Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
BBC's Far East correspondent, who reported on the British nuclear test on Christmas Island.
On the island
Eight records
Brandenburg Concerto No. 4 in G major, BWV 1049Favourite
English Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Benjamin Britten
I thought of the solitude of a desert island. So I thought one must have some great and enduring music. And in recent years I've listened more to Bach than ever before. So I thought I would have one of his records. That would be a great standby.
Nocturne in D-flat major, Op. 27, No. 2
when I was much, much younger and was beginning to realize that there was such a thing as music and that it could be something extremely beautiful, I was introduced to Chopin's music.
in the thirties, I and my brother used to go to France a bit and travel a bit, and life seemed very young and gay. And associated in my memory with those days is that song, These Foolish Things.
A song about the rivers of Yunnan
as we've been talking so much about the Far East, I would like a Chinese folk song.
Zuhälterballade (The Pimp's Ballad)
Members of the original 1928 Berlin cast
on a desert island you must keep in touch somehow psychologically with the big cities and society. And when I think of big cities and the down-to-earth life that I think of Bert Brecht... and I would like to have a song from the Drygossian Oprah where they MacHeath.
the next one comes under the category of Cheering Up. This is such an uplifting song
on this desert island I think, as I said before, one would have to guard against depression. And when I think of stirring tunes, I think of some of these hymns we used to sing when we were young.
The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo / I've Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts
when I first used to enjoy London, and the bookshops and the theatres and all that sort of thing. The street piano jangling away seemed absolutely a part of it, and I think I would have some nostalgic delight on this desert island listening to that kind of noise.
In conversation
Presenter asks
4:48What took you into journalism?
It was something rather running in the family. My grandfather was a journalist, but also my uncle, my father's brother, was a journalist, and I was very fond of him. And I think he had a great influence on me. But I think even without him, I'd have wanted to be one. Somehow the idea of … writing things and having them printed and reproduced. There's something very exciting about this.
Presenter asks
5:07How did you start [in journalism]?
I remember saying to my uncle, What am I going to do about it? How can I how can I make a beginning? He said there's only one way to be a journalist, and that's to be one. And I got a job on a newspaper in Wimbledon called the Wimbledon Advertiser, which has ceased to exist many, many years ago. And I never found anybody who bought it. It really was a very humble beginning.
Presenter asks
5:53Was there any news gathering to be done while you were in uniform [during the war]?
Only right at the end. I was ended up in Hamburg and was secunded to what was called an information control unit. And that meant I helped to run a German newspaper published for the German population there.
The keepsakes
The book
Marcel Proust
because it's reading that's like painting the fourth bridge. By the time you get to the end of it, it's time to start at the beginning again.
Presenter asks
7:52How did this [becoming a foreign correspondent] come about?
Well, I think there's an element of luck in this too, you know. I very much wanted to be a foreign correspondent, and if that's the case, you must let as many people know as possible, and I think I made myself a perfect nuisance to the foreign editor. And it did so happen that the A post in Singapore was likely to become vacant. And I suppose nobody else was very, very keen on having a job right on the equator. It it it was uncomfortable. And so I got the job.
Presenter asks
15:11What impression did you get about how much they [the Chinese] knew of what was going on in the outside world?
Awfully hard to answer this. I think they have means of knowing. The Communists themselves tell you that they now publish bulletins containing news reports by Western agencies and that it's perfectly possible for anybody who's interested to keep abreast of events in the outside world. But the impression I had was that people are so bound up with their daily work and affairs inside China that they're not really very interested in the outside world.
“The business of interpreting events to people back in England is the biggest challenge that a Far East correspondent ever can face. You're dealing with intelligent people, but who don't know the East, and you've got to explain it in terms which can be understood.”
“This inscrutable label that the Chinese and other Eastern races have is of course is nonsense. It is absolute nonsense. The Chinese, of course, vary as much between North and South as in Europe you have the var variety between Swedes and Sicilians. Enormous variety of temperament.”
“I'm not very good at making a go of things and putting things together and tying things together and cooking and so on. And I would have a very hard two or three weeks to start with, I'm sure, of this. To try to escape.”