Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Author, broadcaster and journalist.
On the island
Eight records
Exsultate, jubilate, K. 165Favourite
It seemed to me that her singing of this exultate jubilate is as near as you can get to celestial music. I think if by accident the gates of heaven swung open and you happened to hear what was going on there, it would be something like that.
I think it's a very, very beautiful piece of music, very melodious. I gather that it's by no means, you know ... certain that it's exactly as Albinone would have put it together, but if he happens to be hearing it in the Eternal Shades, I'm sure he'll be well content, because it's very beautiful.
Cello Concerto in B minor, Op. 104
I'm not mad on Vorjak's music, but what I like about this record is the ... Playing of Pablo Casals. I think he's the marvellous player of the cello, and I think in this record you hear him at his best.
Vier letzte Lieder (Four Last Songs): September
I find them immensely moving. ... They've got that extraordinary melancholy in them which is characteristic of the music of the turn of the century, between the Victorian age really and modern times.
Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 61
It's actually, I have to admit, the first piece of classical music. ... that I ever wholly appreciated. I mean, in a sense, it was the beginning of such education as I have in classical music, because we hadn't had this record and I realized how beautiful it was.
Serenade for Strings in E minor, Op. 20: II. Larghetto
Academy of St Martin in the Fields
Now, again, like those songs of Strauss's, this has about it this melancholy, this melancholy that the world that we live in is changing drastically and the things we believe in are going to be challenged drastically and so on, which I note in all the best art of this period between the Victorian age and the twentieth century.
Piano Trio No. 7 in B-flat major, Op. 97 "Archduke"
Daniel Barenboim, Pinchas Zukerman and Jacqueline du Pré
It was so beautifully played, particularly the cello by Jacqueline Dupre. ... normally I hate every form of technology, but this fact that I could through technology listen to her playing was a wonderful thing and it was a very big exception in my distaste for technology.
The Creed (from Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, Op. 29)
It has a sort of longing in it. ... also related the fact when I was in Russia and I was in Kiev when that dreadful famine was on, and I went to church there, and I noticed the same thing in the service this absolute sort of really throwing themselves upon God and saying, Well, there's nothing we can do, we've noth no other hope, nowhere else to look except to you.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:59Have you ever experienced prolonged loneliness?
Yes, I have. But it hasn't worried me too much.
Presenter asks
1:08What would be the worst thing about a desert island apart from the loneliness?
I think simply trying to remain alive. I mean, nobody could be m less competent than I am in matters of sort of uh you know uh building a little hut or um scratching up the earth for food and generally being resourceful.
Presenter asks
4:08Were you brought up to accept [your father's] beliefs?
Very much so. He was an early socialist, an early Fabian, particularly. Yes. And he firmly believed, and entirely convinced me, that if good men like him ever took over government, we should all live in a brotherly, peaceful way ever after.
Presenter asks
15:35Did [the Soviet Union] seem a viable alternative when you got there?
The keepsakes
The book
Samuel Johnson
Dr. Johnson's writings rather than the Boswell because I know that very well and I would therefore take his writings, especially his Lives of the Poets, his Rasselas, his occasional pieces and his verses.
The luxury
a beehive (with necessary equipment)
I thought I'd like to have a beehive. ... I could keep bees ... I would observe them and find them interesting.
I realized a profound truth which is I perhaps wouldn't have learnt unless I'd gone there, makes me very thankful to have gone there, and that is that you cannot make men good. ... by the exercise of power. You have to find some other dynamic, and of course that other dynamic is the dynamic of love, which is the opposite of power.
Presenter asks
21:03How do you look back on your days at the Ministry [of Information]?
I mean, I I would really literally rather do anything in the world than write propaganda. And in a way, it's more painful to write it for a cause that you believe in than for one that you don't. And that's what we were doing.
Presenter asks
27:11Did you make any drastic changes in [Punch] when you took over?
Well, I did really, yes. I'm not sure they were successful, but of course it was imprisoned in the past, you know. ... in its humour and in its make up and everything. And it was absolutely necessary, if it was to survive, to break away from that.
“I was brought up to think of writers as the cream of mankind”
“it made me realize that you could know nothing about a subject whatever and still talk about it. And this is something that Helming Goodst did when I took up television, you see.”
“I think there's nothing more unrewarding than trying to make English people laugh, actually. It's a very thankless task, you know.”
“in so far as you could say what i the pursuit that is worth while in this life it would be to discover reality. And of course discovering reality means discovering God, because God is only a name for reality.”