Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Academic, active Labour politician, and public servant; Master of Birkbeck College and life peer.
On the island
Eight records
The Song of the Veil (from Don Carlos)
I love the mezzo voice, and she has the most beautiful voice. And it was one of the greatest of productions, opera productions, at the Royal Opera House over the last twenty-five or thirty years.
it reminds me of my father. He used to sing it round the lunch table on Sundays when he'd had a glass of beer or two when we were children, and then again he sang it to my own children when they were young and we always loved it.
This goes back to my late adolescence when I did German at school and German at A level and spent quite a lot of time doing exchanges, staying with German families. And although I don't think I actually heard Surabaya Johnny played in these families, it's a lovely piece of twentieth century semi-popular music.
it was something that Tom used to sing when we first lived together. He had one of those enormous great big tapes that we had in the early sixties of Ella Fitzgerald singing Cole Porter, and this is the one I would choose from that tape.
Adoration de la Terre (from The Rite of Spring)
Berlin Philharmonic (conducted by Herbert von Karajan)
one of the great loves of my life is ballet, classical ballet, and Stravinsky was the great twentieth century composer of ballet music. Very hard to select a piece from all the wonderful works that he wrote for ballet. This piece, however, I think is enormously exciting, and I've chosen it partly because, of course, when it was first played, it was a great scandal in Paris. It was booed, and I think it's a demonstration of how audiences can get things wrong at first.
Soave sia il vento (trio from Così fan tutte)Favourite
It's the most beautiful piece of music. Also I think it would be rather appropriate on this desert island in that what they're singing, the two women and Don Alfonso, is May the wind be gentle and the waves be calm as they're waving goodbye to the lovers as they go off in a boat and I would be thinking may the wind be gentle and the waves be calm and somebody come and get me.
Symphony No. 6 in F major, 'Pastoral'
Berlin Philharmonic (conducted by Herbert von Karajan)
This again is like my previous choice, a just wonderful piece of music. I don't think I could go to a desert island without some Beethoven. What this music would do, I think, is make me think about the English countryside, walking in the Star Valley. I have a little cottage which I share with several friends on the Suffolk Essex border, and I love going there at all times of the year, but I think in particular I would think about walking there in autumn.
Von der Schönheit (from Das Lied von der Erde)
Janet Baker (with Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra conducted by Bernard Haitink)
it's a beautiful piece of music, but it's also a piece of music that was used by Kenneth Macmillan in his great masterwork, The Ballet, The Song of the Earth. When I first saw it in the 1960s, it had a huge impact on me, and I think as well as listening to the music, I would think about the dancing.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:56So having got over the problem of how to address you, there's then the problem of how to categorise you, because you're an academic, but I could as well have said politician, and you were a civil servant, and you very much are a public servant. What do you think of yourself?
I have often thought of myself as a rather marginal person who doesn't quite fit into anything not really scholarly enough to be a proper academic, but too much of an academic to be a really effective politician, and maybe just a bit too political to be a good civil servant or administrator.
Presenter asks
4:27We were talking about titles and categories, Tessa, but what about names? I suppose the phrase that's proved difficult for you to shake off is 'dark-eyed evil genius'. Now, where did that one come from?
Yes, I fear that will be with me till I go to the grave. It was apparently invented by some wag in the Foreign Office when I was working in the Central Policy Review staff on a big piece of work which was known as the Review of Overseas Representation. And there was a bit of a campaign against some of our ideas from people from deep inside the Foreign Office.
The keepsakes
The book
George Eliot
I'm a great admirer of George Eliot, one of the great women writers, and I think that is her best work.
The luxury
tennis wall with racket and balls
I wondered whether I should take a lap top word processor... [but] the alternative is to take one of those walls that you get at smart tennis clubs with a nice piece of concrete in front of it and plenty of balls and a good tennis racket so that I could bang away when I got fed up with swimming, which I don't like nearly as much as playing tennis.
Presenter asks
7:14And have you had any regrets since, just looking back and it was, as you say, a long time ago now, thirty years or more, any regrets that you put that work before full time motherhood?
No, I don't regret that at all. I I regret lots of things about what I did as a mother. Um I regret the fact that I was often terribly impatient and you know, I sometimes you know wish that you know I had spent more time doing certain sorts of things with my children when they were small. But I must say that I I do now have a wonderful relationship with my children and see a great deal of them. They matter hugely to me, and I like to think and hope that I matter to them.
Presenter asks
13:49But what were the political ideas, what were the issues that set you alight at that point? Sixty one it would have been, right?
Yes, South Africa. I arrived at LSE not very long after Sharpville. I think poverty in the third world generally. I met a lot of third world students for the first time in my life. I think inequality within Britain. I learnt through my lectures on the social structure of modern Britain the extent and degree of poverty, which I was unaware of within my own country. All these things radicalised me, there's no doubt about that.
Presenter asks
19:14How much larger a role would you like to play? What's your political ambition really, ideally?
Well, my political ambition is to get rid of a Conservative Government and elect a Labour one. And if that were to happen, and I hope and expect it will at the next General Election, then I would very much like to play some part in working for or in a Labour Government.
Presenter asks
30:41If the rescue came too late and there you were a dusty heap on the beach, what would you like to think that we'd be saying about you back here? What would you like to be, I suppose, remembered for, or as?
I suppose I would like people to remember me as a woman in the second part of the twentieth century who fought to improve opportunities for children from every kind of social background, particularly in relation to education. And I suppose I would like people to remember me as somebody who had a wide range of concerns as far as public policy is concerned.
“I really hate it. I much prefer just to be called Tessa, and I regret the fact that serving my party in the House of Lords means that I have to carry a title with me. I wish I didn't have to be called Baroness Blackstone or Lady Blackstone.”
“I have often thought of myself as a rather marginal person who doesn't quite fit into anything not really scholarly enough to be a proper academic, but too much of an academic to be a really effective politician, and maybe just a bit too political to be a good civil servant or administrator.”
“I think I've accepted that I am an organising kind of person. I like running things. I like things to go smoothly. I like people to be using their energies in a way that seems to me to be constructive. What I don't like about myself is that I'm sometimes terribly impatient and I get cross with people if they're doing things too slowly or if they haven't worked out clearly what is a sensible way of tackling a particular problem. And I do wish I were more patient.”
“Oh, I'll certainly sit there miserably hoping somebody will turn up. I I will be terrible on this desert island. One, I'm not terribly good spending long periods of time on my own. I don't like my own company for more than a few hours. And secondly, I'm terribly impractical. I wouldn't really know how to chop down trees and make a fire. I wouldn't find it very easy to go out and catch fish, and even if I caught one I'd hate killing it. So I'd probably starve quite soon.”
“I suppose I would like people to remember me as a woman in the second part of the twentieth century who fought to improve opportunities for children from every kind of social background, particularly in relation to education. And I suppose I would like people to remember me as somebody who had a wide range of concerns as far as public policy is concerned.”