John Napier

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.

Presenter0:31

Our castaway this week is a scientist. He's an anatomist and anthropologist, and his special interest is the primates, which include us. It's Professor John Napier. Now, Professor Napier, you'll be the only primate on the island. Could you endure loneliness?

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I think quite easily.

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I've never been lonely. I've never at that say I've never had the opportunity to be lonely.

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I've been solitary.

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There is a difference, I think. Indeed. Um yes, I I enjoy it. I enjoy my own company oddly enough.

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What would you be happiest to have got away from?

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Oh, silly things really, like Sunday newspapers and sugar tongs. You know, things that annoy one.

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Yes.

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Um is music important to you? Um yes, very important, but not intellectually.

Speaker 11:19

Yeah.

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Have you any skill at music? Do you play an instrument?

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No. No. I play I used to play the drums, but everybody used to play the drums, so I don't count that. No, I think I emotionally, yes, I think it counts a lot. You've chosen your eight records on a basis of emotional.

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Yeah.

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Yeah. Where do we start? What's the first one? Uh the first one is uh my earliest memory of I suppose a pop tune.

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Uh and that is who?

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Sung by Jack Buchanan and Binnie Hale. I used to play this interminably, lying on Axminster carpet with a wind up Columbia grammophone beside me.

John Napier1:57

Town my heart away.

John Napier2:02

Makes me dream all day, dreams I know can never come true.

John Napier2:09

Seems as though I'd ever be blue.

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Jack Buchanan and Benny Hale singing Who from the musical show Sunny. What's your second disc?

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Falling in Love Again sung by Marlena Dietrich.

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Why do you choose it?

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Well, it's a it's a long story. When I was about eleven I broke my leg when I was at school.

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very badly and it was uh treated rather badly. And I was in and out of hospital for

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Five or six years. So my schooling went all to pot.

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I had to get back to school, then there'd be another operation and then I'd have to have a rest and recuperation.

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And um

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Finally, um

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Um my parents were of course in India.

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And I used to uh be uh

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Treat it to a trip out.

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to see them quite often. I must have gone out about three times.

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You know, we used you could go for fifty pounds return on the on the piano in those days.

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Of course, even travelling posh. Posh? Don't you know posh? Oh, posh is uh that's where it all comes from. Port out, starboard home. Oh, it's a lot of power. Posh, of course. That's forgotten. But uh

Speaker 13:26

Yeah.

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But uh

John Napier3:28

Ha.

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This was a wonderful time for me because I was twelve and thirteen, that sort of age then.

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And uh it was terribly romantic. My father, as I say, was in tropical medicine, and he had a big apartment in uh Calcutta, overlooking the Maidan, for those of you who know Calcutta.

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The Victoria Memorial.

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and uh every evening at drink time.

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We'd be sitting round in whiskey chairs on the veranda.

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and having drinks.

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and you see all round you the night it was dark by then.

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and you could see the lights of all the little villages or bustis in the distance, and you could hear the music coming from these villages. You could almost smell the smells of India, sort of a combination I always think of patchouli,

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and drains, but an unforgettable sort of smell. And it was a very romantic time for me.

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And e every evening my father used to play this this record.

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He put it on and uh I just

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I suppose it was my first love and my last love, as far as I am concerned.

Speaker 34:37

Love's always been my game, lead how I may.

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I was made that way.

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I can't help it.

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Men clustered to me, like moths around the flame.

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And if they're wing firm, I know I'm not to blame.

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Falling into love again.

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Marlena Dev.

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What was your first ambition as a boy? My first ambition was to be an actor.

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Was the acting in the family?

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my mother and her brother, my uncle.

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Uh we're both actors at the Ovik.

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during the last part of the war and the early post-war period.

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My uncle unfortunately died in the eighteen.

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Flu epidemic.

John Napier5:30

Thought.

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But I was very much brought up in the theatrical world because my mother had so many friends.

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and, as far as I could see, it was the only thing to be was to be an actor.

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But uh my mother would never allow me to do this because she said it just wasn't a a sound enough pattern of life.

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I had to be either.

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A cobbler.

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or a medical student. Why those two alternatives, I don't know, but they were her two alternatives. They won't for see why medical student, because my father was a doctor.

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But uh I was given that choice and so I became a medical student. Where did you study? I studied balance.

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And you became a surgeon.

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Eventually I became a surgeon in the in the early years of the war. You became a a rather specialized surgeon on uh

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An orthopaedic surgeon specializing in nerve injuries of the hand. Yes, well that was because it it was wartime and that is really the sort of things we were seeing.

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Uh I I specialized in uh nerve injuries, but one also had normal sum of gunshot wounds of military and also wounds from air raids.

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In fact, um my surgical practice was related to wounds and wounds alone.

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So somewhat naturally when the war sort of came to an end,

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I felt

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that I oughtn't to I couldn't launch myself on.

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on the the poor Richardsvillian population.

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'Cause all I was any good at was gunshot wounds. So I decided in fact to go into research and to to leave uh practice. And you took a series of academic posts?

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Oh yes, as an anatomist. Yes. Uh reader in anatomy at the Royal Free Hospital. Um then you were director of primate biology.

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At the University of London. Yep. And you founded the primate biology unit at the Smithsonian. That's in Washington, isn't it? Yes, that's in Washington.

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Yes, that

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Well, we had been um teaching primate biology in this country and the Smithsonian, which is really a magnificent, incredible research institution, felt that they must uh have a a specialist department of the sort that we'd had in the university in in in England.

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And, um, I accepted an offer to go and start one off, largely for research purposes, not for teaching purposes, for research. Yeah. That was a marvellous time, wonderful time.

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Well, we've had a a very brief rundown of your uh professional career. Let's break at this point for your third record. What's it to be?

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thirty-nine the beginning of the war.

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I was in Cambridge.

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Because baths have been evacuated.

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My fiance, who was now my wife, came up for Christmas and it was incredible because it was the first Christmas of the war. Cambridge was dark.

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and there was snow everywhere, but

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I remember walking through the streets um to find King's College Chapel, because I want very much wanted to hear the Festival of Lessons and Carols.

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And I remember walking in, no cures, no booking,

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And I was remember this.

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I suppose a very emotional time.

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And it was the processional hymn once in Ronald David's City.

John Napier9:01

God's fear.

John Napier9:04

He has helped.

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To taste for God's being.

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A trend who sat best.

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Completion.

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Once in Royal David City, the choir of King's College Chapel, Cambridge.

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You've lectured and and broadcast and written a number of books. Your wife works in the same field. She does. She works in the field of uh monkeys and apes and primates. Uh she works in the British Museum, in fact, Natural History Museum.

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You have collaborated on the wrote a book together called The A Handbook of Living Primates. uh listing all the primates and, you know, describing their characters and showing photographs of them. And it's a book that has really done remarkably well, in fact, although uh it comes a myths from me to suggest it. But it really has become a standard work, I think. We've published this ten years ago and it's still very much used.

Presenter10:20

I've been reading your book, Monkeys Without Tails, which explains very simply where we've come from, how we've evolved. But where are we going to? How do you think man will evolve in the future to to meet our changing environment?

Presenter10:35

I don't know that he really will do much evolving in the future. I think you might imagine that a man could live

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Well, forever, as long as there's a to live on.

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Or for perhaps not more than a hundred years. I think it depends what happens. I think he's living on the edge of danger all the time, as a for extinction of the species.

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Uh as far as physical change is concerned,

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I don't think he's going to change very much.

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Um I think that it may well be that in uh a few decades, perhaps even, we'll gradually find men and women are growing much more alike.

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to look at, because what is happening is natural selection is removing the extremes, or rather man's selection is removing the extremes of type. The great caveman type is going.

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Andy

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beautifully Rubin-esque kind of female is going. And what they're left with are sort of intermediate types in which the um male and female look very much alike. Let's have record number four. What's that to be?

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Uh it was the end of the war and um Oklahoma was the first of the new musicals.

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to come to England from America. And uh I think it was almost the first theatre that I'd been to since the war. It was going to Oklahoma Drury Lane.

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And um

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Being so impressed at the professionalism, the punch, the enthusiasm of their production.

John Napier12:31

Yeah.

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Howard Keel with the rest of the Crowdie Lane Company of Oklahoma.

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Professor Napier, you're fascinated by legendary creatures and monsters. You've written a book called Bigfoot, about the Yeti, primarily.

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Ah, yes, I'm afraid I did. Well, you see

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Yetis and abominable snowmens and Sasquatches and

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monograndis, as they're called in South America. They're all very much the same. There is a giant man myth.

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The the general description about people who have seen these creatures, or claim to have seen them, is that they are ape-like.

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There's something between uh a modern ape and a modern man.

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Well, I suppose it was my interest in the primates, in apes particularly, made me feel that this ought to be looked into. So that's what I did in Bigfoot, and tried to analyse it as one would analyse a a living animal that you could touch and see.

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Uh one had to to create one's animals from the reports, of course.

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Right, let's get on to another facet of your life which is very important: magic.

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Well, it was important really, but it was fun.

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This is I suppose this is to sort of throw back to my theatrical ambitions. I used to do a sort of solo.

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Copperty type A.

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uh with mainly with rope. It was great fun. I did all sorts of cabarets and so on for clubs and um

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And a little pocket money too, incidentally. Then my wife and I decided we put on an act together, a musical act what is known in the trade as a silent act. That means there's music all the time. And this was disastrous in many ways, because we were always many bars behind the music.

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We'd never catch up if anything went wrong. We were miles behind, and records would end before we'd even sort of got half way through the trick. I remember once, it was really the the apotheosis of of my magic career, is Pru and I appeared at the Albert Hall. We played, as the expression is, the Albert Hall.

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Now, if you asked me how many people were there when we played the Albert Hall, I'd have to admit to you there were only fifty, but I'll

Speaker 114:48

But I don't know.

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Not really. But nevertheless, we did play the Albert Hall, and that was the moment to end my magical career. Right, let's have record number five.

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BEAP

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Well now this in fact is is a tune to remind me of those balmy days when we're trying to be a scientist in the day and a magician in the evening. And Pro and I used to do this act to th this tune.

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Frank Posell and his strings Les Levandière du Portugal.

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You've done a great deal of television through the years, haven't you? Um well, I don't know how much I've uh well, it's a great deal. Uh but I've been in it since about uh nineteen fifty nine, fifty eight, fifty nine.

Presenter16:01

Uh I mean in days when television programmes went out live, if that p puts it in a perspective of a sort.

Presenter16:07

Can you recall one or two particularly successful programmes that you thought came out very well?

Speaker 116:11

Yeah.

John Napier16:11

Yeah.

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I don't know whether their successor is wonderful for me, and that's in the very early days of the Horizon programme, which is still running, as you know.

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I introduced it for a season and um this was uh very exciting, it was very hard work, and I learnt a lot about television during that time. And then uh more recently I did a series called The Animal Game from Bristol. But I I I I remember one

John Napier16:34

But

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television programme that I must um mention. One of my very first programmes.

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and it was to be on the hands.

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And I thought to myself, Well, now this is an opportunity to put across to the great British public marvellous information about the hand. This is my chance. And we recorded the programme and I did all my heavy, heavy stuff. And I said, Well, are we having any music at the beginning? And um the producer said, Oh, don't worry, I'll I'll I'll put that on top, I'll dump that on and you'll hear it when you hear the see the programme.

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So the programme uh duly went out.

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And my horror

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The opening music

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that was to introduce this serious programme.

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was this

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Hands to hold someone you care for You need hands to show that you're sincere

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When you feel nobody wants to know you

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You need hands to brush away the tears.

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That was of course Max Bygraves seeing you need hands. Well having got over the cultural shock on that occasion, I became very, very fond of m Max's hands. And in fact, I'd rarely say it it's it's one of my favorite records. And uh it's because it really

Presenter18:18

Sort of seems to be my signature tune. Whenever I lectured on the hands, I would always play a few bars of this record at the beginning of the lecture. How would you manage on this desert island? Are you an efficient sort of man at looking after yourself? Not bad.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yes, I

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Yes, I'm not sure.

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They're not

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Never any fishing, no.

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But I think shorter fishing I would be moderately handy most other things. Would you try to escape?

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No, I don't think so.

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I think I should be enjoying it.

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Let's have record number seven.

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Uh record number seven uh really is uh to remind me of nearly three years in Washington.

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And we were in Washington at the time when

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Things were pretty tough, I must admit. Uh Martin Luther King had been assassinated, Bobby Kennedy had been assassinated.

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and the the Black Riots had uh started in Washington. And in fact I was in New York, on the B B C offices on Fifth Avenue in New York.

Presenter19:26

When the riot started in Washington, as with the American correspondent of the BBC, who then was Gerald Priestland.

John Napier19:33

Yeah.

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And uh I I remember him picking up the telephone and saying, What, Washington's Burning?

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and slapping it down, pick up another telephone saying, Get me a satellite I thought those were immortal words, get me a satellite and I imagine he did get the satellite. Anyway, um we heard um the next record very, very many times during that period uh and in fact it is the battle hymn of the republic.

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A Battle Hymn of the Republic sung by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

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Which brings us to your last record. Yes, sadly I'm afraid it is. This is the Stravinsky Rite of Spring, and I would like to take it with me because it reminds me of a very, very happy, if somewhat arduous, time when I was lucky enough to be asked to do the Christmas lectures for the young people at the Royal Institution. They were broadcast on BBC.

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And in one of the lectures I was talking about the

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extinction of the dinosaurs and uh we showed them the

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piece about the dinosaurs from Disney's Fantasia. And of course he used the Rider Spring music uh to show the fate of those poor dinosaurs. And uh it would be a joy to have that in my collection.

Presenter22:41

An excerpt from Strabinski's The Right of Spring, the composer conducting the Columbia Symphony Orchestra. If you could take just one disc, which would it be?

Presenter22:51

I think it would be falling in love again. Marlena Dietrich.

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And one luxury to take to the island with you?

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Hmm.

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Yes, I know exactly what I want. I would like

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A Charles I. Silver Tankard to drink my cocoanut milk from. Just one touch of gracious living. And one book apart from the Bible, Shakespeare, or big encyclopedias.

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I think it would have to be The Riddle of the Sands, which to my mind is the finest um spy story that's ever been written.

Presenter23:23

By asking Childers. And thank you, Professor John Napier, for letting us hear your Desert Island Discs. Thank you for asking me.

Presenter23:31

Goodbye, everyone.

Speaker 123:39

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