A Good Read - and an Encounter with Those Wicked Russians

I’m not quite sure how this happened, but I recently managed to slip under BBC Radio 4’s powerful anti-Peter Hitchens defences. Yes, I know about ‘Any Questions’ , where I’m ‘balanced’ by three people who disagree with me and an impartial presenter who, well, doesn’t agree with me. And about the occasional discussions where I’m invited on as the lunatic dissenter, scrabbling for a few seconds of airtime.

 

But on this occasion, Radio 4 actually treated me as if I was a normal human being. They invited me to take part in an enjoyable programme called ‘A Good Read’ . This particular episode, which lasts about half an hour, can be found here

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01nl6hx

 

and will be available for a year from now. Regular readers here will know of my great liking for the detective stories of Josephine Tey , and above all for her masterpiece ‘The Daughter of Time’.  I’m always amazed that so many people have never heard of Josephine Tey or of this extraordinary, life-changing book. So it seemed to be a good choice for a programme where two guests, and the presenter Harriett Gilbert (herself a member of a distinguished literary family) try to persuade each other of the virtues of books they like.

 

I found myself describing ‘The Daughter of Time’ as ‘one of the most important books ever written’. The words came unbidden to my tongue, but I don’t , on reflection  retreat from them. Josephine Tey’s clarity of mind, and her loathing of fakes and of propaganda, are like pure, cold spring water in a weary land. Her story-telling ability is apparently effortless (and therefore you may be sure it was the fruit of great hard work. (As Ernest Hemingway said ‘if it reads easy, that is because it was writ hard’) . But what she loves above all is to show that things are very often not what they seem to be, that we are too easily fooled, that ready acceptance of conventional wisdom is not just dangerous, but a result of laziness, incuriosity and of a resistance to reason.

 

The other two books, well, I’ll leave you to listen, though I would say that ‘A Landing on the Sun’ was to me a very sad and distressing book, and I’d like to know a lot more about how it came to be written. In fact, I suspect that serious biography of Michael Frayn would be very well worth reading. As for ‘What’s my Motivation?’, I didn’t want or expect to enjoy it, yet I did, and I would never have opened it (the awful cover is enough to put most people off) had it not been Harriett Gilbert’s choice.

 

The whole thing was great fun to do, the reading and re-reading, the conversation itself,  in the hallowed surroundings of the real Broadcasting House, the all-too-brief meeting with John Finnemore, and the very pleasant and intelligent people who made the programme. Where else in the world can you get a half-hour programme about books, in which serious things can be said,  broadcast  on a strong national waveband, uninterrupted by advertisements or appeals for money.

 

Next I draw your attention to an interview of me by the Voice of Russia, the Russian state’s English language station (I suppose it used to be ‘Radio Moscow’) . As it’s a Russian state organ, I hesitated about doing it, but I can say here that I was offered no payment,  and sought no payment, that it did not concern Russian matters and was conducted in a wholly professional fashion without any sign of editorial interference, and is available here

 

http://ruvr.co.uk/listen_audio/93085029.html

 

The paradox is that an interview of me, of this kind and on this subject, is pretty much unimaginable on any BBC station. Mr Ecott was  not, I think,  sycophantic or easy, but he gave me time to elaborate my answers and did not assume from the start that my views were eccentric or suspect. And he never began a question with ‘Are you seriously saying….?’