John Julius Norwich

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

Presenter0:30

My Castaway this week is a writer and broadcaster. Born sixty eight years ago, he's the child of one of English society's most famous marriages, that of the distinguished diplomat and politician Duff Cooper and the beautiful and glamorous Lady Diana.

Presenter0:44

Well connected, well educated, and well travelled, he worked for the diplomatic service for several years before leaving it behind to write books. Popular history, art and architecture have been his main themes, many of which have also been the subjects of his television documentaries. His cultured ease has made him, as he himself admits, a populariser rather than a scholar. I've never allowed total ignorance of a subject to prevent my writing or speaking about it, he says, very often at considerable length. He is John Julius Norwich. Are you confessing in saying that, Lord Norwich, that you're a bit of a con man? Mug up Huns.

John Julius Norwich1:20

My words precisely. I've always wondered how I've got away with it.

John Julius Norwich1:24

I think I've got a good sort of basic historic framework. I think I've got the scaffolding. I think I know where things fit in. I I if I sort of read about a given place or a given period or something, I can sort of more or less put it where it belongs in the general pattern of things. And I do do my homework. I mean, obviously you have to. I mean, I hope that everything I've written has been as accurate as I can possibly make it.

Presenter1:47

But you have to be an enthusiast as well, don't you?

John Julius Norwich1:49

Well I think that's the most important thing of all. I think that's the only thing that keeps me going. I go to somewhere like Venice, I think it's the most exciting and wonderful place I've ever been to, and I can't wait to start telling everybody else about it and and trying to infuse other people.

Presenter2:01

Yeah.

Presenter2:04

So it's that it's the desire to communicate as well.

John Julius Norwich2:06

This is how I had to communicate and enthuse.

Presenter2:09

But you shouldn't undersell yourself, really, should you? I mean, i it has to be said that CP Snow said your history of Venice would become the the standard work on Venetian history. So we're not we're not talking about a dilettante here, are we?

John Julius Norwich2:17

Tip.

John Julius Norwich2:19

I'd love well, I think we probably are, really. Um I've never discovered a single new historical fact in my life. I think I'm probably quite good at uh reading a lot of very, very, very boring books, dirgid books indeed, and turning them into something digestible uh and, I hope, amusing.

Presenter2:36

Tell me about your first record.

John Julius Norwich2:38

Well, the first record is uh is a piano record.

John Julius Norwich2:42

because I've always loved the piano and I couldn't possibly think of the rest of my life on a desert island without at least one to listen to, if not one to play. And there was an incredible French Hungarian pianist called Georges Tsifra who played Liszt in particular better than I ever knew Liszt could be played. And this is the second of his Hungarian rhapsodies and I think it's pianism of absolutely stunning virtuosity.

Presenter4:06

George Cefre playing part of the second of Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies.

Presenter4:11

Of course the thing that's always mentioned about you, and I did it as well in the introduction, is your parentage, Duff and Lady Diana Cooper. They were a remarkable couple at the centre of this very sophisticated social peak. I suppose to you they were not remarkable at all,'cause they were the only parents you had.

John Julius Norwich4:25

People always said, What's it like to have such a beautiful mother? And I could never see it. I mean, she was my mother. I thought everybody's mother was like that. You know, it was the only one I knew. And I took her totally for granted. It was only in very, very great old age when I suddenly, I remember actually sitting by the side of her bed when she was about 92, and I suddenly saw, my God, this is an incredible face. And in a funny way, she kept it because the bone structure was so good. That, and also, she made two films in the early 1920s. And I thought they were both of them completely lost. But one of them turned up at the National Film Theatre a few years ago, and we've got a tape of it. It's called The Glorious Adventure. It's a marvellous bit of kitsch. And my mother played opposite a wonderful American wrestler called Victor McLagdon, who subsequently actually became quite a successful film star.

John Julius Norwich5:07

and uh suddenly seeing her then moving.

John Julius Norwich5:10

I realized this was actually standing beautiful.

Presenter5:12

Objectively. But you had, I mean, she had Evelyn Waugh coming round, and she was worshiping at her feet. He was mad at her.

John Julius Norwich5:18

Evelyn Moore was very much, was platonically in love with her. I mean, Evelyn was very, very, very religious, as we know. He was a.

John Julius Norwich5:27

devil in some ways, but he was very religious. I mean, I don't think he would ever for a moment have deceived his wife.

John Julius Norwich5:34

Uh it was a

John Julius Norwich5:36

what the French call an amite amoureuse, which was actually the way my mother rather liked them, I think.

Presenter5:42

Hm. What what what did your father think of it?

John Julius Norwich5:43

Oh, you didn't mind a bit.

Presenter5:44

To drink.

John Julius Norwich5:45

My parents were totally secure in each other's love. I mean, uh my father strayed much more than my mother did. She didn't mind that either. I mean, three of his greatest girlfriends remained her greatest friends even after he was dead.

Presenter5:55

So they were they were quite avant-garde, this set, were they? I mean it was b contemporaneous with the Bloomsbury set, wasn't it?

John Julius Norwich6:01

Well, it was. It was really unlike the Bloomsbrissette. I mean, the Broomsbrissette on the whole existed on Cocoa. Um my father and mother did not exist on Cocoa, I'm here to tell you.

Presenter6:02

Was it freedom?

Presenter6:04

Mm.

Presenter6:11

You were her only and much longed for child. She was thirty six when she had you birth.

John Julius Norwich6:16

She was thirty six when she had the yes.

Presenter6:17

Yes, and she'd prayed for your Lord, yes.

John Julius Norwich6:19

Yes, she didn't actually go on a pilgrimage to Lourdes to pray for me, but she went.

John Julius Norwich6:25

She and her friend Iris Tree were driving through France and happened to go through Lourdes, and they both prayed for children.

John Julius Norwich6:33

And I appeared nine months later almost to the day, I mean quite alarmingly accurately. Um Iris it didn't work quite so well. She eventually went and lay prone on on the Cern Abbas Giant or one night on midsummer evening. And then it worked too. And her son is it was a s six foot seven Swedish psychiatrist.

Presenter6:48

Sorry the

Presenter6:51

I'm not surprised. But what was your mother like as a mother? Was she as mad and as adventurous and devastating as she says she was?

John Julius Norwich6:58

She was hugely adventurous. She wasn't mad, she was immensely sane and sensible, but she was very, very adventurous and she was always moving. I never knew her sitting and and in those days. Um

John Julius Norwich7:10

There were far fewer cars, obviously, and my mother just used to pop me in the car and we used to drive off and when we got in the middle of the downs, then we just went over the gre went over the green. I mean, she never bothered about keeping to roads or anything like that. And on one occasion, I remember she actually made me pull up a fence.

John Julius Norwich7:23

so that she could get through. She loved illegality for its own sake.

Presenter7:26

And what about you?

John Julius Norwich7:27

Uh

Presenter7:27

Yeah.

John Julius Norwich7:27

And well, I hated it because little boys are fairly timorous beings.

Presenter7:27

But

Presenter7:32

Tell me about your second record.

John Julius Norwich7:33

The second record is Noel Coward. He was an old friend of the family. I remember him singing at the piano from the age of about when I was four or five, and I continued to know him till his death. I think he was possibly the most entertaining man I've ever met in my life.

John Julius Norwich7:47

Uh and also one of the nicest.

Speaker 17:49

When he bellowed. Capella, signorina Sheer ecstasy at once produced A wild shriek from Mrs Wentworth Brewster, changing her whole demeanor.

Speaker 18:04

Her family in floods of tears cried Leave these men, Mama She said they're just high-spirited, like all Italians are.

Speaker 18:12

And most of them have a great deal more to offer than papa in a bar on

Presenter8:18

Little Card singing a bar on the Piccolo Marina, and that was recorded in 1955. Now, during the first ten years of your life, John Julius Norwich, your father, Duff Cooper. What does Duff stand for? Is it a.

John Julius Norwich8:31

Stuff was a perfectly ordinary Scottish first name. I mean, people thought it was hyphened. It wasn't. His his last name was simply Cooper.

Presenter8:33

Great.

Presenter8:37

He was a politician. Didn't he resign over Munich?

John Julius Norwich8:40

He resigned over Munich as he thought we'd betrayed Czechoslovakia.

Presenter8:43

Yes, AJ P. Taylor called him the true hero of

John Julius Norwich8:45

Munich? Well, I mean, I think as it as as as it as it turned out, he was. Um he was doing the job that he enjoyed more than any other, which was First Lord of the Admiralty, which in those days I mean the navy was enormous. Um one of the perks was a yacht. You went round the world inspecting the fleets and all that sort of thing. It was a wonderful time. You lived in the most beautiful house.

John Julius Norwich9:04

And um but anyway, he flung the whole thing up because he felt we betrayed Czechoslovakia and went out into the outer darkness until Winston Churchill came uh to power and and uh and and brought him back in.

Presenter9:16

But how much were you touched by these historic dramas? You would have been ten at the outbreak of war.

John Julius Norwich9:22

Uh

Speaker 49:22

Get

Presenter9:22

Um you know all of these historic things taking place in your house, your father resigning and so on, and Chamberlain and the piece of paper. Do you remember them?

John Julius Norwich9:22

Yeah.

John Julius Norwich9:30

I remember it all happening. What of course I don't think I I don't think I ever realized the significance of it all. Even when obvious things uh happen, like your your your school is evacuated and you have to travel with a gas mask and things all that, you still don't really understand what the implications

Speaker 19:46

Uh

Presenter9:46

Yeah.

John Julius Norwich9:48

are or might be. It's all quite fun, you know? Yes, I enjoyed it all enormously. And when my father resigned, I mean he had an enormous fan mail. I mean thousands of letters poured in a day, every single one of which had to be answered.

Presenter9:59

Hmm.

John Julius Norwich9:59

And I remember sort of going downstairs and sorting them, and even on occasionally forging his signature on some of them.

Presenter10:03

He apparently had a terrible temper.

John Julius Norwich10:05

Yes, but he very, very rarely showed it. It was sheer self self-indulgence when he did. Did he show it against you?

John Julius Norwich10:11

Twice, three times in my life only. What sort of things? Oh, um the first one I seem to remember w was just sort of general bumptiousness and insufferability.

John Julius Norwich10:24

Richly deserved.

John Julius Norwich10:26

But it happened very rarely. Usually, I mean, usually he kept it for people who he knew knew he could take it. I mean, one of the reasons he I he never really liked Evelyn Waugh very much, but one of the reasons he was always delighted to have him for the dinner or the weekend, if he ever he was passing through Paris or whatever, was that he could lose his temper with him. And he always knew that Evelyn would say something that would make him lose his temper. I remember during the war in Sussex.

John Julius Norwich10:50

evening coming over one night and saying, I'd rather we lost this war than won it on the backs of the Americans. And my father went the most extraordinary beetroot colour, and huge veins came out in his temples, and he started quivering all over. You mean

Presenter11:01

Yeah.

Speaker 111:01

We

Presenter11:01

You mean to that?

John Julius Norwich11:03

No, no, but he adored it.

Presenter11:05

And have you inherited that temper?

John Julius Norwich11:07

No. I can't lose my temper. I never have. I've on two or three occasions in my life pretended to.

Presenter11:13

You sound sad about it.

John Julius Norwich11:15

Well, I am rather. Um it's I think it's a weakness. I think it's it's it it it it's um anyone with a real sort of strong character, an ounce of greatness in them, is able to lose their temper. Uh and sometimes this, as we all know, is the only way to get what you want.

Presenter11:29

But you go away and you keep it all to yourself.

John Julius Norwich11:30

Yeah, yeah.

Presenter11:35

You haven't done badly as we should go.

John Julius Norwich11:35

I say, oh yeah.

Presenter11:40

and fume inside.

John Julius Norwich11:42

Upset.

Presenter11:43

Upset.

John Julius Norwich11:43

Upset, but n n n not not out of control. I mean just I mean I I feel all shaky for twenty-four hours after a bad row.

John Julius Norwich11:52

you know, hate it, hate it, get on to the piano, anything, rather than have a row.

Presenter11:57

Record number three.

John Julius Norwich11:58

Record number three.

John Julius Norwich12:00

uh is from one of the great musical misnomers, uh Rossini's Putit messe solonelle. It's little and it's a mass, but it's anything but solemn.

Presenter13:10

Part of the Kirie from Rossini's Petite Messe Solenelle with the Lausanne Ensemble conducted by Michel Gourbeau.

Presenter13:17

You were John Julius evacuated to the States and Canada during the war, and then after that to Eton. Were you a scholar? Were you noted as a very bright little boy? What was the academic perception of you?

John Julius Norwich13:26

Academic perception of you? Um I was usually sort of in the top three or four of my class, but but not excessively so, you know.

Presenter13:34

Dunel.

Presenter13:35

Churchill in the meantime had made your father ambassador to the French in exile in Algiers, and then post war he he was in Paris. So again, in holiday times you lived this presumably rather rarefied existence with your your parents in this

Presenter13:48

Incredible social set.

John Julius Norwich13:50

I did. I think I was the first Etonian to go to France. I went there for Christmas 1944. There were still five months of war left.

John Julius Norwich13:59

And in those days Paris had actually had the coldest winter it had had for about half a century. There was no fuel, no heating anywhere except the British Embassy, which was warm as toast, and gin and whisky at sixpence a bottle.

John Julius Norwich14:12

So my mother got into the habit of just having open house every single night.

Speaker 414:15

Hmm.

John Julius Norwich14:16

And quickly acquired a very large circle of friends. But who came? What sort of people? Well, I mean, all the sort of the people she liked who were basically the my mother hadn't got the foggiest idea about politics. My father was working too hard to be there most evenings anyway. He was still in his office. So she had the people she liked who were the artists and the writers and the actors and the sort of the bohemians. So you mixed with these people, you talked to them, you sat at dinner with them. I mixed their dry martinis. I called them all by their Christian names, you know.

Presenter14:39

So you mixed with these people, you talked to them, you sat at dinner with them?

John Julius Norwich14:47

But I didn't realise at the time, of course, just what they were. I mean, Jean Cocteau to me was this rather nice man with two short sleeves and and and and and and and called Jean who drank an awful lot of dry martinis, you know. Um I didn't really realize that this was probably the one of the outstanding literary dramatic figures in in Paris at the time.

Presenter15:09

What about the Windsors, or haven't they got there yet?

John Julius Norwich15:12

He was the most.

John Julius Norwich15:14

boring man I think I've ever known in my life. She had a sort of rather marvellous brittle American wit.

John Julius Norwich15:20

Um she was fun. I mean the ball came back over the net.

Presenter15:22

Uh

John Julius Norwich15:22

With him it didn't.

Presenter15:24

But what a strange existence for you, aged, what, by then, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen a teenage boy, you don't seem to have sound as if you had, anyway, any any friends of your own age.

John Julius Norwich15:35

I had none.

John Julius Norwich15:37

I had no friends of my own. I ha I had school friends, obviously, and um occasionally I would invite a friend for the holidays.

John Julius Norwich15:46

But the friends tended to be a bit out of their depth.

John Julius Norwich15:48

In this world, you see, it it was quite odd for them. I see that. I mean, to me, it was the only world I knew.

Speaker 115:48

Yeah.

Presenter15:48

Yeah.

Speaker 115:49

Yeah.

John Julius Norwich15:54

But you were happy with this existence? Oh, very. Loved it.

Presenter15:57

Hmm.

Presenter15:58

Code number four.

John Julius Norwich16:00

Well, record number four is operatic. I've loved opera ever since I was first taken to the Magic Figura at the age of sixteen. And I think the three greatest operas are for me, uh, Don Giovanni, Otello and Tristan.

Presenter17:17

Kirsten Flagstadt singing part of the Liebestrut from the final act of Wagner's Tristan unties, with the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Wilhelm Fortwengler, and that was recorded in nineteen fifty seven.

Presenter17:28

So you went up to Oxford, John Julius. You read French and Russian, and um eventually you went into the diplomatic service. You added Serbo Croat then, I think.

John Julius Norwich17:38

Well, only because the Foreign Office who had promised me that they were going to send me to Moscow

John Julius Norwich17:43

um changed their mind and sent me to Bill Grade.

Speaker 417:45

Mm.

John Julius Norwich17:46

So I had to learn Serbo Crat. Unfortunately, it's it's very close to Russian and um I learnt it quite quickly.

Speaker 417:48

Unfortunately.

Presenter17:52

And there you interpreted for, among others, Monty, Field Marshal Lord Montgomery. You didn't think much of him, did you? Well, I mean.

John Julius Norwich17:59

I mean, I thought he was he was a wonderful general. Um uh w what I one could never quite forget was it wa wa wa was that he was seemed to me to be the most self-censored man I'd ever met. I mean every single sentence started with the word I.

Presenter17:59

Die.

John Julius Norwich18:12

And um

John Julius Norwich18:14

If he wasn't talking about himself, uh he just was in no way interested.

Speaker 418:18

Hmm.

John Julius Norwich18:19

My mother

John Julius Norwich18:21

found herself sitting next to him one evening at dinner and was rather surprised at how well she got on with him and was particularly pleased when he said, Oh, look, please don't go on calling me Lord Montgomery, it sounds so formal and she said, Oh, what should I call you? He said, Oh, call me Field Marshal.

Presenter18:36

Not Monty.

Presenter18:38

But didn't you yourself cross swords with him at some point later on in the Lord?

John Julius Norwich18:42

I didn't cross swords with him. There was a hilariously funny moment, I thought, the happiest moment I think for me perhaps in all the years I spent as a fairly regular attender of the House of Lords, when we were doing Lord Aaron's homosexuality bill in the early 70s, I suppose it was. I can't quite remember. And.

John Julius Norwich19:03

Towards the end, Monty got up and, as always, talking about himself, said As your lordships will be aware, I had four and a half million men under my command in the recent hostilities, and I can confidently assure your lordships that no conduct of that kind ever occurred in any unit which I was responsible.

John Julius Norwich19:20

which was a dead silence for about five or six seconds, followed by one of the most wonderful noises I've ever heard, which was twelve hundred peers going

Presenter19:31

So you were in the diplomatic service or or the foreign office for about, what, twelve years altogether? Yes. And then, aged thirty five, you decided to pack it all in and write for a living instead. How big a decision was that?

John Julius Norwich19:44

Enormous. It scared the pants off me. Why'd you do that?

Presenter19:47

Why'd you do them?

John Julius Norwich19:49

I picked up the telephone one day and told personnel department I wanted to do this, and they said come round and see us and by that this time I was already having second thoughts and they said, Well, why don't you take a year off? So you couldn't have fairer than that. I went off and tried to write my book. I just actually researched. I didn't don't think I wrote the first word.

John Julius Norwich20:08

But I did an awful lot of research and um at the end of the year still didn't know what I wanted to do. And I remember sitting in the tube on my way there and saying, What am I going to say? and getting in and hearing myself saying, I'm leaving. And as I said it, I thought I'm going to be

John Julius Norwich20:23

on all fours tomorrow morning coming back to them saying, Please, please, I didn't mean it. Take me back, take me back. But I didn't, and it worked. The risk, thank God, paid off.

Presenter20:33

What was the idea for the book that drove you?

John Julius Norwich20:34

Well, I had this idea. I'd I'd recently uh we'd gone the previous summer to Sicily and I had seen these extraordinary monuments of a civilization of which I knew absolutely nothing, in which it was actually the Norman kingdom which happened in Sicily in the twelfth century, in which the Normans arrived, took over the island, which was half Greek and half Arab. So that suddenly, thanks to them, there weren't very many of them, they couldn't clobber the Greeks and the Arabs, they had to use them, and they had to make the whole thing work as a sort of trio.

John Julius Norwich21:05

And the result was that in this one little island in the middle of the the Mediterranean, in the century which was the century of Crusades when Christians and Muslims were each other's throats, the century of great schism when the Orthodox and the Latin churches broke away from each other, when everywhere else everybody hated each other, in this one little island, the three great civilizations of the Mediterranean came together, sparked each other off, and produced a dazzling civilization which lasted for just 64 years and which in the early 1960s nobody had written about.

Presenter21:36

Oh, is you came back from holiday to look for the book and it wasn't there?

John Julius Norwich21:36

Elise, you can

John Julius Norwich21:39

Yes, no, there wasn't one. I went to the London Library to read about it. I'd never thought of writing about it, I just wanted to know. There weren't any books. So I thought, well, you know, I mean, if I'm ever going to do it, this is the moment.

Presenter21:50

This is your memory.

John Julius Norwich21:51

And so I did. And I've never regretted it for a second.

Presenter21:54

Record number five.

John Julius Norwich21:56

Well, one of my great heroines was a wonderful American torch singer of the nineteen twenties called Ruth Etting.

John Julius Norwich22:04

I've always loved popular music, but I sort of got stuck around 1950. I really, only really liked the mu even even the Beatles I find a little avant-garde.

Speaker 422:22

Always cold to me Whenever somebody is near, dear it must be

Speaker 422:36

Great one to be mean to me.

Speaker 422:40

You shouldn't forget, you see, what you mean to me.

Presenter22:49

Ruffetting singing Mean to Me, and that was recorded in the nineteen twenties.

Presenter22:54

Um you have followed in your father's footsteps, in a sense, John Julius Norwich, because uh you you've written a history of Venice. It's the book really he never wrote. He prepared for it, but never wrote it, didn't he?

John Julius Norwich23:04

He longed to he loved Venice all his life he went there as often as he could he knew it extremely well.

John Julius Norwich23:09

And he always said somebody's got to write a really good history of Venice, because Venice has a very bad politically, Venice had always had a very bad press. It was considered to be the great sort of police state, you know, where you pop little denunciations through lions' mouths and people were either sent down into the dungeons which were underwater or under the leads which were swelteringly hot. And it wasn't like that at all, he said, you know. And somebody's got to do it right. And it's such a wonderful story. And then he.

John Julius Norwich23:38

Was just about to start it. He had a little notebook in which he'd written The List of the Dojes, and just one or two other little facts, I remember, which we found in his papers after he died. And then he died very young, at 63. And so, originally, after I'd finished my Sicily book, my publishers asked me to do a book about the Medici in Florence. But I've got a sort of blind spot about Florence. I've never liked it, and I didn't like the Medici either.

John Julius Norwich24:04

And so after about three months, I said, It's no good, I can't do this book, it's not going to be any good. And they said, Well, why not try Venice instead? And I suddenly said, Ah, now you're talking. Now you're talking about it.

Presenter24:14

When did you first go there then?

John Julius Norwich24:15

I first went there at the age of sixteen and this must have been I suppose the summer of 45 or possibly 46 and my father said to me, All right, I'll show you Venice your first time, you know. He said the great thing to remember about Venice is that however beautiful the churches, the palaces may be, the ultimate miracle is the ensemble, is the city itself, it's the whole thing, the fact that this extraordinary place should exist at all. And therefore we shall walk around it, we shall take a gondola through it.

John Julius Norwich24:45

But we shall only go into two buildings all day. The first building will be St. Mark's Basilica.

Speaker 124:48

First

John Julius Norwich24:51

The other one will be Harry's Bar at the end. And that's what we did. We started at St. Mark's, we ended in Harry's Bar, and we had a day that I shall never forget. I I you can't quite analyse it, otherwise it wouldn't be love. But it's it's very, very strong. And I remember still the way I felt that first day, and even more do I remember the moment I left it when we had to leave at about half past six or seven in the evening to get back for a late dinner at the hotel. And it was just twilight and all the lights were coming on, and I just thought this was so beautiful. And I've never left anywhere with such a haunting sense of regret as I left Venice that night. Fortunately, I came back very often later, so it's but I still get that same quickening of the pulse when I arrive after, I don't know, I mean, well over a hundred visits, I should think, by now.

Speaker 125:23

That's

Speaker 125:27

Yeah.

Presenter25:27

What about

Presenter25:33

But it's sinking.

Presenter25:35

The Mediterranean

John Julius Norwich25:36

The Mediterranean's rising. That's even worse than than Venice sinking. Venice has almost stopped sinking, but the the the water's rising.

John Julius Norwich25:44

Really alarmingly fast.

Presenter25:45

And you've been a leading light, I know, in Venice in Peril, the organization that sort of

John Julius Norwich25:45

And you've been a leading

John Julius Norwich25:49

Yes, of which I'm chairman. And um last year, for example, although we've never we had the the really great floods were nineteen sixty six, we've never had anything quite as bad as that, though we've had one or two very nearly as bad but last year we had more separate floods than any other year of Venice's history. In 1996, we had 1900.

Presenter26:07

So why aren't these floodgates built?

John Julius Norwich26:09

Well, I think there's a very good chance that next year ultimately there will be. It's taken a very, very long time. Uh not so much for the expense, though the expense is absolutely huge. I mean, it's like about

John Julius Norwich26:19

A dozen of our Thames barriers put together.

John Julius Norwich26:22

Uh it's also the fact that

John Julius Norwich26:25

The lagoon is a a unique geographical phenomenon. Nothing like it exists anywhere else in the world, and nobody really knows how it works. And if you monkey about with nature on this scale,

John Julius Norwich26:35

you inevitably set off a chain reaction. And you don't quite know where that chain reaction is going to lead. There's no way of doing d doing that on paper in advance. Like with Aswan Dam, I suppose the last time they did it, you know, and that brought back Bill Harzia, it ruined the sardine industry and the delta of the Nile, did all sorts of things that nobody had expected.

John Julius Norwich26:54

And this might happen too. On the other hand, if they don't do it, there's absolutely no doubt that within half a century or so, perhaps, uh Venice won't exist any more. And uh

John Julius Norwich27:05

Grandchildren anyway, if not our children, will just never have this wonderful thing to see.

John Julius Norwich27:11

Next piece of music. The next one is, well, it's another beautiful girl singing beautifully, but rather a different sort of song. This one is Emma Kirkby, who has, I think, that in a obviously in a very different way, that same sort of marvellous, fresh purity of voice that Ruth Etting has too, or had. Emma Kirkby singing one of Handel's nine German arias.

Speaker 427:36

The ear of spoken crystal, and oiten marble and glass.

Speaker 427:43

Say it was the heaven of the light you shake up, through shakes up.

Speaker 428:00

Yeah.

Speaker 428:02

I eat a marble heart. Sweet was here in the ship to the heart. Feel like a shit.

Speaker 128:09

Yeah.

Presenter28:27

Emma Kirkby with the London Baroque, singing Die Eer aus Dunkel Griften, one of Handel's nine German arias. We said you're a or you said you're a populariser, not a scholar.

John Julius Norwich28:37

My job is to tell a good story. I'm not looking for deep historical understanding.

Presenter28:43

But you don't wish you had that appetite for scholarship?

John Julius Norwich28:47

I admire it very much. I respect it enormously.

John Julius Norwich28:52

I don't think I wish I had it. I mean, I think I think there's

John Julius Norwich28:56

There's something to be said for being a populariser.

Presenter28:59

I suppose it gives you freedom. It means you can have an opinion, you can take sides, you can castigate.

John Julius Norwich29:03

Well, it it certainly gives you that. But again, you see, I mean, if you're writing for the general public, I say, well, as we said at the beginning, I'm trying I'm just trying to get people excited. I'm trying to th I'm trying to make people say gee whiz.

Presenter29:13

But if you're extracting your own view from everything that's been written and you've read I mean you've read all the boring books on our behalf, as it were, and then you're distilling it and and making it exciting, but isn't there a problem that you might distort in doing that? That you can get a different take on things? I mean, w all all history anyway is a bit of a distortion, it's bound to be.

John Julius Norwich29:13

That's

John Julius Norwich29:16

Yeah.

John Julius Norwich29:17

On our behalf, as it were.

John Julius Norwich29:31

I was going to say all history distorts. The greatest books of history probably distort the most.

Presenter29:33

Yes.

Presenter29:35

Do you think you distort more than many?

John Julius Norwich29:38

No, I think I don't. I think I distort less largely one reason is of course that I I

John Julius Norwich29:43

Find, I normally have a huge canvas. I mean, the both the history of Venice and the history of Byzantium last over a thousand years. And you don't have time to go very deep. I mean, you you know, after a couple of pages you've got to make way for his grandson.

Presenter29:54

Mm.

John Julius Norwich29:55

Um you've got to keep the story moving.

Presenter29:57

But I mean your argument presumably would be that as long as more people are reading it anyway, then it's a job well done in that sense.

John Julius Norwich30:02

Well, that's what uh I hope.

John Julius Norwich30:05

Yeah.

Presenter30:06

Record number seven.

John Julius Norwich30:07

Record number seven is, I think, um, I've well, I mean, I've always loved Mozart, everybody loves Mozart. Um, I seem to be the only person I know who thinks that the loveliest music that Mozart ever wrote was his bassoon concerto. He wrote actually three Woodwind concertos, one for bassoon, one for oboe, and one for clarinet, and most people say that the other two are better. I don't think they are, and I think the slow movement of Mozart's bassoon concerto is for me the most hauntingly beautiful, poignantly lovely music that I know in the world.

Presenter31:40

Klaus Tunemann playing part of Mozart's bassoon concerto in B flat, The Slow Movement, with the Academy of Saint Martin in the Fields, conducted by Sir Neville Mariner. It's casting away time. Um are you an escaper, or will you lean back and accept your fate, do you think?

John Julius Norwich31:54

I would lean back and accept.

Presenter31:56

Hmm.

John Julius Norwich31:56

I might regret and uh and and be awfully sorry about it.

Presenter31:56

Yeah.

Presenter32:00

Hmm.

John Julius Norwich32:00

But I would know that there was absolutely nothing in the world I could do about it.

Presenter32:03

And as you close your eyes, leaning back, and the sand flies are nibbling at your toes, or whatever's going on, you start to look back across your sixty eight years, and you think, Well, I did quite a lot, and I I broke a lot, I saw a lot of the world, I did a lot of things that I wanted to do.

Presenter32:19

Will there be one thing that you think I wish I'd done?

John Julius Norwich32:24

Oh yes, lots. I wish I'd been a much better pianist. I wish I could s I wish I could have s learned to sight read, which I never did. I've been spent hours, days, months trying to get better at it. I never seem to improve.

John Julius Norwich32:42

I wish I had been a better tennis player.

John Julius Norwich32:45

Oh, I mean end endless wishes, yes. But but there it is. I wouldn't I wouldn't dwell on them because um

John Julius Norwich32:51

I I'd say, well, there it is, I've done my best, you know. I mean, I I don't think I've been terribly idle.

John Julius Norwich32:57

Um I got r most of the seven deadly sins I know all too well, but I think sloth isn't one of my worst.

Presenter33:04

Record number eight.

John Julius Norwich33:06

My last record is Richard Strauss, again whom I've always loved, and it's one of his four last songs, sung by Lisa de la Casa.

John Julius Norwich33:17

Baim Schlafengen on Going to Sleep.

Speaker 433:29

Yeah.

Speaker 434:03

Yeah.

Presenter34:19

Visa de la Casa singing part of Beim Schlaffengen on Going to Sleep, one of Strauss's four last songs, with the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Carl Berm, and that was recorded in nineteen fifty three.

Presenter34:30

If you could only take one of those eight records, John Julius, which one?

John Julius Norwich34:34

I think it would have to be the bassoon concerto.

Presenter34:36

Hmm.

John Julius Norwich34:36

I think it would c console me for my fate.

Presenter34:39

What about your book? You've got the Bible and Shakespeare waiting for you.

John Julius Norwich34:43

Uh I'll take the decline and fall of the Roman Empire.

John Julius Norwich34:46

Every time for the jokes.

Presenter34:48

And what about your luxury?

John Julius Norwich34:51

Um at one moment I'd I'd thought it would be a piano.

John Julius Norwich34:56

Um I've just started taking lessons again, but this time it's a sort of rouseetting style because it's or the only thing I'm capable of at this age. Um but I've decided now I think it couldn't be it. I think it would have to be the computer.

Presenter35:09

John Julius Norwich, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

John Julius Norwich35:12

Thank you.

Presenter35:12

Thank you.

Speaker 435:20

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