Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A leading contemporary historian of post-war Britain, chronicling its political history and constitutional expertise.
On the island
Eight records
Grew up in the last of the age of steam. One of my most intense memories will be on Shap Fen in a banker locomotive in August 1961, when it was too wet to climb in the Lake District. And with Dad I went up on this banking engine, shoving this express over the top of Shap. Running back down to T Bay with the wind howling and the rain lashing. Pure delight, pure heaven.
Italian Concerto (First Movement)
I went with mum and dad in Stroud, we moved to Gloucestershire by this stage, in the early sixties, one Sunday afternoon to a chamber concert. It was just the vitality. I've never forgotten it. It's also one of those pieces of music, Lauren, which I suppose everybody's got them, where they burst into your head if something good and unexpected has happened to you.
George's always mattered to me. My great friend from school, Howell Thomas, he was in the Lake District one foul wet day on Great Gable, and he said, 'Sing window cleaners, will you?' This voice came from somewhere up on the rock. He obviously wanted me to reassure him that everything was all right. And I stood there on my ledge, thinking, 'Now I go window clean in, to earn and on this Bob, you know, classic George.' And so it stayed with me.
String Quintet in C major, D. 956: II. Adagio
Amadeus Quartet with Robert Cohen (cello)
Somebody described listening to I was probably Beethoven, but it certainly applies to this bit of Schubert as eavesdropping on genius. And this for me is the closest I ever get to eavesdropping on genius. It is beauty beyond description.
I grew up with Tom Lehrer because of those older sisters getting the LPs of the … Before I went to Harvard on a Kennedy scholarship in 71, I met Brian MacArthur, who said 'Send me some articles from my America page.' And I think the second one I sent him was on Tom Lehrer. I said, 'I want to do a profile of you portraying you as Harvard's greatest single contribution to Western civilization this century.' 'Do I detect a note of flattery in your voice?' he said. And I've got into journalism because of Tom. Mr. Lehrer, thank you so much. I owe you everything.
London GirlsFavourite
I'd be lost without Enid, my wife, and my daughters, Polly and Cecily. And this song, they would sing, well, I would join in, mind you, on our long car journeys to the north to see my sister Terry … in our old Vauxhall Cavalier, going up the A1, the Great North Road. We'd put Chas and Dave on the tape and belt out London Girls, because that's what my girls are, London girls. And I can see I'll see them grinning away, shrieking this song.
The Pipes and Drums of Leenish
the pure version, I call it, which is the drums and pipes. I went to Scotland with Maury, my younger sister, and dad and mum, in a hired Ford Prefect from Finchley. Covered in camping equipment before the motorways, it was a Herculean journey and Dad's erratic driving. The Sky Boat song always brings it back, and I used to sing it to the girls. They'd sing 'Sing Speed Bonnie' and I'd do speed bonnie boat like a bird on the wing, all this. And I'd do the thunder crashing and the waves roaring … this is the pure version, which goes straight into me and stays in.
How Lovely Is Thy Dwelling Place (from A German Requiem)
It's to remind me of my faith, if I need reminding and I don't want to say something facetious or silly on the threshold of the Pearly Gates. It might offend people, you see. So this'll get me in the right frame of mind, rather than upsetting the archangels with some wise crack.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:57So you enjoy a delicious slice of gossip... Is that part of the job description of a historian, do you think?
When I'm being facetious, I would describe contemporary history as gossip with footnotes. Gossip is the lubricant of society in many ways, however we wrap it up.
Presenter asks
5:23You've described your father as eccentric. In what way?
Well, he introduced me to rock climbing and I remember in the fifties in Finchley he was taking the huge hemp climbing ropes before the nylon ones which were rather chic. And he got on a bus with black shoes, black ankle socks, terrible sort of Colonel Blimp shorts, and an open neck shirt. If they'd been the County the equivalent of a County cricket sport for eccentricity, you would have opened for Middlesex, you know.
Presenter asks
10:26You've credited the welfare state with being instrumental in shaping your outlook on life. When did you first realise how important it was?
I realised quite early on that dad being unemployed a lot of the time, we relied we lived off state benefits. And he was forever deriding the welfare state. And I used to think this is a bit odd because without the welfare state we'd be stuffed.
The keepsakes
The book
Ted Hughes
I've always wished I could write poetry... I'll have all the time in the world to try and get a bit of poetry working.
The luxury
Unlimited quantities of quality white paper and one fountain pen with black ink
so I can write the diary, I can have a go at the poetry.
Presenter asks
22:33You went through a low point as a journalist in 1977. I mean, what happened?
Somebody brought a name into the paper, The Times, of the alleged fourth man in the Burgess-Maclean-Philby affair. And I was asked to check it out. And this chap's name came up in the early days and was ruled out pretty well straight away. And the deeply unprofessional thing was me just concentrating on the early bit, when for some reason he was suspected, 'cause he knew some of them. And I made the terrible mistake professionally it was unforgivable also in human terms it was, 'cause it brought distress to his surviving family. And the story went out under my name, and immediately somebody called me in and told me about Anthony Blunt before that had emerged. So I realised I made a mistake on a Herculean scale. And I persuaded William Rees-Mogg, the editor, to let me recant and apologise to the family in a letter to the Times itself. I deserved to lose my profession. … It bothers me to this day. … I'm still to this very day, Lauren, ashamed of what I did.
Presenter asks
27:43After Her Majesty died last year, you gave an interview here on Radio 4 where you talked about the end of the post-war epoch with a great deal of emotion. I wonder whether you were surprised by your personal response to this historic moment, to her passing?
I was partly surprised, the intensity I felt. I knew I would be shaken by it, because apart from family, and now just Terry, the one who's left, she's the continuous memory. And I've always admired her deeply. But I was shocked by how much I felt it. And when I did weep. And I knew I would at some point, but I didn't know when it would be, and it was when her coffin passed the cenotaph. It was the juxtaposition of the two that set me off. I'm feeling it now, bet. We don't know what her politics were, her private politics at all, or what she thought about this or that bit of the welfare state or not, but she was the queen of the post-war decencies. And she never put her foot wrong constitutionally. Not once did she put her foot wrong. So I find it very hard to be a detached constitutional historian when we lost the Queen.
Presenter asks
30:47Looking back on devoting your career to studying and chronicling your own times, how do you see them from a personal perspective? Do you think this has been a good period to be part of?
I wish my generation could have done better for the country. … With our upbringing and what we were taught and the quality of our universities and our schools and the quality of the health provision. We should have had more of the instinct of the late forties generation than we have, the wartime late forties generation. I think it's still there. It's just beneath the surface, and Covid brought it out. The better angels of our nature were suddenly flapping around everywhere. And the clapping for the health service and the banging of the pots and pans. That was the sound of a people rediscovering themselves. I do live in hope, Lauren, I really do. … I still think it's there for the taking, because we haven't changed that much beneath the surface. The country's brimming with good and decent and capable people. We're better than this, you know. We really are better than that.
“I love it. Because you see a document there, and it is frozen history, and you think you warm it up, and you get the people to warm up, and then they talk to you. And the trick is not to look back in anger and shout at them. … Going back and moving in with them, I think, is a particular pleasure.”
“Eric would send me these packets [of newspaper cuttings], and one arrived not long before he died. And over the tea afterwards, his Shirley, his widow, wonderful lady, said, 'You're wrong about Eric. He was working on another envelope for you when he died.' Now that's unsurpassable, Lauren. He was trying to broaden me still.”
“I'm still to this very day, Lauren, ashamed of what I did [the fourth man error]. I deserved to lose my profession. That was such an awful thing to have done.”
“The Queen came into my seminar. … We were reading Questions of Procedure for Ministers, which is now the ministerial code which has caused Prime Minister Johnson all that bother. And I remember the Queen's very good at signalling it's time to move on to the next bit of her programme. And she said, 'The British constitution has always been puzzling and always will be.' And I thought, but didn't say, 'Well, you're it, Ma'am.' … It brought great consolation to my students that even the Queen didn't know what the constitution was.”
“I was shocked by how much I felt it [the Queen's death]. And when I did weep. And I knew I would at some point, but I didn't know when it would be, and it was when her coffin passed the cenotaph. It was the juxtaposition of the two that set me off. … She was the queen of the post-war decencies.”
“I wish my generation could have done better for the country. … We should have had more of the instinct of the late forties generation than we have, the wartime late forties generation. I think it's still there. It's just beneath the surface, and Covid brought it out. The better angels of our nature were suddenly flapping around everywhere. And the clapping for the health service and the banging of the pots and pans. That was the sound of a people rediscovering themselves.”