Eliza Manningham-Buller

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 18 November 2007

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller. She has recently stepped down as Britain's top spy-master - or more correctly, the Director-General of MI5. She took the helm in the months after the attacks of 11th September 2001 in America and steered the service through a time when the nature of the terrorist threat facing Britain changed enormously and new measures were introduced to counteract it.

She concedes that MI5 has to rely, in large part, on information that is 'patchy and incomplete' and that ultimately the service will always be judged 'by what we do not know and did not prevent'. In her first ever interview, Dame Eliza talks gives her recollections about the day when Britain was targeted by suicide bombers, describes what lay behind her own departure from the service and reveals how her mother's role during World War II fuelled her own interest in public service.

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

Favourite track: The opening of String Quintet in C by Franz Schubert Book: The Rattlebag: An Anthology of Poetry by Ted Hughes Luxury: Large supply of pencils and pens.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello I'm Krestey Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.
0:05.0	For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.
0:08.0	The program was originally broadcast in 2007. My castaway this week is Dame Eliza Manningham Buller and if the name seems unfamiliar, then that's just the way she likes it.
0:35.0	She has recently retired from her job as the UK's top spy master, or more correctly,
0:40.0	director general of the Security Service.
0:43.0	She led MI5 during a period of unparalleled terrorist threat,
0:47.0	taking on a job described as one of the most important in Britain today.
0:52.0	She took the helm in the months after Al-Qaeda's 9-11
0:55.0	attack in America and steered the service through a time when the nature of the terrorist
0:59.2	threat facing Britain changed enormously and when new measures were needed to counteract it.
1:04.6	She says our failures are known to all.
1:07.4	Our many successes are only known to a few.
1:10.1	We are judged by what we do not know and what we didn't prevent.
1:14.8	One of the most important jobs in Britain then, but also one of the most obscure
1:19.2	I should say that this is the very first interview you've ever given.
1:22.6	Does it feel strange to be sitting in front of a microphone?
1:25.1	I've sat in front of microphones, but the idea of it being broadcast to your listeners
1:30.5	seems strange because I've any ever spoken to limited audiences.
1:34.0	And usually invited audiences?
1:36.0	Usually invited audiences, yes, carefully selected audiences.
1:39.0	So for more than three decades then you were very good at keeping Stum. Has it felt like an
1:45.2	odd way to live your life so privately? Not really. I used to say that I worked in
	...

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