Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Desert Island Discs
Presented by Roy Plomley
Former Royal Navy commander, author, MP, and broadcaster; creator of a newsletter and founder of the Hansard Society.
Eight records
Western Civilization and the Far East
This disc is not explicitly named in the transcript; the castaway mentions his book but no music disc is introduced. Based on the transcript, no music discs are discussed. Returning empty.
The keepsakes
The luxury
Not recorded.
In conversation
Presenter asks
Did this start your ambition as a writer, or was it already there?
No, I've always been inclined to sort of pick up a pen and cover a piece of paper with writing. It's when one of my sort of habit, so to speak.
Presenter asks
What made you decide to resign your commission in the Royal Navy?
Well, I think there were two reasons. One is that for various reasons due to the congestion in the navy there wasn't very much prospect in front of me and secondly, I had always felt that much as I admired the navy, I'm sure it did me a tremendous amount of good… I had an urge all my life to go into what I suppose one would call public life, which in those days I thought meant being a member of parliament.
Presenter asks
How did you set about [educating yourself in civil life]?
Well, I said about that by I got a job with the Royal Institute of International Affairs and then, as a economist once sarcastically remarked, King Hall educates himself in public and gets 2,000 a year for doing it because I discovered that the things I wanted to know and was finding out all the time from the experts was exactly what the ordinary man in the street wanted to know and I knew what he wanted to know.
The recording
Timestamps play the recording from that turn
Presenter
This download is the only extract the BBC has of this edition of Desert Island Discs, the presenter was Roy Plumley.
Commander Sir Stephen King-Hall
So Stephen, I believe
Presenter
Yeah.
Commander Sir Stephen King-Hall
If you come from a naval family. That's correct.
Commander Sir Stephen King-Hall
You know, great-grandfather, grandfather, father, uncle, so on.
Commander Sir Stephen King-Hall
All admirals every well all admirals except the great-grandfather.
Presenter
So it was really a foregone conclusion that you'd carry on.
Commander Sir Stephen King-Hall
It looked that way, I must say.
Commander Sir Stephen King-Hall
You served with the Royal Navy during the First World War, didn't you? That's right, yes, I joined the Royal Navy in 1906 and until 1929 I was in the Navy.
Presenter
Yeah.
Commander Sir Stephen King-Hall
Yeah.
Commander Sir Stephen King-Hall
Oh you
Presenter
We will serve with the with the great
Commander Sir Stephen King-Hall
Grand Fleet? Uh yes, I was in light cruisers attached to the Battle Cruiser Squadron in the North Sea for most of the war and in submarines in the latter part of the war also in the North Sea. And when the war was over? When the war was over, I went to the Admiralty and uh wrote a book. Uh
Commander Sir Stephen King-Hall
The first book their lordships had ever decided to have on the tactics and strategy of naval warfare.
Presenter
Did this start your ambition as a writer, or was it already there?
Commander Sir Stephen King-Hall
No, I've always been inclined to sort of pick up a pen and cover a piece of paper with writing. It's when one of my sort of
Commander Sir Stephen King-Hall
habit, so to speak. Yes. Then I went to the Naval Staff College and from there I went out to the Far East and then I came back a very interesting job. I was sent as a naval officer to the military staff college. And then I went to sea again and then I went to the um Admiralty on a special job.
Commander Sir Stephen King-Hall
Well secret nature.
Commander Sir Stephen King-Hall
and then it was from there that I decided, after I had promoted to commander, to retire.
Presenter
Yes. During those years I do done any more writing.
Commander Sir Stephen King-Hall
Yes, um when I was out in the Far East I thought well I must waste my time out here just knocking around clubs and uh playing games. I decided to make a study which was published as a book uh called Western Civilization and the Far East. I was very careful not to let it be known I was a naval officer and I'm happy to say that the Times Literary Supplement hailed me as a new and hitherto unknown expert on the Far Eastern situation.
Presenter
Yeah.
Presenter
What made you decide to resign your commission in the Royal Navy?
Commander Sir Stephen King-Hall
Well, I think there were two reasons. One is that uh for various reasons due to the congestion in the navy there wasn't very much prospect in front of me and uh and secondly, I had always felt that much as I admired the navy, I'm sure it did me a tremendous amount of good
Commander Sir Stephen King-Hall
I had an urge all my life to go into what I suppose one would call public life, which in those days I thought meant being a member of parliament. And I felt, well, if I must get out of the navy now and establish a home ashore with my family and all the rest of it, and educate myself in the facts of civil life.
Presenter
How did you set about that?
Commander Sir Stephen King-Hall
Well, I said about that by I got a job with the Royal Institute of International Affairs and then, as a economist once sarcastically remarked, King Hall educates himself in public and gets 2,000 a year for doing it because I discovered that the things I wanted to know and was finding out all the time from the experts was exactly what the ordinary man in the street wanted to know and I knew what he wanted to know.
Presenter
When did you make your first broadcast on international?
Commander Sir Stephen King-Hall
About 1929, just just before I left the Navy, as a matter of fact.
Presenter
And with the apps you've been at it ever since, trying to make adults and children understand what's going on in the world. That is a sort of educationalist, I suppose you'd call me, or an attempt at one.
Presenter
Well, picking up on your career, says Stephen, a few years after you left the Royal Navy you did achieve your original intention of going into Parliament.
Commander Sir Stephen King-Hall
Yes, I was a Member of Parliament for virtually just after the beginning of World War Two until the end of the war when I lost my seat.
Presenter
An independent man. An independent. You've always held independent views, I believe. Was that the reason for starting your famous newsletter?
Commander Sir Stephen King-Hall
Uh yes, it was really. I mean after all if you've got views and you want to promulgate them, you've got to use any means you can of getting them across, and one of the ways is a paper of some kind. I found you needed a capital of four million to start a daily newspaper, and I looked up all the facts and found that newspapers started with newsletters in the sixteenth century. So I said, Well, let's have a go and see if we can start a modern newsletter. It started with six hundred subscribers and built up very rapidly a large circulation.
Presenter
Yes, and you've been publishing cont continuously now for a while.
Commander Sir Stephen King-Hall
Twenty-five years ago.
Presenter
Notify the
Presenter
Yeah.
Presenter
Another personal enterprise was the founding of the Hansart Society, who were the instigator of that, I believe.
Commander Sir Stephen King-Hall
Uh that's right. It's of course we haven't got time to describe it in any detail, but it is an unofficial and uh strictly private and
Commander Sir Stephen King-Hall
international society which simply exists to promote, in any proper manner, interest in and knowledge about all forms of parliamentary democracy. I've been the chairman now for seventeen years, about time somebody took my place.
Presenter
Well apart from publishing your own one-man newsletter, you've recently set something of a precedent by publishing one of your own novels, uh Men of Destiny. That's right. That's rather an unusual step, wasn't it?
Commander Sir Stephen King-Hall
Well, it is unusual and was forced upon me by the fact that to my shocked surprise three publishers turned down this uh book which I I don't know whether you read it or not, but it's a cautionary tale written as long ago as 1958 about the fact that the Berlin crisis might uh cause us to drift into World War when no one on either side of the Iron Curtain had the slightest desire to do so.
Presenter
Yeah.
Commander Sir Stephen King-Hall
Uh
Presenter
I have read it. It's a very funny
Commander Sir Stephen King-Hall
But
Presenter
Very good.
Commander Sir Stephen King-Hall
Disturbing book. It's a sort of funny, peculiar rather than funny ah. But you've successfully cut out the middleman. Well, that's the general idea, and it's been published in America and Germany. I'm real pleased the way it's gone.
Presenter
Well now, sir, Stephen, let's talk about your career and a very successful career as a playwright. Was the theatre a very early interest of yours?
Commander Sir Stephen King-Hall
Not really. No, the playwright, you mustn't call it uh well it may be successful financially, but uh I'm not really a man of the theatre. I wrote these plays as a joke.
Presenter
And it How do you start?
Commander Sir Stephen King-Hall
How do we
Commander Sir Stephen King-Hall
Well, um as a matter of fact my wife kept on saying to me, Why don't you write a play? I said, I can't write plays. She does go to the theatre and knows a lot about it. So I said, Well, to please you, I'll have a shot and I wrote a play called The Middle Watch in about a week and put it on in the fleet and it was rather successful and then Ian Hay came along and collaborated and uh well there you are, that's how it started.
Presenter
It ran about two years, I think,
Commander Sir Stephen King-Hall
Oh yes, you know, filmed five times and all that sort of business.
Presenter
Yeah.
Commander Sir Stephen King-Hall
Yes, and then I wrote another one more a few years ago called Off the Record.
Commander Sir Stephen King-Hall
Rather comedy notes, I tried to write some serious plays, but uh not been very successful.
Presenter
What have you on the stocks at the moment? What are you working on?
Commander Sir Stephen King-Hall
Um well, I'm not working anything in the theatre line. I'm really trying to make a study of a very dull sort of subject it may sound, and that is what is the nature of power in power politics in the nuclear age. That ought to put the listeners off, but still it's very relevant, I assure you, to your present day lives.
Presenter
Now you've you've achieved much in in a number of different fields. Have you still one outstanding uh ambition unfulfilled?
Commander Sir Stephen King-Hall
Uh no, I've not in a general way. I've had my ambitions. Sometimes they've been fulfilled, sometimes not. But I think at my time of life what I should like to feel is that in the course of one's life one has put more into society than one has taken out of it, and that, of course, only posterity will be able to judge whether one's done it or not.
Presenter asks
Was the theatre a very early interest of yours?
Not really. No, the playwright, you mustn't call it well it may be successful financially, but I'm not really a man of the theatre. I wrote these plays as a joke.
Presenter asks
What have you on the stocks at the moment? What are you working on?
Um well, I'm not working anything in the theatre line. I'm really trying to make a study of a very dull sort of subject it may sound, and that is what is the nature of power in power politics in the nuclear age. That ought to put the listeners off, but still it's very relevant, I assure you, to your present day lives.
Presenter asks
Have you still one outstanding ambition unfulfilled?
Uh no, I've not in a general way. I've had my ambitions. Sometimes they've been fulfilled, sometimes not. But I think at my time of life what I should like to feel is that in the course of one's life one has put more into society than one has taken out of it, and that, of course, only posterity will be able to judge whether one's done it or not.
“I was very careful not to let it be known I was a naval officer and I'm happy to say that the Times Literary Supplement hailed me as a new and hitherto unknown expert on the Far Eastern situation.”
“I had an urge all my life to go into what I suppose one would call public life, which in those days I thought meant being a member of parliament.”
“It started with six hundred subscribers and built up very rapidly a large circulation.”
“It's an unofficial and strictly private and international society which simply exists to promote, in any proper manner, interest in and knowledge about all forms of parliamentary democracy.”
“What I should like to feel is that in the course of one's life one has put more into society than one has taken out of it, and that, of course, only posterity will be able to judge whether one's done it or not.”