Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Chief Scout, great-grandson of the Victorian Prime Minister.
On the island
Eight records
Bath Festival Chamber Orchestra
Soloist: Yehudi Menuhin (violin). Reason: 'He's a great religious composer… but I've chosen a rather secular piece' and 'Yehudi Menuhin is a great hero of mine.'
Conductor: Sir Charles Groves. Reason: 'he typifies 18th-century English life at its best.'
Horn Concerto No. 3 (third movement, latter part)
Conductor: Herbert von Karajan; soloist: Dennis Brain. Reason: 'a very gay movement.'
Reason: 'the most obscure of my choice.'
Symphony No. 8 (second movement)
Conductor: Herbert von Karajan. Reason: 'I must have some Beethoven.'
Symphony No. 1 (first movement)Favourite
Conductor: Sir Adrian Boult. Reason: 'we must have some Brahms' and 'great, tremendous works.'
The Dream of Gerontius (excerpt)
Richard Lewis (tenor) with orchestra
Libretto by Cardinal John Henry Newman. Reason: 'great English music of Elgar' and 'bonus of Cardinal Newman's mind.'
Reason: 'only modern piece' and 'brilliant composer for young people.'
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:35Could you endure loneliness over a long period on this island?
I don't really believe I could. On the other hand, I think I am quite good at being alone, provided I have something to occupy my mind, such as books or records.
Presenter asks
1:12What was your plan in choosing [the discs]?
I wanted to cover European society from the end of the seventeenth century through to the early twentieth century. because that, I think, provides me with all the company I want.
Presenter asks
7:06Why did you resign [as Headmaster of Lansing]?
Yes, well, I'm very fortunate. I've got a family property, and it was agreed between my father and myself, he was getting on in years then, that that would be about the right time for me to take it over. And I think if one is fortunate enough to be able to alter one's job after about a decade, this is a very good thing to do.
Presenter asks
10:56The keepsakes
The book
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Edward Gibbon
Largely because it's about Gibbon rather than the Roman Empire. And it would last a good long time.
The luxury
A watercolour painting by J.B. Pine of the Chinese temple at Virginia Water
I would take a watercolour. I've got a watercolour at home by a man called J.B. Pine. Underneath it, it's got the caption, a Swiss scene, but it isn't, in fact. It's a scene from the home counties. It's the Chinese temple, now destroyed, at Virginia Water, near Windsor. And it's got a tremendous calm and depth in it, which I love to gaze at when I want inspiration.
Why to Lambeth Palace [were the diaries given]?
They're really a religious document. He was a very religious man, and every night for seventy years he used to record his innermost thoughts and make his confessions, in a sense, in this diary, as well as recording all his daily doings and the immense number of people he met and all the books he read and so on. He's not a literary diarist like Pepys at all, but he's provided historians of the nineteenth century with a tremendous mine of information, literally a mine. I mean, it's not in any order except chronological. And they're being edited now. And my great-uncles, his sons, decided that they should be offered to Lambeth Palace Library because they thought that fitted their character.
Presenter asks
16:18As Chief Scout, have you any major ambition or big innovation that you want to get through during your years of office?
I've got a lot of ambitions, but my one big ambition is to try to bring more Scouting to the areas where it's very thin or not known. There are a lot of difficult areas in our towns and scattered rural areas where there's very little for the kids, and I think Scouting's what they need. I think it would be of immense value to them if we could expand into those areas.
Presenter asks
19:50Would you try to escape [from the island]?
Oh yes, I'd try to escape. not only because I wanted to, but because this would be one of the main exercises for my ingenuity.
“I don't really believe I could. On the other hand, I think I am quite good at being alone, provided I have something to occupy my mind, such as books or records.”
“I wanted to cover European society from the end of the seventeenth century through to the early twentieth century. because that, I think, provides me with all the company I want.”
“We drank everything that was worth drinking in that over the course of ten years and then flogged the rest to connoisseurs who wanted it for its rarity value.”
“He's not a literary diarist like Pepys at all, but he's provided historians of the nineteenth century with a tremendous mine of information, literally a mine.”
“I think it was absolutely essential that we shouldn't get stuck with that old Edwardian image, you know, the sort of music hall boy scout and the sort of knobbly knead scoutmaster. We had to get rid of that.”
“I've got a lot of ambitions, but my one big ambition is to try to bring more Scouting to the areas where it's very thin or not known.”