Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Desert Island Discs
Presented by Roy Plomley
Natural history photographer and pioneer of flash and high-speed flash bird photography, who lost an eye to a tawny owl.
Eight records
Track 1
The keepsakes
No book or luxury recorded for this episode.
In conversation
Presenter asks
Eric, what part of the country do you come from?
Oh, I'm a thoroughbred cockney. I was born within the sound of Bo Bells and very proud of it.
Presenter asks
Which came first, photography or natural history?
Well, I suppose natural history came first, because my mother says that when I was only … two years of age I used to escape out in the garden and … spend all my time collecting beetles and snails. And then, when I was only six, I took my first bird photograph. I bought the camera. I paid 35 Bob for it, all saved out of halfpence and pennies and farthings. I took it straight up to our local playing fields, found the songwriter's nest, rested the lens on the front of the nest, and just took the photograph. I didn't realise there was anything so complicated as focusing or anything like that. I took it back home and got my oldest brother to develop it. Well, you can imagine what it was like. It was just a horrible blur, but it did make me realise there was much more in photography than I'd first thought.
Presenter asks
Was it your first ambition to be a natural history photographer?
It it always has been, yes.
The recording
Timestamps play the recording from that turn
Speaker 2
This download
Eric Hosking
is the only extract the BBC has of this edition of Desert Island Discs. The presenter was Roy Plumley.
Eric Hosking
Eric, what part of the country do you come from? Oh, I'm a thoroughbred cockney. I was born within the sound of Bo Bells and very proud of it. Good.
Presenter
Uh
Eric Hosking
Which
Presenter
Came first, photography or natural history?
Eric Hosking
Well, I suppose natural history came first, because my mother says that when I was only uh two years of age I used to escape out in the garden and uh spend all my time collecting beetles and snails.
Eric Hosking
And then, when I was only six, I took my first bird photograph. I bought the camera. I paid 35 Bob for it, all saved out of halfpence and pennies and farthings. I took it straight up to our local playing fields, found the songwriter's nest, rested the lens on the front of the nest, and just took the photograph. I didn't realise there was anything so complicated as focusing or anything like that. I took it back home and got my oldest brother to develop it. Well, you can imagine what it was like. It was just a horrible blur, but it did make me realise there was much more in photography than I'd first thought.
Presenter
Yes. Was it your your first ambition to be a natural history photographer?
Eric Hosking
It it always has been, yes. Was it your first job when you left school? No. Uh when I left uh school in in nineteen twenty six I drifted into the motor car industry and stayed there until the firm that I was working for went broke in nineteen twenty nine. I was on the unemployment market.
Eric Hosking
And I just tried to find a job, but there were just none available in those days. And so I spent the time going up to the zoo taking photographs of the various different new arrivals, as well as babies that were born. I used to rush the negatives back home, develop them, and print from the wet negative, and rush them around Fleet Street, and more often than not, just didn't sell anything at all. It was very tough.
Presenter
Also uh did a lot of children's photography.
Eric Hosking
Yes, and I would say that any aspiring bird photographer should start off by uh taking children the most difficult thing in the world to photograph to get that child just at the right moment. I suppose I was lucky too. I I got some quite nice ones and in nineteen thirty five had the honour of photographing the princesses.
Presenter
Mhm. And I believe you you were one of the youngest ever to become a fellow of the Royal Photographic Society.
Eric Hosking
Yes, I I got my fellowship when I was twenty one years of age and got the medal for natural photography two years later.
Presenter
Now when did it become possible for you to to get out of the studio uh and spend all your time in the open air photographing birds?
Eric Hosking
Well that came in 1936 after I'd collected together quite a library of photographs and was able to have a pretty steady sale on them. But it was in 1937 that I got the best publicity stunt I suppose imaginable because I was trying to photograph a tawny owl one night. The a bird came down and attacked me in the pitch darkness. Her claw penetrated my eye and I had to be rushed back to Morfield's Eye Hospital in London. They operated within ten minutes of my getting there hoping to save the eye but failed to do so. A fortnight later I had to have it removed completely. Two days later I went back to Wales and I photographed that tawny owl.
Presenter
Eric, how many countries have you visited to photograph bird life?
Eric Hosking
Oh, you ought to give me a warning of that question, Roy. Let me see. I've been up to Lapland, to Sweden, to Holland, to Spain, Bulgaria, and Hungary.
Presenter
And you're off to the United States quite soon.
Eric Hosking
Yes, hoping to go to the United States this year.
Eric Hosking
And how many different species of birds?
Presenter
Do you need notice that too?
Eric Hosking
Yeah, so
Eric Hosking
Uh yes, I do really, because uh, you know, I don't keep a record of the number of different birds that I've seen uh or or photographed. It must be about two hundred and fifty, which is not much more than half, you know, of all the birds on the British list, so I've still got a long way to go.
Presenter
I've still got a long way to go. You were talked just now of the value of having a big library. You must have enormous files of the thousands of photographs.
Eric Hosking
Uh well, I've got actually filed uh thirty two thousand quarter plate negatives, uh plus goodness knows how many the uh thirty five millimetre uh ones. I'm very proud of the fact I haven't found any negative within thirty seconds.
Presenter
So and how many books have you illustrated or contributed to?
Eric Hosking
Well, last October we had a checkover and I found that I had illustrated seven hundred different books. But let me say that that's not entirely my illustrations, but I have had illustrations in seven hundred different books. Almost all over the world. In fact, I think almost every country but China. I don't think I've had any photographs reproduced in China.
Presenter
Out of all these photographs, which is the one that's pleased you most?
Eric Hosking
Well, may I say there are two, and they're both incidentally of barn owls. Uh one I took way back in nineteen thirty five by using Flash Bulb. I was the first one, I think, to use Flash Bulb for bird photography, and it was a a barn owl, and it wasn't until after I developed the negative I found the barn owl had got a young rat in its bill. Then the second one
Speaker 2
Uh
Eric Hosking
was taken in nineteen forty seven of a barn owl flying into a barn. I used a um a photoelectric shutter release so that the bird actually photographed herself and she's got her wings spread out and looks in the most lovely angelic pose.
Presenter
You have developed a number of systems whereby birds photograph themselves.
Eric Hosking
Oh yes, I developed the high speed flash and was the first person to use it in this country. And and what's the greatest rarity you photographed? Oh, they're undoubtedly the Spanish Imperial Eagle, which we did in the south of Spain in nineteen fifty seven. Uh probably no more than about fifty pairs left in the world today.
Presenter
And which would you say is the most difficult job you have undertaken?
Eric Hosking
Uh most difficult, most dangerous, I think, was photographing the Lamagaya, or the bearded vulture, again in Spain. It was in a most precarious situation, so much so that I had to be roped in the hide. My colleagues were rather afraid I might fall or doze off in the heat of the Spanish sun, and that if I did, I should have fallen off a sheer precipice three hundred feet.
Eric Hosking
But uh I didn't, so uh that was that.
Presenter
And uh
Presenter
And of course you you not only take still photographs, but motion pictures too as we know from television.
Eric Hosking
Yes, I I've done a a lot of cinematographic work, but you know, I don't get the kick out of doing cinematography as I do in the still photography. There's something fun out of you know, taking your own photograph, developing and printing the negative and then being able to hold it out and really look at it, which you can't do without
Presenter
That's really a one-man job. It is. There are many other uses for bird photography apart from making attractive pictures for people to look at.
Eric Hosking
Oh yes, uh there's certainly the uh the scientific uh side uh of this uh uh photography, getting uh records of bird flight, for instance. I remember one photograph I took of a of a red start. I took it by high-speed flash, it got one wing held right out and the other one right bound by its uh side. When I showed this to the Air Ministry, they just couldn't believe it and thought that I'd faked it in some way, because they said a bird in that attitude would immediately stall and fall to the ground.
Speaker 2
Uh
Eric Hosking
However, I was able to show them that it wasn't, and they then developed a department of their own to study bird flight and its aerodynamics.
Speaker 2
You've done some fascinating experiments with with with the use of a stuffed cuckoo.
Eric Hosking
Yes, we did because we wanted to find out why a cuckoo lays eggs in certain nests of certain species of of birds and not in others. So what we did was to use a stuffed cuckoo, put it by the side of a nest and watch the reactions. We shoved it by the side of a willow warbler's nest and the willow warbler attacked it viciously. Well a willow warbler is very rarely victimized by the cuckoo. We shoved it by the hedge sparrow's nest, the hedge sparrow wouldn't come anywhere near it. The hedge sparrow is quite frequently victimized. We thought we'd got the answer. Then we shoved it by the
Speaker 2
Hmm.
Eric Hosking
side of um uh of a meadow pipet's nest, and the meadow pipet is a very frequent foster for the uh cuckoo, and um uh it just attacked it viciously, so we just still haven't got the answer.
Presenter
There's been a tremendous upsurge of interest in ornithology lately. I mean everyone's off at weekends with a with a notebook and binoculars.
Eric Hosking
I think it's a very good thing, too. You see, it's a wonderful form of relaxation. After you spend a week in the office, there's nothing better than getting right out into the country and and just uh watching birds.
Presenter
Yes. And you now have a distinguished rival, Prince Philip, I believe, has just published a a book of bird photographs.
Eric Hosking
He has indeed, and I think it's a very remarkable thing that uh a man who is so busy as he is can find his relaxation in taking these photographs of uh of wild birds in the same way, of course, as uh uh Field Marshal Viscount Alan Brooke, who, when he was chief of the Imperial General Staff during the critical period of the war and attending these really high power conferences, often with Sir Winston Churchill, he found the most wonderful form of relaxation was to get out between conferences and just watch birds, whereas most of his colleagues, of course, would just go straight to bed.
Speaker 2
Whereas
Eric Hosking
Have you any big ambition you haven't achieved yet?
Presenter
Yeah, in bad photography.
Eric Hosking
Yes, I have two. I want to photograph very much the great bustard, and we came uh into an ace of getting photographs of it last year in Hungary, but unfortunately tragedy occurred at each of the nests. Uh the other is, of course, the great eagle owl, which is a most wonderful bird with deep orange eyes. I'd love to get my camera there.
Presenter asks
Was it your first job when you left school?
No. … when I left school in nineteen twenty six I drifted into the motor car industry and stayed there until the firm that I was working for went broke in nineteen twenty nine. I was on the unemployment market. And I just tried to find a job, but there were just none available in those days. And so I spent the time going up to the zoo taking photographs of the various different new arrivals, as well as babies that were born. I used to rush the negatives back home, develop them, and print from the wet negative, and rush them around Fleet Street, and more often than not, just didn't sell anything at all. It was very tough.
Presenter asks
Now when did it become possible for you to get out of the studio and spend all your time in the open air photographing birds?
Well that came in 1936 after I'd collected together quite a library of photographs and was able to have a pretty steady sale on them. But it was in 1937 that I got the best publicity stunt I suppose imaginable because I was trying to photograph a tawny owl one night. The bird came down and attacked me in the pitch darkness. Her claw penetrated my eye and I had to be rushed back to Morfield's Eye Hospital in London. They operated within ten minutes of my getting there hoping to save the eye but failed to do so. A fortnight later I had to have it removed completely. Two days later I went back to Wales and I photographed that tawny owl.
Presenter asks
Eric, how many countries have you visited to photograph bird life?
Oh, you ought to give me a warning of that question, Roy. Let me see. I've been up to Lapland, to Sweden, to Holland, to Spain, Bulgaria, and Hungary.
“a bird came down and attacked me in the pitch darkness. Her claw penetrated my eye and I had to be rushed back to Morfield's Eye Hospital in London. They operated within ten minutes of my getting there hoping to save the eye but failed to do so. A fortnight later I had to have it removed completely. Two days later I went back to Wales and I photographed that tawny owl.”
“I found that I had illustrated seven hundred different books. … I have had illustrations in seven hundred different books. Almost all over the world. In fact, I think almost every country but China.”
“I want to photograph very much the great bustard, and we came … into an ace of getting photographs of it last year in Hungary, but unfortunately tragedy occurred at each of the nests. … the other is, of course, the great eagle owl, which is a most wonderful bird with deep orange eyes.”