Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Desert Island Discs
Presented by Michael Parkinson
President of the International Olympic Committee from 1972 to 1980, also a journalist, soldier, filmmaker, author and businessman.
Eight records
The first uh choice, I said Tea for Two, is one of the earliest musical comedies I saw. I played the ukulele, which is then in instrument today in the little school band, and one of the first tunes I can remember.
Well, I think uh as we were talking about r rowing and my my rowing scholarship, I think of nothing which would be m more suitable than the Eaton Booting Song, which is sung by the Eton College Music Society, and which last time I sang it I was a treble.
During the war I I one was very conscious of music, which war music, both from the First War and the Second War. Before the war I had also been connected with the the theatre and had a great friend called Vivianellis who wrote a tune called Spread a Little Happiness.
Polonaise No. 3 in A major, Op. 40, No. 1, 'Military'Favourite
After the w the the war I got married and uh at uh our wedding my wife, who was dancing very musical, Shitcha is uh the Chopin's Polynes Number Three in A. which was uh brings me back uh very happy memories. We've been married forty plus years now, and it's uh it's a tune that we we both r brings us back sentimental memories.
Olympic Hymn
I think uh th th that uh probably I should ask for the Olympic hymn. I I've always wished that that tune was played instead of the many national anthems. When I hung the medal round people's neck I've often felt that there was so much chauvinism, so much nationalism, that uh neutral hymn would have been better.
I used to go up to see the Saddlers Wells a lot, and I became very interested and very fond of ballet. I knew Constant Lamottre well, who was a conductor. And I used to go and visit him in Hanover Lodge, off Regents Park, and Freddie Ashton, who was still with us, thank God. The ballet I remember best, and I saw it again after the war, was Tchaikovsky's The Sleeping Beauty.
The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem
Throughout The Quiet Man, Jack Ford, who was a was incidentally an Irish speaker, was very fond of The Wild Colonial Boy, and it appears very much in the in the in the film, so I suggest that that is a suitable, fairly neutral Irish song.
Where the Streets Have No Name
Well, Omni Island, a Desert Island, I think that I would like to update it a little and suggest a tune where the streets have no names by the U Two, who are illustrated in my book and I I admire very much both musically and the fact that they they many of them I don't agree with all their views are singing with a social conscience.
The keepsakes
The book
R. B. Cunninghame Graham
I've always found it an extremely interesting book.
The luxury
In conversation
Presenter asks
What kind of family background did you come from?
My family came from Galway, where we were merchants, Norman origin, and we've never really left Galway City except when my family married in the 17th century into the O'Flauties, and we got three acres of land. It's always said to me, whatever things I did wrong in Ireland, I'd never be shot for my land. Everyone thinks that I have a title, that I come from behind a big wall. Well, that's right, I would have done too. So why didn't you? Why don't you have more land? Well, because I happen to be a papish, and during penal times, we weren't allowed to have land.
Presenter asks
Were you a pacifist at Cambridge?
Yes, I think I was a pacifist. I certainly went round with Julie Birdwood, who was the daughter of Field Marshal, and one two other people, to discourage people from joining the OTC. I was not politically minded as some of my friends were. I didn't realise how much they were, like Burgess and Maclean. Donald MacLean was an exact contemporary of mine. Guy Burgess was a bit older, but I knew them all. I was never politically involved, other than the fact that one just didn't want another war. One had suffered. One had this blackness all the time.
Presenter asks
The recording
Timestamps play the recording from that turn
Lord Killanin
Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen eighty seven, and the presenter was Michael Parkinson.
Presenter
Our castaway today could best be described as a bit of an all-rounder. The sporting flavour of that definition is appropriate for someone who was from 1972 to 1980 the president of the International Olympic Committee. He's also had a career embracing journalism, the army, filmmaking and business. As an author he's written many books and his latest entitled My Ireland is a loving impression of his homeland. He is Lord Kilanin.
Presenter
Rokilanin, what kind of family background did you come from? I mean, how far back do you go? My family came from Galway, where we were merchants, Norman origin, and we've never really left Galway City except when my family married in the 17th century into the O'Flauties, and we got three acres of land. It's always said to me, whatever things I did wrong in Ireland, I'd never be shot for my land. Everyone thinks that I have a title, that I come from behind a big wall. Well, that's right, I would have done too. So why didn't you? Why don't you have more land? Well, because I happen to be a papish, and during penal times, we weren't allowed to have land.
Lord Killanin
Everything
Lord Killanin
What
Presenter
And my family, who were mayors of Galway, for 200 years vanished until my grandfather became Attorney General, first Catholic Attorney General, and eventually he was made a Lord of Appeal and Ordinary. In the last year of his life he was made Killanin. I'm very proud of being one of the first twentieth century peers because I was not actually the New Year's honest, but he was created, I think, in June 1900.
Lord Killanin
Really
Presenter
And uh that is that is the reason that I have this prefix to my name, which I Mr. I've always found slightly embarrassing. Why? Well, I did. I succeeded at the age of thirteen. My father, who was killed in the commanding the Ashgar's First War, never succeeded. I didn't know my father. I was born a month afterwards. But um, the headmaster of my prep school who suddenly put his arm round my shoulder when I went back and he said
Presenter
Maurice, your mother never told me you were going to be a peer, and so I reacted v very much to that from that day onwards.
Lord Killanin
Very much.
Presenter
And then later when I was a filmman, I went into our agent's office, MCA, and I they asked me my name. I said Lord Kirann. They said, Yes, mister Lord Kirannin. I said, Lord Kirannin and then I realized I was in the world of Count Dorsey, Duke Ellington.
Presenter
Was there in this background, this upbringing? Was there any music? My mother married again. My stepfather was very musical. The first musical event I remember, but strange enough, was at Savoy Hill when we went with Anthony Bernard, who was a later conductor at Stratford-on-Avon, carol singing. So what's dictated your choice then for your desert island? Is it are these old melodies that have memories for you? Yes, I think if I was on a desert island, I'd like to think of the future that I was going to get off.
Speaker 3
Yeah.
Presenter
But um I also like to think of of things that I've enjoyed in life and um most of my selections are piri ones that bring back memories to me. They're rather like um in Proust La Cherche du Temperdu, the taste of the mudlin, the little cake dipped in tea. And to me music has that same effect that it brings back certain recollections. What recollections come back with the the first choice? The first uh choice, I said Tea for Two, is one of the earliest musical comedies I saw. I played the ukulele, which is then in instrument today in the little school band, and one of the first tunes I can remember. It's a time of bye bye, Blackbirds and various other things in the early twenties.
Presenter
T for two played by Pat Swallow.
Presenter
Lord Kilaning, you you mentioned that you never knew your father. You were born a month after he was killed in the in the First World War. I imagine that there was a generation you grew up with, in fact, who didn't know their fathers. I came up in a generation of really one-parent families. I I'm really conscious all the time of blackness, widows, widows, widows. And even when I went on to school, that was still the case. Some people like my mother had remarried. But a tremendous number of us did not have fathers. And I think this later had considerable effect on one's attitude towards war at my Cambridge generation.
Presenter
But it was it was certainly a a a one parent family era.
Lord Killanin
Error
Presenter
What kind of a child were you? Were you an ambitious child? Do you know what you wanted to do in life? No, I don't think I didn't know, and I don't think I'd know n now in my old age. I think practically everything I've done has just been by chance. I I eventually went into Fleet Street because I wanted to learn to to be a writer. I wanted to know about writ something to write about. But I've never had great ambitions, and uh things have just happened. What about giving your interest in sport later on in life, though? Were you uh ver very sort of physically active at school? Were you a good sportsman? I was a sportsman, I hope, but I wasn't an athlete. And um I you know I plodded on and did the necessary things. I boxed later at at Eton I rowed. I got a a rowing virtually a rowing scholarship to Cambridge because the Master of Maudlin I met went dining after I got my lower boats, which is the lowest colour you can get for rowing at Eton. And he said, you know, at Maudlin we're looking for rowing people. I went to Paris, to the university there, and then I didn't know quite what to do. So I said I remembered this offer that there was a vacancy for me at Maudlin. So I went to Maudlin. An enormous man came in to see me the second day and told me to be on the at the Maudlin boathouse next day. I had no idea where the Maudlin boathouse was. And so I took a taxi down. And he was so rude to me, I never went again. That's the last time I rode. Because you ran by a taxi. Yes, I should have run down.
Presenter
Let's have another choice of record.
Presenter
Well, I think uh as we were talking about r rowing and my my rowing scholarship, I think of nothing which would be m more suitable than the Eaton Booting Song, which is sung by the Eton College Music Society, and which last time I sang it I was a treble.
Speaker 3
Yeah.
Presenter
There was Eton Boating Song performed by the Eton College Music Society.
Presenter
Lord Kilanin, you mentioned there that at Cambridge you belonged to a group of people whose attitude toward war had been greatly influenced by what happened to their parents in the First World, their fathers in the First World War. Were you a pacifist then at Cambridge? Yes, I think I was a pacifist. I certainly went round with Julie Birdwood, who was the daughter of Field Marshal, and one two other people, to discourage people from joining the OTC. I was not politically minded as some of my friends were. I didn't realise how much they were, like Burgess and Maclean. Donald MacLean was an exact contemporary of mine. Guy Burgess was a bit older, but I knew them all. I was never politically involved, other than the fact that one just didn't want another war. One had suffered. One had this blackness all the time. It didn't stop me. Later, when I, as a newspaper man, I'd come back from China where I'd seen fighting. And I happened to be in Downing Street reporting for the Daily Mail when Chamberlain came to the window with Peace in Our Time. I was sitting next door to Hannon Swaffer, who was an old socialist on the Daily Herald. He was saying traitor, traitor, traitor. And I then suddenly said, you know, perhaps one should join up. And that's why I joined the Territorial Army. It was suddenly a change, a conversion, which occurred to me in Downing Street. And so I joined the Territorial Army and found myself by mistake for being a soldier for six years. What effect did that have on you, the six years as being a soldier? At D-Day time, which I was highly involved in as brigade major to assault armoured brigade, and I was very frightened. But the rest of the time I enjoyed it. I quite like the discipline of the army. I had
Presenter
I recruited a whole in the Total Army, a whole company of actors and journalists and people who worked at night. We used to drill on Wellington Barracks. I can remember one day a good guards officer coming up to me and said, Michael, have you inspected your riflemen this morning? My other officer was Bill Deeds, late editor of the Daily Telegraph, and I said there's no point in inspecting them. All they've got is busmen's overcoats and the Boy Scouts' starves. And he said, Well, I want to tell you that you're drilling on Wellington Barracks a damn fellow in sandals. I'd recruited the I think two rows of the chorus of Ivan Novello's Dancing Ears, and I they they were extremely good at drill.
Presenter
Their own version, no doubt.
Lord Killanin
Yeah, so
Speaker 3
Yeah.
Presenter
As I say, I I stayed with my regiment as a rifleman, which my father had been originally although he transferred to the Irish cards.
Presenter
And um I can't I enjoyed it, but I I find it an interesting record, please.
Presenter
During the war I I one was very conscious of music, which war music, both from the First War and the Second War. Before the war I had also been connected with the the theatre and had a great friend called Vivianellis who wrote a tune called Spread a Little Happiness. Although that was pre-war, that is a suitable linking memory for me to ask for Spread a Little Happiness by Vivianellis.
Speaker 4
Don't you realize you'll find next Monday or next Tuesday your golden shoes day Even when the darkest clouds are in the sky You mustn't sigh and you mustn't cry Just spread a little happiness as you go by
Presenter
And that was Spread a Little Happiness by Vivinelli, sung there by Hubert Gregg.
Presenter
Lor Kalanin, you went to Fleet Street. Was it during this time that that you became interested in show business, in theatre, in films? Well, I'd been interested in show business at Cambridge where I'd been president of the Footlights, which had virtually collapsed. My first year I became business manager, and the second year I was president. And that really gave me the theatre interest. I was also news editor of Vasty Weekly, which has started as a tabloid. In fact, tho those two things really got me my first job in Fleet Street. I was first of all on the Daily Express, and there were a large number of first nights, especially on Mondays, because a lot of music halls and there was a lot of ballet.
Presenter
And Paul Holt was the ran the entertainment page. And I used to slip in and do be sort of number two string and write a paragraph on what was happening at the Queen's Poplar or the the Met Edgeware Road or at the Sudlers Wells. Yes. You were, of course, you were producer of one of the classic movies, actually, of the, I suppose, of Recent Times, a fellow Recent Times, and that was The Quiet Man, the John Ford film with John Wayne. How did that come about? How did you get to the point? Well, I was associated with the production, to be absolutely precise. I set it up in Ireland.
Lord Killanin
Well I uh
Presenter
I was coming back from China where I've been a war correspondent for the Daily Mail, and I wanted to go to the States.
Presenter
And so I cabled Fleet Street and they said, yes, go back through the United States. We'll go to Hollywood.
Presenter
and go to Chicago,'cause uh th that was the films and crime with were the ideas what the United States Washington didn't matter so much. So I cabled John Ford, whose family came from my village in West of Ireland. My great uncle had seen his father off on the boat.
Presenter
and had been put out to foster parentage during the famine times, cholera times at the house. And so although I'd never met Jack Ford, we knew each of each other, so I cabled to him. His children met me in Honolulu, and I had a most wonderful ten days. I picked up a lot of stories. I met Cary Grant, Katie Hepburn, Darrell Zanock, who was very busy getting his uh wrist right for playing polo, which I don't think he ever got on the horse, but he used to swing a polo stick round. And we started talking about making films in Ireland. And as a result of that, Jack showed me a a little sh short story in a book of Morris Wall Street's called Green Rushes, which was the origin of the quiet man.
Presenter
It's a lovely film still. It still holds up, you know. It uh has a timeless quality about it. It's a good story. Did did you get to know John Wayne, who of course starred in that? Yes, well he I got to know extremely well. I'd met him originally in Hollywood. The horse he rides and the quiet man is was my own hunter. The second day uh he found it, he said he couldn't ride because he was on my saddle. So we had to send for a cowboy saddle. So the quiet man rides through the Irish countryside on a cowboy's saddle. I don't think anyone's ever noticed it. I used to see also a lot of Duke when I made another picture in in London with Jack Ford called Gideon's Day with Jack Hawkins and the Duke was cutting a picture here or dumping a picture. And I took him to Elvino's. We were great drinking buddies together. And we took him to Elvino's and someone came up to me and said, Would I ask my friend to take his hat off? Well, the Duke couldn't take his hat off because he'd forgot he hadn't put his toupee on when we left the Savoy. We'd walked up Fleet Street into Elvino's, so we had to walk out again. I've been thrown out of Elvino's several times.
Presenter
Let's have another choice of record, please. After the w the the war I got married and uh at uh our wedding my wife, who was dancing very musical,
Presenter
Shitcha is uh the Chopin's Polynes Number Three in A.
Presenter
which was uh brings me back uh very happy memories. We've been married forty plus years now, and it's uh it's a tune that we we both r brings us back sentimental memories.
Presenter
Chopin's Polonaise number three in A, played by Ilana Berret.
Presenter
Lord Kilanin, let's now talk about your work with the Olympic movement. You you started on the International Olympic Committee in in 1953. How did that come about? Well, I after in nineteen fifty I was approached by the Olympic Council of Ireland whether I'd be President. And I think I was considered a good neutral because sport that vancore in Ireland is basically on an all-Ireland basis.
Presenter
And I was considered fairly neutral in that I was a Green Catholic in d in the eyes of the d uh the people in in the Republic in Dublin. And I had been in the British Army, which put me in slightly better stead in the north of Ireland. And as that sort of neutral, I came really enter through politics. And then two years later, there was a vacancy for the Irish member. The International Olympic Committee is a self-electing body.
Presenter
a not very democratic system of electing, but uh once you're in there it's run in a democratic way. And uh so I said yes, and I was elected in nineteen fifty two at Oslo.
Presenter
And I remember that's how I entered the international world. It was a far different organisation then, no, not talking about the fifties than now, wasn't it? Absolutely different. First of all, it it was uh it was a sort of I mean the the the the joc the English Jockey Club or the turf club of which I've been the steward would be a left-wing organization compared to the IOC in those those days. As bad as that. And practically everyone had a title. I think that's uh that was one of my qualifications. And of course at that time th th well, very soon after the Eastern Bloc came in. They decided that that the Olympics wasn't a bourgeois organisation. So I saw all that change. But uh when we first went I remember the Games to Finland.
Lord Killanin
I do
Lord Killanin
Yeah, those those days.
Presenter
Yeah, we all took a white tie and a wore decorations and dressed every night.
Presenter
And so it's from that side. And also it was small. To my mind, the best two Olympics I remember were at Helsinki and in Melbourne, because they were about individuals. And after that, it spread more and more into team games, into more and more chauvinism and more and more flag waving and more and more anthem playing. And it is the success of the games, which is very important. But and one's got to move with the times. It's no good saying it's not as it used to be. One's got to face the fact that it has altered, and indeed it's altered from the financial point of view. Now they're
Lord Killanin
Yeah.
Speaker 3
Yeah.
Lord Killanin
Now though.
Presenter
They are very big, very successful. Another choice of record, please, Larkin.
Lord Killanin
They are very big, very succ
Presenter
I think uh th th that uh probably I should ask for the Olympic hymn. I I've always wished that that tune was played instead of the many national anthems. When I hung the medal round people's neck I've often felt that there was so much chauvinism, so much nationalism, that uh neutral hymn would have been better.
Speaker 3
Love it!
Presenter
Let's talk about this business of you being the President of the International Olympic Committee. Because what it gave you, apart from an overview of the Olympic Games, also gave you access to the world's leaders, the top politicians, because inevitably the Olympics gets involved with politics or vice versa. What did you make of them? I mean, what do you make of President Carter? Because you had several eyeball to eyeball accounts. Well I I I had to face Brezhnev in the in the Kremlin.
Lord Killanin
Well I am
Presenter
And Carter in the White House in succeeding weeks. So I found President Brezhnev, whose politics I wouldn't necessarily agree with, very well briefed. When I went to the White House and flew Concord, the White House, and saw President Carter, I really left very worried because he hadn't been properly briefed on the details of what you can do, what you can't do, and trying to stop the games. And I must admit, I remember very well giving a very big press conference after it, but thinking all the time, I only hope that the White House is better briefed on things that really matter rather than on sporting matters. It was very interesting because I was a ended up before the war as a political diplomatic journalist. And of course, I was always knocking on doors and never being able to see people like Brezhnev and Carter or their equivalents in those days. When I was president, I was always meeting them, and I couldn't write about it till I'd finished. Is there any way in which you think you foresee in the future that politics can be kept out of sport, or is sport inextricably involved with politics? I think sport, especially the Olympic Games, have been involved in politics since the beginning. I mean, in 1896, the first gold medal was won by John Powers Boland, who is an Irish nationalist MP. I noticed the other day when tennis was reintroduced, he's immediately claimed as the first English-British person. Even those days we wanted to be separate in Ireland. It's gone on all the time. It'll continue, that'll continue. What I dislike is intensely is that the game is being used for political purposes, such as the boycotts, being told we couldn't go to Moscow by certain politicians or that the nationals of the country couldn't go, but when they were doing nothing else about it, it's the easiest game of politics to play and the people who suffer are the athletes.
Lord Killanin
Yeah.
Speaker 3
Yeah.
Lord Killanin
Uh
Presenter
No one else. At the time when we were being told not to not to go there as African-American. At the time of Montreal, where we had the walkout because of the a New Zealand tour of South Africa, which had nothing to do with us. We d
Lord Killanin
Yeah.
Lord Killanin
As athletes
Presenter
At ceased recognizing South Africa, the last thing I was able to do was to see China, uh the largest country in the world, competing at Lake Placid.
Presenter
I might say they boycotted all the Chinas, boycotted Moscow, but at least I saw them back into the fold. Another choice of record, please. I used to go up to see the Saddlers Wells a lot, and I became very interested and very fond of ballet. I knew Constant Lamottre well, who was a conductor. And I used to go and visit him in Hanover Lodge, off Regents Park, and Freddie Ashton, who was still with us, thank God. The ballet I remember best, and I saw it again after the war, was Tchaikovsky's The Sleeping Beauty.
Presenter
That was the music for the wedding in Schaikovsky's ballet, The Sleeping Beauty, the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by John Ladgebury. Lord Kilanin, let's now talk about Ireland. You've written this this loving book, My Ireland, which is a personal impression about your homeland. Looking through the book, it's a magic place, quite obviously. What what makes it magical for you? What are its qualities? Well, I I I like it because it's small. I I l I like it because the people, I like it because of its music, I like it because it's literature and what it what it produces. And um I I like living at home. I I think I'd be miserable not living although I s I'm cockney born or
Lord Killanin
But
Presenter
Belgravia born. But uh that that's just by chance. I uh as I said, that most things are by that seem to happen by chance. But um I've devoted a lot of my life to Ireland and to business and
Presenter
Let's have another choice of record, please, Rochdale. Throughout The Quiet Man, Jack Ford, who was a was incidentally an Irish speaker, was very fond of The Wild Colonial Boy, and it appears very much in the in the in the film, so I suggest that that is a suitable, fairly neutral Irish song.
Speaker 4
Was a whale colonial boy, Jacobin was his name. He was born and raised in Ireland.
Speaker 3
Amen.
Speaker 4
In a place called Castlemain
Speaker 4
He was his father's only son.
Speaker 3
Was his mother?
Speaker 4
His mother is crying in joy.
Speaker 3
Father Friday
Speaker 4
And dearly did his parents love
Presenter
That was the Wild Colonial Boy, sung by the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Macum.
Presenter
Lord Kalanin, you're presently engaged in writing your autobiography. Is it a book about a happy man, about a fulfilled life? Yes, I think it is. As I say, it's a story about everything that was never really planned, happening. Obviously, at moments one had firm intentions to achieve something. But I've had a fairly wide life, and I'm writing about my Fleet Street days, the stories I covered, like the abdication and Chinese-Japanese war and things like that. I'm writing about social things like what one might call the Anglo-Irish life in the twenties. I'm writing about my business life after the war. I'm not writing about my Olympic life because I've already done that, although I think there were some additions that I'll put in.
Presenter
But I I I hope it's a a book of a a happy man.
Presenter
I'm I've never made millions. I never had any ambition to make make millions. I pay a lot of tax. I make money for other people. I've been a banker, amongst other things. But I'm very good at making money for other people and not for myself.
Presenter
Do you have yet a a title for the book? Have you thought about that? No, it's I I as I say, it's basically My Non-Olympic Life. I suppose it's at the moment I'm I think my working title is My Other Life or Lives.
Presenter
Let's have a final choice of record, please. Well, Omni Island, a Desert Island, I think that I would like to update it a little and suggest a tune where the streets have no names by the U Two, who are illustrated in my book and I I admire very much both musically and the fact that they they many of them I don't agree with all their views are singing with a social conscience.
Speaker 3
I love the turns to rust.
Speaker 3
Beaten, blown by the wind, trampled in dust.
Speaker 3
I'll show you in place.
Speaker 3
I wanna desert plane
Speaker 3
Well the season on the
Presenter
You too, and where the streets have no name. Look, Lanning, you're now on this desert island. Are you going to enjoy the experience, do you think?
Presenter
I I think so. I'll be very lonely, but uh I think I'll I'll en enjoy it.
Presenter
What about uh
Presenter
What about trying to escape? Do you think you might try and build a boat and sail away, or would you resign yourself to the edge of the table? I might have a radio and be the Safe of the World service. You've got to imagine now that there's some kind of wave comes along, it takes away seven of your disks and leaves you one. Which one would you have?
Presenter
Keep sh probably the most conservative one of this Chopin's Polonaise, merely'cause it it reminds me of my married life and there I am alone on the desert. Now, what about the book? You can assume that you've got the works of Shakespeare and you've got the Bible with you.
Presenter
Yeah, I have been always very fond of a book called A Vanished Arcadia by now forgotten writer called R. B. Cunningham Graham. It was known as Don Roberto. And he wrote a book about the Jesuit missionaries in Uruguay at the end of the 16th, early 17th century, who set up really a Christian communist state. They were disliked by the archbishop, they were disliked by the Spanish conquerors, but they had this extraordinary state in which everything was shared. And I've always found it an extremely interesting book. And it's strange enough, I was rereading it. It's very, very topical to this day. It's very much what's happening in Central America at the moment. And what about the luxury object, inanimate? Luxury objects would be the Olympic gold medal that I was given, and then the Olympic award. Local Lane, thank you very much indeed.
Lord Killanin
Uh
Lord Killanin
You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.
What did you make of President Carter?
When I went to the White House and flew Concord, the White House, and saw President Carter, I really left very worried because he hadn't been properly briefed on the details of what you can do, what you can't do, and trying to stop the games. And I must admit, I remember very well giving a very big press conference after it, but thinking all the time, I only hope that the White House is better briefed on things that really matter rather than on sporting matters.
Presenter asks
Is there any way in which you think you foresee in the future that politics can be kept out of sport?
I think sport, especially the Olympic Games, have been involved in politics since the beginning. ... What I dislike is intensely is that the game is being used for political purposes, such as the boycotts, being told we couldn't go to Moscow by certain politicians or that the nationals of the country couldn't go, but when they were doing nothing else about it, it's the easiest game of politics to play and the people who suffer are the athletes.
Presenter asks
What makes Ireland magical for you?
Well, I I I like it because it's small. I I l I like it because the people, I like it because of its music, I like it because it's literature and what it what it produces. And um I I like living at home. I I think I'd be miserable not living although I s I'm cockney born or Belgravia born. But uh that that's just by chance.
“I succeeded at the age of thirteen. My father, who was killed in the commanding the Ashgar's First War, never succeeded. I didn't know my father. I was born a month afterwards.”
“I came up in a generation of really one-parent families. I I'm really conscious all the time of blackness, widows, widows, widows. And even when I went on to school, that was still the case. Some people like my mother had remarried. But a tremendous number of us did not have fathers. And I think this later had considerable effect on one's attitude towards war at my Cambridge generation.”
“I've had a fairly wide life, and I'm writing about my Fleet Street days, the stories I covered, like the abdication and Chinese-Japanese war and things like that. ... But I I I hope it's a a book of a a happy man.”