the fact is most

Presenter13:17

Zoo every

Conrad Black13:19

commercial news and not particularly interesting, but if you emphasize

Conrad Black13:23

With the strategy, the personalities, and the self enrichment, it can be made interesting.

Presenter13:27

And he he talked to you about history as well. I mean, were were you not a a an authority on Napoleon by the age of ten?

Conrad Black13:30

Are you not?

Conrad Black13:33

Not an authority, but certainly interested in him, yes.

Presenter13:36

And is it true that he also installed a slot machine in your drawing-room to teach you?

Conrad Black13:40

Not in the drawing room. Now now you are taking liberties. He put it in the basement.

Presenter13:44

But go on, tell me what it was to teach you.

Conrad Black13:46

Well, i the uh frivolity of gambling and how the odds were against you, and how to avoid addiction to it. But you see, whenever we lost all our money, then we could open it up and take the money out again. But but the the lesson was worth uh w it was, one, worth learning, and two, it was a good way of imparting it.

Presenter14:03

You were obviously, if if if I may observe, I mean, quite an extraordinary little boy, then, that that you had this obviously very intense relationship with your father, and and knew all sorts of things that boys of eight, nine, ten wouldn't normally know about at all.

Conrad Black14:17

This is possible and it was accentuated by the fact that we lived in an area which uh w was semi rural at that time. If I bicycled for twenty minutes I could reach the home of someone my age, but it was not someone I was particularly close to. So uh I d I read perhaps more than uh than most people my age.

Presenter14:38

Because one of your school friends has observed since that childhood was a prison for you.

Conrad Black14:43

Huh.

Presenter14:43

And and and I think a history master has said that he always seemed to be waiting for something. I mean, were you always anxious to grow up and to get on?

Conrad Black14:50

Well, yes. I in the first place I didn't like school. I found it even more, I suppose, than most students do to be an unreal

Conrad Black14:59

A preparation for the real event.

Presenter15:01

Didn't you steal the exam papers at one point and sell them?

Conrad Black15:04

I could offer a technical defense uh worthy of an American barrister, but in a word, yes, I did. But um uh in fairness

Conrad Black15:15

And I don't want to sound too defensive about what I did when I was 14. I don't think it's, you know, all that material. But in fairness, I did that as the final act in a series of

Conrad Black15:25

Escalating measures and countermeasures.

Presenter15:28

Record number three.

Conrad Black15:29

I listen to speeches sometimes, and I listen to some of mister Churchill's, and

Conrad Black15:34

Some of Mr. Roosevelt's, and some more recent ones, some of General de Gaulle's. But what I've chosen here, just representing great speeches, is a small section from General MacArthur's much-maligned address to the U.S. Congress. It was one of the first historical events that I was a witness to. I happened to see it on television. I was not quite seven, and I didn't obviously appreciate the significance of it, but I do remember it. It was a great event. General MacArthur's address struck me since I've been listening to it as an adult, as a remarkably prescient

Conrad Black16:08

comment on

Conrad Black16:11

the future of East Asia, and in particular he warned against the dangers of what twenty years later was known in Vietnam as a limited war by limited means for a limited objective. General MacArthur always warned against getting involved in that kind of a war.

Speaker 416:26

But once

Speaker 416:27

War

Speaker 416:29

is forced upon us

Speaker 416:31

There is no other alternative than to apply every available means to bring it to a swift end. War's very object is victory, not prolonged indecision.

Speaker 416:53

In war, there is no substitute for victory.

Presenter16:57

General MacArthur's address to Congress in april, nineteen fifty one. You visited Britain as a small boy, didn't you? First class to Southampton on the Queen Elizabeth. You'd have been nine? Eight.

Conrad Black17:08

Yeah.

Presenter17:08

What do you remember about that trip?

Conrad Black17:11

I was a ship buff, so my first memory is how splendid the Queen Elizabeth was.

Conrad Black17:16

It took almost five full days to explore it completely, and that of course is the length of the voyage. Britain I remember uh how impressed I was with the evident historical aspect, the cathedrals and the older buildings. I mean this sounds ludicrously pedestrian, but to someone coming from Toronto it is remarkable to see quite frequently buildings three hundred or four hundred or or even more.

Presenter17:44

Yeah.

Conrad Black17:46

Years old. I remember also the the splendid aspect of uh

Conrad Black17:52

Of London, the elegant doormen and porters at the clubs and the hotels and the endless colonnaded facades. Again, it was a sense of grandeur that in Canada I was not accustomed to. I was accustomed to grandeur in New York, which is a city I knew better, but of a different kind. And these two cities, of course, made a huge impression on me. They communicated to me at that early age what I would describe as the Canadian problem of seeming, as Canada does, to see itself somewhat in the baggage train of the British and the Americans.

Presenter18:23

You've written and presumably you

Presenter18:25

Wouldn't therefore argue with it.

Presenter18:27

Let me quote All my life I had sought a more distinguished, varied, and eventful life than could be provided by the milieu in which I was brought up.

Conrad Black18:36

This is true. I will say in defence of Canada not to swaddle myself in the Maple Leaf flag, but

Conrad Black18:42

Toronto in nineteen fifty three was uh was infinitely uh parochial. Now it isn't like that now. It's really quite a comfortable city. But but essentially uh

Conrad Black18:55

The point remains the same.

Presenter18:56

Essentially, you're glad to be out.

Conrad Black18:58

Yeah, but it's not a renunciation. It's a rather a more of a broadening, if I may put it that way.

Presenter19:04

Record number four.

Conrad Black19:05

I do prefer German to Italian opera, and I do have some acquaintance with Wagner.

Conrad Black19:11

and I have chosen Infernum Land, one, on its uh artistic merits, and two, this has always seemed to me to be Wagner before he became completely obsessed with German nationalism.

Conrad Black19:45

I

Speaker 419:48

One wonder he guns in To be at all Christmas as mighty condebra

Speaker 420:02

This large assigner.

Speaker 420:09

I'm sorry.

Speaker 420:15

Final

Presenter20:25

Rene Collo singing the aria In Fernum Landt from Wagner's Lohengrin with the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Herbert von Karian.

Presenter20:33

At some point, Conrad, back in your education you took a calculated decision to reverse the trend and you got your head down and eventually got a law degree. And then quite soon after that you bought your first newspaper, a Quebec Weekly, called the Eastern Township Advertiser. Did did you go in and work on it yourself?

Conrad Black20:51

They did indeed. I was almost the whole um

Conrad Black20:54

The staff of that newspaper.

Presenter20:55

But you turned it into profit, did you, this paper?

Conrad Black20:58

Yes, I did it in part by reducing my own salary each week to a point to ensure that we at least broke even. But I did.

Presenter21:04

But you've got the taste for newspapers. Yeah.

Conrad Black21:06

Yeah, that's what it is. And it was undoubtedly a great learning experience. I often am reminded of it when I take visitors to our

Conrad Black21:14

press hall here in Docklands and and the print run begins and then flashes across the board one million copies required. I often think of uh those days.

Presenter21:23

How many newspapers do you own these days?

Conrad Black21:26

Uh quite a few.

Conrad Black21:28

I mean, counting the weeklies and everything?

Presenter21:29

Everything.

Conrad Black21:30

Yeah, several hundred.

Presenter21:32

Yeah. Two or three hundred, yeah.

Conrad Black21:33

Can in really

Presenter21:34

Really? In Canada and in the States.

Conrad Black21:37

Australia.

Conrad Black21:38

Yeah, that's right. That's good.

Presenter21:39

You've got yes, the Caymanian compass. Wonderful title.

Conrad Black21:43

There's a bathing suit issue every week.

Presenter21:46

The the Waikiki Penny Saver.

Conrad Black21:48

Well, that's that's what you would call here, a free sheet.

Presenter21:51

There must be a lot of them you never see at all.

Conrad Black21:53

Well I have an associate who takes care of most of the smaller ones in the US and Canada and he sees them. We have a division of work.

Presenter21:54

Ever. Or they've never seen you.

Presenter22:00

Yeah.

Presenter22:03

Going back to your the progress of your career, because it was by your early thirties, wasn't it, that you became director of the huge Canadian conglomerate, the the Argus Group, and then three years after that you became its chairman, and uh you would have been thirty four and hailed as the wonder boy of Canadian business. Did your father live to see you become so successful?

Conrad Black22:21

No.

Conrad Black22:23

He, I think, would uh at the end of his life have regarded me as a

Conrad Black22:28

quite a successful young man, so he wasn't

Conrad Black22:31

Under the impression that his line was being represented by a ne'er-do-well, but he didn't see that.

Presenter22:35

But would he have been impressed by what happened, do you think? Or or would he did you only do what he would have expected of you?

Conrad Black22:43

No, I I well, obviously this is a wild hypothesis.

Conrad Black22:48

Uh I know, I think he actually uh it sounds desperately self-serving, but I think he would have rather been impressed. I mean that's not especially why I did it, but I think that would have been a

Conrad Black22:57

That would have been the case, yes, he would have been impressed with it.

Presenter23:01

Number five.

Conrad Black23:02

I frequently listen to liturgical music, and this is not exactly liturgical music, but it is it is close enough. One hears it at funerals sometimes.

Conrad Black23:12

And uh almost anything sung by Pavarotti, even the London Fun Directory, would sound quite sonorous. But this is Panus Angelicus by Cesar Frank, and it has a special place with me because when I was

Conrad Black23:24

At the height of my courtship with my wife I had to go away for four weeks and we had heard this in slightly emotive circumstances, so she gave me a disc of it and I I uh I played it while I was away.

Speaker 423:41

Peace on dirty gold.

Speaker 423:47

Make the body for

Speaker 423:54

Uh

Speaker 423:58

Ready for the money.

Speaker 424:02

Mori Sano

Speaker 424:09

Loris Mira.

Speaker 424:27

Auber Sunni Poetha

Presenter24:36

Luciano Pavarotti, singing Parnis Angelicus, by Cesar Frank. You mention your wife, who is Barbara Emile, the Sunday Times columnist, whom you married um some eighteen months ago.

Presenter24:47

She's your second wife. Um your your first marriage failed, would you say, because of the move across the Atlantic to here? Was that the price you pay?

Conrad Black24:57

Mm. That might be oversimplifying it. I I I would um

Conrad Black25:03

have a certain natural reticence about going too far into why it failed. Nothing scandalous or shocking, but I think it was what the French would call a bifurcation, not only geographically, but my wife, with whom my relations are cordial, wanted a simpler life,

Conrad Black25:20

And and I think that um the interests uh binding us together gradually declined. I'm afraid that's not an uncommonly uh encountered problem with marriages, and that and that afflicted us.

Presenter25:33

But it must have been a great blow for someone who is as traditional, I suppose, as you are, and and and a convert to Catholicism, someone who believes very strongly in the sanctity of marriage.

Conrad Black25:43

It was. It was a very heavy blow and um it it was uh saddening at every level. I would say that it would be no less so if I were not a Roman Catholic. I wouldn't emphasize sectarian aspects to that, but uh to anyone who takes marriage seriously when it breaks up, especially if there are young children involved, it i it is a very upsetting experience and it was.

Presenter26:04

And and your children, how old are they now?

Conrad Black26:08

twelve and sixteen.

Presenter26:11

And they're back in Canada. You must miss them quite a lot.

Conrad Black26:13

I do. I I uh I see them fairly often and as I say, my relations with their mother are perfectly civil, so there's never any

Conrad Black26:21

dispute about that, but um

Conrad Black26:24

But yes, it's a difficult separation in some ways.

Presenter26:27

So now your life despite houses in Palm Beach and in Toronto and and businesses in other parts of the world is is very much centred on London, and Barbara's job is here too, obviously, and you live in Kensington. Does it all feel like home now? Do you do you feel that you belong? I mean, I mean that professionally and socially.

Conrad Black26:46

Not exactly at home, no. I well, I'm very comfortable here. I am, after all, not British and uh I do spend

Conrad Black26:54

perhaps a little less than half the year, but still a good part of the year, abroad.

Presenter26:57

But I'm referring back to that uh quote of yours that I referred to earlier, where you said you were always looking for somewhere that was more distinguished and more eventful. I mean, is is this it? Have you found it?

Conrad Black27:06

I mean it's

Conrad Black27:08

I would say a um

Conrad Black27:10

A slightly different balance between

Conrad Black27:14

Britain and the United States with the Canadian add-on would be it, yes.

Presenter27:18

Let's have record number six.

Conrad Black27:19

Right.

Conrad Black27:20

I always found uh Chopin's work with pianos to be really exquisite. It's simple, but it's very, very um

Conrad Black27:29

virtuous, if I may use that word. And uh I thought his uh piano concerto number one, which I believe was written while he was still

Conrad Black27:39

generally resident in Poland, and I've I've always thought that it was a his m his music was very uh gentle and very subtle for a country with such a difficult history.

Presenter28:41

That was part of the second movement of Chopin's Piano Concerto No. One, played by Emile Guillels with the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Eugene Ormondy.

Presenter28:50

I I can imagine after all you've said, Conrad Black, that the contemplative life of a hermit on a desert island

Presenter28:57

Wouldn't suit you too well. You want to be gregarious, you know.

Conrad Black29:01

It uh is a life that I frequently am tempted by.

Presenter29:05

But you are, as I understand it, I mean, a man who likes fun. I mean, uh you're not a stranger to a three hour lunch, are you? I mean, you're not such a tycoon that you don't sit back and relax.

Conrad Black29:14

No, this is true and and I don't have a conventional work schedule and I I do actually

Conrad Black29:20

conduct my work largely by thinking about it.

Conrad Black29:23

Rather than bustling around and being

Conrad Black29:26

physically particularly active and being, as you said earlier, gregarious with all the people that work with me.

Presenter29:28

Mm.

Conrad Black29:32

I'm not a particularly

Conrad Black29:34

A sporty person, and much of my leisure is taken up reading, so I do like.

Conrad Black29:39

Quiet moments reading and listening to records.

Presenter29:41

You're not a great outdoor Canadian.

Conrad Black29:43

No, no, the cry of the loon and the dip of the paddle have never quite done it for me. As a youth I never wanted to be a mounty in a red tunic.

Presenter29:48

BAY

Presenter29:51

Record number seven.

Conrad Black29:52

Yes, I I um felt we had to have a vocalist and I couldn't bring myself to um

Conrad Black30:00

what we would call a popular song, although I will admit that there was a candidacy from one of Elvis Presley's more comprehensible songs. But the first vocalist

Conrad Black30:09

And this shows how unrepresentative a youth I was, that I always used to listen to with a very appreciative ear was Paul Robeson.

Conrad Black30:17

What I have here is his version of Londonderry Air.

Conrad Black30:22

And these are the Irish American words. And I am not, in fact, a devotee of Irish American sentimentality, but I remember when I went to Ireland in 1966, the train at Limerick, uh the at the station, there was still uh broadcast in the public address system the words change here for Cork and America.

Speaker 430:45

Oh, the pipes, the pipes are cold.

Speaker 430:52

Glen to Glen and down the mountain side

Speaker 430:59

The summer's gone and all the roses falling It you, it you must go and I must come

Presenter31:15

Paul Robeson singing the London Derry Air. So what's what's the strategy, Conrad Black? What's the grand plan? What next? What's the big move?

Conrad Black31:24

I would say

Conrad Black31:26

It's essentially more of the same.

Presenter31:29

But the natural progression for a newspaper publisher would be into television, which, of course, your

Presenter31:33

Prevented from doing beyond a 20% stake, aren't you?

Conrad Black31:36

We're hopeful of a change in the rules though, and certainly the rules are being reviewed.

Presenter31:39

Yeah.

Conrad Black31:42

Uh we are not prevented from doing it in some other countries, but um

Conrad Black31:47

We are indeed shackled in this country.

Presenter31:48

Uh But no, but

Conrad Black31:55

is not as closely regulated.

Presenter31:57

I was going to say, I mean, Rupert Murdoch found a way around it by beaming television into us from a foreign satellite. Have you considered something like that?

Conrad Black32:03

Yes, we have. And uh i it's it's like getting on a a merry-go-round. You know, you you don't want to get on either too early or too late. I mean, he did it and and and it's working for him, but he almost went bankrupt after he'd done it and I'm

Conrad Black32:17

Very pro-Rupert Murdoch as an individual, but I couldn't live the way he does, and I couldn't operate my business the way he operates his. He's a.

Conrad Black32:25

a much bolder man than I am and he he has to use the

Conrad Black32:29

American jargony bets the company from time to time. If you want to be well to do, you have to do that at least once, but after you've at least in my case done it, you don't ever want to do it again.

Presenter32:39

The telegraph, if possible, the acquisition which as we discussed really changed your life.

Conrad Black32:45

You can.

Presenter32:46

is something that you intend, if possible, to keep a firm hold on, is it?

Conrad Black32:50

I I'm I'm not a vendor of newspaper franchises. I I indeed I it almost killed me to sell uh

Conrad Black32:57

for the first time in my life, a house a couple of years ago. I I I tend to buy things and not to sell them. Even cars, if I like the car, I just don't sell it. I buy another one when it gets old, but I but I don't sell the car.

Presenter33:08

Let's have your last record.

Conrad Black33:10

Yes, well uh I thought uh

Conrad Black33:13

We would have a bit of uh showmanship here, and I always admired Tchaikovsky for firing off cannons in the eighteen twelve overture. Uh this is rather fantasized Russian history, it's war and peace to music, as you know, but it it's such a uh it's such a splendid work of um panache and pseudo history that I thought we'd

Presenter33:14

Devont.

Conrad Black33:36

Give the eighteen twelve overture a try.

Presenter34:40

The end of Tchaikovsky's eighteen twelve overture played by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Zubin Mehta. If you could only have one of those records on your island, Connor.

Conrad Black34:50

I think I would tire of the Mormon choir, General MacArthur, and even Tchaikovsky, and I prefer to think of Napoleon as he was when Beethoven dedicated his concerto to him, so I think I would go with the Emperor Concerto.

Presenter35:01

What about your

Conrad Black35:02

You book

Conrad Black35:04

I can't imagine that anyone could answer that question other than the Oxford Book of Verse, but I think that's uh that's kind of a trick answer. So if I have to take one book or I think I would take Cardinal Newman's Apologia, although he was not a Cardinal when he wrote them.

Presenter35:18

And what about your luxury?

Conrad Black35:20

I thought what I would take.

Conrad Black35:22

although it's it most people wouldn't consider it a luxury, is a a model that I have of HMS Hood. It was a model commissioned by Lou Grade when he made the movie Sink the Bismarck, and I'm interested in

Conrad Black35:33

the um history of interwar and World War Two battleships. It's a splendid model, about six feet long, and it it always uh reminds me of my passion as a very young

Conrad Black35:44

Glad for

Conrad Black35:46

Naval Affairs

Presenter35:48

Conrad Black, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Conrad Black35:51

Thank you for having me, sir.

Speaker 336:00

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