Anthony Lawrence

Speaker 10:01

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio Podcasts. Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne, and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast. For rights reasons, the music is shorter than on the original broadcast. The presenter is Roy Plomley. I hope you enjoy listening.

Presenter0:27

This week, our Desert Island castaway is the B B C's Far East correspondent, Anthony Lawrence.

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Now, Anthony, you cover a very vast territory, one containing many desert islands. Have you ever visited one?

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Well, yes, I did. In 1957, I had to go and report the nuclear device explosion that the British let go over Christmas Island, or near Christmas Island. Yes. And that was a desert island, all right. I think it had been inhabited by a few people and a lot of wild crabs, but the people were taken away and there were just the crabs left and some servicemen and technicians. Yes, I shouldn't think the crabs weren't very good, Nick, were they? No, I don't think so. Are you a musical person? I'm afraid not really. No, I'm fond of music, but I seem to have found very little time to develop the liking for it. So I suppose that means I'm not really musical. Was there any overall plan in choosing your eight records?

Presenter1:21

Yes, I had a few considerations in mind. I thought of the solitude of a desert island. So I thought one must have some great and enduring music. And in recent years I've listened more to Bach than ever before. So I thought I would have one of his records. That would be a great standby.

Presenter1:40

And then the other thing was that one must keep cheerful. It's no good getting depressed on an island. So one will rather tend to have music which is rather light and which bucks you up when you're getting into these black sort of moods. And then the other kind of music would be that which recalls days when you were extremely happy and having a very good time. Right. What do we start with? Let's start with a Brandenburg concerto of Bach. Yes, which one? Number four.

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The opening of Bach's fourth Brandenburg concerto, Benjamin Britton conducting the English Chamber Orchestra. Let's go straight into your next record. What's that?

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Well, that would be

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Something of Chopin because when I was much, much younger and was.

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beginning to realize that there was such a thing as music and that it could be something extremely beautiful, I was introduced to Chopin's music. So I'll choose for the next one a nocturne of Chopin, Opus twenty seven, number two in D flat.

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The Shop earned Nocturne over twenty seven, number two in D flat, played by Arthur Rubinstein.

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Anthony, you're a Londoner. Yes.

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What took you into journalism?

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Well

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It was something rather running in the family. My grandfather was a journalist, but also my uncle, my father's brother, was a journalist, and I was very fond of him. And I think he had a great influence on me. But I think even without him, I'd have wanted to be one. Somehow the idea of

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And

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But

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Of writing things and having them printed and reproduced. There's something very exciting about this. How did you start?

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Oh, well, uh, how do you start in journalism? I remember saying to my uncle, What am I going to do about it? How can I how can I make a beginning?

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He said there's only one way to be a journalist, and that's to be one.

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And I got a job on a newspaper in Wimbledon called the Wimbledon Advertiser, which has ceased to exist many, many years ago. And I never found anybody who bought it. It really was a very humble beginning. Where did you move to after that? Oh, I had a rather checky career. I went from the Wimbledon Advertiser to a newspaper published in Grays in Essex called The Thameside Mail.

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Uh

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And from there to a paper called East Hametco.

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After

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Then I was out of work for a while and then I went to a newspaper called the Wembley News. Yes. Then you served in the army during the war. Was there any news gathering to be done while you were in uniform? Only right at the end. I was ended up in Hamburg and was secunded to what was called an information control unit. And that meant I helped to run a German newspaper published for the German population there. So your German was pretty good.

Presenter6:16

Well, I acquired a c a a pretty big German vocabulary. I had studied a little German before the war, though not at school. And so I had a smattering and I I very much increased this, but my grammar has always been frightful. And when you were demobilized? Oh, that was in'forty six.

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And then I married my wife, who was at that time living in Hamburg. She's German.

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And what have?

Presenter6:41

Well, then we came to live in Wimbledon, which was the only place where I had friends who might find us a flats. You remember, it was terribly difficult to get anywhere to live immediately after the war. And I was extremely lucky in meeting somebody from the BBC, Donald Edwards, who at that time was running the news sign of Bush House, what is now the World Service, and was offered a job on the strength of being a journalist who spoke German. And this really did surprise me. But as they explained, they're probably...

Speaker 17:07

And this really

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Far many better journalists than me, and many people who spoke much better German. But just at that time, they hadn't a combination of both. So I got the job. Then down to Centre Desk, the news desk, which was very interesting. Did you have any overseas assignments when you were on Centredesk, or was that purely office work? It was nearly purely office work, desk work. I did go abroad to help cover the Council of Europe.

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And I subsequently went to Broadcasting House and was still working on the desk when I helped the diplomatic correspondent, Tom Barman, cover a conference of foreign ministers in Geneva. But those were the only two foreign assignments before going out to Singapore.

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That was

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Well, now yes, foreign correspondent, how did this come about?

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Well, I think there's an element of luck in this too, you know.

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I very much wanted to be a foreign correspondent, and if that's the case, you must let as many people know as possible, and I think I made myself a perfect nuisance to the foreign editor.

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And it did so happen that the

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A post in Singapore was likely to become vacant.

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And I suppose nobody else was very, very keen on having a job right on the equator. It it it was uncomfortable. And so I got the job. Oh, that's a very modest way of putting it. Let's have your third record before we start talking about Singapore debt.

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Oh, yes, well

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It's very interesting to recall the past. And in the thirties, I and my brother used to.

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Go to France a bit and travel a bit, and life seemed very young and gay. And associated in my memory with those days is that song, These Foolish Things. So I'd like to hear that.

Speaker 28:49

A cigarette that bears a lipstick's tracer

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An airline ticket to romantic places

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And still my heart has

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These foolish things

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Remind me of your

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Me up.

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A tinkling piano in the next apartment.

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No stumbling

Presenter9:17

These Foolish Things A Thirties Recording by Turner Leighton

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Now you went off to Singapore as Far East correspondent. What year was that, Anthony? Well, that was fir fifty six. And how big an area had you to cover? Well, actually, the title in those days was South East Asia Correspondent, because

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I don't think the BBC sort of set out to cover really thoroughly, all that thoroughly, the whole of the Far East. But in fact,

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The area which I was vaguely looking after stretched from Japan in the north.

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To Australia and New Zealand. So I had an enormous amount of traveling to do. Yes. Had you been to the Far East before? No, never. Never. Had you made any special studies of the area? No. Of course, as soon as I heard I was going to get this job, I read lots of books on the Far East very rapidly and saw a lot of experts. But you see,

Presenter10:07

You're bound to be new in a place like the Far East. If you had sent out a Chinese specialist, he would have suffered from exactly the same problem whenever he went to Japan, Australia or New Zealand. It is such a vast area. So I think they probably did a sensible thing. They they sent out a journalist who was reasonably trained.

Presenter10:25

who would know the kind of things he would have to ask, the kind of things he would have to look for, and who would also know a lot about communications. And as you know, when you're a foreign correspondent, 90% of the business is getting the stuff back to head office. Yes, quite.

Presenter10:38

You were all on your own, and you had to be ready to fly off to wherever the news broke at a moment's notice. Yes, well, but the BBC have a transmitting station down there. But anyway, that was not run by journalists. That was nothing to do with journalists, but there was a BBC organization there which was a help. In Singapore? Yes. But as far as journalism was concerned, as far as news was concerned, yes, I had to be ready to go off anywhere at a moment's notice. And in 1956, where was the news breaking? Well, I ran straight into some riots in Singapore, and that was rather a shock because the political situation in Singapore at that time was frightfully complicated.

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And you had race problems, you had political problems, and it all had to be sorted out.

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quite difficult. I realized in those early days that

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The business of interpreting events to people back in England is the biggest challenge that a Far East correspondent ever can face. You're dealing with intelligent people, but who don't know the East, and you've got to explain it in terms which can be understood. So those riots were quite an eye opener to me. Then I was sent off on a royal tour to Australia and New Zealand.

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And then I came back and was sent straight off to Indonesia because there was some trouble down there.

Presenter11:48

You were plunged into all this quite raw. And you had to get back not only recordings, but film. Well, the film began to develop a little later. I think in in the following year. Television news was developing very, very rapidly in those days. And more and more the foreign correspondents were being brought into it. There were all kinds of teething troubles. You had to use local cameramen who...

Presenter12:10

Were often men who had up to then just taken their local wedding pictures. So they weren't very good often at handling more sophisticated equipment. Lots of things could go wrong. But yes, TV developed all the time. You were required to do more and more work for TV. Yes, and getting the stuff back through sources and through people whose language you didn't understand. Now, what about languages? Eastern languages aren't ones you can pick up easily. No, they're not. Some are tonal, you see, and that adds to the difficulty that you say something in one tone of voice, it means exactly something different than if you say it in another tone of voice. But the useful thing, the helpful thing, and the surprising thing really is how many people do speak English. Even in 56, English was very much a lingua franca of all that part of the world. And you would meet a surprising number of officials who knew some English or been educated in England or had acquired some English. Yes. Have you ever worked out your mileage in the course of a year, an average year? Well, no, it must vary tremendously according to where you go. Must run into scores of thousands of miles every year. Let's have a record number four.

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Ah, yes. Well, as we've been talking so much about the Far East, I would like a Chinese folk song. And I think we have one.

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Dealing with the rivers of Yunnan Province.

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Region for treasure.

Anthony Lawrence14:04

Make a king journal.

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D

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A song about the rivers of Yunnan sung by Li Lin.

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who, judging by her photograph, which is the only thing I can appreciate on the record sleeve, is a very pretty girl indeed.

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Antony this inscrutable label that the Chinese and other Eastern races have is of course is nonsense. It is absolute nonsense. The Chinese, of course, vary as much between North and South as in Europe you have the var variety between Swedes and Sicilians. Enormous variety of temperament.

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But particularly in the South, they've they they can be extremely emotional. You see tears streaming down the cheeks of a of a woman who has lost somebody dear to her.

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A husband or father feeling great emotion when his son returns from overseas, they're not inscrutable at all.

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Earlier this year you were inside mainland China. Was that difficult to get in?

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Well, it's sort of unpredictable. I've been trying for a long time, and so had the BBC. And then suddenly the other side say, yes, you can come in. They they they said a week. We they might have been more generous, but a week was already very, very good. What impression did you get about how much they knew of what was going on in the outside world?

Presenter15:29

Awfully hard to answer this. I think they have means of knowing. The Communists themselves tell you that they now publish bulletins containing news reports by Western agencies and that it's perfectly possible for anybody who's interested to keep abreast of events in the outside world. But the impression I had was that people are so bound up with their daily work and affairs inside China that they're not really very interested in the outside world. Let's have record number five.

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You know, I think on a desert island you must

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Keep in touch somehow psychologically with the big cities and society. And when I think of big cities and the down-to-earth life that I think of Bert Brecht, the

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the German poet and playwright. And I would like to

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have a song from the Drygossian Oprah where they MacHeath.

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The Robber

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talks about his happy days, which is when he lived in a brothel with this girl Jenny.

Anthony Lawrence16:29

In I not shy.

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He links for gun and east.

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Nathan be shown Suzaman.

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G won't be.

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It's highly fair.

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Be him the eye nam round

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He shuts as he.

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Unsee a nail to me

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A number from the Threponny Opera by Goetweil and Bert Brecht, sung by members of the original nineteen twenty eight Berlin cast.

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Let's go on to record number six.

Presenter17:07

Oh yes, well the next one comes under the category of Cheering Up. This is such an uplifting song, Di Forella, the Trout of Schubert, and I think this is sung by Elizabeth Schulman.

Anthony Lawrence17:17

I'm a fish on hell.

Speaker 217:22

Uh

Anthony Lawrence17:22

Elon is the real

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The name is shot, wounds are in this room.

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Let's wonder if it's far.

Anthony Lawrence17:35

I'm not sure if I can do it.

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Elizabeth Schumann singing Schubert's The Trout. What are your hobbies, Anthony?

Presenter17:52

Um I haven't got any, I'm afraid, except for for reading. I I read a great deal. Yes. I was really probing for something that might have been of use to a castaway on a desert island, but as you've been on war fronts in Europe and in the Far East, I should think your your survival drill is pretty good, isn't it? You could look after yourself.

Presenter18:09

You're rather touching me on my weak spot. This is the thing that would really make me very anxious in connection with being cast on a desert island.

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I'm not very good at making a go of things and putting things together and tying things together and cooking and so on. And I would have a very hard two or three weeks to start with, I'm sure, of this. To try to escape.

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Well, I'm pretty good physical card too.

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The idea of putting to sea in a homemade raft wouldn't appeal to me at all. No, I think I'd just wait and watch the watch the horizon. I think you're wise. Let's have record number seven.

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And watch them

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Yes, well, on this desert island I think, as I said before, one would have to guard against depression. And when I think of stirring tunes,

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I think of some of these hymns we used to sing when we were young.

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Especially something like Onward Christian Soldiers.

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The York Celebration Choir.

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Now we come to your last record. What's that?

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That's the street piano, and

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Perhaps that rather dates me. It's a long time, I think, since you really heard a street piano in London. I don't know. I haven't heard any this time, home.

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But uh when I first used to enjoy London,

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and the bookshops and the theatres and all that sort of thing. The street piano jangling away seemed absolutely a part of it, and I think I would have some nostalgic delight on this desert island listening to that kind of noise.

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A London street piano, or barrel organ as we incorrectly used to call them, playing The Man Who Broke the Bank Monte Carlo and I've Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconut.

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If you could take only one disc of your aid, which would it be?

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Well, I think it would be the Brandenburg concerto because one would think of something which would last and be durable and which you could listen to many, many times. And that's the one that would stand up to that test. Right. And one luxury to take with you?

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Well

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But two very comfortable armchairs. Why two?

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Want to put my feet up on.

Presenter21:44

Good, yes. And one book apart from the Bible and Shakespeare. Well, could you have a set if it's by one author? I would like to take In Search of Times Pass à la Recherte du Tompere du of Proust, because it's reading that's like painting the fourth bridge. By the time you get to the end of it, it's time to start at the beginning again. Yes, and you'll take it in French? Oh, yes, I think I would. Do it the hard way.

Presenter22:08

And thank you, Anthony Lawrence, for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Presenter22:13

Thank you.

Presenter22:14

Goodbye, everyone.