Robert Burchfield
Desert Island Discs
BBC
4.3 • 14.3K Ratings
🗓️ 20 April 1985
⏱️ 38 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Robert Burchfield, who has been Chief Editor of the Oxford English Dictionary since 1957, was born in New Zealand. After fighting in Italy during the war, he came to England to complete his education and stayed on to be a lecturer at Oxford University. In conversation with Roy Plomley, he talks about his career and discusses the many problems associated with compiling dictionaries.
[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Christy Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. |
| 0:05.9 | For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music. |
| 0:08.8 | The program was originally broadcast in 1985, and the presenter was Roy Plumley. |
| 0:14.3 | Our cast away this week is a lexicographer. He's chief editor of the Oxford English Dictionary |
| 0:35.6 | Dr. Robert Birchfield. Dr. Birchfield, the dictionary is produced actually in Oxford, is it? |
| 0:41.7 | Yes, it's produced in 37 A.S. and Giles, right in Central Oxford, a gorgeous Georgian mansion just by the War Memorial. |
| 0:50.7 | The Oxford University Press is in fact part of the university. |
| 0:54.5 | Technically, it's part of the university, but it's not part of the financial structure as much as I understand it of the university. |
| 1:00.9 | It produces some excellent books on music. Is music an interest of yours? |
| 1:05.6 | Not particularly, I grew up in a fairly silent home. I used to run a lot, play a lot of games, go fishing, and various things of that kind. |
| 1:15.4 | But my parents were not musical, and the house was fairly silent in Instagram. |
| 1:20.4 | Well, we've given you this task of assembling eight discs to last you for a long time. So it was fairly difficult. |
| 1:26.9 | Not difficult now, but would have been difficult when I was five, six, seven, or eight. |
| 1:32.2 | What's the first one? |
| 1:33.5 | The first one might sound rather surprising, choice, the Skybird Song. |
| 1:38.3 | When I was at school in a town called Wanganui in New Zealand, like so many schools, we had school assemblies with the music teacher requiring us all to sing. |
| 1:49.8 | There were many songs that were all persuaded to sing, but the Skybird Song is one, particularly, that I remember. |
| 1:56.2 | Have you any Scots ancestry? |
| 1:58.2 | Yes, my grandfather was a Scott here, and a graded from Scotland, about the turn of the century. |
| 2:28.2 | Oh, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come |
| 2:58.2 | come down, come down, come, come down, come, come down, come down, gather those people running, gather the bodies. |
| 3:19.5 | Come down, gather the bodies. |
... |
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