Sir Nicholas Henderson

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 28 May 1989

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The castaway in this week's Desert Island Discs is one of the country's leading former diplomats, Sir Nicholas Henderson. He has served in Britain's embassies all over the world - including Poland, West Germany and Paris, but was most prominent as our man in Washington during the Falklands War. He'll be talking to Sue Lawley about the pleasures and pitfalls of this somewhat nomadic, but nevertheless glamorous existence, and choosing eight records to accompany him on this, his final posting.

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

Favourite track: Concerto No 19 In F Major Third Movement by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Book: Short Stories by Guy de Maupassant Luxury: Sculpture from The Louvre and a box of different seeds

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,
0:11.0	and the presenter was Sue Lolly. My castaway this week is a diplomat, the epitome of British tact and a plom.
0:36.0	He has served as his country's ambassador in Poland, West Germany, France and the United States.
0:41.0	Before that, he had learned his profession in very distinguished
0:45.0	company, having been private secretary to five different foreign secretaries.
0:51.0	Universally known as Nico and admired for his ability to open doors and calm fears.
0:56.5	It was once said that having him in Washington during the Falklands War was as good as having another battle fleet. That's Nico, approachable and reassuring, otherwise
1:06.6	known as Sir Nicholas Henderson. I'm not sure how flattering it is, Sir Nicholas, to be
1:11.1	compared to a battle fleet, but I suppose it was meant to be a compliment.
1:15.0	No, I was compared by the BBC, many thought much more pertinently, when I was in Washington, to a broken down English country house.
1:25.0	We used to see such a lot of you I can remember at that time you were constantly
1:30.0	marching in and out of meetings with Al Haig and Casper Weinberger.
1:35.0	Yes, it wasn't like normal diplomatic life because there was a war and one had therefore had a different role
1:41.0	and America is a different place from any other country where they expect
1:44.7	foreign representatives to push their way around and get their view across.
1:49.2	But you were very much, weren't you, the voice of Britain in America.
1:53.4	I don't know whether you did look like a, what was it, a dilapidated house?
1:56.3	Yeah, a broken down English country house.
1:58.9	You were on all the chat shows, weren't you? Yes, because it was the main item of news and the Falklands War was as much the main item of news in the States
2:09.0	throughout as it was here and they want to know each day what was happening or going to happen and I was
	...

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