Mary Archer

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 guest on Desert Island Discs this week is best known for being a wife, but that description alone is unfair and does her less than justice. She won a first at Oxford she is a fellow of Newnham College, Cambridge, and is a world authority on solar energy.

Presenter0:46

Last year she was involved in a notorious court case in which her husband Geoffrey sued a newspaper for libel. She is Mary Archer.

Presenter0:56

Mary Archer, if I were to describe you as a very private person married to a very public man, would you argue with that?

Presenter1:04

I think I wouldn't have done, um, though I find myself more in the public eye now, for example, appearing on a programme like this. I think I am, however,

Presenter1:15

basically rather a private person, happy to be solitary, happy to be alone with the things I like to do. And what are those things? How does the private person where does the private person find refuge?

Presenter1:28

Well, first of all, in work. I am a scientist, and that's always been a source of enormous pleasure to me, to to read about science, to listen to other people talk about it, to do it myself.

Presenter1:41

So that's an important solace. And then uh music is also very important to me, so this is a particularly attractive uh programme as far as I'm concerned. I've always uh loved music and particularly loved singing. Do you come from a musical family?

Presenter1:57

My father was uh musical. He used to play the piano every evening after work and

Presenter2:03

I would often play with him, or more particularly sing with him. We had lots of song books of folk songs and Old English songs and little operatic arias and so forth, and we worked through a tremendous repertory together.

Presenter2:16

Can we hear your first record?

Presenter2:19

My first record is an organ voluntary by Wolford Davis, here played by George Thulman Ball, who was organist at the Temple Church in London.

Presenter2:28

My father, as I said, loved organ music, and he used to go sometimes with my mother.

Presenter2:33

To listen to organ recitals at lunch time he went very often to Saint Michael's Cornhill to hear Harold Dark, and also to the Temple Church to hear George Thorburn Ball.

Presenter2:44

And this solemn melody is a short organ voluntary which was composed for the Temple Church by Wolfrid Davis, who was Tholbenball's predecessor there, and it's among the sheet music that I've inherited from my father, and my father used it as an organ voluntary when he was a church organist.

Presenter4:02

Solemn Melody by Walford Davis played on the organ of the Temple Church in London by Sir George Thorburn Ball.

Presenter4:09

Now, Mary Archer, you you say you sing. What are you, a sop, a setting sop?

Presenter4:13

Well, I have rather a wide range, and I have need to be. I can be anything from a soprano to a tenor, but uh normally I like to sing contralto or something like mezzo soprano.

Presenter4:24

It's great versatility. Well, it's it's rather fouc demure. I I have to sing all that uh range because I'm choir mistress of uh Granchester.

Presenter4:33

parish church, which is the village near Cambridge where I live, and uh sometimes one simply has to fill in a part that's missing.

Presenter4:40

Now rumour has it, according to the villagers, that when you walk backwards and forwards to the church, for all of this, that you you carry a polythene bag with you, and collect the rubbish out of the streets as you go. Yes, I'm afraid that's quite true, and you get some very peculiar looks when you do it. But I do hate letter, and I particularly hate to see it outside my own front door.

Presenter4:58

Um and Granchester is a much visited village because it's famous for the Rupert Brook connection, and I'm afraid people will drop litter and uh it becomes it becomes a kind of obsession. I find it very difficult to walk down the street without picking up rubbish. As long as you try don't try and do it in London.

Presenter5:14

Is it very important to you all of that, the the church and the community?

Presenter5:20

Yes, I think it is now. Uh when we were first married Effra and I lived in London, and I enjoyed that very much. And then in'seventy six' we moved to Cambridge, and I enjoyed that more, not least because it was smaller.

Presenter5:32

And then in'seventy nine' we moved to Granchester, which has six hundred souls, and I enjoyed that.

Presenter5:37

even more because that's a community

Presenter5:40

where one can have some serious hope of knowing, as it were, everybody, or a large proportion of the people. And it seems a human size community, and I I do enjoy that. Yes, and it is important. And how important is religion to you?

Presenter5:54

Well, I was brought up in the Church of England tradition, and I'm very attached to the liturgy of the Church of England.

Presenter6:03

And religion is important to me in a rather generalized intellectual sense. I I think that the universe is a

Presenter6:11

Wonderful creation, and it's a remarkable thing that mathematics is the key to it so that.

Presenter6:16

My view as a scientist of the universe is in some way a quasi-religious view.

Presenter6:21

But I don't think I'm a very good Christian. There's a lot I find quite difficult to take on board.

Presenter6:26

Let's have your second record.

Presenter6:28

My second record goes back to my school days. I went to uh Cheltenham.

Presenter6:35

And there I started.

Presenter6:37

singing choral music.

Presenter6:39

And the first one we ever sang was Hiawatha's Wedding Feast, which is now terribly unfashionable, but it used to be very, very popular. It used to rank with Elijah as a

Presenter6:48

often performed and much loved uh piece of English music.

Presenter6:53

Anyway, I can still remember every last note or of Hiawatha, and it would be a great pleasure to hear it again.

Mary Archer7:08

Oh, the wild flood of the forest.

Mary Archer7:15

Or the wild bird of the prairie.

Speaker 17:16

Yeah.

Mary Archer7:21

Oh with eyes o'er swapped and fawn alive.

Mary Archer7:28

If the world will lookest at me, I am happy, why am happy.

Mary Archer7:43

As the lilies, the lilies on the prairie, when they feel the new

Presenter7:57

On AWAY, AWAKE, BELOVED from Hiawatha's Wedding Feast by SAMUEL COLED TAYLER, sung by Richard Lewis. I take it, Mary Archer, if you know all the words, you're going to be marching around this island singing this.

Presenter8:09

Well, I do sing a lot. I I hum and I sing and I whistle to my children's great disapproval continually, virtually, as I work or as I move around the house. So yes, I could sing I could give myself an operatic performance of that. Singing all the parts. I take it also the idea of of being alone won't worry you one jot.

Speaker 18:24

I take it to

Presenter8:29

It wouldn't worry me as long as I thought that all those I cared about were well and happy, and of course not missing me too much. But no, I I enjoy my own company. It wouldn't worry me.

Presenter8:39

Well, now, as you were saying, you you were born and brought up in Ipsham, then you were sent off to Cheltenham Ladies' College. Was it always obvious that you were an achiever?

Presenter8:50

I think I was thought to be a bright little girl, and my father was very encouraging, and like like many women who've got fairly far in life, my father was a very important influence.

Presenter9:02

both on me and my elder sister.

Presenter9:05

He had very high, very uncompromising standards, and I think I was inculcated with those.

Presenter9:12

And I always enjoyed work. I was always a boring, bookish girl.

Presenter9:17

And you won a place at Oxford? Yes. The study ward.

Speaker 19:20

Okay.

Presenter9:21

To study chemistry, I went up to Saint Anne's College in nineteen sixty two to study chemistry. Can we hear your next record?

Presenter9:30

Yes, my next record dates from about that time. It was in my second year at Oxford that I met Geoffrey.

Presenter9:36

and I met him at the flat of a man called Nick Lloyd, who was then my boyfriend.

Presenter9:43

Now he was then the editor of Charwell, but he's now the editor of the Daily Express. Life Moves On.

Presenter9:48

and we were totally unsuited in all respects. But anyway, it was at a party that he gave that I met Geoffrey.

Presenter9:54

And as I recall, though this may be apocryphal, but as I recall, there was a Beatles LP playing in the background. And certainly I associate the Beatles very much with that time and with Geoffrey, who'd run a big campaign in which the Beatles had helped raise a million pounds, when a million pounds was a million pounds, for Oxfam. So this record is one of the Beatles' classics. I want to hold your hand.

Speaker 410:26

Oh yeah

Speaker 410:28

Tell you something.

Speaker 410:30

I think you'll understand.

Speaker 410:34

Can I say that something?

Speaker 410:37

I wanna hold a ha

Speaker 410:41

I wanna hold your hand.

Speaker 410:45

I wanna

Presenter10:47

The Beatles with I Want to Hold Your Hand. So that was when you met Geoffrey. What sort of figure did he cut?

Presenter10:55

A very unusual and dashing figure in my eyes.

Presenter10:59

because he had come up to Oxford to do a dipet, a diploma in education, and was much more interested in running, in fact, than in anything academic.

Presenter11:08

He sprinted first for the university and then briefly and not terribly successfully, but anyway he did for Britain.

Presenter11:15

He was terrific fun, something different from anything I'd ever met before, and uh I I suppose it was the attraction of opposites, but I just took to him. Yes,'cause you you were saying you were quiet and studious, and he's obviously very extrovert. I mean, chalk and cheese.

Presenter11:31

Yes, I suppose so. But in some ways we are alike in more ways perhaps than is readily apparent, or perhaps we've grown to be alike. Anyway, I thought he was the one for me, and I wasn't wrong.

Presenter11:43

Did you spot at that time, though, that life with Geoffrey was going to be a a bit of a roller coaster, a fairly public business? Yes, I thought it would be an exciting and adventurous life, and I thought also, quite correctly, that I'd have my own profession as a kind of backstop.

Presenter12:00

And what did your parents think of him?

Presenter12:03

I think they find him a bit alarming, and they also thought, quite rightly, that I was too young to get married. I was twenty one when we married, and I quite agree now, looking back on it, that is too young.

Presenter12:13

But they liked him, and they always were very supportive.

Presenter12:18

Shall we have your fourth record?

Presenter12:20

My fourth record is, I think, one that you must play many times on this programme, and that's Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.

Presenter12:27

And I ask for that for a particular reason, and that is that

Presenter12:31

When we first went to live in London after we were married, I joined the BBC Choral Society.

Presenter12:37

and they contributed to the Proms every summer.

Presenter12:41

And among the things that I think we always sang, perhaps on the penultimate night of the proms, was the Beethoven Ninth Symphony.

Mary Archer12:55

Love you all.

Mary Archer13:02

He's an air.

Presenter13:41

The finale from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, a performance by the London Symphony Chorus and Orchestra, conducted by Carlo Maria Cellini.

Presenter13:50

So Mary Artra, they were married, living in London. Nineteen sixty nine, Geoffrey entered Parliament. He became the baby of the House of Commons. He was the youngest member then. He was at one time. He was the MP for Lough in Lincolnshire.

Presenter14:03

How did you take to being an MP's wife?

Presenter14:07

Well, I was still very young. I think I was twenty four when he went into the house, so it was exciting and bewildering, and I found it quite hard to cope with. I also remember

Presenter14:17

having some difficulty with with trying

Presenter14:21

to do public things, even little things like open fates or make speeches. I find it quite hard, I suppose. I've

Presenter14:28

got better over the years, but

Presenter14:30

I remember it as a time that was exciting but quite full of stress.

Presenter14:35

And then a few years on from that your first child, William, was on the way, and as you said, you commuted out of London to Oxford. Now, because of all of that, and your commitment to your academic work, you very nearly put that baby's life in jeopardy.

Presenter14:49

Yes, I did. Yes, I I suppressed this story for years, but I've now sort of come out of the closet with it. William was due, I think, in a July yes, July of nineteen seventy two, which was planned because it was after the end of the academic year. And I entirely blame myself. William started to arrive early, in May, in fact, I mean very early, uh, while I was actually teaching at Oxford in Somerville College and

Presenter15:14

For some reason I I didn't down tools and get myself next door to the Radcliffe Hospital, which would have been the sensible thing to do. I just carried on.

Presenter15:23

with my day's routine, with the consequence that by the time I arrived back on the train to London, and Geoffrey, bless him, was punctual as always and met me, really the baby was well and truly on the way, and I hardly recognised it.

Presenter15:35

But Geoffrey did, and he's very good in a tight corner, and he got me to Guy's hospital very quickly, and I think William was born about five minutes after we arrived.

Presenter15:44

Your next record, please.

Presenter15:47

My next record is by a group called the Clerks of Oxenford, who I think are now in suspension, but when I was at Oxford they sang the kind of music that I've come to love best, Tudor and Renaissance, unaccompanied music, and cut quite a few discs.

Presenter16:04

few of which I appear on, but I don't think I'm on this one, which is from their recordings of Christmas carols, traditional Christmas carols which I've always loved very much, and this particular one is a simple German carol, the Echo Carol.

Mary Archer16:20

From Hill Heart to stand.

Mary Archer16:31

O Missoula Hills that have been fair.

Mary Archer16:49

Sing me more.

Mary Archer16:57

The Storming No.

Presenter17:06

The traditional German carol I Come from Heaven, also called the Echo Carol, sung by the Clerks of Oxenford.

Presenter17:13

Well, now you're saying you're very organized and that home is very important to you. Are you a kettle polisher? The sort of person who can't go out until all the beds are made and everything's shiny bright?

Presenter17:23

I find a certain difficulty, yes. In fact, I'm often castigated for that. My particular obsession is I can't go out without emptying the waste paper baskets. Um yes, home is important to me, uh and I enjoy housework in a funny way. I find it relaxing.

Presenter17:38

And our home has a wonderful sense of calm and repose about it, because it's an old house. It is, as you were saying, it's the old Vicarage, Granchester, and of course that's about which Rupert Brooke wrote the wrote eponymous poem

Speaker 117:50

wrote his papony.

Speaker 117:51

Back.

Presenter17:52

Can you it must be very beautiful. Can you describe it, your house?

Presenter17:56

The basic centre of the house was built in sixteen eighty three, and it's a typical house of the period, its timber frame on the first floor and brick below.

Presenter18:09

And it's grown over the years, as vernacular houses generally have. There have been nineteenth century editions, twentieth century editions, and changes.

Presenter18:17

So it's all up and down, and there's no right angles in it, but it's a it's a lovely, comfortable house, and it's just the right

Presenter18:24

Shape and Size for Us, and In the Garden it's got a wonderful folly, in which Geoffrey writes Do you like Rupert Brooke's poetry?

Presenter18:32

I like the best of his poetry very much. He was a very young man when he died, and some of the stuff that's been published is is is pretty.

Presenter18:41

sentimental and I don't like it very much, but the best poetry is wonderful, and I think the old Vicarage Granchester is wonderful, and his prose writing is also wonderful. Terrific letter writer.

Presenter18:53

This is a record of A Verse Anthem by Orlando Gibbons.

Presenter18:58

Who wrote

Presenter19:00

lots and lots of wonderful church music. He was a very staunch Anglican, early Anglican, and I think he was the first to set English texts. And this is a most marvellous verse anthem recorded by King's College choir.

Presenter19:15

called This is the Record of John.

Mary Archer19:25

This is a rap.

Mary Archer19:30

When the Jew saved his eyes from Jehovah Salem, from Jehu Salem.

Mary Archer19:44

I was good.

Mary Archer19:54

I said that he failed.

Mary Archer20:01

Oh I have no

Presenter20:11

This is a record of John, performed by the choir of King's College, Cambridge, with the Jacobean Consort of Viles, directed by Sir David Wilcox.

Presenter20:21

Well, now, Mary Archer, we left your life story where you'd had one baby, and then it was two years later, in nineteen seventy four, that you were pregnant with your second boy, as it turned out, when suddenly your lives, yours and Jeffrey's and Baby Williams, were turned on their heads. What happened?

Presenter20:38

Well, that was our first great disaster. Yes. That was uh when Geoffrey made a very unwise and overreaching investment, and lost not only his money, but a good deal of the bank's money, so we were heavily in debt, and that was a very profound

Presenter20:54

Shock

Presenter20:55

Jamie, my second son, was born just after that, which was worrying.

Presenter21:01

What was the first you knew about this disaster?

Presenter21:05

Well, the first I knew of it um I was told on William's second birthday in may seventy four.

Presenter21:13

We were having a little birthday party, I remember very well, and

Presenter21:16

Geoffrey told me that there was a problem with the investment. In fact,

Presenter21:21

It had been recommended to him fraudulently, and it turned out to be part of a quite a widespread

Presenter21:27

a ring of frauds and Geoffrey had been taken in by this and

Presenter21:32

That was the first I knew of it.

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How poor were you?

Presenter21:36

As a result.

Presenter21:37

Well, we were seriously poor as regards ready cash uh very poor.

Presenter21:42

On the other hand, we lived then in a nice house which we had to sell, but we did have that, and we had

Presenter21:50

as it were, our youth and our wits, and uh so we weren't impoverished in every sense, but we were very strapped for cash.

Presenter21:58

Of course it also resulted in Geoffrey losing his seat in the House. Yes, yes.

Speaker 122:02

Uh

Presenter22:07

It was thought quite likely that he would.

Presenter22:10

How badly did it affect you personally, all of this?

Presenter22:15

I found it hard to cope with. I carried on working and that was a definite solace.

Presenter22:23

I was very glad to be able to carry on pretty well normally at work in London.

Presenter22:29

But

Presenter22:30

Grinding anxiety about money is there's nothing else like it that I've ever experienced.

Presenter22:36

Um, I came out in some most hideous kind of um spottiness all round my face that was d d due to the stress we were under, and that didn't go away for some time.

Presenter22:48

Well, it was at that point that that Geoffrey decided to write, to to write you out of this trouble. Did you know that he had a book in him?

Presenter22:57

No, he'd always been interested in popular novels and in films and in plays, and particularly in the theatre.

Presenter23:05

and was always full of ideas, so from that point of view it wasn't a surprise, but actually to sit down and write a book, that came as a great surprise to me.

Presenter23:13

And it came as even more of a surprise as I write slowly and laboriously that he did it so quickly.

Presenter23:18

Do you remember um seeing the first chapters and realizing that this could be something big? Oh yes, I remember it very clearly. He went away to write.

Presenter23:27

He never has been able to write in the bosom of his home and his family, and that also I understand. And he went away and stayed with a man called Sir Nowell Hall, who was

Presenter23:37

former principal of Brasenose, where Geoffrey had been at Oxford.

Presenter23:41

and came back after a few weeks with a draught written in long hand, and I sat down at the kitchen table and read it, and I thought it was a terrific story.

Presenter23:50

Another record, please.

Presenter23:53

The next record is really in honour of my boys, and particularly William, my eldest son, whose voice is now broken, but he used to have a nice treble voice, and used to sing with the choir of St. John's College in Cambridge, where he was as a prep school boy.

Presenter24:11

And this record is the Fure Requiem Mass, and in particular the Sanctus from that Mass, and I ask for this because that was one of the pieces that William particularly enjoyed singing in some of the choral events that they mounted.

Mary Archer24:49

Uh

Mary Archer24:53

For in God's name.

Mary Archer25:15

His father

Presenter25:25

The Sanctus from Foray's Requiem, taken from a performance by the choir of Saint John's College, Cambridge, with the Academy of Saint Martin in the Fields, directed by George Guest.

Presenter25:37

We've talked about the large financial calamity in your life. More recently, of course, your world suddenly seemed to collapse again, because your husband stood accused by newspapers of consorting with a prostitute and of paying her to keep quiet. You must have thought, here we go again. It did give me a sense of deja vu, as I must admit, and that was a comfort in a funny way, because I thought what we had done faced before was worse, and I knew we'd come through that, so

Presenter26:04

It gave me the courage to face that second disaster. But were you exasperated, infuriated, or were you in the most terrible despair?

Presenter26:16

Certainly not in terrible despair no, never.

Presenter26:19

And neither exactly infuriated nor exasperated because I knew exactly what had happened, and I think.

Presenter26:27

It would be more accurate to say I was angry at the folly that had

Presenter26:32

put the thing up and about and fabricated a malicious story. So it was, I think, anger that sustained me through it.

Presenter26:42

But the feeling of of um invasion of your privacy must have been terrible. It did seem at one point that there was no corner of your life, however personal, that was sacrosanct.

Presenter26:53

Well, if you have to defend yourself in court, you've got to speak the whole truth and the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and and one has to accept that.

Presenter27:03

But still

Presenter27:04

one's private inside one's head. I mean, invasion of privacy can't really be complete if you keep your thoughts to yourself. And were you always confident about the outcome, or or were there moments of great fear?

Presenter27:18

I was very confident more confident, I think, than

Presenter27:22

anyone else around me. I'm a rationalist. I

Presenter27:25

knew what the facts were and I

Presenter27:28

assumed that it would become apparent that that's what they were. Although we were warned, of course, there's no certainty of success in such an action.

Presenter27:36

But, nevertheless, I was confident. And you never doubted? No.

Presenter27:41

Do you now have an abhorrence of the word fragrant?

Presenter27:46

I've heard it rather a lot, I must say.

Presenter27:49

Many people would say that in order to cope with all of that, uh the second time in your life, that it takes great

Presenter27:58

Independence of spirit and mind to withstand two such shocks in one marriage. Is that is that what you have? An independence?

Presenter28:09

I think I am fairly independent, yes. For a start I've always been wholly independent in my professional life, because Geoffrey is no scientist and knows nothing about it, and I've always liked that. I've always liked to have my own thing. So there's that kind of independence.

Presenter28:24

But then in another way I think we are very interdependent, and that was also important. It wasn't, I think, that we felt we were two independent people somehow thrown together and going through this extraordinary thing, but we were interdependent and going through it together.

Presenter28:40

Can we have your eighths and your final record, please?

Presenter28:43

My eighth record brings us to East Anglia and to a madrigal by John Wilby, who was musician to Sir Thomas Kitson at Hengrave Hall, which is just near Berry St. Edmunds. It's now a religious community, but then it's a private house.

Presenter28:59

And Wilby wrote the best English madricals, I think, and this is a particularly beautiful one, Drawn Sweet Night, which sounds very simple, but is very difficult to sing and here is Sung angelically by Emma Kirkby in a setting for her voice with vial accompaniment.

Mary Archer29:27

And sweet and sweet.

Mary Archer29:42

And

Mary Archer29:58

A noise of painfully.

Presenter30:18

The Madrigal Draw On, Sweet Night, by John Wilby, sung by Emma Kirkby, with the consort of music, directed by Antony Ruley. Well, Mary Archer the wave comes along and snatches away

Presenter30:32

Seven of your records, which is the one that you desperately hope it will leave behind.

Presenter30:38

Well, I'd be very tempted by Draw on Sweet Night, which is a very suitable madrigal for a solitude on a desert island, but I think it would have to be Beethoven a sublime piece of music.

Presenter30:49

Now, I mentioned at the beginning that you're an expert on solar energy, so this is presumably going to come in very useful. You're going to have a centrally heated mud hut. I think I should certainly make moves in that direction, and I would like to be marooned in a nice sunny part of the world, therefore. Oh, that's good. All right, well then I can also have a solar still and have nice fresh water.

Presenter31:10

And your book. You have the Bible and you have the complete works of Shakespeare. What other book are you going to take?

Presenter31:18

I think I would take Proust's Remembrance of Things Past, which I read first about ten years ago, and it took me three years of an evening reading, and a wonderful, wonderful work it is, and it would be a pleasure to have the time to sit down and read it again. Lots in it, and plenty to think about. A a wonderful book. Every sentence strikes home.

Presenter31:40

And your luxury.

Presenter31:41

Well, I would like very much to take a portable ship to shore radio telephone, but I'm not sure you're going to allow this. I don't think I am for one moment.

Presenter31:51

Too bad. And I'm also told that a four poster bed is ruled out, which is too bad, because we have one. You might live in it, you see. That's the problem with four posters. It would be of practical use. This must be a luxury which is of no help to you whatsoever, but just gives you spiritual pleasure. Right. Well, the reason I would have liked to have taken my four poster bed is not merely because it's the most comfortable bed in the whole world, but because what I will take, if you will allow this, is the wherewithal to embroider some hangings for it.

Presenter32:21

Which is another project I should think that would take three years. Needles, cotton, and a bolt of material. Exactly. Mary Archer, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs. Thank you.

Speaker 132:40

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