Eric Simms

Eric Simms0:00

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.

Presenter0:30

Our castaway this week is the naturalist and broadcaster Eric Sims. Eric, you've built your hides in many isolated places. Have you visited any desert islands?

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I haven't unfortunately visited any desert islands in tropic seas, which I'd like to very much but I've been on remote uninhabited islands around the British Isles, sharing perhaps my life with two hundred and fifty grey seals, but uh with not with many humans. What would you be happiest you got away from?

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I think noise. Jet aircraft, people shouting, traffic, that kind of thing. How big an interest is music?

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I wish I could play an instrument. This has always been rather a matter of regret for me. But I like music. I find it's an essential part of my life, and I really couldn't do without it. Did you have any kind of plan in choosing your eight records?

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I chose records which have reflected my passage really through life, because I've led a very interesting and very varied life.

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Haydn Roeslein, sung by Elizabeth Schumann. This takes me back to my days when I was a teenager, becoming first interested in music, and I used to go as a boy to the promenade concerts conducted by Sir Henry Wood in the old Queen's Hall, and this I remember this delightful voice, this very delightful person.

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Freedom for all

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Face line, race, line of face line

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Nine of it, I don't

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It's the wonderful

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A dish

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Oh no!

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Elizabeth Schumann singing Schubert's Haydn Roeslein.

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Eric, were you brought up as a town boy or a country boy?

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A town boy. I was born in London, about three miles, four miles from Marble Arch.

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I went to school in London, so although I perhaps yearned for the countryside somewhere, there's no doubt about it that I was a townee. What inspired your interest in wild life, in in birds in particular? My mother tells a very interesting story of how, when I was two and a half, I came home one day

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clutching rather carefully a little baby blue tit in my hand.

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And I showed it to her, and she very rightly was upset, and said take it back at once.

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And apparently I said, Well, I've been watching these birds for a little while.

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and they come at fairly regular intervals and then they go away again. They've just gone away and this gives me time to come and show it to you.

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So if that story is true, and I've no reason to doubt it, it's something which uh I can't ever recall starting. And as a schoolboy you'd go on bird watching expeditions.

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Yes. I went to school in Hammersmith, so I had the grounds of Chiswick House, and here I saw kingfishers and great spotted woodpeckers close to.

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And of course I had the Royal Parks in the centre of London. As a youngster, what was it your ambition to be? The the idea, I suppose, of being an ornithologist must have seemed rather remote.

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Well, it is remote, and I would like to have been an ornithologist, but in those days there were no professional ornithologists. And because my two brothers were historians and awakened in me a very keen interest in history, and I had some extremely good history masters at the school I was at at Latymer Upper School,

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I found really that I was being directed towards history and uh

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My ornithological interest tended to take perhaps second place. You were at Merton College, Oxford. Did you read history there? Yes, I read history there because I intended at that stage to become a schoolmaster. But there were again great opportunities at Oxford. I joined the Oxford Ornithological Society.

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And I was taken under the wing of a great ornithologist, W. B. Alexander, who was the director of the Edward Gray Institute, and he took me out on trips to look for stone curlews in the Chilterns and the Cotswolds and to count uh duck on the local gravel pits. And this was a a a a great help to me. Now, your next record takes you back to Oxford, doesn't it?

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Yes. I can remember that I got a great deal of satisfaction, for example, from the concerts that used to be given in the chapel of Balliol.

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and there were many opportunities for someone who was interested in music, and it was at this time that I was beginning to understand, and also to become really sympathetic towards the music of Beethoven.

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A memory of Oxford part of the second movement of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony

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Herbert von Carion conducting the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.

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While you were in Oxford the war was on, and you joined the RAF as air crew. Did your flying duties take you overseas? Yes. I had forty months in Canada and the United States. I was trained for part of the time by the United States Army Air Corps.

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Very interesting experience because it was very different from anything that I had experienced in the RAF.

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But uh I had the opportunity because I was stationed in Florida.

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To visit the Everglades.

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And this great natural asset, part of America's wildlife heritage, was a marvellous thing to have writ literally on my doorstep the egrets and the purple ibis and the herons, and of course the alligators and marvellous butterflies.

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This was a great opportunity, and of course I was over there at the firm's expense.

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Yeah.

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Now there's another record to remind you of that period in your life.

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Well, if it hadn't been for the war, of course, I wouldn't have met my wife. She was on the same station as I was, and my way to um a squadron.

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And the music I'd like to have is Dvor Jacques's Symphony from the New World, part of the first movement.

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This music not only reminds me of my stay,

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in the New World, but also it was the music that I played on the morning of my wedding day.

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Part of the first movement of Vorchak's New World Symphony.

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Ist van Kirtisch with the London Symphony Orchestra.

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How did broadcasting come into your life?

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In a way it was a slight accident. Um I had done one or two broadcasts in nineteen fifty from Birmingham in the Midland region.

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But uh my sister, who knew that I wanted to be a professional ornithologist and uh her husband saw an advertisement for a post in a paper, and they sent it to me because they thought I might be interested in it. Well, it turned out to be a very exciting one. Uh it was actually to make recordings in the whole field of natural history, to write scripts and produce programmes, and it has arisen as the result of the retirement of Dr. Ludwig Koch, who of course.

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Yes, he was indeed. And he of course had come in the nineteen thirties as a refugee from Nazi Germany.

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and had brought with him some of his early wildlife recordings. He made, after all, the first known recording of a bird.

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which was way back in the eighteen eighties of an Indian shama,

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And I had the welcome task of carrying on really where he left off.

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In nineteen fifty, when you became the BBC's resident ornithologist, you were still recording on disc, of course. We started off with equipment which was called Type C, which was used by the mobile units of the BBC for most outside work.

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But it had problems, of course, because it was very difficult to operate in cold weather, and it was extremely bulky, and the recording time possible on each disc, of course, was very short it was only about four and a half minutes.

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And then of course came tape.

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Yes, and this revolutionised recording not only of uh all events, but also of wild life sounds. It gave you a much longer continuous recording time. One could record for forty five minutes as compared with four and a half minutes on a disc.

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It also had a better dynamic range, and you were therefore getting more faithful recordings of the sounds that were being used, and of course it was less um less cumbersome, it was more easily moved around.

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What's the toughest job you'll remember in collecting a bird song?

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Well, many of them were were difficult, but perhaps one of the most difficult was getting the first recordings of Golden Eagles.

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Now I went up to Scotland with Bob Wade, who was a recording engineer who joined me as part of this team.

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And to get recordings of Golden Eagles it was necessary to haul eighteen hundred feet of heavy plastic cable up a cliff face, and at the top there was a rock buttress about twenty feet high, and I had to scale this, pulling this enormous weight of plastic below me, and when I got to the top I sort of collapsed, somewhat exhausted, on this enormous irie, much to the consternation of the Golden Eaglet, which was sitting there and had been peering over the edge watching me make my ascent.

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And we got recordings not only of this eaglet calling hungrily because it was left for many hours on end by the adults, but also and this perhaps was the most exciting part of it recordings of the female coming in with a great sort of whoosh of wings, used to come over about three thousand feet above the irie, close her wings, and come in with this sort of glorious swoop.

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And then she started talking to it. And it was these recordings of an adult golden eagle which perhaps were one of the one of the great triumphs of my recording life. Yes, you talked about the bird talking. Now you've heard as much bird song as anybody. What conclusions have you drawn about the vocabulary of bird communication?

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Well, I like to think that some birds do actually sing because they enjoy it.

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If you take the blackbird, which is a common enough bird, when a male blackbird sings in spring, he says, first of all, I'm a blackbird, because the nature of his song is that of a blackbird. He also says, I'm a male.

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He then goes on also to say, I am a male in breeding condition. I mean, he wouldn't be singing unless he was in breeding condition.

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And then, fourthly, he's saying, I want a mate, I want a wife. So, provided a blackbird's song answers all those four conditions, one might say, why does it bother to do anything else with its song? But we do know that male blackbirds very often improvise. I've made recordings of the same individual over successive summers and found that the bird has improved its performance. So this suggests to me that there's some kind of aesthetic feeling, some sense of pleasure or fulfilment. Is there any change of mood, for example, in the

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Dawn Chorus, The Dawn Song and the Evening Song.

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The dawn song tends to be very impassioned, very brilliant, and maintained for perhaps, say, half an hour or forty minutes.

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After it's sung it goes off to feed and may resume occasional phrases throughout the day and then in the evening the dusk song is a much more relaxed, easy, and less determined performance than you would get. Now my next recording, which I I'd like to hear, is that actually of a blackbird singing on my own roof, recorded at Dollys Hill in northwest London, where I live, and this was recorded in the early morning and perhaps reflects this uh this state of passion.

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Uh

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A Blackbird recorded at Dollys Hill, London.

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When was it you transferred your main activities to television?

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This came in nineteen fifty seven.

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when for the first time B B C Television opened up a school service. And it seemed to me that this was an opportunity to expand my activities. I have always been interested in education.

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And this for the first time provided a new service which I hoped was going to enrich the schools. One was going to be able to supply not just sounds this time, but um films of birds

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in their various activities and other animals as well, and it seemed to me a a pioneering challenge.

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What we were looking for really was to show in good close up to children something which they find very difficult to see themselves in the wild. I don't think natural history on television serves a purpose if it only shows them what they could already see.

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In recent years you've been working as a freelance, of course.

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Yes, for the last nine years. But uh much of the work that I did before has gone on and I've been able to spend a great deal of time writing. I've been able to do a lot more practical conservation work, both on national and on local level, because this is something which is very close to my heart. I feel very strongly about the threats which are coming to our to our present world.

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You have been writing a number of books. Recently an autobiography. Yes, uh called Birds of the Air, I suppose for obvious reasons because uh its association between birds and air waves.

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And I've had an opportunity of spending a great deal of time writing up accounts also of the twenty five years' work that I've done in my own local area.

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Because conservation needs to be not only on a global scale, but very much also on a local scale.

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But unless we have the information, then we don't know how to act.

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And I have spent this twenty five years on a continuous study of my piece of suburban London it's the longest study of the kind that's ever been attempted

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And in this way I can see what changes are taking place. Let's have your next record.

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Well, I would have to have something which um came from a wind instrument, and I think I would like Mozart's clarinet concerto in A major, the first movement.

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Yeah.

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Part of the first movement of Mozart's clarinet concerto in A major, with Gervaise de Paya and the London Symphony Orchestra. Let's go straight on to record number six now.

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I need something.

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from a violin. I had a little difficulty deciding which one I really wanted, but I've settled finally for Max Brook's violin concerto, the opening of the third movement.

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The beginning of the third movement of Max Brook's violin concerto with Nathan Milstein as soloist.

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Now you've had a great deal of experience in building hides, which is very useful experience for any castaway.

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You could look after yourself on a desert island, I should think.

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I think I could get by. I don't have any really great uh anxieties about it. Done any fishing?

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Yes.

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I can't combine fishing very easily with ornithology because I tend to get distracted from the fishing part of it by seeing some exotic bird fly over the top. But I confess and have done. I could get by without. And in the REF, of course, you learn navigation.

Eric Simms20:08

The top

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And in the hour

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Uh, can you handle small craft?

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I'm not basically a sailor, but I've had some experience. Would you try to escape?

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I think in the end I probably would. Eventually, even having the opportunity to do all the recordings, I think I'd want to get back to Civilization. Record number seven.

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I must have some more music of the human voice, and the next record that I'd like is one that is a most glorious piece of singing, and it stirs me every time I hear it.

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Its Monteverdis magnificat from the Vespers of sixteen ten.

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It's the trio piece which is for tenor voice and soprano duet with echo effects.

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And makes us feel

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Praise Lord.

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An excerpt from the Magnificat from the Monte Verde Vespers, a performance conducted by Helmut Rieling.

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Which brings us to your last record.

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Looking back on my choice, I see that some of the music that I have chosen so far tends to be perhaps a little reflective.

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and I would need to have one piece of music which shows something perhaps of the torment as well as the hope of the human spirit.

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So I would settle for Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. two.

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Part of the second movement of Rachmaninoff's second piano concerto, Vladimir Ashkenazi with the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra. If you could take only one disc, which would it be?

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It would have to be Beethoven's seventh without question. And one luxury to take to the island.

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I believe that when I was shipwrecked I would have found myself with my binoculars around my neck, because I never do any kind of voyage without being in a position to look at birds. And so these would have arrived with me on the shore. So I'd like to ask for some tape recording equipment, perhaps with solar batteries, which would enable me to go on making wildlife recordings. Yes, I think that bit about the field glasses is a bit cheeky, but nevertheless we'll let you get away with it.

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and one book apart from the Bible, Shakespeare, and big encyclopedias.

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Gilbert White's Natural History of Selbourne. This has been a guiding light to me all my life, and it would remind me of the very Englishness of England.

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And thank you, Eric Sims, for letting us hear your Desert Island Discs. Oh, it's a great pleasure to have come and to have been invited. Goodbye, everyone.

Eric Simms24:29

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