Quintin Hogg

Speaker 10:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

Speaker 10:08

The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen eighty eight, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:28

My very first castaway is a scholar, a lawyer, and a politician. His scholarship is great he was once said to be the cleverest boy ever to go to Eton.

Presenter0:38

His legal knowledge considerable he was the longest serving Lord Chancellor this century and his politics rumbustious he's thrilled the faithful at many a Tory party conference with his oratory and his antics. He is, of course, Quinton M'Garrill Hogg, QC, Lord Halesham of St. Marylebone.

Presenter0:58

Lord Helsham, it's going to be hot but beautiful lonely, but peaceful. Now, do you look forward with relish or with horror to taking up residence on this desert island?

Quintin Hogg1:10

I would have looked forward with a great deal more relish when I was fifty and more able to look after myself but I think I can manage now, you know, after a fashion.

Presenter1:19

Do you think, then, that you could endure the loneliness?

Quintin Hogg1:22

Oh, I can enjoy the loneliness, yes. Um, although I m would miss my wife.

Presenter1:27

What will you have been happiest to have got away from?

Quintin Hogg1:31

I think perhaps the viviant of

Quintin Hogg1:37

public life and private life, the morning newspapers and the nonsences about rows and furies and bans and crackdowns and all the jargon of modern urban life.

Presenter1:52

Well, now you have an old fashioned grammar phone with a handle and a horn, and a meagre allowance of eight records. How have you set about choosing what they shall be?

Quintin Hogg2:01

Well, I go through my life and I think of different periods in my life and different people that I've known and different things I've heard and they all bring something back to me. And of course if you're alone on a desert island, your contact with people and the real world is the thing you will want to recapture on your records.

Presenter2:22

Shall we have the first one?

Quintin Hogg2:23

Well, the first one before the First World War, in the nursery, old fashioned grammar phone like his master's voice, and it was singing I DO Like to be beside the seaside.

Speaker 42:39

I do like to be beside the seaside. I do like to be beside the sea. I do like the tune and on the vrom, vroom, vroom. When the brass man plays tiddlely om, pom, bomb. So just let me be beside the seaside. I'll be beside the del with glee. And if not the girl desired, I should like to be beside beside the seaside, beside the sea.

Presenter3:16

I Do Like to Be Beside the Seaside, recorded in nineteen ten, as we could hear, by mister Mark Sheridan. You had that record in your nursery, you said. Yes, we did.

Quintin Hogg3:23

Yes, we did. And on the other side, if I'm memory doesn't mislead me, there was a very good one called Everybody's Doing It and it was co about a a new dance which had come in from America called the Turkey Trot, which was the forerunner of the fox trot.

Presenter3:40

Well, I think we know everybody's doing it, isn't it?

Quintin Hogg3:42

Doing it, doing it, everybody's doing it now.

Presenter3:46

And you you used to listen to these with your with your nanny or with your mother?

Quintin Hogg3:49

Well, mainly with my nanny and my little brother Neil. My mother would be downstairs, being very much more respectable.

Presenter3:56

So were you were you dressed up in your best sailor suit and taken downstairs to mummy for tea?

Quintin Hogg4:00

Mummy for

Quintin Hogg4:01

Oh, yes. Usually for well, sometimes for tea we were shown off, scrubbed, clean, and sometimes in whatever it was. But um also after lunch to be fed on little lumps of that Christaline coffee sugar, and all the mum cousins and aunts and sisters would be there, and my father would be presiding.

Presenter4:22

What sort of little boy were you?

Quintin Hogg4:23

I think rather a horrid little boy in some ways. I think I was as arrogant as I subsequently became, but of course much smaller and much more timid. Precocious.

Quintin Hogg4:35

I was intellectually precocious, I think morally rather the reverse, but hyperactive, I think is the modern phrase.

Presenter4:43

What about your mother? What are your memories of her?

Quintin Hogg4:46

Well, she was exceedingly beautiful.

Quintin Hogg4:49

My father married her as a widow. She came from Tennessee, which is just on the border between the North and South in the United States.

Quintin Hogg5:00

An old family we'd been there since before the Revolution.

Presenter5:04

What are your memories of her? Because of course she died when you were still quite young, didn't she?

Quintin Hogg5:08

She died suddenly, and to me unexpectedly, when I was seventeen, and it was a great shock, a terrible shock.

Quintin Hogg5:17

She was so vivacious that when my father first met her in Bath before he'd become engaged to her, he said she was at the far end of a room which was full of people, and somehow her influence had galvanised the whole assembly as if a spark of electricity had run across it.

Presenter5:37

Uh

Quintin Hogg5:37

Let's have your next record. On a dark night in Sussex, when we just bought our home near Hailesham, and she used to sing Negro Spirituals, and the one I'm thinking of is Swing Low Sweet Chariot.

Speaker 45:50

Swing Lord, sweet chariot Coming for to carry me home Swing Lord, sweet chariot

Speaker 46:12

Coming for the carry meal home I looked over Jordan, and what did I see?

Speaker 46:23

Coming for the carry-me home A band of angels coming after me

Speaker 46:33

Common for the Carry Me Home

Presenter6:43

Swing low, sweet chariot, sung there by Paul Robeson, but bringing back memories of your mother's lullabies. Now, in nineteen twenty you went off to Eton. You were a scholarship boy. Were they happy days?

Quintin Hogg6:55

Yes, looking back on it, extremely happy. The first days at Eton, of course, were the complete muddle. I was sent to the wrong room, and to the wrong schoolrooms, and

Quintin Hogg7:04

Even the wrong chapel, of which there are two. But th no, no, Eton is more like a university. It's a collection of houses, and I was in the best house of all, which was college.

Presenter7:15

Now you said that you were already a a jolly clever chap. Were you known as what is still known as perhaps a bit of a swat?

Quintin Hogg7:22

They call it a sap at Eton. But yes, I'm afraid I was a bit of a pot hunter. I was very ambitious. I went after the prizes and I often got them. The o only thing about it is that other boys there are as clever as you are, so they can easily put you down, teaches you a little bit of humility, although in my case it was more difficult.

Presenter7:44

That unlike the majority of schoolboys, you loved your Latin and you loved your Greek.

Quintin Hogg7:48

Marvellous absolutely marvellous. I wouldn't be without them now for the world, although they're rusty and old and can be drawn out of their scabbard with the greatest of difficulty, but they still mean an enormous lot to me.

Presenter8:02

Why?

Quintin Hogg8:03

Well, European civilization, whether you're reading French classical poetry or whether you're reading anything almost, is deeply rooted in the past. The medieval church and right back to the classical days of marathon and salamis and all the great natural virtues like courage and integrity and patriotism, these things were part of the ideology of the ancient world. If we cut ourselves off from our roots, we're like cut flowers, and ultimately we shall be withered and thrown away.

Presenter8:38

Let's have another record.

Quintin Hogg8:40

Well, this comes from my Eaton days, because after my mother died

Quintin Hogg8:45

I was taken out to the musical comedies of the day by my elder brother, Edward Marchbanks, and one he took me to was Jessie Matthews, and she sang a song called Dancing on the Ceiling, and I was very much taken with it at the time, and I would like to hear it now.

Speaker 49:05

I whisper, go away, my lover. Let's not fail But I'm so grateful to discover he's still there

Quintin Hogg9:07

Okay, bye.

Speaker 49:19

I love my feeling more. She'll be the dancing floor. Just more.

Presenter9:35

Dancing on the Ceiling by Jessie Matthews. She recorded that in nineteen thirty four. I see a twinkle in your eye when you mention Jessie Matthews.

Quintin Hogg9:42

Well, I met her many years afterwards, and I told her how much I'd loved that, and she was very, very pleased. I said, I remember when I was deeply in love with you, and she was very, very pleased. And she had such a vivacious face, and lovely dark eyes, and dark hair. She was a beautiful girl.

Presenter10:01

So let's um get you off to Oxford, which was, what, nineteen twenty six. Now, it was when you were there that your father, a very distinguished man, was appointed Lord Chancellor. and he was given a hereditary title.

Quintin Hogg10:15

Yes, vi he became baron first and then viscount.

Presenter10:18

How did that affect you? Because of course as the sun it was going to have quite an effect.

Quintin Hogg10:23

Well, it did, of course, alter my entire life. The hereditary peerage was compulsory, you see. The the original donee of the peerage might be a volunteer, but the eldest son was a conscript, and I don't like being conscripted.

Presenter10:39

But how did it affect you personally, when you say it altered your whole life?

Quintin Hogg10:42

Well, of course I had been thinking in terms, until that moment, of a political career of the conventional kind, election to the House of Commons as a member of my party, representing a constituency and perhaps taking office. If you are a hereditary peer and you have to succeed, all the high offices of state, including the two law officerships, are debarred from you.

Presenter11:07

So this was in one stroke taken away, any chance of this happening?

Quintin Hogg11:10

Any chance of

Quintin Hogg11:11

Yes, I mean President of the Board of Trade, Home Secretary, Law Officer, and of course the higher offices like Chancellor of the Exchequer, Foreign Secretary, very although Alec was Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister.

Presenter11:24

So you were very upset?

Quintin Hogg11:25

I wasn't so much upset, because, do me credit, I really was more concerned about my father. I thought he was a wonderful man, and history might have been different had he been chosen instead of Neville Chamberlain. Who knows?

Presenter11:41

History might have been different had you been chosen instead of Sir Alec Douglas Hume.

Quintin Hogg11:44

It would be.

Presenter11:48

Did you know then, even then, when you were at university, that you would want to be Prime Minister?

Presenter11:54

Yeah.

Quintin Hogg11:54

I I don't think one does want to be Prime Minister. I think a man who wants to be Prime Minister is a fool.

Quintin Hogg12:00

But a man who enters a profession likes to do well in it, and if all the major uh prizes are cut off from you, if you might, if I may coin the phrase, at a stroke, I think you do feel a little brand off.

Presenter12:16

Let's stop there and have your fourth record, please.

Quintin Hogg12:18

Well, this is very different because I was talking about my elder brother, and I will talk about my younger brother.

Quintin Hogg12:26

whom I visit every summer and who lives in Switzerland. And two or three years ago he took me to a

Quintin Hogg12:34

Curiously, twentieth century operetta called Da Fidele Bauer at the Lucerne Festival. And it's about a young boy in an Austrian village who makes good and becomes a great man in Vienna and is visited by his former fellow villagers. First of all, he's very much ashamed of them, and then he's suddenly won over by their vivacity and charm. And the opera ends with him singing Wirzint Alla, Bauer, Bauer, Bauer, Bauer.

Speaker 413:08

Isnafembawa Isna Manchester Isna Ba Baba Ten Bar Supancharins Dimension Cove in our own minds and the menu of the world

Speaker 413:24

Power slides and godside of Sintelborn.

Speaker 413:43

Isn't a chemo baller Island we must rock your slower Islauch

Quintin Hogg13:54

Uh

Speaker 113:54

Ah

Speaker 413:55

Keitma Somanchamench dimension dukkin nawa. Keitmarai so mancharange dimension dokena.

Presenter14:05

Peasant's March from Leo Phall's operetta Der Fidele Bauer, The Faithful Peasant.

Presenter14:11

Now you got into Parliament, Lord Halesham, in the late thirties. How did that come about?

Quintin Hogg14:16

and it was the most spectacular by-election of the interwar period.

Presenter14:21

Why?

Quintin Hogg14:22

Well, because we started in the ordinary way, there was a n a Labour candidate, Patrick Gordon Walker, there was a nice little Liberal candidate called Iva Davis, and then came this extraordinary succession of meetings about the Czechoslovak crisis. There was Goetheburg, there was Bonn, there was the other way round, and then there was Munich.

Quintin Hogg14:46

And then Frank Peckenham, as he then was, did something I don't know what, but got the other two candidates shanghai by their parties, and s put up the Master of Bail against me as a sort of popular front candidate. And so Munich

Quintin Hogg15:04

Master Balliol and this untried Conservative candidate entered into the lists as the first by election after Munich, and from that moment I was famous.

Presenter15:15

And you were, of course, then uh what we now know in history as Anna Peaser. You did believe in Munich. You did believe in Chamberlain.

Quintin Hogg15:23

I wasn't in the Pisa. I did believe in Munich, and I do believe that we wouldn't have won the war without it. It was a tripwire. The country could not have gone into war divided, and it was divided in nineteen thirty eight, but even more important

Quintin Hogg15:38

The Eight Gun Fighters

Quintin Hogg15:41

which won the battle of Britain, the Hurricane and the Spitfire, were not in service we'd have fought with furies, and we'd have been beaten.

Presenter15:50

Now you went to war, you were commissioned in the Rifle Brigade, and you were posted to the Western Desert. But before that you experienced the Blitz in London. Now the scene is uh nineteen forty and you were in the Carlton Club with your father.

Quintin Hogg16:03

Yes, I was saying goodbye to him. I was by that time going to the Middle East to as I thought to join my battalion, but in fact it wa was to join another one. And um

Quintin Hogg16:15

Well, we sat in the Carlton Club when it was being bombed. A a great big bomb burst through the roof and burst over our heads and a lot of firebombs were in pell-mell immediately opposite, and I had to carry my father out of the Carlton Club, because by that time he was paralyzed all down one side. And I thought to myself, as I saw the sky through the roof, just like Aeneas carrying Enchises out of the ruin of Troy.

Presenter16:47

We shall have your fifth record.

Quintin Hogg16:49

Well, why not the regimental march of the Rifle Brigade, at one time the ninety fifth Regiment of Foot?

Presenter17:47

The Regimental March of the Rifle Brigade, I'm ninety five, played by the Band and Bugles, Third Battalion, the Royal Green Jackets. Lot of marching about going on here. You used to march to that, you say, at Eton.

Quintin Hogg17:59

Yes, curiously enough, the Eton Officers' Training Corps had the same regimental tune because they used to divide between adjutants. One time it would be a rifle brigade adjutant and one time it would be a guards adjutant. But the regimental march was the ninety-five. But it was always played on field days by one of the guards' battalions stationed at Windsor. And of course you've heard it played 140 to the minute, which is the way it ought to be played. But when we marched across Barnes Pool Bridge, there would be the fifes and drums of the Cold Stream or whatever playing, I'm ninety-five, I'm ninety-five and two keep single. I've contrived, I've contrived, I've contrived. So we went on at that.

Quintin Hogg18:45

Uh

Presenter18:45

Do the words stay as clean as that?

Quintin Hogg18:47

Well, there are alternative versions which are sometimes sung on different occasions.

Presenter18:53

Mm, but never written down.

Quintin Hogg18:55

Well, I've never seen the Britton Dad.

Presenter18:59

Lord Helsham, it seems to me that uh that you won't be doing badly on this island because you can cook, can't you?

Quintin Hogg19:04

Well, I I can cook, but of course what there is to cook on a desert island I don't know. I might be able to fish. I'm rather good at fish, and if there's edible fish, but I don't think there's much wildlife which I can cook also.

Presenter19:18

Now, Lord Helsham, it was in nineteen forty four that you married your wife, Mary, and it was, of course, a very happy marriage, wasn't it?

Quintin Hogg19:25

Yes, we were married for thirty four years, and five children.

Presenter19:31

I have the impression that women have been very important to you in your life.

Quintin Hogg19:35

I think they have, but uh I'm a natural man and uh

Quintin Hogg19:40

I must say I enjoy female company.

Presenter19:43

Now Lady Halesham of course was killed in a riding accident in Australia in 1978, some ten years ago.

Presenter19:51

It must have been horribly painful for you.

Quintin Hogg19:53

It was a terrible shock. She was twelve years younger than me. We were as happy as uh on our honeymoon during that visit to Australia. We were enjoying ourselves. We were riding around something rather bigger than Rotten Row in a thing called the Centennial Park at Sydney, and the horse ran away with her and must have shied at a bollard of some kind, threw her over its right shoulder, I think, and uh the next thing I saw she was lying there in a pool of blood with her head broken in.

Presenter20:28

You have, I mean, you have always had, I I think, a a strong Christian faith. How shaken was it by that loss?

Quintin Hogg20:36

My faith was not shaken.

Quintin Hogg20:38

But the sun didn't shine any more in the day, and the birds didn't sing.

Quintin Hogg20:45

I was a pelican in the wilderness, and a pelican is a water bird I was a sparrow on the roof tops, and the sparrow is a gregarious bird, and the sparrow is a learn.

Quintin Hogg20:55

And I was an owl, which is a woodland bird in the open.

Quintin Hogg21:00

The flowers didn't bloom.

Presenter21:03

But the sun shines again now.

Quintin Hogg21:05

Well, the sun shines, yes, but one carries scars of previous wounds with one to one's dying day.

Presenter21:13

I'm sure you have a a million happy memories of her. Is there any special one that you would treasure on this desert island?

Quintin Hogg21:20

Well, I would take with me.

Quintin Hogg21:24

A record of what we played at her funeral at Hurstman Sioux, which is Saint Patrick's Breastplate. She was an old Irish family, and of the two hymns she liked best, one was Saint Patrick's Breastplate.

Speaker 421:42

Be out to myself today.

Speaker 421:48

I'm all

Speaker 422:00

All for saved.

Presenter22:13

The hymn Saint Patrick's Breastplate sung by the choir of Belfast Cathedral.

Presenter22:19

Lord Helsham, let's go back to your political career, to the days when in the late fifties under Macmillan you were chairman of the Conservative Party. Now I can remember pictures of you ringing that bell and standing in your baggy bathing drawers on Brighton Beach. You really were quite a showman, weren't you?

Quintin Hogg22:35

Well, it wasn't that I was a showman, I was an advocate.

Quintin Hogg22:39

After Suez, the party had fallen into very low morale. Harold, the Prime Minister, was busy being Prime Minister, and also his way of looking at things was played down, played long and played cool. Well, we weren't going to win the nineteen fifty-nine election by playing it down, playing it low, playing it cool. That might be the way to be Prime Minister, but it wasn't the way to encourage the faithful. And therefore, studying Harold, I did the opposite. Being, as I believe, a good advocate, I identified the right way of winning the case, and of course I was as spectacular as I knew how to be. The whole of a barrister's life is uh devoted a to concealing his own identity and b to sacrificing himself for his client and. Well yes, but you enjoyed it as well. Well one doesn't uh do a thing unless one enjoys it. Well at least one doesn't do it well unless one enjoys it. So I threw myself into my job.

Presenter23:40

As a result of all of that, you became enormously popular. The party loved you. You were the darling of the party. There were people across the land who thought you were wonderful, that you were Churchillian in your patriotism. And you have said, I think, that Mr Macmillan himself said to you that he hoped you would follow him into the Prime Minister's office.

Presenter24:01

Why did you not succeed him?

Quintin Hogg24:03

Well, to begin with, I think there were people in the party who would have preferred Rab Butler, I think, very reasonably. There were people in the party who thought unreasonably that I was too far to the right for their liking. There's always been a tendency in the Conservative Party to play safe if it can, which is a very dangerous thing to do. One should take a calculated risk if one has to take a calculated risk in life. And everybody said how marvellous it would be if only Ellik would consent. And that's exactly what happened. And so they went round to Harold, and he advised the Queen to send for Ellik, and we all served happily under him. Were you very disappointed? Not at all. I was very much distressed at the way in which I'd been traduced by people whom I had.

Quintin Hogg24:49

helped to get into power, uh there were people who spread hideous stories about me and I very much distressed at it, but uh disappointed not being Prime Minister, no, never.

Presenter25:01

You said earlier on that it would have been a very different business had you been Prime Minister instead of Sir Alec Douglas Hume. How different?

Quintin Hogg25:08

Well, as the White Knight said, I don't say it would be better. I only say it would have been different. I think we would have won the sixty four election.

Presenter25:18

We shall pause and ask you for your seventh record.

Quintin Hogg25:21

Let's go back to the coronation. When Mary and I visited the coronation and were invited in our grand robes, and it was a cold morning and we got out of the car and

Quintin Hogg25:36

The policeman saw Mary in her Thy Countess's robes, and he said, By God, you look smashing and so she did.

Presenter26:46

Vivat Regina taken from the recording of the nineteen fifty three coronation service.

Presenter26:52

Lord Hilsham, you have been a loyal member of the Conservative Party since the nineteen twenties. You were, of course, the longest serving Lord Chancellor this century. You served for twelve years.

Presenter27:03

Now, you have in these years supported or or served under some seven Prime Ministers, haven't you? Chamberlain, Churchill, Eden, Macmillan, Hume, Heath, and Mrs Thatcher.

Presenter27:14

Which of them, in your view, will go down in history as the greatest Prime Ministers?

Quintin Hogg27:21

I don't think it's possible, so close to events, to make a a judgment on that. I think Churchill stands obviously in a class by himself. He happened to have been born and to have matured at exactly the time when history required

Quintin Hogg27:41

Such a curiously shaped piece on the board, and he was a man of genius.

Quintin Hogg27:47

Cardinal Newman used to say

Quintin Hogg27:50

That he looked in vain for the finger of God in history. He said it was like looking into a mirror, expecting to see his own face and seeing nothing. Now, the one case in which I think I can see the finger of God in contemporary history is Churchill's arrival at the precise moment of 1940.

Presenter28:11

Now you've retired from office. You retired just after the last election, Lord Helsham. It must be very strange being out of office.

Quintin Hogg28:18

It's absolute hell. It's not because you miss office as such, but you haven't got an an official car, you haven't got a secretary, you haven't got files. There's a deluge of invitations to make lectures and speeches and give prizes away to schools, and you don't know where to turn for the next thought in your mind. Oh no, it's um i it it's the most desperate situation to find yourself in. It's like being uh withdrawn from addictive drugs and being made to play a game of football at the same time.

Presenter28:51

I'm going through cold turkey and

Quintin Hogg28:53

Cold turkey, but um hot curry as well.

Presenter28:58

Your eighth and your final record.

Quintin Hogg29:00

Well, one looks towards the end. People do have memorial services. I can't attend my own.

Quintin Hogg29:08

But what I've told my children is that I would like a proper requiem, and I would like to hear the Die's Eire sung to the old Gregorian chant.

Speaker 429:20

Die es ire, die sila, sales gor infabila.

Speaker 129:22

Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 429:31

Tester.

Speaker 129:31

Estend.

Speaker 429:37

Cuandus tremore es futurus, quando yude exes vendur.

Speaker 429:48

Kumdala Sri Te Diskusum.

Speaker 429:54

Pour me ruspar against all

Speaker 129:54

Come on.

Speaker 129:58

Oh.

Speaker 430:07

Corje groves.

Speaker 130:07

What's your

Presenter30:15

A setting of the Dies Ire in Gregorian chant, performed by the Della Consort.

Presenter30:22

And which, Lord Helsham, of all your eight records, when this great wave comes along and cruelly washes away seven of them, which single one would you beg that it should leave behind?

Quintin Hogg30:33

I should find it very, very difficult to choose.

Quintin Hogg30:37

But perhaps it would be my mother's.

Quintin Hogg30:42

Swing low, sweet chariot.

Presenter30:45

Now you have the Bible, and you have the complete works of Shakespeare. What book would you also like to have?

Quintin Hogg30:51

Well, if I'm allowed it in the Lerb edition.

Quintin Hogg30:54

I would like the works of Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey.

Presenter31:00

And what's special about the Lerb edition?

Quintin Hogg31:02

The Leban edition has an English translation on the right hand side. You mean you're going to cheat? I don't think it's cheating, but it would help me with some words which I might have forgotten, and some syntax which I might have got wrong.

Presenter31:13

All right, we'll import it specially. And uh finally, Lord Helsham, your your luxury.

Quintin Hogg31:18

Well, I assume there's a certain amount of fresh water on the island, and I remember that in the woods of my father's farm some curious person had brought an empty bath.

Quintin Hogg31:32

Now I would like that empty bathtub with a plug in the hole and an infinite quantity of soap.

Presenter31:40

No, I think in that case you have to promise not to turn the bath upside down and live underneath it.

Quintin Hogg31:45

I will make that promise. I am no Diogenes.

Presenter31:49

And you have to promise not to eat the soap.

Quintin Hogg31:51

I don't think I could.

Presenter31:53

Lord Helsham, it's been a delight. Thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Quintin Hogg32:00

Thank you very much.

Speaker 132:08

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