Lord Deedes

Speaker 20:00

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 two thousand and one, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:30

My castaway this week is a journalist and politician. It's a combination which has allowed him to have a front seat at many of the great events of 20th century history. He reported the Abyssinian War in 1935 and became the model for Evelyn Waugh's comic hero in Scoop. He was there when Neville Chamberlain declared peace in our time. He questioned John Profumo on the Christine Keeler affair and he accompanied the Princess of Wales on her famous expedition to Bosnia.

Presenter0:57

During the course of all of this he was a Conservative MP for nearly twenty five years, a Cabinet Minister, and he was the editor of the Daily Telegraph.

Presenter1:05

Now eighty eight, he's still writing and reporting, his energy and achievements gently disguised beneath disarming self deprecation. It's really rather alarming, he observes, to live in a world where some one with my truly modest accomplishments and intellect can be so successful. It bothers me. He is Baron Deeds of Aldington, a title rarely used by the man every one knows as Bill.

Presenter1:31

You have, um, Bill, if I may, witnessed an unbelievable amount of the twentieth century. Do do you feel like a piece of walking history?

Lord Deedes1:38

Yeah.

Lord Deedes1:38

Not at all, really. I'll be very lucky.

Lord Deedes1:42

That's the word I use about my life. I've been lucky to have a front seat all expenses paid, too, at so many different events. Journalists have that privilege, but they don't always have it for seventy years.

Presenter1:54

But it's journalism, not the politics, really, that's the first love, obviously, isn't it?

Lord Deedes1:59

I was very happy as a constituency MP.

Lord Deedes2:02

I was never blissfully happy, Erza.

Presenter2:03

They were

Lord Deedes2:05

As a minister, there were too many disciplines attached to it. Journalists are very um

Lord Deedes2:10

They're always in spirit about a freelance people, and it's a totally different discipline.

Lord Deedes2:16

From being a minister of the Crown. So, yes, you're right. I think.

Presenter2:20

It's the independence that you like. It's the free spirit.

Lord Deedes2:22

Yeah.

Presenter2:25

Yeah.

Lord Deedes2:25

You depend on yourself, you depend on your ideas, you depend on your own uh inspiration. If you were a minister, you depend mainly on other people's inspiration, I think.

Presenter2:35

But you also you've got all that responsibility of all the people that you're there to look after, as it were.

Lord Deedes2:40

Yes, and when there's a meeting you've got to go, you're surrounded by a very strict much stronger discipline than the army.

Presenter2:47

But you'd have had a lot of meetings to go to when you were editor of the Daily Telegraph. You didn't really much enjoy that, did you? You didn't like being in the meeting.

Lord Deedes2:53

No, I didn't mind that. I had a very nice boss in Lord in Lord Hartwell, and I enjoyed really counselling other people about their own difficulties and so on and so forth. Form of interference I learned in politics. Interfering in other people's lives, yes.

Presenter3:07

But but what you really love is is what you

Lord Deedes3:08

How ya

Presenter3:10

still do now, as you say, seventy years on, it's almost as if you've led your career backwards, because now you're a roving reporter out there in all sorts of places, I mean Angola, Bosnia, Kosovo, Liberia, the Sudan, with your notebook in your hand, and that's where you're happiest.

Lord Deedes3:25

You're quite right. Go off, find a good story, furthermore, get it into print.

Lord Deedes3:31

Bliss, absolute bliss.

Presenter3:34

Tell me about your first record.

Lord Deedes3:36

Before the war I wasn't a very highbrow viewer of the theatre, but I loved the palladium, I loved the the performance of The Crazy Gang, and I loved above all Flanagan singing. Very evocative voice. So Flanagan is top of my pre-war pops.

Speaker 43:54

A ribs we never saw before.

Speaker 43:58

Savoys Dyke and King

Speaker 44:02

There's only one place that we know and that is where we sleep.

Lord Deedes4:06

That is where

Speaker 44:09

Underneath the archae

Speaker 44:13

We dream our dreams of bum bum ba-do-bido. Underneath the bum bum bow did a bum.

Presenter4:18

Yeah.

Speaker 44:20

On cobblestones we land them bobo

Presenter4:24

Flanagan and Allen and Underneath the Arches, and that was recorded in 1932, about 69 years ago, this summer. Amazing.

Presenter4:31

To begin at the beginning, though, Bill Deeds, the truth is you didn't expect to have to work, did you? It's not actually what your family did.

Lord Deedes4:40

No. In theory my father owned a lot of acres, and I had no particular hope or expectation of inheriting them. But no, work didn't seem to me an absolute essential in life.

Lord Deedes4:52

until my father got caught up in a Wall Street crash. So I left school a year early, and I got through my exams with a very nice governess, and then there was an interval. I played I worked in the mornings and the evenings, and played golf in the afternoon seemed a perfect life.

Lord Deedes5:08

But my sisters got rather stern, and said that really I ought to get more earnest and start working.

Presenter5:14

But had your father lost everything? Did you did you stay?

Lord Deedes5:16

Not everything, but quite a lot. We lived in a ramshackle castle, which has since been very well restored by different people, where Alan Tark uh ended his days. Saltwood. Saltwood Castle, yes.

Presenter5:27

12

Speaker 25:27

Yeah.

Lord Deedes5:29

Very expensive.

Lord Deedes5:30

And father gambled a bit on the Stock Exchange in order to make ends meet. And of course the Wall Street crash was a bit hard on gamblers. They went they went they went down the spout. So that's what happened to father.

Presenter5:41

That must have been a shock to start with.

Lord Deedes5:43

Sir John Reith of the BBC, who thought I rather immature for the BBC, so we passed that one by, and Israel's chief of Marx Expenses, and he offered me a job as a store manager.

Lord Deedes5:58

And then finally I ran into, or was put into, the office of the managing editor of the Morning Post, and he had just got acquired

Lord Deedes6:09

A gun in my uncle's shoot at Chaughton.

Lord Deedes6:13

And my uncle had no use for any job for his own sons, and mentioned me.

Lord Deedes6:19

So basically I got a job as a beginner on the Morning Post in return for a gun in my uncle's chute for the managing editor, and really that was no words really are too strong to condemn it nowadays.

Presenter6:34

There's good healthy nepotism going on there.

Lord Deedes6:36

Nepotism isn't strong enough.

Presenter6:39

And so you began as

Lord Deedes6:41

Do it.

Presenter6:41

Reporter. But had you written anything before?

Lord Deedes6:41

But had you

Lord Deedes6:42

Anything before? No, nothing at all. The Morning Post was a very small newspaper. It had a very, very small staff. It suddenly began to feel very geriatric. And so it recruited young men. It had a couple of young men in from either Oxford or Cambridge, and I turned up.

Lord Deedes6:58

And there we were. But could you just write? Did you discover you could just do it? Had you scribbled before? Took a week or two. We had the general election of nineteen thirty one. That taught me quite a bit.

Lord Deedes7:09

I don't know. Yes, I suppose I did discover I could write. I got into it after a bit.

Presenter7:15

Tell me about your second record.

Lord Deedes7:17

Every year during the war, no matter what the war was doing, Churchill went to Harrow Songs. He loved them. He thought that they were great songs, great music, and he usually cried.

Lord Deedes7:29

And so, because I was eventually a bit of his government, I thought it would be appropriate to have one of the Harrow songs, one of the less known ones here, sir.

Speaker 47:41

Give us you.

Speaker 47:44

Holy holy.

Speaker 47:49

Yes.

Speaker 47:50

Here, sir, here sir.

Speaker 47:52

Yes.

Speaker 47:58

Hands off, handsome, handsome.

Speaker 48:02

Yes.

Presenter8:09

Here, sir, one of the Harrow School songs sung by pupils at the Royal Albert Hall in November 2000, and memories for you, Bill Deeds, of Churchill, Profumo and other old Haruvians. You started work as a general reporter, and early on it it seems to me you began to write about the unemployed, about poor children, about victims, really much as you do today in Africa, interestingly. You were doing it then in the thirties, starving children and so on.

Lord Deedes8:30

I'm gonna

Presenter8:37

And and you were on the spot, I know, in in South Wales, when Edward the Eighth uttered those words, something must be done, weren't you?

Lord Deedes8:46

Yes, it was just before the end of Edward the Eighth's reign. He was down in South Wales. He was a Dallas top outside Master Tydville.

Lord Deedes8:54

And massive unemployment, 43% it was in Master Tidrill.

Lord Deedes8:59

And he looked round and he said, These works have brought these men here.

Lord Deedes9:02

Something must be done to bring them back.

Lord Deedes9:06

And it was the something must be done thing that caught on. It sort of echoed round the world. And we decided to launch an appeal that was the Early Morning Post. We launched an appeal for children of the unemployed.

Lord Deedes9:18

I remember organising it all. It was a marvellous marvellous effort. And then on Christmas Day I went down to South Wales, I think it was, and watched the postman going round. He didn't go round very much, ordinarily.

Lord Deedes9:33

And he went round distributing these gifts, and I thought it was all very well worth while.

Presenter9:37

Yeah.

Presenter9:39

And then, of course, moving on a few years, you were there, as I said in the introduction, when Chamberlain came back from Munich with the piece of paper.

Lord Deedes9:48

Yeah, I moved over the telegraph and brought us up by then brought up the Morning Post.

Presenter9:52

But were you did you feel objective about it? Were you just there to report the story, or or did you have very strong views about appeasement?

Lord Deedes9:52

But are you doing

Lord Deedes10:00

I had strong views, because I was doing civil defense of the telegraph, and I knew

Lord Deedes10:04

How very badly we were prepared against an aerial war.

Lord Deedes10:10

So I had some hunch as to why Chamberlain felt it necessary to go and see Hitler, not once, but three times. It was three visits, and I saw him off on one of them from Heston in a small plane, and I saw him back Munich that terrible night when he came back and said this is peace in our time, and we all doubted it.

Lord Deedes10:31

Uh no, I don't think we did all doubt it.

Lord Deedes10:33

Many of us were deeply relieved there wasn't going to be a war tomorrow.

Lord Deedes10:39

I was too wrapped up in the story really. There was a there were there were several people in the telegraph office, Victor Gordon Lennox, the diplomatic correspondent, and others, who were very sceptical.

Lord Deedes10:51

And at that impressionable age I rather tended to take my view from other people.

Lord Deedes10:56

I was pretty sure war was coming anyway. I was pretty sure of that.

Lord Deedes11:01

But I wasn't anything like as far seeing as some of my friends.

Presenter11:07

Record number three.

Lord Deedes11:08

One of the jollier things I thought about the pre war, the war, and the post war years

Lord Deedes11:14

was no coward. I regarded him as a very

Lord Deedes11:19

Well, a talent to amuse is an understatement. He's a heroic figure to me, no old card.

Lord Deedes11:24

And one of the things I first remember from him

Lord Deedes11:28

Is carried in a room with a view

Speaker 411:30

Uh

Lord Deedes11:30

Maroon with a view.

Speaker 411:33

You and you and no one to worry us, no one to hurry us.

Lord Deedes11:36

And no one to worry us, no one to harm us.

Speaker 411:43

Best film we found.

Speaker 411:48

We'll gaze at the sky and wire.

Speaker 411:54

Guess what it's all about, then we will figure out why.

Lord Deedes11:55

What it's all

Presenter12:00

Noel Coward, of course, and a room with a view. The other war uh you knew about Bildees before the Second World War was of course the Abyssinian War, nineteen thirty five. You'd have been twenty two and you went out there for the uh the Morning Post.

Lord Deedes12:13

He was young, unmarried, ideal to send out to a war nobody quite knew where Vicina was.

Lord Deedes12:19

or whether I'd ever come back. So I was the perfect candidate for that.

Presenter12:23

But how did you how did you do it? How did you begin? How did you know what to do? Who helped you? Who advised you?

Lord Deedes12:29

Well, I found my own way to Addis Ababa, more or less, with quarter a ton of luggage. The morning post didn't expect to see me back, so I was very amply supplied with everything I could need for months and months and months.

Presenter12:42

What they thought they were sending you to your death, did they?

Lord Deedes12:45

Well, they weren't sure what they were sending me to, but they thought I might be away a long time. Anyway, they provided me. They they were very good sent me out with lots of stuff. And there was Evelyn War, living out of a suitcase, who thought the whole thing hilarious. That's really what

Lord Deedes12:59

He rose about in s in scoop everybody's luggage.

Presenter13:03

But he he was there for the Daily Mail, wasn't he?

Lord Deedes13:05

Well, he was partly there for the Daily Mail. He was really there to write two books a serious one, which was called War in Abyssinia, and a novel, which was called Scoop.

Lord Deedes13:16

and the publishers had all that organised.

Presenter13:18

What we should explain there, of course, for anyone who hasn't spotted it, is that that you and this massive luggage you describe were the the kind of prototype for Evelyn Waugh's William Boot of The Beast, the newspaper The Beast, for his novel Scope.

Lord Deedes13:34

Yeah.

Lord Deedes13:35

Even more rarely.

Lord Deedes13:37

made any character in his novel identifiable.

Lord Deedes13:41

And I'm certainly not identifiable in Scoop, but my luggage caused me mirth and it features, as it were, and I think my naivety.

Lord Deedes13:51

because I wasn't a very experienced war correspondent, first war I'd ever been to. I think that rang a bell with him, because whatever else he was in the book, who remember William Boot was pretty naive.

Presenter14:01

He was shambolic and very funny.

Lord Deedes14:04

Yes. Well, I was neither shambolic nor very funny. I was just competent. I just about I was very lucky, because I sent very, very truncated cables from Addis Ababa, and they were written up by a brilliant man in the office, our theatre critic.

Lord Deedes14:19

John Truin. And they appeared as Golden Prose in the Morning Post, and everybody it had to appear under my name. Nobody could say I was sending skeleton cables which were being written up in the office. So I got more credit than I deserved. Not a great slice of luck in my life.

Presenter14:35

Record number four. Tell me about that.

Lord Deedes14:37

I do remember one very low point in the war when I didn't

Lord Deedes14:41

honestly see to myself that I couldn't discuss it with anyone how we were going to win. And my wife and I went to a cinema in York. We were stationed up there and she was living up there.

Lord Deedes14:53

And we saw a film called Danvis Moonlife.

Lord Deedes14:56

which had a music in it was part of Warsaw Concerto. And it's always stuck in my head as being a time when I was being a bit faithless. I did not see end of forty two, beginning of forty three, didn't see how we were going to win.

Presenter15:43

Part of the Warsaw Concerto played by Louis Kentner with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Muir Matheson, and that was from the original soundtrack of the film Dangerous Moonlight.

Presenter15:52

You've mentioned Bill Deeds, your luck a lot, and obviously your luck was with you in the war. You survived it for a start.

Presenter16:01

But also and I know you don't much care for talking about this, but I want to ask you, if I may. You you won the Military Cross, and it said in the citation he showed complete disregard for his own safety. So there was luck, if you like. Tell me but just tell me what happened. Where were you?

Lord Deedes16:17

You have to put all this in the context of war.

Lord Deedes16:21

Or

Lord Deedes16:22

medals for gallantry, MC's, whatever they are, very honourable in their own right. But they p have to be put into context that when a nation is fighting for its life, people will do things that they would not do at any other time.

Presenter16:36

Calix

Presenter16:37

And what did you do?

Lord Deedes16:39

Well, we we did what we were told and on this particular occasion I think I was told to attack a bridge, or get a bridge over some canal.

Lord Deedes16:49

And it was a bit of a folly, really. We couldn't get any support from guns and so on, and so we started to cross the bridge and got mown down. So they called it off. Then we had to get the wounded back. And I lost I mean

Lord Deedes17:03

The sorrow of c commit I mean, I lost quite a lot of chaps and and two two junior officers.

Lord Deedes17:09

who I felt rather to blame for. So it wasn't a happy time at all. That's why I don't talk about it more than I can help.

Presenter17:16

But it must have changed your life. Uh something like that happening to you had to be mocking

Lord Deedes17:20

It marks me instinctively with a small sense, I suppose, of obligation. I wouldn't overdo it.

Lord Deedes17:26

In the war altogether I well I lost a number of young officers whose lives would still be going and uh prosperous and successful, no doubt.

Lord Deedes17:36

No, I'm quite serious about this. I think that people who went through the war and survived it owed a bit more to posterity than than other people.

Presenter17:47

But you've talked about this this obligation it left you with, and and and as you say, you don't want to overstate it. But I wonder if that may be why you you go to war zones as you do these days, actually, in Africa, and you you report on terrible injuries and visit hospitals and so on. Are you in in a sense fulfilling that obligation?

Lord Deedes18:06

I wouldn't make too much of it. I

Lord Deedes18:09

I think it's more because if you achieve a bit of success in public life and you become there's no point in it being an Ordez, you can't eat it and unless you make it useful to other people. And you can be useful to aid organisations and people who I try and help. A and and that's the way it is, isn't it, really?

Lord Deedes18:27

Record number five.

Lord Deedes18:30

The one memory I carry out of the war.

Lord Deedes18:33

it still sort of echoes in me sometimes, is the sound of soldiers singing sentimental songs.

Lord Deedes18:41

After an answer concert. Sometimes we have an answer concert just before

Lord Deedes18:45

We were going into battle.

Lord Deedes18:47

And the voices of the soldiers singing songs like From the Time You Say Goodbye.

Lord Deedes18:53

still stay in my mind, is one of the things I really remember from the Second World War.

Speaker 418:58

For prayer within your heart.

Speaker 419:06

That the time will surely fly

Speaker 419:15

The day when we shall meet again From the time you say goodbye.

Presenter19:29

From the time you say goodbye, the parting song sung by Vera Lynn with members of Her Majesty's Forces. So, Bill Deed, your political career began in nineteen fifty when you became MP for Ashford, near to home in Kent. Um you were apparently surprised to be chosen because Ted Heath was running against you, wasn't he?

Lord Deedes19:40

Me to have

Lord Deedes19:47

Yet I was surprised to be chosen, really. I'd only just settled down after the war.

Presenter19:51

Why do you think you beat him?

Lord Deedes19:54

The point was, really, that ancestors of mine had fought that part of the country.

Lord Deedes19:59

for a long time.

Lord Deedes20:01

And so history stood on my side, you might say.

Lord Deedes20:07

In those days the Tory party thought more of the pass than was good for them, and they thought, therefore, my track record, or the track record of my ancestors, gave me a sporting chance.

Presenter20:18

Anyway, in you went. You served four Prime Ministers, I think. You went in as a junior minister, I think, Housing and served Churchill, you served under Eden, and then you went into the Cabinet under Macmillan and Hume, I think, weren't you?

Lord Deedes20:23

I was in

Lord Deedes20:30

Yes. I mean, I came out of out of junior government to being a junior minister because well I couldn't afford it. I mean the the pay was very low. They they they get much better paid nowadays.

Lord Deedes20:41

And I got hauled back by Macmillan, who got into deep, deep trouble with the Night of the Long Knives in nineteen sixty two, where he got rid of so many members of the Cabinet he had to scratch round to find new ones, and I was one of the ones he pitched.

Presenter20:55

But he got, of course, into even deeper trouble in 1963 with the Profumo affair. Now, you.

Lord Deedes21:00

Yes, we had trouble with that and then we had to review everything. I would say the same thing about that. I think.

Lord Deedes21:06

Jack really, Jack Berfumer's work, Toyne Bihor and Sans, since then, has earned a reprieve, but people still like to talk about it and write about it, and

Lord Deedes21:18

It was a difficult time, no doubt about it difficult for the Cabinet, difficult for me, because I had been involved in talking to Jack one night when somebody made an allegation in the House of Commons, and some absurd hours two in the morning we summoned Jack, and six of us sat in judgment.

Presenter21:34

But he made that was when he made the false statement, really. He denied there'd been any impropriety in his relationship with Christian Keeler.

Lord Deedes21:38

That's it, that's it. And I sometimes wonder whether we hadn't if we hadn't had this court-martial at two in the morning, how far we contributed to his downfall by just doing that. I've often thought of that, often thought of that.

Presenter21:52

You typed up that statement.

Lord Deedes21:54

Yes, it is. I'm a contributing factor to the downfall.

Presenter21:56

Why you

Presenter22:00

But why did you type it up?

Presenter22:04

Yeah.

Lord Deedes22:05

Because I would because I among my modest accomplishments, I I learned to be a touch typist. My mother sent me to a proper school to be learned just before I started to work. So I had a typewriter. None of the other ministers dreamt of having typewriters.

Presenter22:16

Therefore, you know, you you saw the man whom you knew, you saw him speaking, and then you went away and you typed it up. Could you tell he wasn't telling the truth? Did you guess?

Lord Deedes22:28

I believe what I heard. As I say, two in the morning is not the best time to interview somebody if you really wish to know what the truth is. Certainly sitting round a table, hauling somebody out of bed. He'd he'd be his house was surrounded by the press.

Lord Deedes22:43

And then was woken up and ordered to come to the House of Commons. I'm only saying I don't think the circumstances were conducive.

Lord Deedes22:51

Discovering the truth.

Presenter22:54

Did you stay in touch with him?

Lord Deedes22:56

Oh, yes, we're friends. Oh, rather, absolutely, yes, indeed. That's one of the reasons I find it's hard luck on him that this story goes on and on. Pe many people have done worse things in public life with Jack, and haven't paid back.

Presenter22:57

Oh, rather.

Lord Deedes23:09

He paid back.

Lord Deedes23:11

Nobody can deny that.

Presenter23:13

Record number six.

Lord Deedes23:15

I I've reached the age now when I don't think people take enough notice.

Lord Deedes23:20

Of the beautiful things that happen in life, the flowers that shine at different times of year.

Lord Deedes23:26

And so occasionally.

Lord Deedes23:29

Usually happens after I've seen people, too many people, using their mobile telephones and thinking of nothing else.

Lord Deedes23:35

Occasionally I do in my Monday column in the telegraph.

Lord Deedes23:39

remind people of a scent in the garden, a flower to smell, a bird to watch, something that is really worth while, makes life worth living. And I think Vaughan Williams expresses it very well.

Presenter24:52

Part of Vaughan Williams' The Lark Ascending, played by Tasman Little with the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Andrew Davies.

Presenter24:59

Such a long life, as we've said, Bill Deeds, we we just can't cover it all. It's all fascinating. But I wouldn't be forgiven if I didn't ask you about the Princess of Wales, because, as I said in the introduction, you went with her on her last working trip a few weeks before she died, when she went to Bosnia to publicise the campaign to get rid of land mines. You were obviously very, very impressed by her.

Lord Deedes25:23

Yes, she was a personal heroine to me because

Lord Deedes25:31

Working for some of the aid organizations, I had become very smitten by the frightful damage being done in poor countries by landmines.

Lord Deedes25:39

I saw too many children crippled and and from nineteen ninety one onwards I tried to campaign about this a bit, much with the help of the Daily Telegraph.

Lord Deedes25:49

But until Dinah Princess Wales came along, nobody really took much notice. And she changed the world's mood on this subject. That's why she's.

Lord Deedes25:58

She'd always been big to me. She was wonderful with people who'd been crippled. Um

Presenter26:04

What do people mean though when they say that she was wonderful with people? What did she do? You mean?

Lord Deedes26:08

Well, she managed to bring them comfort in a way that I hadn't seen done before. She was a mixture of a sort of princess and a hospital nurse. I remember a widow we went to, a young widow, she'd just lost her young husband because he'd been fishing and he'd fished and his rod had caught a mine in the water or something and had gone off and killed him.

Lord Deedes26:31

And I remember she didn't say a word that there was a language barrier anyway. We were in some part of Bosnia.

Lord Deedes26:37

and she put an arm round this woman's shoulder.

Lord Deedes26:40

and brought um the eyes could see, I mean immediate comfort.

Lord Deedes26:44

And I mean, to do it with silence, to bring condolences with silence, is quite quite something. So she had this gift.

Presenter26:51

Uh

Lord Deedes26:52

Yeah.

Presenter26:52

For her personally, did you get because you talked to her a lot, I know, and you helped her write her speeches and so on did you get the impression that it was a new beginning for her, that she'd found something effective to do?

Lord Deedes27:04

Yes, I did. She lived long enough to know that the work she had done on the mines business had had a response, that it had created a stir that was the thing to create a stir, make the public feel the horror of the thing. She achieved that.

Lord Deedes27:22

And I think that was very satisfactory to her.

Presenter27:25

And and then she died and oh

Lord Deedes27:27

And she died. Do you do you remember where you were? She died and I I remember going to the Abbey feeling that, you know, um we're really wondering what would happen next as she was as she was dead. Um

Lord Deedes27:43

My goodness, I admired the way in which, with every sort of there must have been a lot of contesting voices Westminster Abbey put that service together.

Lord Deedes27:54

To get Elton John into Westminster Abbey, I thought, was remarkable, and yet it fitted perfectly.

Speaker 428:01

Even though he tried

Speaker 428:06

Truth brings us to tears All our words cannot express The joy you brought us

Speaker 428:13

Through the years.

Speaker 428:17

And it seems to me.

Speaker 428:19

Lived your life like a candle in the wind

Speaker 428:24

Never fading with the sunset

Speaker 428:28

When Rain City

Presenter28:30

Elton John, singing the version of Candle in the Wind, which he dedicated to Diana, Princess of Wales. You um had a bit of a shock earlier this year, Bill, out in India, didn't you? A swift reminder that you were not immortal.

Lord Deedes28:41

Well, I went off to Indian earthquake.

Lord Deedes28:46

And it was a bit of an expedition, really, that Indian earthquake. It was quite emotional. And we finished up five hours in a helicopter, and my companions said they didn't think I looked too good, and I was dragging my left foot, etc. And then I had a very, very, very, very small stroke. And the amazing thing was this: I went to an Indian hospital in Ahmedabad, a private hospital.

Lord Deedes29:08

Sunday evening, and within an hour.

Lord Deedes29:11

They'd done a scan, taken blood tests, etc., etc., and they said all is well. You behave yourself, you'll be okay.

Presenter29:17

Were you behaving yourself? Because as I read it, between the E C G and the brain scan you were finishing off your copy for the Daily Telegraph.

Lord Deedes29:25

Uh no but yes. Uh I I've written most of the story and I just wanted to get it right for them.

Presenter29:32

But I it has to be said.

Presenter29:35

It doesn't need saying, but let me say it. You haven't exactly had a boring life, have you? I mean, if you stopped working now, you know, you've still got so much to.

Presenter29:44

Sit there and look back across.

Lord Deedes29:47

Yeah. I w all journalists live with a fair good bet. I do find base of life quite important to me, yes. Yes, to give herself time to smell the flowers, as Walter Hager used to say. But otherwise keep at it, keep at it. And I enjoy the life I lead now, very much. I enjoy my life now as much as I have ever enjoyed it.

Presenter30:07

And um b can I ask, without being offensive, how I mean, would you is that how you'd like to end your life?

Lord Deedes30:13

Of course, yes, yes, yes. I often say to Doctor who kinda took me over, I say, You know, I have a man that died in his boots and not in his bed, so don't worry about it. He looks very relieved when I tell him that.

Presenter30:26

Tell me about your last record.

Lord Deedes30:28

One of my favorite places is Africa. I've come to see that a lot of people would suffer a lot more.

Lord Deedes30:35

If we didn't have aid agencies, if we didn't have some of the young people we've got in this country who go out, live very uncomfortably and sometimes dangerously, trying to help poor people in Africa and Asia to lead a better life. And not long ago I remember going to a school in Zimbabwe which was still getting supplementary rations because of the drought. And the school rallied round and we all sang together God bless Africa and it was a very moving moment.

Speaker 431:22

Oh sing, single.

Speaker 431:27

Oh, see, see brain

Presenter31:32

God Bless Africa, South Africa's national anthem, and that was from the original soundtrack of the film Cry Freedom.

Presenter31:39

If you could only take one of those eight records, Bill, which one would you t choose?

Lord Deedes31:44

I think I take

Lord Deedes31:47

God bless Africa.

Presenter31:48

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

Lord Deedes31:53

Am I allowed to take the original prayer book?

Lord Deedes31:56

I have one.

Presenter31:56

Yeah.

Lord Deedes31:57

Yes. Yes, that's what I take.

Lord Deedes31:59

Without any amendments. The unamended prayer book is what I take. Because if you really want to

Lord Deedes32:08

See good writing, there it is.

Presenter32:10

And your luxury.

Lord Deedes32:12

For choice, Mr. Trumper's aftershave. Ever since the war I've used two products of his, Eucris for my thinning hairline and aftershave, and the aftershave is delicious. But I'd like to keep clean shaven on the desert on, so the aftershave would be very helpful, probably. I have to do it with a shell, so that would be my luxury.

Presenter32:34

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

Speaker 232:44

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