Dr Jonathan Miller

Desert Island Discs: Archive 2005-2010

BBC

Society & Culture, Personal Journals

4.4 • 804 Ratings

🗓️ 23 January 2005

⏱️ 35 minutes

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Summary

Sue Lawley's castaway this week is Dr Jonathan Miller. Jonathan Miller has been an influential and prolific force in British intellectual life since the 1960s. A writer, theatre and opera director and explainer of science to the public, he's had not one career, but several, and is seemingly capable of endlessly reinventing himself - as a scientist, a director, a television presenter, a writer, a film-maker and, more recently, a sculptor.

Whilst still a medical student he received an invitation which changed the course of his life and career - to take part in a sketch show called Beyond the Fringe, which was to go to the Edinburgh Festival. Jonathan was never to return to science full-time, as invitations to direct began to come in. He went on to become a leading theatre and opera director, celebrated for productions which included Tosca, set in Mussolini's Italy, and a mobster Rigoletto. This career alone would be regarded by many as more than sufficient, but Jonathan Miller combined it with making films and presenting television programmes.

[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]

Favourite track: Aria from Goldberg Variations by Johann Sebastian Bach Book: The Invertebrates by Libbie Henrietta Hyman Luxury: Canvas roll containing dissecting set

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, it's Nicola Cochlin. Young people have been making history for years, but we don't often hear about them. My brand new series on BBC Sounds sets out to put this right. In history's youngest heroes, I'll be revealing the fascinating stories of 12 young people who've played a major role in history and who've helped shape our world. Like Audrey Hepburn, Nelson Mandela, Louis Braille and Lady Jane Grey, history's youngest
0:25.4	heroes with me, Nicola Cochlin. Listen on BBC Sounds.
0:30.7	Hello, I'm Krista Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive.
0:35.7	For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.
0:38.8	The program was originally broadcast in 2005,
0:42.3	and the presenter was Sue Lawley.
0:44.2	Music My castaway this week is a theatre director.
1:02.0	That's a rather inadequate description of a man who's done a lot of things in his life,
1:06.2	but who nevertheless claims he's failed to achieve as much as he could.
1:09.8	Having read natural sciences at
1:11.5	Cambridge, he qualified as a doctor, but it was on the stage rather than in the operating
1:16.1	theatre that he began to make his name. He co-wrote and performed in Beyond the Fringe with
1:21.5	Alan Bennett, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, started to direct plays and became editor and presenter
1:26.5	of the BBC Television Arts Programme monitor.
1:29.2	Since then, he's made several series for radio and television on science and the arts.
1:33.3	The body in question is probably the best known,
1:35.9	and directed dozens of plays and operas for the stage.
1:39.5	In recent years, the invitations have come more from abroad than from home
1:43.9	and with his accompanying sense of rejection, a feeling of regret that he gave up the intellectual challenge of medicine for the more frivolous world of the arts.
1:53.3	There's a very large part of my sensibility, he says, which is filled with a sort of inconsolable remorse about having betrayed a very good mind.
2:03.2	He is Jonathan Miller.
2:05.3	People, frankly, Jonathan, would laugh to hear you say that.
	...

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