Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Director of the V&A who transformed the museum into a popular, accessible institution amid controversy.
On the island
Eight records
Prelude from Partita No. 1 in B flat major, BWV 825
I first heard Dino Lipatti and it has remained a firm favourite with me ever since. And I couldn't go to a desert island without it.
Christus Natus Est (from the Midnight Mass)Favourite
Choir of the Monks of the Abbey of Saint Pierre de Solesmes
I find it very difficult to be on a desert island without having some Gregorian chant.
I have been passionately attached to that record ever since.
I'd like to share a part of that with the birds on the desert island.
Duet from Cantata 'Jesu, der du meine Seele', BWV 78
Ursula Buckel, Hertha Töpper, Munich Bach Orchestra, Karl Richter
This is one of the things which I play very frequently indeed.
Dido's Lament (When I am laid in earth) from Dido and Aeneas
Jessye Norman, English Chamber Orchestra, Raymond Leppard
With this heroic majesty, with this tenderness, and with such heart breaking purity.
Piano Sonata No. 31 in A-flat major, Op. 110 (excerpt)
I'd like to hear one of Beethoven's last sonatas.
It's intensely spiritual and devotional and I found it deeply moving.
In conversation
Presenter asks
5:01Was that the kind of child you were in Darlington, just after the war? Were you the sort of child who went frequently to museums?
Oh yes. I think all our family weekends were spent either visiting historic buildings, museums, cathedrals, churches. Both my musical education and my historical and art education was received via the enthusiasm of my parents.
Presenter asks
6:49Tell me about your grandfather, who was quite an influence on you, wasn't he?
Oh well my grandfather was a very well both my grandparents were very special people. They were very musical. … But my grandfather was a maritime engineer. And had the most incredible recall he could remember where he had been many, many years before. And so later when I went to sea, he was able to say to me, 'Well, when you go to Rio de Janeiro, if you go down a particular road in a particular direction, you will see X, Y and Z.' And I tested this on a number of occasions. And he was always right.
Presenter asks
10:25How did that happen? [your meeting with your husband]
Well, a mutual friend of my husband's rang me up and said he was coming to Dublin on business. He didn't know Dublin, and would I show him round? And so rather reluctantly, and I think possibly rather grudgingly and ungraciously, I said, 'Well, if I must, I will.' And really that was the end of the story. Or the beginning of a very long story. … He was a Spanish naval officer from the Republican Navy, an exile from Franco Spain, and he'd served in the British Navy during the war and was working in the Mercantile Marine.
The keepsakes
The luxury
a bottle of really good, expensive, perfumed hand cream
I think I'd love to have a bottle of really good, expensive, perfumed hand cream.
Presenter asks
15:30So did that mean you were terrifically spoilt or did you kind of muck in? [on board the ships]
I think I was tremendously spoilt. Of course, I was very young and it was a Spanish crew, and most of the men were immensely fatherly to me, and I learnt a lot from the boatswain. I got very good at oxyacetylin welding. And I was also quite involved in a pastime which is called chipping and hammering, which means taking the rust off the deck plates. And I was rather good at that. So I think the bo'sun had a good pupil.
Presenter asks
19:51Would he be surprised to see you now as the director of the V&A? Are you a rather different person today from the woman who was married for twenty years to a Spanish seaman?
Well, I certainly wouldn't be doing the job that I'm doing if he was still alive, because it is a total commitment and a complete full time involvement. But I think that inevitably had an impact on what I chose to do.
Presenter asks
27:22How did you keep your nerve? [during the controversy at the V&A]
I have a group of extremely supportive close friends. I have a small, tight, close family. And they closed ranks and were quite incredible, and I owe them a great deal. … Of course the worst moment of it was I had a much loved Old English sheep dog, who was getting extremely old, and I had to have her put down in the middle of that, and that was really a bending point. It was quite intolerable. But the staff in the office and the staff in the Museum understood and were very, very kind.
“I was entirely happy and would go back to that kind of life reading, working, sitting in the sun, and being a connoisseur of ports and port architecture any day that it's offered.”
“When one is at sea life is governed very much by the rising and the setting of the sun. And you can't live in that way in London.”
“To make the V&A much more a part of the national subconscious, to get it into the national bloodstream, that it was a real and very living and very important part of our culture. It wasn't something that was elitist, it wasn't something that was only for the art historian. There's something in the V&A for everybody, and that's what I'd like everybody to know.”