Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Public servant and banker, renowned as the most accomplished negotiator, instrumental in Marshall Plan and Britain's Common Market entry.
On the island
Eight records
Clarinet Quintet in A major, K. 581Favourite
Gervase de Peyer with members of the Melos Ensemble of London
I regard [it] as Mozart at his most sublime.
Eine kleine Nachtmusik, K. 525
when I was about twelve I tried to learn totally unsuccessfully the violin. But I got into the school band briefly and Anne Kleinen Nachtmusik was our party piece.
Don Giovanni, K. 527: "Madamina, il catalogo è questo"
Samuel Ramey with the Vienna Philharmonic, conducted by Riccardo Muti
It's the one I fell in love with when I first heard it at the age of fifteen. It's Leporello's account of the conquests of his master.
String Quartet in D minor, Op. 76, No. 2 "Fifths"
Haydn to me is a sort of composer for all seasons. And with Beethoven, with Mozart, you have to choose what you want to hear, depending on how you feel. But Haydn you can put on a string quartet or a symphony at any time.
When we went to America, my wife and I, the memory of the depression and the New Deal was still very much alive. And so was the dust storms in Oklahoma, which virtually depopulated Oklahoma. And there was a splendid folk singer called Woody Guthrie, whom we heard then in the flesh, and who wrote these Dust Bowl ballads.
She sang this, I think it was in 1949. when I was chairing a small group of four people who had been asked to recommend to the all the participants the division of Marshall Aid... And we retired to a hotel in the forest of Chantilly. And there we worked it out. And she sang this just about that time. So it became, so to speak, the theme song of Martial Aid.
La Belle Hélène: "Au mont Ida trois déesses"
John Aler with the Choir and Orchestra of the Capitole de Toulouse, conducted by Michel Plasson
I've been a great admirer of Offenbach for a long, long time because I regard him as the only great musician I know who has been a parodist and a satirist. And this is the song from Belle Lein where Paris tells uh the high priest whom he meets how he gave the apple to Venus and as a reward got Helen of Troy.
Triple Concerto in C major, Op. 56
my wife I think this and the clarinet quintet we played earlier were her two favorite pieces, and I love them too. So that's why I've chosen that as the last one.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:30Is there an elixir, a formula [for your remarkable activity at your age] that we should know about?
I wish I could tell you all I know is that I keep going, and the best way to keep going is to keep going. I think the main thing I can say is you've got to keep interested. The minute you don't, you're finished.
Presenter asks
11:17What do you remember about that moment [when the First World War broke out]?
we were away in the mountains on holiday and suddenly we heard that uh the Russians had occupied our little village. We also heard that our house with many others had been burnt down. I think, if I remember rightly, it was the only time I saw my father cry. My mother was much more sturdy in that respect, but they were very upset, needed to say, because we were there just with the clothes we had for our holiday and nothing else.
Presenter asks
27:51How has it been over all these years, as a civil servant, to suppress your own personal views?
I wasn't, so to speak, a civil servant from birth. I mean, I didn't start in the civil servant, and therefore I came in from an academic career. And all a lot of the people I met in the civil service I had met before in a different context. And therefore, there was a certain freedom of expression. And I was very lucky with ministers... I could speak fairly freely to them, and they knew where my sympathies lay both on domestic and international affairs.
The keepsakes
The book
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
if I have to take another one, I would want to take Goethe's Faust, and if I may, I would take it in the German, because that's what I was brought up in.
The luxury
a voice recorder with cassettes and spare batteries
so that I can talk to myself and perhaps record some of my thoughts, and maybe even do another book.
Presenter asks
31:43Do you feel British?
somebody once asked me of my old friend Denis Hamilton when he was editor of the Times. Tell me, the thing I really want to know, what language do you dream in? and I told him it was English. And I think I make Shakespeare responsible for that. I think language is after all I've long concluded that the essence of national identity is language.
“The best negotiation is the one where both parties emerge feeling happy and reasonably satisfied.”
“I think language is after all I've long concluded that the essence of national identity is language. This is really what determines national identity. And anyone I say this to my friends who are Europhobes I said to them, Look, you needn't worry about national i identity. A nation that has Shakespeare as its greatest poet needn't worry about national identity.”