Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Physician and neurologist, first man to run a mile in under four minutes.
On the island
Eight records
Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 61Favourite
Kyung-Wha Chung, Vienna Philharmonic, Kirill Kondrashin
I have chosen this because it's a magnificent piece of music, but there is another reason which may seem a little odd, and that is as a neurologist I'm always concerned with how the brain controls movement, and the intricacy of a violin concerto and the speed of movement of the hand is something that is very close to the limits of understanding. Of course, also the memory involved. So I like to think of this as a test of the brain controlling the body.
Alan Townsend and his band Risky Business
The next record um reminds me of Oxford Now. Uh one of the pleasures of living there. Is that our eldest daughter, Erin, and her husband live there, Alan Townsend, and their three children, our three grandchildren. And we see a lot of them. And Alan, my son-in-law, is an immunologist. In Oxford, but in the past year he started a jazz band for fun. And they've called their band Risky Business, and the next record is its signature tune, written by Geoffrey Cottrell, who's one of the band.
Symphony No. 9 in E minor, Op. 95 'From the New World': II. Largo
Columbia Symphony Orchestra, Bruno Walter
I've chosen it because I've always been happy in America. I've made many visits there. When I was nineteen I went with an Oxford team to tour American universities. I then went back as a research fellow in the neurology department at Harvard. At that time it was the time of Kennedy's inauguration which we saw. And so I have a great feeling for America and many friends there. And so this New World Symphony reminds me of the freedom and expansion that one feels in America.
English Chamber Orchestra, East Suffolk Children's Orchestra, Norman Del Mar
During the time when my family were growing up, we remember many school concerts, but I can remember our boys singing in this Noah's Flood, singing their hearts out at school.
Jeremy Pound, Choir of New College, Oxford
It's in the bleak midwinter and this is a setting of Christina Rossetti's poem and it's a happy reminder to me of going back to Oxford.
Princeton Chamber Orchestra, Sir Roger Bannister (guest percussionist)
I found myself playing the second nightingale. A music critic afterwards said he thought the nightingales were a bit slow coming in, and that's not something entirely characteristic of me.
Chorus and Academy of Saint Martin in the Fields, Sir Neville Marriner
This again reminds me of Oxford. Last year there was a magnificent concert in the Sheldonian Theatre to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Haydn's visit to Oxford, and we listened to the wonderful music of the creation. I suppose Oxford is really a place of ideas primarily, but two of its pleasures are music and architecture, and these two pleasures were celebrated in this particular occasion.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:14Hasn't the four-minute mile inevitably influenced people's perception of you, even though you haven't let it dominate your life?
Yes, for me my life in the past thirty seven years has been medicine and neurology, but there are times when people around the world come up to me and recognise me and so on. I am in a sense a piece of public property in that way. … Well, I think we ran at a time when public spirits in Britain were rather low. It was the end of the war, and the country was really still finding its way. Sport wasn't really developed, and there had been the climbing of Everest in 1953, and this was something which seemed to be possible and broke on the sporting world, and more generally because it seemed to be an emergence of some new kind of desire to excel and try to tackle physical barriers. … We did have something which is not perhaps so fashionable now, a kind of patriotism.
Presenter asks
4:37Were your legs special? Was your running as a child more than just the usual need for haste?
Yes, I I think there was something, perhaps, genetic, which meant that I didn't get tired as other children might, and I was impatient my wife tells me I'm still impatient and I just wanted to get everywhere as fast as possible. It certainly was as easy for me to run as to walk, perhaps easier.
Presenter asks
The keepsakes
The book
An enormous anthology of short stories, Russian, American, French, and English
I'd like something lighter. And I thought an enormous anthology of short stories, Russian, American, French, and English. That would be something which would give me plenty to read.
The luxury
a solar powered receiver. If we could have a television as well as a radio, but uh and if a radio I could listen to radio four.
It sounds as if your parents pushed you, that you were under some pressure. Did you feel that?
I think that it was certainly true that we didn't waste time and uh obviously in order to get to university one had to um work fairly hard and that was what I was doing.
Presenter asks
13:55Did you have any idea then that you might make a large mark and break the four-minute mile?
The notion of a four-minute mile, I think, had been virtually dropped in this country, although it was certainly clear that it would one day be run. And I simply took each year as it came and had no really long term plans at that stage.
Presenter asks
21:35How much of a blow was it to come fourth in the 1952 Helsinki Olympics?
Well, it was quite a blow because I had, about two weeks before, run the equivalent of a four-minute mile in training. But I think if I had won that gold medal, I would have retired, because I was a medical student in clinical years, and it was becoming very difficult to train.
“I am in a sense a piece of public property in that way.”
“It certainly was as easy for me to run as to walk, perhaps easier.”
“And discovering a little brick, as it were, that can be inserted in the whole realm of knowledge in relation to medicine is, I think, one of the most satisfying things in my life.”
“I wouldn't tolerate separation from my wife very well. We've been married for thirty seven years and we enjoy so many pleasures together that it would be certainly a pretty sad affair.”