Sir Paul Dukes

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This download is the only extract the BBC has of this edition of Desert Island Discs. The presenter was Roy Plumley.

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musician, author, secret agent in revolutionary Russia, and authority on Eastern philosophies. Here is Sir Paul Dewkes. Now, Sir Paul, I know you visited a number of wise men who live and meditate in solitude.

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Could you discipline yourself to enduring indefinite solitude on this island?

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Oh, I think very well I should love it.

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What would you

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You'll be happiest to have got away from.

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Noise and what it passes nowadays for music, pops and jazz and all the rest of it, quite apart from the noises in the street.

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Sir Paul, where were you born? I was born in Bridgwater in Somerset. What was it your earliest ambition to be? I always wanted to be a church organist first. Did you study for that? Well, yes, I did begin that way, but at school my views on music broadened very greatly and I wanted to become an orchestral conductor. My father wouldn't have that.

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Yeah.

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I believe you ran away.

Sir Paul Dukes1:05

Well, I did, yes, when uh school days were over and my father had taken a holiday in France and I had a a few pounds in my pocket.

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and I took a steerage ticket to Rotterdam from Liverpool Street station.

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Yeah. How did you keep yourself?

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How do you

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Well, I earned my living. I didn't come back for ten years.

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How did you keep yourself in Rotterdam?

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Oh, I I got a job teaching English.

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And then when I'd earned enough I went on to Germany.

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and learnt German.

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And then I went on to Poland.

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Then I went on to Russia from there by easy stages working my way.

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Yes.

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What did you do in Russia? When I got to St. Petersburg, straight away I put myself down for the entry examination into the conservatorium.

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Uh

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which I passed and then for the next four years I was a student at the Concertaine.

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What uh

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Uh piano as a specialty. But of course when I graduated I had to take all the

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theoretical subjects as well. History of uh art and music and aesthetics and all that sort of thing. Counterpoint, harmony, all these things. I took them all in Russian. Were you the only English student there? No.

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There was another English uh student there.

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Lawrence Collingwood, whose name will be familiar to many people in this country. Indeed. And our lines were not quite parallel, but we often saw each other, and it was an amazing coincidence that when I recently returned to England,

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and took a house down in Surrey, I found that he was a close neighbour of mine, and we've been having great fun ever since, reminiscing.

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Now, Sir Paul, when you left the Conservatorium, did you in fact become a Consul?

Sir Paul Dukes2:49

Check.

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Uh

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Yeah.

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No, I didn't, because I uh discovered in the course of those four years the remarkable fact

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that the principal conductor of the

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Uh Imperial Russian Opera

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Was an Englishman whose name also is very famous, Albert Coates?

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By that time my ideas about music had broadened out very considerably. I no longer wanted to be a pianist, I wanted to have a whole orchestra in in front of me, and Albert Coates took me under his wing and I became an assistant of his at the Marinski Opera House.

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for two years. This was just before the First World War. This was just before the First World War and during the during the first year of the World World War. Mhm. And after that? After that I volunteered for military service. I was no good as a soldier and they pushed me into the British Embassy in St. Petersburg because of my knowledge of languages, more or less in charge of the press department.

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Cheers.

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You were there during the Revolution? So I was there during the Revolution. Then of course I relinquished my post at the Marinsky Theatre.

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Mm-hmm.

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And uh because of the revolution I never took it up again.

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Yes.

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Did you stay there right during the war? Oh yes, until I was sent to the Foreign Office here in London, again on account of my knowledge of Russia and the languages, where I found that my immediate boss at the Foreign Office was none other than John Bucken.

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of whose works I was a very profound admirer.

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And we used to concoct ways and means of

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getting behind the scenes in Russia somehow or other. And to make a long story short, it was as a result of that that I was sent back to Russia again.

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Yeah.

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But this time in charge of our integrity.

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Uh

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Ellie.

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Yeah. Service. I believe you returned disguised as a member of a Russian political organization.

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Yes, I had to disguise myself and then

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Seize whatever opportunities I could. Yes, that was the first of a number of disguises. Oh yes, I had to change my disguise many times.

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You did some scarlet pimpernel work in helping people escape. Yes, I did. A good deal.

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And you had some narrow escapes yourself. Oh, yes, I had many.

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Uh

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There was one story of you living in a tomb for four or five days.

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Yes, well I nearly got caught in a search in a house. I threw an epileptic fit. There was a doctor a friend who had taught me how to do this.

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And so I threw an epileptic fit, and the searchers took fright.

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And I was the one person in in that house that was not arrested.

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So when they had carted everybody else off,

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to the secret police. I was let out by the back door by the cook.

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And I spent the next week out in the open air.

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I found in an old disused cemetery, an old disused tomb. It was summer time and dry. And uh there I slept for the next five or six nights. And eventually I believe you joined the Red Army. Yes, ev you have to do everything in that kind of game. And eventually I joined the Red Army and eventually escaped from the Red Army.

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So technically you're still a deserter from the Red Army.

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I suppose I am. I I don't know what they would uh say about it today.

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Oh, yeah.

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That's v that's uh very many years ago.

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Now having left Russia, Sinvaul, and having been awarded the KBE for your work, what was the next move?

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Next move I went to America where I was invited to deliver

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Lectures all over the country?

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And you also became a professional dancer, didn't you? An animal dancer.

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Yeah.

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It wasn't really a professional dancer, but part of my yoga training consisted in endurance tests, uh fasting,

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Uh the longest of which I did was about a month.

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And not only that, but on the physical side.

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To be able to hold out in certain very difficult work.

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and responsible works in which other people's lives were involved.

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As an acrobatic dancer for six months consecutively, which I did.

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You also did some research in longevity, why some people live longer than others. Yes.

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That has always interested me.

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Yeah.

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He went?

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Interviewed all the centenarians you could find. How many was it? About a hundred and fifty at that time.

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That's twenty-five years ago. Did you find any common factors in diet or occupation or way of living? Very few indeed.

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The one common factor is, if you want to live to be a hundred,

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Pick your father and mother carefully.

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Now you'll talk briefly of your work in yoga, Sir Paul. You've adapted a system of yoga to make it suitable for Westerners.

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Yes, that is what I tried to do.

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Yoga is really a way of learning to control both mind and body.

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Yes, that's right.

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How does this help us?

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Well, every single thing we do in life, whatever it is, from start to finish, we do through the medium of the physical body.

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I've never seen anybody when their body became an encumbrance be able to park it in the corner of the room and the solence paid goes off and does the shopping.

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It doesn't happen that way. Every th single thing we do, all our aspirations, prayers, hopes, fears, and

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Every experience we have we have through the medium of the physical body.

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So it is the physical body which should be the first spiritual preoccupation.

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Mm-hmm.

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Uh

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You have been in India, in in the Himalayas, in search of a a guru to teach you some of the secrets of yoga.

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Yes.

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Yes?

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Did you see any of the sensational effects of yoga about which one hears, for example, levitation?

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Oh yes.

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But this bears no aspect to yoga as you'll practice and teach.

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But as

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Did you know they are stunts which can be studied by specialists who spent years learning each one of them?

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But they're not encouraged in the study of philosophic yoga.

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You decided a few years ago, at the age of seventy, that you were going to change your way of life and begin all over again as a result of what you had learned.

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Yes. Well, I didn't decide it, but that is what happened when I got there.

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I found I was able to start life all over again, starting at about seventy.

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Yes. And these disciplines of mental and physical exercises, does this also involve diet and and and that sort of thing?

Sir Paul Dukes9:41

Uh yes. More of the how.

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Then the what?

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How you breathe and how you eat is more important.

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Than what you breathe and what you eat.

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This is control. This is control.

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Uh

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And what about the exercises of the standing on the head, the lotus position? These are ways of acquiring the discipline of control.

Sir Paul Dukes10:07

They are extras, so to speak. These extra exercises and postures are very helpful indeed.

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When they are done with a special purpose, but not if they are done just as gymnastics.

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Yeah.

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Thank you, Sopoldio.