Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Historian, journalist and broadcaster, known for books about Ireland and television work.
On the island
Eight records
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The keepsakes
No book or luxury recorded for this episode.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:38You read history at Oxford with a view to what? What did you want to do?
I didn't know. I had absolutely no idea. I read history because that was what I was good at at school, the only thing I was good at at school. And I just thought I'd read history.
Presenter asks
0:51And what happened to you when you came down [from Oxford]?
Well, mercifully, the war … happened to lots of us. The war came. And so one didn't have to decide. As it happened, I was stuck in Ireland for six, nine months after the war began, waiting to be called up to fly aeroplanes for the REF.
Presenter asks
0:58What were you doing in that time [in Ireland]?
I went lu again, a slice of luck, the editor of the Irish Times was a member of the local golf club, and he said, 'Why not come along and do an apprenticeship in the Irish Times', which I was delighted to do.
Presenter asks
1:51What happened when you were demobilized [from the RAF]?
I went back to the Irish Times and worked there for the next seven, eight years.
Presenter asks
3:19You got interested in psychosomatic medicine and wrote books critical of orthodox medicine. What got you onto those lines of thought?
I suppose it was the fact that when I was writing a column for the Irish Times … I used to long for subjects which would get readers' letters to pour in … And there were three obvious ones. Railways … cruelty to animals, and health, medicine. Whatever you wrote about health or medicine there was always a flow of letters. … I had a lot of medical student friends and doctor friends, and they fed me with information. But one of the things which was going on was psychosomatic medicine, which at that time was a new phrase. And I got interested in this, and it used to enrage me, the fact that there wasn't any interest in the higher echelons of the profession about it. And so I became … prejudice against medicine as a profession, as distinct from the individuals who practice it.
Presenter asks
4:42Do you think your campaign with your four books has produced any seeable results?
I don't think the campaign produced results in that sense, but I think what it did was it reflected a mood within the profession as well as outside the profession. And then nowadays I find that doctors, and particular general practitioners, family doctors, are far more open about this. They're far more willing to realise that there are forces at work for health which aren't touched by the kind of medicine which they learnt in their medical training.
“Mercifully, the war — when I say mercifully it's a strange thing, but it happened to lots of us. The war came. And so one didn't have to decide.”
“I used to long for subjects which would get readers' letters to pour in, which helped eke out the column. And there were three obvious ones. Railways fascinated people for some reason or other, cruelty to animals, and health, medicine.”
“It used to enrage me, the fact that there wasn't any interest in the higher echelons of the profession about it. And so I became … prejudice against medicine as a profession, as distinct from the individuals who practice it.”
“I frequently would talk as if I was living in nineteen forty two or people would step back, puzzled, you know, who is this man who's never grown up?”