Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Award-winning journalist and author known for covering global conflicts, especially in the Middle East, and for interviewing Osama bin Laden.
On the island
Eight records
The particular section I I I want to play is in fact meant to sound like the guns of the Western Front. And my father, who was a soldier in the First War, actually played the War Requiem to him, and he couldn't stand it. It was too modern for him. But this bit he admired.
Adagio for StringsFavourite
A piece of music of sort utter conviction that if you listen to this you understand the meaning of real tragedy, that war is about the total failure of the human spirit. It wasn't written about war. But it's a message for someone like me. I've heard it many I play it in Beirut sometimes. It is absolutely devastating.
This Was Their Finest Hour (Speech of June 18th, 1940)
It's the June speech, the most defiant speech that Winston Churchill made during the Second World War. And the reason I'm choosing it is partly because, of course, Winston Churchill's portrait inevitably hung over the living room of my parents' home. But also because, over and over again, more and more frequently, the Blairs and the Bushes of this world think they are Winston Churchill... and when you listen to this, you think, God, the Bushes and the Blairs are midgets of this world. Here is the real leader.
Well, this is a throwback to university days at Lancaster... and over and over again, over throughout the day and night, as I sat there in the evening swatting up on linguistics, they would play Donovan's Mellow Yellow, and it absolutely synonymous to me of university.
Well, it's really chosen by Juan Carlos. We were in the same apartment block. I was up and he was down. And he went to get a glass of red wine. He said, Fiske, I want to play something for you... and he said, Robert, can you imagine that in the 17th century, amid plague and wars, that anyone could write music like this?
Psalm 23 (The Lord's My Shepherd)
Well, this goes really back to my dad again, a man who also had very little self-doubt. And he would insist every Sunday that we went to All Saints' Church in Maidstone for morning matins... every Sunday morning, as he waited for my mother to get dressed for church, he would walk up and down humming and singing the twenty-third psalm.
Well, this is Feyrouz, the only great singer for most Lebanese... she has the most beautiful, melliflous voice that any Lebanese has ever heard. And throughout the civil war, and indeed even in the last war this summer, at the worst moments people will play Feyrouz singing Beirut.
I first heard it at the battlefield of Al-Alamein... And as I was reading the names, the Israeli delegation... played this wonderful piece of music, the Hatikvah. And when I listen to it, I still love this piece of music. I wonder if only the Israeli government could behave with the same dignity and integrity as this piece of music.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:58Does the proximity to death that you so often experience make you feel more vital, more alive?
No. It makes me more angry when I see dead people, especially of course, because mostly I see dead civilians. It makes me realize what a very, very narrow line there is between living and dying... if you saw what I saw in wars... dogs tearing corpses to pieces, women and children bombed in the desert, you would never support a war again. Never, ever.
Presenter asks
2:34What was your first impression when you met Osama bin Laden face to face?
a rather vain man in his robe. He was in the Sudanese desert, and um he thought he was very frightened of me because I was the first foreign journalist he'd ever met... I thought he was a very vulnerable man at that stage. And he talked about his sense of calmness under fire... And I thought, oof, ouch, this is how these people are born.
Presenter asks
7:26Was your father a frightening father?
I obviously worshipped him, because all boys worship their father or want to. But I have very clear memories of him shouting at me, beating me if I interrupted him when he was talking to my mother. And he sent me off to prep school when I was nine years old... And I started to despise that. You have to earn respect, you can't demand it from a child.
The keepsakes
The book
Thomas Malory
Because it's the only book that's ever made me cry. ... And he describes a battle in which an arrow hits him and the pain he feels. And I thought, my goodness, this guy has been in battle.
The luxury
I learned to play the violin. ... so probably I'd like to have my violin ... I'd like to have it restored and see if I can learn to play again.
Presenter asks
10:31What was it about the film Foreign Correspondent that particularly captured your young imagination?
It didn't matter that it was a work of fiction... what was the phrase once used by a Sunday Times war correspondent, Nick Tomlin... All you need as a foreign correspondent are a few facts, passable knowledge of English and rat-like cunning. And the rat-like cunning did appeal to me because I'm a rat-like person when I'm really after a story.
Presenter asks
13:47How did you feel when you saw dead bodies for the first time in Belfast?
I remember the first time I saw a man shot. It was a British soldier... and I saw this soldier topple over and over somersaulting out the back... And I thought, My God, this is real. This is not a movie, Robert. Watch out, watch out... Yes, it was the first conflict I'd covered... it had an effect.
Presenter asks
17:34How did you get out of the situation when you were attacked by Afghan refugees in Pakistan?
I started hitting them, I started bashing them, just like in the boys' own paper, and I was I was crying'cause I hate violence and the last thing I'd ever do is want to hit Muslims in their own country... And they suddenly fell back about twenty feet. And this Imam, this religious man... took me by the arm and led me away
“if you saw what I saw in wars, which you don't because of course television cuts out the bloodiest scenes... dogs tearing corpses to pieces, women and children bombed in the desert, you would never support a war again. Never, ever.”
“refusing the narrative of history, refusing to obey orders, is part of what journalism is about.”
“If you drink in a war, you'll die. You've got to keep your wits about you. Absolutely, totally. I think that if you feel politically passionate about something, you don't fall back on booze and cigarettes, frankly.”
“I'm not happy. I don't enjoy my work at all. But I'm passionate about it and I wouldn't want to live in any other way.”