Enoch Powell

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 19 February 1989

⏱️ 39 minutes

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Summary

The castaway in this week's Desert Island Discs is the Rt Hon Enoch Powell - politician, poet and classical scholar. He'll be looking back on some of the incidents and issues which have made him one of the most controversial politicians in post-war Britain - among them, his so-called Rivers of Blood speech on immigration policy, and his exhortation to the electorate to vote Labour after his resignation over Britain's entry into the EEC.

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

Favourite track: The Renunciation of Siegfried (from Götterdämmerung) by Richard Wagner Book: Old Testament In Hebrew & Greek Luxury: Smoking device to smoke fish

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 1989, and the presenter was Sue Lolly. My cast away this week is a politician, a poet and a classical scholar. He was a member of the House of Commons for 37 years, first as a conservative and then as an Ulster Unionist.
0:38.0	All was admired for his intellect and eloquence. He never held high office. On issues such as the common market,
0:45.3	Northern Ireland and immigration, he expressed opinions which alienated him from many of his
0:50.4	colleagues. His isolation, however, often seemed to be a source of strength. His
0:55.8	lack of office never undermined his influence. Now, 77, he can look back on a career in which
1:02.3	he has been criticized as an extremist and hailed as a sage.
1:07.0	Whichever view you take, there can be no doubt that he has remained true to himself, Enoch Powell. Not always true though, Mr Powell, to the name your family
1:16.3	knew you by best. You were called John throughout your childhood, weren't you?
1:20.7	That's right. Yes. I was given two baptismal names after my respective
1:26.2	grandfathers. But the reason why Enoch superseded John is really a very mundane one and it's one which nobody would have guessed.
1:39.0	I had ambitions in my teens to be a classical scholar and I saw myself producing the definitive edition of Thucydides,
1:47.0	rather a presumptuous attitude for a school board. And one day, it must have been when I was 16 or 17,
1:55.0	I came across a copy of a classical review
1:58.0	in which an article on Thucydides had been written by an Oxford scholar
2:02.0	by the name of J. You Powell.
2:05.0	Heaven said I to myself, we should be confused.
2:08.0	I must differentiate myself from this fellow, whoever he is, who is writing about Thucydides. So for the first time I
2:14.5	spelt Enoch in full and that became my Czech signature and that became my
2:19.4	permanent signature. Well now how do you view the idea of being cast away on a desert island?
2:25.3	Do you view it with relish or dismay?
	...

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