John Julius Norwich

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 2 November 1997

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the broadcaster and popular historian, John Julius Norwich. Closely associated with Venice, he talks about his love for the city and his battle to protect it from the rising waters of the Mediterranean. It's a passion he learnt from his parents - the diplomat and politician Duff Cooper and the beautiful socialite Lady Diana. As a boy he grew up surrounded by his mother's friends - artists and writers like Jean Cocteau and Noel Coward. Evelyn Waugh, too, frequently visited. But he was someone who his mother adored and his father barely tolerated.

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

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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 1997, and the presenter was Sue Lawley. My castaway this week is a writer and broadcaster.
0:23.0	Born 68 years ago, he's the child of one of
0:36.0	English society's most famous marriages, that of the distinguished diplomat and politician
0:40.4	Duff Cooper and the beautiful and glamorous Lady Diana.
0:44.0	Well connected, well educated and well travelled,
0:47.0	he worked for the diplomatic service for several years
0:49.0	before leaving it behind to write books.
0:52.0	Popular history, art and architecture have been his main themes, many of which
0:55.5	have also been the subjects of his television documentaries. His cultured ease has made him, as
1:01.2	he himself admits, a populariser rather than a scholar.
1:05.0	I've never allowed total ignorance of a subject to prevent my writing or speaking about it, he says,
1:10.0	very often at considerable length.
1:12.0	He is John Julius Norwich. Are you confessing
1:16.3	in saying that Lord Norwich that you're a bit of a con man?
1:19.4	You mug up on something. My words precisely I've always wondered how I've got away with it. I think I've got a good
1:25.3	sort of basic historic framework I think I've got the scaffolding I think I know where things
1:30.0	fit in I if I sort of read about a given place or a given period or something, I can sort of more
1:35.3	or less put it where it belongs in the general pattern of things. And I do do my homework.
1:40.3	I mean, obviously you have to. I mean, I hope that everything I've written has been as
1:44.5	accurate as I can possibly make it but you have to be an enthusiast as well don't you
	...

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