Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
An explorer described as probably the last in the great tradition of the individual explorer.
On the island
Eight records
Pie JesuFavourite
Choir of King's College, Cambridge
from the Requiem. Heard it in Nairobi and thought it incredibly beautiful.
Ethiopian Church Music (Christmas music)
Chosen because he attended an Easter service at Lalibela and it gave him the feel of it.
Pipes and Drums of the 2nd Battalion Scots Guards
Thrilled by the sound of pipes; has Scots blood through two great-grandmothers.
The Maiden and the Nightingale
No reason given from transcript.
Death of Boris (Boris Godunov)
Heard it at Eton 51 years ago, stuck in his mind.
What the Thunder Said (from The Waste Land)
Something he would love to have written.
Reminds him of a unique highland area in Arabia he explored.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:31How much does music mean in your life?
I'm afraid you have picked somebody who has no musical sense at all. None.
Presenter asks
2:32You were born in Addis Ababa. How did that come about?
My father was British Minister at the time. It was at the end of the reign of Menlik. And the country at that time really was very remote and very barbaric. And in consequence, I did have a very odd childhood. I was there till I was about nearly nine years old.
Presenter asks
4:51You came back to this country to prep school. Could you adjust?
No, I think that was partly the trouble. Certainly I hated my private school and hadn't really adjusted by the time I was at Eton. … We regarded my brother and I were regarded as complete freaks and also monumental liars when for instance I said that I'd been in the trenches in the First World War.
Presenter asks
The keepsakes
The book
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Edward Gibbon
I think it's about seven volumes. It would last me 'cause I have read it through a couple of times, but I'd be quite happy to sit down and read it again.
What is the motivation? What is the urge that you have to travel to isolated places that virtually nobody else wants to touch?
No, I don't know. It's curious, isn't it? I think it's a feeling of adventure. It's the challenge of it. It's the company of the people who live there, the desert people.
Presenter asks
20:17What sort of ration did you give yourself [crossing the Empty Quarter]?
Well, we started off with quite a lot of ration. … by the time we got to get across the empty quarter, we were down to about half a pound of flour each per day. … And water. We had a pint of water a day. And very brackish it was too.
Presenter asks
28:55You like the loneliness of the terrain, but you like to have people with you?
I like to have the local people with me, yes. I should hate to sit there all by myself indefinitely. I'd make any effort to get away.
“I'm afraid you have picked somebody who has no musical sense at all. None.”
“it was journeying down to the coast and um camels and water holes and men with spears.”
“My first [vacation] long back from Oxford, I got a job as a farman on the tramp steamer and went out to Constantinople, which is a place I very much wanted to see. Another time I got a job as a deckhand on a trawler off Iceland.”
“I've never spent since I left Oxford, I've never spent more than three months a year in this country. And the rest of it has been in as remote areas as I could find.”
“increasingly as you get the tourist hordes and millions and millions of them getting in and out of airplanes all over the world, they're destroying the world which I value. … They're like swarms of locusts.”
“I should hate to sit there all by myself indefinitely. I'd make any effort to get away.”