Tina Brown

Tina Brown0:00

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.

Tina Brown0:08

The programme was originally broadcast in the year two thousand, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:32

My castaway this week is a journalist. In a career often devoted to the lives and works of the famous and influential, she's become a celebrity in her own right. At Oxford she wrote an article which propelled her into journalism with the New Statesman, the Sunday Times and Punch, and then at the age of twenty-five to editor of The Tatler. Here she introduced the Debs newspaper to some bad company, as she put it, and boosted circulation to such an extent that her publishers summoned her to New York to edit Vanity Fair. She's lived in America ever since. Her startling success at the magazine which brought her there was followed by a less certain stint at that leviathan of American culture, the New Yorker. Now she's running a brand new publication, Talk Magazine. Success is by no means assured, but the woman in charge remains calm and still controversial. After twenty years of being an editor, she says, I've fired a lot of people and killed a lot of copy. You don't make friends that way. She is Tina Brown. You've certainly sailed, Tina, and continue to sail in some very choppy waters. Has it become a kind of natural habitat for you?

Presenter1:34

Well, I've always loved new challenges and I've always loved controversy really. I mean I enjoy

Presenter1:39

biting off new projects that are the cause, I suppose, of a certain amount of difficulty along the way. But I've always made a got lot of friends. I've loved the work. I love the the journalism in a sense. And I think you have to develop a pretty thick skin at the same time. It's very high profile. It's big business. Everybody's watching.

Tina Brown1:51

And I think

Presenter1:57

And everybody's waiting in the wings to bring you down on the table. Yes, it's always been very high profile. But I've also learnt that it. The most important thing is you focus on the work, you focus on the quality, you don't sort of look left or right, and you get on with it. So you don't feel the flack, you just feel like. No, I don't. And I think if you're going to be the agent of change.

Speaker 42:09

You don't feel the flack. You just

Presenter2:13

You're bound to get some controversy. But you are an agent of change. You are a perfectionist. That must make you very demanding to work for. I think I am very demanding, but I'm also very tolerant of people who are good. You know, so in some ways, although I'm very intolerant of people who aren't, I will give a pretty long slack to people who are good. And in a sense, I will put up with almost anything from someone who's really good and almost nothing from someone who isn't. So of course, what's the buzz? What turns you on? It's the story, ultimately, is it?

Presenter2:42

Yes, I mean I think that I'm very you know I'm a great responder in the sense that you know I'll hear something and I'll have a tremendous instinct that I want to pursue it, that this is a story that's more than meets the eye. And you like to write, I know, what you've described as or to commission what what you've described as the defining piece, and I suppose looking back across it you could certainly say that when you wrote the piece The Mouse That Roared, that was the first time we knew there was problems, there were problems with the Wales's marriage. That was in the mid eighties. It's those kinds of things, isn't it? I think for you, Mrs. Thatcher came out with the quote.

Tina Brown3:07

Yes.

Presenter3:12

Home is where you go when you've got nowhere else to go to. That's right, yes, that was a pretty defining piece.

Tina Brown3:14

That's right.

Presenter3:17

Well, I think that obviously you look for those pieces that seem to nail a time and a place and a person in a way that's memorable. We did a piece in Talk magazine in our first issue about George W. Bush, and it really has been the piece that has continually come up and come up and come up because it was the first piece really that depicted him as

Presenter3:36

Kind of callow and shallow and making comments about the death penalty that were flip. It was a pretty favorable piece apart from that, but those comments in the piece just sort of togged him. And, you know, every time it comes up, people quote these comments that he made about Carla Faye Tucker and the death penalty and say, you know, this is the real George Bush. So how is it for you when you don't have a magazine and briefly you didn't between The New Yorker and this New One Tour?

Presenter4:00

Well, when I was in the gestation period, having left the New Yorker to launch Talk magazine, it was a very strange time. I felt that I'd had an arm cut off. You know, I was virtually faxing myself ideas in the middle of the night because I'm a great sort of, you know, emailer and faxer after midnight.

Presenter4:12

And I found myself feeling tremendously cut off from the the sort of the zeitgeist. I mean, I li I liked to I liked to be able to respond. It was in the middle of the impeachment actually at the time, and I felt very, very sort of disabled by not being able to respond to the impeachment somehow.

Presenter4:26

More of that later. Tell me about your first record.

Presenter4:29

The first record that I've chosen reminds me of a really great night in uh the summer of'ninety nine. It was the launch of Talk magazine, and very few people give parties at Liberty Island. It's rather hard to get it for a party.

Presenter4:41

But we did get it, and it turned into this incredible celebration where all these amazing people arrived by boat. Kind of Noah's Ark of Cafe Society came out sort of two by two. It was kind of you know, Salman Rushdie and Demi Moore. It was one of those kind of surreal, strange mixes of people.

Presenter5:00

Macy Gray, she really she hadn't had any albums out and she was a new talent and we were looking for a great new act and she performed live on the island and this music brings back to me that incredible night of excitement and you know the flickering candles, the Statue of Liberty illuminated and the flag fluttering in a light summer breeze and being in America as an immigrant and feeling this had to be a defining moment for me and for everything I care about.

Speaker 45:29

Hey wait, I want night.

Speaker 45:34

Everything we must

Speaker 45:40

We got something starting.

Speaker 45:45

Crazy out of sight.

Speaker 45:50

We had such a good time. Hey, why didn't you call me? I thought I'd see you again.

Presenter5:59

Macy Gray, and why don't you call me? Um for someone who's really fundamentally quite reserved, Tina, you rather like throwing parties, don't you?

Presenter6:08

I love the theatricality of putting together a big event. I've always liked that. But where does that come from in you, do you think? I think it really comes from the fact that I grew up in a in a in a show business family. My my mother used to throw wonderful parties in our house in Little Marlowe. She loved to mix up

Presenter6:24

The actors and the directors and of my father's life. Your father was a film producer. He was a film producer and he made a whole range of films from sort of Hotel Sahara, Chilton Hundreds, Desperate Moment, you know, the Margaret Rutherford films. And my mother loved entertaining the cast and the directors, and she also had a kind of wonderful knack for the sort of high-low mix, which I think I've inherited. You know, I remember my favourite memories of socially with her was introducing Benny Hill to Dame Rebecca West. And I thought, you know, that was something I certainly remembered and took part in. So you took part in all of those parties, did you? You mixed with all these people at a very young age.

Tina Brown6:52

Top

Presenter6:56

Yes, I did. I used to love it. I was a very sort of quiet, reserved child, but I used to watch

Presenter7:01

the kind of transformation in my mother, as a matter of fact,'cause she and I were very alike, really. I mean, she was actually very reserved, very private woman. But when she got into a social situation, she sort of flowered. It was really quite interesting. It was like a kind of poppadom in water. Suddenly the bubbles would rise to the surface and she would be this incredibly witty.

Presenter7:17

Very vivid personality. And you, in the midst of all of that, were were small, blonde, prishy, looked as if butter wouldn't melt, but at the same time you were

Presenter7:27

Storing up all these observations and writing about the people you met, weren't you? Yes, I was. I mean, I always felt that I was there as the observer. And I used to scuttle off to my room and write my diary for hours and hours, you know. But irreverent comments. Very irreverent, very satirical. And I've kept a diary to this day. I still write my diary when I'm on airplanes. Do you? Yes. Pithy comments, observations. Pretty pithy.

Tina Brown7:47

Pretty

Presenter7:49

What are you going to do with it? Well, I see it as my old age pension.

Presenter7:53

But in a sense, you lived between two worlds, therefore, didn't you? Because you were also away at boarding school. Yes, my parents sent me to these very sort of posh upper middle class boarding schools. So on the one hand,

Presenter8:05

The schools were very kind of Debbie and Centrinansy in a funny way. And then the home life was very much about the film business. So I've always had a kind of mix in my life of being able to move between different kinds of society, I suppose. And I think that's very good for a journalist because you end up needing to be very mobile. You have, as a journalist, you have to kind of be an imposter in every world and belonging to none. Second record.

Presenter8:30

I wanted to choose this uh song from Help because The Beatles were my idols, like a lot of baby boomers, and Hey You Gotta Hide Your Love Away was one of the more kind of uh John Lennon favorites and uh

Presenter8:40

My father took me to the set of help when I was ten. It was at one of the great coups that he was able to deli deliver to me.

Presenter8:46

My friends at school were so unbelievably jealous, and he took me to the set of help where I met.

Presenter8:51

My idols, John and Paul.

Speaker 48:53

I can see them laugh at me, and I hear them say

Speaker 49:05

Hey, you've got to hide your love away.

Speaker 49:12

Hey, you've got to hide your love away.

Presenter9:20

The Beatles and Hey, you've got to hide your love away. You were a big trouble at school, Tina Brown. How many times were you expelled? I was expelled a couple of times and sort of suspended once.

Tina Brown9:26

Top

Speaker 49:26

I'm just gonna

Tina Brown9:26

Yeah.

Presenter9:31

I was very mutinous. I mean, one either rebels against one's parents or one's school. And I was on very good terms with my parents. I never had anything to rebel against, really.

Presenter9:39

So, I I focused entirely my kind of manic mutinous energies on my school. So, what happened? Why were you expelled? Well, it wasn't anything.

Presenter9:47

really bad. It was just that I was trouble. I was always kind of questioning authority and leading others to join me. You know, that was what they had against me then essentially. You led a strike once. Yes, I once led a strike because at certain kind of English boarding schools they have this strange thing where

Tina Brown9:55

And Z.

Presenter10:02

You could only change your knicker linings twice a week. Linings? Linings. And you had two pairs. You had a grey pair and a white pair. And you only could change them twice a week. And I thought this was totally outrageous. So I led a strike. And we marched up and down the lacrosse pitch shouting knickers out, out, out, knickers in, in, in. And I felt very sort of excited and elated by all this. But I was shipped home and told I could go home with my knickers and stay.

Presenter10:28

That was expulsion. I had to sit out the rest of the term. But you were completely expelled from the school. I was expelled from one school, yes. That was because I kept a diary and.

Tina Brown10:33

Work

Tina Brown10:34

I was a school from one school.

Presenter10:39

I wrote about the headteacher in a very sort of she found for some reason she was marauding around looking for my diary, which I think I really should have complained about, but she did, she found it.

Presenter10:48

and she discovered that I wrote about her her very, very large bosom as an unidentified flying object.

Presenter10:54

And she took exception and she shipped me out. How did your parents react to all of this?

Presenter10:58

My parents were incredibly supportive throughout. Their whole attitude was How could you have failed with this interesting child?

Presenter11:05

So, hence not being any stranger to controversy. I mean, it's all there, isn't it? Yes, I mean, I think they just thought these schools were wacky and.

Tina Brown11:09

Yeah.

Presenter11:12

It was probably their fault for sending me there. But, nevertheless, you although you spent many summers sitting under the apple tree, not going to school, I think, you did get the A levels and you did get the level of levels.

Tina Brown11:21

Yeah.

Presenter11:23

And I did get to Oxford, and uh once I got to Oxford everything seemed to fall into place.

Presenter11:28

Next record.

Presenter11:29

And this record, Stormy Weather, by Jack Hilton, is the music that I played over and over and over again in my second year at Oxford when I was trying to decide who I was more in love with, Simon or Stephen. I had two boyfriends. One of them was contemplative, literary, and rich, and the other one was incredibly eccentric, very sort of irresponsible and funny. Then they eventually became friends with one another, and we ended up bowling around the country lanes of Oxford in Stephen's open sports car, listening to Stormy Weather. It was a very magical time.

Speaker 312:00

I can't go on. Everything I had is on stormy weather.

Speaker 312:06

This my man and I ain't together.

Speaker 312:10

It keeps raining all the time It keeps raining all the time

Presenter12:17

Stormy Weather, sung by Cecile Petri with Jack Hilton and his orchestra. So at Oxford, um, Tina Brown, you wrote for Isis. You were always going to be a writer, but did you know what kind of writer? Might you have been a novelist?

Presenter12:29

I just felt that I was an observer, really. I started writing because I kept this diary, as I've said, and

Presenter12:35

I went to a private eye lunch at the invitation of Aubram Waugh who I'd interviewed for Isis.

Presenter12:39

And at the end of the lunch, I came home and I wrote my diary and I wrote all about the lunch. I copied it all out and published it in Isis, the magazine. And Auburn Moore read it and loved it and thought it was very good. And he sent it to the editor of The New Statesman, who asked me to be a kind of Oxford correspondent. That's really what sort of got me launched, because having been published in The New Statesman, of course, then I had an appetite to see myself in print more and loved it and realized that going to things and writing about them could be a way of life, which seemed to me again. I love that. Cutting one-line is about people. Janet Streetporter dresses like a traffic light and sounds like a tannoy.

Tina Brown13:06

Which seemed to me again not true.

Presenter13:13

Fearless stuff, really. Pieces with attitude. Is that how you'd sum it up? I guess it is. I mean, at the time I just wrote what I thought and saw, and now I suppose those pieces are pretty sharp.

Presenter13:24

Yes, I think that just comes naturally. So uh y so you've gone on being sharp? I think I've gone on being pretty sharp, but probably more privately than I am publicly. You did have a period though at Punch where you were doing sort of action girl stuff.

Presenter13:36

Yes, I think I probably should have been a little bit more sort of outraged about it. Actually, probably today they wouldn't get away with it. But at the time the boys were always sending me off to do these outrageous things, like, you know, be a go-go dancer or work in a bunny club or whatever. But actually, it was very entertaining, and some of those pieces are pretty funny when I read them now. But in the midst of all of this, and by now we're in the mid-seventies, you were sent for by the editor of the Sunday Times for campaigning, the gritty Harry Evans, who ran the paper that every good journalist wanted to be on, really.

Tina Brown13:57

Yeah.

Speaker 413:59

Territory.

Speaker 414:02

To be on, really.

Presenter14:03

You wanted a job with him, or he had read your writing. How did it happen? Harry had read my pieces in the New Statesman, and he wanted me to write for what was then the look pages, which is the sort of the style section.

Speaker 414:07

How did it happen?

Presenter14:14

I think every journalist worth their salt wanted to be part of the Sunday Times. I mean, there was an absolutely.

Presenter14:19

Brilliant feeling to that paper. It was Broadway.

Presenter14:23

And I wanted to be part of that whole incredible culture of that newspaper. So it was an incredibly thrilling phone call when he asked if I would come in and meet with him. So in you end.

Presenter14:32

In I went, and of course he kept me waiting and waiting and waiting. Anyone who knows Harry knows that that's actually part of the course today as well. And I waited and waited and waited outside. And finally, the secretary said, Well, you can go in now. He said, Well, you can send her in. And he still ignored me because he said, Sorry, I've got to make up the front page. And he was making up the front page. And I watched Harry making up the front page, and I was gone, completely gone. I mean, he had these piercing blue eyes, and when he turned around and looked at me, I just was.

Presenter14:58

Was toast, you know, that was the end. It was love at first sight. How long did it take him to connect?

Presenter15:04

quite a bit longer really. I mean another sort of six or eight months. And then he came to New York. Uh I was there. Uh I I won the Catherine Packenham Prize for some journalism that I'd done and I spent it on a ticket to New York.

Presenter15:13

And he was coming to New York, and we were trying to sort of work out this arrangement with the paper. He said, Well, I'll have a drink with you.

Presenter15:18

I'm meeting some of my journalists and, you know, I'll fit you in there.

Presenter15:22

And uh I think that was the time when he really suddenly sort of noticed me in a different way. But it wasn't all plain sailing. I mean, there were difficulties. He was married. Yes, he was married. He'd been married for a long time and uh

Presenter15:34

I didn't think there was any chance that he wouldn't be.

Presenter15:36

And of course that was that was difficult and it meant the relationship had to be

Presenter15:40

obviously private for a long time. And also it compromised you reworking on the Sunday Times, I suppose? Yes, I felt that, you know, the fact that he was the editor and the fact that I was involved with him and the fact that he wasn't yet divorced meant that I really ought to leave the paper and and be

Presenter15:54

Working somewhere else, I didn't want to compromise him.

Presenter15:56

with somehow the gossip and the difficulties and the intrigue and the trivia and all the stuff that goes with that kind of happening in an office. So I kind of went off and that's when I went to work for Punch and I developed a separate career. And I think that really editing the Tatla became because I realized I couldn't work for the only place I really wanted to work.

Presenter16:13

So it turned me to editing. I think if I hadn't met Harry and estate at the Sunny Times, I would have probably stayed a writer because that's really where I wanted to be.

Presenter16:21

Next piece of music.

Presenter16:22

I've chosen this Elgar because this reminds me of Harry. He's always action Harry. He's the most sort of activist person I've ever met in my life. And whenever I've come home from being away or being out and this music is playing, I know that Harry's in his study madly creating at his computer, writing, writing speeches, articles. Harry's home and all's right with the world.

Presenter17:39

Elgar's Enigma variation number seven, played by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir Simon Rattle. So you didn't get to work on the Sunny Towns for long, Tina. You did get to edit The Tatler. You were 25, youngest editor in town, all of that. But it was right up your street, really, wasn't it? And you were the right person at the right time. Society was changing. Thatcherism, Princess of Wales on the horizon. Yes, I think The Tatler was a really thrilling break.

Presenter18:04

And society was

Presenter18:06

Going through an interesting change, and the Princess of Wales gave us the greatest story. Suddenly the London social world was the story, which was very lucky for us. What was this bad company you introduced it to?

Tina Brown18:13

Which was very lucky.

Presenter18:17

Well, my hi idea for the Tatler really was that the problem was it had been all about the upper class rictus, it was about enjoying a joke on the stairs, or as I used to say, enjoying a stroke on the stairs. And I decided that it really you really had to introduce the kind of the sporting to the snorting, you know, the idea that you would mix it up and read that the editorial pages would reflect the newer society, you know, the new money, the new fashion.

Presenter18:37

Mixing the world of Hollywood and theatre with the upper class world. And you invented an alter ego for yourself called Rosie Boot, who kind of took the Mickey out of the Hooray Henrys, the eligible bachelor's, Hugo Pouncer Page, and the tiny ironist Martin Amos. Yes, you obviously had a way of tiny.

Speaker 418:52

Yeah, you also have to web.

Presenter18:54

Well, I had a wonderful time. Yes, I mean, Rosie Boot became my pseudonym, and I was able to then make fun of all these please-with-themselves young men who were out there trying to make it with the girls. Did you say a pseudonym? How much of it was you, really? Because again, you were part of that. As you say, you'd been to the boarding schools, you'd mixed with the Debbie set, the country set, as well as the Showbiz household. It was a side of me. I mean, I think but I think also when you're an editor, you start to feel slightly inhibited as a writer. An editor has to be more responsible, it has to be about networking, making friends for the magazine, and you can't be too.

Tina Brown19:02

But you say

Tina Brown19:11

Uh

Presenter19:21

controversial in a sense as the editor, but as a writer you can do what the hell you like. So I felt that the pseudonym allowed me to be myself as a writer while I could have another identity as the editor.

Presenter19:31

But that's therefore that side of your personality. And I think, again, you've called that the gadfly side. Yes. And then there's the bookworm side. You are both.

Tina Brown19:37

Yeah.

Presenter19:38

Yes, I am both. I mean, I think that uh as time goes by though it's harder to be the gadfly when you're the editor. I think that's a downside of editing. You had, and I have to mention this, um written a piece about the Parker Bowles family which was described as the worst instance of social betrayal since the massacre of Glencoe.

Presenter19:55

What on earth did you write, do you remember?

Tina Brown19:55

What on earth did you

Presenter19:57

Oh, I can't remember now, but I know that, um

Presenter20:00

You know, people tended to be taken aback by the fact that I could sort of go into a situation and seem very much part of the scenery and then I would go off and write something pretty sharp.

Presenter20:10

Which is what you've done as a child at the end of the day.

Tina Brown20:10

So

Tina Brown20:11

Yes, which is one.

Presenter20:14

Don't feel guilty about it. I don't. Didn't didn't feel like a traitor.

Presenter20:18

I didn't know because I think that in the end they understood. I mean, the the thing about the English is they have a great sense of humour. I think it's different in America, I have to say, that.

Presenter20:25

In America, you're never forgiven for that kind of satirical commentary. I think in England, people have a great sense of humour. You know, I mean, I think that.

Presenter20:33

The royal family particularly, they they have a sense of humour about themselves. I don't think that's true in America. I think that if you're rude about the rich in America, they remember for ever. So you're well behaved these days, are you? I doubt that.

Tina Brown20:43

Bad leaders don't

Presenter20:46

Record number five.

Presenter20:48

Uh this is Tina Turner singing I Can't Stand the Rain. I feel that Tina Turner very much to me represents the the glitz of the eighties, the era of the power suit, you know. That was the era that I was editor in chief of Vanity Fair in New York.

Presenter21:00

I look at those photographs of me now in a red suit with my red nails and my high heeled shoes, and I think.

Presenter21:06

What an incredibly vibrant, over the top, wildly razzle-dazzle time it was.

Speaker 421:13

So, they're hitting.

Speaker 421:18

That will promise.

Speaker 421:21

It's just the one thing that just can't stand, can't stand the rain.

Presenter21:41

Tina Turner, and I can't stand the rain. So Vanity Fair, as you say, was very glitzy, glossy, big budget, high profile, glossy foreign city, though. You, a stranger there, not knowing a lot of people, but supposed to lead this whole thing forward and turn it around because it wasn't doing too well. There must have been times in that first year that you found pretty daunting.

Presenter22:05

The first year at Vanity Fair was an incredibly difficult time in every way.

Presenter22:10

Harry was uh actually working in uh North Carolina.

Presenter22:13

and I was sort of alone in New York and I didn't really know anybody.

Presenter22:17

And I didn't really know the kind of the culture, I didn't know the journalists, I didn't have a network. I did have a very big instinct for what I wanted the magazine to be, but getting it done was extremely hard.

Presenter22:26

It was also had got off to the most appalling start. I was the third editor in six months, and everybody was kissing it off and saying it was dead and finished.

Presenter22:34

And there was a a day in May of nine of'eighty five, which when I'd been there for a year and a half, when we learned that Sainuhaus was going to fold it. The owner. The owner. The Condynast. The Condy Nast was going to fold it. And because he'd sort of had enough, he'd spent a fortune and he thought it wasn't going to work.

Tina Brown22:42

Everything

Presenter22:48

And I was in San Francisco at the time and I flew back to New York.

Presenter22:52

and went to see him and I begged him for another six months. I said, It's going to happen, it's going to turn around. I've just done this piece on the Princess of Wales about the problems of her marriage. And I said, you know, we've just got to give us another few months. And to his great credit, he said, Okay, okay, you've got another six months. And in that six months, the magazine suddenly started to take off and

Tina Brown23:06

Uh

Presenter23:10

We went from two hundred fifty thousand to one point two million. You gave it that crackle, you gave it that excitement that you wanted to give it. But as much as editorially, I think it was also a a marketing exercise, wasn't it? You got to get the covers right. The covers were very important. I had Annie Leibovitz working, who is a marvellous photographer, and it was all about getting the celebrity to do something.

Tina Brown23:22

The covers of

Presenter23:29

They hadn't done before. And Annie was particularly good at persuading them to do that, I have to say. I mean, she was the person who really persuaded Demi Moore to take the photograph seven months pregnant with the pregnant stomach. You know, I had been looking for a way to make a statement about the 90s, and I was looking for a cover that would really make that statement to say we've turned around and we've left the sort of red nails behind.

Presenter23:49

And when Annie brought the picture in, which was taken at the end of the session of Demi Moore with her pregnant stomach, I said immediately, that is it, because it was so natural that it really took off the power suits, literally, and said, naked, pregnant, it's fine to show your stomach, it's fine. And it went all over the world. It became one of those phenomena, the things that really make a magazine define. But also the secret was in the mix because you were as likely to see Demi Moore pregnant on the cover as to read about the rainforest inside it or politics inside it. Again, it's this gadfly bookworm thing as you just did. I've always thought that great magazines could span the high and the low, and I think that the whole

Tina Brown24:20

Yeah.

Presenter24:26

Joy in a magazine is being able to do that. You know, we would publish something like William Styron and His Depression, and yet at the same time have a cover like that, and people loved it.

Presenter24:35

Record number six.

Presenter24:37

The next uh choice is Haydn the Creation, and I've chosen this because it reminds me of a wonderful evening when I was editing The New Yorker, when I came back to England to help raise money for the Bodleian Library with the magazine, and there was a concert at the Sheldonian where this was played.

Speaker 424:55

It's true, it's all for the bad.

Speaker 425:25

Slowly.

Speaker 425:27

Yeah.

Presenter25:47

The Adam and Eve duet from Haydn's creation, sung by Helen Donart and Jose Van Damme, with the Philharmonia Chorus and Orchestra conducted by Raphael Frübeck de Burgos. You mention The New Yorker, Tina. It was, as you've put it, I think, an academy to Vanity Fair's big top. Only three editors, I think, in its 70-year history, you know. And along come you, the fourth, young female, British, this high society rednail, as you say, image. It didn't play well with the literati, did it?

Tina Brown26:06

Yeah.

Presenter26:16

It didn't at first. There was a great anxiety when I came to the New Yorker that I had sort of Atla the Hun had entered the ivy covered walls. It was worse than that. It was vitriolic. It was pretty vitriolic. Starlin in high heels. Yeah, Stalin in high heels, all of that. But actually after it was a very short time really that

Tina Brown26:27

It was pretty fixed.

Presenter26:33

The really good literary people understood what I was trying to do.

Presenter26:37

largely because, you know, the people that I brought to the New Yorker

Presenter26:40

Were Simon Sharma, David Remnick, Anthony Lane? These were wonderful writers, and I think that.

Presenter26:47

People like John Updike, for instance, were enormously welcoming to me. But then you had people like Garrison Keeler who'd also been writing for it saying, you know, she hasn't changed the New Yorker, she's obliterated it. I know. They went on saying that. Yes, they went on saying it, but it's interesting to see that you don't see them back in the magazine now. David Remnick, my successor, who's done a brilliant job, I think, in maintaining what we'd set in motion.

Tina Brown26:50

But then you had

Tina Brown26:57

I know, well it's on saying.

Presenter27:08

You know, has developed those talents that I brought with me. And there's always going to be people who are reactionary when you come in. And I think if you're an agent for change, you just have to go through it. So, again, we're back to you thriving on controversy almost perversely, really. I felt there was a mission at the New Yorker. I mean, I do get very passionate about what I'm doing. So, my mission and the mission I was given really was to save the New Yorker. The magazine had really begun to fail tremendously. And in a way, I felt that it was on my shoulders to save this great literary institution. How many people did you sack in the first year?

Presenter27:42

Well, we had to lose seventy nine people. We had to lose is a great

Presenter27:45

Do you do it yourself on these occasions? Yes, I usually do, because I think it's important to not shirk that if you're in charge and explain it properly and make people understand why.

Presenter27:55

But I and I brought in forty eight new ones and they were all brilliant. And a lot of the old guard, people like Lillian Ross and Roger Angel and Philip Hamburger, these great names that had been at the New Yorker for years and years, loved the new people. And I was very proud of what we did. We put on

Presenter28:08

250,000 sales, and we really took it out of its sort of benighted decline. But it's interesting, in the end, I think it was your mother who said, time to move on, time to do something that makes you happy.

Presenter28:19

I think my mother felt that although the New Yorker was this incredibly important sort of project.

Presenter28:24

She wanted to see me back at doing something which I'd started myself. I mean, when we launched talk at at Liberty Island, I think my mother would have loved that event more than anything. I think she would have felt.

Presenter28:34

very, very happy indeed to kind of see me starting something of my own. But she sadly didn't live to see it all. Alas, alas, she died, and uh that was a very, very difficult time for me.

Tina Brown28:40

Alas.

Presenter28:44

I still miss her enormously. She was such a kind of vivid and

Presenter28:49

incredibly wise presence in my life. Because they moved with you to New York, your parents? Yes, I took them with me to New York. My father and I are still very close. Uh you know, he certainly didn't anticipate living longer than my mother. He is ten years.

Tina Brown28:53

Uh

Presenter29:00

older than her, so it was an enormous blow when we lost her.

Presenter29:04

But I'm glad to say the children adore him, and they always come and see him when they come back from school.

Presenter29:08

And it's great to have him there. He lives on the ninth floor and I'm on the three floors below, and he comes down for dinner, and it's it's wonderful that I can have him with me.

Presenter29:16

Echo number seven.

Presenter29:18

This is a Vivaldi that always reminds me of Christmas in our house in Long Island with the children.

Presenter29:24

We decorate the tree at Christmas and the children decorate it, of course, with us. And this music, the kind of Christmas music that that we always put on and

Presenter29:31

It's the time of the year when I think of this.

Presenter30:34

Part of the first movement of Vivaldi's Gloria in D major, performed by the Philharmonia Chorus and Orchestra conducted by Riccardo Mutti. Harry, of course, Tina has taken US citizenship recently. Do you think you'll ever do that?

Tina Brown30:43

Yeah, yeah.

Presenter30:45

No, no, I don't. I I am the more American I get, the more British I feel. What do you miss about us, if you miss us?

Presenter30:52

I miss the very sound saneness of the English.

Presenter30:56

A low keyness, which I will always appreciate. And an irony, too. I mean, I love the English sense of humour. I miss the English sense of humour greatly.

Presenter31:03

You've had the huge successes, you've just got the CBE to prove it. Don't you long to you were talking earlier about the responsibilities of being an editor, don't you long to break out of the box and go back to doing what we were talking about your doing early in your life, just writing what you've felt, you know, not just publishing your diary, but writing some pieces absolutely of the moment. I do. I mean, I must say that's the thing I miss the most, and I'm sure that eventually I will return to doing that. Well, let somebody else take the responsibility. That's what I feel. I think, you know, to hell with it, you know, let another I'll be another editor's problem. You know, let them sort it out. Let them take the flat. I'll just write the piece. Yes. I certainly do miss that, and I'm sure I will eventually return to doing that. You could, of course, do it on a desert island.

Tina Brown31:17

Not just publishing your diary, but

Tina Brown31:26

That's what I feel.

Tina Brown31:33

Uh

Speaker 431:33

Yeah.

Presenter31:39

Very good place. That's what I need to take myself away from all the madness. In the meantime, you have to lead your life by very tight rules, I assume, to get it all in. Yeah, it's a hyper sort of hyper-scheduled, hyper-organized life. And of course, you know, as a working mother, I'm sure all working mothers feel this. You know, you're you're desperately trying all the time to create some tiny little place for yourself, you know, emotionally and intellectually, where you can just hide for a while.

Presenter32:01

And that, I think, is a strain on every woman. It's certainly a strain on me at times. And certainly I know that at the end of the day, when I've sent all my faxes and I've made all my phone calls and I've sent all my emails and I've looked at all the memos and I've

Presenter32:17

kissed the children good night, read Isabel her bedtime story, uh gone upstairs to say goodnight to my father, and then finally I have my time, my little bit of twenty minutes or so, when I just

Presenter32:27

I'm in my own head and I'm able to sit down at my computer and I will write for myself. And that's a wonderful time for me. That's my kind of special time. Austrikon. And so this music by the Buena Vista Social Club, it's the music that I play when I'm in that kind of dreaming, kind of finally free in my own head place. It's very special to me for that reason.

Speaker 433:01

Yadrocero vo y para ma cane, Qui vo a puesto vo y para ma yaría.

Speaker 433:13

Tiendo serro voy para ma cane, llemo a pueto voy para ma yarí.

Presenter33:19

Buena Vista Social Club playing Chan Chan. Well, Nartina, if you could only take one of those eight records, which one would you take?

Presenter33:28

I think I'd take the Buena Vista Social Club actually, because I think Desert Islands are pretty dreamy places. And I think at that point I would have really wound down and I'd have just become this kind of lolling castaway who just wants to be a lotus eater. When did you last wind down?

Presenter33:41

Long time ago.

Presenter33:44

What about your book? You've got the Bible, you've got the complete works of Shakespeare.

Presenter33:48

I think I'll take George Eliot's middle march.

Presenter33:51

I love the sort of texture and the worlds and the wisdom of Elliot, and I think she's eternally modern. And I also think that uh the bustling life that she creates is something I'm going to miss on that island. So I can dive into her many worlds and live there for a time. What about your luxury?

Presenter34:07

I'm going to take a a roller coaster.

Presenter34:10

'Cause it's going to remind me of my time in New York.

Presenter34:13

Very, very colourful roller coaster. And I'll spend my time on it in between listening to the Buena Vista Social Club and reading Middlemarch.

Presenter34:21

Dina Brown, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs. Thank you.

Tina Brown34:33

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