Sir Anthony Seldon

Presenter0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Discs from BBC Radio 4. For rights reasons, the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.

Presenter0:10

For more information about the programme, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.

Presenter0:34

My castaway this week is the educationalist and writer Sir Anthony Seldon.

Presenter0:39

If I tell you he spent nine years as master of one of our most eminent public schools, and that among the thirty books he's published are biographies of four British Prime Ministers, you may imagine you already have the cut of his

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Listen up. His is not a text book existence.

Presenter0:55

He thinks power rarely confers happiness, and admits to periods of profound anxiety. He flunked his A levels, dabbled in hedonism, and confesses to having at times been seduced by glamour and wealth. In addition, he claims to abhor what he calls the educational apartheid of the British school system, encouraging us to care a little less about sitting exams and a little more about sitting in the lotus position. He's a devotee of yoga and meditation. He says I've always been pragmatic. I've always been emotionally on the left and intellectually on the right, and always had a sense that you need both aspects. So welcome, Sir Anthony Seldon. You're an award winning teacher. You're a highly acclaimed headmaster. You're now Vice-Chancellor of Buckingham University. And you say that if we show youngsters respect, they always rise to the occasion. Now I think that is surprisingly optimistic for somebody who's spent a long time in education. Do you think it's really true?

Sir Anthony Seldon1:55

Absolutely certain that it's true. It's always the case that your most difficult child in school

Sir Anthony Seldon2:03

is difficult because they feel bruised and rejected, but you give them something to do, maybe look after a younger child, and it brings out something totally different in them. So I'm a supreme optimist about human nature.

Sir Anthony Seldon2:18

And I think that there is goodness in every single child, and especially perhaps those who are most awkward and cussed.

Presenter2:28

And you say at the centre of education should be humanity, heart, and emotions.

Sir Anthony Seldon2:34

Of course exams and tests are important, but they're only part of it because they're only testing the intellect, and quite a small part of the intellect too, whereas we are all our bodies and our emotions, our feelings, in truth, all of us

Sir Anthony Seldon2:53

Every adult as well as every child can do far more in life

Sir Anthony Seldon2:58

than we think we can, and we self limit ourselves. It can be a voice from fifty years or one year ago that says you're no good at that or people laughed or jeered when one tried to paint or play a musical instrument or dance. And we think I can't do that.

Presenter3:15

What about that culture of darling you're wonderful at everything? You know, that idea that actually there is a time and a place to be quite straightforward with young people, and to say, Well, I'm glad you enjoy it, but I can't see you ever making a living at it.

Sir Anthony Seldon3:27

Ah, this is the answer to that.

Sir Anthony Seldon3:30

We're not all wonderful at everything, but we can all have a go at everything. You know what? Some people might not be good at music, but they might be great at public speaking, or at acting, or at being creative and entrepreneurial.

Sir Anthony Seldon3:44

We should never say to people you can't have a go, you can't do this. Schools have utter responsibility for the whole development of each child, and we don't do nearly a good enough job at it, and it grieves me.

Presenter4:01

Aside from this great tranche of your life that you spent in education, you have also, as I mentioned, written a lot of books, among them very well regarded biographies of Prime Ministers, Blair, Brown, Cameron, and Churchill. Lots of people find politicians quite dull. What is it about leaders that interests you?

Sir Anthony Seldon4:21

I think it is that they are all damaged in different ways. Churchill, terribly damaged, had his depression in the nineteen thirties, his Black Dog.

Sir Anthony Seldon4:33

And anybody who is going to make these supreme sacrifices for them and their families.

Sir Anthony Seldon4:40

interesting. And and the times that they live through, the decisions they have to make, the fact that every moment of every day is shaped for them. I'm just mesmerized by Prime Ministers and and that building Downing Street and what happens minute by minute and room by room.

Presenter4:58

Let's go to the music, Sir Anthony Selden. Tell me about your first choice this morning. What is it, and and why have you chosen it?

Sir Anthony Seldon5:05

Well this is One Day More from Les Miserable, a musical I adore and it's sung by the pupils and former pupils at Wellington College helped by Wellington Academy, the state school that we founded and it's that idea of everyone being in it together. Young people can achieve whatever the background, extraordinary things. There's music and creativity in every child.

Speaker 25:37

Baby for the storm.

Speaker 25:42

At the barricades of freedom, while I join my brother, our ranks begin to fall. Will you take your place with me?

Presenter6:07

One Day More from the musical Les Miserable, composed by Claude Michael Schoenberg, with lyrics by Herbert Kretzmann, performed there by pupils of Wellington College and Wellington Academy. So Anthony Selden, independent schools do better in terms of grades and future earning potentials for their pupils than the state sector. But given that, what, only about seven percent of Britain's children go to these fee-paying schools, and that it can cost well actually up to around about thirty-four thousand pounds a year in fees.

Presenter6:37

Wouldn't it honestly be better for everyone across the board if the playing field was levelled

Presenter6:44

and these institutions were quite simply abolished.

Sir Anthony Seldon6:48

Well, I think that if the quality of education was as good as it is at the best independent and the best state schools, then that might well be the ideal. Though I still think there's a role for a different sector that challenges, which doesn't have to be subject to the same governmental regimes as the rest. But, you know, all my life I've been very conscious of the way that education entrenches divides in our almost uniquely divided society in Britain and have tried to find ways to bridge those divides. And setting up now two academies at Wellington is one of those ways and having a whole variety of outreach programmes that many state and independent schools are involved with. The most important predictor of anyone's behaviour is the expectations that their superior have of them. And so I think it is raising expectations which is at the heart of good education, good schooling, good universities.

Presenter8:02

What's the hardest part of being a headmaster?

Sir Anthony Seldon8:05

Oh, the constant worry about things that could go wrong. I have my phone by my bedside every night throughout the twenty years of being ahead. It's a very lonely job being ahead, which is why you need to have very sympathetic governors.

Presenter8:23

And given that I asked you what is the hardest part, what what's the best part?

Sir Anthony Seldon8:27

Oh, it's a Wonderful job. I love it, loved it, loved it. It's having young people coming up to you and saying, I've done this or I've done that. It's being with teachers, having parents saying lovely things to you. You are the magician at the centre of the ring and spells and charms emanate from you and magical, breathtakingly wonderful things happen.

Presenter8:56

Let's have some more music, uh Anthony Seldon. Tell me about this second piece that we're going to hear.

Sir Anthony Seldon9:01

The first piece of music that I remember was when I was at junior school, aged ten, and it was music called the Allegri Miserari, and the choir master told the story about how when it was played

Sir Anthony Seldon9:17

Candle was put out throughout the whole service so that at the end of the service the whole chapel was left in the dark and that sense of mystery has enchanted me all my life. When I was at senior school I would have loved to have sung the solo that you'll hear where there's a top C but someone called Peter Brooke I don't know if you're listening but I've hated you all your life because Peter was chosen rather than me.

Presenter10:41

Part of the Allegri Miserary, sung by the Talus Scholars, directed by Peter Phillips. Sir Anthony Seldon, you were born into suburban London in 1953. You say that your parents gave you a a relatively privileged middle-class upbringing. Your father, you say, was a ferocious high achiever, and your mother was subject to profound anxiety. That strikes me as quite a combination in the house.

Sir Anthony Seldon11:04

They were a very sweet couple. They looked after each other. Dad was brought up an orphan and in the East End of London. His parents died in the influenza plague at the end of the First World War.

Presenter11:17

Big.

Sir Anthony Seldon11:17

Uh

Presenter11:17

have been Jewish immigrants.

Sir Anthony Seldon11:19

They were Jewish immigrants, came from the Ukraine and my poor father made his own way up through the East End, went to the London School of Economics and believed profoundly in self-help and that came out as a belief in the free market and market economics and he later founded a think tank that had a big influence on Margaret Thatcher.

Presenter11:47

So he was the first editorial director of the Institute for Economic Affairs. Correct. And did he bring that work home? I mean, was he chatting about politics?

Presenter12:06

Who were the politicians that he brought home?

Sir Anthony Seldon12:08

Mrs Thatcher came to parties. Geoffrey Howe. Geoffrey Howe, at our wedding when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, gave us two wedding presents, an ironing board and a kitchen clock. And when the Treasury realised what he had done, they demanded one of them back.

Presenter12:26

These are about to say how generous, yeah, they're not quite so generous.

Sir Anthony Seldon12:29

It was a very political home. The house was constantly full of people and my mother, who had a very different kind of background, again affected by the First World War, her father shot in the head, couldn't carry on with his work, became a communist, totally polar opposite to his son-in-law, my father. And that was a very depressive, difficult home for her. And yes, she was full of anxieties. And whatever we did, there was a fear that something bad could and might happen, as had happened all too often in her own life. And I think it affected me more than my two older brothers. I was the last of the three and perhaps she molly-coddled me more. And I can certainly see that in my fathering of my children, they would say that I fuss much too much.

Presenter13:32

Let's have some more music, Anthony Seldon. We're on your side. Tell me about this.

Sir Anthony Seldon13:36

Well, we have to have some Beatles, don't we? And an optimistic Upbeat Beatles because so much of my life is about happiness. And this is also a song that our children loved. We'd zap the cassette on and they'd listen to it, three of them in the back of the car.

Speaker 113:55

Try to see it my way, do I have to keep on talking till I can go?

Speaker 114:02

While you see it your way, but the rest of knowing that our love may soon be gone. We can work it out, we can work it out.

Speaker 114:14

Think of what you're saying You can get it wrong and still you think that it's alright

Speaker 114:21

Think of what I'm saying We can work it out and get it

Presenter14:25

That was the Beatles and we can work it out. Anthony Seldon, you've written that at the age of fourteen your life was suddenly plagued by anxieties and that that was when the hedonism kicked in. I'm I'm interested in what you got up to. What did you do that was hedonistic at fourteen?

Sir Anthony Seldon14:39

Oh, you want me to say naughty things? Everyone loves headmasters, hearing that they have had a dark side. I drank too much, I smoked very heavily, I fell in love with lots of girls, but they didn't really fall in love with

Presenter14:41

Oh definitely.

Sir Anthony Seldon14:58

Me?

Sir Anthony Seldon14:59

I uh wore black every single day of my university career and looked frankly totally ridiculous. Um but I didn't do drugs after an experience I had when I was seventeen when I smoked some marijuana and it it affected me badly for about a week afterwards.

Presenter15:21

And that was of course sort of the end of the mid to the end of the sixties. Was that why you flunked your A levels first time around?

Sir Anthony Seldon15:27

Oh, I was very um angry and I don't know what I was angry about, but I just knew I was angry. And I had a headmaster who let me come back to school and I reset my A levels.

Presenter15:40

And that second time of trying, you did well in your A levels and you you went on to study philosophy, uh, politics and economics at Oxford. Was that sort of partly to please your parents?'Cause that's very much in the mould of what your dad was involved in.

Sir Anthony Seldon15:52

I think I probably yeah, I think I probably chose economics rather than English or history because I thought dad would have liked that. I didn't get a very good degree. I did spend almost all the time directing plays. I loved being at Oxford and I blame myself for not having worked harder.

Presenter16:16

Tell me a bit more about directing plays.

Sir Anthony Seldon16:18

Just l

Sir Anthony Seldon16:20

I was never good enough to act, so I thought, well, I have to take charge uh and organise other people. I never liked it when teachers said get into pairs because I always dreaded no one would ever want to be a pair with me.

Presenter16:34

And did they did they want to

Sir Anthony Seldon16:35

Be a bear with you.

Presenter16:40

W were you somebody who took that terribly to heart? Because some peop I mean, we all get left and not get picked, and some of us remember it, and some of us can't remember it.

Sir Anthony Seldon16:42

'Cause some peop I mean, we all get left.

Sir Anthony Seldon16:46

I think all my life I've been afraid of rejection and afraid of not being good enough. But in the last few years I'm beginning to feel better about life and whatever I've done.

Presenter17:02

Let's have your fourth, Anthony Seldon. Tell me a little bit about this.

Sir Anthony Seldon17:07

Absolutely key in my life was meeting Joanna. We were married in 1982 by Hugo Grin who'd been through Auschwitz. The Holocaust has been a powerfully shaping factor in my life. And this is Schindler's list, the music from the film. And the particular recording here is by a young student from Wellington College. And I love this because she plays it with such tenderness and I feel such hope when I listen to this recording, Hope for the Future.

Speaker 117:26

Hmm.

Presenter18:47

That was part of the theme from the film Schindler's List composed by John Williams, and it was especially recorded for this programme by Mira Steenbrugge on violin and Simon Williamson on piano, both from Wellington College. So you went, Anthony Seldon, on to do a PhD at the LSE, and then you began your first book. It was uh about Churchill's post-war government, early fifties government. Wha why are you smiling there?

Sir Anthony Seldon19:13

Oh, because I just loved the idea of uh writing a book and and Churchill, it was just a dream. He was such a figure uh throughout my life, this great heroic figure who'd saved the country during the war. Happy memories.

Presenter19:30

And it's

Presenter19:32

And so, yes, and indeed memories, I'm sure, of going to you went to the United States as part of this research.

Presenter19:37

Interesting that you say the the happy memories and having a good time, because it was also a time when you there was a moment of crisis. Just explain to me what happened.

Sir Anthony Seldon19:45

Well, in the early stages of writing it, I went off to the libraries of Presidents Truman and Eisenhower, and I found myself in the middle of the United States, miles from anywhere, and I just had a total collapse of confidence. And Oxford was over. Nobody, frankly, could care less about my doctorate. And I had to put myself together and I started meditating and practising yoga. And

Sir Anthony Seldon20:24

Enormously helpful too was meeting Joanna and my life I realized needed the bad times. We all go through bad times. Often they're bad because part of us is saying that we need to change and we can use these opportunities to learn and to grow.

Presenter20:46

Let's have some more music. We're going to listen to your fifth choice of the morning.

Sir Anthony Seldon20:50

Uh

Presenter20:50

Back.

Sir Anthony Seldon20:50

Yeah. When the children came into their mid-late teens and they discovered that their friends were a lot more exciting than their mum and dad, I can't imagine how they came to that conclusion. I think we were just the last word in fun. But we did discover that by taking them off on short breaks for four or five days every year to somewhere sunny with a bit of culture, it was a way of keeping them together.

Sir Anthony Seldon21:18

One of the films that we'd all loved as a family was Gladiator and we went to the place in Morocco where Gladiator was filmed and we started listening to this track which is ethereal and spiritual and at that time I'd been ahead for nearly ten years and I'd written books but none of them really fulfilled me and this song reminds me about getting back in touch with myself and doing the things that allowed me to feel that deep inner peace and harmony.

Presenter22:32

Now we are free from the soundtrack of the film Gladiator. It was written by Hans Zimmer, Lisa Gerrard, and Klaus Badelt and sung by Lisa Gerrard there with the Lyndhurst Orchestra conducted by Gavin Greenaway. So, Anthony Seldon, you joined Brighton College then in 1997. You went on to be the Master, as we know, at Wellington College in Berkshire in 2006. When you started to introduce yoga and happiness classes to your school, what was the response, not of the pupils, but of the parents?

Sir Anthony Seldon23:02

The parents, I think, were apprehensive at first because I was a new head and who was I? What was this person?

Sir Anthony Seldon23:10

And it took time to build trust. And all this work around well being and positive psychology and mindfulness is much about helping us to live smarter lives, more sorted lives.

Sir Anthony Seldon23:29

You know, young people learn much better when they're calmer and focussed.

Sir Anthony Seldon23:35

And when they started getting hold of that

Sir Anthony Seldon23:38

They started liking it and many of them wanted to know more about it and started coming to parents' classes on mindfulness and on coaching and recognizing that they too should be taking their own mental and physical health more seriously.

Presenter23:55

And what changes then did you see in the classroom and in results and in the general conduct of pupils?

Sir Anthony Seldon24:02

It was important to me that

Sir Anthony Seldon24:05

We could always say that the results at Wellington were going up quicker or as quick as any school in the country. Because we had so many detractors who thought this was psycho-babble, living in La La Land, or deeply self-indulgent. We had all that and more thrown at us. But how could that be the case if what they worship on the high altar, which is GCSE and A-level results, were going up so so sharply?

Presenter24:33

You certainly draw pretty loud criticism on occasions from the educational establishment, who sometimes sound like they wish you would just shut up.

Sir Anthony Seldon24:39

Yeah.

Sir Anthony Seldon24:41

Um

Presenter24:42

Do you get that feeling?

Sir Anthony Seldon24:43

I certainly get the feeling that's what they wish I'd do and probably more than just shut up. And it's happening now with universities too. But that doesn't stop me because I honestly think, according to my deepest convictions, I'm right about well not I'm right, but this way of thinking is right, about what education is and about the importance of taking wellbeing and character and creativity, entrepreneurship seriously.

Presenter25:15

Let's have some music, Anthony Seldon. We're on your sixth.

Sir Anthony Seldon25:19

Um last year I took Joanna on a mystery tour. I took her back to somewhere that we'd been on our honeymoon and I played the same music to her that we played on our honeymoon on the same journey along the riverbank and it's this very mysterious piece at the end of Sebelius' second symphony where there's a suppressed sense of tension that goes on and on and on.

Presenter26:55

That was part of the fourth movement of Sibelius's Symphony No. Two, played by the Vienna Philharmonic, conducted by Leonard Bernstein. Sir Antony Selden, you have said recently that you have never been

Presenter27:06

I'm happier. And that is particularly interesting because since, I think it was 2011, you and your wife have been dealing with Joanna's diagnosis of terminal cancer.

Presenter27:18

She is somebody it's only uh very clear to hear you speak this morning, and indeed in much that you've written, that your marriage has been an incredibly happy one. You have three children.

Presenter27:28

Um, can you explain that apparent paradox of being able to live happily in such a very difficult situation for you both?

Sir Anthony Seldon27:36

Yes, it is odd, isn't it? But she has been incredibly uh strong ever since this incurable cancer was diagnosed uh four and a bit years ago. And um it it's I think, Kirsty, it's about

Sir Anthony Seldon27:55

Making the most of the time that you have and there's something about the prospect of mortality and there being a finite time no one knows how long that we're together with each other and with the family that makes us want to celebrate everything. So little things that would constantly make her cross like me not putting the breakfast things in the dishwasher. Actually that still gets her a bit. But in general it's the little things which are swept away and we just love being together. And I can see her more clearly as she is than I ever saw her before. I just love her for what she is. So I think that's why I feel so happy.

Speaker 128:08

Hmm.

Presenter28:55

And what are the things that you and Joanna choose to spend the time you have together doing?

Sir Anthony Seldon29:03

Ooh, we um we go for walks together, we see more films together, we read books together, we have lots of of shared projects and with the children. The quality um the the sense of being with each other uh it's unspoken, we don't talk about it, we all know and it's brought I think all of us together. And that's how life can and should be. It's in a way a sad thing that one sometimes needs something like this to remind one that we should be savouring each other, rather than the human condition, which in my experience at least was too often focussing on what I and others didn't have.

Presenter29:53

Tell me about your seventh piece of music.

Sir Anthony Seldon29:55

Well, uh this is a cheerful one. This is Samuel Barber's adagio for strings and I played it behind lots of the different dramas that I directed. One I wrote called Somme which was performed at the Edinburgh Fringe and at the end of it someone, an American, came up to me with tears streaming down his cheeks and and he said, Who wrote it? Who wrote it? And so I sort of coughed and said with a little bit too much modesty, Well, actually I wrote it and he said no, no as if I was the biggest idiot of all time. He said not not the play, he said the music.

Sir Anthony Seldon30:35

That was a little bit humiliating, but I I love this music and this particular version was played four days after the eleventh of September two thousand and one.

Presenter31:48

That was Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings played by the B B C Symphony Orchestra conducted there by Leonard Slatkin and that was broadcast on The Last Night of the Proms in two thousand and one.

Presenter31:58

Anthony Seldon, how much do you think you have in common with the the leaders you've spoken about? You know, these people, these sort of neurotic, damaged individuals at the at the very nexus of power, the people who say I am the man or woman to lead the country, you find them fascinating. Do you find that you you know you you're singing from the same hymn sheet on that one?

Sir Anthony Seldon32:18

I'm sure that that is part of it, though I do think that everybody is uh damaged in different ways uh and that the process of life is the unravelling of the truth about un ourselves.

Presenter32:34

It has to date been a very productive life. What what are you proudest of?

Sir Anthony Seldon32:39

Oh, uh our children?

Sir Anthony Seldon32:43

Staying married?

Sir Anthony Seldon32:46

helping some people along the way. The nicest thing in my life is when students write and say thank you for doing this, those things.

Presenter32:56

Let's have your final piece of music, Anthony Seldon. What are what are we going to hear?

Sir Anthony Seldon33:00

Well, so this is from Brighton College where the children grew up and it's sung by the choir. It's I vow to thee, my country. I've always had a big thing about the First World War and I so want to follow the path of the Western Front, to spend a month walking it in memory of a young soldier, Douglas Gillespie, who died tragically young on the Western Front, who on almost at the end of his life wrote to his parents about how that Western Front should become a via sacra, a sacred path along which everybody should walk as a memory of where war leads.

Speaker 233:48

I've heard of all

Speaker 233:54

Most dear to them that love, most dear to them that small.

Speaker 234:05

We made us go to our mist, We may not see thee.

Speaker 234:17

The Lord is the faithful heart and brightest of the rain.

Speaker 234:28

And so my song inside shining mountain.

Presenter34:55

That was the second verse of I Vow to Thee, My Country, with words by Sir Cecil Spring Rice set to the music from Holst Jupiter. It was recorded specially for this programme by Brighton College Chapel Choir. The organ was played by Richard Dawson, and the choir was directed by Sandy Chenery. It is time now, Antony Selden, then, to cast you away.

Presenter35:13

Sorry about that. I'm going to give you the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare. You get to take another book. What will your book be?

Sir Anthony Seldon35:19

Well I'll read both of those every day, and the book would be Joanna's poetry and short stories, if I'm allowed that.

Presenter35:29

You certainly are we shall give you that.

Presenter35:31

And a luxury too. This is so

Sir Anthony Seldon35:34

Difficult.

Presenter35:35

Uh

Sir Anthony Seldon35:35

But it would be a yoga mat and prayer mat which I could also sleep out at night under the stars on and I'd love that.

Presenter35:46

Yes, you may certainly have that then. And finally, if you could save only one of these eight disks, which one would it be?

Sir Anthony Seldon35:53

Allegri miserari with the idea of the candles going out one by one.

Presenter35:58

It's yours, Sir Anthony Seldon. Thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Sir Anthony Seldon36:03

Thank you for having me on.

Presenter36:45

You've been listening to a download from the BBC. You'll find more information on the Radio 4 website: bbc.co.uk slash Radio4.