Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
2 appearances
Writer and broadcaster whose work popularises history, art, and architecture through books and TV documentaries.
On the island
Eight records
Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 in C-sharp minor
I've always loved the piano and I couldn't possibly think of the rest of my life on a desert island without at least one to listen to, if not one to play. And there was an incredible French Hungarian pianist called Georges Tsifra who played Liszt in particular better than I ever knew Liszt could be played. And this is the second of his Hungarian rhapsodies and I think it's pianism of absolutely stunning virtuosity.
He was an old friend of the family. I remember him singing at the piano from the age of about when I was four or five, and I continued to know him till his death. I think he was possibly the most entertaining man I've ever met in my life.
Kyrie (from Petite messe solennelle)
Lausanne Vocal Ensemble conducted by Michel Corboz
is from one of the great musical misnomers, uh Rossini's Putit messe solonelle. It's little and it's a mass, but it's anything but solemn.
Mild und leise wie er lächelt (Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde)
Kirsten Flagstad with the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Wilhelm Furtwängler
I've loved opera ever since I was first taken to the Magic Figura at the age of sixteen. And I think the three greatest operas are for me, uh, Don Giovanni, Otello and Tristan.
Well, one of my great heroines was a wonderful American torch singer of the nineteen twenties called Ruth Etting. I've always loved popular music, but I sort of got stuck around 1950. I really, only really liked the mu even even the Beatles I find a little avant-garde.
Die ihr aus dunkeln Grüften (from Nine German Arias, HWV 208)
Emma Kirkby with London Baroque
The next one is, well, it's another beautiful girl singing beautifully, but rather a different sort of song. This one is Emma Kirkby, who has, I think, that in a obviously in a very different way, that same sort of marvellous, fresh purity of voice that Ruth Etting has too, or had.
Bassoon Concerto in B-flat major, K. 191: II. Andante ma adagioFavourite
Klaus Thunemann with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields conducted by Sir Neville Marriner
I seem to be the only person I know who thinks that the loveliest music that Mozart ever wrote was his bassoon concerto. He wrote actually three Woodwind concertos, one for bassoon, one for oboe, and one for clarinet, and most people say that the other two are better. I don't think they are, and I think the slow movement of Mozart's bassoon concerto is for me the most hauntingly beautiful, poignantly lovely music that I know in the world.
Beim Schlafengehen (from Four Last Songs)
Lisa della Casa with the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Karl Böhm
My last record is Richard Strauss, again whom I've always loved, and it's one of his four last songs, sung by Lisa de la Casa.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:44Lord Norwich, you have done a great deal of travelling. Have you visited any desert islands?
Well, let me think. I visited Tobago in 1948. I shouldn't think it's a desert island now, but it certainly gave me the feeling that it was a desert island then. I thought it was one of the most beautiful places I'd ever seen in my life. And it's around there that you would like your present desert island to be? Oh, I think so. Well, I don't know, I've never been to the South Seas. I think there might be some rather marvellous ones there. You'll preserve an open mind on this. I think so. I suspect that the West Indies are now probably slightly over-touristed. You know, I think probably the South Seas I better go for.
Presenter asks
5:05Now, as the son of Sir Duff Cooper, afterwards the first Viscount Norwich, a very distinguished statesman and diplomat, your travels must have begun quite early in life.
Well, my father used to wasn't in the diplomatic service before the war. He was a Cabinet minister sitting in London. So I didn't really travel very much before the war. I mean, I went to France a couple of times. But then when war came, my parents were sent out, I think it was in nineteen forty one, to Singapore. And I was sent off as an evacuee to Canada, and I went to a Canadian prep school for 18 months and only got back to England in 1942.
The keepsakes
The luxury
Presenter asks
Whereupon you went to Eton and while still at Eton you attended the Nuremberg trials in 1946?
I attended the Nuremberg Trials for 10 days. It was a pure stroke of luck. The two judges of the Nuremberg trials, Mr. Justice Lawrence and Sir Norman Burkett, passed through Paris on their way back to Nuremberg after Christmas. And Norman Burkitt had a son whom I didn't know, but was almost exactly my age. And they simply said, while they were in Paris, why don't you come along too for a week and see what's going on? So it was a marvelous, exciting opportunity. There were all these villains that I'd heard about and read about and had nightmares about all my life actually sort of parading in front of me.
Presenter asks
6:27Well, then you moved on to the University of Strasbourg. Why Strasbourg?
Because I had a passion for modern languages at the time and I thought that Strasbourg was going to be able to teach me equally good French and German because of being roughly on the borders of the two. And it had a very good Russian section, which I was also very interested in. And then the Royal Navy. And then the Navy. I worked as secretary to the Captain's Secretary in the Captain's Office of a cruiser, HMS Gleopatra, and had a simply marvellous time. Good. And then New College, Oxford, still modern language. Still modern languages? Specializing in Russian, I mean. French and Russian, I think, yeah, yes.
Presenter asks
7:05Was it more or less taken for granted that you would follow your father into the diplomatic zone?
No, not at all. You see,'cause my father was never really a diplomat. He joined when he was very young, but he left in nineteen seventeen to go to the first war, and when he came out of the war, he never went back into it until suddenly he found himself ambassador in Paris in nineteen forty. But that was merely because of sort of wartime conditions. He had always rather discouraged me from doing so. And I had no vocation for it at all. It's just that I I wanted to get married. I knew I had to have a job. The Foreign Service examination was one that you didn't have to prepare for. It cost you 10 bob to join and I thought, well that was good enough. So I risked my tin bulb, and to my very great surprise, ultimately got through. Yes, I bet it's gone up now. It's probably two or three pounds by now.
Presenter asks
0:44Are you confessing [in saying you are a populariser] that you're a bit of a con man?
My words precisely. I've always wondered how I've got away with it. … I hope that everything I've written has been as accurate as I can possibly make it.
Presenter asks
4:11What's it like to have such a beautiful mother [Lady Diana Cooper]?
I could never see it. I mean, she was my mother. I thought everybody's mother was like that. You know, it was the only one I knew. And I took her totally for granted. It was only in very, very great old age when I suddenly, I remember actually sitting by the side of her bed when she was about 92, and I suddenly saw, my God, this is an incredible face.
Presenter asks
6:51What was your mother like as a mother? Was she as mad and as adventurous and devastating as she says she was?
She was hugely adventurous. She wasn't mad, she was immensely sane and sensible, but she was very, very adventurous and she was always moving. … She loved illegality for its own sake.
Presenter asks
9:16How much were you touched by these historic dramas [like your father resigning over Munich]? Do you remember them?
I remember it all happening. What of course I don't think I I don't think I ever realized the significance of it all. Even when obvious things uh happen, like your your your school is evacuated and you have to travel with a gas mask and things all that, you still don't really understand what the implications … are or might be. It's all quite fun, you know? Yes, I enjoyed it all enormously.
Presenter asks
11:05Have you inherited that [terrible] temper [of your father's]?
No. I can't lose my temper. I never have. I've on two or three occasions in my life pretended to. … I think it's a weakness. I think it's it's it it it it's um anyone with a real sort of strong character, an ounce of greatness in them, is able to lose their temper.
Presenter asks
19:31How big a decision was [leaving the diplomatic service to write]?
Enormous. It scared the pants off me. … I remember sitting in the tube on my way there and saying, What am I going to say? and getting in and hearing myself saying, I'm leaving. And as I said it, I thought I'm going to be on all fours tomorrow morning coming back to them saying, Please, please, I didn't mean it. Take me back, take me back. But I didn't, and it worked. The risk, thank God, paid off.
“consolation is what I'm going to need quite a lot of.”
“There were all these villains that I'd heard about and read about and had nightmares about all my life actually sort of parading in front of me.”
“I'm in love with the place. It's as simple as that. I think it's the most, in fact, I know it's the most beautiful city in the world.”
“I think the navy took longer to teach me to tie a bowl in than it's ever taken to teach anyone else to tie a bowl in.”
“I think the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, it will keep me going for a nice long time. It's full of facts. It's full of gloriously funny jokes. And when I'd finished reading it, I could start learning it.”
“I've never discovered a single new historical fact in my life. I think I'm probably quite good at uh reading a lot of very, very, very boring books, dirgid books indeed, and turning them into something digestible uh and, I hope, amusing.”
“I've never left anywhere with such a haunting sense of regret as I left Venice that night. Fortunately, I came back very often later, so it's but I still get that same quickening of the pulse when I arrive after, I don't know, I mean, well over a hundred visits, I should think, by now.”
“I'm trying I'm just trying to get people excited. I'm trying to th I'm trying to make people say gee whiz.”