Noel Barber

Speaker 10:00

Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Disc's Archive. For rights' reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen seventy six, and the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Speaker 30:30

On our desert island this week is the author and foreign correspondent Noel Barber.

Speaker 30:35

mister Barber, you spent a great deal of your life in travelling. Have you ever lived in isolation?

Speaker 30:40

Yeah.

Noel Barber0:40

Yes, I have not for long, but I have actually lived on a desert island.

Speaker 30:44

Hi.

Noel Barber0:45

Have you indeed? Where? Right in the middle of the Pacific, an island called Suvorov. The island itself is only half a mile long. It's absolutely heavenly place. Um but it's ringed by a a huge coral atoll fifty miles circumference, so of course it's marked on all the mariners' charts. How long were you there? I was there four days. It took me four days to get there in a chartered boat, and then I spent four days there with a man who was living on the island, whom I went to seek, and then four days back.

Speaker 30:45

Uh

Speaker 31:11

What

Noel Barber1:12

From your experience. Uh

Speaker 31:12

Experience would be the worst thing in a situation like that, apart from the loneliness.

Speaker 31:18

Yeah.

Noel Barber1:18

I don't think the loneliness is is the worst thing in many ways. Certainly it wasn't with this man that I went to meet, Tom Neal, who had lived there for eight years.

Noel Barber1:26

You know, I think really the worst thing of all are insects. Uh-huh. In the tropics, in any warm country, and it's it's hell, absolutely. What would you be happiest to have got away from?

Noel Barber1:38

Well, I'm a country boy, you know, and I think to get away from the cities. Simple as that. I love cities, I love coming back to them, but I adore the simple life.

Noel Barber1:48

Is music a big thing in your life?

Noel Barber1:50

Yes, it is. I'm very, very fond of it. I know very little about it, but I I really love my music. What was your plan for choosing your record?

Noel Barber1:58

Basically

Noel Barber1:59

It seemed to me that if we're going to uh live on a desert island, you'd have to live with happy memories. And uh so really I picked out of all the

Noel Barber2:08

Music I love.

Noel Barber2:09

Those that have got special memories. Where do we start?

Noel Barber2:13

Well, I think we ought to start on the island itself and uh

Noel Barber2:17

I remember to this day leaving Pango Pango in this chartered boat and a group coming down and singing on the edge of the shore as we left off and set off for the Pacific, and they were singing a song called Song of the Islands.

Speaker 33:01

Song of the Islands by the Waikiki Beach Boys.

Speaker 33:04

What's your second record?

Noel Barber3:06

Well, uh complete contrast. It's um The Song of the Forest by Shostakovich, and it's really it's always fascinated me. I picked this up.

Noel Barber3:16

in East Berlin, soon after the war, just after Shostakovich had r had composed it, and it wasn't available in the West at all, and I loved this hook. It's one of the most beautiful pieces of music I think I've I've ever heard.

Noel Barber3:28

I lost it. I lost the record. I could never get it. And then in nineteen fifty seven the Daily Mail sent me to the South Pole. And it was damn cold. It was about thirty five degrees below zero.

Noel Barber3:41

And we got out of this plane with skis on it that had taken me up the Beardmore Glacier.

Noel Barber3:47

Then I we just made one rush into the plastic hut where a small group of American scientists were living, and as I walked in and the second door closed behind me and I took the muffler off, there was the Song of the Forest being played.

Speaker 34:56

An excerpt from Shostakovich's Song of the Forest

Speaker 35:00

A Russian performance conducted by Alexander Yoloff.

Speaker 35:04

mister Barbie, you're a Yorkshireman, aren't you? Yes, indeed. Duncaster.

Noel Barber5:08

Yeah.

Speaker 35:08

Yeah.

Noel Barber5:08

What was your very first ambition as a schoolboy?

Noel Barber5:11

Well, my first was to be a successful novelist, and a successful writer, and then it gradually became a writer, whether it was a journalist, whether it was a writing books.

Noel Barber5:22

You did a little freelance journalism when you were in your teens. Yes, I did. Yes, a little, here and there. But I had to earn money. My father s felt that I ought to.

Noel Barber5:32

You know, do my job in life. It's rather different from the way things go today. And so I worked for many years as a commercial traveler, then I gave that up. Then I finally.

Noel Barber5:42

uh decided to take the plunge into writing. It was totally unsuccessful, and so I spent a year selling notepaper door to door. So what did you do next? Well, then I did get a job um on the

Noel Barber5:55

Doncaster Chronicle, then went on to the Yorkshire Evening Post, and then I became a sub editor on The Daily Express in Manchester. I loved the Daily Express with Bert Gunn the editor, but I just couldn't take Manchester working at nights. I never made a friend in so I gave it up. I managed to find um

Noel Barber6:11

a boat that was sailing, but they didn't know where it was sailing, an old tramp steamer called the Cayson, and I went off at a pound a week. I paid the skipper a pound a week for the director's cabin. We left Barry in South Wales.

Noel Barber6:26

And I honestly didn't know whether we were going to turn left or right when we got into the Bay of Biscay, but we went to Mexico. I stayed three or four months in Mexico.

Noel Barber6:36

Money ran out. I still couldn't sell any articles. I thought I'm bound to sell articles on Mexico, but nobody wanted them.

Noel Barber6:42

So I then uh

Noel Barber6:45

Got another tramp steamer, sailed to Singapore. Then I did land a good job there as the editor of the local paper, quite by chance. And I left Singapore in nineteen thirty nine simply because everybody told me that there's nothing to worry about in Singapore, the guns were facing the right way.

Speaker 37:00

Oh dear.

Noel Barber7:00

And you know, and so I thought I better come home and s and come into the war. That's really the only I might have s you know, I might have died in Chang'e if I'd stayed.

Noel Barber7:10

And I didn't want to come back the same way that I went. I've always had this love of travel from the earliest days of my life as well.

Noel Barber7:17

So I went up to Hong Kong, Shanghai, Peking, made my way slowly. I only had a hundred pounds, and then I m came back finally on the Trans Siberian Railway. How long did that take? Took twenty one days. One day it stopped for absolutely no reason. It didn't start for forty eight hours.

Noel Barber7:34

Presumably they'll run out of wood or whatever they do.

Speaker 27:37

Yeah.

Noel Barber7:38

But there were some fine Russian singers on there, and I learnt a marvellous song there.

Noel Barber7:43

And that's what I would really like for my third record, in fact. What's it called? Well, it's called Kalitka. It's a beautiful old Russian folk song.

Speaker 38:34

Kalitka played by the Gaboradix Family Orchestra.

Speaker 38:39

Right now it was nineteen thirty nine.

Speaker 38:42

You joined the RAF, didn't you?

Noel Barber8:43

Yes. I was in England for the Blitz and then I joined in the ranks as to trainers. I they promised me faithfully, of course, that I'd be a pilot, but as soon as I got there, everybody else in the uh sort of flight that I was in called me grandad even then, so I I had to finish up training as a navigator.

Noel Barber9:02

and then he was seconded to information work to the Far East.

Noel Barber9:06

Well, uh yes. I it it was very interesting. It it's extraordinary. I came back uh four o'clock one morning, landed in uh the Isle of Man, was taken down to

Noel Barber9:16

See somebody in Claridget, and they wanted somebody to run a

Noel Barber9:22

Sort of semi-secret radio station out in San Francisco. And I left two days later. Couldn't believe it.

Noel Barber9:28

And after the war?

Noel Barber9:30

Well, uh during the war the operation in San Francisco tended to pack up, I suppose basically because we knew that the atom bomb was coming and so nobody wanted to waste any dollars with keeping a team in America.

Noel Barber9:43

I came back on um

Noel Barber9:45

on a very small freighter, and I landed back here, ready to go back to the RAF.

Noel Barber9:50

And by one of those miracles uh I was made the editor of the Daily Mail in Paris, which of course had a quite a useful function. And then you had the

Noel Barber10:01

Days of watching Europe come to life again. Ah, yes. It was incredible, wasn't it, really? You know, it's uh I spent those eight eight years in Paris.

Noel Barber10:11

Yeah.

Speaker 310:11

And then when the Continental Daily Mail expired, sadly, you joined the Daily Mail proper.

Noel Barber10:16

Yes. I was either given the opportunity of coming back here or uh taking severance pay and so on. And of course I've been on the mail for a long time and I loved it and I still, you know, I've always been very closely attached to it. I've lived worked with it for thirty or forty years.

Speaker 310:29

And now you were special correspondent.

Noel Barber10:31

Yes. I became a special correspondent. I went off, first of all, doing a diary anywhere in the world. And uh I'd never in those days I had never, ever sent a cable. And I was staying with Edward Moligneux in Jamaica.

Noel Barber10:45

And I got a cable that a great deal of unrest in Belize in British Honduras. So I went over there at a terrified out of my life, you know. And I thought, well, my God, this is... They wanted a big splash story on what was happening. And I was the nearest man, so I was the first man in. You know what the daring do date line is. You know, you've got to.

Noel Barber11:07

It was really funny because I wrote my first, I cabled my first story with a

Noel Barber11:13

With an intro, which I I must say I had to you know, I had nothing to lose anyway, you know, so I just started my story.

Noel Barber11:22

British Honduras is a colony forgotten by everyone except the exporters of gin.

Noel Barber11:29

And I must say that after that

Speaker 311:30

I had no problems. Not bad at all. And you had a project to drive a Land Rover from London to Tibet.

Noel Barber11:37

Yes, that that was marvellous. That was a wonderful trip. The idea was that Land Rover fitted me up with a a special Land Rover. I set off and could go anywhere and file two stories a week. Just one story about the trip, a sort of continuing story, and the other, anything that I would find. I found a marvellous sort of off-beat stories. I found a school where they train kids to be snake charmers. And I I went up in the Jhansabawa Mountains in India where they

Noel Barber12:07

They still practice polygamy, you know, and it's it's it r it's quite a wonderful trip, that's you got a book out of it. Yes, I did, yes. Let's have record number four. Well, this is going back a bit. Um I like to have the pearl fishes.

Noel Barber12:20

the Bizet's opera. My mother was Danish. We were brought up sort of speaking Danish and English and never quite knowing where you were. And it's I you know, it's very amusing really when you're a kid and you can't read.

Noel Barber12:32

My mother loved the pearlfishes, but she always called it the pearl fiscal. And, you know, for quite a long time I thought that was the English word. And I've had other instances, especially for people who live in between two countries like we did when I was young. I could never understand why we had to give the king all our plums. We had a plum tree at the bottom of the garden.

Speaker 312:54

I don't get it.

Noel Barber12:55

No, well, I used to sing the song, Send him Victorious And it was and you know, until I could read, I had no idea that that they that we didn't have to send him clubs. And so I really want to have the Pearl of Fiscum.

Speaker 313:00

And it was

Speaker 113:01

Yeah.

Speaker 313:03

You could

Noel Barber13:10

One of the audios from that.

Speaker 213:13

Peace and the Essex.

Speaker 213:23

Lose me.

Speaker 213:31

Up for this one.

Speaker 213:58

I let the sun swear.

Speaker 314:11

A duet from the first act of Bizet's The Pearlfishers sung by Ernest Blanc and Nicolai Gedder.

Speaker 314:19

Mr. Barbie, it would be much simpler to ask you where your travels haven't taken you.

Speaker 314:24

South America For me.

Noel Barber14:26

Mexico you've been to? That's practically. Well, not quite, is it? No, I don't think no, yes, I but I've never been to South America.

Noel Barber14:32

I think in the days when I was a foreign correspondent, the boys in New York could get there so much more quickly. Now, of course, I'd just hop on the Concorde and beat New York easily.

Speaker 314:40

Yeah.

Speaker 314:41

Uh you talked about hiring that launch to go to your island paradise. Now I read that that cost you one hundred and fifty pounds a day, which raises the interesting question of a journalist's expenses.

Speaker 314:54

But there are really three sides to the job, getting the story, getting the story out and getting the expenses passed.

Noel Barber14:54

The results are not.

Noel Barber15:01

Yes, I um

Noel Barber15:04

I have to admit that we we knew this was going to be a big story, providing, of course, that this man on this desert island was alive. It would have been a bit of a flop.

Noel Barber15:13

But I have to admit that I didn't tell the Daily Mail how much it was going to be. I I had a sort of nice big chunk of money with me, and I thought I better just let that one ride.

Speaker 315:24

Pali.

Speaker 315:25

There was another occasion in which on which you flew fourteen thousand miles for a dinner engagement.

Noel Barber15:30

Yes. Well, it w it was I just wanted to get my my own back on a man called General Delat de Taciny. He was a remarkable man, but he was very sly. He was one of the last great commanders, of course, in in Indochina. And I was having lunch with him in Paris with in a group, and I said to him, quite sort of

Noel Barber15:47

Casually, you know, Mont General, I would wish we could have a little dinner alone so you could sort of brief me on what's happening in this part of the world and so forth. He said, Nothing simpler, dear boy, nothing simpler. Please have dinner with me on Saturday. So I said, Thank you very much. He said, Black tie, of course. I said, naturally, sir. And then he looked at me with a sort of look. This was Tuesday, by the way, and he looked at me and said, In Saigon, of course. I said, but naturally, sir. But I didn't pay for that one. I made him get the French Air Force to fly me out. And I flew 14,000 miles. I got there five o'clock on Saturday, had a bath.

Speaker 116:14

Yeah.

Noel Barber16:20

at the Caravelle and uh changed and they flew me back about two o'clock the following morning.

Speaker 316:26

And you got your story. I got my story, yes. Another paradise you went looking for was

Speaker 316:33

A a shangre law in the in the Hunza area, in the Himalayas. Ah, yes, very different. Uh it's a remarkable place. The Hunza people have have been in the news. Uh they're reputed to live on apricots and because of that live longer than any other.

Noel Barber16:41

Yeah.

Noel Barber16:47

People.

Speaker 316:47

Yeah.

Noel Barber16:47

Apricots is staple diet. They don't live on it entirely. They use it for everything, but they do. I I was taken round, of course, and I wanted to do a story with photographs, and I met a man who was 105, and he apologised for being late, but he'd just been out for a four-mile walk. So I said, Well, are you sure you're you know is it all right going for a walk in this really rugged country up there?

Noel Barber17:08

And he said, I was a father last year, and he was produced a son at the age of of 104. So there must be something to be said for apricots. Indeed.

Noel Barber17:18

Let's have your fifth record. What are we having next? This is the Archduke Trio by Beethoven. This is the record that.

Noel Barber17:25

first really taught me to love classics and I still think one of the most beautiful slow movements the world of music has ever produced.

Speaker 318:34

The opening of the slow movement of Beethoven's piano trio in B flat major, The Archduke, played by Thibault, Casals, and Corto.

Speaker 318:44

How many books have you written now, Mr Bovin? Twenty-six. It's the books, of course, that are the most important part of your life now. Yes. I've mentioned a few uh of your books based on your actual journalistic experiences. You've also written a number of others based on research, slabs of modern history, the fall of Singapore, for example.

Noel Barber19:02

Yes, Sinister Twilight. Yes, I've never really liked, in retrospect, of course, the books that I wrote as a foreign correspondent. I didn't realize that you don't have to be the first in the field with a book. You can take two, three, four, five years if you want to write a book, if it's going to be a good one. And I'm not saying that mine are good, but at least I think they're better than the early sort of quickie jobs. I used to.

Noel Barber19:26

suffer from the misapprehension that because people read my stories in the Daily Mail they'd rush out and buy the books which in effect told the same stories. You see, now this just isn't true. Do you have a new book on the way? Yes, I do. I've got a book coming out in June, uh The Week France Fell. And this is really a book uh

Noel Barber19:43

about the fall of France, of course, in June 1940, but basically it's a book.

Noel Barber19:47

about France and the tragic events of those seven days by someone who loves France and adores it and has lived there for ten or twelve years.

Speaker 319:56

Yeah. And there's one book in your list which is out on its own. It doesn't seem to match the others somehow. A book of conversations with painters.

Noel Barber20:05

Uh

Speaker 320:05

Oh, yes.

Noel Barber20:06

Yes, yes. That was not what you might call a money-making book, but it gave me a great deal of pleasure. When I was young I had great ambitions to be a painter, and in fact I've done a lot of painting, and in fact I have had uh four or five paintings exhibited in in the in Paris, in the Academy.

Noel Barber20:23

I'm not a good painter at all, but I became very friendly with painters in Paris. A lot of the old post impressionists became very close friends of mine simply because I was the running the newspaper and I met them all, and I just wrote it for the sheer pleasure of writing it.

Speaker 320:37

Yeah.

Noel Barber20:37

Yeah.

Speaker 320:37

What's your next record?

Noel Barber20:39

Well, I'd like uh to play Mahler's Fifth Symphony. I'm married to an Italian. We had our first beautiful holiday together in Venice and, for better or for worse, Marla's Fifth always reminds me of Venice and uh it's also one of my favorite pieces of music.

Speaker 321:53

Part of the fourth movement of Mahler's Fifth Symphony, the Koncertgebau Orchestra conducted by Bernard Heitink.

Speaker 322:01

Now, what skills do you possess which would be useful on a desert island? Could you look after yourself?

Noel Barber22:06

I can make very good bread from breadfruit. I can make a very good well, of course coconut milk is one of the great drinks of the world. And if by any chance, just a little advice for anybody who happens to be on a desert island, if by any chance you've got a bottle of gin with you, you pour that into a coconut and you've got the finest cocktail in the world. I did this when I went to Tomil. I took a bottle of gin and poured it in. You can make very good scones from Uto, the unformed coconut and breadplant, and you get a sort of coconut scones. The fish is no problem. I speared about, oh, I must have speared 20 fish in four days on earth. They're big ones too. I think I might be able to manage. Would you try to escape?

Noel Barber22:52

I don't know. I d at first certainly not. I would love to be there.

Noel Barber22:57

Record number seven. Record number seven, well that's quite different, the Seekers. I'm not really fond of pop, frankly, but I do like it every now and again, and I would love to hear them singing Kumbaya.

Speaker 223:21

Yeah.

Speaker 323:35

The seekers singing Kumbaya

Noel Barber23:38

What's your last record? Well, the last will be Zarathustra. To me, this would be...

Noel Barber23:44

the proofs that I would not have to spend all my years on a desert island because if man can conquer the moon and this of course was virtually the theme song for it I think that uh somebody would send a parachute down for me.

Speaker 324:57

Richard Strauss's Alzo Sprecht Zarathustra, Sir George Shelty conducting the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

Speaker 325:04

If you could take just one disk out of the eight.

Speaker 325:07

Yeah.

Noel Barber25:07

Oh, I think it would have to be the Archduke trio.

Noel Barber25:10

And one luxury to take to the island with you?

Noel Barber25:14

Well, I talked about painting, but uh Tom Neal on this desert island.

Noel Barber25:19

Once said to me that the most important thing of all is not to take anything like a battery radio or anything that will suddenly die out. And if I took paints, suppose it'd all be used up very quickly. You know, when I was at the South Pole, the Americans actually parachuted a piano down.

Noel Barber25:35

And I think that's what I'd like.

Speaker 325:38

All right. An upright piano. And we'll let you have that bottle of gin as well to put in the cocoanut milk. And one book apart from the Bible, Shakespeare, and big encyclopedias.

Noel Barber25:49

Yes. Well, I would take um the Oxford Dictionary of um quotations, six hundred pages of joy.

Speaker 325:56

And because of your interest in painting and painters, choose one picture as well.

Noel Barber26:02

I think I would take the the Sunflowers by Van Gogh.

Speaker 326:06

Right. And thank you, Noel Barber, for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Noel Barber26:11

Yeah.

Speaker 326:11

Uh Uh

Noel Barber26:11

Tank Do

Speaker 326:11

Read him.

Noel Barber26:12

Uh Yeah.

Speaker 326:12

Goodbye, everyone.

Speaker 126:19

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists Archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk/slash radio four.