Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A Marxist historian best known for his seminal works on 19th-century history and his book The Age of Extremes on the 20th century.
On the island
Eight records
not only because Parker is an extraordinary artist, but also because in some ways it reminds me that people must continue to learn.
Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott, BWV 80
Vienna Chamber Orchestra and Academic Choir
the moment has come to have a bit of militancy. I'm sorry to say that Johann Sebastian Bach, whom I'm going to play, never did a cantata about the international. Uh so I'm doing the next best thing.
String Quintet in C major, D. 956
Pablo Casals, Milton Katims, Alexander Schneider, Isaac Stern, and Paul Tortelier
I suppose it brings out that The world is an extraordinary place and a place of deep emotions but not necessarily of fun.
Partly because I cannot conceive of the rest of my life when I cannot listen to Billy Holiday. who was a genius.
Minuet from Orpheus in the Underworld
Paris Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus, conducted by René Leibowitz
Firstly, because it reminds me of Paris... Secondly, because Offenbach is consistently unsentimental... and third, because he's consistently funny and witty and a good composer.
it reminds me of A splendid day in Italy. In Tuscany, With some friends.
Slow GrindFavourite
I can listen to this stuff for ever. Once again, it's a blues.
Der Abschied (from Das Lied von der Erde)
Kathleen Ferrier, with the Vienna Philharmonic, conducted by Bruno Walter
Its Mahler's Lead von der Erde. which I find profoundly moving.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:47So you admit defeat, do you, Professor Hobsbawm, that Marxist Leninism is a dead duck?
The Soviet Union and the October Revolution to which in my Very young teenage I committed myself, has obviously been defeated and won't return again. I don't think the cause has been defeated. But at least it will not be realized, if at all, in the way in which we thought it was going to be realized.
Presenter asks
2:00Is your ability to intellectualize the reasons for its [the Communist Utopia's] demise constant, or do you sometimes have you ever reacted emotionally to it?
Of course, I've been depressed. continue to be depressed. It was a good cause, and in the last decades, it seems to me, the cause of social justice and social equality has retreated. repeated rapidly. I can't be other than depressed under these circumstances.
Presenter asks
7:53What do you remember of those months after Hitler came to power in January thirty three? How did things change?
As far as I myself was concerned, obviously they didn't change. We weren't affected by it. We were we were English. We were not German. Consequently, the worst that could conceivably have happened is being expelled. But, as far as other people are concerned, we knew that in some ways this was the end and the terrible Dangerous period had begun.
The keepsakes
The book
Pablo Neruda
I've read some of it, and I read some of it on, I'm told, where you have to do it, on a sort of semi-desert island situation, like on the hills overlooking Machu Picchu. It's written about Machu Picchu. But there's so much in it that I haven't read. Take me a long time to read, and so, anyway, that would be something to get on with.
Presenter asks
12:17If you'd known the terrible things that were taking place in the Soviet Union at that time in the name of Communism... would you still have remained loyal?
Well, in the first place we didn't know we didn't know the extent of it. ... In the second place, insofar as people told us, we Didn't believe them. Didn't want to believe them, perhaps. We didn't believe them.
Presenter asks
20:48Why didn't you [resign from the Communist Party in 1956 during the invasion of Hungary]?
I think I didn't wish to deny The whole of my life? We had substantially exactly the same views, my friends and myself, those who left and those who didn't. and we remained friends afterwards. I can't explain why personally I decided, perhaps also, I didn't want to suggest to anybody that I was trying to get an advantage. by abandoning uh views which in the past had could not have been said to bring me anything except disadvantage.
Presenter asks
31:06What in your view can we believe in now? What are your values?
I still believe in the old values of the eighteenth century Enlightenment. In reason In education, in the improvement, if not the perfectibility, of human beings and in the attempts at any rate to establish liberty, equality, fraternity, or life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, or any of these other marvellous slogans which we owe to Uh the late eighteenth century.
“Much of my life, he admitted recently, has been devoted to a cause that has plainly failed. But there is nothing that can sharpen the historian's mind like defeat.”
“The commitment particularly in the nineteen thirties, we were all deeply, profoundly committed there wasn't anything that was more important in life. then the great cause.”
“I think one of the great advantages of having been alive as a Communist. is that nobody can accuse you of having been in it for the sake of careerism, or for the sake of making money, or for the sake of getting famous or a celebrity. I didn't wish to lose that moral high ground.”
“I fear that if we don't change we shall simply get used to living under conditions which ought not to be tolerated by civilized people. but will be tolerated because human beings can get used to almost everything.”