Hello, I'm Christi Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For Wright's reasons, we've had to shorten the music. The program was originally broadcast in 1983 and the presenter... Roy Plumlee. you A castaway this week is a writer who lives an adventurous life. When a journalist, he was in the thick of things as a foreign correspondent, in recent years he's been writing books about distant places. It's Geoffrey Morehouse. Geoffrey, a desert island with many hazards on it. You have endured loneliness at some time, isolation? Yes, I deliberately exposed myself to it once when I took some camels across the Sahara.

Whether I'd cope with it on a desert island or not remains to be seen, let us say. How much would a... Limited amount of music help? - It would help a lot. I like music and I find it difficult to. Imagine life without music. I can't pretend I have it playing continuously, but I would miss it very badly if I didn't have any. I know you were once in the church choir. Do you play an instrument? I played the violin when I was a kid and dropped it because exam pressures became too great. And I messed about with the bouzouki a few years ago, but never really commanded the instrument. I wish most of all that I kept up my singing actually. Well, Ed record, what's the first one? I think Harkins... Back to that beginning, I was lucky enough to be in a rather good church choir, which instantly introduced me to the church.

The world of Orlando Gibbons and Charles Villiers Stanford. And I've always had a great feeling for liturgical music. So I'd like please the... Allegri Miserare, with that boy hitting the fantastic note two octaves above middle C.

Allegory's Miserere by the choir of King's College Chapel, Cambridge. Where was the church in which you... It was in Bury in South Lancashire, the bottom of the Rossendale Valley, which is a cotton mill town with the Pennines in the background. Betty Grammar School, what were you best at at school? Writing things. I wasn't bad at history. The only prizes I ever collected were for English and history. I was totally innumerate, still am I think. But I discovered that I could string words together when I was at school. What did you want to be? Oh, I always wanted to be a writer, but coming from that sort of background... Ground. One never aspired to anything as grand as books, because the first thing you had to think about was earning a bread and butter. And so it was clearly to be journalism and this is...

I began with. Well first of all you had to do your national service, what did you opt for? I opted for the Navy and I was lucky enough to get into the Navy and luckier still to get a ship and so spent quite a lot of time in the Mediterranean. Where did you get to? Spent a lot of time in the Mediterranean. Time in Malta, Eastern Mediterranean, as far as the Persian Gulf actually. But I... I was lucky, it was the first time I'd been abroad. Lots of people spent the National Service polishing bricks in older shops. So, when you came out of the Royal Navy, straight away to journalism? I went into the local evening newspaper and like every other young cub reporter I suppose I spent the first six months doing what were known as the calls thrice a day to the ambulance station, the hospital and the fire station to find if any trouble had befallen the citizens. You remember the very first story of yours, however small, that appeared in print?

I can't remember the very first that appeared in print. I can remember the first that made any sort of impression on my colleagues. There'd been an almighty storm one day and there was a rumour that a chimney pot had come off some house or other and I was sent as the sprog reporter to find out precisely happened, whether any real damage had been caused, and discovered that in fact the chimney had gone straight through five floors of a house. A baby had been in its cot in the... And had followed the chimney all the way down to the basement. Was still in its cot in the basement with only a slightly grey nose and that made the newspapers lead story that day. Right, your second record. Well, a real abiding passion of mine, though again I've... Been anything of a performer has been cricket which I think is the the subtlest

Of games, as well as one of the most dramatic. And it's a game full of character, which is one of its great appeals, human character. I'd like, please, to hear the commentary by Rex Houlton and John Arlott on... On the on the on the on the on the on the Bradman goes back across his wicket and pushes the ball gently in the direction of the Houses of Parliament, which are... Beyond mid off it doesn't go that far it merely goes to Watkins at silly mid off no runs till 117 for one two slips of silly mid off and a forward short leg close to him as holly pitches the ball up slowly and he's bowled. - Don Bradman out for a duck. I love that stunned note in John Oliver.

So there you were, a journalist on the local evening paper, flower shows and inquests and whatever. And the call, the usual humdrum. When did you join the Manchester Guardian? I got there in 1958, when it was still the Manchester Guardian, and I'm quite ridiculously proud of the fact that I worked on the Manchester Guardian. What did they start you as? as deputy features editor. I'd had a bit of sub-editing and makeup experience by then. And I and Brian Redhead started the features department on the Manchester Guardian. And when... I've been doing that for a couple of years or so. I said, Look, I really want to write. I don't want to organize other people writing. I became the chief features writer and that I did for the next eight or nine years. And you began to do a lot of foreign stuff. Yes, I started travelling, mostly by myself.

Buzz off somewhere, swan around for a week or two and then come home and write two or three pieces about it. Yes, a color piece rather than... Out on a tragedy or particular assignment. That's right. But once I was caught up in I happen to have been sent off to Prague in 1968 to find out how Dubcek's peaceful revolution was going on and I was about to come home when I realised that the Czechs were really getting rather worried about the Russians not having gone home from the Warsaw Pact manoeuvres. I filed a story and the following day in fact every plane that came into Prague was loaded with journalists come to see what this crisis was all about. And I followed it for the next two months. It made a great impression on me. And the spirit that was abroad there at the time was really very, very moving. Have you been back, sir? Yes, I went back a couple of years ago.

And I'm afraid things had changed. I mean, everyone was very buoyant in those days before the invasion. And I'm afraid that two years ago when I went back, everyone was rather bitter. The awful thing of all was the fact that nobody trusted anybody anymore. Friends would talk to you about the political situation. Only if they were alone. They wouldn't do it even if their best friend was with them. Too many people have been shocked since Dubcek was deposed. Now going back to those days on the Guardian, you climbed the Matterhorn at one point. What was that about? This was the centenary of Wimpers first ascent and because I've always been keen on hills, walking. I hadn't done any serious rock climbing actually for donkey's years, but, er, it was Idea to send me off to do a piece on the Matterhorn. So I went and on arriving in Zermatt discovered that

Every single guide in the district had been bought up by the BBC who were doing this television spectacular. And very good it was too. I had to try to solo the thing. I got up beyond the Hernley Hut, not to the summit. And then I slipped on some ice. And when I'd finally recovered my composure... I decided the sensible thing to do was to beat a retreat at that point, so I came down. Yes, it's the sort of thing that needs organizing properly. It is. It's foolhardy if you've not climbed for a long time to go and try to solo the Matterhorn. Went down in a Polaris submarine? Yes, it was one of the first Polaris... Vessels in the Holy Lock. It was simply a journalistic party was put aboard and they took us out into the Atlantic and brought us back.

What struck me most of all was that the captain in Briefingers and explaining very carefully how the button couldn't be pressed accidentally. Was actually rolling in his hands a pair of ball bearings And I suddenly thought, My God, the captain in the cane mutiny who went off his head used to roll a pair of ball bearings. So he did. When you were stuck under the Atlantic with 16 nuclear missiles all around you, but we came back safely. Well, let's have your third record. When I went back to Prague... Couple of years ago I fulfilled a long-standing ambition by managing to hear Don Giovanni which is one of my favorite operas anyway. Managing to hear Don Giovanni at the Till Theatre there, where of course it had its very first performance. So please, may I have... Le Parellas, Aria and the trio from Act One.

♪ You'll regret your soul ♪ The trio from the first act of Mozart's Don Giovanni, Bernd Weicker, Margaret Price and Gabriel Bakke, and the conductor, George Schulte. You wrote your first books.

While you were still at the Guardian, didn't you? - Yes, there was an amazing week in, I think, 1961, when on the Monday morning, I got a letter from one member of the editorial board of Penguin, asking me if I-- Care to write a book about monasticism, because he'd read a piece I'd written about Benedictine And on the Wednesday morning I got a letter from another member of the Penguin Board asking me if I'd care to write a book on the state of England. Back and said, Gentlemen, would you kindly toss up and decide which book you really want me to write? And it was decided that monasticism was a timeless subject so it could wait. And we did the other one first, which was The Other England. What did that involve? What is The Other England? I wrote it very much with Priestley's English Journey in the 30s, at the back of my mind. I simply tried to describe what life was like in different areas of England. And I evolved this thesis that although the current talk about the two English

Was a little misplaced because people and Lord Hailsham in particular I think was talking about the big division between in the North of England and the South of England. I decided that the real division was between London and the home counties and the whole So really it was a study of the English provinces. London versus the rest. That's it. The old battle. And monasticism, was that a subject that you knew about apart from having written a piece? I didn't know very much about it, but I'd always been fascinated by it. And although I don't think I can fairly... ...more than a sympathetic agnostic. The Christian faith and Anglicanism in particular will dog me till the day I die. And I think I probably embarked upon that to hope to get to the bottom of religion. I didn't, of course, because I discovered that monks and nuns are frequently just as puzzled as the rest of us.

But it was a life that I found very very fascinating indeed during the three years or so I was doing the research. How wide was your research? Well, it was... Carried out in England but I went to one or two continental religious houses La Pierre-Quivier in France and Tésé of course which was the and still is a large Consistent community in Burgundy and That place in particular was very very striking. They they I think had a deal of influence on all sorts of changes that have taken place in the The religious life in the Catholic Church over the last couple of decades. And then you'll make a big decision to give up journalism and that very handy monthly check Settled down to write books, but was that a difficult decision to make? Oh yes it was, because I was not at all unhappy doing that.

The job I was doing as far as I was concerned, being chief features writer for The Guardian, was the best job in Fleet Street. I didn't want to leave the paper, but I had decided that I wanted to concentrate on writing books, trying to get to it. Bottom of things. I mean the trouble with journalism is that you're always juggling six balls at once and I tend to be a single-minded sort of cuss. And so I decided to take the plunge and leave journalism and only resort to it when I needed to pacify it. The bank manager and keep the wolf from the door. Well this was a watershed in your career, so let's pause here for your fourth record. Well, I don't think... I would like to be anywhere without Bach, who I think is probably the one composer that I can listen to in any sort of mood. And although I've never played an instrument, I think the instrument I would most have liked to have played is the organ. May I please have Helmut Volker playing the little fugue in G minor?

Helmut Wahlker

Bang Bach's Little Fugue in G Minor, BWV 578. Now, Geoffrey, you've written two books about India. The first one was 12 years ago about... Calcutta. Yes, I was casting about for a new book subject and... And a friend of mine who knew India rather well pointed out that no one had ever written anything for donkey's years. About this incredible city by the Hooghly. Was it a new territory, had you been there? No, I had never been to India at that point. I did a lot of reading first and then eventually I went off and I was knocked sideways by it. Everybody who goes to India for the first time is knocked sideways by that country. And for some people this means that they never want to go there again. They are so depressed by poverty. Different kinds of hygiene, all sorts of things about India that turn them off. And other people...

Are knocked sideways and it means that they want to keep on going back and that's the way Calcutta took me. I went there to... Decorative years and had about three months each time there, and produced this book. Ever since people have been saying you ought to write another book about India. But it took me a long time to get round to it, partly because I couldn't focus on precisely what topic I wished to write about, and partly because... Other things intervened and I wanted to do them as well. But finally I got round to writing this outline of Indian-British history in Dibratanagar. And of course you visited... ...cut her again. How much had it changed in 12 years? I was there a couple of years ago. It's, it's, er... It's changed a little and it has changed a little for the better. I'm afraid I was rather pessimistic. I ended that book with a sort of apocalyptic vision of doom. But things have improved for the better.

There are now for example diesel engine ferry boats across the river which there weren't before And the bus services are better and they've started to dig an underground railway. I'm not sure whether that's wise but at least... One of the problems in transport has always been a very big problem in Calcutta, have been tackled. it's hard in Europe to grasp. The scale of India, the vast distances, the vast population. That's true. I think it is the scale of everything that happens there that rather... Overwhelms the European. I don't think I've ever been anywhere in India, even in a remote country area, when I have felt... Alone. Even on a remote country lane there is always a bullet car. Two miles off in the distance going away from you, or there's a chap on a bike...

Three miles in the other direction coming towards you or there is someone two fields away squatting down you you're never away from human beings. This new book covers this enormous field. It must have needed a vast amount of research. How much travelling did you do? I didn't do very much travelling. I had this one trip when I checked up on Things that I hadn't seen before on previous trips to India, but most of it was reading a lot of stuff that I hadn't read for a long time. Time or reading fresh stuff. I mean it's it's a terrible exercise in compression it can't be anything else I mean to try to encompass that. Of Indian British history in 300 and odd pages. In some sense this is a ridiculous thing to be doing. I hope I've got what matters in and I hope most of all that I've managed to, um... Assess the British record correctly. We've got to record five.

Well, as I say, I have been knocked sideways by Indra. I wish to go there again and again and again. Make some Indian music, please. Ravi Shankar playing a piece called Kapi Holi which is associated, of course, with the Spring Festival when everyone goes absolutely potty and chucks coloured water over each other.

Ravi Shankar playing the sitar, Kafi Holi which is to do with the Spring Festival of Colours. Geoffrey, your books decide... Play a very wide range of interests. There's one I haven't seen about missionaries. Was that one that involved a lot of travel? Yes, it did. The publisher came to me and said, Would you write a history of the Christian missionaries? And my immediate reaction was, What, all of them? Because somebody... In Africa in the 19th century, and I did a lot of field work for that. I did a lot of field work for that. I did a lot of field work for that. I did a lot of field work for that. and I did a lot of field work for that. I went out to Africa for about a couple of months. I went up the Congo for... In a dugout to trace the line of the old Baptist mission stations up there. And the most extraordinary thing happened because I went on to an offshoot of the Congo proper.

And eventually wound up at a remote village called Nkolo Lingamba. And it really was like something out of Lord Jim. I mean, the fires in the village were lit and smoke was drifting over the river as my canoe arrived. I came down to the water's edge and picked up everything in the boat, put it on the heads and walked ahead of me into the village and made me welcome for the night. Following morning, all the ladies of the village were washing clothes by the river bank, and one brought from under her skirt. Guess what? packet of Persol. The arm of Lord Leibhund is very extensive. A couple of tough books about tough exploits. You planned the first ever solo camel crossing of the Sahara Desert from west to east. Who talked you into doing that? Nobody. It was one of these awful impulsive things on us. It was actually when I was coming back from...

The field work for the missionaries. I was flying home from Sierra Leone and We'd been in the air for about half an hour and I looked down and the earth was totally orange. In fact, you couldn't see the earth, the cloud was totally orange. And it was a sandstorm and I suddenly realized how enormous the Sahara was. It was no longer a statistic. This vision... The sandstorm went on for a couple of hours. And I realised that no one had ever been across Solo on a camel. I mean, plenty of people have done it from north to south. Impulsive leer thought gosh I wonder whether it's possible on second thoughts you decided not to do it completely alone oh yes I mean, I went out thinking that once I got the hang of handling camels, I would... It entirely alone, but the first fortnight showed me what folly that would have been. It's simply physically impossible.

For one man to handle more than one camel. I mean, the business of catching them in the morning. Because although you hobble them, you want them to... To wander a little bit in order to get what food they can. And it would have taken half a day to catch more than one camel. In fact, how many of you went? I never travelled entirely alone. I always had one man with me. I picked them up. But oases as I went along. I once had three people travelling with me. Basically it was me and a local. Camels? Well I had six altogether I never had more than three at one time. I had six altogether three I'm afraid died on the way. Take you long to learn how to handle them? I was making a fist of it after about a week. After about a month, I think I was quite a co-worker. - And you had to learn Arabic, of course. - Yes, I'd learnt Arabic before I set off. The trouble was that I set off in Mauritania and...

Discovered that they spoke a very primitive form of Arabic called Hasaniya and It seemed to me not only that the vocabulary was substantially different from the one I'd learnt, but that all... The rules of grammar that I had in the Boris were more or less inverted. Actually, the further east I got, the more people were speaking the sort of Arabic that I had learned. And navigation was important. Navigation was very important and it was very difficult because although I could navigate alright, the trouble was that very early in the trip... My sextant got smashed and after that I was only doing it by dead reckoning, which is bit dicey and in fact I because I wasn't navigating accurately enough we missed a well in a sandstorm When we were out of water and it was a bit dire.

For 24 hours. How far did you get? You didn't complete the whole trip? No I didn't. I got 2,000 miles which was just over halfway. And it would seem enough? Yes. I was very ill by then, I got dysentery and I think I was... Just to run down. I'd got to the point where I knew that if I tried to push it any further, I might not come back with a story to tell. How long had 2,000 miles taken you? Six months. As long as that. Yeah. 25 miles a day on a camel you were doing pretty well. And that produced a book called The Fearful Voice. And who did another book, The Hardware, who spent a year as a deckhand on a fishing boat. Based on the Massachusetts coast. - Yes, that was hard work, but it was great fun. I've... I very badly wanted to write a book about a fishing community because I think that like mining communities... They are people slightly apart from the rest of us. They are much more closely knit communities.

Because there is always this hazard on the edge of their lives when a chap goes off to work in the morning He never really knows quite whether he's coming back or whether he's going to come back in the same piece that he went out in So I wanted to write a book about a fishing community and for me because I cannot stand remote from things I want to write about. Had to go and be a fisherman. But to do it for a year shows a legal application. Well the lads on my boat thought I was pretty daft actually, Art who had made about four trips. How big was the boat? It was 70 odd feet long and there was a crew of six of whom I became one. What we were fishing? We started off deep-sea lobstering, we were on the edge of the continental shelf, we used to go out from Gloucester, four trips that would last a for ten days. That was the town where Kipling wrote Captain Scouragious. That was the town indeed and Kipling I have to tell you. Spend only three weeks in Gloucester and produced an international bestseller which still lives.

Well, go on, you used to go out, it wouldn't... Well, we went out on these trips and caught lobsters off the edge of the continental shelf and brought them back alive. Pay too well, so we converted to pair-trawling for Herring. And from those experiences you wrote The Boat and The Town, and we've come now, I think, Record number six this quite coincidentally is is an American thing I was of that daft generation that was brought up to believe that the only good music was classical music and I knew not a thing about pop until I think the Beatles arrived. And I then discovered Simon and Garfunkel, whom I've liked ever since. And so, please, I would like sounds of silence. Hello darkness my old friend I've come to talk with

♪ While I was sleeping ♪ ♪ And the vision that was ♪ *music* Simon and Garfunkel, The Sounds of Silence. Now you've done some books on quieter, gentler matters, the diplomats for example, all about the foreign office. Mmm, fascinating. You're dealt, I suppose, with so many consuls on your travels. That I was an obvious candidate. No, I'm not quite sure that was so, but I, again, I've... Found that ideas from books sometimes come from me, sometimes from my publisher, roughly in 50/50 proportions. This was the publisher's idea. In fact, he'd been negotiating with the Foreign Office for some time before I came in on the Act to have a...

Outsider let into the works. We always get the impression that the foreign office is a house of secrets that nobody who hasn't sworn the oath can get in. Well, I didn't actually sign the Official Secrets Act, but I... Two and a half years more or less living in the Foreign Office and making forays abroad to see them at work in the embassies. You're given complete facilities? Yes, pretty well. I have to say that although I began work on that book with my fair share of prejudices about civil... Servants in general and diplomats in particular. I have to say that the best diplomats I can I came across were amongst the most impressive people I've ever come across in my life. I have to say also that the worst I came across was so gall-blimey that you wondered how on earth they managed to get into the same outfit as the best. The vast majority were hard-working, Highly intelligent men. I was really quite impressed by them.

Cricket earlier on when we played the John Arlett record of that disastrous innings of Don Bradman, you also wrote a book about cricket. Yes, that was sheer self-indulgence. Again, it was my publisher's idea because I had never thought of writing a cricket book, but he knew that I was very keen on cricket. And said, Why don't you write some essays on cricket? So I spent a whole season pottering around cricket grounds, first-class grounds and village grounds and... Produced the best love game and I was enormously tickled when I got the cricket society's prize for it. Pleasant way to spend a second. It was. It was sheer self-indulgence, though. What's the next book? Well, I... Off to Pakistan in a few days. I want to go to the northwest frontier which I've never seen. That's exciting. Well, it shouldn't be too exciting but it will be fascinating. This is a very varied list of books you've produced. Can you find a connecting link between them all?

one thing they have in common? I think the only claim I could make is that they're all about what make people tick. I mean, that's a ridiculously inflated claim, maybe, but it's the only thread I can think of. It's the people you expect to find there that will never go. Oh yes, this has always been the reason for travelling ever since I was a kid. To find out even when you were just on your own two feet walking the Pennines. What lies in the world? over the other side of the hill and what manner of man awaits you over the other side of the hill. How like you, how different from you is he? Record number seven. One of my great pleasures has always been Slav choral music with those marvelous... Rumbling bases and curling sopranos. And whenever I've been in Paris, indeed it was the very last thing I did before I flew off to the desert from Europe, I've tried to go to the...

Orthodox Church there to hear Mass. I'd like to hear that choir sing the Kyrie eleison, please.

The experiment is over. Of the Russian Cathedral in Paris, Kyrie Eliazon. I have an idea, Geoffrey, that this island isn't going to hold you. I mean, you've been in the Royal Navy, you've spent a year as a deckhand on an American fishing boat, you've spent months in the desert... You seem to have been on this island before in various ways, and I'm pretty sure you'd get off. I think I would, basically because I always want to go home. I enjoy travelling, I always look forward to it, but I've... I've never yet not wanted to come home and always been jolly glad to get home. And as I live in one of the most delightful places on earth, at the top of Wensdordell, I shall try to get home very soon.

So a raft and some dead reckoning and here you come. I shall try it. Good. Your last record. Well, one of the big hazards of living in conditions like this, I suspect, is that one starts to feel sorry for oneself and one becomes pretty jolly slumicky. And I think there's absolutely nothing for making you pick yourself up off the deck in such conditions as that as a good bagpipe and drum band. So could I have the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders playing the old 93rd Cabot Fé?

The pipes and drums of the 1st Battalion, the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. If you could take only one disc, which would it be? I think it would be... Don Giovanni. I cannot see how anybody could possibly be depressed listening to that. Right. And you're allowed to... Take one luxury. Could I have a pair of curlews which would produce the sound that means most of all home to me? A pair of curlews? Now this raises a problem. Luxuries should be inanimate and obviously we can't cage curlews. We'll give you some splendid recordings of curlews and choose something else. Ah. I should like a little box full of Indian spices so that I can cook myself tasty meals and not just have broiled fish Right and one book you The Bible and you have Shakespeare. Dictionary of National Biography please. Great source book. Yes. English history.

A vast number of volumes too. Very handy. Well, the microfilm edition will do fine, as long as I have the spyglass too. All right. And thank you. Geoffrey Morehouse for letting us hear your desert island disc. Thank you Roy, I've enjoyed it enormously. Goodbye everyone. You've been listening. To a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For more podcasts, please visit

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