Professor J H Plumb

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Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive.

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For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in 1978 and the presenter was Roy Plumley.

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On our desert island this week is the historian, Professor J H Plum.

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Does music play an important part in your life, Professor Plunn? Yes. I think that almost every day I like to hear something. Although I wouldn't say that I'm a a

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Concert Goeve

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Great dedication. Nevertheless, I like to have it round in the house. Have you any musical skill yourself? None.

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Except when I was a child I tried to uh

Professor J H Plumb0:55

Exactly.

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learn the piano and

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Tried for seven years and got as far as a Bach fugue, and then I'm afraid I realized I was not a pianist.

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Did you choose your eight disks according to any kind of plan?

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Um partly partly for uh the music which in a sense I've been immersed in over the most of my life, eighteenth century music, and particularly Handel, who is the greatest of English composers really in the eighteenth century and also for nostalgic reasons, because when I was young

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and still, indeed, now I adore jairs.

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What's the first one?

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what might be called almost my signature tune at the moment, that is Zadok Priest, which people may remember opened the Royal Heritage television series. Indeed. And of course recorded in the

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King's College Chapel.

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Japanese call it.

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which um of course is the home territory.

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And also, of course, by handle written for George II.

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And I suppose I spent most of my life, working life at least, on

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the first part of the eighteenth century.

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Handel's coronation anthem Zadok the Priest, The Choir of King's College, Cambridge, directed by David Wilcox.

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How do you think you'd rate as a curstweek? Would you look after yourself? Are you a practical person? Yes, I like cooking. I used to sail a great deal for most of my life.

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And I wouldn't be able to make a house or I'm no carpenter, but uh I think I could probably forage for myself and cook for myself and

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generally keep myself alive. With your experience of small boats, would you try to escape? Would you try to construct some sort of craft?

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No,'cause I'm no carpenter.

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What's your second record?

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The second record is again Handel, because I think he wrote most superbly for the human voice.

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And this is from Saul, The Death of My Brother Jonathan.

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Perfect expressed.

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What language can my grief express? With most of the pleasure I have.

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My brother Jonathan from Handel's Saul with the counterturner James Bowman.

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Now, you were born in Leicester, and you were educated there at Alderman Newman School and at the University College. What was your ambition as a boy? To write. I mean, before that, of course, I wanted to teach. I suppose an imprite little boy wants to do that for some years.

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And then somewhere about thirteen or fourteen, I suppose.

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I decided I wanted to be a writer, and I know when I was fifteen

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I designed a whole series of uh Mercian novels based on, of course, Thomas Hardy's Wessex novels that of course never got any further than the titles. What inspired your interest in in history? Did you have a particularly well developed sense of the past?

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Don't think so. I had a very good schoolmaster, a man called Joles, who's now dead, who encouraged me to

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go around castles and churches and

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to read the history of Leicester and so on. Yes. I suppose that's how it really began. And I suppose I got infinite curiosity. I like looking at things and poking into things. And you read history in Cambridge, in in Christ College? I read history at Leicester first of all and took a external London degree.

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I then went as a research student to Christ College in 1934.

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And you did that research under the great Professor GM Trevelyan. What was the subject, first of all? Oh, it was uh late seventeenth century English Parliament, uh the parliaments in the reign of William the Third. Mhm. He was a most remarkable man because one used to sit in silence with him for quite a considerable time.

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He is not an easy conversationalist.

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and I really hated being supervised by'em until I got to writing.

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And then when I produced the first chapter,

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They seemed to uh bring him alive, and he brought me to we both sat at a desk, and then he went over my prose.

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and I learned a great deal from how to write a sentence from Truelyan.

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Then the war came along and you had to occupy yourself with current affairs. Yes, I was in naval intelligence for six years.

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To begin with I found it tremendously exciting and then afterwards rather boring. Can you tell us something about the work you were doing? Yes, I was working on Ultra, to begin on the ancillary codes that led into Ultra or helped to from time to time.

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Can you tell us

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And that was marvellously exciting.

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when you were doing it, but afterwards it became a bit tedious and repetitive. And then fortunately I moved into the intelligence that was to be d derived from Ultra, and that again was so the end of my war two was quite interesting and exciting. The middle years were a bit tedious.

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Let's have another record. This time it's Chopin by Askenazzi. I think Chopin is one of the great.

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composers for the piano, perhaps the greatest, and after all, in spite of my failure as a boy, I still love the piano.

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Chopin's Nocturne Opus Fifteen No. One, played by Ashkenazi.

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When the war was over you went back to Christ College as a fellow and tutor and university lecturer in history. Very shortly after that I think you published your first book. That's right, England in the Eighteenth Century. I wrote that immediately after the war, but at that time there's enormous paper shortages.

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And so it wasn't published until 1950. I remember finishing it.

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early in nineteen forty eight. And it's been reprinted regularly virtually every year. Yes, it's sold somewhere around about three quarters of a million copies. Well, that is a an exceedingly good sale for English.

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The main body of your work, of course, has always been about the eighteenth century.

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Of a special note, uh a two-volume life of Robert Walpole. That must have taken a number of years. Very deeply researched book. Yes, that took about ten years altogether.

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And um

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It was enormous fun to do because it led me into all sorts of strange houses and strange places and

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I made some lifelong friends while I was doing it. And then a shorter life of his successor, the Earl of Chatham, and a book on the first four Georges, which is another book. Again, it sold extremely well. That was the first book of mine to get on the bestseller list. And the next week, Suez took place. And so off it went.

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Okay.

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Your only excursion outside the period really has been to the Italian Renaissance? No, I've written books on the um history of history, which takes me to Chinese history and uh ancient history and uh in fact all history. And I've written a large number of essays which cover almost every historical field actually.

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You have this great enthusiasm for Italian Renaissance painting. Yes, and for Dutch seventeenth century painting, perhaps even more so. Uh the the the Renaissance um liking, of course, is something you share with Walpole.

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Yes, and also he bought heavily Dutch as well. That's very typical of the eighteenth century connoisseur and collector. He was interested very much in the

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painting of the Renaissance, but also had a very keen eye for seventeenth century Dutch pictures. You're a trustee of the National Portrait Gallery. Yes, I've been a trustee now for the best part of sixteen or seventeen years, and it's a body which I've enjoyed being on most of all in my life.

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Another record, number four I think we've got to. This is Mozart. And how could any 18th century historian not have a record by Mozart on the desert island? And this, I think, is one of his most moving

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Compositions

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The beginning of the second movement of Mozart's Symphonia Concertante for violin and viola.

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K364, The Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, directed by Neville Mariner and the soloists Alan Loveday and Stephen Shingles. One of the enjoyable things about writing history must be the handling of original documents and working with family collections of documents and letters. Visiting, in fact, old houses, as as you mentioned just now. Yes, indeed. And um

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Fortunately, Warpole

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after all, was in office for longer than any other Prime Minister ever has been.

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He had a vast number of colleagues over that time.

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and so his correspondence was scattered almost in every castle and every country house in the land. And of course I had some very odd and

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some delightful, some very strange adventures in my search for Walpole letters.

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There are still

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Vast archives in private hands.

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For instance, that the archive at Chatsworth is is very, very vast. The one at Blenheim is enormous. Uh that of course has just been bought by the nation. It's going to the British Library. But when I worked there it was in

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A very dungeon like muniment room, which no form of heat

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And I remember having to wrap myself in the family standard to keep warm. And in a muniment room like that there's always the excitement you may come up with a jackpot from among some neglected parcels of Yes, you do occasionally. I mean there, in fact, I discovered

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You do

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At Blenheim on that bitterly cold winter's day, I did have a bit of luck, because I came across

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Some of the earliest Cabinet memoranda which we knew about had been miscatalogued and misdescribed, but they were in active effect detailed notes on Queen Anne's Cabinet.

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And I have another very vivid memory of that day.

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My bones were beginning to shake with cold, and then I heard a a rather tired English voice coming from the estate office next door.

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Saying, You know, I don't really understand why his Grace needs a second footman when he dines alone.

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So you never know, you see what you're going to run into when you go to a muniment room. On the whole, are scholars and and researchers welcome in in private houses like that? Mostly. I mean, I was astonished by the kindness and the hospitality I met with.

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in most places. But of course, I mean, a scholar is a bit of a bore intruding into a family situation quite often. And there are one or two who

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well, shall we say not uh very keen.

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to let their archives be seen. In fact, uh the two archives I never got into. You've had the privilege of working in the beautifully kept Royal Archives at Windsor Castle.

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That was delightful because there was a wonderful warm fire and a delightful archivist who's no longer there called Miss Smith, who looked after one terribly well.

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This of course brings us neatly to your work on Royal Heritage. We'll talk about that in a minute. Let's have another record first. Well, I've chosen the Beethoven record because Beethoven is again seminar.

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Can't bear not to listen to for very long.

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And I've chosen this by the pianist Solomon because I think I always feel this his has been a very tragic life, his most brilliant pianist, and as you know.

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I was unable to continue.

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part of the second movement of Beethoven's fourth piano concerto, with Solomon as the soloist.

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Now, Royal Heritage, Professor Plum, well, to my mind, one of the most successful television series ever. How did you come to get mixed up in it in the first place? Well, that, I think, was um due to um a variety of reasons, but partly I think because the people concerned uh Hugh Weldon and Michael Gill and

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Perhaps some of the palace, I don't know.

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uh liked what I did and had done and had written.

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And so they asked me to take part in it. And uh I was very hesitant because I had never written for television before.

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And I feared it might be more of a sort of

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View of Museum

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rather than historically based. But when I learnt that it was to be treated historically, of course I I leapt at the opportunity. There were the cynical critics, of course, who said what is a serious historian doing mixed up with this and called it Plum's Jubilee hack work and that sort of nonsense.

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Yes, well people always do that. Um I thought and tried to

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get into those programmes, a sense of what the British monarchy had meant to the people of the time, how the society in which they had ruled had expected them to live.

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And also I learnt myself a great deal about the character of a number of monarchs once I began to look at the objects which they'd collected and amongst which they'd lived. I think I know far more now about uh Charles I and George III.

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Than I did when I first started on the programmes. Yes, few of us realized how many treasures there were in the collection. The great problem, of course, was selection.

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Yes, it's almost impossible. I suppose because the amount we've filmed, there'd be enough material for another nine or ten television scripts.

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But uh well you all you saw really were the tips of various icebergs. And you've prepared this magnificent book derived from the series, w which is a a a very great bestseller.

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Yes, it's done very well. I hope it goes on doing very well. And the calorie production, I think, is super. I think it's a beautifully planned book, too. I think Peter Campbell did a magnificent job.

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Record number six. On a desert island, I'm sure I should get

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slightly melancholy and

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nostalgic and wanting my friends and what have you. And I think this string quartet of Schubert would fit that mood perfectly.

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The opening of Schubert's string quartet in A minor, opus twenty nine, number one, the Amadeus Quartet.

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Now the last press cutting I consulted told me that you're about to become master of Christ College. That's right.

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From freshman to master, have you any

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Well, regrets is hardly the word, but your life has to an extent been encapsulated in in in Christ College. Yes, I've always lived there, but I've always regularly escaped from it.

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I've never been a pure historian. I've had a certain number of business interests and

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I go to America a great deal where I have a number of consulting situations and I'd have hated to be purely a Don living his entire life in Cambridge. That wouldn't have been for me and I think I'd have been less good an historian if I'd not had that external interest. You are a very regular customer on transatlantic flights. Yes. And I hope I should go on being so.

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I think we've got to record number seven. Yes, well I gather I mean if I'm going to be on a desert island I should have to write something and obviously I couldn't write history.

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So the only thing that I could think I would be able to write would be my autobiographer, even if I had to write it in sand.

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And in order to recollect my youth, I thought that I ought to have at least two records of my great passion between the years of eighteen and twenty five, which was jazz.

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And so I start with, of course, with

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Mood Indigo. Duke Ellington. Duke Ellington.

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Duke Ellington in his Cotton Club Days, a nineteen thirty recording of Mood Indigo.

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And now your last record. Yes, the last record is

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Sidney Becher, Petite Fleur, and I didn't hear it until long after the war.

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when I had almost forgotten about my old interest in jazz.

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and Sidney Berchet's Petite Fleur revived it completely.

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And somewhere about 1960, I started buying a great deal of jazz again.

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So I owe a special debt to this record.

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Sidney Berchet, Petite Fleur.

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Have you a book on the stocks at the moment? Yes, it's going to be called The Pursuit of Happiness. It really deals with the middle class at last having enough money to

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have leisure pursuits. So naturally they thought the leisure was a little dangerous, uh might be very corrupting, so they went in for purposeful leisure.

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like literature and painting and music and occupying their leisure time with those things, with the arts in fact. When did that swing happen? That began towards the end of the 17th century and developed immensely strongly in the 18th century. Purposeful travel, for example. You couldn't have a holiday without a purpose. It was terribly interesting actually.

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It's terrible.

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Right. Well, if you could only take one disc with you, one of the eight that you've played us, which would it be?

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Oh, I think it would have to be the Beethoven. I'm sure it would have to be. The Beethoven fourth piano concerto. That's right.

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And you're allowed to take one luxury with you.

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Oh.

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Well, probably

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couple of weeks ago that would have been a case of um

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Chateau L'Estrites 1945, but last week I tasted the Latour 61.

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And I think it'd be a case of magnums of um plateau 61, I should want. Yes, I don't think one case would be much good. You're better. Well, could I have more cases? Yes, of course. We'll arrange that. Well, and then a dozen cases of the sixty-one is first growths.

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Well could I

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Yeah.

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Yes, of course, we'll arrange that.

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But

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

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Yes. Then I'd take Voltaire's correspondence, I think. Right. I might warn you, it does run to 118 volumes. 118? So it would keep me going for quite a long time.

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Yeah.

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Right, well you must promise not to build anything with it. It's just for reading. Thank you.

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And I think you should choose one painting.

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That I think would be um

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a self-portrait by Rembrandt as an old man. I think it has

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Wisdom, sense of human endurance.

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Everything that I admire. Which one? There are several. The one that I don't know where it is, one that has comes immediately to my mind. He has a turban on his head. Oh, yes. And has this sense of age.

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But

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It's a most beautiful moving painting. Right. And thank you, Professor J. H. Blum, for letting us hear your desert island discs. And thank you very much, Tuvalu. Goodbye, everyone.

Professor J H Plumb27:10

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