I set up In Our Time 27 years ago. I had been shunted from Start the Week to what was cheerfully known as the ‘death slot’, 9 a.m. on Thursdays, because BBC management decided I could no longer present that programme after becoming a member of the House of Lords. I know I’ve said it before elsewhere, but its success from those inauspicious beginnings was very fulfilling for me. I decided to retire from IoT in September. I will miss it as it gave me a tremendous education, but I know it will be in very good hands – Misha Glenny is a first-class broadcaster and writer. While passing on the baton, I would like to say how much the audience reaction always meant to me. There were many young people who reacted to the programme and the podcast. This gave me one of my greatest satisfactions over the years and the entire archive can still be heard online, as I am reminded when someone stops me in the street to talk about a programme from years ago that they’ve recently heard.
The intellectual diversity of IoT has been astounding. One of my favourite moments was when a scientist began his reply: ‘A billion, billion light years ago…’ I enjoyed the scientists the most as guests because I knew least about their subject. In the early days of the programme I might begin by saying ‘Back in ancient Greece’, until one contributor told me: ‘If you say that again I will lose the will to live.’ I stopped after that. The programme was totally dependent on the academics, chosen in every case for their outstanding expertise in the subject in hand. It was a bit risky because on several occasions they were on radio for the first time in their lives, but they gave authority to the programme. And that came through in myriad ways, just one being that when discussing poetry from the deep past, it was read in its original language. The listeners seemed to love this, as I did. The fact that IoT now has an audience of millions was thanks to various excellent teams over the years. Too many people to mention by name, but the person who steered the ship to its last transmission while I was still presenting it was producer Simon Tillotson. I am very grateful to him and everyone else who worked on the programme.
I live in Hampstead, which has long been a haven for writers. There’s Keats’s house and garden in which he composed some of his finest poetry. D.H. Lawrence lived here at Byron Villas in the Vale of Health on the Heath. Katherine Mansfield came to Hampstead from New Zealand and Margaret Forster from Carlisle together with her husband, Hunter Davies. William Empson wrote Seven Types of Ambiguity just along the street in which I live, Al Alvarez lived in Flask Walk and John le Carré haunted the Heath. And then there is Kenwood House, a beautiful museum where you can see one of the finest Rembrandts. Perhaps the greatest advantage for me in Hampstead is that I can walk everywhere as I don’t drive. In my early twenties, while taking my test, I pressed the accelerator instead of the brake. The car was towed away and the last I saw of it, it was parked near Madame Tussauds in a sorry state.
A disadvantage of living in Hampstead is that one or two inconsiderate people use extremely noisy leaf sweepers. For the most part, though, residents are thoughtful, kind and helpful. There is an active sense of community in the streets. There is, for instance, a group known as Borders of the Heath, current membership 242. They have their own WhatsApp group and exchange multiple messages daily. I know about this group because one of our dogs was a Border terrier. Every few months the Borders and their owners gather at the sports ground before setting off for a walk round the Heath. There are few sights more joyful than Borders at play.
My week always finishes with a list of phone calls to family and friends. The list has diminished considerably over the past few years. I have lost so many close friends from childhood, school, university and Cumbria. It’s a sad moment each week when I realise the number of people who are no longer here. Just last week I lost my cousin Geoff, whom I’d known all my life. We grew up together in Cumbria. He was more of a brother than a cousin. Recently I haven’t got up to Cumbria as much as I would have liked. Work and illnesses have blocked the way. The attraction of Cumbria is its unique landscape and my long association through friends and relatives. It’s almost like a little kingdom of its own. Sometimes, though, when walking on the Heath, I see it as a rather penny-postage replica of the Lake District: the woods, the hills, the lakes. The older I get, the better it gets.
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