Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Politician and historian best known for his candid diaries published in 1993, detailing his political career and personal life.
On the island
Eight records
Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Claudio Abbado
Well, the Leonora Overture, there's a passage in the Leonora Overture that absolutely bowled me over the very first time I heard it, because I was sitting next to the most beautiful woman. I was very, very young, I was 16 or 17, I suppose, and I'd never seen her before.
Candy Kisses is um a song that uh used to be played on the Duke box in Sarasota, Florida, where I worked for a bit as a a bell hop in a hotel. It's always stayed with me because there's a particular line in it.
Well Sentimental Journey was a great Air Force song at the end of the war and I was only or just a teenager then. But it was played on Naffy pianos in echoing Nissenhutz and so on, and in the background the roar of the B seventeens, you know, coming back limping and so on.
A massed Welsh male voice choir
Now the twenty third Psalm is lovely in church, always, of course. It's something which, as far as I know, they haven't yet. castrated the language. But I in this case I've chosen it sung by a male choir because I think it's got a wonderful resonance that way.
It is a most beautiful tune, Bellbird. And For me it it conjures up a lot of escapist visions of great heat and white dust and midsummer and almost deserted but brightly coloured village streets in in Latin countries and very, very navy blue sky and A long, long way from Westminster and winter fog and rain.
The Dead March (from Saul)Favourite
English Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Philip Ledger
Well, this is Handles all. I mean, this is the great piece that is always played in the Abbey whenever a notable dignitary, particularly a Tory, dies. and I first heard it at Anthony Eden's. Memorial service.
Well, this is the sort of archetypal bagpipe tune. I would have to have on the island bagpipes. I think really the first musical instrument I Heard, I suppose, on my grandfather's land in in the west of Scotland. and I associate that music with everything that I really like.
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Mstislav Rostropovich
The Capriccio Italiene was the One of the very first bits of what one would call classical music that I heard on my own that I discovered, if you like, by accident, that just a wonderful magical tune was just coming across the ether at me while I was driving a car.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:12How much of a disappointment is it to you, Alan, that you're better known as a diarist than for any political achievement?
Well, it ought not to be, because uh diaries and the written word last longer and and outlive their authors to a far greater extent than the transient fame that attaches to people who just blunder about in politics. But it is a disappointment.
Presenter asks
1:49How close do you think you came to that Cabinet seat? Do you believe that Mrs Thatcher would eventually have delivered it if she hadn't [left office]?
Yes, I was going to be Secretary of State for Defence, but in 1919, two things got in the way. First of all, Saddam Hussein attacked Kuwait, and that meant that you couldn't change halfway through a war. ... And then she herself got into the most frightful jeopardy ... and she was in such a jam that she couldn't think about secondary appointments.
Presenter asks
6:51Is it the pursuit that you've always enjoyed, or is it the conquest?
I don't much like the terms even pursuit and conquest, because they imply that the object of your desire or affection is in some senses reluctant and To me the the important thing about relationships is that both sides should enjoy them.
The keepsakes
The book
A History of Western Philosophy
Bertrand Russell
I w want a book that gives variety and yet stimulates the mind.
Presenter asks
7:31Your father wrote in his autobiography that in Jane you had found your natural protector, and that you were a lucky man. Is that the case?
Yes, it's very true. ... God knows where I'd have been if I hadn't been married to Jane. I mean I think I sat in the diaries at one point locked up probably for fairly long stretches at a time. ... Oh, just brawling and Kind of breaking the law and, you know, out of God. She's controlling my worst side.
Presenter asks
19:16How much did you care what your father thought of you?
Um I s don't I probably cared more than I pretend. I was very keen to um show my mother that I could [prove myself] ... because my mother was a terrific sort of lip curler ... She was often very cruel.
Presenter asks
22:21Can you describe what it is that you enjoyed about being [in Westminster] as a minister or not? What gave you a buzz?
Going through the door marked members only. A colossal latent charge of static electricity which pervades that place. It is so Redulant of history and circumstance. ... you can draw strengths from this great electric charge in the chamber and in the members' lobby and so on. All that's absolutely marvellous.
“I never lost an election and I've never been sacked and I like to leave it like that.”
“I prefer the company of women to that of men.”
“I think courtesy is is actually quite important in in human relationships. ... you've always got to try and be. Reasonably correct and courteous in the way you treat others until you actually want to thump them, that's different.”
“I keep saying that to myself, because it was my choice to leave, and it is theoretically my choice to return. But others may think differently and and block it.”