Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Internationally regarded historian whose best-selling books bring the past to life through great human understanding, scholarship, and vivid readability.
On the island
Eight records
I came from an unmusical home, and when I fell in love I also fell in love with music and opera, which remains my great passion. I was seventeen, and my first boyfriend took me to the marriage of Figaro, and so it's associated with first love.
The Bells of Magdalen College, Oxford
These are the bells of Morden College, Oxford, and bells are tremendously important to me in a Proustian way. Whenever I hear bells I think of my childhood.
Winterstürme wichen dem Wonnemond
This is Wagner, and George Weidenfeldt first took me to the whole ring in a week... and I've chosen Placido Domingo singing, because he's my ultimate hero, and he sings to me, directly to me, whenever he's on stage or on a C D.
Sanctus (from Mass for Five Voices)
Choir of St John's College, Cambridge
William Bird is very important to me. He was a Catholic in the time of Queen Elizabeth, who managed to serve the Queen in the Chapel Royal, and also compose masses for the Catholics who were secret refuseniks, as we might call them, or recusants.
This is Janet Baker singing from Orfeo, Gluk's Orfeo. She's singing, I think, the most moving song of all, What Shall I Do Without Eurydice? And Marie Antoinette introduced Gluck to Paris.
Symphony No. 73 in D major, 'La Chasse' (or 'L'impériale' / 'La Reine')
This is from Haydn Larraine, and it's so moving, because when Marie Antoinette was imprisoned in the Tower shortly before her execution, the guards who were sorry for her brought her a harpsichord, and there was a scrap of music by coincidence on it, which was a piece of Haydn which had been composed for her...
String Quartet No. 15 in A minor, Op. 132 (Third Movement)
Well, this is Harold's favorite piece of music. He loves it. It's the slow movement from Beethoven's string quartet.
Piano Concerto No. 23 in A major, K. 488 (Third Movement)Favourite
This is Mitzuko Uchida playing Mozart, Mozart my favourite composer, and Mitzko my favourite interpreter of Mozart.
In conversation
Presenter asks
2:35How did you manage to write all of these books while being the mother of six children?
I don't know if I knew I'd bottle it and sell it. All I can remember is being extremely exhausted most of the time. At the same time, having always a project on the go, it gave me something to have to myself. And I think my children will confirm this. I used to sort of shut the door and put a notice on it, sort of more or less saying don't come in.
Presenter asks
4:35Was it a close family, a competitive family [growing up as one of eight children]?
It was certainly a very competitive family, great talkers and debaters, and somebody once said Pakenhams talk very fast, and I said yes, of course they do, because if they left a silence, an enigmatic silence, somebody else would quickly fill it.
Presenter asks
5:48What sort of people were your parents as a child?
My mother was tremendous lively Quick. terribly attractive... My father, for a long time I sort of mixed him up with Jesus Christ, because he was like gentle Jesus, meek and mild. He never spoke a word of anger at all, never really spoke to us in any case, but sat in a deck chair reading a book.
The keepsakes
The book
The Collected Works of Sir Walter Scott
Sir Walter Scott
Scott's wildly out of fashion, but I adore him, and they're so long and so colourful I owe a great deal to Scott in kindling my interest in history, Kennilworth, Ivanhoe, and all of that. So I think I'll have a good time.
The luxury
I have this fantasy about swimming just in ropes and ropes of false pearls, masses of false pearls, all round me, and there'll be nobody to see, so in I will go, swimming about with my pearls round my neck.
Presenter asks
18:48How do you begin going about researching such immense historical figures?
I generally begin by just trying to get the main date straight in my head, so I've got a little plan, and I write down about ten questions that I would want to find answered in a book.
Presenter asks
27:53How did you yourself handle things [when Harold Pinter was seriously ill]?
I don't think it's more difficult. I think it's difficult i in quite a different way, because all the time you mustn't show endless anguish. That's the last thing people need. The great fear, as I call it, which is that they will die, is always with you. But you simply can't indulge yourself, except in the watches of the night when you can't help it. So you must be calm.
“I think the moment when it's not quite such a playground is when you have to sit down and actually write the book and make sense of it all. But I love research. I do all my own research and I enjoy it...”
“What luck to have your first serious historical book, a bestseller, is is so fortunate because booksellers love you. They always think you might do it again.”
“How can I get through life if I don't write? At least for a few hours a day. I stopped thinking about him and his plight, and I immerse myself in the plight of Louis XIV.”