Magnus Magnusson

Speaker 10:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty 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 seven, and the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:32

This week, our castaway is the journalist and broadcaster Magnus Magnusson.

Presenter0:36

Magnus, you're from Iceland and still an Icelandic citizen, I believe. Yes, I've still got my Icelandic passport. Doesn't do me much good, but I like it. I'm appallingly ignorant about Iceland, but I do know that it isn't all that icy, and it's only recently independent. That's right.

Magnus Magnusson0:51

I think they call it uh northern temperate, the climate. It's a bit wet in the south, cold in the north, uh rather sparsely inhabited. It's a big island, it's it's bigger than than Ireland, for instance. But we've only got about two hundred and twenty thousand people. And we got our independence in nineteen forty four after

Magnus Magnusson1:09

Some seven centuries of being a Scandinavian colony.

Presenter1:12

Well, off to a smaller island with an even smaller population of one.

Presenter1:17

What's the first disk you're going to take with you?

Magnus Magnusson1:18

I was thinking of taking the Carmena Burana by Karl Orff. I like the mediaevalism of it. I'm a bit of a medievalist at heart. And I think it would shock me awake when I first landed on this island to have this glorious noise pumping out at me.

Speaker 22:05

Take star

Speaker 22:15

Don't enjoy spots here.

Speaker 22:22

Yeah.

Speaker 22:25

If somebody won't say

Speaker 22:30

Source in Armis, Ex in Armis.

Presenter2:36

The opening of Karloff's Karmenaburane, the choir and orchestra of the German Opera Berlin.

Presenter2:43

You're an amateur musician yourself, aren't you?

Magnus Magnusson2:44

Don't

Magnus Magnusson2:45

I'm an amateur of music. I love it. I wouldn't dare call myself a musician. And you play the piano? Badly. And you have a family orchestra. Well, we've a family who play all sorts of instruments uh a few pianos, guitars, clarinets, recorders, the spoons, the muthi, the mouth organ.

Magnus Magnusson3:03

the trumpet now as well. So we can make quite a noise. Has the orchestra appeared in public? No, it hasn't. Uh they've been asked to appear in television, but they're a bit reluctant. They thought it was enough having one member of the family making a fool of himself on television. Uh

Presenter3:17

Record

Magnus Magnusson3:17

Yeah.

Presenter3:17

Uh

Magnus Magnusson3:17

Do

Magnus Magnusson3:18

Well, uh for waking up on a lovely spring morning, what we do at home is we sometimes put on Mozart's clarinet concerto. We've got a new interest in the clarinet because my eldest daughter is now learning it. And it is the most perfect way to realize how wonderful life can be.

Presenter4:29

The opening of the adagio from the Mozart Clarinet Concerto, Alfred Prince with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra.

Presenter4:37

How old were you when you came to Great Britain? Nine months.

Presenter4:41

How well do you remember much about it then?

Magnus Magnusson4:43

Uh

Presenter4:43

You can

Magnus Magnusson4:43

Came to Scotland straight away? Yes, uh my father was appointed European manager of the Icelandic Co-op.

Magnus Magnusson4:50

And of course there was only one place in Europe to all Icelanders, and that was Leith in Scotland. That was a gateway to the world, because the ship, the ship, went from Iceland to Leith, and so that's where the European Office of the Co op started. And he settled in in Edinburgh. There are, of course, great historical links between the Icelandic people and the Scots.

Presenter5:04

The rock

Magnus Magnusson5:08

Oh yes for instance, it's believed that a very large proportion of the original Norse settlers of Iceland in the ninth century were sort of second generation Norsemen who'd settled in the Hebrides and the Northern Isles and took wives and concubines with them. So we're a bit Celtic as well as being Norse.

Presenter5:25

Mm-hmm.

Magnus Magnusson5:25

Uh

Presenter5:26

And you were educated at uh Edinburgh Academy and then at Oxford. What did you read? I read English at the Welsh College, Jesus College.

Magnus Magnusson5:33

And I sent a reading English at a Welsh College. And what were your plans?

Magnus Magnusson5:37

I was going to become an academic, or going to try to become one. I then read for a postgraduate degree in in Old Icelandic, and then got a bit sidetracked because I ran out of scholarship money.

Magnus Magnusson5:49

And the first summer I decided to earn a bit of pocket money by doing linage for the Scottish Daily Express in Edinburgh, the time of the festival when anybody who can actually hold a pen is valuable to cover various fringe events. And I used to write five thousand word essays on Inscrutable plays which were printed as three-line notices.

Presenter6:08

Nevertheless, it led you to be assistant editor of the Scottish Daily Express, which isn't very academic. Not entirely.

Presenter6:15

and then assistant editor of the Scotsman.

Magnus Magnusson6:17

Yeah.

Presenter6:18

When did you start?

Magnus Magnusson6:18

Broadcasting.

Magnus Magnusson6:20

In the late uh fifties, at the time when commercial television was coming to Scotland and they were looking for chaps who knew one end of a question from another, because the cheapest programme you can make is two people sitting in a studio asking questions of each other.

Magnus Magnusson6:34

And so we were tried out one by one in Rota. The first programme I did was uh a two-hander with another person making his debut and that was Alastair Burnett. And he's gone on to greater things.

Presenter6:46

Right.

Magnus Magnusson6:47

Yes, in the mid sixties.

Magnus Magnusson6:49

Stay down here for that.

Magnus Magnusson6:51

Wonderful way of learning your trade doing a daily program like that.

Presenter6:55

You are the studio anchorman.

Magnus Magnusson6:57

With Cliff Mitchellmore, yes. Any trials or tribulations you remember? It was quite the most disconcerting experience of my life. The very first day I discovered that I was short sighted, which I'd never known before, because what they used to do was they would write out your link in big letters and pin it to the bottom of the lens of the camera.

Presenter7:14

Mm-hmm.

Magnus Magnusson7:14

And you ought to be able to read this. Now, Cliff Mitchemore wore spectacles like telescopes. I didn't. I didn't have specs at all. And when I suddenly had to do one of his links, the floor manager waved at a sort of blurred shape at the distance, which I imagined was a camera, and said, Read it.

Magnus Magnusson7:30

So I just strode purposefully towards it. The camera backed away until it was trapped against the back of the studio, and I went up to it, seized the piece of cardboard, and read it off the cardboard at the lens. I wasn't very popular for that. I got spectacles next

Presenter7:45

So and you were one of the founder members, of course, of Chronicle, the BBC's archaeological programme.

Speaker 27:50

Mm-hmm.

Presenter7:51

Well, at which point let's break off your third record. What's

Magnus Magnusson7:53

I'd like to play an Icelandic record. Icelandic music uh tends to be rather traditional still in male voice choirs. They couldn't afford instruments in those days. And they've got a tradition like the Welsh. This is a a song called Auervas Alta, which means in the beginning. It's from a a tenth century Icelandic poem about the creation of the world.

Speaker 28:16

Does he know

Presenter9:05

An old Icelandic folk song in the beginning. Now you have translated a number of the Icelandic sagas into English. Yeah.

Magnus Magnusson9:13

Yes, I

Presenter9:13

Uh Done

Magnus Magnusson9:13

Four for Penguin Classics with a colleague who is now at Edinburgh University.

Magnus Magnusson9:18

And that really was the start of my interest in archaeology, I think, because I got so interested in the history of Iceland these medieval sagas are about tenth century Iceland and Scandinavia that I wondered whether archaeology had any any proofs to give us about the stories that I was translating. This is what all people who first approach archaeology think, you know, you'll find the name plate of so-and-so amongst the ruins. And uh from then on it blossomed into archaeology worldwide.

Presenter9:44

Did really? Mm. And into Chronicle, where you began reporting digs from all over the world. Which ones do you remember in particular? I think uh

Presenter9:52

Uh

Magnus Magnusson9:52

The most attractive one was Tonga, the friendly islands. I adored Tonga. It's the most marvellous place. We spent three weeks there living with the villagers. But I also adored China, the experience of going to China. You brought back some fabulous stuff from. Yes, it's it's an amazing country. Slightly monotonous to live in, I think, but the actual objects were so fascinating. So you and Chronicle helped to establish this.

Speaker 110:06

Yeah.

Magnus Magnusson10:15

Current Great Boom in Archaeology. I think it was established by Sir Mortimer Wheeler, the late Sir Mortimer Wheeler. I just really cashed in on the boom, I think. What's the most exciting artefact you've ever had? I think the one I'm fondest of is one that I was given when I was a cub reporter on the Express and was sent across to South US to do a story in the Hebrides. And there was a dig going on at a place called Kilpedder. It was a wheelhouse from the Iron Age. And the archaeologist in charge gave me a stone to keep. It was pear-shaped with indentations at top and bottom. It had obviously been used as a kind of a hammer. But on the stone itself, there were dark marks, dark grease marks, and these were the sweat marks from the the pads of the palm of the people who'd used it 2,000 years ago. And that was the most electrifying experience. I still have it. To touch that stone and be totally and intimately connected with the past.

Speaker 211:07

Yeah.

Magnus Magnusson11:08

Well, back to music. What's number four? I'd like to choose Albinone. I'm very fond of organ music and I'm very fond of of the the eighteenth century music as well. Albinone is a Daggio in G minor for organ and strings.

Presenter12:21

The opening of Albinone is Adaggio in G minor for organ and strings, the Wurttemberg Chamber Orchestra, with Douglas Haas at the organ.

Presenter12:30

In Chronicle, you had done some reports on archaeology in in the Middle East, in in Egypt in particular. Was it this that inspired your recent series, B C The Archaeology of the Bible Lands? Uh

Magnus Magnusson12:41

It was one of the factors, but mainly it was just that everything came together at the right time. My interest in sagas was maturing, and I thought of the Old Testament as a great literary epic, and my interest in archaeology was maturing, and also the skills that we were developing in Chronicle had come to a point where all the team, very experienced team of old comrades, were ready to tackle a really major series such as the Archaeology of the Bible Lands.

Speaker 213:09

Hmm.

Magnus Magnusson13:10

What were your terms of reference?

Presenter13:10

Yeah.

Magnus Magnusson13:12

to find out what kind of illumination archaeology has given to the ancient civilizations of the Middle East, using the Old Testament narrative as a kind of thread throughout the series.

Presenter13:25

Did the political situation stop you from doing a complete survey? Were there any great difficulties?

Magnus Magnusson13:30

There were none at all, to my astonishment. Uh the Arab countries, for instance, who knew perfectly well that we were going to be filming in Israel and vice versa, they all lent over backwards to help us. Scholarship of this kind, I think, is totally international. It crosses all boundaries. The only place we didn't go, and that was of our own choice, was the Lebanon, because at that time the fighting was very fierce there and it it didn't seem fair to risk the lives of a camera crew or myself, come to the be being a devout coward, to visit sites which one could get library footage of. How long did the

Presenter14:02

Gold programme station.

Magnus Magnusson14:02

Yeah.

Magnus Magnusson14:03

I started serious research on them two years ago, and then went out to the Middle East on reckeys, and then we spent about a year filming and editing. So you've collected your scripts into a book.

Magnus Magnusson14:16

Yes, I was writing a book at the same time. The great advantage of a book is that you can use far more of the background research than you can on a television programme, where you tend to just give impressions of of what you've discovered. The book gives the the background thinking behind it and much greater longer interviews with the archaeologists concerned.

Presenter14:36

And

Magnus Magnusson14:36

Yeah.

Presenter14:36

As usual with any activity that touches on religious belief, there's been acrimony. You've been accused of bias and glibness and undermining Christianity and so on.

Magnus Magnusson14:46

Yes, I'm afraid I have. I it certainly wasn't the intention to do that. I think some people

Magnus Magnusson14:52

Felt that any questioning of what they consider to be holy writ is undermining Christian faith.

Magnus Magnusson15:00

On the other hand, most people, especially people in the Anglican Church and the Church of Scotland, have looked on it as reviving interest in the Old Testament.

Magnus Magnusson15:10

Record number five.

Magnus Magnusson15:12

I've chosen uh a song from the Songs of the Auvergne.

Magnus Magnusson15:16

With Vittoria de Los Angeles The Shepherd song, it to me is the absolute epitome of lyricism and beauty and countryside and the open air.

Speaker 215:48

Lost the rain

Presenter16:26

Bilero from The Songs of the Auvergne.

Presenter16:30

Victoria de Los Angeles with the Lamoureux Orchestra of Paris. Another very different activity of yours on the box is Mastermind.

Presenter16:39

A very popular programme, of course, but it started in quite a small way, didn't it? Yes.

Magnus Magnusson16:43

Total accident actually. We started very late on Monday evenings on BBC One and on Thursday evenings at a peak period there was a rather risque series called Casanova Jones and because the BBC assumes that no children are up after nine o'clock, you can be dirty after nine, you've got to be clean before nine. And so they just swapped the programmes after four weeks and we were pitchforked into a peak spot and were lucky enough to hold it.

Presenter17:08

How many series now?

Presenter17:09

Five. Yes. Five, yes. The presentation always rather surprises me. A t a touch of the Spanish Inquisition, rather solemn, surely very frightening for those taking part.

Magnus Magnusson17:19

Well, I don't think it is. I think it's a bit tongue-in-cheek, actually. The for instance, the the theme music is called Approaching Menace. That's you, isn't it? Yes, yes. I'm I'm not really quite such a Himmler Himmlerson as as I look on on the programme. I'm accused of being curt and brusque and

Presenter17:27

Yes.

Magnus Magnusson17:36

In fact, I'm just getting on with the job as fast as I can, because they only have two minutes to answer, and if I waste time being nice to them, then they have less chance of winning.

Magnus Magnusson17:45

More music, where next?

Magnus Magnusson17:47

Shostakovich. I'm very fond of Shostakovich indeed. I've used his music for television programmes that I've produced myself in Scotland, and I've chosen the Ninth Symphony, the opening from the first movement.

Presenter18:58

The opening of the Shostakovich Ninth Symphony by the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra.

Presenter19:04

One activity that I know you devote a lot of time to. You were elected Rector of Edinburgh University.

Magnus Magnusson19:09

Yeah.

Magnus Magnusson19:10

Yes, that's one of the most exhilarating experiences that I've had for a long time. It's a marvellous job in that you are working with young people, with students, at the same time working with the academic world that I had hoped to join one day, but as an outsider, a lay chairman of the governing body. With a special interest in students, there are bound to be divergences of interest, and the chairman, by being outside it, ought to be able to try to bring all these interests together into harmony to reconcile conflict. Yeah.

Presenter19:40

You have this responsibility in Edinburgh, you live in Glasgow, you work most of the time in London, you have a lot of travelling in your life.

Magnus Magnusson19:45

But

Magnus Magnusson19:46

It's very short. In fact, my house in Glasgow is closer to London than people living in Brighton.

Magnus Magnusson19:52

Yes, it's only twenty minutes away from the airport. The airport is twenty minutes away from television center. I can be in the office in one hour, forty minutes from leaving my house.

Magnus Magnusson20:03

Record number seven.

Magnus Magnusson20:05

When I was young we were brought up to the choral music of the Orpheus Choir and and Roberton's conducting of it. And the one that I will always remember, which we used to go to the Usher Hall in Edinburgh to hear, was um All in the April Evening. This is to me the epitome of the very special Orpheus noise, and everybody in Scotland at that time was trying to make that noise too. We never managed to make it ourselves, but oh, how we loved hearing it.

Speaker 220:45

She will and live good lives but stay on

Speaker 221:05

I was expressing right on the road.

Speaker 221:14

Lord in Him I store on the land.

Presenter21:32

All in the April Evening by the Glasgow Orpheus Choir, conducted by Sehu Roberton.

Presenter21:38

How good a castaway would you

Magnus Magnusson21:39

Theoretically I ought to be quite good. I've filmed, for instance, the making of Bronze Age boats out of hide and dug-out canoes and that kind of thing. Uh it was connected with an experiment of living for a fortnight in the Iron Age in Denmark and how to live off the country around you. So in theory I'd be a jolly good castaway, except that I'm totally handless. I break everything I touch, especially precious objects and museums. If I touch a piece of wood with a nail it splits, so I probably wouldn't be able to build anything, but I I'd enjoy thinking about it. There must be something somewhere. Can you

Presenter22:12

Fish.

Presenter22:13

No, but I've put out the limits of two hundred miles right away.

Presenter22:17

Uh before we get on to that subject, let's have a record now.

Magnus Magnusson22:19

A brick.

Presenter22:20

Yeah.

Presenter22:21

Yeah.

Magnus Magnusson22:21

Well my final record is um Julian Bream.

Magnus Magnusson22:25

Playing Rodrigo's guitar concerto, I adore the sheer virtuosity of this man, in an instrument which we play a lot in our family, exceptionally badly.

Presenter23:22

The finale of Rodrigo's guitar concerto, Julian Bream with the Melos Ensemble. If you could take just one disc.

Magnus Magnusson23:30

Which would it be? I think it would be the Icelandic one, Auervasalta, the surf all around me, and the idea of being part of creation. I'd love that.

Magnus Magnusson23:39

And one luck

Presenter23:40

Luxury to take with you? A pipe. Definitely my pipe. And one book apart from the Bible, Shakespeare and big encyclopedias.

Magnus Magnusson23:47

I think my favourite book is The Wind in the Willows. I've loved that ever since I got it as a five-year-old. That I could read forever.

Presenter23:54

Good. And thank you, Magnus Magdesen, for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Magnus Magnusson23:58

Thank you very much for inviting me.

Presenter24:00

Goodbye, everyone.

Speaker 124:09

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