Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Journalist and politician who reported the Abyssinian War, was the model for Scoop, and later a Cabinet minister and editor of the Daily Telegraph.
On the island
Eight records
Before the war I wasn't a very highbrow viewer of the theatre, but I loved the palladium, I loved the the performance of The Crazy Gang, and I loved above all Flanagan singing. Very evocative voice. So Flanagan is top of my pre-war pops.
Every year during the war, no matter what the war was doing, Churchill went to Harrow Songs. He loved them. He thought that they were great songs, great music, and he usually cried. And so, because I was eventually a bit of his government, I thought it would be appropriate to have one of the Harrow songs, one of the less known ones here, sir.
One of the jollier things I thought about the pre war, the war, and the post war years was no coward. I regarded him as a very well, a talent to amuse is an understatement. He's a heroic figure to me, no old card.
Louis Kentner with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Muir Matheson
I do remember one very low point in the war when I didn't honestly see to myself that I couldn't discuss it with anyone how we were going to win. And my wife and I went to a cinema in York. We were stationed up there and she was living up there. And we saw a film called Danvis Moonlife. which had a music in it was part of Warsaw Concerto. And it's always stuck in my head as being a time when I was being a bit faithless.
The one memory I carry out of the war. it still sort of echoes in me sometimes, is the sound of soldiers singing sentimental songs. After an answer concert. Sometimes we have an answer concert just before We were going into battle. And the voices of the soldiers singing songs like From the Time You Say Goodbye. still stay in my mind, is one of the things I really remember from the Second World War.
Tasmin Little with the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Andrew Davis
I I've reached the age now when I don't think people take enough notice. Of the beautiful things that happen in life, the flowers that shine at different times of year. And so occasionally. Usually happens after I've seen people, too many people, using their mobile telephones and thinking of nothing else. Occasionally I do in my Monday column in the telegraph. remind people of a scent in the garden, a flower to smell, a bird to watch, something that is really worth while, makes life worth living. And I think Vaughan Williams expresses it very well.
To get Elton John into Westminster Abbey, I thought, was remarkable, and yet it fitted perfectly.
God Bless AfricaFavourite
The Choir of the South African College of Music
One of my favorite places is Africa. I've come to see that a lot of people would suffer a lot more. If we didn't have aid agencies, if we didn't have some of the young people we've got in this country who go out, live very uncomfortably and sometimes dangerously, trying to help poor people in Africa and Asia to lead a better life. And not long ago I remember going to a school in Zimbabwe which was still getting supplementary rations because of the drought. And the school rallied round and we all sang together God bless Africa and it was a very moving moment.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:31Do you feel like a piece of walking history?
Not at all, really. I'll be very lucky. That's the word I use about my life. I've been lucky to have a front seat all expenses paid, too, at so many different events. Journalists have that privilege, but they don't always have it for seventy years.
Presenter asks
1:54Is it journalism, not politics, that is your first love?
I was very happy as a constituency MP. I was never blissfully happy, Erza. … As a minister, there were too many disciplines attached to it. … You depend on yourself, you depend on your ideas, you depend on your own uh inspiration. If you were a minister, you depend mainly on other people's inspiration, I think.
Presenter asks
4:31Did you expect to have to work, or was that not what your family did?
No. In theory my father owned a lot of acres, and I had no particular hope or expectation of inheriting them. But no, work didn't seem to me an absolute essential in life. until my father got caught up in a Wall Street crash. So I left school a year early, and I got through my exams with a very nice governess, and then there was an interval.
The keepsakes
The book
Thomas Cranmer
The unamended prayer book is what I take. Because if you really want to see good writing, there it is.
The luxury
But I'd like to keep clean shaven on the desert [island], so the aftershave would be very helpful. I have to do it with a shell.
Presenter asks
5:41How did you get your first job on the Morning Post?
I ran into, or was put into, the office of the managing editor of the Morning Post, and he had just got acquired A gun in my uncle's shoot at Chaughton. And my uncle had no use for any job for his own sons, and mentioned me. So basically I got a job as a beginner on the Morning Post in return for a gun in my uncle's chute for the managing editor
Presenter asks
9:52How did you feel about Neville Chamberlain's appeasement policy when he returned from Munich?
I had strong views, because I was doing civil defense of the telegraph, and I knew How very badly we were prepared against an aerial war. So I had some hunch as to why Chamberlain felt it necessary to go and see Hitler … and I saw him back Munich that terrible night when he came back and said this is peace in our time, and we all doubted it. Uh no, I don't think we did all doubt it. Many of us were deeply relieved there wasn't going to be a war tomorrow.
Presenter asks
16:01How did you win the Military Cross?
You have to put all this in the context of war. … on this particular occasion I think I was told to attack a bridge, or get a bridge over some canal. And it was a bit of a folly, really. We couldn't get any support from guns and so on, and so we started to cross the bridge and got mown down. So they called it off. Then we had to get the wounded back. And I lost I mean The sorrow of c commit I mean, I lost quite a lot of chaps and and two two junior officers. who I felt rather to blame for. So it wasn't a happy time at all.
Presenter asks
21:00What was it like when you questioned John Profumo about his relationship with Christine Keeler?
It was a difficult time, no doubt about it difficult for the Cabinet, difficult for me, because I had been involved in talking to Jack one night when somebody made an allegation in the House of Commons, and some absurd hours two in the morning we summoned Jack, and six of us sat in judgment. … I sometimes wonder whether we hadn't if we hadn't had this court-martial at two in the morning, how far we contributed to his downfall by just doing that. I've often thought of that, often thought of that.
Presenter asks
26:04What made the Princess of Wales so effective when she visited victims of landmines in Bosnia?
She managed to bring them comfort in a way that I hadn't seen done before. She was a mixture of a sort of princess and a hospital nurse. … she put an arm round this woman's shoulder. and brought um the eyes could see, I mean immediate comfort. And I mean, to do it with silence, to bring condolences with silence, is quite quite something. So she had this gift.
“I've been lucky to have a front seat all expenses paid, too, at so many different events. Journalists have that privilege, but they don't always have it for seventy years.”
“I think that people who went through the war and survived it owed a bit more to posterity than than other people.”
“I enjoy the life I lead now, very much. I enjoy my life now as much as I have ever enjoyed it.”
“I often say to Doctor who kinda took me over, I say, You know, I have a man that died in his boots and not in his bed, so don't worry about it.”