Professor Sir Denis Brogan

Presenter0:00

This download is the only extract the B B C has of this edition of Desert Island Discs. The presenter was Roy Plumley. How long have you been broadcasting, Sir Dennis?

Professor Sir Denis Brogan0:09

Oh, well, I began broadcasting and after the news, I suppose, about 1930 or 31, when it was beginning to be a regular nine o'clock commentary.

Professor Sir Denis Brogan0:19

after the news and I kept on doing that and then I worked in the BBC

Professor Sir Denis Brogan0:24

quite a lot in the war in various ways and uh

Professor Sir Denis Brogan0:28

I suppose I've been at this business now for thirty years anyway.

Presenter0:32

You're best known, of course, for your astonishing range of knowledge on Round Britain Quizzes. We were with that programme from its earliest stage.

Professor Sir Denis Brogan0:38

In the beginning, and of course its ancestor, transatlantic quiz, that's since 1943. So it's twenty.

Professor Sir Denis Brogan0:45

Three years.

Presenter0:46

This phenomenal memory of yours, have you ever consciously trained it, or was it a gift?

Professor Sir Denis Brogan0:51

No, I think it's uh that kind of memory as a gift, or uh whatever you like to call it, it's a fact.

Professor Sir Denis Brogan0:56

Of course you can improve you can it begins to give way with age and you can improve it by reading precisely and memorizing deliberately instead of accidentally.

Professor Sir Denis Brogan1:06

which I try to do. I no longer have the automatic.

Professor Sir Denis Brogan1:09

It's a visual.

Presenter1:10

It's a visual memory.

Professor Sir Denis Brogan1:12

What is it?

Presenter1:12

Yeah.

Professor Sir Denis Brogan1:12

It's a visual image. I can see the page. I know where the line occurs on the page. I can see the illustration, just as I could see in the past.

Professor Sir Denis Brogan1:20

An anatomical drawing, though I couldn't use it. And that is not as good as it was, but I still.

Professor Sir Denis Brogan1:26

I still can visualize a good many pages and know

Professor Sir Denis Brogan1:29

Uh but it's not automatic any longer.

Presenter1:32

You also have the unusual gift of being able to work on two mental levels at once. In the London Round Britain Quiz studio, Lionel Hale says you've been observed writing a letter while answering a question and not faltering on either task.

Professor Sir Denis Brogan1:47

Well, the usual letters are not terribly important letters. Ones I could work off and the question perhaps perhaps was easy and I wasn't under strain either way.

Professor Sir Denis Brogan1:56

Can you

Presenter1:56

You remember trivial people?

Professor Sir Denis Brogan1:57

People's names. I used to be very good at that. It's gone off now. And it's very embarrassing because if I go blank, people say, Why forget me?

Professor Sir Denis Brogan2:06

I used to be very good at any kind of trivia, in fact.

Presenter2:08

Yes.

Professor Sir Denis Brogan2:09

But not any longer.

Presenter2:11

Well now you're retiring from your chair of political economy at Cambridge. What are you going to do? What are your plans?

Professor Sir Denis Brogan2:16

Well, we're uh I've got two books to write, one on a French subject, one on the American subject. I work on them alternately, a fortnight of one, fortnight in the other. I'm on the French book at the moment.

Professor Sir Denis Brogan2:25

Then my wife and I are going out to America at the end of January. We're going to Princeton and she's writing a book of hers and I'm writing two books of mine and also taking a seminar at Princeton.

Presenter2:36

Yeah.

Professor Sir Denis Brogan2:37

Yeah, yeah.

Presenter2:38

So you're going to be busier than ever.

Professor Sir Denis Brogan2:40

Oh well

Professor Sir Denis Brogan2:42

Not quite, because now back in Cambridge we weren't as many phone calls from students.