Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Journalist and science writer who undertook UN missions to deserts, jungles, and the Arctic, and wrote about them.
On the island
Eight records
Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67
because this recalls the the V campaign during the war. With which you were concerned. With which I was concerned, and I was the person I don't boast of it, I I I was the man who had to put it off the air.
The keepsakes
No book or luxury recorded for this episode.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:28What was your earliest ambition?
My ambition was always to be a writer. I thought of myself as an author with a capital A, but I was prepared to settle, as I did, to become a journalist. I left school at Forfra Academy when I was fifteen. That was the end of my formal education. I became a police court reporter. in Dundee to begin with, uh and then I was sent to London by the Dundee Courier. And I ironically enough did in fact sit in the gallery of the House of Lords so that whenever I have an argument about verbatim reporting I can always say I could have done it.
Presenter asks
5:07When you left the News Chronicle in nineteen fifty six, did you go to another paper?
No. I still [went] on [the] editorial board of The New Statesman, although I left that about two years later.
Presenter asks
5:34And you were appointed Professor of International Relations at the University of Edinburgh. Which department does this come under?
It's under the faculty of law, although I teach no law. It's a a chair to which they appointed me because they had the imagination to see, and I think I am not flattering myself in saying this, that in fact science and technology had become the social dynamics of our time, and that was the profound forces whether it's atomic energy or anything else. The effect which was influencing the politics of our time, and that indeed the great manifestations, even the wars and so on, were the surface manifestations of very profound forces, and therefore the They wanted someone to put international relations into the new context of change.
Presenter asks
8:08Isn't it all happening too fast? Aren't discoveries and developments being pushed out before their implications have been [realized]?
Far too fast. I don't know how you put the checks or the brakes on it, but at the moment we're just not digesting all the big developments that are happening. My problem, a very serious problem, is how, in fact, we can evaluate the the proper use of science for human betterment. You've got so many single track minded people now who are pursuing very clear objectives as far as they are concerned, with no relation to any other objectives in the world. A typical one, of course, is space research, which I I regard as as enormous diversion of human ingenuity. It's not just the money, but you think of all the int amount of intelligence and and skills and so on which are going into escaping from this planet instead of uh concentrating on the real problems which are still unsolved on on on this earth.
“I was a little boy when the war broke out in nineteen fourteen. And uh it was a hot summer day, I remember, and we were barefoot, because we went barefoot on a hot summer day. And I can remember the the scaling of the pipes and the tune of Bonnie Dundee, and the march of the Pfeiffenforfer yeomanry on horseback. out of the town. They were marching on the call up. And uh I I just remember a hand coming down, picking me up. in the town square of Forfa. kicking uh his boot out of the stirrup, putting my foot in the stirrup, and riding me out about a mile out of the town behind the bagpipe. Uh I don't remember that man's face, I only remember his hand, I can't tell you his name, I can't tell you any face or any names, because not one of that troop ever came back. And uh this had a profound effect on me, and I can still, as you see, vividly recall it. And I think that uh while I have never had the courage to be an out and out pacifist, it's completely dictated my attitude to war uh and uh now I'm very actively anti war, not just because of the totality of it today, but simply because th th this awful sense of a a generation which was sacrificed, a generation which was before my time.”
“My ambition was always to be a writer. I thought of myself as an author with a capital A, but I was prepared to settle, as I did, to become a journalist. I left school at Forfra Academy when I was fifteen. That was the end of my formal education. I became a police court reporter. in Dundee to begin with, uh and then I was sent to London by the Dundee Courier. And I ironically enough did in fact sit in the gallery of the House of Lords so that whenever I have an argument about verbatim reporting I can always say I could have done it.”
“I'd like to um suggest that we put on the Fifth Symphony, Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, because this recalls the the V campaign during the war. With which you were concerned. With which I was concerned, and I was the person I don't boast of it, I I I was the man who had to put it off the air. This was because it was too successful. The the B B C and the Overseas Service and Douglas Ritchie as Colonel Britton had built up this enormous uh morale. the army in in Europe. And of course the trouble with an army is when you've done it you've got to uh give it exercise to do, and they were giving it exercise, and some very effective one, but it was cutting across a great many of the military. things and uh Also, what they didn't know, uh which I did unfortunately, we weren't going to invade for another two years. So we were building up a tremendous uh support in Europe, which you're going to frustrate eventually by delay. So I had to get it off the air by telling Colonel Brett, my dear friend Douglas Ritchie, that uh he must announce that he was going temporarily off the air. Let his voice be the voice which would announce the invasion of Europe. Well, he did two years later.”
“A typical one, of course, is space research, which I I regard as as enormous diversion of human ingenuity. It's not just the money, but you think of all the int amount of intelligence and and skills and so on which are going into escaping from this planet instead of uh concentrating on the real problems which are still unsolved on on on this earth.”