Lord Roll

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 was a public servant and is now a banker. The American economist JK Galbraith called him the most accomplished negotiator in public affairs of the last fifty years. He was part of the team which implemented the Marshall Plan. He worked with Edward Heath on Britain's negotiations to enter the common market. And he helped Harold Wilson and George Brown create that bold but ill-fated initiative, the Department of Economic Affairs. Altogether a very British Mandarin, you might think. But this distinguished pillar of public life was born in a remote corner of Eastern Europe. His parents spoke no English, and he only found himself a British citizen after the consequences of the First World War encouraged him to leave his homeland. Now 93 years old, he still travels far and wide on business and is otherwise at work most days in the city, where his negotiating skills remain much respected. It's great fun negotiating, he says, and it helps if you have a sporting instinct. He is Eric Rolle. Lord Roll, forgive me, if you will, by first of all pausing to marvel at your your age and what you do at it. You are remarkably active. Is there an elixir, a formula that we should know about?

Lord Roll1:43

I wish I could tell you all I know is that I keep going, and the best way to keep going is to keep going. I think the main thing I can say is you've got to keep interested. The minute

Lord Roll1:56

You don't, you're finished. I don't know whether you know the version, Old bankers never die, they only lose interest. Well, this is very true. If you lose interest, you might as well give up.

Presenter2:06

And a glass or two of red wine helps, I gather.

Lord Roll2:09

Yes. I asked my doctor not long ago whether I should give up alcohol. He said, How much do you drink? I said, Not very much, but I always have two or three glasses of red wine. Keep it up, keep it up, he said. So I said, You're the sort of doctor to have.

Presenter2:20

So I said you

Presenter2:23

What you do and have done in and you've in fact you've had three careers because you were an academic first and then a a a public servant and now a banker what you've always done, as I quoted Gal Braith as saying, is you've been a negotiator. This is a very specific skill and I really want to ask you about it because it seems to me what you have to have above all other things is enormous patience.

Lord Roll2:44

That's perfectly true. And not only patience. I think you must be mindful of the interests of the other party. The best negotiation is the one where both parties emerge feeling happy and reasonably satisfied. Is that possible?

Presenter2:57

Is that placed?

Lord Roll2:59

But it's very important t to at any rate to be mindful of it.

Presenter3:03

Certainly, but again, let me continue with the Gal Braith quote, because he says he wrote that you'd encountered more uninformed, ignorant, absurd or genuinely perverse figures than most. And of course you've negotiated with an awful lot of top people and sat alongside an awful lot of Prime Ministers and Presidents. So would you agree with that statement?

Lord Roll3:24

Well, I'm afraid since the majority of mankind probably responds corresponds with this description, it's un inevitable. Yes, I I have met some stupid people, some uh opinionated people, some people with whom it was very difficult to get on with, but some or other I think patience is very important.

Presenter3:43

Well

Lord Roll3:43

Very important.

Presenter3:43

I want to ask you about some of the people we know whom you've sat alongside, but we'll come to that. Let's first of all have your first record.

Lord Roll3:51

The first record is the last movement from uh Mozart's Clarinet Quintette, one of the last ones, I think it's five eighty one, which I regard as Mozart at his most sublime.

Presenter5:01

The end of Mozart's Clarinet Quintet in A major, played by Gervaise de Payet, with members of the Malos Ensemble of London.

Presenter5:09

As far as I can read about you, Lord Roll, you don't seem to have had, and we talked about your patience, a tempestuous relationship with anyone, but I suspect that George Brown at the Department of Economic Affairs came closest, didn't it?

Lord Roll5:24

Yes, in a way, he did. He was a very intelligent man. He had very good instincts.

Lord Roll5:31

He had

Lord Roll5:32

Terrible temper.

Lord Roll5:33

I think his frustration at not winning the leadership battle against Harold Wilson left a permanent mark on him.

Lord Roll5:42

Drink is supposed to have played a part, but in my experience there was no real correlation between his.

Lord Roll5:49

behaviour and his temper and drink sometimes a glass of sherry would

Lord Roll5:55

have a terrible effect on him, and sometimes half a bottle of gin wouldn't.

Presenter5:59

But did you have stand up arguments with him?

Lord Roll5:59

But did you have

Lord Roll6:01

We had many arguments, but oddly enough, the worst arguments were about totally trivial things. I remember one occasion I came into his room late one evening, and he said, Where's my car?

Lord Roll6:12

So I've no idea. Where did you leave it? He said, Well, the driver dropped me off here and I don't know where it is. Find my car I said, I'm terribly sorry, I've got a lot of responsibilities and I'm always ready to serve you, but I can't really go finding your car. And the next morning he apologised, which he usually did after a temper tantrum of that kind.

Presenter6:32

Because the department, it was an odd department, Department of Economic Affairs. It was set up in a way to dilute the influence of the Treasury, wasn't it?

Lord Roll6:40

Well, you know, I'll tell you something about that because I remember that Tommy Barlog, who had a great responsibility in inspiring Harold Wilson to set up this new department, when it was set up, I and my senior colleagues were given absolutely splendid offices on the main floor of the Treasury, but a long, long way away from the front.

Lord Roll7:02

And Tommy came to me and he said, You've ended up exactly where I thought you would, at the back side of the treasury.

Lord Roll7:09

I'm sorry to say I can't say it was wrong.

Presenter7:12

What about Harold Wilson himself, who of course did win the leadership? How how would you summarise his effectiveness as Prime Minister?

Lord Roll7:18

Well, I tell you, I think Harold Wilson was extremely intelligent. He'd been a Don. But I fear that he once he get got into politics, he thought that politics was essentially a game of manoeuvring.

Lord Roll7:34

And therefore, I think he was sometimes too clever by half.

Presenter7:38

Yeah.

Lord Roll7:38

And lacked a certain amount of vision, which you, after all, you have to have as Prime Minister.

Presenter7:43

He of course had his Alastair Campbell figure, didn't he, in Joe Haynes, the generalist PR man.

Lord Roll7:49

Joe Haynes says you see this was another thing, but this is an occupational hazard, I think, of politicians.

Lord Roll7:56

PR and Harold Wilson, whenever we had a meeting, particularly with foreign dignitaries, he always had Joe Haynes, and immediately after it was over they would go into a corner and he said, Now what do we tell the boys, Joe? That was the first thing. In other words, what do you tell the press?

Presenter8:14

So spin is not a novel invention at all.

Lord Roll8:16

I don't think so. I don't think so. It's been that f for a long time.

Presenter8:21

Tell me about your second record.

Lord Roll8:23

Anikleinen Nachtmusik. Now it has a special meaning for me because when I was about twelve I tried to learn totally unsuccessfully the violin. But I got into the school band briefly and Anne Kleinen Nachtmusik was our party piece.

Presenter9:35

Part of the first movement of Mozart's serenade in G. Einekleine Nachtmusik, played by the Vienna Chamber Ensemble.

Presenter9:42

And memories for you, Eric Rowell, of trying to learn the violin. This in, as I mentioned, a remote corner of Europe, of the Austro Hungarian Empire, in the early years of the last century. Can you can you describe it to me, this place?

Lord Roll9:54

Well, it was the capital of one of the provinces of Austria-Hungary, the Grand Duchy of Bukovina, the land of the beaches. It changed hands a number of times. In nineteen eighteen it became Romanian, and then after this war it was part of the Moldavian Republic, and now it's part of the Ukraine.

Presenter10:16

But in those early years, before the First World War, um, you went to a small village school.

Lord Roll10:21

That's right. We lived in we lived in a village just outside Chernovitz. And the village school had, as far as I remember, only one teacher, the head teacher who taught everything.

Presenter10:31

And there was even a village wet nurse, I I understand.

Lord Roll10:34

That's right.

Lord Roll10:36

this very sturdy

Lord Roll10:38

Peasant woman, Marie.

Lord Roll10:41

was the one who nursed me.

Presenter10:44

But at home

Lord Roll10:45

It was quite common in those days.

Presenter10:46

Of course. But at home life was was very full, I understand. I mean, it was quite an intellectual house full of books.

Lord Roll10:52

Oh yes, very much so. We also had in the dining room two huge

Lord Roll10:59

Uh German encyclopedias.

Lord Roll11:02

And they were kept in the dining room because the questions usually arose over meals, and they had to be looked up immediately, so the encyclopedias had to be handy. And I think all this has left a mark on me. I still love looking up things.

Presenter11:17

Then of course the First World War broke out. Do you remember that moment?

Lord Roll11:21

Yes, I do, because we were away in the mountains on holiday and suddenly we heard that uh the Russians had occupied our little village. We also heard that our house with many others had been burnt down.

Lord Roll11:36

I think, if I remember rightly, it was the only time I saw my father cry. My mother was much more sturdy in that respect, but they were very upset, needed to say, because we were there just with the clothes we had for our holiday and nothing else. So what did you do?

Presenter11:47

So that

Lord Roll11:49

Well, we uh got on a on a cart with a couple of horses and we started trekking north through s through Transylvania. Then we went to Budapest and then we went to Vienna and that's where we stayed the rest of the war.

Presenter12:04

So you were refugees, really?

Lord Roll12:05

We were refugees in Vienna, that's right.

Presenter12:08

Next piece of music.

Lord Roll12:10

This is Mozart again, and it's an aria from Don Giovanni. It's the one I fell in love with when I first heard it at the age of fifteen. It's Leporello's account of the conquests of his master.

Speaker 212:23

Adam Elmer

Speaker 212:25

Yes, beneath, apologetic, and the men.

Lord Roll12:30

Oh, Lord, we make him.

Speaker 212:34

Etré comés, au servé, et tré de commer.

Speaker 212:44

And just a ten to a one.

Speaker 212:52

Schenpoinfranchurkia, Northern Tona, Minispia.

Speaker 213:02

Chinese vanja sonjan me liter.

Speaker 213:11

Literally.

Speaker 213:14

I'm not sure if I can do it.

Speaker 213:16

How many eighty teeth don't need?

Speaker 213:19

But unceau necessarily.

Presenter13:23

Samuel Raini as Leparello, singing the catalogue aria from Act One of Mozart's Don Giovanni, with the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Ricardo Mutti. Lot of cynicism in in that aria Eric Role. The least sweet of the whole work. I wonder why it appeals to you.

Speaker 213:23

Uh

Speaker 213:34

But

Lord Roll13:34

Oh yeah, it

Lord Roll13:38

I don't know. Maybe because I was fifteen.

Presenter13:40

But I'm just interested in the the the um business of cynicism because it is not part of your makeup at all. No, no, no, not at all. And neither is sarcasm.

Lord Roll13:46

Yeah.

Presenter13:49

And yet, again, you have sat alongside people who have wonderful lines in sarcasm, haven't you? Like John Maynard Keynes, for example.

Lord Roll13:58

I I wouldn't say it was cynical. He was very worldly wise, and he was also very impatient.

Lord Roll14:04

He was impatient of people who had a high position in life and in his opinion didn't live up to it. And yet he was extremely kind to younger people and he certainly was with me. But he could be very rough and outspoken. I've seen him many times in Washington, for example, during and after the war in negotiation.

Lord Roll14:24

And also, of course, he coined quite a number of things. For instance, there was a series of telegrams between London and Washington during one of his negotiations, and the one from London to Washington had the code name Nabob.

Lord Roll14:40

The one from Washington to London had the code name Baboon. And I said to him one time, Why did you choose Baboon? He said, Well, I found in some Elizabethan literature the phrase, His face reminds me of the buttocks of a baboon toiling up the hillside. And that's what he put in, because he thought his opposite number in Washington resembled that. He couldn't stand him. He said, Crowley is has his ear so close to the ground that he cannot hear an upright man.

Presenter15:14

So let's go back to your life a bit. They were in Vienna speaking German so far. By the time you go back to where you came from, it's become Romania and you have to learn Romanian. Uh

Lord Roll15:24

12.

Presenter15:25

At what point do you start learning English?

Lord Roll15:28

Well, English sometime during that period we had a

Lord Roll15:32

lady she was a sort of almost semi governess.

Lord Roll15:36

She taught me English by making men learn Shakespeare by heart. I I still remember the first few lines of Julius Caesar, which she taught me.

Presenter15:42

Ooh.

Presenter15:43

And was that the reason, then, that you took to English so well that you decided

Lord Roll15:43

And it was

Lord Roll15:46

I think it must have been one of the factors.

Presenter15:50

Because it was not a common thing to do. Others, I think, of your generation were going to Western universities, to Rome and to Trieste and to

Lord Roll15:55

They went to Paris, to Vienna of course, above all Paris. Some went to Munich and Berlin.

Presenter15:57

So

Presenter16:01

But you chose Birmingham.

Lord Roll16:01

But you know,

Lord Roll16:04

I went partly because I wanted to go to Birmingham, which had the first faculty of oil engineering and refining.

Lord Roll16:12

Oil was a great thing in Romania. It was one of great oil producers, and I thought, well, that's where I'm going to end up. Of course, once I got to Birmingham, I discovered I wasn't very interested in chemistry, and so I switched to economics.

Presenter16:18

We end up.

Presenter16:25

Next record.

Lord Roll16:27

This is one of Haydn's string quartets. Haydn to me is a sort of composer for all seasons. And with Beethoven, with Mozart, you have to choose what you want to hear, depending on how you feel. But Haydn you can put on a string quartet or a symphony at any time.

Speaker 217:27

Uh

Presenter17:45

Part of the first movement of Haydn's string quartet in D minor played by the Smithson string quartet.

Presenter17:50

You had um your life is so long we can't go into every corner of it, but certainly, um, Lord Royle, you had wonderful academic success in Birmingham, you went to Hull, you became a professor in your late twenties of economics, you you wrote a

Speaker 217:53

Yeah.

Presenter18:03

a book that's still much respected on economics about that time too, and you became a British citizen. It seems to me that what you did in Hall is is in many ways what your father had done in your corner of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, because you you created around you or became part of a group of like-minded intellectuals, didn't you? But this time it's England and it's the thirties, and your preoccupations must have been

Presenter18:27

Quite different from the literary

Lord Roll18:29

Yeah.

Lord Roll18:30

Yes, I think that's right. I think I still consider myself very much a product of the thirties. We had a little club called the Art and Life Club.

Lord Roll18:40

And there were a lot of very interesting people there. For instance, we made great friends with a young man who came to Hull to teach mathematics, Jakob Brunovsky. He died rather young. He did this tremendous television series. Ascent of Man.

Presenter18:55

The Ascent of Manness.

Lord Roll18:58

And I think many, many of us thought he had a heart attack immediately afterwards, recovered from that and very shortly had another one of which he died.

Speaker 219:03

Mm-hmm.

Lord Roll19:07

We all think that it was the strain and the work involved in this series that undermined his health. But he was one of the principal leaders.

Presenter19:16

But then of course in the thirties again there were the politics, the rise of fascism uh in Italy and Nazism.

Lord Roll19:21

Yeah.

Presenter19:24

Yes, and and and then you would have witnessed from there the the the abandonment of Czechoslovakia, uh all of that. That must have disturbed you very deeply.

Lord Roll19:32

Oh, yes. I think uh Bruno and I and my wife wrote a little sort of pamphlet. It was never published, we just distributed it out, all about the action of Her Majesty's Government in regard to the rise of fascism and Nazism. And needless to say it was quite critical. And of course one got to hear about people one knew, friends, children of friends and so on, that I'd known and that who'd fallen victim to the Nazis or to the fascists in Italy. But uh of course by nineteen thirty nine when the war broke out I I was going to America.

Speaker 219:50

Mm, mm.

Presenter19:51

Yeah.

Presenter20:13

Hence your next record talk.

Lord Roll20:14

Well, this is a piece from the Dust Bowl Ballads. When we went to America, my wife and I, the memory of the depression.

Lord Roll20:24

and the New Deal was still very much alive.

Lord Roll20:28

And so was the dust storms in Oklahoma, which virtually depopulated Oklahoma. And there was a splendid folk singer called Woody Guthrie, whom we heard then in the flesh, and who wrote these Dust Bowl ballads.

Speaker 320:45

From the southland and the droughtland come the wife and kids and me.

Speaker 320:53

And this old world is a hard world for a dust-bowled refugee.

Speaker 321:02

Yes, we ramble.

Speaker 321:04

And we roll.

Speaker 321:06

And the high weed That's our home

Speaker 321:11

It's a nab.

Speaker 321:13

Ending highway

Presenter21:15

Woody Guffery singing Dust Bowl Refugee. You you spent the war in Washington, Eric Roll, organising food and supplies to Britain. You're at the nerve center of the Allied effort. And then from there

Speaker 321:15

Woody Guthrie

Presenter21:27

Eventually after the war you went to administer martial aid i in Paris, working alongside there Ernest Bevin, who by then was was the British Foreign Secretary, um, negotiating with Molotov. Now what can that have been like?

Lord Roll21:40

Well, it didn't last very long, I'm afraid, because the Russians under Molotov came in a huge delegation of about eighty people, and I remember very well there was a sort of ministerial meeting.

Lord Roll21:53

And Ernie came back to the embassy where we all were. And he came back and he said, He left uttering threats. Molotov with his eighty people had marched off. And he'd marched off because he realized

Presenter22:03

They

Lord Roll22:08

that this wasn't just a hand out and he was going to come and get a lot of dollars for nothing that the Americans were going to insist on a recovery programme for Europe.

Lord Roll22:20

But this programme involved certain principles of liberalization of trade and all that kind of thing, which the Russians at that stage were unprepared to accept.

Presenter22:29

So off

Lord Roll22:30

Yeah.

Presenter22:30

So out they walked. Yes. But of course, as you've written, and you've written books about this, what that was all moving towards, this reconstruction of Europe, was all leading towards a new Europe and the creation of a new concept, i.e., the common market. So, if we move on to that period, because again, you were very much involved in the early 60s alongside Edward Heath. Macmillan had sent Heath out to negotiate with De Gaulle. De Gaulle.

Presenter22:56

Was demanding to see us. You've written us the British naked at the time.

Lord Roll23:00

That's right. Je la Verne.

Lord Roll23:03

I had a very close friend who was probably the girl's chief assistant at the time, Olive Vonser, and Vonser said to me that he had said to the girl,

Lord Roll23:14

With the British. I'll tell you a story. There was a story of a Jewish boy who was.

Lord Roll23:20

encouraged to marry a a girl he didn't know, and he said, Oh, no, I won't think of marrying her until I see her without any clothes on So of course the parents were absolutely shocked.

Lord Roll23:31

However, finally they arranged for him to look through a keyhole into the next room where she was going to get undressed.

Lord Roll23:38

She got undressed, he looked through the keyhole and then he said, I don't like the shape of her nose. And he forms her said, I said this to the goal. Are you going to say that at the end of the negotiations? And the goal said, No, no, no, no, no.

Presenter23:50

But he did. But he did. It it it all ended uh as we know after all those intense negotiations with that resounding non that that sort of went across the world.

Lord Roll23:51

But he did.

Lord Roll23:59

Yeah.

Presenter24:01

But

Presenter24:02

Apparently, according to what you've written, it was a closer call than we

Lord Roll24:06

It was very close. In fact, Wormser said to me on the evening of the veto, he said, You have no idea how close we were to agreement and I got the impression that he himself didn't really know that the goal was going to say no on that famous fourteenth of January or whatever it was in sixty three.

Presenter24:24

But do you think he knew de Gaulle all along that he was going to say

Lord Roll24:27

Well

Lord Roll24:28

Nobody knows. Now, many people say that the McMillan-Kennedy agreement on nuclears, which happened I think in November whenever they got together

Presenter24:37

Yeah

Lord Roll24:38

Yes, that's right. W it was the last straw and that's what convinced um the goal that the British were always going to look towards America, never to Euro towards Europe. Maybe, maybe. I I'm still not absolutely convinced of that. I think he wasn't quite sure till the end, and then he decided maybe this is the better way.

Presenter24:58

Record number six.

Lord Roll24:59

This is a little French song, Edith Piaf, singing La Vien Rose. She sang this, I think it was in 1949.

Lord Roll25:09

when I was chairing a small group of four people who had been asked to recommend to the all the participants the division of Marshall Aid, the first tranche, about four billion dollars. And we retired to a hotel in the forest of Chantilly.

Lord Roll25:28

And there we worked it out. And she sang this just about that time. So it became, so to speak, the theme song of Martial Aid.

Speaker 225:43

Le voir la vientre i nagi d'modamour d'a moud de toure de som fa quar touchover.

Presenter25:59

Edith Bieff singing La Viengrose, Life in the Pink, the theme tune of Marchal Aid for Mike Castaway, Eric Rowe. Um, you you were you are deeply committed to Europe, Eric Rowland. From what I've read that you've written, you seem

Presenter26:14

Really, if one's plain speaking about it, to lay the blame pretty squarely o on us for not getting in there and leading from the front early on. You what you seem to imply, and you didn't quite say, but you're certainly implying it, is that we had a kind of inflated sense of our own economic importance, that we were too insular, too conservative.

Lord Roll26:33

I don't think it's quite that.

Lord Roll26:35

I was very conscious of uh

Lord Roll26:40

The dilemma or trilemma, if you like, that this country was in, I always said it was a three ring circus, that we stood at the center of the Commonwealth.

Lord Roll26:51

The Atlantic Community and Euro.

Lord Roll26:53

Now that was a very flattering unction to put to our souls, as Shakespeare would have said, that we stood in the middle of these three rings as a as a description of our difficulties of finding our way into life. Fine.

Lord Roll27:08

but as a solution to the problem.

Lord Roll27:11

It of course didn't work.

Presenter27:12

But if you had to put your money on the table now, and and again, fifty years on now, we're still sort of hovering on the brink of this big pool, aren't we? I mean, what would you say was our problem? Are we overcautious? Are we uninspired? What are we just plain mad in your hearing?

Lord Roll27:17

On the brink of this

Lord Roll27:27

Mad in your view. No, I don't think plain mad, but I think it's very difficult for us to make up our minds in view of our history. I mean, we've come a long, long way from the empire, workshop of the world. So it's not surprising that we find it very difficult to know what exactly we should do. But if you ask me whether I believe in this European destiny, I do. I know.

Presenter27:51

I know how difficult has it been over all these years, you know, and certainly as a civil servant in general, not specifically on Europe, to suppress your own personal views? How do you actually keep your own views under?

Presenter28:08

Uh

Lord Roll28:08

Well, I don't

Presenter28:09

Don't

Lord Roll28:09

Keep them all that much under. For one thing, I've written a little bit, and there I've let myself go moderately. Yes, but at the time.

Presenter28:09

Well Janda, for one thing I've

Presenter28:14

Yes, but at the time, at the time you would have done, that's that it's really the question one always has to ask the civil servant.

Lord Roll28:18

The question one always has to ask the civil servants.

Lord Roll28:22

I wasn't, so to speak, a civil servant from birth. I mean, I didn't start in the civil servant, and therefore I came in from an academic career. And all a lot of the people I met in the civil service I had met before in a different context. And therefore, there was a certain freedom of expression. And I was very lucky with ministers I mean, Cripps, for example, even George Brown, certainly Ted Heath. I could speak fairly freely to them, and they knew where my sympathies lay both on domestic and international affairs.

Presenter28:57

Record number seven.

Lord Roll28:58

It's from Offenbach's Bell Elene. I've been a great admirer of Offenbach for a long, long time because I regard him as the only great musician I know who has been a parodist and a satirist. And this is the song from Belle Lein where Paris tells uh the high priest whom he meets how he gave the apple to Venus and as a reward got Helen of Troy.

Speaker 229:25

Au monois dias circle dans a bois Qes dies plances La Pli Baldrois Evones pour journey lezon

Presenter29:52

Silent.

Speaker 230:03

Pro ce bois passing homme, ingenomes fre bour Se nois samatur t pom Vouvoi biar tableau

Presenter30:24

John Adler as Paris singing The Judgment of Paris from Act One of Ochenbach's La Belle Elene with the choir and orchestra of the Toulouse Capital, conducted by Michel Plasson.

Presenter30:34

Um you quit the civil service, um public life, Eric Rowland, in your late fifties and you've had a whole nother career since then as a banker in in Warburgs, one of our leading merchant banks. I mean, uh longer, I think, than your civil service.

Speaker 330:45

Yeah.

Presenter30:47

Which is where you are still to day, as I say, in the office most days, unless you're travelling abroad for them.

Speaker 330:47

Uh

Presenter30:53

Um, has that all been more fun, or does the game get even more serious when you're dealing directly with hard cash, people's money?

Lord Roll31:03

I find that there wasn't too much of a break between

Lord Roll31:07

Academic work.

Lord Roll31:09

public service and now merchant banking because there's this question of psychology.

Lord Roll31:16

Now, in academic work, psychology is not unimportant because you are teaching people, and therefore you have to establish the right sort of connection with your audience.

Lord Roll31:26

In the public service, of course, particularly when you're engaged in a lot of negotiation.

Lord Roll31:33

Psychology is also very important.

Lord Roll31:35

And in this job of investment banking psychology is absolutely vital. So there isn't all that difference.

Presenter31:43

You certainly, as far as as as Britton is concerned, began as an outsider, as we've heard. You've made your way right the way up to to the heart of the establishment in all kinds of ways, you know and you picked up a knighthood and a peerage along the way, and there you are, mandarin, banker, and so on.

Presenter32:01

Are you now? Do you feel British? Do you do you do you

Lord Roll32:03

Audience.

Lord Roll32:05

I tell you, somebody once asked me of my old friend Ennis Hamilton when he was editor of the Times.

Lord Roll32:11

Tell me, the thing I really want to know, what language do you dream in?

Lord Roll32:15

and I told him it was English.

Lord Roll32:17

And I think

Lord Roll32:20

I make Shakespeare responsible for that. I think language is after all I've long concluded that the essence of national identity is language. This is really what determines national identity. And anyone I say this to my friends who are Europhobes I said to them, Look, you needn't worry about national i identity. A nation that has Shakespeare as its greatest poet needn't worry about national identity.

Presenter32:53

Last record.

Lord Roll32:55

Now the last one is the second movement from Beethoven's Triple Concerto, the Largo. And my wife I think this and the clarinet quintet we played earlier were her two favorite pieces, and I love them too. So that's why I've chosen that as the last one.

Presenter34:14

Part of the second movement of Beethoven's Triple Concerto for piano, violin and cello, played by Mark Teltzer and Sophie Mutter and Jo Yo Ma with the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Herbert von Karian. Now, if you could only take one of those eight records, Erik, which one would you take?

Lord Roll34:30

I think I would take the clarinet quintet.

Lord Roll34:34

much as I love all the others, but I think I would take that.

Presenter34:37

And what about your book? You've got the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare in English or in your

Lord Roll34:41

In English or in Germany. Shakespeare will will do me, but if I have to take another one, I would want to take Goethe's Faust, and if I may, I would take it in the German, because that's what I was brought up in.

Presenter34:53

A new luxury.

Lord Roll34:54

As I shall be alone, nobody to talk to, I would very much like to have a little recorder with cassettes and spare batteries, so that I can talk to myself and perhaps record some of my thoughts, and maybe even do another book.

Presenter35:12

Eric Roll, Lord Rolle of Ipston, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Speaker 235:23

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