Mary Benson
Desert Island Discs
BBC
4.3 • 14.3K Ratings
🗓️ 16 February 1997
⏱️ 40 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week's castaway on Desert Island Discs grew up in a conventional white South African family. Shielded from the true history of her country under apartheid, she played in the shadow of a Pretoria prison where many hundreds of black men and women were hanged, and never questioned what went on there. Then Mary Benson read the book Cry the Beloved Country. From that moment on, she became a ceaseless campaigner for the rights of black South Africans and dedicated her life to documenting their struggle. This week she talks to Sue Lawley about her search for a purpose to her life and chooses the music which has meant most to her.
[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]
Favourite track: Eroica Variations Opus 35 Fourth Bagatelles, Opus 126 by Ludwig van Beethoven Book: Unpublished Notes by Athol Fugard Luxury: Telescope
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Kirstie Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive for rights reasons |
| 0:06.1 | We've had to shorten the music |
| 0:08.1 | The program was originally broadcast in 1997 and the presenter was Sue Lawley |
| 0:30.8 | My castaway this week is a writer, born in South Africa at the end of the First World War |
| 0:35.8 | She was brought up in a world where the privileges belonged to the whites |
| 0:40.0 | She travelled in Europe and America, dabbled in the theatre and cinema |
| 0:44.1 | and fell in love with unattainable men |
| 0:46.6 | Then in 1948 she read a book which changed her life |
| 0:50.8 | Cry the Beloved Country by Alan Payton |
| 0:53.4 | From that moment she became committed to the Black African cause |
| 0:57.4 | She met Nelson Mandela, became the first South African to testify before the UN Committee on a partake |
| 1:03.6 | and was subjected to house arrest and a ban on her writing |
| 1:07.4 | In 1966 she left behind the country she loved and came to live in Britain |
| 1:12.5 | but she never gave up the struggle |
| 1:14.5 | Her recent biography tells her story in a way described by Nelson Mandela as |
| 1:19.5 | the striving to realise a fond dream |
| 1:22.8 | She is Mary Benson |
| 1:25.2 | And is the realisation of that dream all you hoped it would be Mary |
| 1:29.2 | or do you get depressed by the fact that it's so fraught with problems? |
| 1:33.2 | It's almost what I mean in a way it was so extraordinarily unexpected in its way when it happened |
| 1:40.8 | and enormously exciting |
| 1:42.6 | but yes there are obvious, very unpredictable problems |
... |
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