C Northcote Parkinson

C Northcote Parkinson0:00

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 nine, and the presenter was Roy Plumley.

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This week our Castaway is a writer, historian, essayist, novelist and biographer, and a man whose name has been given to a celebrated law.

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C. Northcote Parkinson.

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Professor Parkinson.

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You are a man of many interests. Is music one of them?

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Yes and no?

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I was brought up in a very artistic household, taking that in that term in a wide sense. My father was a painter.

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A rather good painter?

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My mother was a pianist and the daughter of a professional musician.

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who was a choir trainer and a conductor.

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And uh close by was Yorkminster, presided over in those days by Sir Edward Burstow, I mean on the musical side, uh remembered in many churches throughout England as, I think, Burstow in E-flat. Uh so I I had a

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Musical background to that extent. Do you play discs?

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I don't play discs. I am too busy writing books, which is my trade, and I've never thought of a way of playing discs to any profit. Uh so I write books instead. Now what's the first of the eight records you've chosen?

C Northcote Parkinson1:43

What you

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Well, I've taken them in a sort of autobiographical order, and so my mind goes back in my early days to various rounds, catches, or canons, and goes to the earliest of them all, which is that old and delightful song, Summer is ye comin' in.

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See

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See the skin that come together fairly straight.

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Yeah.

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Sing and sing the golden meat song that sing the golden bee single gold sing before the golden lamp sing the golden cold lamp sing and sound the cold land That's very silver That's very soon

C Northcote Parkinson3:15

Oh.

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Summer is I coming in, Alfred Deller and his consort. Let's go straight into your next record.

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Well, you see, I had a a a boyhood which was rather torn.

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Between the claims of art

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On my father's side

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And music.

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On the side of my mother.

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but rather came together with the theatre, in which both parents were interested.

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And looking back on it, I think the moment when all these interests seemed to coalesce was in the appearance of The Beggars' Opera. This is of course Nigel Playfair's production of The Beggars' Opera, uh with the costumes and scenery designed by Claude Lovert Fraser and the music which is of course English traditional arranged by Austin.

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Fill every glass for wine inspires us and fires us with courage, love and joy. Fill every glass for wine inspires us, inspires us with courage, love and joy.

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Women and wine should life have grown.

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Fill every glass from The Beggars' Opera, and we've got a long way from the Nigel Playfair production, too. That was from a recording conducted by Sir Malcolm Sargent.

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Now you mentioned York. I know you are a Yorkshireman. Were you born in York? No. I was born on the borders of Yorkshire and Durham, at a place called Barnet Castle.

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But I was removed to York by my parents at the age of four.

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And I lived my childhood there. Now you were fascinated by naval history. Yes, indeed. Why?

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I saw something of naval warfare in World War One. As a boy, I had holidays on the Yorkshire coast and was very familiar with the sound of gunfire from the various actions protecting convoys and from uh armed trawlers being engaged with submarines and limping back into port afterwards. And I seem to have been infected then.

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Now you read history in Cambridge, but

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There is no course in naval history, is there? Oh, no, indeed. British historians all realize that the part played in British history by the Navy has been negligible. And I could do nothing at the university in which I was really interested. I took s courses in history, in economic history, actually, graduated, and then went back to naval history at the Royal Naval College, Greenwich, where I was employed.

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By Geoffrey Callender, Sir Geoffrey Callender, as he became, who was in the act of forming the National Maritime Museum. And I worked under him, forming at that time 50% of the staff of the National Maritime Museum as it was struggling into existence. At that time, your first book was commissioned. What was that?

C Northcote Parkinson6:37

Yeah.

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My first book, which I wrote began writing almost as soon as I graduated, was a biography of Admiral Lord Exmouth. What date was he? The same period as Nelson.

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But he was a better sailor than Nelson was. He was one of the great seamen of the day. Nelson wasn't, you know. He was a great officer. Not a great seaman. At which point let us break off your third record. What have you to do? Oh, uh it has to be a sea chanty, obviously. And the one that I would choose is one called Spanish Ladies.

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From ocean to Scilly is heard in my league. Farewell and adieu to you Spanish ladies. Farewell and adieu to you ladies of Spain. For we've received orders for to sail to Old England. But we hope in a short time to see you again.

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Roar like true British sailors, we'll ring

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Spanish Ladies, sung by Affa Fox.

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What was your next book? Were you also at Greenwich when you wrote that?

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No. I'd gone back to Cambridge when I published a book called Trade in the Eastern Seas, which led to a sequel called War in the Eastern Seas. I'd rather make the Indian Ocean my stamping ground at the period, it seemed.

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But of course I had other interests, as any young man would have.

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And when I look back on the nineteen thirties

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Of course, the big difference between the nineteen thirties and the present age is, as you'll readily guess, that I was younger then.

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and therefore looked on the world in a different way, sometimes perhaps in a sentimental way, or in a romantic mood.

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And for me, the mood of the nineteen thirties.

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Is represented by Ginger Rogers and Freda Starr.

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And thinking over the different

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pieces of music. The one that has remained with me

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Is one called

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This hut of mine

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Maybe it was the music or the glamorous sky of blue.

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Maybe it was the mood I was in.

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Or maybe it was really you.

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Uh

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Really?

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This heart of mine was doing very well.

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Yeah.

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Okay.

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The world was fine.

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Back to the thirties for Frederister singing This Heart of Mine.

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You were doing some schoolmastering, weren't you? You were at the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, among other places. Yes, when the Second World War began I was a master at the Royal Naval College. I was teaching naval history by then to future naval officers.

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Now you

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Yeah.

C Northcote Parkinson9:50

Beach.

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You already had some army status at that time.

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Yes, oddly enough, I'd uh been a territorial officer. I was first commissioned in nineteen thirty two in the Queen's Royal Regiment, the Second Regiment of Foot. Uh you joined your regiment, of course, when war broke out, but in fact you finished the war on the general staff.

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Yes, having had two years attached to the Royal Air Force, so as to complete a not very heroic service in all three branches of the armed forces. Now, from the summit of the the general staff, as it were, it must have been interesting to have a a bird's eye view and to be able to compare the situation with the fairly similar Napoleonic situation. Even more, sir, at an rather earlier stage of the war, when I was defending Dover. I defended it rather well. You may recall that it remained in our hands throughout the war. Indeed. And what struck me as an historian

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is that our defence of Dover at that time was in such very traditional terms. Our bayonets would have served very well at Waterloo our helmets would have attracted no adverse comment at Agincourt.

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And uh when the

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Word went forth that Hitler might be landing that night.

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My own particular task was to march a body of infantry into Dover Castle, over the Druelbridge, under the Port Cullis, and finally make my way down through a series of winding staircases and underground tunnels until I finally emerged, I hoped with my troops still behind me, at the beach at the foot of Shakespeare's cliff. And you can imagine that when Hitler got word of this that he cancelled all plans that he may previously have drawn up. But I had that feeling at that time how very traditional it all was up to the moment when the first flying bombs came over and at that moment Britain ceased to be an island.

C Northcote Parkinson11:43

Unreal.

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Uh

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True. But the war itself was symbolized for me in a musical sense.

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By the production of the motion picture of Henry the Fifth.

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It had even the Agincourt song in it, the wording of which runs Our King went forth to Normandy. And this, of course, our King actually did and I look back on the film, and perhaps particularly on that song, as something of that period in my life.

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The Argent song from Sir William Walton's music to Henry the Fifth.

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Now after the war you went to the Far East.

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Yes. I went out to Singapore in 1950 and was to spend the next eight years in the Far East, not only in Singapore and Malaya, but in Thailand, Hong Kong, Borneo, other countries of Southeast Asia. Now your work was all educational. You you set up a history department in in Singapore University.

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Well, I was trying to sell the idea of history to Singapore and Malaya as a whole, and uh a a lot of my work, in fact, or perhaps some of my best work was done on radio. I was trying to sell the idea of history to people who had not so far had very much idea of it. Now, shortly after you returned, you published an important work wi with a title which is now familiar in the language, Parkinson's Law. Now, can you in in a few words summarize that law?

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The law is a a law of nature, of course. I didn't invent it, I discovered it. The law is that work expands to fill the time available for its completion.

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And it has a number of important

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Coronaries

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One of them being that in any administrative organization apart from the BBC, the administrative staff will increase each year by a known percentage, irrespective of the work, if any, to be done.

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And since then there have been other invaluable essays. What what was Parkinson's Second Law?

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Oh this is one very relevant to the present age. I sometimes wish that our ministers might read it. This is that expenditure rises to meet income.

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In other words, if you get a rise in salary.

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You may think, well, next year I'll have a bigger income, therefore I will spend uh so much on an insurance policy, so much in a trust fund for the children, or whatever beneficial and long term plan you have in mind.

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But as soon as a few months have passed, you find there is no money left over. In some extraordinary way the expenditure has risen to meet and sometimes overlap.

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the income, producing a phenomenon which is sometimes called too much month left over at the end of the salary.

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Indeed, I think it's time we had another record. What should we have not?

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Well, I am in my political views, first of all, a royalist. I am, above all, a loyal subject of Queen Elizabeth the Second.

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And in Guernsey we may have no particular loyalty.

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Two, as for example recently Mr. Jim Callahan the First.

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But our loyalty to Queen Elizabeth the Second.

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is uh equal to that of anyone in any other parts of the British Isles.

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And I was particularly reminded of this last year.

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when I made my oath of homage to her as sovereign, uh in my capacity as a seigneur of a feudal uh property in Guernsey. And of course, as I did that, my mind went back inevitably to that memorable scene of her coronation years before in Westminster Abbey.

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An excerpt from The Queen's Coronation.

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Now, you've become in recent years a biographer. You wrote A Life and Times of Horatio Hornblower. Yes, indeed, I did. It was great fun. For me, I mean. A tribute to Forrester. Yes, a tribute to Forrester. And apart from that, I think I could say, without undue self-praise, that it is probably as good a biography as any non-existent character can expect to have.

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You have yourself written a series of books on naval adventure in Napoleonic times. You have a running character called De Lancey. That's right. I've only read the first one, Devil to Pay, which I think is excellent. How many have there been? Four.

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There is a fifth one on the way, and a sixth one is being planned, and that will probably complete his career.

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And your most recent book, another biography, Jeeves. Now we've read a lot about Jeeves, but little that tells us about his early life. Have you been fortunate in finding a hidden store of his family papers or something of that sort? Oh, indeed, yes, yes. I was very fortunate, of course, before that with Horatio Hornburg, with a whole box of family papers which were found in a solicitor's attic down in Kent. With Jeeves, I've done what work I could. I can't say that I have the full detail about his life, but

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There are now a number of very interesting things. You see, many people have worried about Jeeves. How did he have that superb command of English? We're not told about any school he went to, that nothing about his education emerges. And yet Jeeves is always known by the superb command of the language. His syntax, his choice of words, is always admirable.

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Understand.

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And that's the Uh

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The answer was that his father, the son of a clergyman, won a scholarship to Oriel College at Oxford.

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and did very well in his examinations, and was about to become a philologist, a student of language.

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He had given a very useful lecture on the letter P to an entranced audience of the Philological Society.

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But

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And all the world looked anxiously for his forthcoming lecture, which was naturally on the letter Q, and which would seal his reputation as a scholar and win him a fellowship at his own college. Unfortunately, he was so apprehensive when faced with this ordeal, that he accepted a great deal of refreshment from his friends, appeared intoxicated in the lecture-room, uttered some incomprehensible remarks about minding his P's and Q's, and fell flat on his nose.

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Uh

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Oh f

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A believer evidently in doing the job thoroughly, he then married a popular barmaid from a local public house, and at that point the curtain descended on what might have been his academic career. He went to London as a proofreader and index compiler, and Dreeves, his son, was brought up at his knee, as it were, and learnt from his father that commanding knowledge of the language which his father possessed.

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And still retained even while swaying drunkenly over the proof sheets in his London garret. That is a fascinating piece of research, I do congratulate you. Let's have another research. Very much one does one's best, you know, to explain these things that have puzzled other people. Where have we got to? What happens next? Well, my mind goes to a song which swept through the world some time ago.

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Let's have another

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Uh

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Called Never on Sunday.

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And uh I don't know why, but this is uh uh a sort of haunting tune which remains at the back of my mind and serves to pander to my more frivolous side.

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when I drag myself away momentarily from Bach and Mozart.

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And think of Well, never on Sunday.

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Never on Sunday with the composer Manos Hagidakis at the piano.

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Now you are an islander.

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Are you a sailor?

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A PRACTICAL SAILOR.

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been I spent one summer as a deck hand in a Greek schooner in the Aegean.

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And that year, at any rate, might have claimed to be a a a sailor. Under sail.

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Under sail and uh and diesel engine. Would you try to escape from your desert island?

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Would you try to construct some kind of craft?

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Well, I haven't had any very accurate description of the island yet. I think that its amenities become rather relevant at this point. It has everything you need if you can apply them. It has fresh water. It has vegetation. It sounds rather good. Uh it's in the South Seas. It's in the South Seas we take. Of course. Uh I have been to Tahiti and such places and I

C Northcote Parkinson24:09

It's a message we take off.

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My impression was favourable so far as it went. You wouldn't bother to escape, then?

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I wouldn't put it like that, but I mightn't make any too strenuous efforts for the first few years. Right.

C Northcote Parkinson24:25

Uh

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I think it's time for your last record.

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Well, you have cooperated with me in a sort of orgy of self-indulgent nostalgia.

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But I have to realize, as an historian,

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that the past on which one looks back in a nostalgic way

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is usually imaginary.

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What we remember isn't really what happened.

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It is what we like to think happened.

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And to illustrate this theme, I would like to play.

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That wonderful record from the motion picture Gigi in which Maurice Chevalier sings a duet with Hermione Gingold.

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How often I've thought of that Friday night when we had our last rendezvous And somehow I've foolishly wondered if you might by some chance be thinking of it too

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That carriage ride? You walked me home. You lost the glove.

C Northcote Parkinson25:44

I lost a comb.

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Yes, uh I remember

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Maurice Sevalier and Hermione Gingold in the film Gigi.

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If you could take only one disc of the age you've played as which would it be?

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Well, I confessed earlier on that I'm a royalist, and I think I underline that fact when I say that my record of all these would be that taken from the coronation of our sovereign lady, Queen Elizabeth II. Right. And one luxury to take to the island. What have you chosen?

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Our radio set. We can't guarantee reception quality, but good luck. And one book apart from the Bible and Shakespeare, and we don't like big encyclopedias. No, I don't like them. I was good lucky. I think my book would be The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon. It runs to about six volumes. Yes. There is a lot of it, and he happened to be a very good historian.

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So let's check it out.

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And a very gifted author writer

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And thank you, Professor C. Northcote Parkinson, for letting us hear your desert island discs. Thank you for letting me be so self-indulgent as to have all my favourite tunes played for me. Goodbye, everyone.

C Northcote Parkinson27:16

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