Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Journalist and broadcaster who, as editor of the Sunday Times for eleven years, broke major scoops and challenged the print establishment.
On the island
Eight records
It is one of the most beautiful songs of the twentieth century. My brother was a singer, and music was always being played in our house when he was around. So I grew up with a love of beautiful lyrics and of lyricism and strong melody. And Fire and Rain for me brings back many memories of my younger life.
I've always I'm always interested in music that mixes things, and I guess I'm a Gemini, and this mixes two things. It mixes jazz, which was modern jazz, which was a great passion of mine when I was younger, and it mixes rock music, which always has been a great passion. And they are consummate musicians, Blood, Sweat and Tears. And at university, we listen to this because we as students knew we were a cut above the rest.
Miles Davis, probably the greatest trumpeter the world has known, doing a classical piece, Conciato de Aranuez, by Rodrigo. A very famous tune, and everyone will get it immediately. But it is normally played in guitar, whereas here Davis is playing fugal horn with a hat on the front of it to get that kind of tone. Again, it brings back many happy memories of listening as a youngster.
Nimrod (from Enigma Variations)
I've just moved the spectator into uh uh a house in twenty two O'Queen Street. So you see I I started my working life in twenty four, so in thirty five years I've gone down two blocks... Um Elgar used to go there after his uh performances... So I've chosen Nimrod, which I think is quintessentially British.
Symphony No. 9 in E minor, Op. 95, "From the New World"
Well, I talked um about the United States and um for me the whole sense of promise and of opportunity uh uh and of wonder of the United States is summed up in The New World Symphony uh by Dvorak.
Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 35Favourite
Tchaikovsky wrote the violin concerto when he was in Italy and he had just left his wife and he was with his boyfriend by then. He was living the life he wanted to live. I I know Beethoven's final movement uh of the ninth is an ode to joy, but this is I regard this as the real ode to joy. This is written with such happiness and ver for life that if I have ever felt unhappy, I play this and you can't not but smile.
Golden Slumbers / Carry That Weight
If you come from my generation uh and have a love of music, Then the Beatles were somewhere in it. And this second side of Abbey Road I think is one of the greatest pieces of popular music that's ever been put together on an album. And this is where it reaches a climax with golden slumbers and carry that weight.
For me, the Petro Boys were to the eighties what the Beatles were to the sixties. And I've chosen being boring because it's kind of about how you never thought you would be what you ended up being. But above all It was it says that whatever happened. Good, bad, mistakes, failures, triumph successes. We were never boring, and for me life has never been boring.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:42What was the biggest scoop during your eleven years as editor of the Sunday Times?
Oh, I think the biggest was probably revealing the full extent of Israel's nuclear arsenal. After all, it was big enough for our only source to be kidnapped by Mossad of the Israeli Secret Service. and he then spent sixteen years in jail he's still effectively under house arrest in Israel now.
Presenter asks
3:20How heavily does it prey on you that what makes a brilliant story can ruin people's lives?
Anything that we publish can ruin people's lives and I think if editors were always to think about the consequences of what they publish, you might end up publishing nothing at all. I'm afraid consequences have to look after themselves. Our duty is to establish the truth and publish it.
Presenter asks
9:02Why do you think it is that people concentrate so much on your background?
Because I think it's part of our British culture that we're more obsessed with where people come from than where they're going. There is still a huge class prism through which we see things in our country. I mean, and to some extent it it's all it's all right in in that it's a kind of he fought against the odds. All I'm saying is that the odds were not as highly stacked up against me as some profile writers have uh made out.
The keepsakes
The book
Adam Smith
I thought long and hard about this. I think it would have to be Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. When you have both Margaret Thatcher and Gordon Brown claiming to be the child of Adam Smith, then I kind of feel you've got [an] influential book across the political spectrum.
The luxury
I couldn't bear to be cut off. That would be the worst thing, you know. So I would love, even if it was just a wind up one that you can now get, I'd love a radio that could get me either the B B C World Service or Radio Four.
Presenter asks
16:05Did you feel liberated when you went to be the American correspondent for The Economist?
Yes, I felt liberated, and it changed my views as well. What America gave me was a strong view both of the benefits of the free market or of the market economy, but also of social liberalism, of the idea that people should be allowed to lead their own lives.
Presenter asks
25:52Were there any times during the Wapping dispute when you thought it was not worth it?
No, but there were times when I felt it was very gruelling. The strike was going on and on and on. I couldn't move anywhere. We had to go i to work by a different route every morning. When I came home at night I had to sit in a car half a mile away while my house was searched in case anybody was waiting inside it. But that's the way it was.
Presenter asks
31:50You've never been married and you don't have children. Is that ever a regret?
Yes, I think it is a regret, though I wouldn't count it out. There have been times when I have come close to getting married, and I have there have times when I have been in love. That's just the way the cards have fallen... What I don't regret is getting mari married, having a family and then getting divorced. I kind of think when I look at the dysfunctional families around today, And the social problems that is causing, I think if that's the way it's going to go, it's better to be single and not do any damage.
“Because I think it's part of our British culture that we're more obsessed with where people come from than where they're going.”
“I think journalism becomes dangerous when we think that we're part of the government. We are not. We we're outside them. It is not our job to be cheerleaders for them.”
“The meritocratic revolution has come to an end, um, sadly. And that those who um who think that they have the right to certain jobs, well, they should relax because they're they're gonna get them again.”