Robert Fisk

Presenter0:00

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 six.

Presenter0:27

My castaway this week is award-winning journalist and best-selling author Robert Fiske.

Presenter0:32

He spent his life covering conflicts around the world and the last thirty years living in and writing principally about the Middle East.

Presenter0:38

His choice of career came early. Aged twelve, he watched Alfred Hitchcock's film Foreign Correspondent. The lead character's cunning, lack of scruples, and winning way with the ladies enraptured him, and from that day on his mind was set and never wavered.

Presenter0:53

He says his job is monitoring the centres of power. Doing it has on occasion brought him perilously close to death. He's been beaten to a bloody pulp by a gang of Afghan refugees, fled kidnappers in a car chase through the streets of Beirut, and been invited to take tea in a cave with the most unlikely of hosts, Osama bin Laden.

Presenter1:14

His is not the prose of the dispassionate bystander. In fact, he rails at the media's emphasis on balanced reporting, and is criticised by some for his partiality. It sounds Robert Fiske from that catalogue of Daring Do as though you almost have lived the life of an action movie hero.

Robert Fisk1:31

No. I was thinking the other day whether I actually enjoyed the life I've had, and I think I haven't. I might have been passionate about it, but I don't think I've actually enjoyed it. I was sitting on the boulevards in Paris and watching families walking down the street in the sunlight, and I went back to Beirut and sat on my balcony over the Mediterranean.

Robert Fisk1:47

And thought to myself, did I really want these last thirty years of war? You know, couldn't I have lived a happier, safer, more secure life and seen something else? And I wondered whether perhaps I'd just wasted it, you know.

Presenter1:58

Does the proximity to death that you so often experience make you feel more vital, more alive?

Robert Fisk2:01

Yeah.

Robert Fisk2:05

No. It makes me more angry when I see dead people, especially of course, because mostly I see dead civilians. It makes me realize what a very, very narrow line there is between living and dying. It's very easy to die, very easy to get killed. I always think if you saw what I saw in wars, which you don't because of course television cuts out the bloodiest scenes, or we mustn't see the pornography of death. We should. We should. Because if you saw what I saw, you know, dogs tearing corpses to pieces, women and children bombed in the desert, you would never support a war again. Never, ever.

Presenter2:34

Meeting Osama Bin Laden face to face w hopefully we'll talk in detail about that later, but the first time you met him, the first impression was what?

Robert Fisk2:42

a rather vain man in his robe. He was in the Sudanese desert, and um he thought he was very frightened of me because I was the first foreign journalist he'd ever met.

Robert Fisk2:53

He was very worried I was going to ask him about terrorism, and instead of that, I asked him about what it was like to fight the Soviet army, because of course he used to be on our side fighting the Russians in Afghanistan, 1980, 81, 82. And his immense feeling of relief went over him. I thought he was a very vulnerable man at that stage. And he talked about his sense of calmness under fire, and a mortar shell fell at his feet. And many would wish that it had blown up, of course. And he said, I felt this sense of what he called Sakino and Iric, calmness, inner calmness. And I thought, oof, ouch, this is how these people are born.

Robert Fisk3:26

He survived, but he didn't care.

Presenter3:28

Vanity and vulnerability.

Robert Fisk3:30

No, precisely, which means that

Presenter3:32

No, precisely, which makes me wonder if if there was a part of you that that quite liked him, that quite connected with him.

Robert Fisk3:39

I've got so used to meeting these various rogues and murderers and mafiosi and so-called democratic leaders in the Middle East that I don't actually have much personal feeling. But like him, I think there was a sort of sense of humour, not him, but from me. And I said, here we go again, another secret meeting with Bin Laden on another bloody mountaintop, you know. And I think he realized that I was sometimes a bit tired when I had to drag myself over the deserts of Afghanistan to meet him in some wretched tent. He spotted that.

Presenter4:08

Uh

Robert Fisk4:08

A lot more there.

Robert Fisk4:10

Yeah.

Presenter4:10

We'll we'll talk about it a little later. Let's hear your first Desert Iron Disc.

Robert Fisk4:14

Benjamin Britton's War Requiem. The particular section I I I want to play is in fact meant to sound like the guns of the Western Front. And my father, who was a soldier in the First War, actually played the War Requiem to him, and he couldn't stand it. It was too modern for him. But this bit he admired.

Presenter5:26

Part of the D S E ray from Benjamin Britton's War Requiem. That first recording then capturing um some of the immense sadness and turmoil of conflict that seems to affect you in your witnessing of it, and that to a large degree affected uh your father. He he was in the trenches of the First World War.

Robert Fisk5:45

Yes, he was uh nineteen when he was sent to the Third Battle of the Somme in nineteen eighteen. He was much older than my mother. My mother wasn't even born when he was on the on the on the Western Front. But he obviously was haunted by the few months he spent there. I I grew up listening to my father talking about the First War.

Presenter6:00

This is a very unusual childhood. He was steeping you in in the war that he had lived. He was instructing you to read all the books that catalogued in great detail the happenings of the First World War. Your first foreign holiday was to the battlefields.

Robert Fisk6:14

It was. It was to the Somme in 1956, 1956, when I was ten years old. My father wanted to go back and find the little cottage in which he spent the first night of peace on November the 11th, 1918. I've actually been back since and found the house again and talked to the people who lived in it. He was too shy to knock on the front door in 1956, though he would have found the daughter of the old lady who used to serve him breakfast. But yes, I think one of the things that affected him deeply, and he talked about it a lot, he was ordered to command a firing party to execute an Australian soldier of the same age as himself, 19, who'd actually killed a British military policeman in Paris. And he refused. My father's a very right-wing Conservative man. He drove me out of my mind. In the end, I didn't even go and see him when he was dying in nursing home. But he refused to obey an order.

Robert Fisk7:01

Someone else shot the Australian soldier. He didn't save him. But the idea of my father refusing an order, a man who believed in magistrates, judges, capital punishment and later life, was incredible. And he, you know, in a sense refusing the narrative of history, refusing to obey orders, is part of what journalism is about.

Presenter7:17

And struck a chord with you because you thought that actually under the same circumstances you would have done what your father had done.

Robert Fisk7:23

Oh, I would have done. No doubt. Refuse orders always.

Presenter7:26

But as but as a child you had a father who wa he you know, he was three piece suits, he was military tie, he was a disciplinarian. W was he a was he a frightening father?

Robert Fisk7:31

He was

Robert Fisk7:34

He was your tyrant?

Robert Fisk7:36

Well, my mother used to have a film camera, and she has colour film, silent of course, of my father and I snowballing in the days when we had real snow in Kent in Maidstone, four feet high, not the rubbish snow we have now. And clearly, I'm having great fun throwing snowballs at him. And I obviously worshipped him, because all boys worship their father or want to. But I have very clear memories of him shouting at me, beating me if I interrupted him when he was talking to my mother. And he sent me off to prep school when I was nine years old, and I came back after three weeks, crying and weeping not to go back. And my mother pleading in tears for my father, he will go back. He'll learn to be a man. He must grow up.

Robert Fisk8:11

And I started to despise that. You have to earn respect, you can't demand it from a child.

Presenter8:16

Your next record.

Robert Fisk8:18

Well, it's Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings, very, very famous, used by Oliver Stone in that extraordinary film, Platoon. A piece of music of sort utter conviction that if you listen to this you understand the meaning of real tragedy, that war is about the total failure of the human spirit. It wasn't written about war.

Robert Fisk8:35

But it's a message for someone like me. I've heard it many I play it in Beirut sometimes. It is absolutely devastating.

Presenter9:23

Part of Samuel Barber's Adachio for Strings. So so there you were, Robert Fiske, as a little boy, studying the war books that Daddy had given you.

Robert Fisk9:32

Daddy.

Presenter9:32

Because he demanded that.

Robert Fisk9:33

No, because I'd read in a school book somewhere of some some boy was calling his father father, and it was a way of mocking him a little bit. You see, he wanted to be called Dad, so I called him father. It was a way of a little way of annoying him. And then I began to call him King Billy, Bill being his first name. And at first he resented this, and gradually he realized there was a kind of affection in it. In fact, in the letter he left for me when he died in 1992, aged ninety three he lived a long life, chose my dad well that way, he actually said, you know, thank you for making us so proud, old boy, and look after your mother, who's given me the greatest years of happiness in my life. And he signed himself King Billy.

Presenter9:41

Right.

Presenter10:07

You you've written that your mother was a flame of optimism over your young life, uh and that would seem to denote that there was uh quite a lot of seriousness, quite a lot of darkness, and there was this woman who managed to make life a little brighter.

Robert Fisk10:20

Yes, she always said it always comes out well in the end. She even believed at the end that she dying she was dying of Parkinson's. Oh, they've got a cure coming for it, apparently. Maybe I can hang on till then. Not bad.

Presenter10:31

What was it as a little boy when watching Foreign Correspondent and watching the exploits of Huntley Haverstock as was the the pen name of the main character? What was it about that that particularly captured your young imagination?

Robert Fisk10:35

You what

Robert Fisk10:40

Yeah.

Robert Fisk10:45

It didn't matter that it was a work of fiction. It's quite a funny film as well. But what was the phrase once used by a Sunday Times war correspondent, Nick Tomlin, who died in the Seventy three war? All you need as a foreign correspondent are a few facts

Robert Fisk10:58

Passable knowledge of English and rat-like cunning. And the rat-like cunning did appeal to me because I'm a rat-like person when I'm really after a story.

Presenter11:05

Your next record.

Robert Fisk11:07

Well, it's actually not a piece of music. It's the June speech, the most defiant speech that Winston Churchill made during the Second World War. And the reason I'm choosing it is partly because, of course, Winston Churchill's portrait inevitably hung over the living room of my parents' home. But also because, over and over again, more and more frequently, the Blairs and the Bushes of this world think they are Winston Churchill, standing up to appeasement, refusing to deal deals with the Hitler of Baghdad, and they play out this preposterous, pathetic, obscene, third-rate theatre as if they are World War II leaders. And when you listen to this, you think, God, the Bushes and the Blairs are midgets of this world. Here is the real leader. This is one of the real Titans, Winston Churchill.

Presenter11:49

For rights reasons, we are unable to bring you this choice.

Presenter11:54

That was the end of Winston Churchill's speech of june eighteenth, nineteen forty. This was their finest hour. You started your journalism working for the Sunday Express. You had a Saturday job working for the the Sunday Paper. You were what, round about seventeen?

Robert Fisk12:05

But you won't water.

Robert Fisk12:07

I wouldn't be seventeen. I was about the youngest journalist who'd ever walked the streets of Fleet Street with uh with a with a pay packet. Yeah.

Presenter12:12

Now the Express and the Sunday Express in those days, I mean, those were the glory days. They were the kings of free glory.

Robert Fisk12:15

Yeah.

Robert Fisk12:17

I saw Lord Beaverbrook walk into the office, absolutely. We had this big sign across the roof of the newsroom in the express saying, Make it quick, make it accurate, you know. I I was part of that world and all Arthur Christensen was still alive, the great Daily Express editor, and I saw him, these heroes of journalism, which I've been worshiping for the last five years, they were walking past my desk. I actually had a desk and a telephone that I could use, and someone else paid them.

Presenter12:38

Well, it was

Robert Fisk12:39

Spectacle

Presenter12:39

And and after school then, it was a a stint at the Newcastle Evening Chronicle. Then you went on to Lancaster University. Then

Presenter12:46

At the beginning of the seventies, as a staffer on the Times, you were sent, aged twenty five, to cover the conflict in Belfast. So that was your first taste of real conflict. Did did it smack you on the chops?

Robert Fisk13:00

I think there were two things that did. First of all, it was not conflict, it was how poor Belfast was. I couldn't believe that a British government could be so shameful as to allow these tens of thousands of people, both Protestants and Catholics, to live in this filth. Belfast was the dirtiest, filthiest, poorest city I'd ever seen in my life at this stage. And when I saw the British army, which was extremely brutal, I mean, there's no doubt about it it was, so was the IRA, but I mean I'm talking about the authorities, I couldn't believe what I was seeing. It was not what I'd been reading about in the newspapers, it was not what I'd been seeing on television. That was it.

Presenter13:33

To anybody even witnessing a hand to hand fight in the streets late on a a Friday night, very occasionally, people never forget that, but you were seeing combat, you were seeing violence, you were seeing the viciousness that people were doing. I was seeing dead bodies day to day.

Robert Fisk13:39

Yeah.

Robert Fisk13:44

I was seeing dead bodies. I was seeing dead bodies for the first time.

Presenter13:47

How was that?

Robert Fisk13:50

I remember the first time I saw a man shot. It was a British soldier on the back of what we called a pig. It was a big Humber armoured vehicle. And suddenly it was Ba Ba Ba Ba Ba Ba Bab and I saw this soldier topple over and over somersaulting out the back and the noise of his rifle as it hit the road a tremendous crack.

Robert Fisk14:05

And I thought, My God, this is real. This is not a movie, Robert. Watch out, watch out And shortly after that, there was a Protestant paramilitary murdered. And I walked into this house and there were all these Protestant paramilitaries in brown shirts, less like sort of Hitler brown shirts, round the room.

Robert Fisk14:21

And his father took me across and took the lid off the coffin. He said, Look, the poor wee boy Feel his hands, they've broken his fingers And he pulls out this dead hand, and sure enough the fingers were broken. Never touched a dead body before. And I looked round, and all these brown shirted men were watching like this, and I realized, my God, they were his killers

Robert Fisk14:37

They were the murderers in the room.

Robert Fisk14:39

Yes, it was the first conflict I'd covered in black guard it had an effect.

Robert Fisk14:42

Robert

Presenter14:43

Okay.

Robert Fisk14:43

Risk your force.

Presenter14:43

The

Robert Fisk14:43

Yeah.

Robert Fisk14:45

Well, this is a throwback to university days at Lancaster. Actually, I lived in Morecambe, which was a much more pleasant place to be than Lancaster because this is the second year of Lancaster University I went there. And I'd sit on the beach in Morecambe and I was right next to Morecambe Pier. And over and over again, over throughout the day and night, as I sat there in the evening swatting up on linguistics, they would play Donovan's Mellow Yellow, and it absolutely synonymous to me of university.

Speaker 415:10

I'm just mad about Saffron.

Speaker 415:14

Al Saffron's matter by me

Speaker 415:19

I'm a just bad suffering.

Speaker 415:23

She's just mad about me They call me Mellow Yellow Quite frightened sleep

Speaker 415:31

The common mellow yellow

Robert Fisk15:32

Hello.

Presenter15:36

Donovan and Mellow Yellow. So you've lived, Robert, in Beirut for exactly thirty years now. You were sent there when you were twenty-nine, on the cusp of thirty.

Robert Fisk15:43

But

Speaker 315:43

The customer

Presenter15:44

You secured the job of Middle East correspondent for The Times in 1984.

Presenter15:49

They tried to kidnap you. Who first of all, who were they?

Robert Fisk15:52

Well, they were a group of school, as I always call them, of an organization called AMAL. Malicious change, like you know, chameleons walking over paper.

Presenter16:00

And what happened?

Robert Fisk16:01

Well, I was driving down a street called Bliss Street, and it was dark. And the strange thing was, that morning I'd been interviewing a Christian who'd been held hostage and had been kidnapped. And I was actually thinking about the interview and what it was like to suddenly find yourself being kidnapped. And as I was thinking about it, I looked to the left and I saw this carload of gunmen coming up next to me, windows open, waving rifles, pointing to the side of the road. And I slowed down. I thought, I kept saying to myself, this is it, this is it, this is it.

Robert Fisk16:27

And I watched him get in front of me, and I let him get in front of me, and I veered out into the road again, which I wasn't meant to do. And he was chasing me through the streets, and I was hitting parked cars. And I thought I was wounded, I thought I'd got blood on me. It was only later as it was just my perspiration. I was fighting at the wheel. And after about a mile,

Robert Fisk16:44

I realized I knew Beirut better than he did. I'd been there so long, I knew it. I said, My God, I've got away. I've made it. I've got it. I've done it. I've done it. I've actually got away from the bastards with the guns. So the flight.

Presenter16:52

Plate or f

Robert Fisk16:53

Fight

Presenter16:53

Response highly tuned and a success under those circumstances. What happened when you were?

Robert Fisk16:56

Manned

Presenter17:00

You were in Pakistan and it was a a mob of people from Afghanistan, refugees. I hate that word.

Robert Fisk17:05

They were refugees whose families had just been killed in a B-52 American air raid.

Presenter17:11

And they set upon you.

Robert Fisk17:11

I was the first Westerner they saw, yes they did. This man came up this huge rock and banged it onto the top of my head, and then everybody else started doing the same thing. There were young men were arriving with wolfish smiles. It was a very bad experience of the human being. And I had blood dripping off me, my glasses were smashed into my face, and I remember thinking, I wonder how long it takes.

Robert Fisk17:32

And that was the most dangerous thing you can ever think.

Presenter17:34

So how did you get out of this situation?

Robert Fisk17:36

I started hitting them, I started bashing them, just like in the boys' own paper, and I was I was crying'cause I hate violence and the last thing I'd ever do is want to hit Muslims in their own country, or anybody else's country, or anybody. And they suddenly fell back about twenty feet. And this Imam, this religious man, yeah, I couldn't see him very clearly, he had a long gown, took me by the arm and led me away, knowing of course they wouldn't throw stones at him.

Presenter17:57

Interesting that in the telling of that story the thing that seems to affect you most is when you had to hit them, not when they hit you.

Robert Fisk18:03

Yeah, because these were people, you know, I I wrote at the time, and of course I was attacked for it. If my family I had a family and children had been torn to pieces by an American bomber and I saw someone who looked like an American, I'd have done the same as they did. I'd have attacked Robert Fisk, of course. Of course I would. We're human beings. So you entirely forgive them for their actions? Ah, it's not about forgiveness. This is a war. You don't it's not about forgiveness. This is something that was inevitably going to happen if my car broke down as it did in the wrong place.

Presenter18:30

In my experience of meeting many foreign correspondents, of meeting people who do the job you do, they tend to be people who who enjoy the adrenaline rush, who who, in a sense, are romantic. They have an ideal of what humanity is about and they're restless souls. And they often have to calm their restlessness with, you know, cigarettes and whiskey and wild, wild women.

Robert Fisk18:55

Avoided that, but anyway.

Presenter18:55

Have you?

Robert Fisk18:56

Yes, of course. I don't even smoke actually. If you drink in a war, you'll die. You've got to keep your wits about you. Absolutely, totally. I think that if you feel politically passionate about something, you don't fall back on booze and cigarettes, frankly. I don't think you do.

Presenter19:13

You can be self-contained.

Robert Fisk19:15

Completely.

Presenter19:15

Uh do you think the job I mean, you surely must have witnessed the type of people also that I'm talking about. Do you think the job makes people less capable of sustaining a a conventional life? Or do you think it's people that don't want to sustain a conventional life that seem to be attracted to the job?

Robert Fisk19:28

I think that, you know, I think particularly of my friend Juan Carlos Comuccio, who was a Bolivian-born journalist. When all the journalists, eventually all the male journalists, left Beirut in 1986, he stayed on and so did I. And Juan Carlos was also he's a very subversive person. He liked me challenging authority and making fun of authority. But he was also a very depressive person. Whereas I had my mother's view of the world. I still thought it would get better, however bad it was. And a couple of years ago, he was sitting in a swimming pool. I think he'd had a few drinks. And he picked up a gun and shot himself.

Robert Fisk20:06

I think what happened is that he was drawn to it like the famous Moth to the Flame, because his sense of depression matched the awfulness of the wars he covered.

Presenter20:17

Your fifth record then?

Robert Fisk20:18

Well, it's really chosen by Juan Carlos. We were in the same apartment block. I was up and he was down. And he went to get a glass of red wine. He said, Fiske, I want to play something for you. And this is before Pac-Bal was popular. And he said, Robert, can you imagine that in the 17th century, amid plague and wars, that anyone could write music like this?

Presenter21:40

The opening of Pachabel's Canon in D. And Robert Fiske, we heard that the first time you met Osama bin Laden it was a relatively uh straightforward affair. Um subsequent meetings, second and third meetings, were slightly more complex. Describe how they came about.

Robert Fisk21:55

Well, the second meeting came about when well, he always asked to see me after that. I never asked to see him, and when he did ask to see me, I always made a delay to show him that, you know, I was not going to be summoned by Bin Laden. I had other things to do as a Middle East correspondent.

Presenter22:07

Given that he is the most wanted man at the top of the stage. He was then as well, actually. How do you get the message? How does the message get to the end? Oh, I'll tell you how this message.

Robert Fisk22:10

But he was then as well actually.

Robert Fisk22:13

Oh, I'll tell you how this message came. I got a phone call which I think came from Switzerland.

Robert Fisk22:17

Saying that the man you met in Sudan would like to see you again. I knew it's been done.

Robert Fisk22:21

And I arrived in Afghanistan, checked into the Spingar Hotel in Jalalabad, and I.

Robert Fisk22:27

I waited and waited day after day and nobody came.

Robert Fisk22:31

And suddenly one evening I was lying on the bed in the heat and I heard

Robert Fisk22:37

On the window. The classic, every book, every book. On the window. It was on the window outside. I was on the ground floor. And I said, This is it. And there was a truck outside with armed men in a rocket-propelled grenades. And we set off driving for 24 hours across the wasteland of Afghanistan. I remember we passed these villages which the Russians had bombed. They were ghost villages, and there were naked children crawling through them. And eventually we crossed this stream at night. And on the other side, there were a sort of field with trees and lots of military camp beds and armed men lying on them or sitting on them. It's al-Qaeda, of course, was al-Qaeda. And I was led very politely. I mean, nobody searched me, nobody checked me. We walked through and sat down outside a little hut. And suddenly in the doorway was Bin Laden standing there in his robes. There he was. That's how I came to him. That's the second time. Third time, rather similar beginning, except this time he was at the top of a mountain in a camp, a training camp. The first time I spoke to him, he wanted to talk about the Russian war. The second time he wanted to condemn the Saudi royal family for corruption. But this time he was locked onto the west.

Presenter22:39

On the window.

Robert Fisk23:40

And it was very, very cold. I slept in the tent.

Presenter23:43

And what was the date of this third meeting?

Robert Fisk23:45

Nineteen ninety seven.

Robert Fisk23:47

And this time he wanted to see me after 9-11, but I couldn't reach him because of an air raid in Afghanistan. But the last words he said to me was sitting outside the tent on a rock, and he said, Mr. Robert, from the mountain upon which you're sitting, we destroyed the Soviet army and the Soviet Union. Bit of an exaggeration, but there was an element of truth to all this, of course. It was Afghanistan that destroyed the Soviet Union. And he said, and I pray to God that he permits us to turn America into a shadow of itself. I was actually crossing the Atlantic on 9-11. Plane turned around, of course, when America closed its airspace. And when I got back and I sat in my hotel room and I watched the Twin Towers coming down again and again on television, that kind of biblical epic of smoke and fire. I'm looking at the picture of Manhattan. I remember thinking, my God, New York is now a shadow of itself.

Presenter24:32

There came a moment when you believed that he was trying to, um, for want of a better phrase, recruit you to the cause.

Robert Fisk24:37

Yes, the third time I saw him I arrived at a tent.

Robert Fisk24:42

And he said, Mr Robert, one of our brothers, had a dream. And I thought, My God, I don't like this. And he said They saw you coming on a horse dressed as a Muslim Imam. And I thought, He's reaching out to me. Watch out, Fisk How did you get out of this? Armed Al Qaeda men are sitting round me.

Presenter25:00

They're sitting round with their collateral tops resting on their thighs.

Robert Fisk25:01

Yes. And I thought, I can't offend him, but I've got to get out of this. And I said, No, Sheikh Osama, I am not a Muslim, I am a journalist and my job is to tell the truth. And he said, Oh, this is the same as being a good Muslim.

Robert Fisk25:21

I got out of it, thank God. And in a sense, he got the message: I wasn't going to be recruited, I didn't want him to do with it. And at the same time, I didn't offend him and make him look stupid.

Robert Fisk25:28

But did you

Presenter25:28

Uh

Robert Fisk25:28

Yeah.

Presenter25:28

Fear for your life?

Robert Fisk25:29

No.

Robert Fisk25:30

No, absolutely not.

Presenter25:31

But that is how valuable you were to Osama bin Laden. He was inviting you in because he wanted you out.

Robert Fisk25:34

I was a

Robert Fisk25:36

No, I think he wanted to make sure I could come back later, probably. Now, don't get romantic about Bin Laden. He I wasn't valuable to him. Absolutely not. And nor is he valuable to me, by the way. He's just another person to interview. He will live with me for the rest of the rest of my life because I interviewed him so many times. He's not actually of great interest to me at the moment. I'll tell you why. Because he's totally irrelevant. After the atom bomb was made, you could go round arresting all the nuclear scientists and it wouldn't make the slightest bit of difference. The bomb was made. Al-Qaeda has now been created. He's created the monster. It doesn't matter if he lives or dies. Your sixth record.

Presenter25:46

They'll come for the rest of the time.

Robert Fisk26:09

Well, this goes really back to my dad again, a man who also had very little self-doubt. And he would insist every Sunday that we went to All Saints' Church in Maidstone for morning matins. I was so bored. But every Sunday morning, as he waited for my mother to get dressed for church, he would walk up and down humming and singing the twenty-third psalm. The Lord is my shepherdite. And I used to think, Oh, God, church again.

Presenter27:35

Psalm twenty three The Lord's My Shepherd sung by the Huddersfield Choral Society.

Presenter27:40

So Robert Fisk, that was the song that your father used to sing as he.

Robert Fisk27:45

The hymn you've

Presenter27:46

Sorry, the hymn your father used to sing. Yes, he's here in spirit in all his pedantry.

Robert Fisk27:49

I fear he's looking somewhere in the studio at the moment. Go away, Bill, for a moment.

Presenter27:51

Yeah.

Presenter27:54

All all those years as a boy treading the battlefields of the First World War and touching those rusted helmets of the British uh soldiers and looking at the corroded mortar shells, how do you feel about your path so apparently influenced by your father's experience, in a way your your early life and your later life lived through the prism uh of your father's experience?

Robert Fisk28:14

I don't think I realised the degree to which it was until I was writing my latest book, and I actually went right back into his papers and his files and his photographs. And then I began to realise that the influence was enormous. When he died, my mother rang up. I was in Beirut. I said I didn't go and see him when he was dying. My mother rang me up and said, just to let you know your father's died. And there wasn't much to say. And she said, I'm not going to the funeral. I won't go. You look after it.

Robert Fisk28:39

It was a pretty big shock that was.

Presenter28:41

Said

Robert Fisk28:41

Yeah.

Presenter28:41

She wasn't She didn't go.

Robert Fisk28:45

He was an old man. He was taking a cocktail of drugs from a doctor. I think he became quite cruel. He was threatening to beat her, she said. But I arranged his funeral service. I arranged his favourite hymns, including the 23rd Psalm, of course. When I came back to the house afterwards, my mother wanted to hear every detail. And later on, as she was dying herself some years later, she told the lady looking after her. She always wanted to stay at home, and she did all her life. She died at home. I was with her when she died. With her, I was. And she did tell the lady looking after her, I was in Afghanistan or somewhere, years later that she missed Bill and wanted to see him again.

Presenter29:18

Given all the death that you've seen at close proximity, d does it prepare you any more than a typical person for the death of your parents?

Robert Fisk29:26

I felt very sorry for her for the suffering she was going through. But having seen so many children dying I've seen children die as I've stood by their bed with wounds from bombs, from shells it wasn't a tragedy in that sense, it wasn't an act of wickedness. Of course, the the what comes to all only children I'm an only child when both their parents are dead, you say, I'm next. But I've been ready for death for a long, long time, I promise you, I'm used to the possibility of it. So death as an institution doesn't frankly frighten me.

Presenter29:56

Next record.

Robert Fisk29:58

Well, this is Feyrouz, the only great singer for most Lebanese. There are younger ones now, but she has the most beautiful, melliflous voice that any Lebanese has ever heard. And throughout the civil war, and indeed even in the last war this summer, at the worst moments people will play Feyrouz singing Beirut. Beirut with all your flowers, how come you came to smell of smoke and fire?

Speaker 330:20

Bairu tuhhal dara fatauru luki tamata

Speaker 330:30

Illa tarashafaha fuadil muharamu dil til Bayu tuha al dara fato yulu ke dama dad.

Presenter30:47

Uh

Presenter30:51

Feyrouse and Beirut. Robert Fiske, you wrote quite unusually for you to talk about your inner thoughts and inner life. In The Independent, almost exactly a year ago, that when I saw families walking happily in London or Paris, I wondered whether I had not missed out on life, that perhaps comparative safety and security, with nothing more than the mortgage to worry about, was preferable to the existence I had chosen for myself. I began to wonder if my privilege had not also been my curse. Does this mean that?

Presenter31:19

At sixty you are wondering whether it's all been worth it.

Robert Fisk31:24

Well, I certainly did wonder it then. I mean, obviously war should not be the natural state we live in. Oddly enough, when you live in a war, you never think it's going to end, and you start thinking that it is the natural state. And of course when you come to Europe, which is an immensely privileged place to live in, I mean, how wonderful a place Europe is. What a state of the art way of living.

Robert Fisk31:43

I got back to Beirut and sat on my very beautiful apartment balcony with my Bougainvillea over the edge, and I have my music there too.

Robert Fisk31:50

And I thought to myself, you know, was this really 30 years of doing this? You can't wind the movie back and start again like you can with foreign correspondents. And I thought, is this really the life I wanted? But then again, you know, I also thought back to when I was offered the job. And I remember thinking, Wow, the possibility of being in the Middle East and covering history. And I know that I would take the same decision again if I was 29 once more. I'm not happy. I don't enjoy my work at all. But I'm passionate about it and I wouldn't want to live in any other way.

Presenter32:20

What's your eighth record?

Robert Fisk32:22

Well, it'll surprise you perhaps. It's the Israeli national anthem, the Hatikvah. I first heard it at the battlefield of Al-Alamein when there was a great commemoration, as there is every year on October 23rd, marking the anniversary of the battle of Montgomery's victory over Rommel in 1942. And I was looking at the monument, and as I walked around, you'd notice there'd be an Arab name, a Muslim name, and then a Jewish name, and then a Muslim name. And these names on the memorial are, of course, those citizens of Palestine before it split up into the West Bank, Gaza, and Israel. And they fought together with the British against the Nazis. And as I was reading the names, the Israeli delegation, which now comes, of course, Israel didn't exist then, but it comes for the Jewish dead, played this wonderful piece of music, the Hatikvah. And when I listen to it, I still love this piece of music. I wonder if only the Israeli government could behave with the same dignity and integrity as this piece of music.

Presenter33:52

The National Anthem of Israel, Hatikvah, chosen as your eighth record, surprisingly, you said, Robert Fiske. Um you're alone on the island then. Uh nothing to bear witness to.

Speaker 433:54

Uh

Robert Fisk33:57

You said Robert Fitz

Robert Fisk34:03

Oh, I've been watching the sea off my balcony for 30 years, Kirstie. I can certainly watch the sea again on the desert island. Well, it won't be bad.

Presenter34:11

Um you have the complete works of Shakespeare and the Bible, which is a very good idea.

Robert Fisk34:14

Which I don't think I want the complete works of Shakespeare.

Presenter34:16

Right?

Robert Fisk34:16

You could use Shakespeare. I'm not looking for a substitute, but I've had enough of Shakespeare in my life. I can quote much of it too.

Presenter34:22

And they but and you've also got the Bible, but again you'd defile that under fiction so that wouldn't be much use to you on the other side.

Robert Fisk34:26

Well, I don't particularly want the Quran on my island either. And what book would you take? You'd like to take one book. Malora's Mu'dafah.

Robert Fisk34:34

Because it's the only book that's ever made me cry. And if you read Mallory, it's very interesting that the Knights in Mallory had clearly been on the Crusades. I think Mallory might have gone on the Crusades. He'd certainly talked to people who'd been fighting the Muslims in the Middle East. And at this time, I'd never been to the Middle East. I was at college. I'd never been to the Middle East. And he describes a battle in which an arrow hits him and the pain he feels. And I thought, my goodness, this guy has been in battle. This is a real this is a real battle witness from where you fourteenth century, twelfth century?

Presenter35:02

So that's the book. You're allowed a luxury.

Robert Fisk35:05

Well, when I was at school I learned to play the violin. This sounds like an old cliche. And I used to play on an amateur orchestra afterwards. Um and so probably I'd like to have my um v I've got my violin, it's in Beirut actually. I'd like to have it restored and see if I can learn to play again.

Presenter35:21

We will happily give you that. And and if uh the waves crashed onto the shore and were in danger of washing away all of those desert island disks, which one would you run to save?

Robert Fisk35:31

Oh, I keep semi-barber.

Robert Fisk35:33

A Dago for strings. It's too haunting to dispense with. I I managed to rescue that one.

Presenter35:37

Robert Fiske, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Robert Fisk35:40

You're very welcome.

Presenter35:48

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk/radio4.