Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Author, traveller, ex-soldier and ex-politician, best known for his clandestine and unauthorised travels in the Soviet Union and Central Asia.
On the island
Eight records
The Regimental Band and Pipes and Drums of the Black Watch
Partly because I heard it played literally in my cradle. My my father was was in the Cameron Islanders and um it was the first pipe tune that I ever knew and it came back into my life when when I became a private in the Cameron Islanders, whatever it was, twenty or thirty years later.
L'Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, conducted by Ernest Ansermet
One of the things that did lighten the darkness a bit in those days was being able to go to the Balshoy Ballet and um they didn't have a very big repertory but they had Sleeping Beauty and Swan Lake and I had to choose. I wanted one waltz and I listened to to Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty and came down in favour of Swan Lake.
he had recently been taking some lessons in playing the organ, and I thought his performance was absolutely first class, and what I also liked about him was that he played some tunes which took me back to the thirties when I wasn't quite as young as he is now. But I was younger. And so this combines nostalgia with the um next generation.
this is a tune that, um Anybody who was in the Eighth Army will remember well... which we all used to listen to in the desert, in in the the war. and which I in fact was able to follow up because she was situated when she sang this song in in Belgrade and I was later dropped into Yugoslavia by parachute.
Voi che sapete (from The Marriage of Figaro)
Because I think it's a beautiful song, beautifully sung, and a magnificent bit of music.
Archie McTaggart and Cameron McKick
very appropriately the road to the isles, because that is exactly where we're situated in our garden.
Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major, Op. 73 ('Emperor')Favourite
Vladimir Ashkenazy, Chicago Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir Georg Solti
Because I I think, without really knowing very much about it, that uh Beethoven was incomparably the greatest composer and I like to end up with something by him.
In conversation
Presenter asks
3:14Do you come from a military family?
I'm the first one not to be a soldier for four or five generations.
Presenter asks
3:35Was it the prospect of travel which attracted you most [to the diplomatic service]?
Not really, no. I thought it would be the the most interesting and exciting thing I could do.
Presenter asks
10:41Why [did you decide to become a politician]?
Well, what I really decided to do was to get out of the Foreign Office and, um, uh into the army. But I found this wasn't as easy as I'd thought. I was frozen in the Foreign Office by the defence regulations. But after one or two unsuccessful attempts, I discovered that under one of the rules of the Foreign Office, anybody who stood for Parliament, who even thought of standing for Parliament, had to resign first.
Presenter asks
17:31Tell me about [the Yugoslav enterprise]. What was it?
The keepsakes
The book
Leo Tolstoy
I think that would take me a very long time, and I think that by the time I got to the end of it, or possibly before, I should be ready to try and escape. Part of the point is to have it in Russian to keep my mind fully occupied.
The luxury
unlimited supply of pencil and ballpoint pens and paper
what I would have to have is an unlimited supply of pencil and ballpoint pens and paper.
Well, I had asked to be parachuted into Greece because I I knew classical Greek and and uh I could understand a little modern Greek... the answer came back we don't want Maclean for Greece, but we do want him for Yugoslavia... [the Prime Minister] explained to me that he had begun to have doubts about what was happening in Yugoslavia... he had come to the conclusion that that there was some other resistance movement infinitely more important than the Chetniks who really were fighting the Germans and he said to me, want you to go in and find out what is happening there. And that is what I did a few weeks later.
Presenter asks
29:22Would you try to escape [from the desert island]?
I don't I'm not certain that I should escape. Uh on the other hand, I I think that if there was Timber abud. I would inevitably have a shot sooner or later after a nice long rest.
“I went there with the firm determination to meet as many Russians as I could and in fact I did meet a few, mostly in trains and buses and places like that. The f the the further one got away from Moscow the easier the atmosphere was but it was very difficult indeed. They were terrified.”
“I travelled at one time on an old bill from some shop in London that had by royal appointment and with a whole row. I mean, you know, they were by appointment of the Duke of Connog and Queen Mary, a lot of people like that. And all these impressive coats of arms, they took in everybody. It was a marvellous bill, that. I paid it in the end, too.”
“Winston Churchill once introduced me... to Field Marshal Smuts as a young man who made a public convenience of the Mother of Parliament. By becoming an MP... in order to get out of the Foreign Office and into the Army. All I can say is that the Mother of Parliament has made a public convenience of me for the next thirty odd years.”