Professor Glyn Daniel

Professor Glyn Daniel0:00

Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen eighty one, and the presenter was Roy Plumley.

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This week, our castaway is the archaeologist and author, Professor Glynn Daniel.

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Now you have eight discs with you. You are a Welshman, of course, so I presume we can take it for granted that you're interested in music. That's true.

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Whereabouts in Wales do you come from? Well, I was brought up in the Vale of Dlamorgan in Lantwood, Major, where my father was schoolmaster.

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and he was also a deacon and choir master in the local chapel, and he was also very fascinated by

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Welsh hymns. Indeed, one of the great Welsh hymn writers was a distant relative of ours. So I was brought up in an atmosphere of chapel music, not church music, chapel music. Indeed, I played the harmonium in several chapels, very badly, I may say.

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Got to love Welsh hymns. Were you one of a big family? No, an only child. You were at your father's school, of course. I was at my father's school. That was a primary school in this little village. And then I moved at eleven to the county school, as they were then called, in Barry, which was just ten, twelve miles away. I believe you were already interested in some hill forts in the surrounding country. Yes, yes. The whole area was a great archaeological area.

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And uh from

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The beginning

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Right through there were megalithic monuments, there were hill forts, there were round barrows, and indeed I was encouraged by my school to take an interest in archaeology. What was your ambition as a schoolboy?

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Well, I don't think I had one and uh I suppose that by the time I left school and went as an undergraduate first to the University of Wales,

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And then later to Cambridge, I suppose if I had asked myself what I thought I was going to do, I would say, Oh, well, you will end up as a schoolmaster teaching geography.

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You were taking organ lessons when you were Yes, I was. I had been fascinated by the organ.

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I graduated from the harmonium in our local chapel to the organ in our parish church, and I used to spend every Saturday morning playing away there and had to give a shilling out of my pocket money in nineteen twenty nine, thirty, thirty one for a little boy who blew this organ. And then when I was at University College College I was asked what subjects do you want to study? So I went through the list of subjects and what I did do was enroll as a student for a year in geology.

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And then they said, but you must have a second subject. So I looked through the list, and to the astonishment of the people in the registrar's office, I said, I want to learn to play the organ. And they said, well, this is a very curious combination, geology and the organ. But I said, no, this is what I want to do. And so one day a week I went out to Landorf Cathedral, which is five to eight miles outside Cardiff, and was taught by Doctor George Beals, the organist there. Very entertaining time I had too.

Professor Glyn Daniel3:37

Uh

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Yeah.

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Well, let's break off at this time for your first record. Well, my first record that I've chosen is a Welsh hymn tune.

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But it's not a a choir singing a hymn.

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It is in fact the most beautiful tune Rosamedre.

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The place is in Anglesey, and it's in the form of an organ prelude.

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Written by Vaughan Williams, he wrote very few organ works, but he did do these three hymn tunes, and they're very beautiful, and this, I think, is the most beautiful one.

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And it's played by Philip Ledger on the organ of King's College in Cambridge.

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The Vaughan Williams setting of the Welsh hymn tune Ros Medre played by Philip Ledger at the organ of King's College, Cambridge.

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What sort of man was Dr. Beals? Well, he was a very entertaining and very kind man, and he very rapidly realized that I was never going to be a successful organist. So what he did was show me how these tremendous instruments worked, and this I loved and have always loved, and introduced me to all the various stops, and then began to teach me all the whole repertoire of organ music from beginning to end.

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And one day I said to him, Well, now do tell me, I am fascinated by cinema organs, and this of course was the great moment in the twenties and the thirties where all these Wurlitzers were rising up out of the ground in all the cinemas of Cardiff. And I said, Do tell me what is the essential difference between a cathedral organ, such as we are seated at at the moment, and a cinema organ. He said, No difference at all. I can make this work like a cinema organ if you like. And in no time, the whole of Land of Cathedral was electrified by the most fantastic jazz and jumpy and jolly music that he was doing. And as he was playing this and I was laughing, I heard some steps coming up into the organ loft.

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And suddenly there appeared a Verger, and he said, Doctor Beals, Doctor Beals, have you forgotten the funeral? And at that moment the door of the west end of the cathedral opened, and the funeral came in.

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End of

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And doctor Beals rapidly changed his tune. I should think so.

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Now, from Cardiff you went on to Cambridge, to St John's College, to read what? Geology again? No, I went up to read geography and then after a year reading geography I moved into the archaeology and anthropological tripos and there I found really what I wanted to do. In those days of course archaeology was a minority interest. Very much so. Well you stayed on at St John's for your doctorate. What was the subject of your thesis? Well the subject of my thesis was in fact megalithic monuments in England and Wales and to do that I had to travel the whole country. My parents were

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Very kind and

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lent me their car and so during the period nineteen thirty five to thirty eight I visited every single megalithic monument in southern Britain. What were your extracurricular interests in Cambridge? Well, I played chess and I played squash and

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did them both, looking back on it, remarkably well, but like so many things, my life never top class. But my great interest was, again, music and of course one of the great things in my life then, and from now until the present day, is living in the presence of those two great choirs

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That's King's and St. John's. Well, this takes us into your next record, doesn't it? Yes, it does.

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And my next record is of the Sanctus and the beginning of the Benedictus.

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in Benjamin Britton's Missa Brevis.

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And it's played

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and sung by the choir of my own college, Saint John's College, directed by George Guest.

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Holds on the inland stresses, oh sorry, inland stresses, oh sorry, inland stress

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the Sanctus and the beginning of the Benedictus of

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The Missa Brevis by Benjamin Britton, recorded in Saint John's College Chapel, Cambridge.

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Now after your doctorate you got a research fellowship, but the war put an end to your Cambridge activities. You went off into the RAF. You were an intelligence officer. Yes I was. I went into photographic intelligence. That's to say not actually taking photographs, but interpreting the photographs that were taken. And I was first in Wembley and then we moved to Medenham where the great Central Photographic Interpretation Unit was set up. It was very exciting and one felt one was really doing something even one was only counting the barges that were accumulating in Dunkirk and Calais and elsewhere for the invasion of Britain that fortunately never happened. Then after about eighteen months I was asked whether I would like to go out

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and start photographic intelligence in India with a view to building up a unit which eventually would move to Singapore or to Ceylon and be responsible for what was then thought to be the last phase of the war, which was the war against the Japanese.

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So out I went to India,

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and I enjoyed it enormously.

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It was in a kind of way an escape from the war. Nothing of a dangerous kind happened to me, except that I once went down to Calcutta.

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and uh went into the great Eastern Hotel, and the proprietor said, Oh, dear, oh dear

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This is no time to come here. The Japanese raided Calcutta yesterday.

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But I said there were only eight Japanese aircraft and nothing happened. Oh, he said, you may think nothing has happened, but all I can tell you is that all my staff have left and they've taken with them everything possible. I haven't got a knife or a fork or a spoon. Oh dear. But um that was the only dangerous thing that ever happened to me in India. I enjoyed it enormously and I enjoyed very much uh being in Delhi.

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The Imperial Delhi Gymkhana Club was a haven of peace and quiet on my day off, and I used to play the piano in the afternoon when there was nobody in the club.

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And then later on in the afternoon I discovered an officer who was on my staff who came in and played jazz.

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and eventually he ran a band which was very successful in Delhi.

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And it was then that I realized that there was a kinship between the classical simplicity and severity of Bach

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And modern jazz music.

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And

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There are several people who have managed to combine these and I've loved this. And once again, we come to your next record. Well, my next record is uh the Frenchman Jacques Lussier with his two colleagues, Caros and Michelau. And what I have selected is the Gigu from the Partita number one in B-flat major.

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Jacques Lussier playing the Gig from Bach's Partita No. One in B-flat major. So the war was over. You were a wing commander.

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and you returned to Saint John's. You married a lady who has been by your side in many archaeological enterprises.

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And uh you've edited a magazine together for a long time. That's true. She was on my staff in India. She uh had read geography herself in Oxford.

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And since I took over the editorship of the magazine Antiquity, she's been the production editor, and indeed really been far more than production editor. She's really controlled the whole bag of tricks and controlled it brilliantly for

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A quarter of a century. In addition to your work in Cambridge, you've been visiting Professor and

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Other universities? Yes, in Aarhus in Denmark.

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and then I spent a very, very pleasant semester as professor in in Harvard.

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During your years uh as a practical archaeologist, which have been the most useful technical advances which you've seen?

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Oh, well, without any question, there is one that has completely revolutionized archaeology, and that is the discovery of radiocarbon dating. I mean, before the 39-45 war, we all said to each other, is there no way of having absolute dating for the past? Here we try and tie things up with Egypt and and with Greece, but if only there was a technique which was outside archaeology. And to our astonishment this happened. And the technique of radiocarbon dating was developed by Libby in Chicago and enabled us to have absolute dates that are unquestioned dates.

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And so for the first time

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And really archaeology started all over again in the fifties when carbon fourteen dating started. It started again because it had an absolute framework.

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And we could no longer say, Well, I wonder how old Stonehenge is, or I wonder how old this tomb is in France. The dates were provided by scientific laboratories. And you're getting further and further back. That's right. Mm-hmm.

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Let's have some more music. What's your fourth record?

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Well, my fourth record is based on the fact that I have been very friendly with all the musicians in Cambridge in my time. And what I have selected is one piece that was written by my very close friend, Robin Orr, who went away to be a professor in Glasgow and then came back to be professor in Cambridge.

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And it's the beginning of his symphony in one movement.

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The opening of Robin Orr's Symphony in One Movement, the Scottish National Orchestra conducted by Alexander Gibson.

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Your personal archaeological interest has remained the megalithic tombs in Western Europe? No, it's uh been twofold. It's that, but it's also been the history of archaeology. Yes. When I was in India in the war,

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Mervyn Horder, Lord Horder as he now is, asked me if I would write a volume in his series, A Hundred Years of This and That, and so I wrote The Hundred Years of Archaeology.

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And it was a great education to do it.

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And from then on I've been very keenly interested in the whole problem of the development of archaeological ideas from the beginning to the present day.

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Now interest in archaeology has spread enormously recently in in in a few decades, and you had a lot to do with that through the popularization which you achieved by a television program, Animal Vegetable Mineral.

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Yes, that's true. It uh started the programme in uh nineteen fifty two and went on for seven years.

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I must say that at first I thought that it wasn't going to be a success at all, because the formula seemed a difficult one. It consisted of three people, three experts, sitting around a table and being shown things from a particular museum.

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and asked to identify them.

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The public was shown what the answer was, and then we had this general discussion.

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When I went to the first rehearsal with Sir Mortimer Wheeler, we came away absolutely in despair, and we said, Well, that's never going to get anywhere and yet three weeks later it had started, and it went on, as I say, for the greater part of the fifties.

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Of course I was only an archaeologist, but sometimes the programmes spilled out on to natural history, and here I was very, very alarmed indeed.

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And I of course had the answers before the programme began, and I swatted up all these things, and there was one occasion in which Julian Huxley was there, and he could be a very, very sharp and critical person indeed.

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and one of the objects was a most repulsive thing about three inches in length.

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which was an egg.

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And it was a soft egg, and it had come from a museum in the Midlands. And I'd

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checked everything about it that I was told, and when it was brought forward for Julian, who after all was a natural historian of great distinction, when it was brought through to him, he said, It's so and so. No, it's so and so. No, it's so and so. And then he suddenly said, Now, my dear boy, you know nothing about natural history. You're an archaeologist. I do.

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There is no other animal in the world which could have produced an egg like this or if there was, I would have known about it.

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So I said now, trembling, looking at my cards and wondering what on earth had happened, I said, Well, you're wrong. There is one animal, and you've missed it. And he produced a pound note out of his pocket, and waved it at me, and said, This is yours, if I am proved wrong.

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So I said, trembling, I said, This is the egg of the giant land snail of Brazil.

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And he clutched his head and said, Oh, my God, my God Fancy me forgetting that

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And of course, in those days, television was live, wasn't it recorded? Absolutely, all the time, yes. Possibly, to your surprise, you were voted Television Personality of the Year 1955. Yes, to my great surprise. And since then, of course, you've done other series, Buried Treasure and Chronicle. And you are, in fact, a director of Anglia Television. That's right. Mm-hmm.

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Another record.

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Well

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Because we've been talking about broadcasting, I must have this record that brings back all the fifties to me.

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It said that was it somebody had Calais engraved on her heart. Well, I have this tune certainly engraved for ever on my mind, because it was the signature tune of Animal, Vegetable, Mineral.

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The theme music to Animal, Vegetable, Mineral.

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The original disc that was used, the prelude in E major from Bach's Violin Sonata No. six played by the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Kusevitsky.

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Through the years, Professor Daniel, you you've produced a a long list of books, as well as countless contributions to learned journals. All your work is scholarly, but not all of it is serious. There have been some detective stories, for instance. Yes, there have been two.

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I wrote the first one when I was in India, being

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bored by long evenings, and so I I wrote uh one about Cambridge called The Cambridge Murders. And then at the end of the war I wrote another which was about my native village in South Wales, which was called

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Welcome Death, and then the other day, going through my files, clearing up my rooms at my retirement, I discovered that I had written another one, and I read it, and um I'm going to send it off to a publisher.

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It's called The Mysterious Barricades and it's based on a tune.

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It's called a mm.

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An original tune of the 17th century. Of course, some of your archaeological books have a frivolous side. The Hungry Archaeologist in France, for instance, deals with prehistory, but also with good restaurants. Yes, but I don't think it's frivolous. It's very sensible to know where in France not only to see archaeological remains, but restaurants and bars. You also edited, as you began to mention, a long series of books, Ancient Peoples and Places. Yes, that's perfectly true. That started over a quarter of a century ago and has now got to its hundredth volume.

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Its intention was to bring some aspects of prehistoric archaeology

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into comprehensible, understandable form in long essays of forty to fifty thousand words. And I think it's succeeded to a certain extent. You used just now the the word retirement. This is not quite true. You have in fact relinquished your chair of archaeology, but you haven't retired from your college.

Professor Glyn Daniel25:04

Yeah.

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No, no, no, no. I belong to a college which fortunately

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keeps you on as a fellow and until death. As a tribute to your well your relinquishment of the chair, a lot of your ex-pupils and your colleagues have produced a volume of essays, Antiquity and Man. And this volume is in your honor and there are some very distinguished contributors. Yes, and it was presented to me.

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Earlier this summer, at a special occasion in Stationers' Hall, at which the Prince of Wales, who'd actually written a preface to the book,

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very kindly came and

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gave it to me.

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That must have been a great occasion. Yes, it was.

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Another record, we've got to number six.

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We've got a number six, and the one I've chosen is my association again with organ music and with France. I'm tremendously interested and excited by the great French organists and composers like Vienne and Vidor and Boyleman and the rest of them. But the one I've chosen is by Poulanc, and it's from his organ concerto or his concerto for organ strings and timpani and I think is one of the most remarkable works of modern French music.

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An excerpt from the Poulanc concerto in G minor for organ, strings and timpani.

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Maurice de Roufflet with the French National Radio Orchestra conducted by Georges Pretre.

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Now you're not teaching any more. I suppose you're going to be busier than ever.

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Uh well, I don't think uh busier than ever, but I shall certainly have more time to do.

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all the side interests that I have, which will of course include music.

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I've always had the great pleasure of going to festivals in various parts.

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particularly those in East Anglia, the

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Festivals at Aldborough, and particularly the festival in King's Lynn,

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and it was there I met and heard for the first time

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Catherine Seria.

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whose voice is surely one of the great voices of this or any other century.

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And I would like to hear her voice.

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As my seventh record.

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She's singing the folk song Blow the Wind Southerly.

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O the wind southerly, southerly, southerly Lo bony breeze my love heart to me.

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They told me last night there were sheeps in the offing, And I hurried down to the deep rolling sea.

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But my eye could not see it Wherever might be The bark that is bare.

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I know.

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The Voice of Kathleen Ferrier.

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Professor Daniel, your service in India accustomed you to tropical climes, and I expect you've had to live fairly rough on on some of your digs, so we haven't so much compunction as usual in dispatching you to a desert island. Do you think you could look after yourself?

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Ooh, I I expect so, yes. You could build a shelter? I could build a shelter, yes.

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The food will be ordinary. There's nothing special about it, I'm afraid. Mm-hmm. Have you done any fishing? No, I'm not a fisherman.

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Well, as a boy I used to catch trout in the stream that ran through my grandfather's fields, but uh nothing no, no, no, not deep sea fishing, no.

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Would you try to escape?

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Rather depends on the climate.

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The climate's very good. Oh, good. Well, then I'd stay there. Right.

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What's your last record?

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Well, my last record is what I regard as one of the most beautiful pieces of music.

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It's the Allegri miserare, and I think it's one of really the most uh

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moving things i i in all church music.

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Allegri's Miserari, the choir of King's College, Cambridge, conducted by David Wilcox. If you could take only one disc of the eight you've chosen, which would it be?

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I would take the Jacques Lussier, because it would give me pleasure at all times. And you're allowed to take one luxury with you, any one object that's no practical use?

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I would like a case of very good Beaujolais or very good clarity. Yes, we won't confine you to just one case, just in case you are there for a long time. You'd better have an ample supply. Good. And one book. You have the Bible and Shakespeare.

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Well, I think that what one needs is a compressed anthology book, not so much a dictionary of quotations, but something like Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. And that would make endlessly fascinating reading.

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And if I ever came back from this island I should be better informed than I am now. Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. And thank you, Professor Glynn Daniel, for letting us hear your Desert Island Discs. Thank you very much. Goodbye, everyone.

Professor Glyn Daniel32:44

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