Ludovic Kennedy

Presenter0:00

This download is the only extract the BBC has of this edition of Desert Island Discs. The presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:07

You told us you retreated from the south east to Scotland. You are a Scot.

Ludovic Kennedy0:11

Yes, I am.

Ludovic Kennedy0:13

My uh my uh father's family came from Ayrshire, and my mother's from Invernessia, so I'm both a Highlander and a Lowlander. And Ludovic is is that Scotts? And Ludovic is the Scottish derivation of a name which started with the Romans, which was Ludovicus.

Ludovic Kennedy0:25

And I suppose Ludovic is really the nearest to it. It used to have a K on the end.

Ludovic Kennedy0:30

But uh now it no longer has. It's the same as Ludwig in German, as Louis in French, as Luigi in Italian, as Louis in English.

Presenter0:34

Louisiana.

Ludovic Kennedy0:37

There were se

Ludovic Kennedy0:39

When I was fighting the by-election in R in Rochdale about twelve years ago, a lot of people didn't vote for me, they told me, because they thought I was a Slovak or Russian.

Presenter0:48

Although, Scott, you were educated in England, at Eton and Oxford. You had a jazz career at Eton, I believe.

Ludovic Kennedy0:54

Uh

Presenter0:54

Uh

Ludovic Kennedy0:54

Well, it was a it it was a very mild jazz career. I used to play my my parents were keen that I should play a musical instrument, and they m made me play the flute. Well, I found that playing the flute you have great problems with saliva.

Ludovic Kennedy1:06

You're always shaking the saliva out of it, so I couldn't stand the flute, and also I wasn't that musical. I couldn't read the read the music well enough, so I took up the drums, which was much more agreeable, and I I had a very mild jazz career drumming at at Eton, and indeed ever since.

Presenter1:21

Yeah.

Presenter1:21

Your Oxford career was interrupted by the war.

Ludovic Kennedy1:24

Yes, I had a year before the war, and then the Navy in the war, and then two years after.

Presenter1:27

Yeah.

Ludovic Kennedy1:27

Did you have an adventurous walk?

Ludovic Kennedy1:29

I had a quite exciting war. I was in destroyers in the Home Fleet most of the time, and in the Atlantic, Russian convoys, Norwegian campaigns, sinking the Bismarck.

Ludovic Kennedy1:40

That sort of thing.

Presenter1:41

Yes.

Ludovic Kennedy1:41

Your first book was about the Navy? Yes, my first book was called Sub-Lieutenant, and it was one of three. There was one called Infantry Officer and one called Fighter Pilot by Paul Ritchie, and mine was about my time in this first destroyer. Yes. When did you write that? When you were back at Oxford? No, I wrote that in the war. A lot of it was written in the Royal Naval Barracks at Plymouth. A lot of it was written on leave at a house in Scotland. It was written in various places, and it was published in 1942. I see.

Presenter2:09

And after the war you went back to Oxford and took your degree in English. And then I uh went back and got my MA. Yes.

Ludovic Kennedy2:16

Uh

Presenter2:16

You wrote a book about Nelson's captains keeping in the naval literary line. When was that?

Ludovic Kennedy2:23

Well, when I was leaving Oxford I met Ale Rouse there, who had been commissioned by a firm of publishers to get various books written by authors, and he asked me if I'd like to write a book on Nelson's Captains. It took me about two years, two to three years, and I was doing other things, but I wrote it.

Ludovic Kennedy2:37

at that time. What things? What was your first job when you came there? Well, I I became librarian and lecturer and introducer of guests at a curious place called Ashridge Adult Education College, which is Berkhamstead, which had been a Conservative party conference place before the war.

Ludovic Kennedy2:53

And uh that was a good job, because the people came at weekends, from Friday to Monday, one was very busy, but the rest of the time, from Monday to Friday, they all went away, and one had the post to oneself and one could write.

Presenter3:04

I believe your first real contact with the world of theatre and television and or show business in general was when you married a a beautiful and talented dancer who's also a film actress, Moira Shiere.

Presenter3:17

Yes.

Presenter3:18

You accompanied her, I believe, on a ballet tour of the United States soon after

Ludovic Kennedy3:22

To a man. Uh Yes, I did. The the Austin Motor Company lent me a a very small car. They were trying to sell baby Austins in the States at this time, and they let me have this car on a kind of showing the flag uh mission. And I used to follow her around uh from from place to place. I couldn't go to every place, but I went to a great many. I motored must have motored about five or six thousand miles.

Presenter3:41

Yes.

Ludovic Kennedy3:42

Great fun.

Presenter3:42

And you were sending some articles back about this. Was this the real beginning of your career in journalism?

Ludovic Kennedy3:48

Yes, I suppose so. Um I had done some things for the Sunday Times before that and uh as you say I did some despatches on the trip at this time. Mm-hmm. You even became a television critic? Yes, uh I did some criticism for the Evening Standard.

Presenter4:01

But you've lived that done.

Ludovic Kennedy4:02

I hope so. Yeah.

Ludovic Kennedy4:03

You begin Uh

Presenter4:03

I'm working in radio before television.

Ludovic Kennedy4:05

Uh yes, my first uh radio full-time radio thing was uh uh a thing on the third programme called First Reading which I did for John Davenport.

Ludovic Kennedy4:15

Which was literally what it uh what it said. It was the first reading of uh unknown um poets and authors and uh quite a lot of people who are now famous uh appeared on it.

Presenter4:23

Yes. And how did you start in television?

Ludovic Kennedy4:26

I started in television uh in a little programme when ATV started called Sunday Afternoon, which John Irwin put on, out at the Hackney Empire.

Ludovic Kennedy4:35

And I had a little tiny item in this, but it was enough when after six months the programme ended for me to apply to ITN as a newscaster.

Ludovic Kennedy4:44

and I had an audition, and they said as they do on these occasions, well, don't ring us, we'll ring you and the following day they did ring me to tell me that Robin Day was ill and Chris Chatterway had gone to Edinburgh, and would I come and do the news that night.

Ludovic Kennedy4:57

which I did and stayed for two years.

Presenter4:59

Yes. And from newsreading to interviewing, and currently, of course, on 24 hours. Yes. Out of your.

Presenter5:06

Long career as a television interviewer.

Presenter5:09

Which interviews stand out in your mind as having been jobs you were satisfied with?

Ludovic Kennedy5:13

I wish they did stand out more, you know. They're they're so ephemeral, they come and go. You know, if you had to if you asked me now who I interviewed on Twenty Four Hours last week, I'd be hard pushed to tell you.

Ludovic Kennedy5:23

Um I've got a very warm spot for the Archbishop of Canterbury, whom I've uh

Ludovic Kennedy5:27

done, I think is the word, now about eight or nine times, and we've

Ludovic Kennedy5:31

got rather a happy relationship with each other.

Ludovic Kennedy5:34

I did an interview with George Brown, you know, after he'd left office, which I was quite pleased with.

Ludovic Kennedy5:39

Just one or two stick in the mind, but most go. Do you remember any disasters in the way of interviews? Happily there haven't been any. One's always dreaded it, but I've always, at the last moment, some curious thing comes to one's rescue, you know, if you've run out of questions and the man is there staring at you, something happens to you. Something happens to you, and it's marvellous what the viewer doesn't notice.

Ludovic Kennedy6:02

You have a great interest in criminology. When did that start?

Ludovic Kennedy6:05

I suppose you could say that started in my grandfather's house in Edinburgh when I was a small boy. He was Professor of International Law at Edinburgh University, and he had a library, and the top shelf of that library was full of those wonderful, wonderful red volumes, Notable British Trials, edited by Mr Roughhead, who lived down the Crescent and was a friend of his, and so gave an added sort of spice to my reading of these books. And I used to sit up at the top of his stepladder between tea and dinner when I was about eleven, twelve, thirteen, absolutely absorbed in these books, you know, Trial of Doctor Buck Ruxton, who cut up a girl and threw her down Moffat Gorge, and Kennedy and Brown, who'd set fire to a taxi driver and things of this kind. You you never wanted to read law?

Ludovic Kennedy6:47

No, I don't think I did, oddly enough. It was a it was a sort of romantic concept I had. Yes. These books, um

Ludovic Kennedy6:54

You see, they seem to me to speak of the majesty, the the glory, the integrity, everything you like of British law. I felt it could never go wrong.

Presenter7:02

You wrote a very successful play in the early fifties called Murder Story. This was really a plea against capital punishment, wasn't it?

Ludovic Kennedy7:09

Yes, this was a it wasn't very successful. I mean it did all right, but it wasn't very successful.

Ludovic Kennedy7:13

This was um based on the Craig Bentley case. You may remember that case. Craig, aged sixteen and Bentley, aged eighteen, uh shot a policeman on a Croydon rooftop.

Ludovic Kennedy7:24

Craig, who actually had fired the shot, was too young to be hanged. Bentley, who was old enough to be hanged, but hadn't fired the shot, was in fact hanged. And I thought this was the most dreadful thing, and my wife and I stayed up on the night of his execution, un unable to believe that such a thing was going to happen.

Presenter7:41

Yes. And then you wrote a book which has just been filmed about the Christie murder case called Ten Rillington Place. You were convinced that there had been a miscarriage of justice.

Ludovic Kennedy7:50

I became convinced. Uh I I had an idea there'd been a miscarriage of justice, and I had an idea, with both of which ideas had been proved right, that people were trying to pretend they're happening.

Ludovic Kennedy7:59

And I decided to look into it. And every bit of evidence that I found supported my belief, didn't go against it. I was at any moment prepared to find something that was going to turn my because I could hardly believe that such a thing had happened. You know, it's difficult to believe that. But as I say, everything that I found pointed to the belief that Christie had done these murders and not Evans.

Presenter8:18

Yeah, see what it in fact did got fresh evidence that hadn't been produced at the trial.

Ludovic Kennedy8:22

A little. Not very much. It was more a question of collating it all and putting this sort of vast jigsaw puzzle together, which nobody had done before.

Presenter8:29

Hm. And you've got the case reopened and an inquiry ordered.

Ludovic Kennedy8:32

Well, yes, I there a long time went by, and then Harold Evans, who was now editor of the Sunday Times, but was then editor of the Northern Echo in Darlington, he and his friend Herbert Wolfe, they mounted a press campaign, and finally we got uh over a hundred MPs to sign a a paper asking for a new inquiry, and then finally one was granted.

Presenter8:49

Yes, which led to a free pardon for Evans, although rather too late to do him any good. Yes.

Presenter8:55

You wrote another book on the trial of Stephen Ward. I'm not sure.

Ludovic Kennedy8:58

Not a miscarriage of justice, you think? Well, yes, I mean, that was a a different kind of a miscarriage of justice. I mean, the Ward was just being made a scapegoat for the Profumo affair. Ward was charged with living on the immoral earnings of prostitutes, and the evidence alone quite plainly showed that he hadn't been doing any such thing.