Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Pilot who held the world record for most flight deck landings (2407) for 65 years.
On the island
Eight records
The keepsakes
In conversation
Presenter asks
11:33As you were growing up in those early years in Baghdad, in the nineteen fifties, what was expected of young women? What did people think that little girls would go on to do?
You know, I think there's a misconception about that society actually I mean, women were very liberated, you know. I mean, all my friends, I don't I don't have a single friend from Iraq who wasn't a professional.
Presenter asks
12:21You are a notably glamorous and flamboyant dresser yourself. You are wearing the most exquisite shirts and you've got brilliant jewelry. Do you think that… describing your mother there, do you think people can be born with an eye? Is it something you innately have?
I don't know. I think it's also acquired. You know, you see things, you learn from people. My mother used to call me Carmen Miranda, you know, because I always used to wear funny things and wanted to do funny things on my head.
The book
The Complete Works of William Morris
William Morris
the complete works of William Morris. He embodied what for me is true, that socialism is about building beauty.
The luxury
Not recorded.
Presenter asks
14:47Were you aware of breaking the conventional female mold? I mean was that part of what you set out to do or didn't think about not as a gesture but instinctively. For instance I was elected St Pancras Borough Council as one of the youngest members in nineteen [nineteen] thirty seven. And they said, Oh, you go on Maternity and Child Welfare Committee I said, Why should I? I'm not married and I haven't any children. You go on it. You're both.
I said, Highways, sewers and public works. 'Cause that's what makes a city tick. … I wanted a job at the heart of all the problems of the world and of society. And I was lucky in the Prime Minister Harold Wilson because he really believed in the abilities of women, and so that's why he made me Minister of Transport. I was the first ever woman to Minister of Transport in this country.
Presenter asks
26:17It must have taken a tremendous effort to come to terms with [multiple sclerosis].
It does take a tremendous effort because one is naturally very frightened by it, and I was very frightened by it. It took me a long time to come to any kind of grips with what had happened. But then I can say that, in a sense, I'm lucky because the cello repertoire is small.
Presenter asks
28:35The contrast between life as a second class citizen, third class, fourth class in South Africa and and swinging London in the sixties must have been colossal.
Mind-blowing. … To walk the streets of London just to savour this thing of being free … we would walk even very, very late … I always told people we we would ask for directions even when we knew where we were going, just for the incredible fun of having a police officer and a white police officer at that speaking to you courteously, Sir, Madam, and that he was not going to ask, Why are you here? Where is your pass that gives you permission to be here at this time?
Presenter asks
36:24You came from fife and went to Oxford University from the age of 17. How did you find it?
It was a complete culture shock. It was unlike anything I'd ever experienced. … Everything was different. Even the vegetables were different. The accent was different. Nobody understood a word I said.
“When I heard it, I thought to myself, well, yes, I have my irresponsible sides too. Let me tell you one of the things I did which will demonstrate this. I was asked to do the first landing on a small carrier off a Spitfire or a Seafire. … So I did a loop round each span [of the Forth Bridge]. … Fortunately didn't get the side number of the aircraft, and nobody, nobody thought the Navy had a Spitfire. So it all fell on the RF and they were accused of it. I wasn't caught out there. If I had been I think I'd have been court martialled.”
“None of us knew whether we were Sunni or Shia or Christian or Jewish. … And that's the Iraq I loved and I know.”
“I painted the little girl and I looked at her, and at the time, I had no family, I had no siblings, I had nobody. And I was saying, well, okay, I'm on my own here. And, you know, am I going to leave this little girl on her own to die in the hospital? And I made a conscious decision that I wasn't going to.”
“I sat up in bed and and cried that night really and and realized I need to grow up. Refereeing that World Cup final between Australia and New Zealand in front of 85,000 people and millions of people watching at home, scrutinizing every single decision you make under a huge amount of pressure was nothing compared to to the challenge of accepting who I was and in accepting who I was then [it] saved my life.”