Sir Hugh Greene

Sir Hugh Greene0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive.

Sir Hugh Greene0:05

For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in 1983, and the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:30

Our castaway this week is a writer, broadcaster, ex-foreign correspondent, and ex-director general of the BBC, Sir Hugh Green.

Presenter0:38

So Hugh, the BBC probably does more for music than any other organisation in the world. How musical are you? How important is it in your life? Music has never been uh very important in my life. I'm not exactly tone deaf. Certain songs and tunes stick in my mind, but musical I am unfortunately not. How did you set about choosing this small list of eight discs to last possibly for the rest of your life?

Presenter1:05

Well, I thought that uh if I ever was wrecked, I might indeed settle down to writing an autobiography, and I wanted sounds which would be evocative of different stages in my life.

Sir Hugh Greene1:16

Uh

Presenter1:18

Right. Where do we start? At the beginning. That's right. We start with me.

Presenter1:23

In the nursery at home, dancing with my sister's governess, who was twenty eight, I was fourteen, and I was very much in love with her, to the strains of The Cabaret Girl. Oh, that was a musical comedy of the time. A musical comedy of the time. And what numbers are we going to hear from The Cabaret Girl? Two songs, Dancing Time and Kalua.

Sir Hugh Greene1:37

Abuse.

Presenter1:47

Sung by Dorothy Dixon, a great star of the nineteen twenties, whom I met only a few years ago, and she still seemed to me to be as beautiful as ever.

Speaker 21:57

Your feet have simply gotta glide. You must lead me lightly, hold me tightly, take beware you hear all those laxophones

Sir Hugh Greene2:09

Where cannot you call it easy?

Sir Hugh Greene2:14

All the boys in London, not California.

Presenter2:19

Yeah.

Sir Hugh Greene2:19

Santime is any old time for me.

Speaker 32:33

When it's moonlight in Kallua, nightlights there's definitely

Sir Hugh Greene2:43

Yeah.

Sir Hugh Greene2:44

It was only Kaluwa when yourself met mine.

Presenter2:56

Two songs from The Cabaret Girl, sung by Dorothy Dixon. So Hugh, you come from a a prosperous family of brewers and traders in Northamptonshire. But your father was a schoolmaster. Yes, he became headmaster of Berkhamstead School a few months after I was born in nineteen ten. So you lived at the school? Lived at the school, born in a schoolhouse before he moved to the schoolhouse as headmaster.

Presenter3:24

And um I had my first visit to a pub, in fact, at six weeks old, because we stayed in a pub while he moved from one house to another. How many in the family? Six of us altogether. Yes. Four sons, two daughters. One of the sons being of course the novelist Graham Greene. Were you the youngest? Except for one sister, yes.

Presenter3:46

Did you and your brothers attend Burke Hampstead school? My eldest brother, poor chap, went to Marlborough, which did him no good at all. It was a very tough school, I believe, at that time.

Presenter3:56

But Raymond, who became a doctor and mountaineer, and my brother Graham and I

Presenter4:01

We were all at Bergmasted School under my father.

Presenter4:04

As the headmaster's sons

Presenter4:07

Were grievances taken out on you by the boys? No, I wouldn't put it like that. One felt at times a bit awkward.

Presenter4:16

It was difficult to have this division in one's life between home on one side of what Graham has called the Green Bay's Door,

Presenter4:24

And when one went through that one left privacy behind and was uh among crowds of other boys.

Presenter4:31

Well, after Burg Hampstead the next step was Oxford. But first it was decided to widen your horizons and and you were sent to Germany. Why Germany? Well, the year was nineteen twenty nine. That was probably the best year of the Weimar Republic.

Presenter4:47

Strasemann hadn't yet died.

Presenter4:50

Germany at that time had a very great attraction which um even my parents must have felt. I can't think of any other reason why they chose Germany, but I'm very glad they did.

Presenter5:03

Because Germany has meant ever since a great deal in my life. And at that time you experienced

Presenter5:09

Briefly, the old Germany, a Germany that very speedily disappeared. The Germany of Weimar with its enormous attractions, its leading place in the arts, the wonderful films of Weimar Germany, including one which I loved and saw about seven or eight times, Congress Dances, a musical about the Congress of Vienna. Lilian Harvey. Lilian Harvey, that's right.

Sir Hugh Greene5:35

Yeah.

Presenter5:36

She sang the what I suppose is almost the theme song of Congress Dances about how the most beautiful things in life only happen once.

Sir Hugh Greene5:53

It gives me a final flow that keeps the iron, the complete freedom, the

Presenter6:05

It's gonna be iPhone.

Speaker 26:31

Me like this longer

Sir Hugh Greene6:36

Lovely.

Sir Hugh Greene6:38

I target

Sir Hugh Greene6:39

Yeah.

Sir Hugh Greene6:40

Neither thrilling up nor either

Presenter6:45

Lillian Harvey, singing just once for all time from Congress Dances. That comparatively brief visit was to mould much of your future life. But on you went to Oxford. What did you read? I started off by reading for honour mods, that is classics, Latin and Greek.

Presenter7:04

And the normal thing after that would have been to go on to read Greats, which was ancient history which I should have loved, and philosophy and I knew myself well enough at that time to know that I didn't have the mind of a philosopher.

Presenter7:21

Editor.

Sir Hugh Greene7:21

And

Presenter7:22

The senior tutor at Merton, Geoffrey Muir,

Presenter7:25

was a great authority on Hegel, and the idea of spending my time with Geoffrey Muir discussing Hegel was really quite beyond me.

Presenter7:35

What were your other activities? You're you're a tall man. Did they put you in a boat? They tried to, and I rowed, I think, for about ten days.

Presenter7:44

and then gave it up because I had a boil on my bottom. I decided it was a sport only for galley slaves.

Sir Hugh Greene7:48

Now you have

Presenter7:53

And you were something of a university impresario. You were obsessed by the cinema. I believe you started a film society. Yes, I started the Oxford University Film Society, persuading the proctors that it was a right and proper thing to do. I believe you used to go up and down Water Street booking films, doing the whole thing very professionally. Water Street really was the street of adventure then, full of uh small, rather crooked little firms which uh owned the great German classics, the Russian classics, Swedish and so on.

Speaker 38:12

Yeah, and

Presenter8:26

I used to go along with a big cigar in my mouth, trying to look very much like a film impresario.

Presenter8:33

Did you think that some branch of the film industry might be your future career? Were you attracted? Yes. I had made friends with Sam Ekman, who was the MGM representative in London.

Sir Hugh Greene8:37

We would check.

Presenter8:43

And he gave me an introduction to Michael Balkan, the great impresario of the Ealing films, who then had the studios in Shepherd's Bush, which are now BBC Lime Grove.

Presenter8:56

And I went to see Michael Bolken. He didn't offer me a job.

Presenter9:00

But many years later, when I was Director General of the B B C, I reminded him of that and of the fact that we now owned his studios.

Presenter9:11

You began to edge towards journalism. I edged towards journalism. I didn't really know what I wanted to do.

Presenter9:19

But my father let me have two hundred pounds to last me a year, which was not impossible in those days.

Presenter9:27

And I went to Germany and I got some introductions before going and went to Munich.

Presenter9:33

To act as stringer paid on space rates for the New Statesman and the Daily Herald. In fact, officially, I believe you were correspondent for the Detroit Daily News. Well, the Daily Herald correspondent in Berlin said, My boy, you will have a hell of a time in Munich working for two socialist newspapers. Opened his desk, took out a card which said correspondent of the Detroit Daily News. I took that. And that got you by. That got me by. What's your third record?

Presenter10:05

Well, my third record takes us back to Oxford. I told you I wasn't a philosopher, and I read English literature.

Presenter10:13

for finals. Something I've never regretted. On the contrary, I think one of the best decisions I ever made in my life.

Presenter10:19

and I had the great luck.

Presenter10:21

to be one of the first pupils of uh Edmund Blunden.

Presenter10:26

A very considerable pate, to my mind.

Sir Hugh Greene10:27

Yeah.

Presenter10:29

And this record is Edmund Blundon reading what is in fact my favourite poem of his.

Presenter10:35

Forefathers

Presenter10:37

Here they went with smock and crook

Presenter10:40

Toil in the sun

Presenter10:42

Loll in the shade

Presenter10:44

Here they mudded out the brook.

Presenter10:46

And here their hatchet cleared the glade.

Presenter10:49

Harvest supper woke their wit

Presenter10:52

Huntsman's moon their wooings lit

Presenter10:55

From this church they led their brides

Presenter10:58

From this church themselves were led shoulder high.

Presenter11:02

On these waysides sat to take their beer and bread.

Presenter11:07

Names are gone.

Presenter11:08

Edmund Blundon reading his own poem, FORFATHERS.

Presenter11:12

So to Germany. This was nineteen thirty three, Hitler just in power. Yes, it was december thirty three when I went to Munich. One of your early achievements, you managed to visit Dachau, one of the first concentration camps of the Hitler era.

Presenter11:28

Yes, I did that in my full capacity as correspondent of the Detroit Daily News.

Presenter11:34

getting in some way or other the um permission of the SS.

Presenter11:40

And I remember going along to I suppose it was Gestapo headquarters, and they wanted to see my passport, and I was sitting there waiting, and I suddenly remembered that inside my passport I had got some illegal Communist pamphlets.

Presenter11:56

And

Presenter11:58

I thought, oh dear, now this may prove rather awkward but they never saw, and after that, although I learnt to be more careful,

Presenter12:07

I never respected the efficiency of the German secret police too much.

Sir Hugh Greene12:11

Well

Presenter12:12

In those early days was Dergau bad?

Presenter12:16

Dacquer was not as bad as it became. It was a very unpleasant feeling.

Presenter12:22

The people were standing around, of course, very depressed, very thin.

Presenter12:27

The SS guards were the most brutal types. I wrote a letter to my mother about it at the time, so I can still reread that letter and bring that impression back into my mind.

Presenter12:39

Inevitably you saw a lot of the Hitlerian top brass. Which ones did you meet?

Presenter12:45

I met Goering.

Presenter12:47

I met Goebbels. I was very friendly with an adjutant of Hitler's called Captain Wiedemann.

Presenter12:54

I have been as close to Hitler as I am to you at this moment.

Presenter12:59

But I never was, so to speak, introduced to him. I believe you used your height and your distinguished appearance to bluff your way into VIP enclosures quite frequently. Yeah, well on one occasion I remember going up a steep lot of stairs outside a German railway station when Hitler and Goebbels were going off to Italy.

Presenter13:18

And I wasn't supposed to be there, but I walked up the stairs immediately behind Goebbels, who's about a foot shorter than me, and the Hitler youth lining the staircase burst into loud laughter.

Presenter13:31

which didn't amuse Goebbels, who wasn't used to that sort of behaviour.

Presenter13:35

Where were you when Britain declared war? By that time I had been expelled from Germany in may nineteen thirty nine.

Presenter13:44

On what ground?

Sir Hugh Greene13:44

On what ground?

Presenter13:45

Well, uh obviously they didn't like me, but the actual ground was as a reprisal because a German journalist had been expelled uh from London uh for Nazi party activities. And I remember at a farewell lunch given for me by the Foreign Press Association, I said that I hadn't been leader of the Berlin section of the English Conservative Party.

Presenter14:12

So when war broke out? And so then I was sent to Warsaw. I was Warsaw correspondent. Correspondent for whom? You were no longer. Still Daily Tele Oh, I had long ago become, in fact, in february nineteen thirty four.

Speaker 314:19

Still the data.

Sir Hugh Greene14:19

Uh

Presenter14:25

first assistant correspondent for the Daily Telegraph and then Chief Correspondent. And after I was kicked out from Germany I was sent to Warsaw because that seemed likely to be a rather hot spot as it was.

Sir Hugh Greene14:39

Right.

Presenter14:41

Right, we've got to record number four.

Presenter14:44

Well, if I was recalling

Presenter14:47

My time in Germany.

Presenter14:50

I would need a sound of that era.

Presenter14:54

And I chose that very good tune, even though it was the devil's tune.

Presenter15:00

The whole special cell.

Presenter15:31

The Host Vessel song

Presenter15:33

So, Hugh, you had done six years of good work as a foreign correspondent, an expert on German affairs. What wartime job was open to you when you got back to England?

Presenter15:43

Well

Presenter15:44

At first there seemed to be no very obvious job, but my time for call up was due anyway, and I managed to get into Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve.

Presenter15:56

Not with any very great difficulty. I remember being uh interviewed by a an RAF officer with one of those very big moustaches.

Presenter16:07

who uh said to me Parais vaux, francais.

Presenter16:10

And I said we?

Presenter16:12

And he said, Speckens he doch

Presenter16:15

And I said, Javul. And he said, Bloody good linguist, I see you are, old boy. Just the sort we need for RAF intelligence. And um I found myself in the branch of RAF intelligence called AI1K, which dealt with the interrogation of German Luftwaffe prisoners. And I was doing that job during most of the Battle of Britain.

Presenter16:40

And then the BBC.

Presenter16:43

How did that contact first start? Well, that was really rather odd. The BBC made an approach through Duff Cooper to Archibald Sinclair, the Secretary of State for Air, to release Pilot Officer Green to be head of the BBC German service.

Presenter17:03

And Pilot Officer Greene was seconded by the RAF to the BBC. Rather a curious way in which to join the place where I spent a lot of the rest of my life. Yes, down to Bush House. Exciting work, deceiving the enemy, taunting the enemy.

Presenter17:20

Deceiving, taunting, but um most of all, and most important of all, uh giving the enemy hard news, hard news even of our defeats, so that when, as one hoped, the time would come for victories, they would believe what we said about the victories, and I think I can say we did.

Presenter17:43

But there was some taunting too. We um broadcast a number of songs, often parodies.

Presenter17:51

of German songs, the first one of all.

Presenter17:54

which was a song about the German army being moved up and down, hither and thither, with no end to the wall.

Presenter18:01

was a great compliment to us adopted as the official

Presenter18:05

Song

Presenter18:06

with slightly different words, of um the German antiaircraft gunners. That shows they were listening, it shows that even then, early on they were listening. But later on these songs got tougher. And Lutzie Mannheim, a German actress in England,

Sir Hugh Greene18:13

Amen.

Presenter18:23

Sang a parody of Lala Anderson's Lily Marlane.

Presenter18:29

Which ends with the order to hang Hitler on a lamppost. And that's one of the records you've chosen to bring back those years.

Sir Hugh Greene18:36

Yeah.

Presenter18:38

That is my next record.

Presenter18:58

Yeah.

Sir Hugh Greene18:58

Yeah.

Presenter19:02

Hengine Randy La Cherner.

Presenter19:06

Died in the

Speaker 319:07

Yeah.

Presenter19:07

Uh

Speaker 319:07

Lily is my name.

Presenter19:10

Luzi Mannheim, in a rather special version of Lille Marlin. In the later days of the war you visited the liberated areas. You paid another visit to Dacha when it was a different proposition altogether. That was uh really horrible.

Presenter19:26

Dachau had not been an extermination camp, it had not they had no gas chamber.

Presenter19:31

But there was an incinerator, a big hall, piled with corpses round an enormous stove.

Presenter19:39

And the uh notice was up in this big hall saying Rheinlichkeit ist teer plicht bitter henterwaschen. Cleanliness is a duty here. Please wash your hands.

Presenter19:51

But the living, the skeletons in their striped pyjamas, were in some ways more difficult.

Presenter19:58

bear than the dead, to have them kissing one's hands and embracing one.

Presenter20:03

And you saw a devastated Berlin, all the places that you had known so well. Yes, everywhere I had lived was destroyed.

Presenter20:11

Now, you decided not to go back to being a foreign correspondent now that the war was over.

Presenter20:17

Yes, I had every chance, but I got interested in administration as well as in reporting, in running things.

Presenter20:27

And that, above everything, I think, was what kept me in the BBC, and of course I'm glad it did.

Presenter20:33

Though um I left the BBC for a time, not long after the war, to take charge of broadcasting in the British zone of Germany, building up a new German broadcasting system. On the lines of the BBC? Roughly, but uh with uh adaptations to uh German custom and German history. And then back to Bush House as head of BBC European services. How many languages did that cover? East European services, in fact, which covered Russian, Yugoslav and Bulgarian.

Presenter21:10

Greek and Turkish.

Presenter21:12

But mainly, of course, it was Russian that mattered, and I think it was because of needing to take a tougher line in our broadcast to Russia that Ian Jacob wanted me for the job. This was the Cold War period? Yes.

Presenter21:27

Now, you were accepted as an expert in psychological warfare, and if there has to be warfare, that's the best kind. There must have been a fair amount of infighting to sort out in so so many nations, so many

Presenter21:39

Causes

Presenter21:41

A job demanding an immense amount of tact. Yes, and uh tact also in dealing with uh the Foreign Office.

Presenter21:48

who would sometimes think that one was being too tough.

Presenter21:53

But I didn't have that job for very long. You went off in your travels again? I was uh sent off to Malaya on another psychological warfare job.

Presenter22:04

which had nothing or hardly anything to do with broadcasting.

Presenter22:07

which was conducting psychological warfare against the Chinese.

Presenter22:11

The insurgents

Presenter22:13

The male.

Presenter22:14

People's Liberation Army, as they called themselves, in the jungle of Malaya.

Presenter22:19

which meant the use of leaflets of rumour.

Presenter22:23

And rather different methods for me.

Presenter22:27

and then back to the B B C

Presenter22:30

An important administrative job. Did you not hesitate, having been a man of action? You could have been crushed in the BBC's great administrative machine unless you were careful. Well, I was absolutely terrified of that job, becoming Director of Administration.

Presenter22:47

The only job that has ever frightened me.

Presenter22:49

It didn't frighten me later on to go on to a higher job.

Presenter22:53

But in I came to enjoy it very much. It was again that strain in me which I had become conscious of at the end of the war, that I was beginning to enjoy running things, and I learnt

Presenter23:04

How the wheels went round in the BBC in that way. Well, you you ran them very well to such an extent that you were invited to be Director General, and we'll talk about that distinguished office in a minute. Let's have another record.

Presenter23:16

Well, my next record is a Beatles record.

Presenter23:20

which seems to me to be really rather beautiful poetry. The Beatles, after all, were one of the trademarks of the sixties. As it happened,

Presenter23:31

I regret it now. I was asked about this record and decided that it shouldn't be broadcast because it seemed then to be encouraging drug taking. How that can ever have seemed like yet I'm now rather at a loss to say. This is a section of the Sergeant Pepper record, isn't it?

Presenter23:51

Welcome.

Presenter23:52

Fell out of bed, dragged a comb across my head.

Presenter23:58

Found my way downstairs and drank a cup And looking up, I noticed I was late

Presenter24:05

Find my coach and grab my

Speaker 324:06

My head.

Presenter24:08

Uh

Speaker 324:08

Made the bus, seconds fly

Speaker 324:12

I'm away upstairs

Presenter24:14

And had a smoke And somebody spoke and I went into a dream

Presenter24:19

Voices of the Sixties. The Beatles. So, Director General, Sir Hugh, Supremo of a very large organization indeed, an organization that impinges on every one of us. You started with shock tactics. You did something dreadful. You moved the nine o'clock news. Yes.

Presenter24:38

The trouble was that the audience for the nine o'clock news had by that time, in spite of its sacred reputation,

Presenter24:46

uh got rather small and uh the uh director of radio and myself decided

Presenter24:53

That it'd be much better to have the main news at ten, when it could have half an hour, too.

Presenter24:59

And that would provide for better programme planning earlier in the evening. But there certainly was a considerable outcry. The nation trembled. What were you going to do next?

Presenter25:12

What you did do very effectively was to attack the anti-image of the corporation and and make for more exciting broadcasting. Well, I tried to. I thought that in some ways the BBC had got a bit uh stuffy. It was not appealing to the nation as a whole, but more to the respectable middle class. And I thought the BBC should be everybody's BBC. Mhm. And therefore it meant to some extent doing away with the BBC voice, having different accents on the air.

Presenter25:47

And it meant more adventurous programming, yes. It meant laughing at politicians. A liberalization. Yes. Which programmes do you remember as being particularly indicative of of the times and what you were aiming at? Well, one which is generally picked out

Presenter26:04

is a programme called That Was the Week That Was.

Presenter26:08

which started in the autumn of nineteen sixty two, which we thought of as a late night programme on Saturdays for a couple of million people.

Presenter26:19

and got up to an audience of about twelve million, heard with equal enthusiasm all over the country. And an excerpt from that is your next record. That is so, starting with Millicent Martin.

Speaker 326:46

That was the week that was it's over let it go 52 times a year The week is done and over with before you know

Speaker 327:00

The new force in politics is of course the army.

Speaker 327:04

They've got the candidates, but what they haven't had yet

Speaker 327:08

is a party political broadcast. They've got one ready.

Speaker 327:12

It's by 326098 Lance Corporal Wallace A.J., Royal Signals.

Sir Hugh Greene27:21

Yeah.

Speaker 227:23

Good evening to you.

Sir Hugh Greene27:25

I'm clear.

Speaker 227:27

I'm speaking to you tonight from the Gascape store at Kitchener Line's number 14 supply depot Utoxita.

Presenter27:34

An excerpt from That Was the Week That Was, with Millicent Martin singing the theme song, The Voice of David Frost, and then Roy Kinnear as Lance Corporal Wallace AJ Royal Signals.

Presenter27:48

How long did you stay as Director General?

Presenter27:52

Appropriately, april first, nineteen sixty nine.

Presenter27:57

And when you left, among the other things you've done is write some books which had probably been in your mind for a long time. You you wanted to settle down and do some writing? Yes. So uh in some ways what I've produced, apart from a little book called The Third Floor Front about my life particularly in the B B C,

Presenter28:17

I became an anthologist and produced several

Presenter28:21

collections of early Victorian detective stories. I wrote introductions, of course. And now you're in publishing with the Bodleyhead Company. And in the Bodleyhead catalogue at the moment there's a book called A Variety of Lives, a Biography of Sir Hugh Green.

Presenter28:39

Now, why a biography and not an autobiography? Why didn't you write the story yourself? I started to. I think I had written about twelve thousand words about my early life.

Presenter28:50

And then I realized that the time was coming when I'd have to spend months in the B B C archives.

Presenter28:56

Turning over dusty and boring papers, and I just couldn't.

Presenter29:01

Bear the idea of spending my life in that way.

Presenter29:04

And I just put it aside. And about a year later this young man, Michael Tracy, turned up and wanted to write my biography. So I thought, Ah, this is my release. Well, he's produced a very entertaining book, but then you had a very entertaining life. Let's have your last record.

Presenter29:21

My last record uh is my brother Graham reading an extract uh from his book In Search of a Character. I chose that because I thought in one shape or another I should like to have his company on the desert island.

Presenter29:35

january the thirty first, nineteen fifty nine.

Presenter29:41

All I know about the story I'm planning is that a man turns up.

Presenter29:45

and for that reason alone I find myself on a plain between Brussels and Leopoldville.

Presenter29:51

The search for the character cannot end there.

Presenter29:54

X. must have known Lapelville come that way.

Presenter29:57

But the place where he emerges into my consciousness is a leper station many hundred miles up the Congo.

Presenter30:05

Perhaps yonder, perhaps one of the smaller stations four days away.

Presenter30:10

The Voice of Graham Greene.

Presenter30:12

Now you've fended for yourself in quite a few countries, Sir Hugh. Could you survive could you look after yourself on a desert island?

Presenter30:19

I think that if there was a well of sweet water and lots of bananas, then I could get by. Would you try to escape? Do you know about sailing? No. I'd be completely helpless.

Presenter30:31

Yeah.

Presenter30:32

Now you've got your eight records. If you only had one, which would it be?

Presenter30:39

I am inclined to think that um I would rather like to have Edmund Blunden.

Presenter30:45

And one luxury.

Presenter30:48

Oh, that's easy. I would like to have a portable typewriter.

Presenter30:52

And if you will allow it, lots of paper. Yes, of course. You're going to do that autobiography also. Then I'll do that autobiography. Good.

Sir Hugh Greene30:57

No, then I'll do it

Presenter31:00

And you have the works of Shakespeare, and you have a Bible. You may have one other book.

Presenter31:06

Um

Presenter31:07

I think I would like the uh Penguin complete Sherlock Holmes. Right.

Presenter31:14

And thank you, Sir Hugh Green, for letting us hear your Desert Island discs. I should thank you, Roy, for making me think of them. Goodbye, everyone.

Sir Hugh Greene31:48

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