Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A diplomat who served as head of the diplomatic service.
On the island
Eight records
I choose this because it is a beautiful, basic piece of music, Bach, very correct and yet very melodic.
Slow movement of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minorFavourite
I think that it is one of the most perfect pieces of music that was ever written.
Excerpt from the last movement of Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony
after Mozart, we clearly must have Beethoven, and I have chosen the pastoral symphony, and we will have a piece from the wonderful climax which the symphony works up towards the end.
Jussi Björling and Robert Merrill
I would like now to have a piece of really grand, grand opera. And the grandest grand opera I can think of at the moment is the famous duet from Verdi's Othello between Othello and Iago.
Slow movement of Brahms Violin Concerto
both for the sheer beauty of its music and also because the record that I want is played by Yehudi Menuhin and I would like to take with me something which I regard as a personal tribute to Yehudi, both as a craftsman and as a great human being.
Anton Dermota and Hilde Gueden
I thought we ought also to have in our collection a little lighter relief from Vienna.
I thought I must have a piece from the great classical age of jazz in which I grew up.
Closing passage of Schumann Piano Concerto in A minor
It's such an incredible example of technical dexterity and accomplishment and sheer musical dynamic.
In conversation
Presenter asks
3:59What was your first ambition?
My first ambition developed really very late and until university times I had no idea what I wanted to do. Then I did get a pretty clear notion that I wanted to have a career which had to do with foreigners.
Presenter asks
4:54Before sending you to Tokyo, were you given a crash course in Japanese?
No, in those days we were less well organized than we are in language teaching, especially for non-specialists. I wasn't a specialist in Japanese. But what I did was that I went via the United States and Canada and the Pacific and by sea, of course, the whole way in those days. And I took some Japanese books and I slogged away at some elementary Japanese. Which I found tremendously useful when I arrived and was able to build up on. And indeed one had to because people in your house just didn't do what you wanted them to unless you told them in Japanese.
Presenter asks
8:31What happened to you after the war? Did you stay on in the United States?
No, what happened was that it was decided that the United Nations should hold their first assembly session ever in London. So I came home and a bit unorthodoxly more or less appointed myself secretary to the British delegation led by Ernest Beffin.
The keepsakes
Presenter asks
9:19Was this an eventful time? [as ambassador to Burma]
This was a great event in my life because the first appointment to a post of your own is always a great moment when you are at last in charge of something. And Burma itself was a very congenial country and our experience was most enjoyable. It's a very beautiful country. It wasn't very safe at the time because there were still rebels and marauders around, but we managed to travel a good deal and it was also a very great pleasure having our relationships with U Nu, who was at that time Prime Minister and was a very delightful and a very fine man to deal with.
Presenter asks
12:59Has this changed? Has the intake broadened? [in the diplomatic service]
Yes, very much indeed. And in recent years, we have made a great point of trying to interest universities other than Oxford and Cambridge in diplomacy as a career for their good students of a certain attainments and character. We're not looking for people because they were not at Oxford and Cambridge, but we do want to get the best people from all backgrounds and all around the country.
Presenter asks
14:46What was that junket? [disguised as Sherlock Holmes in Switzerland]
What happened was that I've been a member of the Sherlock Holmes Society of London since its re-foundation after the war, and then suddenly to my great surprise in 1967, I was invited to be president. And at that time the Society were hoping to do a quiet little trip to Switzerland in which they would visit the Reichenbach Falls where the famous fight took place between Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty. But after my wife and I had been on a business trip to Latin America this spring, we came home and found the thing had become a world story. And, well, there we were. You traveled with Professor Moriarty on the edge of the falls. Yes, and not once, but six times no less, because We we had to do this struggle on a very narrow pathway and you can't get more than two television cameras bearing on the target at once. So we had the struggle over and over again. We're quite exhausted by the time it was finished.
“I play the piano a lot, but badly.”
“I can't speak for her, but as far as I'm concerned, I never made a better decision.”
“What you have to do is to be able to meet and deal with and like and be liked by people from all classes of society from countries whose method of thought, whose climate, whose habits are quite different from our own. And if you haven't got that capacity, you shouldn't try diplomacy.”
“It's such an incredible example of technical dexterity and accomplishment and sheer musical dynamic.”