Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A lexicographer and chief editor of the Oxford English Dictionary.
On the island
Eight records
Scottish National Orchestra and Chorus
When I was at school in a town called Wanganui in New Zealand, like so many schools, we had school assemblies with the music teacher requiring us all to sing. There were many songs that we were all persuaded to sing, but the Skyboat Song is one particularly that I remember.
St. Joseph's Maori Girls' College Choir
New Zealand, as you doubtless know, has got two major groups of people, the Pakehas, the white people, and the Maoris. And I've chosen one called Pokari Kari Ana, which is a love song, a waiata of the Maori people. It is a modern song, not a traditional one. Nevertheless, it gives the impression of Maori Dom.
E lucevan le stelle (from Tosca)
we went to the opera in Trieste. And then we went down to Rome and had the unforgettable experience of going to the baths of Caracalla and hearing the opera again. With names one had heard of. Benjamino Gigli, for instance... It was a gorgeous experience, and I shan't forget Benjamino Gigli.
Die ForelleFavourite
Isabel Bailey introduced me to one of the most glorious melodies of all time, De Forel the Trout. and she hasn't herself recorded it, though she sang it to us in nineteen forty six or nineteen forty seven. And I've therefore decided to choose Elizabeth Schwartzkopf singing the trout.
Academy of St Martin in the Fields
Moreland College is the college I came to in Oxford, and CS Lewis spoke to me about Mozart. And of course one has an empire of music in Mozart. One doesn't know where to turn. But to me a small but characteristic piece of his whole work is Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.
Hymnus Eucharisticus (Te Deum Patrem Colimus)
Choir of Magdalen College, Oxford
On the first of May each year. A hymn, a Latin hymn, is sung from the Tar, and you know I was at Maudlin for four years or so, and I've been to the ceremony many, many times, especially when my children were young, but I've never actually heard this hymn.
Were I Laid on Greenland's Coast (from The Beggar's Opera)
John Cameron and Elsie Morrison
associated with nineteen seventy six, a rather dramatic year from my point of view, when my first marriage broke up. and later in the year I remarried. Elizabeth was working in London, I was working in Oxford. I was flying up and down the M forty, and when I arrived, as often as not, I noticed that she had the Beggars' Opera playing on her record player, and soon discerned that of all the ballads that MacHeath and Polly Peacham were playing, the one that she really loved was Were I Laid on Greenland's Coast
Let the Bright Seraphim (from Samson)
in nineteen eighty five I think anybody's choice must be the remarkable Handel. It is his tercent Henry, born in sixteen eighty five. And out of his prodigious works, because of the associations of it, and because Kiri Te Kanawa is the singer, a country woman of Milan from New Zealand.
In conversation
Presenter asks
3:13What did you want to be [when you were growing up]?
I wasn't sure. It was quite clear to me that my mother and father, who were pretty desperately poor, hadn't achieved very much by doing what they had done. They kept telling me that I must get myself educated... and you'll be beyond the poverty barrier. And that, I suppose, if I rationalise it now, was roughly speaking what I was trying to do.
Presenter asks
4:14Where did you serve [during the war]?
I served first of all in a province of New Zealand called the Wairapa and went round helping to prepare maps... Then I went off to the real war in Italy. and there was involved in fixing the position of our guns and fixing the position of German guns so that we could fire our guns precisely on to them at any time that we chose to.
Presenter asks
18:27How soon did it become apparent that one volume wasn't going to be enough [for the OED supplement]?
quite early on and... Bear in mind that it was fifteen years from the time I started before even the first volume appeared... From the time Volume one came out, it was quite clear it was going to be a three volume dictionary. It didn't become clear that it was to be a four volume dictionary until we were well into the second one.
The keepsakes
The book
Plato
It's very difficult to choose one book, but I think my choice would be Plato's Republic, with the Greek on one side and the English on the other, one of the greatest books ever written.
The luxury
MS Junius 1 (Ormulum manuscript)
Yes, that would be my luxury MS. Junior's one, which I could pore over without fear of anyone wanting to look at it, to poke about with it. It would be mine.
Presenter asks
21:13What about obscenities [in the dictionary]?
Yes, they go into the dictionary just in the ordinary way. We take a deep breath and define the obscene words just as we would define a word in anatomy or in physiology... Slang goes in in great abundance. Slang is the language of the future. Must be recorded. However ephemeral.
Presenter asks
31:25Would you try to escape [from the island]?
No. No, and I answered that quite seriously, not frivolously. I lexicographers are by nature hermits... I worked in a tiny house, which I called disgracefully a hovel, in Walton Crescent, in Oxford, for some time. I was never happier than working in those circumstances.
“They kept telling me that I must get myself educated. It wasn't clear to me whether they meant a trade or to become a schoolmaster or what. But get yourself educated and you'll be beyond the poverty barrier.”
“Slang is the language of the future. Must be recorded. However ephemeral.”
“I'm just a little anxious about the way that theoretical linguistics is taking the soul and the heart out of the English language. I feel that in my bones. I'm trying to restore some quality of imagination to the whole subject. It's too arid at the moment, too scientifically handled, as if the English language is a structure that can be compared with something that is mechanical.”
“lexicographers are by nature hermits. Nobody has particularly noticed this. But James Murray worked in a corrugated iron shed in his garden on his dictionary. Doctor Johnson worked in the garret when he was working on his dictionary. I worked in a tiny house, which I called disgracefully a hovel, in Walton Crescent, in Oxford, for some time. I was never happier than working in those circumstances.”