Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Anti-establishment activist and writer, first known as a charismatic student leader who led major 1968 protests in London.
On the island
Eight records
Choir of King's College, Cambridge and the English Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Stephen Cleobury
It's for is Requiem, which, I think given what we've been talking about, is quite apposite, that it's a requiem for a world that has gone, which many people now regret has passed away, but find themselves unable to do anything to bring it back.
String Quartet No. 7 in F sharp minor, Op. 108
This particular one is quite gentle compared to some of the others, which can be very harsh, but they're all wonderful.
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Gerald Moore
Prometheus, of course, is the great rebel amongst the ancient gods, because he gave the earthlings fire and had to be punished for the rest of his life. So anyone who's radical has to identify with Prometheus.
Alice is the middle name of my companion and we've been together now for over twenty five years, so we play it occasionally and it's very nice.
Verdi's Don Carlos, one of my favorite operas of all time. I love the Schiller play, but its grand passion, love, anger, inquisition, dissent, all the things that appeal to me brought into one opera.
This is his composition of The Croppy Boy, which is a very famous Irish tune, but which will surprise you, because it's done in a very gentle mode, and it's not folksy and it's not ultra-emotional. The emotion that is is suppressed. So it's a tribute and a homage to Cornelius, who would have developed as a very great composer had he lived.
Mede Ishk VetunFavourite
Pakistani devotional singer, now dead, belonging to a tradition of Sufi mysticism, and this is the strongest religious tradition in the Pakistani countryside.
Tom Lehrer was my old-time favourite. And he gave up writing music when Henry Kissinger got the Nobel Prize, because he said satire was no longer possible. But this is a piece of music which was written in the 60s, but applies even more strongly to the world in which we live today.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:21How did you get involved in [the strike in the Himalayas]?
I was talking to one of them and I said, How much are you paid? and he said, you know, gave me the figure, and it was just piffling. And he said, we try hard really to get a raise. And I said, well, you've got to go on strike. … And they announced a strike. And the whole place, this sort of elite hill station, was stinking for exactly twenty four hours and they won all their demands. And I it gave me enormous confidence in the collective power of workers.
Presenter asks
2:37Why did you care, as a fourteen, fifteen year old boy, what these cleaners were being paid?
Well, you know, because I guess my parents were radical and when I was growing up in Lahore, our house was always packed with all sorts of people, trade union leaders, peasant activists, poets, artists, singers on the one side, and then members of the family who were incredibly crusty, reactionary, heads of police, military intelligence on the other. And I was always attracted to the underbelly. My natural sympathies were with the underdog.
Presenter asks
11:57Why did your parents decide that you should go to Oxford?
Well, they decided that because I had become extremely active in the student movement against the military dictatorship. And my m mother's brother, one of them, was a senior figure in military intelligence, and he came home one day when I wasn't there and said to my mother, Get him out of the country or he'll spend the next five years in prison.
The keepsakes
The luxury
a DVD player with my favorite opera (Don Carlos)
the luxury item would have to be a little D V D player with my favorite opera [Don Carlos]; I could listen to it endlessly.
Presenter asks
19:13Did you find it difficult to adapt to the reality of those radical situations [in Vietnam and Bolivia]?
I didn't actually, and I guess it's because when you're young you really don't care. And I was thinking both in Vietnam and even in Bolivia that so if one's killed, so what? So many other people are dying. What makes you that special? You know, it's not bravado. I wasn't frightened of death at I'm much more scared now. I wasn't frightened of death at that time.
Presenter asks
27:15In the 1970s, you moved away from direct political involvement. Why did you do that?
It was in the nineteen eighties uh that I did that, because I thought life in a small left wing Marxist group had become very introverted. People were fighting, turning on each other, crazy things were being done, and I just thought one cannot be effective any more.
“I was always attracted to the underbelly. My natural sympathies were with the underdog.”
“I would not have left had I been told that they wanted me to leave.”
“I hope I will die as I've lived, never part of any establishment.”