Christopher Serpell

Speaker 10:00

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

Speaker 10:08

How did you start in journalism, Christopher? You were

Christopher Serpell0:10

Up at Oxford, what did you read?

Christopher Serpell0:12

I read um what's known as Honour Mods and Greats, uh which is uh a very nice school to read, but doesn't really equip you for anything practical. And I must say when I when I went down from the University I hadn't the slightest idea what I wanted to do or be, except I felt it should be something vaguely literary. Did you go straight to the Yorkshire Post?

Christopher Serpell0:32

Not quite straight. No. I landed, of course, out of the University into the middle of the Great Depression, when it was extremely hard to find jobs. I did try the B B C, and was received by a rather stern gentleman who I think was a retired colonel.

Christopher Serpell0:48

who told me briskly to go back to my home town, Leeds, and buy a bicycle, and see how many subscriptions to the Radio Times I could sell.

Speaker 10:55

Very helpful.

Christopher Serpell0:56

Which was helpful perhaps, but put me off the BBC at that time. Well, eventually, knocking about in London and doing odd jobs like being secretaries of clubs and so on, I started to do book reviewing and through the good nature of friends in Fleet Street and got to know the people in the London office of the Yorkshire Post, and they intro introduced me to the then editor.

Christopher Serpell1:19

Arthur Mann, who very kindly took me on on a minimal salary as reporter in my home town, Leeds. The power of the press was first revealed to me when I was sitting on top of a Leeds tram and two ladies sitting in front of me and one said, Maybe this has never been the same since yon young chap from Yorkshire Post reviewed her art show.

Christopher Serpell1:42

And then the Times. What jobs did you do on the Times?

Christopher Serpell1:45

Well, I joined the Times as a sub editor, and I was basically a sub editor throughout my service with it, which lasted a good seven years. Uh but there was lots of variety in it.

Christopher Serpell1:56

And then the war that took you into the Navy? Yes, just about the time when the Times was going to push me off as a foreign correspondent to New York, they found they couldn't reserve me any further, and they were kind enough to ask me whether they could help me towards one of the Palm services. When did you start broadcasting?

Christopher Serpell2:13

I started broadcasting while I was actually working for the Navy uh because um

Christopher Serpell2:18

The Times was one of the few newspapers in Fleet Street which did not make up the salaries of their former staff to to the pre-war level. I was living on naval pay and being taxed for the year before when I was getting Fleet Street pay, or rather printing house square pay. Uh so I had to make up my salary somehow and um

Christopher Serpell2:36

Some good ladies in BBC Schools Department, the great Frieda Lingstrom to name the principal one, helped me to become a compere for a programme called Current Affairs for Schools. And that got me acclimatized to the microphone. It was the kind of programme, you know, where you turned up and you said to the children, now children, there's been a great battle in the Philippines. Get out your atlases and run your finger down longitude.

Christopher Serpell3:01

so and so, until you come to a little group of islands. You got it? Are you there? Well, that's the Philippines, and here's the Reverend Langham Place, who was a missionary there in nineteen eleven, to tell you all about it.

Speaker 13:13

You were B B C correspondent in Rome. What sort of assignments did you have? Things were pretty rugged. This was just after the war, wasn't it?

Christopher Serpell3:20

Uh

Speaker 13:20

Uh

Christopher Serpell3:20

Uh

Christopher Serpell3:20

Yes, the Allied occupation of Italy ended in 1947, which just after I got there. Actually, by comparison with austerity Britain of that period, I suppose perhaps it was just the sunlight and the good nature and the good humour. Italy did seem, even in those days, a paradise, although there was a lot of genuine positive poverty and hardship about.

Christopher Serpell3:46

But for me it was it was a wonderful assignment. I'd opened a new office and I had to find out what the BBC wanted to hear about Italy. Of course I was started by being very conscientious and reporting the incredible complexities of Italian politics.

Christopher Serpell4:03

Until I discovered that what uh the British audiences, or at any rate the editors of the BBC programmes, wanted, was more light-hearted material. Now, in every Italian newspaper there is a section which is known as the Black Chronicles, the Chronica Nera, which is crime, yes, to some extent, murders, yes, to some extent, but also odd happenings, strange coincidences, and the occasional miracle. I I sometimes felt that miracles occurred in Italy almost as often as murders. And so I used to send the material from the Black Chronicles. By no means always black.

Christopher Serpell4:39

And this was very popular and I I became used, I think, as an almost permanent postscript to Radio Newsreel, which was of course our main outlet in those days. Do you remember a favorite one?

Christopher Serpell4:50

Well, there are one or two which keep getting quoted back at me by people who heard them at the time. There was the one of the gentleman who was pinching a ride on the local bus which went up from the town in the valley to the village on the hillside.

Christopher Serpell5:03

And he was riding on the roof beside um a coffin which was going up to the undertakers in the village.

Christopher Serpell5:10

And when they were half way up the hill on a steep incline, the coffin lid was raised slightly, and a sepulchral voice from inside said, Has it stopped raining yet? whereupon this poor chap fell off the roof of the bus, and broke his leg, and brought an action against the bus company.

Speaker 15:26

You were several years in in Italy. How long did you say?

Christopher Serpell5:29

See?

Speaker 15:29

Heavenly

Christopher Serpell5:29

Yeah.

Speaker 15:29

All of

Christopher Serpell5:29

And then to the United States. Then we were torn up with our roots screaming at the change and uh sent to Washington. I was made uh chief BBC correspondent in the United States.

Speaker 15:40

Did that mean staying in Washington or?

Christopher Serpell5:42

Uh

Speaker 15:43

Uh

Christopher Serpell5:43

Uh

Speaker 15:43

Uh

Christopher Serpell5:43

inner territory centered on

Speaker 15:45

Bye.

Christopher Serpell5:45

From Washington North. Well, I've more or less admitted I am an inveterate traveller and and I hate staying in one place for too long. Uh in fact my wife would claim that I left Washington once a month at minimum. And I don't think it was as bad as that because

Christopher Serpell5:59

Washington was the seat of power in those days. The news suddenly became all important instead of um something which you had to push as from Italy. And uh it wasn't easy to get away from Washington, but whenever I could, whenever there was an important story outside Washington, I tried to persuade the BBC to send me to it.

Christopher Serpell6:18

And invariably the answer came back when I said, can I go to, say, Little Rock? The answer was, well, yes, provided you can assure us that nothing will happen in Washington in your absence.

Speaker 16:30

After your years in the States, you had a spell

Christopher Serpell6:32

Yeah. Yeah.

Christopher Serpell6:34

Yes, I came back really to find out what television was all about. I had

Christopher Serpell6:39

done some appearances before

Christopher Serpell6:41

stray television cameras while I was in North America.

Christopher Serpell6:45

But I didn't understand the medium and I wanted to

Christopher Serpell6:49

learn what could be done for news through this medium as well as radio.

Christopher Serpell6:54

So I came back and had a year's attachment to uh

Christopher Serpell6:58

Television Current Affairs at Lime Grove. And then I joined BBC Television News in its old establishment, that great arc of a place, Alexandra Palace, on the the roof of North London. Yes, was this a desk job or were you travelling as well? It was mostly a desk job. I did some actual presenting of the news, uh complicated foreign stories which needed some explanation.

Christopher Serpell7:22

Um I got a certain amount of travel in, more in the form of joyrides.

Speaker 17:26

Uh Yeah.

Christopher Serpell7:27

Uh

Speaker 17:27

A lot of these excursions, of course, must be done in a hurry, which means that you you can't very well book accommodation ahead. This must lead to a lot of discomfort.

Christopher Serpell7:36

Well, on the whole the BBC is very good. News Division have h always had a travel clerk who has done wonders in trying to book accommodation, but there's always the moment when the best laid bookings break down. I I remember when I was travelling in fact from West Pakistan to Dhaka in East Pakistan and I thought I had booked into the hotel in Dhaka.

Christopher Serpell7:59

When I got there late in the evening, very tired after night had fallen, um, the clerk on the desk said no, he was sorry there was no room for me.

Christopher Serpell8:07

and I flew into a tantrum, the standard tantrum, and uh he said, You can always find a room, sir, in the Annex. So I picked up my bag and was about to walk there when he said, Ah, sir, for the annex you will need taxi.

Christopher Serpell8:20

And I took a taxi, which taxi ride which seemed to go on for hours through the the darkness of the countryside, and it was eventually decanted out at a sort of lonely concrete barracks, surrounded by a great choir of tree frogs all

Speaker 18:20

Uh

Christopher Serpell8:34

Croaking away.

Christopher Serpell8:35

and three disconsolate gentlemen crouching round a lamp on the stone floor of the basement, and one of them showed me up to a small but adequate room.

Christopher Serpell8:44

and I went to bed in a terrible temper, but very tired, and I just sort of passed out of my bed.

Christopher Serpell8:49

and woke up the next morning to hear a lizard on the windowsill making a wolf whistle at me, and looked out, and there was absolutely the gorgeous East practically in person. It was a brilliant blue and white sky, a green landscape, a water tank below my window with Pakistani ladies washing clothes on stone slabs, and on the hill opposite a great white villa in the sort of John Company style, full of brightly coloured people, and a red brick wall crossing the middle distance with a line of monkeys following one after the other along the top of the wall. The whole thing looked like something out of I won't say little black sambo, but something some classic.

Speaker 19:28

Yeah.

Christopher Serpell9:28

Well worth

Speaker 19:29

The taxi ride. Well worth the taxi ride.

Speaker 19:31

And now you're retiring, Christopher. What are you going to do? You're going to be busier than ever, obviously. But what are your first plans?

Christopher Serpell9:37

Well, I can't stop broadcasting. It's gotten to be a habit, and at the moment I'm doing as much as I can, mostly for the BBC. In fact, all entirely for the BBC, but some of it for BBC's overseas services.

Christopher Serpell9:50

Um

Christopher Serpell9:51

I hope perhaps some day to get back to America and write a book about a particular aspect of American history. Whether I can do that or ever ever afford to do it remains to be seen. Meanwhile I I'm going to do that.

Christopher Serpell10:05

And I'm going to keep on with my cooking. I'm very fond of cooking and making bread and my home brewing and my home wine making. Splendid.