Sir Antony Beevor

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This is the BBC.

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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.

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

Presenter0:42

My castaway this week is the historian Sir Anthony Beaver. He has taken books on military history from the neglected, fusty shelves at the back of the shop to pride of place atop the world's bestseller lists. Marshalling his literary prowess to complete works entitled Stalingrad, Ardennes, D-Day, and Berlin, The Downfall, 1945. He chronicles many of the bloodiest moments mankind has endured, throwing light not just on human horror and heroism, but much of the hitherto ignored struggles of ordinary soldiers and forgotten citizens. His own back story makes interesting reading and is strikingly at odds with how he's made his name. He failed both his English and history A levels, and as a young officer in the Eleventh Hazars, it was the boredom of a posting to Wales that led him to begin writing. He says one writes to understand, and it's always thrilling when you're going through the archives to find something exciting or unexpected. It is like panning for gold. So welcome, Sir Anthony Beaver. It'll be no surprise to listeners that, of course, your books always take a huge amount of in-depth research. Is it the researching or the writing in the end which is your greatest pleasure? They're different pleasures.

Sir Antony Beevor1:56

I enjoy both. The research is always exciting because I find, contrary if you like, to the continental idea of history where you get a thesis and then you prove your thesis with the different material you find in the archives, I think that's actually an aberration. I find that the really exciting moments are when you find something in the archives which shows that your presumptions, your attitudes were wrong about something, because then you really know you found something different and new. And that is truly exciting. The writing process is a great pleasure, actually. It's tough at times, but basically it's the most satisfying part. And then, of course, my wife and I, both being writers, we edit each other's work. It was an early moment in our marriage where we had to get through the pain barrier of accepting criticism. But she just puts a line beside a paragraph saying boring or don't understand, and I know I've got a problem, and I do the same to her.

Presenter2:47

Let's talk for a moment about the multifactorial nature of your writing. When you are taking into consideration not just the movements of troops and the strategic decisions of commanders and how it affected the populations in the areas where the battles are fought, how do you figure that all out, literally?

Sir Antony Beevor3:03

It does require an immense amount of reading beforehand. I mean, certainly even before you go into the archives, because unless you understand it, you're not going to be able to convey that understanding to the reader. It's got to be really clear in your head before you dare start the actual process of writing. And so, in fact, I'm I work in a a barn in the country and there's a large ping pong table and all the maps are spread out there or attached to the walls and so forth.

Presenter3:26

Are there parts of the world where the version that you have given us of history has not been welcome?

Sir Antony Beevor3:33

Yes, that's certainly true. In China they expagated my history of the Second World War. Everything was cut out. Any reference to Chiam and Mao was cut out. Russia was of course far more sensitive. I was warned by the Russian ambassador at the time in London when the Berlin book came out that it was in fact he accused me of lies, slander and blasphemy. But then over a vodka lunch, which was rather strange, which he invited me to afterwards, he said, you've got to understand, you know, the victory is sacred and anything which undermines it and of course the appalling accounts of the mass rapes by Red Army soldiers did undermine the sacred element of the victory. So I have certainly been attacked and technically I'm liable to five years' imprisonment if I go back because of a new law brought in by Sergei Shoigu, the Minister of Defence.

Presenter4:18

And you say technically, I mean, you haven't been back since. Do you is it your belief that if you did go back

Sir Antony Beevor4:20

Yeah, you

Sir Antony Beevor4:22

You can't tell. I think it's unlikely, but at the same time, you know, Russia is very, very unpredictable.

Presenter4:28

Time for the music, Sir Anthony Beaver. We're going to hear your first disc. Just tell me a little bit about it. Why have you chosen this?

Sir Antony Beevor4:34

I've always loved Baroque trumpets. There's something, I think, very uplifting, and I think it was something which the great courts of Europe found. I mean, trumpeters were always paid far more than anybody else, because it was regarded as a very special, almost celestial music. I just love the joy. It's a sort of joyful rivale, if you like, to put it in military terms.

Presenter6:00

That was Vivaldi's concerto in C major, played by the parlay of instruments with Alison Balsam and Crispian Steele Perkins on trumpet. Sir Anthony Beevery. Your book, then, as we know, Stellingrad, was published in 1998. It very firmly put you on the literary map. It sold up to date about two million copies. In any great success story, timing, of course, plays its part, and it certainly did with you. Your access to the archives of the Russian Ministry of Defence was crucial in what you were able to understand and write about. And your research began in 1994. That's right. Why was that important?

Speaker 36:18

Yeah.

Sir Antony Beevor6:34

Well, 1994 was when Pikoya, who was the Minister of the Archives appointed by Yeltsin, told the military to open up their archives for the first time. And they had no idea what to do, because for them these were still secret documents, and to allow foreigners, you know, let alone I mean potential enemies from the Cold War period, into their archives was something that they found very hard to understand. And there was that rather typical mixture of paranoia and naivety, which one finds very much in Russia. But the point was that in the Commissar's reports there was the real gold for me, because every single night a report some twenty-five pages long was flown back to Stalin because he had to know exactly what was going on. So there was no propaganda bias for once, and you could really rely on that stuff.

Presenter7:20

And of course you credit often in your books the the work of the translator. You must have to work incredibly closely with the translator and have to trust them implicitly.

Sir Antony Beevor7:31

Well, I realized that, you know, my Russian would never be good enough. And so, as a result, I found the wonderful Luba Vinogradova, who we've worked together now for over 20 years. And Luba's doctorate was in plant biology, which for me was perfect. I did not want to have a historian because they might have, you know, focused the material on their own interests or whatever. And Luba, I'd already found when we went down to Volgograd to interview some of the veterans and so forth, had exactly the same instinct as I did. And it's been wonderful ever since. And Luba gave up plant biology and she's now writing her own books, which is wonderful.

Presenter8:05

You say that you also would go to speak to war veterans. After more than half a century, how can you be sure that as you sit down with somebody that they are actually telling you what happened?

Sir Antony Beevor8:17

Often they're not, and it's certainly true that those who'd read lots of official histories, particularly of Russian soldiers and veterans, were basically uh filtering all of their experiences through what they'd read afterwards. And that, of course, is no good at all. But what was interesting was that the women were very different, because they hadn't read the official accounts, and their memories were far more reliable. At the time, the women had kept their mouths shut and their eyes open, and the men had been so humiliated by the Stalinist system that now they were in control of history. They were the ones who were able to tell us foreigners, you know, what happened. But in fact, of course, it was a totally censored, a totally expurgated version of what had happened.

Presenter8:56

Anthony Beaver, it's time for some more of your music this morning. We're going to your second disc. Tell me about this. You're smiling now.

Sir Antony Beevor9:03

Well, I've always been a huge Blondie fan. I mean, I think Debbie Harry is one of the great songwriters, but also the rhythm. I mean, it's something which just grabs you. It's Blondie and Union City Blue.

Speaker 39:19

Oh, what are we gonna do?

Speaker 39:23

Union

Speaker 39:26

Union, you're gonna be a little bit more.

Presenter9:48

That was Blondie and Union City Blue. We'll go back a little bit further than uh the nineteen eighties now, Sir Anthony. We'll go back to uh middle to late forties, nineteen forty six. You were the youngest of three brothers. A strong literary tradition. Just tell me a little bit about the background of your family.

Sir Antony Beevor10:04

The basically the on the mother's my mother's side it was sort of a long line mainly of sort of blue stockings. It actually started, I suppose, about eighteen thirty two with uh John Austin's treatise on jurisprudence. And I was, in the end, um sixth generation of the family published by the same publishers.

Presenter10:20

Your father had he was a successful lawyer in London, but he had had probably I mean, it sounds like a pretty interesting war. He w he was in special operations.

Sir Antony Beevor10:29

That's right. First of all, he was thrown out of Portugal by Salazar. What was he getting up to? Well, he was preparing the blowing up of all of the oil terminals on the Tagus in case the Germans invaded. But of course, the Salazar regime was not very happy to find a British officer working undercover, working actually with left-wing guerrilla groups ready to do that if the Germans did invade. So he was chucked out of the country and then was sent to Italy later on, where he was the senior SOE officer on Field Marshal Alexanderstaff.

Presenter10:33

What was he getting up to?

Presenter10:58

And so did he talk to you about all of this?

Sir Antony Beevor11:00

Very little. That wartime generation didn't talk about it until really the very end of their lives, when quite often it was a little bit late.

Presenter11:06

Did you feel as a child that those early years of your life were lived somehow in the shadow of World War Two?

Sir Antony Beevor11:13

Very much so. I mean, people's lives were defined. Did they have a good war? My father did have a good war. My mother almost had a good war because Ian Fleming wanted her to parachute into Italy, which is where the sort of family lived. I mean, my grandparents had bought this ruined castle in the Lunigiana, and he was a painter and she was a writer. And they had this idyllic Bohemian life, which is where my mother was brought up. But she spoke the local dialect perfectly and all the rest of it. And so that's why Fleming wanted her to parachute in. But she was actually pregnant with my eldest brother at the time, so I was saved.

Presenter11:47

You you were quite seriously unwell as a little boy.

Sir Antony Beevor11:50

I had something called Perthes disease, which means your hip bone goes soft and uh normally you're scrapped to a bed while it regrows or firms up. But uh my mother said, Well, that would be terrible. Why not put him on crutches with my leg in a sling behind my back?

Presenter12:04

Uh and so how long were you in that state?

Sir Antony Beevor12:05

Uh three years. Um but between sort of the age of four and um seven.

Presenter12:11

Did that encourage a sense of separateness in you?

Sir Antony Beevor12:14

Locally, I think it's a good idea.

Presenter12:14

Different.

Sir Antony Beevor12:15

Well, I was different in that particular way and also being quite a lot younger in terms of the three brothers. I think that did mean sort of shall we say one had a fairly rich imaginative uh life. But also though it did have a knock-on effect because obviously one was bullied at school and all the rest of it having come off crutches, um being sort of very weak. And I think that's actually where I um probably decided I I wanted to be a soldier and join the army or if I needed to prove myself, though I didn't accept that or didn't uh allow myself to realize that at the time.

Presenter12:44

And how did you handle the bullying apps at the time?

Sir Antony Beevor12:47

Basically, you just had to grit your teeth as far as possible and uh you know, if you were gonna be blubbing it you just had to be in private. I mean this was very much the age of, you know, when you went off to uh prep school at the age of eight and all that sort of stuff.

Presenter12:59

Time for some more music, Sir Antony. This is your third. What are we going to hear now?

Sir Antony Beevor13:03

Jeremiah Clarke's uh well, some people say trumpet voluntary, others say Martin Prince of Denmark. It was the piece of music which I suppose first got me interested in classical music. It was always played coming out of chapel at my prep school in Worcestershire. I think it did sort of stir something in me. And I think ever since I've always been fascinated with the trumpet.

Presenter14:31

The Philip Jones Bras Ensemble, playing part of Jeremiah Clarke's Trumpet Voluntary. Sir Anthony Beaver, you went, you said you were at prep school in Worcestershire and then you went on to Winchester Public School of course and as we know from my introduction you not only failed your I mean I heard you laughing as I said you failed your English and you failed your history A level. What was the problem?

Sir Antony Beevor14:52

I think I I was basically in revolt at the time. You know, Winchester was uh slightly uh it was very good for the sort of, if you like, the intellectual high flyers. But I do remember once there were two boys, two scholars, walking around cloisters and I overheard them discussing Proust. I thought at the age of thirteen or fourteen, you know, shouldn't you get a life? Um and uh I think I think I was in revolt and I probably wasted my time there. You can imagine how furious my father was.

Presenter15:19

Yes, I can, and I definitely want to hear more about that.

Sir Antony Beevor15:22

Well, he was quite right. I mean, you know, it was an appalling waste of an education, but I think it certainly implanted a number of seeds which encouraged me later on to start educating myself.

Presenter15:32

Were you marking yourself out as different? Was that what the sort of two fingers up at father was, really?

Sir Antony Beevor15:37

I don't think it was quite as obvious as that. No, I greatly admired my father. I mean, he was an extremely impressive man. I think I was sort of slightly awed by him in many ways, and loved him later when he sort of retired, because then he mellowed and couldn't have been kinder or more encouraging.

Presenter15:52

There was not a great uh military history in your family yet you ended up at Sandhurst. Why did you choose to go to Sandhurst?

Sir Antony Beevor15:58

Well, I think it was at that stage I hadn't realized, but from the age of m prep school, I suppose, that uh I'd obviously wanted to prove myself physically. There'd been a a chip on my shoulder physically as a result of that Perthese disease. But I didn't realize this until much later, in fact, basically when I was actually writing my first novel at the end of my time in the army.

Presenter16:16

How did you come to realize it, then?

Sir Antony Beevor16:18

Well, because like all first novels, it was one of those embarrassingly autobiographical first novels and uh and I suddenly realized the truth. Actually it was as sort of, if you like, the best bit of sort of auto psychotherapy you can imagine.

Presenter16:22

Graph

Presenter16:30

Um the English establishment then for you you know, it's it's prep school and it's Winchester and on to Sandhurst, and yet you don't sound like you were a young man who was entirely at home in the establishment. I if I had met you in your let's say your early twenties, what sort of a young man would I have met?

Sir Antony Beevor16:47

Goodness. Um, well, my my wife always says she wouldn't have touched me if she had come across me in those days, and I'm sure she was right. I don't blame her for that either. Um partly, I think part of the problem was, of course, being brought up in an all-male family and in an all-male school. You know, women were sort of alien creatures, and um it took a long time before you started to realize actually they were human beings, I'm afraid. Uh, it was only really one started to learn about life in the army, and that actually was very good for me. I mean, it was a bit of a shock. But you did start to learn in unexpected ways. Drill sergeant at Sandhurst, I remember him telling us that in the old days when the sentry boxes were outside Buckingham Palace, he'd been the sergeant of the guard, and there was a new recruit arriving from Perbright. And he told him, you know, if the palace is attacked or whatever, you blow your whistle and the guard will turn out to defend the thing. Anyway, middle of the night, suddenly they heard the whistle being blown. They all charged out, fixing bayonets and putting magazines on their rifles, ready to defend the palace, to find that actually a very drunk girl had climbed into the sentry box behind him and taken down his trousers and was playing with him. And he didn't know what to do but blow his whistle. Anyway, you learnt about life in the army, if nothing else.

Presenter17:50

Let's have another piece of music, then, Sir Anthony Peter. It's time for your fourth. Tell me about this.

Sir Antony Beevor17:56

Well, Coburg was the regimental march of the Eleventh Azars, and I did love it with the regiment, even though I hated Sandhurst. They were a wonderful collection of people. And Coburg was originally written by Michael Haydn, but it was adapted by the Prince Regent, who was Colonel in Chief.

Presenter19:20

That was Coburg, usually attributed to composer Michael Haydn, and played by the regimental band of the Royal Hussars there. Sir Anthony Beaver, where and how had your interest, your deep interest, in history, begun?

Sir Antony Beevor19:33

It started actually at the prep school. I had a wonderful history teacher. I mean, let's face it, it's always the teacher who is the one who sort of triggers it, called Alec Porch, and I've always been eternally grateful to him. Then, of course, at Sandhurst, I studied under John Keegan.

Presenter19:38

Oh well.

Presenter19:46

A very famous military historian.

Sir Antony Beevor19:47

Yes, and he did revolutionize military history when he wrote The Face of Battle, because for the first time it was looking at things from the bottom up rather than the staff officers or the general's version from top down. And my father, when I explained why I'd decided to leave the army and all the rest of it, was wonderfully encouraging. I started off writing a few of these novels, mainly to learn how to write. And then publishers started to say, Why don't you do military history? because it's very rare to have somebody who has military experience today and can write.

Presenter20:18

So so you honed your craft and you got it to the point where, as we know, Stalingrad was published in 1998. Four years later you published Berlin, The Downfall, 1945.

Presenter20:29

I have read that it was a book that took a significant personal toll upon you, and I'd like to find out more about that.

Sir Antony Beevor20:38

Well, it was such an appalling story. The Berlin Book is about the terrifying collapse of the Third Reich, but also it includes the the mass rapes committed by the Red Army on German women as they advanced on the capital.

Sir Antony Beevor20:54

There was a German historian called Helke Sander, and with her colleagues, they came up with estimates of roughly altogether two million German women who had been raped. And let's face it, in most cases, as one knows from the reports in the Russian archives, it was time and time again. And that's why there were so many suicides as well. So, from that point of view, it was a vast phenomenon. And it wasn't just a question of the mass rapes, but it was also what happened to the children as well. I mean, we found in the Russian archives accounts, even this is from the NKVD, the sort of security troops under Beria, even reporting about the German women cutting their wrists and the wrists of their children because they couldn't survive it any longer. So, not surprising, with the pressure of finishing the book on time, but also the horror of the material. I really did have a little bit of a nervous breakdown at the end. I'm never going to forget the face of my editor when I sort of collapsed in tears in her office and felt I just not that I couldn't go on because by then I was fairly close to the end, but whether I was going to be able to sort of keep it all going and so forth. And with Stalingrad, nobody had expected it to be a success at all, and I wasn't under pressure from the point of view of publication date. Here, they were preparing this as sort of, you know, the major book of the year and all the rest of it, and it was all fixed into a programme which you couldn't miss.

Presenter22:09

Uh the passion that you have for for uncovering these great historical truths and moments and details is clear to anybody who reads your work.

Presenter22:19

I'm wondering what you think about those of us who choose to read it. Why do you think we're doing that? Because the facts are often abhorrent.

Sir Antony Beevor22:27

I think we are fascinated by evil. We have to understand it in some ways. Why are men compelled, in so many cases, to be cruel, to carry out these uh appalling acts? And yet, at the same time, the great lesson of history must be you cannot generalise. I mean, not every Russian soldier was a rapist. Um particularly Jewish officers did what they could to save German women, and they had more reason for revenge than anybody. Not all German soldiers in in the Soviet Union were war criminals. The vital duty of the historian is to fight that sort of categorization, that generalization.

Presenter23:01

And in the mind of the reader often the idea that what would I have done? If I were there then, what would I have done?

Sir Antony Beevor23:08

But that, I think, is why we're still fascinated with the Second World War. You're actually right. It is a question of moral choice. Today we're living in a period where there is very little sort of moral sense of disapproval or anything like that. And we do ask ourselves, would we have hidden Jews if that was going to put our family at risk or ourselves at risk? We must pose these questions.

Presenter23:28

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

Sir Antony Beevor23:33

Well, this is, shall we say, a very personal choice in a sense because I bought the house just after 1970 and there were friends living there and suddenly Elizabeth Sombart, a great concert pianist, turned up and she moved in her grand piano into the sitting room and she slept on a futon, which was the great fashion of the day, underneath the grand piano and she used to play wonderful concerts for us in the evening.

Presenter24:59

That was part of Chopin's concerto number one in E minor, played by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra with soloist Elizabeth Sombar. You're a one-time lodger, as we learn there, Sir Anthony Beaver. You know, we we so often hear politicians throughout the decades say that, you know, the reason we need to be interested in history, we need to learn the lessons from history. And I'm wondering, as you are watching the nightly news, as you surely do, and you see the pictures from Syria and you see the pictures of the ongoing and appalling battle in Aleppo, what are your thoughts on that, given that you have such a well-informed historical perspective?

Sir Antony Beevor25:34

Well in fact I've just been lecturing on this about the whole of the evolution of urban warfare from Stalingrad through to Mosul. I mean it's terrifying when one does see things which basically one should have learnt beforehand. And in that sense you can learn from history. But the really terrifying aspect is when the media, but above all politicians, start making history into a form of predictive mechanism. They try to take historical parallels far too far, partly because they sometimes like sounding Churchillian or Rooseveltian, and it sort of puts them on a bit of a pedestal and emphasizing the seriousness of the subject. But it's usually disastrous in strategic terms if it influences what is going to be decided.

Presenter26:14

And so therefore you're saying there are not parallels to be drawn, that this is a unique set of circumstances.

Sir Antony Beevor26:18

Dances with all Everything is unique in that particular sense. History does not repeat itself. I mean, there are echoes, there are rhymes, whatever you want to call it, which sound very beguiling, but I think that we've got to realize that history is not a predictive mechanism. It's not going to tell us about the future. And the trouble is that, and this may sound rich coming from me, the Second World War has become almost the defining reference point for all forms of conflict and problems in the world.

Presenter26:45

And that is not useful.

Sir Antony Beevor26:46

It is not useful, it is dangerous.

Presenter26:48

And what about the way that history is taught now? Do you take um much issue with the way history is taught in schools, with what's being left out? I mean, much of this has become political with a small P these days.

Sir Antony Beevor26:59

Uh it is. And uh the trouble started, I think, when people could uh give it up at the age of thirteen or whatever. I think the bigger worry, of course, is that most people, having acquired no historical knowledge at school, believe almost every film that they see, especially when it's announced as based on a true story. And um therefore fiction has actually become the fountain of people's ideas about history.

Presenter27:25

Much more to talk about, but for now let's listen to some more music. Um tell me about this. We're going to listen to your sixth disc.

Presenter27:32

Clock

Sir Antony Beevor27:33

Only

Presenter27:33

Uh

Sir Antony Beevor27:33

Again, dreaming.

Presenter27:35

And what would you have been doing when you were listening to this? Tell me about that period of your life.

Sir Antony Beevor27:38

Well you can't stay still when you're listening to it. I mean I well these were dancing days. These were dancing days though. I was always a useless dancer. I was a worse singer. I mean the children will never allow me, quite rightly, to sing in church or anywhere, even if I was at a wedding or whatever it might be.

Presenter27:40

I mean, I were these your dancing days?

Speaker 327:56

We never

Speaker 327:58

Amen.

Speaker 328:01

Dream in its free

Speaker 328:05

Don't want to live on charity.

Speaker 328:10

Yeah, choose me, or is it fantasy?

Speaker 328:16

Real, real is living verity. Eagles died standing.

Presenter28:24

That was Blondie and Dreaming. Uh Sir Anthony Beaver, you met and married the writer you've uh already mentioned her many times Artemis Cooper. You were thirty-nine when you met and married.

Presenter28:34

Relatively late for somebody of your generation. Had you been what used to be called rather wonderfully a man-about-town up until then?

Sir Antony Beevor28:35

Some people

Sir Antony Beevor28:41

Well, not very much about town in those days. I I s I suppose I had been in sort of army days, but uh in the early days of writing when one didn't earn very much money, um, you know, things weren't that easy. And actually after we got married we didn't have children straight away'cause it really had to be books before babies.

Presenter28:56

And tell me then about Artemis. What was it at that grand old age of thirty nine that that captured your heart?

Sir Antony Beevor29:02

We met in the most predictable way possible, which was Drink's party of mutual friends of parents. I think the thing was great similarity of sense of humour. We automatically, I think, in almost all cases liked or dislike the same people. And it was, I suppose, the idea that you really had finally met somebody who you knew you would never be bored with. And I have never been bored with her ever.

Presenter29:27

And you have this wonderful forensic eye for detail, for the small bits that, as you say, can often be the most revelatory.

Presenter29:35

Does that extend to the rest of your life? I mean, are you able to sit and watch a really sort of schmoltzy war movie or or something that is sort of historically really playing fast and loose?

Sir Antony Beevor29:45

Um, no. I mean, um, Artemis refuses to watch any war movie with me. She knows perfectly well I'll be grinding my teeth all the way through at all the inaccuracies. And I agree that's um pretty irritating. Um the only time was when we went to see Valkyrie with Tom Cruise, because we both knew it was going to be simply ghastly and see him saluting, you know, as Staufenberg saluting like an American GI. It was too appalling for any words. So, yes, I hate virtually all war movies. I mean, there are a couple which are superb. And on the whole, try to avoid them.

Presenter30:14

And when you're not writing and researching and grinding your teeth at war movies, um what what do you do to relax? Do you cook? Do you play chess? Do you what do you get involved in?

Sir Antony Beevor30:22

Um I I play chess um rather inadequately, but I uh love it. I read fiction. I mean, I don't read any novels at all while I'm working on a book, so for three years no fiction at all, and then I splurge. I read all the novels that I would love to have read or m fail to have read during that particular period.

Presenter30:41

Let's have some more music, Sir Anthony. Tell me about your seventh piece. What are we going to hear now?

Sir Antony Beevor30:45

Uh well, V Vivaldi's mandolin concerto. I've n I was never keen on mandolins to start with. It seemed to be something which rather precious people did on Oxford evenings. And then suddenly hearing this one, I was uh I I just simply loved the sound.

Presenter32:06

That was Vivaldi's Mandolin Concerto in C major, played by the Ensemble Instrumentale de Grenoble, conducted by Kurt Roddell, with Christian Schneider and Danielle Meyer on mandolin.

Presenter32:18

Sir Anthony Beaver, you have spent much of your life documenting uh human suffering, really. What have you come to understand about humanity through that?

Sir Antony Beevor32:27

Thank God there are moments of joy, warmth, even in the worst times. I remember when writing about some Russian women who were prepared to massage the frostbitten feet of German soldiers, hoping that some mother somewhere might do the same for her child, her son. And so you know that you cannot generalise and that war brings out, obviously, the very worst in people, but it can occasionally bring out the best in people. I'm not suggesting that as an argument for war, far from it. It's very much the opposite. But it does show that you can never really make automatic moral judgments.

Presenter33:05

Now tell me, I'm about to cast you away, Sir Antony, as you know, and I'm wondering if there's any aspect of being alone on this little island that you will actually welcome.

Sir Antony Beevor33:15

Not really. I'm on the whole I'm I I I sort of do like to have people around and talk and so forth. I don't think I'll be reduced to the level of putting um uh a football on a can and talking to it as Tom Hanks did in that particular film. I think there will be moments of which I will like and enjoy, but I think I'll be lonely, yes, indeed.

Presenter33:32

And of course we know you spent time in the army. Does that I'm guessing that makes you quite self-sufficient?

Sir Antony Beevor33:38

Pretty self-sufficient, yes. I um I think I'd be able to sort of make my basher, as they would call it, and uh and survive in that particular way. In my ignorance, I've got to ask what that is. Oh, sorry. It's a sort of shelter which you can construct out of leaves and logs and so forth and branches. Yes.

Presenter33:52

A bachelor. Yes. I'll take that with me. I like that one. Tell me about your eighth one then. We're going to listen to your last piece of music.

Sir Antony Beevor33:59

Haydn's trumpet concerto. It's again Alison Borson and it is, I think, one of the most joyous pieces of the trumpet.

Presenter35:17

That was part of Haydn's Trumpet Concerto in E flat, with Alison Bolton on trumpet, accompanied by the Bremen German Chamber Philharmonic, conducted by Thomas Clugh. It's time now, Sir Antony, for me to give you the books. I give you the complete works of Shakespeare and the Bible.

Presenter35:32

And you, the author, get to take one other book. What are you going to take with you?

Sir Antony Beevor35:36

I'm going to take Tegenev's Fathers and Sons, or Fathers and Children, according to the translation. It is the best.

Sir Antony Beevor35:43

Novel for any aspiring writer to learn from. Because what is this, although it's a novel of ideas in many ways, it shows how the real genius of a novelist can actually summon up a character in a couple of sentences or even less. And I'm always fascinated on how he does it, and that's why it's the sort of book which I can go back to again and again just to sort of try to work that out. Right. It's your. Uh

Presenter36:11

Yeah.

Sir Antony Beevor36:11

Yeah.

Presenter36:11

And Hello

Sir Antony Beevor36:12

Luxury 2

Sir Antony Beevor36:13

Well, I love fishing, and actually it would be extremely practical on a desert island to have uh an extra source of food, so I would like to take a fishing rod and tackle.

Presenter36:22

I'll pretend that I didn't hear the word practical, but you can take a fishing rod and and tackle. And which of the eight tracks would you like to save?

Sir Antony Beevor36:30

I would very much like to save the Vivaldi, the concerto in in C major, because I think it's one of the most joyful pieces of music possible, and I think one needs that on a desert island.

Presenter36:39

All right, his viewers, Sir Anthony Beaver, thank you very much for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Sir Antony Beevor36:44

Thank you very much, Catsby.

Presenter37:31

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

Speaker 338:04

This is the B B C.