Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
British Conservative politician and the last Governor of Hong Kong, known for defending human rights before the 1997 handover.
On the island
Eight records
Cello Concerto in E minor, Op. 85
Jacqueline du Pré, London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir John Barbirolli
Elgar's one of my favourite composers. I also very much love the cello. Uh and uh you put the two together and you've got one of my favourite pieces of music, which I've always thought gives the lie to any suggestion that the English aren't romantic.
Te Deum in C major, Hob. XXIIIc:2
The English Concert and Choir, directed by Trevor Pinnock
This I first heard in St Mark's in Venice on New Year's Eve in 1989. We'd gone there for a wonderful family holiday and I can remember the doors of the church being thrown open, that wonderful golden screen turned so that it faced the congregation, and hearing this Te Deum pouring out of the church, it was wonderful.
The next track is one of my favourite pop songs. It's The Rolling Stones. And I'm playing it for one particularly substantial reason, and that is the first dance I ever took my wife to, The Rolling Stones, with a band. It was the Maudlin commemoration ball in about 1963 or 64.
Mir ist so wunderbar (from Fidelio)
It's from Fidelio, it's Mirist Sovunde Bar, and it was used as the theme tune for a film which the BBC made about me and my family when I was a junior minister in Northern Ireland, which I remember being memorably reviewed by Simon Hoggart as being like Elvira Madigan Without the Suicide Pact.
Sound the Trumpet (from Come Ye Sons of Art)
Alfred Deller and John Whitworth
I can remember hearing this sung for the first time at a Bath Festival performance in Wells Cathedral, which is one of my favourite cathedrals in the world.
The next piece of music, which um isn't uh offered up with any autobiographical intent, I promise you, is Handle with Care by the Travelling Wilburys, uh some of my favourite pop musicians, Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison, George Harrison, and so on and it's one of my favourite pop records.
Kyrie (from Great Mass in C minor, K. 427)Favourite
I think this is a splendid piece of choral music. I shall play it very, very loud on my desert island.
Im Abendrot (from Four Last Songs)
Jessye Norman, with the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, conducted by Kurt Masur
The last record is um the record really I don't want to sound morbid um that I'd quite like to go out to, um in every sense of the word. It's Jesse Norman singing at Gloming in Abbendrot, uh the last of Strauss's four last songs, and I think it's pretty well the last thing that Strauss ever wrote.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:59How important is it to you, that sort of warmth that you meet in the streets, because you've suffered such terrible insults from the Chinese?
Well, I'm pretty thick-skinned. I I always feel that um if people haven't got a very good argument they hurl abuse at you … But you're right in saying that in order to avoid feeling isolated, in order to ensure that one still has some uh contact with reality, getting around meeting people is important for me personally and it's certainly important for my uh morale.
Presenter asks
5:23Was the offer [of the Hong Kong governorship] from John Major a complete surprise when it came within hours of your losing your seat at the last election?
No, I didn't know it would would be could be on the cards. I'd actually thought for some time um that it was likely that I'd lose my seat. When I told the Prime Minister what I thought the election results were going to be and gave him a list of seats that we would win and a list of seats that we would lose, he was shocked to see that um I'd put Bath on the list of seats that we would lose.
Presenter asks
7:09It was a pretty devastating experience, wasn't it? You looked very hurt [losing your seat in Bath].
The keepsakes
The book
Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes
it's the most marvellous collection of poems and fragments from poems
The luxury
I could sit there um every evening and uh contemplate um the eternal verities
It was a very bruising experience. Nobody should go into politics thinking that politics is about gratitude. It it isn't, it shouldn't be. People have a perfect right to make choices. But I'd had a relationship with Bath, and not only the fact that I lost, but the way I lost, and the behaviour of some people, were were extremely hurtful.
Presenter asks
16:53How did you justify that to her? What did you say [when telling Mrs Thatcher you would resign if she stood in the second ballot]?
Well, I actually made it clear to her that I'd find it difficult to support her in another ballot. She was extremely good about it. She recognised that some of us did feel that very strongly, did think that she would be in an impossible position after the first vote if she held on to the job narrowly in a second ballot, that it would be weakening for her, that it would be demeaning for a leader as substantial as her. But she was getting advice from other people that she should battle on. I think that was bad advice, and I think a lot of people felt exactly as I did, and exactly as my two colleagues did, but weren't saying so.
Presenter asks
23:12Why did you, as they say, needlessly stir up trouble [with democratic reform in Hong Kong]?
Well, I didn't. And those who think that the al alternative to having occasional arguments with China was a quiet life are kidding themselves the alternative was having endless arguments with Hong Kong and with majority opinion uh in Hong Kong.
“I arrived featherless, and I shall go featherless.”
“I believe very strongly that um if you've got principles you should say what they are and stick to them. Um I I have a very determined view of um what the world um should be like, and I'm not sure what the point of going into politics is and un unless you're like that.”
“I think it's an important part of being sanely alive to think about not being alive.”
“I think that for years after 1997, some people are going to be saying that we tried to do too much to safeguard Hong Kong's civil liberties. Others will be saying that we did too little. I very much hope history doesn't judge the latter to be the case.”