Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Desert Island Discs
Presented by Roy Plomley
Journalist and science writer who undertook UN missions to deserts, jungles, and the Arctic, and wrote about them.
Eight records
Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67
because this recalls the the V campaign during the war. With which you were concerned. With which I was concerned, and I was the person I don't boast of it, I I I was the man who had to put it off the air.
The keepsakes
No book or luxury recorded for this episode.
In conversation
Presenter asks
What was your earliest ambition?
My ambition was always to be a writer. I thought of myself as an author with a capital A, but I was prepared to settle, as I did, to become a journalist. I left school at Forfra Academy when I was fifteen. That was the end of my formal education. I became a police court reporter. in Dundee to begin with, uh and then I was sent to London by the Dundee Courier. And I ironically enough did in fact sit in the gallery of the House of Lords so that whenever I have an argument about verbatim reporting I can always say I could have done it.
Presenter asks
When you left the News Chronicle in nineteen fifty six, did you go to another paper?
No. I still [went] on [the] editorial board of The New Statesman, although I left that about two years later.
Presenter asks
And you were appointed Professor of International Relations at the University of Edinburgh. Which department does this come under?
It's under the faculty of law, although I teach no law. It's a a chair to which they appointed me because they had the imagination to see, and I think I am not flattering myself in saying this, that in fact science and technology had become the social dynamics of our time, and that was the profound forces whether it's atomic energy or anything else. The effect which was influencing the politics of our time, and that indeed the great manifestations, even the wars and so on, were the surface manifestations of very profound forces, and therefore the They wanted someone to put international relations into the new context of change.
The recording
Timestamps play the recording from that turn
Lord Ritchie-Calder
This download is the only extract the BBC has of this edition of Desert Island Discs. The presenter was Roy Plumley.
Lord Ritchie-Calder
I was a little boy when the war broke out in nineteen fourteen.
Lord Ritchie-Calder
And uh it was a hot summer day, I remember, and we were barefoot, because we went barefoot on a hot summer day.
Lord Ritchie-Calder
And I can remember the the scaling of the pipes and the tune of Bonnie Dundee, and the march of the Pfeiffenforfer yeomanry on horseback.
Lord Ritchie-Calder
out of the town. They were marching on the call up. And uh I I just remember a hand coming down, picking me up.
Lord Ritchie-Calder
in the town square of Forfa.
Lord Ritchie-Calder
kicking uh his boot out of the stirrup, putting my foot in the stirrup, and riding me out about a mile out of the town behind the bagpipe.
Lord Ritchie-Calder
Uh I don't remember that man's face, I only remember his hand, I can't tell you his name, I can't tell you any face or any names, because not one of that troop ever came back.
Lord Ritchie-Calder
And uh this had a profound effect on me, and I can still, as you see, vividly recall it. And I think that uh while I have never had the courage to be an out and out pacifist, it's completely
Lord Ritchie-Calder
dictated my attitude to war uh and uh now I'm very actively anti war, not just because of the totality of it today, but simply because th th this awful sense of
Lord Ritchie-Calder
a a generation which was sacrificed, a generation which was before my time.
Lord Ritchie-Calder
What was your earliest ambition?
Lord Ritchie-Calder
My ambition was always to be a writer. I thought of myself as an author with a capital A, but I was prepared to settle, as I did, to become a journalist. I left school at Forfra Academy when I was fifteen. That was the end of my formal education. I became a police court reporter.
Lord Ritchie-Calder
in Dundee to begin with, uh and then I was sent to London by the Dundee Courier.
Lord Ritchie-Calder
And I ironically enough did in fact sit in the gallery of the House of Lords so that whenever I have an argument about verbatim reporting I can always say I could have done it.
Presenter
We have to do it.
Lord Ritchie-Calder
Uh yeah, but uh then I went back to Glasgow.
Presenter
Uh this
Lord Ritchie-Calder
with the grandiloquent title, the age of nineteen, by the way, of Our Special Crime Commissioner for Scotland for the Glasgow Sunday Post.
Lord Ritchie-Calder
After that I went to um the Daily News in London. I was there for four years.
Presenter
Do I have?
Lord Ritchie-Calder
I was a light story writer, believe it or not. I was a man who was supposed to draw the humour out of situations. Then I went to the Daily Chronicle as a descriptive writer, and the Daily Chronicle died on me, but at least it I amalgamated my own person, the News and the Chronicle. And then I went to the Daily Herald, and at this time I got involved in science.
Lord Ritchie-Calder
And I wasn't going out to do a job of science writing in that sense. I went out to describe what happened in science laboratories and simply by
Lord Ritchie-Calder
Because it was successful and it did appeal to people and it did put me on extremely good terms with the scientists, I I I kept on doing it until I acquired a a fairly solid reputation. Only three of us in those days were actually writing about science.
Presenter
During the war you had a foreign office appointment.
Lord Ritchie-Calder
Yes, I was Director of Plans or Political Warfare in the Foreign Office, and that meant that I was involved with both sides, both military and political.
Lord Ritchie-Calder
uh with the um problem of the enemy and also of the occupied countries, of course, building the morale of the occupied countries and helping with the development of the resistance movement.
Presenter
Yeah.
Presenter
After the war you joined the News Chronicle as science editor and at the same time you began using your special knowledge in a wider field.
Lord Ritchie-Calder
Yes, the United Nations wanted someone, one pair of eyes, to have a look at problems, with some insight and some knowledge of science and technology, to see how the development of technical assistance and that kind of thing could be best promoted. In the first instance I undertook for UNESCO
Lord Ritchie-Calder
A Mission to the Deserts of North Africa and the Middle East
Lord Ritchie-Calder
And then after that I went for the United Nations and all its agencies to Southeast Asia.
Lord Ritchie-Calder
And following that, I was asked by the Canadian Government, with the backing of the UN and its agencies.
Lord Ritchie-Calder
to have a look at the Arctic and I spent, I think, about five months.
Lord Ritchie-Calder
in the frozen north, uh seeing whether it could become part of our habitable world.
Presenter
Yes. And as well as doing a scientific fact-finding job, you were also interpreting the findings of these missions in terms of popular journalism.
Lord Ritchie-Calder
Yes, all my material was being distributed as dispatches all over the world, and uh it did in fact begin to build up, in the first instance, a concern about deserts and possibilities and so on. Uh and also, of course, it appeared as books. Um uh the three books, Men Against the Desert, Men Against the Jungle, Men Against the Frozen North.
Presenter
Yes. And you were appointed to the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy.
Lord Ritchie-Calder
Yes, that was uh interesting because I was then on the Arctic mission. I was four hundred miles from the pole when I got this signal from the UN asking me to go to Geneva to serve on the um first conference of the peaceful use of atomic energy. I was also on the second one, as well as nine fifty eight.
Presenter
Yeah.
Presenter
When you left the News Chronicle in nineteen fifty six, did you go to another paper?
Lord Ritchie-Calder
No. I still r went on on the editorial board of The New Statesman, although I left that about two years later.
Presenter
And you went on more United Nations fact finding missions.
Lord Ritchie-Calder
Uh continuously. I in nineteen sixty I went to the Congo and I travelled about ten thousand miles inside the Congo.
Lord Ritchie-Calder
Yeah.
Lord Ritchie-Calder
And then I went back to Southeast Asia on the second long mission.
Presenter
And you were appointed Professor of International Relations at the University of Edinburgh. Which department does this come under?
Lord Ritchie-Calder
It's under the faculty of law, although I teach no law. It's a a chair to which they appointed me because they had the imagination to see, and I think I am not flattering myself in saying this, that in fact science and technology had become the social dynamics of our time, and that was the profound forces whether it's atomic energy or anything else.
Presenter
Else.
Lord Ritchie-Calder
The effect which was influencing the politics of our time, and that indeed the great manifestations, even the wars and so on, were the surface manifestations of very profound forces, and therefore the
Lord Ritchie-Calder
They wanted someone to put international relations into the new context of change.
Presenter
Yes.
Presenter
And, of course, you've recently been raised to the peerage, which means a lot of work in the House of Lords.
Lord Ritchie-Calder
Yeah.
Presenter
Uh
Lord Ritchie-Calder
Uh
Presenter
Uh
Lord Ritchie-Calder
It means a great deal of work. I spend three days a week uh there during session time.
Lord Ritchie-Calder
Let's have another record now. What next?
Lord Ritchie-Calder
I'd like to um suggest that we put on
Lord Ritchie-Calder
the Fifth Symphony, Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, because this recalls the the V campaign during the war. With which you were concerned. With which I was concerned, and I was the person I don't boast of it, I I I was the man who had to put it off the air.
Lord Ritchie-Calder
This was because it was too successful. The the B B C and the Overseas Service and Douglas Ritchie as Colonel Britton had built up this enormous uh morale.
Lord Ritchie-Calder
the army in in Europe.
Lord Ritchie-Calder
And of course the trouble with an army is when you've done it you've got to uh give it exercise to do, and they were giving it exercise, and some very effective one, but it was cutting across a great many of the military.
Lord Ritchie-Calder
things and uh
Lord Ritchie-Calder
Also, what they didn't know, uh which I did unfortunately, we weren't going to invade for another two years. So we were building up a
Presenter
Yeah.
Lord Ritchie-Calder
tremendous uh support in Europe, which you're going to frustrate eventually by delay. So I had to get it off the air by telling Colonel Brett, my dear friend Douglas Ritchie, that uh he must announce that he was going temporarily off the air.
Lord Ritchie-Calder
Let his voice be the voice which would announce the invasion of Europe.
Lord Ritchie-Calder
Well, he did two years later.
Presenter
Lord Richie Calder, you have to cover the whole field of scientific knowledge from improved kitchen equipment to space travel, Lindjo.
Lord Ritchie-Calder
Yes, the job of the science writer is in fact
Lord Ritchie-Calder
It would cover the whole field, a tremendous lot to keep up with.
Lord Ritchie-Calder
Enormous amount, uh in fact too much nowadays and uh the I have to rely very much on the younger generation to do my legwork for me, if I necessarily
Presenter
Isn't it all happening too fast? Aren't discoveries and developments being pushed out before their implications have been
Lord Ritchie-Calder
Realize Far too fast. I don't know how you put the checks or the brakes on it, but at the moment we're just not digesting all the big developments that are happening. My problem, a very serious problem, is how, in fact, we can evaluate the the proper use of science for human betterment.
Lord Ritchie-Calder
You've got so many single track minded people now who are pursuing very clear objectives as far as they are concerned, with no relation to any other objectives in the world.
Lord Ritchie-Calder
A typical one, of course, is space research, which I I regard as as enormous diversion of human ingenuity. It's not just the money, but you think of all the int amount of intelligence and and skills and so on which are going into escaping from this planet instead of uh concentrating on the real problems which are still unsolved on on on this earth.
Presenter
Yeah.
Presenter asks
Isn't it all happening too fast? Aren't discoveries and developments being pushed out before their implications have been [realized]?
Far too fast. I don't know how you put the checks or the brakes on it, but at the moment we're just not digesting all the big developments that are happening. My problem, a very serious problem, is how, in fact, we can evaluate the the proper use of science for human betterment. You've got so many single track minded people now who are pursuing very clear objectives as far as they are concerned, with no relation to any other objectives in the world. A typical one, of course, is space research, which I I regard as as enormous diversion of human ingenuity. It's not just the money, but you think of all the int amount of intelligence and and skills and so on which are going into escaping from this planet instead of uh concentrating on the real problems which are still unsolved on on on this earth.
“I was a little boy when the war broke out in nineteen fourteen. And uh it was a hot summer day, I remember, and we were barefoot, because we went barefoot on a hot summer day. And I can remember the the scaling of the pipes and the tune of Bonnie Dundee, and the march of the Pfeiffenforfer yeomanry on horseback. out of the town. They were marching on the call up. And uh I I just remember a hand coming down, picking me up. in the town square of Forfa. kicking uh his boot out of the stirrup, putting my foot in the stirrup, and riding me out about a mile out of the town behind the bagpipe. Uh I don't remember that man's face, I only remember his hand, I can't tell you his name, I can't tell you any face or any names, because not one of that troop ever came back. And uh this had a profound effect on me, and I can still, as you see, vividly recall it. And I think that uh while I have never had the courage to be an out and out pacifist, it's completely dictated my attitude to war uh and uh now I'm very actively anti war, not just because of the totality of it today, but simply because th th this awful sense of a a generation which was sacrificed, a generation which was before my time.”
“My ambition was always to be a writer. I thought of myself as an author with a capital A, but I was prepared to settle, as I did, to become a journalist. I left school at Forfra Academy when I was fifteen. That was the end of my formal education. I became a police court reporter. in Dundee to begin with, uh and then I was sent to London by the Dundee Courier. And I ironically enough did in fact sit in the gallery of the House of Lords so that whenever I have an argument about verbatim reporting I can always say I could have done it.”
“I'd like to um suggest that we put on the Fifth Symphony, Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, because this recalls the the V campaign during the war. With which you were concerned. With which I was concerned, and I was the person I don't boast of it, I I I was the man who had to put it off the air. This was because it was too successful. The the B B C and the Overseas Service and Douglas Ritchie as Colonel Britton had built up this enormous uh morale. the army in in Europe. And of course the trouble with an army is when you've done it you've got to uh give it exercise to do, and they were giving it exercise, and some very effective one, but it was cutting across a great many of the military. things and uh Also, what they didn't know, uh which I did unfortunately, we weren't going to invade for another two years. So we were building up a tremendous uh support in Europe, which you're going to frustrate eventually by delay. So I had to get it off the air by telling Colonel Brett, my dear friend Douglas Ritchie, that uh he must announce that he was going temporarily off the air. Let his voice be the voice which would announce the invasion of Europe. Well, he did two years later.”
“A typical one, of course, is space research, which I I regard as as enormous diversion of human ingenuity. It's not just the money, but you think of all the int amount of intelligence and and skills and so on which are going into escaping from this planet instead of uh concentrating on the real problems which are still unsolved on on on this earth.”