Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Eight records
Waltz from the ballet 'Swan Lake'
Not transcribed in extract — likely cut from recording.
The keepsakes
No book or luxury recorded for this episode.
In conversation
Presenter asks
What do you do first when you collect all the material for writing history?
The first thing I do uh is to collect from all the material I'm going to read uh passages which I either summarize or have typed out in full.
Presenter asks
What do you then do with all that material after two years?
And then, after, shall we say, two years, I arrange them all doesn't matter in what order they're collected, in strict order of date.
Presenter asks
How do you begin to see the whole picture?
And it's only then, when I go through them, marking them with coloured pencils, that I begin to see the whole picture. That gives me my theme.
Presenter asks
What is a great difficulty in writing history?
One of the great difficulties in writing history is the order in which you write it.
The recording
Timestamps play the recording from that turn
Sir Arthur Bryant
This download is the only extract the B B C has of this edition of Desert Island Discs. The presenter was Roy Plumley. The first thing I do uh is to collect from all the material I'm going to read uh passages which I either summarize or have typed out in full.
Sir Arthur Bryant
And then, after, shall we say, two years, I arrange them all doesn't matter in what order they're collected, in strict order of date.
Sir Arthur Bryant
And it's only then, when I go through them, marking them with coloured pencils, that I begin to see the whole picture. That gives me my theme.
Sir Arthur Bryant
Then one comes to the next problem, which is that of arrangement. One of the great difficulties in writing history is the order in which you write it.
Sir Arthur Bryant
When you see a picture, you see the whole picture at once. You may take time to take in its details later. But in writing history you have to present it in a certain order, and in a sense whatever you say to start with needs qualify.
Sir Arthur Bryant
And then one comes to that final problem of making it easy to read.
Sir Arthur Bryant
The harder it is to write, the easier it is to read.
Sir Arthur Bryant
one perhaps to write a single paragraph, one perhaps has several hundred slips of paper taken from different materials in front of one, and all one's doing to start with is to transfer facts from one bit of paper to another.
Sir Arthur Bryant
And it comes out almost unreadable.
Sir Arthur Bryant
One subsequently has to rewrite until one's taken out every unnecessary word until every sentence makes the reader want to find out what is in the next sentence, and that's a fearfully artificial and aboriginal process.
Presenter asks
Why is writing history different from seeing a picture?
When you see a picture, you see the whole picture at once. You may take time to take in its details later. But in writing history you have to present it in a certain order, and in a sense whatever you say to start with needs qualify.
Presenter asks
What's the final problem of making history writing easy to read?
The harder it is to write, the easier it is to read. … to write a single paragraph, one perhaps has several hundred slips of paper taken from different materials in front of one, and all one's doing to start with is to transfer facts from one bit of paper to another. … [it] comes out almost unreadable.
“The first thing I do uh is to collect from all the material I'm going to read uh passages which I either summarize or have typed out in full.”
“And then, after, shall we say, two years, I arrange them all doesn't matter in what order they're collected, in strict order of date.”
“And it's only then, when I go through them, marking them with coloured pencils, that I begin to see the whole picture. That gives me my theme.”
“One of the great difficulties in writing history is the order in which you write it.”
“The harder it is to write, the easier it is to read. … one perhaps to write a single paragraph, one perhaps has several hundred slips of paper taken from different materials in front of one, and all one's doing to start with is to transfer facts from one bit of paper to another. … And it comes out almost unreadable.”