Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
The only politician to have held the four highest offices of state: Chancellor, Home Secretary, Foreign Secretary, and Prime Minister.
On the island
Eight records
I'm Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter
First one is again is obviously the thirties and nostalgic. It's Fat Swallow. I was a great admirer of Fat Swallow. There were all those lovely tunes he he sang and he had that great gravelly voice, like Up the Lazy River and so on. But I I chose I'm going to sit right down and write myself a letter.
Symphony No. 41 in C major, K. 551, "Jupiter" (3rd Movement)
Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Karl Böhm
Yes, this is again a a rather a nostalgic one, in the sense that w my wife and I used to go to the proms in the thirties when they were in the old Queen's Hall, before it was blitzed, of course, and you could get in them for two shillings, which was ten p. It was quite a lot, I suppose, but even so it's pretty cheap by today's prices. And what I'd like uh they they had certain evenings for for certain music, and um Mozart was a great favourite of mine in those days, together with Beethoven. And what I would like is if you could play it is the part of the third movement of the Jupiter symphony.
Nocturne in B-flat minor, Op. 9, No. 1
The next record I'd like is a piano record. I always wanted to play the piano when I was young, and never did, although my sister did. And I've chosen one of Chopin's nocturnes, the one in B-flap minor, opus number nine, number one. It's not the most popular of them, but it's one I like. It's very calm and clear.
Introducing Tobacco to Civilization
I'd like Bob Newhart, that record introducing tobacco to civilization. The first time I heard it, I laughed so much the tears simply ran down my cheeks.
Jesus, Lover of My Soul (Aberystwyth)
Huddersfield Choral Society, conducted by Owain Arwel Hughes
This one is a compliment both to you and to Wales. It's the Huddersfield Choral Society, which I'm sure you would want to hear, but it is conducted by Owen Arwell Hughes, who is of course one of our outstanding Welsh conductors. And it's the hymn tune, GZU, Lover of My Soul, sung to the tune Aberystwith, written again by a great Welshman, Parry.
Songs of the Auvergne: Shepherd's Song (Bailèro)
Josephine Veasey and the Treorchy Male Choir, conducted by John Cynan Jones
Well, this is a new one. I only heard it a year or two ago. It's the Shepherd Song from Canterloup's Songs of the Auvergne.
Brandenburg Concerto No. 4 in G major, BWV 1049 (1st Movement)
English Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Benjamin Britten
Yes, an old favourite, or one of several old favourites, and that is part of the first movement of Buck's Brandenburg Concerto No. Four.
The Day Thou Gavest, Lord, Is Ended
Oh, well, now I'd like to go back to the Royal Marines, I think, or at any rate, to some mass band. And the Royal Marines, you know, I often think of them playing The Day Thou Gavest, Lord, is Ended, and sunset on some distant parade ground. And in my imagination, I conjure up pictures of Malta or Gibraltar or Singapore, where they're playing this tune amid the tropical or semi-tropical heat. And it's a wonderful sort of nostalgic recollection for me.
In conversation
Presenter asks
2:19Was there much music in your background in your youth?
Yes, uh there was. Um on a Saturday night the Royal Marine Band in the early twenties used to play in the Portsmouth Tarn Hall as it was then called at Tupney concerts. My mother used to take me to those and then they were followed a little later in the twenties when the Wesley Central Hall was built in the Fratton Road in Portsmouth by those great uh Threpney concerts. … But we had very great artists who came round, people like Peter Dawson and others. And of course there was all the chapel music. We used to sing all the hymns. I still know every moody and sankey I think that was written. And we used to sing them every Sunday in in the London Road Baptist Chapel.
Presenter asks
2:25What kind of background was it that you had? What kind of parents did you have?
Well my father was in the Navy for twenty-five, thirty years and became a coast guard when he retired, but unfortunately he died very shortly after. My mother was very religious. She was a what would now be called a fundamentalist. She believed in the second coming of the Lord that would happen at any time, and so I had a very a very religious um chapel going background. We used to say grace before meals. Before I went to school we used to read a passage from the Bible every morning. And on Sundays we spent pretty well the whole day in chapel as far as I can remember. I didn't I didn't uh mind it at all. I rather liked it. It was my life at the time.
The keepsakes
The book
Leo Tolstoy
I'm going to take a long book that I've never yet managed to finish reading, Tolstoy's War and Peace. I might just manage it on that island.
The luxury
A large telescope and a textbook about the stars
a big telescope so that I can study the stars, especially if it's if the island's in the southern hemisphere, because I don't know the stars in the southern hemisphere... and a book, if I might, about uh about the stars... could I have some some textbook to show me what the stars are?
Presenter asks
Looking back, do you regard [your religious upbringing] as being a kind of stifling experience at all?
I think perhaps in some ways it was narrowing, but on the other hand it did have a profound influence and it did mean that I knew the Bible. And what greater literature could you find than that King James version of the Bible? I'm sure it's influenced me in the use of language. And I I still enjoy reading the Bible. I will read a chapter of the Bible now and again. I can't pretend particularly for uh religious reasons, but because I think that it often contains very great thoughts.
Presenter asks
6:30Were your parents at all political?
My mother was. We after my father died, we lived in a series of furnished rooms and we lived with um uh one lady who was a strong member of the Independent Labour Party and the co-op movement and she after my mother had been refused a pension by the Admiralty she got a pension for her and so I grew up in a Labour atmosphere and my first recollection of politics is of carrying the numbers when I must have been about ten or eleven from the schoolroom back to the committee rooms.
Presenter asks
8:07Was there any possibility, coming from this background, that you might get to university, or was that out of the question?
But that was out of the question at the time. I don't know how clever I was probably every a lot of people say I'm not clever at all and I'm quite prepared to accept that, except that I became Prime Minister and they didn't, all these clever people. But no, I I I got um what was called senior Oxford in those days. The Ministry of Pensions paid my fees at the local secondary school, two guineas a term, um and um they allowed me to stay until I got the senior Oxford and then I passed an examination into the civil service.
Presenter asks
10:12Could you pinpoint the moment in time when you knew that you had to go into politics as a career?
I don't think I could exactly, but I could give you a rough idea in the sense that when I joined the Inland Revenue I was drummed into the position of being Office Secretary for the Inland Revenue Staff Federation, it had a different name in those days, and I gradually got interested in trade unionism. and from that in politics.
Presenter asks
19:03Which [of the three offices of Chancellor, Home Secretary, and Foreign Secretary] did you enjoy most?
I think I enjoyed Foreign Secretary most of all. I A, it was my second term, as it were. Chancellor and Home Secretary I did in my first term, and I was therefore more experienced and felt I could handle the situation better. I wasn't, although I was learning, one always learns throughout life. Nevertheless, I had a certain amount of background. And it also brought me into contact with a number of people overseas, in the Commonwealth, in the Third World, and of course in the United States, continent, and so on. And I very much enjoyed that.
“I got um what was called senior Oxford in those days. The Ministry of Pensions paid my fees at the local secondary school, two guineas a term, um and um they allowed me to stay until I got the senior Oxford and then I passed an examination into the civil service.”
“I think a Prime Minister can do as much or as little as he wants. Harold Wilson was very good in the sense that he seemed to have eyes in the back of his head and he was able to keep an eye on what was happening all the way round and he loved that. He wanted to know everything that was happening. I didn't mind so much if I didn't know everything was happening, provided things were going along pretty well. Sometimes they did and frequently they didn't, as you know. But I wasn't a workaholic and I hope never would be.”
“I defy anybody to become Prime Minister and not to feel immensely moved and proud and happy at such a time.”
“I feel very sorry indeed for young politicians with families because it really does tear them apart and it's I think a most trying occupation in that sense.”