Countess Elizabeth Longford

Speaker 30:00

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 nine, and the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:31

On our desert island this week is the Countess of Longford, who, as Elizabeth Longford, is the celebrated historian and biographer.

Presenter0:39

Does music play a big part in your everyday life?

Countess Elizabeth Longford0:43

In a way I should say yes, though I'm not really musical in the sense that people would recognise who were musical, but I'm

Countess Elizabeth Longford0:53

passionately fond of sun things.

Presenter0:56

Do you play an instrument?

Countess Elizabeth Longford0:57

No, no. Except I was made to play the piano because I only play it now for grandchildren or for fun.

Presenter1:06

Do you use background music while you're researching or copy typing or anything like that?

Countess Elizabeth Longford1:11

I certainly do. I I feel rather ashamed of doing it, because I know it's not the right thing, and one should treat music as an end in itself, and not as a background. But I'm bound to say it has a wonderfully therapeutic effect on me as a writer. If I get tied into knots, there are only two things which undo the knots. One is a walk in the garden, which would be marvellous on the island, and the other is putting on a record.

Presenter1:38

Now what's the first one you've chosen for your island?

Countess Elizabeth Longford1:41

Well, the first I've chosen are The Cries of London.

Countess Elizabeth Longford1:45

Because I'm a Londoner, born and bred. I was born in the sound of.

Countess Elizabeth Longford1:49

Bow bells

Countess Elizabeth Longford1:51

And I'm interested in the development of London historically, the different cries of London in different parts, for instance, where I live now in Chelsea.

Countess Elizabeth Longford2:01

The cries were supposed to be the most melodious, especially for primroses and cowslips, and it was said that Purcell's music had somehow got into these cries and made them really soup.

Presenter2:14

A Purcell wa w was a Chelsea man, was he?

Countess Elizabeth Longford2:17

Yes, for a time, yes. But also I can remember one cry of London, and that was the muffin man. I can remember the little bell tinkling on a Sunday afternoon.

Presenter2:18

Yeah.

Speaker 22:27

Yeah.

Countess Elizabeth Longford2:28

and then parlour maids and housemaids popping up from the areas and buying muffins for the family for tea.

Presenter2:37

We haven't got an arrangement of the Cries of London by Purcell. We've got one by Orlando Gibbons, and I'm afraid he doesn't bring muffins in.

Countess Elizabeth Longford2:45

Ha ha ha.

Presenter2:45

But it's the best we can do.

Speaker 32:54

I'll give you good morning masters.

Speaker 32:59

Past three o'clock.

Speaker 33:03

And a fair morning.

Presenter3:07

Youth muscles, young white muscles What toddling thought You cockles, you great cockles, you great sprats hole What with the pies by a road

Speaker 23:33

I arose!

Countess Elizabeth Longford3:35

But

Speaker 23:36

Rise to Ferrend!

Speaker 33:36

Right.

Presenter3:39

Bright just not rhyme!

Presenter3:44

Some Cries of London by The Della Consort

Presenter3:48

Now, you're a Londoner.

Presenter3:49

Your father was a Harley street surgeon.

Countess Elizabeth Longford3:51

Yes.

Presenter3:52

We were brought up in London.

Countess Elizabeth Longford3:53

Yes, I was born in Harley Street and and lived there until I married.

Presenter3:58

As a schoolgirl, what did you want to be?

Countess Elizabeth Longford4:01

First of all, I wanted to be a painter.

Countess Elizabeth Longford4:05

And I was no good at all at draftsmanship, but had some sense of colour and imagination. Luckily that was knocked out of me quite early, but I had to choose whether to go to the slade, which was offered to me, or to Oxford, to the University. And thank goodness something guided me to choose Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford.

Presenter4:28

Did you read history?

Countess Elizabeth Longford4:29

I read ancient history and philosophy. I did classics in fact. Great.

Presenter4:35

Now in the university you met a fellow undergraduate, Frank Pakenham.

Presenter4:40

whom you married. Do you remember the very first time you saw him?

Countess Elizabeth Longford4:44

I certainly do remember, but he didn't see me, I saw him. I was walking back from the buffet in a Khmem ball.

Countess Elizabeth Longford4:52

And I saw a a figure fast asleep on a chair in a great empty corridor. And I remember thinking, What a handsome looking young man I wonder which party is foolish enough to leave him there, not dancing with him. And I naturally never thought I'd see him again. In fact, I did see him again, asleep again the very next night at the next morning.

Presenter5:15

Night.

Presenter5:16

Uh

Countess Elizabeth Longford5:17

Yeah.

Presenter5:17

He wasn't getting his money's worth at those commemorates, was he? No.

Presenter5:22

Now what's your second record?

Countess Elizabeth Longford5:23

My second record is Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody, which is connected with this period of my youth, the the only time when I could say I was really frightened and this music seemed to

Countess Elizabeth Longford5:37

experience everything I was experiencing.

Countess Elizabeth Longford5:40

It was an occasion when I wo was at Oxford. My mother got very serious blood poisoning through gardening.

Countess Elizabeth Longford5:48

And she got a rose thorn in her finger through not wearing gloves and she almost died, but

Countess Elizabeth Longford5:56

I can remember listening to this rhapsody.

Countess Elizabeth Longford6:00

And hearing the battle between the germs, the terrible

Countess Elizabeth Longford6:06

onslaught of the bacillus and then the culture which was made in the hospital. This was years ago, but we were told a little about how medicine was developing and praying that the culture would beat the germs. And at the end I felt

Countess Elizabeth Longford6:24

As it rises to its great triumph, the medicine had triumphed over disease.

Speaker 27:14

Uh

Presenter7:19

The closing passage of Liszt's second Hungarian Rhapsody

Presenter7:23

Villy Boskovsky conducting the London Philharmonic Orchestra.

Presenter7:27

What did you do when you came down from Oxford?

Countess Elizabeth Longford7:30

Well, I got married very soon, and then I took up lecturing for the Adult Education, Workers' Educational Association, and I went to live near Stoke on Trent in the Potteries. And got tremendously wrapped up with the labour movement.

Presenter7:47

converted you to socialism? Was was that at Oxford or before?

Countess Elizabeth Longford7:50

No, not at Oxford. I w I wasn't interested at all in politics. I was only interested in poetry, literature, history, and so on. But when I started lecturing, I was in an area that was suffering from the most appalling unemployment, both the miners and the potters. And I lived in one of their cottages and got to know them all very, very well personally, not just as pupils, but as people. It was at the time of the nineteen thirties, the Great Slum.

Countess Elizabeth Longford8:22

And really any one would have done the same as I did.

Countess Elizabeth Longford8:26

This date.

Countess Elizabeth Longford8:28

I would do it again.

Presenter8:29

You'll contest at a couple of elections, in fact.

Countess Elizabeth Longford8:32

Yes. The first one was in'thirty five, before the war, while this slump was still on, and the second I I stood for Oxford after the war.

Presenter8:41

without any success.

Countess Elizabeth Longford8:42

Yes, without any.

Presenter8:44

Now, in due course, your husband became the seventh Earl of Longford, and you raised what is, by modern standards, a large family.

Presenter8:53

And that must have taken up most of your time for a number of years.

Countess Elizabeth Longford8:57

Yes, all my ambitions were set aside except the political one, because I found it was possible until about the middle of the war when transport became too difficult. But up till then it was possible to make speeches, taking babies along with me in the carry cot and going home again.

Speaker 29:13

Yeah.

Countess Elizabeth Longford9:16

At dead of night. It was all I wouldn't dream of doing such a thing now, but one's full of adventure in youth.

Presenter9:23

In fact, your first book was about raising a family.

Countess Elizabeth Longford9:26

Well, if you can call it a book. It was called Points for Parents and it was really articles which I wrote for the Daily Express.

Countess Elizabeth Longford9:36

In collaboration, I always say, with the mothers who were also raising families, and they used to write to me, and I wrote these articles for them.

Presenter9:45

Now the family you raised is a very literary one. How many literary packenyms are there? Um your husband, who has been on this programme, uh a great campaigner of course, and also a biographer.

Countess Elizabeth Longford9:56

Yes, but he chooses rather different subjects from mine. He's written on Abraham Lincoln.

Countess Elizabeth Longford10:02

and Saint Francis of Assisi.

Presenter10:04

And your daughter Antonia Fraser, um, historical biographer and a novelist.

Countess Elizabeth Longford10:05

Antonio

Countess Elizabeth Longford10:09

Yes, she writes thrillers.

Presenter10:11

And your eldest son, Thomas Packenham?

Countess Elizabeth Longford10:14

He's also a historian and has just finished a most magnificent

Countess Elizabeth Longford10:19

I should say definitive history of the Boer War.

Presenter10:22

and Lady Rachel Billington.

Countess Elizabeth Longford10:25

Rachel's our novelist. She's written quite a number of novels and now she's got an immense one coming out this autumn.

Presenter10:33

And your daughter Judith?

Countess Elizabeth Longford10:34

Judith is our only poet. She writes poetry.

Presenter10:38

Let's have another record. We've got number three.

Countess Elizabeth Longford10:41

Well, it's really a Labour hymn called England Arise and it connects with my early

Countess Elizabeth Longford10:51

campaigning days. I've heard it sung in numerous Labour churches in the old days, especially in the Midlands and in the North. And though it isn't great music, when I hear it it brings back all that far away stress and strain and also the idealism and the belief in Utopia just round the corner.

Speaker 211:15

England arise, the long, long night is over.

Speaker 211:22

Pride in the world.

Speaker 211:26

Yeah.

Speaker 311:30

Out of your evil dream of toil and storm.

Speaker 311:37

Arise, O England, for the deed!

Speaker 211:41

It is here.

Speaker 211:44

You feel that his heart be unswerved.

Speaker 311:48

Happy answers

Speaker 211:52

Ah, I saw in country

Speaker 211:55

Uh

Speaker 311:55

Uh

Presenter12:00

England Arise, recorded in Glasgow and conducted by Alan Bush.

Presenter12:07

Your first historical book. What was that?

Countess Elizabeth Longford12:10

It was an analysis really or story of the Jameson raid which came just before the Boer War.

Presenter12:17

Well now

Presenter12:18

The Biography of Queen Victoria, Victoria R. I. A very long and excellent biography, the first dispassionate one really since Lytton Strait Hugh.

Countess Elizabeth Longford12:28

Well, thank you.

Countess Elizabeth Longford12:30

Very much. Lytton Strachey was a a brilliant artist, but he didn't have one advantage which I had, and that is he didn't read Queen Victoria's journals and letters.

Presenter12:42

You were given the privilege of using the Royal Archive.

Countess Elizabeth Longford12:43

Yes, this was the enormous step forward. And almost everything that I selected to put in was allowed to go through.

Presenter12:52

Do you think you would have discovered anything new about her?

Countess Elizabeth Longford12:54

Oh, a tremendous lot. I discovered the enormous number of occasions when she and Albert had real, almost blood rows, where they exchanged furious notes and shut themselves into their rooms, banged the door, burst into floods of tears, both of them.

Countess Elizabeth Longford13:13

But at the same time they were devoted to each other, and as we know, she was broken hearted when he died.

Presenter13:18

Yeah.

Presenter13:19

We're reading now about a new biography that's coming out which reveals that she did indeed have an affair with John Browner and and produced a child. We don't know what evidence will be produced, but does it seem to you likely?

Countess Elizabeth Longford13:30

Absolutely unlikely on every possible ground.

Countess Elizabeth Longford13:35

Queen Victoria would never have married a servant. She was devoted to him, she loved him, he was her good John Brown, but always a servant. Secondly, all that evidence is old, rehashed. It all came out in the eighteen sixties in various scurrilous papers which promptly folded. And as far as I know, there's no new evidence. It's just word of mouth handed down from these old tales.

Presenter14:03

Let's have your fourth record. What's that to be?

Countess Elizabeth Longford14:06

I'd like to have a very sad song that Prince Albert himself.

Countess Elizabeth Longford14:12

wrote called Derungelipte, the Unloved.

Countess Elizabeth Longford14:16

And it's sung by a beautiful young

Countess Elizabeth Longford14:20

Singer Susan Longfield, who, alas, died when she was very young. This reminds me of my own daughter I lost at about the same age. And the whole thing it's sad, and yet the beauty transcends it, so that I don't feel sad when I'm listening to it. I feel happy.

Countess Elizabeth Longford14:50

And this took a future flow.

Speaker 314:56

Destroyed heaven.

Speaker 315:07

Blessing C Des Terzi Hiru Christ live libers.

Presenter15:35

A song composed by the Prince Consort De Unkeliebte, sung by Susan Longfield.

Presenter15:41

Now, your biggest work so far, Wellington, in two very fat volumes. Was it planned to be as as long as that right from the start, or or were you carried away?

Countess Elizabeth Longford15:51

I think you could honestly say I was carried away, but I don't regret it now. I think it was hard on my publisher, because it's much more difficult to sell two volumes than one. But after I'd had all this new material and read so many secondary, very little known sources, soldiers who'd kept diaries and so on, I realised I could not do justice to the Battle of Waterloo, this tremendous world-shaking event, if I just squashed it in to a chapter in a single volume, in the middle of a single volume. And so I took the plunge and gave it a really good doing, as good as I was capable of.

Presenter16:34

Now, the new material, that was the family archive of of of Wellington family.

Countess Elizabeth Longford16:39

That's right, yes. I w I was very lucky indeed to be allowed to do this, especially as our families were related.

Countess Elizabeth Longford16:47

And the Duchess of Wellington, not a very successful Duchess. I think the Duke who gave me the papers was rather afraid I might um

Countess Elizabeth Longford16:56

not do the Duke justice championing the Duchess.

Presenter17:00

It

Countess Elizabeth Longford17:00

But I tried to be fair.

Presenter17:02

Now getting on for half a million words. How long did you, as it were, live with Wellington? I mean, with this absorbing this vast amount of material and and writing these two volumes?

Countess Elizabeth Longford17:13

Eight years.

Presenter17:14

It did.

Countess Elizabeth Longford17:14

But of course part of it was spent in travelling. I went to all Wellington's battle sites in the Peninsular War and of course Waterloo.

Countess Elizabeth Longford17:24

and then all the places that he lived in and visited.

Presenter17:29

A very rewarding character, splendid laconic turn of phrase.

Countess Elizabeth Longford17:32

A wonderful character. His despatches, it was such a pleasure to read them. There were sentences you could quote on every page.

Presenter17:42

Record number five, please.

Countess Elizabeth Longford17:43

Well, for record number five, I'd like to have the amazing Beethoven's Wellington's Victory.

Countess Elizabeth Longford17:51

which was the victory in the Peninsular War, Victoria.

Countess Elizabeth Longford17:57

With all the marvellous effects of gunfire trumpets.

Countess Elizabeth Longford18:02

Canon

Countess Elizabeth Longford18:03

And the songs sung by the soldiers, both British and French.

Presenter19:09

Beethoven's Wellington's Victory, the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Antal Dorati.

Presenter19:15

Cannon and Musket Firing under the Direction of Gerald C. STow, it says. Now after that great Wellington opus, you took a bit of a breather, two fairly short books.

Countess Elizabeth Longford19:26

I r wrote a life of Byron, yes, for a series. That's why it had to be short. One could go on writing a very long life of Baron, but it was written within limits. And I also did Byron's Greece, which was illustrated, a journey through Greece in Byron's footsteps.

Presenter19:46

A nice travelogue for you.

Countess Elizabeth Longford19:48

Oh, it was I've always written about people who went to marvellous places in the world. Very lucky.

Presenter19:54

Pers.

Presenter19:55

And uh a biography of Churchill.

Countess Elizabeth Longford19:58

Yes, that again was commissioned. It was written for a special purpose for the Churchill Centenary to raise money for the Churchill Institute, Churchill Foundation in America.

Presenter20:09

Okay.

Presenter20:11

and a book about the Royal House of Windsor.

Countess Elizabeth Longford20:14

Well, you're reminding me of some books that yes, that was my own idea, the Royal House of Windsor. This was to try and trace the characteristics and the story of the house from its beginning in nineteen seventeen up to the present day. The present day then being nineteen

Countess Elizabeth Longford20:31

seventy

Countess Elizabeth Longford20:33

2.

Presenter20:34

Yeah.

Presenter20:35

Record number six.

Countess Elizabeth Longford20:37

Well for number six I'd I'd like to have something very different, very beautiful, Handel's water music.

Presenter21:47

Part of the Handel Water Music Suite, the Hamilton Harty Arrangement, George Weldon conducting the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

Countess Elizabeth Longford21:54

And that's a very good example of what I call splendid background music to work to.

Presenter22:00

I'll try that one.

Presenter22:02

Though so far all your biographies have been about the great.

Presenter22:06

You have a new one just out another of your good, thick, rather vast terms, about a a rather obscure Victorian poet, Wilfrid Scorn Blunt. Why did you choose him?

Countess Elizabeth Longford22:17

Well, the main reason was I was asked to write his life because his papers had been put under a ban of fifty years in the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, and they included the most fascinating, but also in those days unpublishable, secret memoirs, as he called them. And these diaries produce an amazing picture, social picture, of England and also of India and Egypt and Ireland at the end of last century and in the Edwardian period. And to my mind, they tell us more about manners and moreies.

Countess Elizabeth Longford22:56

Then

Countess Elizabeth Longford22:57

Many other published and very well known work.

Presenter23:00

Yes. Yes, he's not very much in fashion as a poet, is he? He's not in the New Oxford Empire.

Countess Elizabeth Longford23:04

No, not as a poet. I love some of his poetry, some of it.

Countess Elizabeth Longford23:09

But really he should be in fashion as a man he's such an extraordinary character.

Presenter23:15

Do you never feel you want to break away from fact and and write fiction? Let your mind wander.

Countess Elizabeth Longford23:20

I often feel I just want to throw my research books, my second resources, on to the rubbish heap, and right out of my head. But I can't. There's nothing in it.

Presenter23:31

I'll have a try one day.

Presenter23:35

Your next record.

Countess Elizabeth Longford23:36

Well, my next record, I'd like to

Countess Elizabeth Longford23:39

Have a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins.

Countess Elizabeth Longford23:43

Read by a great friend of mine up at Oxford all those years ago, the actress Margaret Rawlings, who has the most wonderful reading voice. And she gave me this record when I was complaining that I didn't find Hopkins too easy. I wanted to understand him because he's a very great Catholic poet and mystic, and I'm a Catholic, and I wanted to.

Countess Elizabeth Longford24:09

get inside this poet and through her reading it many horizons

Countess Elizabeth Longford24:15

receded which had been barriers to me.

Countess Elizabeth Longford24:19

Yeah.

Speaker 224:19

Look at the stars look look up at the skies Oh, look at all the firefolk sitting in the air, The bright burrows, the circle citadels there

Speaker 224:28

Down in dim woods the diamond delves the elves' eyes The grey lawns cold where gold, where quick gold lies.

Speaker 224:37

wind beat white beam area beeles set on a flare flake doves sent floating forth at a farm yard scare

Presenter24:46

STARLIGHT NIGHT BY GEROD MANLY HOPKINS, READ BY MARGARET RAWLINGS.

Presenter24:51

Are you brought up

Presenter24:52

A large family. Very successfully. We know, then, that you can look after other people.

Presenter24:57

How well could you look after yourself?

Countess Elizabeth Longford25:00

I think quite well. I'm not very demanding. I shouldn't make uh impossible demands of myself, so I I think I'd get along all right.

Presenter25:08

And you'll like gardening, you can cultivate.

Countess Elizabeth Longford25:10

I'd love that, yes. I should turn every grass into a blade of corn.

Presenter25:16

And you could rig up some kind of shelter, do you think?

Countess Elizabeth Longford25:19

Certainly, yes.

Presenter25:21

Would you get a a kind of

Presenter25:23

Obsession to escape, or would you set it out?

Countess Elizabeth Longford25:26

No, I'd I'd sit it out. I'm very keen on islands. I like the whole sort of history of islands and thoughts of islands. And it happens that Baron, whose life I wrote, he wrote a poem on the island. And I think the idea of an island, perhaps it's people born in this country or in Ireland, have this feeling for islands.

Presenter25:47

Right.

Presenter25:48

Your last record, what's that to be?

Countess Elizabeth Longford25:50

Well, my my last record is going to be a very happy, jolly song out of the magic flute, Mozart's magic flute, Papagaino's song, which reminds me of Sussex, where I live now, and of marvellous evenings at Glinebourne.

Presenter26:44

Yeah.

Presenter26:45

Hold in me you see, a band, of mirth and minstrelsy. My name is ever in demand, With young and old throughout the land. I set my traps, a birds flock round, I whistle, and they know the song.

Presenter27:08

Dennis Noble singing Papageno's song from The Magic Flute. If you could take just one of the eight discs you played as, which would it be?

Countess Elizabeth Longford27:17

It would have to be handled, because I know it would never fail me.

Presenter27:21

Handles water music.

Presenter27:23

And one luxury to take to the island.

Countess Elizabeth Longford27:26

The luxury would be

Countess Elizabeth Longford27:28

Well, it'd be useful too, but it would be a luxury an enormous piece of tapestry.

Presenter27:33

Yes.

Countess Elizabeth Longford27:34

on which I should work out the island itself, but in relation to another island, which I'll mention in a moment.

Presenter27:41

Oh, what's that? Uh something to do with your your book?

Countess Elizabeth Longford27:42

Sounds good.

Countess Elizabeth Longford27:44

Yes.

Presenter27:45

What's that to be?

Countess Elizabeth Longford27:46

Well, the book is going to be Sir Thomas More's Utopia.

Presenter27:49

Ah, yes.

Countess Elizabeth Longford27:51

The island of Nowhere.

Countess Elizabeth Longford27:53

and I should work the two in together. And the fascination I never tired of reading this amazing masterpiece.

Countess Elizabeth Longford28:03

uh Henry VIII's reign and yet as relevant today as ever it was. And I'd never get tired of it because you never can be absolutely quite sure what it means or what he's saying, whether he's laughing or whether he's serious. So it would be great fun putting that onto tapestry.

Presenter28:21

Sir Thomas Moore's Utopia. And thank you, Elizabeth Longford, for letting us hear your Desert Island Discs.

Countess Elizabeth Longford28:28

Thank you very much.

Presenter28:29

Goodbye everyone.

Speaker 328:37

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