More Rosebud - Dame Mary Archer

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1:25Gyles Brandreth: Hello and welcome to another episode of More Rosebud. But if you're listening to this in real time, it's Tuesday. It's Tuesday, the 3rd of March. It's been quite a challenging beginning to march for me because Sunday was St. David's Day. And the following day, I thought to appear on the television program that I do in the UK called This Morning, I would wear my daffodil jumper. I got up quite early. I pulled it out of the cupboard. I got into the car and realized I'd walked off with a jumper that was the right color. The base color was correct. It was a lovely daffodil yellow, but actually on it wasn't a daffodil, a Tudor rose.

2:03Dame Mary Archer: Oh, whoops.

2:05Gyles Brandreth: Yeah, that's Harriet. Harriet Jane is with me. That is a mistake.

2:09Dame Mary Archer: Well, I mean, I imagine the whole of Wales is up in arms right now.

2:13Gyles Brandreth: Happily not, because the floor manager, Jack, explained to me, don't worry, Owen Glendower, he was a Tudor.

2:20Dame Mary Archer: Oh, good.

2:20Gyles Brandreth: And he married, so the Welsh and the English eventually got together.

2:23Dame Mary Archer: Gosh, what a well-educated floor manager.

2:26Gyles Brandreth: He's a brilliant floor manager.

2:27Dame Mary Archer: Is he Welsh?

2:28Gyles Brandreth: I don't know. But he's very dapper and he's very knowledgeable. Gosh. He's a very helpful guy. So that was a slightly traumatic beginning to March, which is always my favourite month because many of the best people were born in March. My birthday happens to be this coming.

2:45Dame Mary Archer: Not naming any names.

2:48Gyles Brandreth: When were you born after all?

2:49Dame Mary Archer: I thought many of the best people were born in June.

2:52Gyles Brandreth: Many of the best people were born in June, but many of the best people were born in March. What is your birthday, remind us? June the 6th. June the 6th, yes. Well, it's a special day. And nearer June the 6th, I will be reminding everybody so they can get their birthday cards and their special homemade lemon meringue pies, your favourite to send to you. But it's your birthday. It's my birthday this coming Sunday, the 8th of March, which coincides with International Women's Day. I rather assumed when I first heard about International Women's Day that very charmingly the organisers had chosen my birthday as being an appropriate day because I am so woman-friendly, so empathetic, so interested in the rights of women.

3:39Gyles Brandreth: Yeah, and you are actually. I genuinely am. But International Women's Day goes back a century. It's an American concept, all connected with the labour movement in America and women at work. women being enfranchised, all that sort of thing. I was thinking how everything has changed for women, even so much in my lifetime. Last week when we had Justin Welby, the 105th Archbishop of Canterbury, as our special guest on Rosebud, he mentioned that when he was at Cambridge University, only one in 10 of the undergraduates was female. and it was similar for me when I was at Oxford University in the 1960s.

4:23Gyles Brandreth: By the time you got to university and you went to Oxford as well, what was the ratio of male to female?

4:30Dame Mary Archer: I think it was getting to be pretty equal and now I think it may be more women.

4:37Gyles Brandreth: Yes, because it's done on brightness, on intelligence and we know that women are the brighter of the species.

4:41Dame Mary Archer: They do very well. Girls do brilliantly at school, don't they? I wonder what that is.

4:45Gyles Brandreth: Do you think they work harder?

4:46Dame Mary Archer: I think they, I mean, another of my massive generalisations, I think girls grow up quickly and are mature and hard-working, possibly before a lot of boys get to that place.

4:57Gyles Brandreth: I challenged myself coming here today, Harriet, to think of when I was a child in the 1950s, who were the role models? Not as it were the famous glamorous women. We've talked in the past about Leslie Caron, indeed a guest on Rosebud, the late, great Brigitte Bardot. They're different. I mean who were iconic figures, women who were considered great women. And I think the only three that came instantly into my head that I was brought up on in the 1950s told about, Elizabeth I, possibly Mary Queen of Scots as part of that story, but Elizabeth I, because I went to a French school, Joan of Arc, and Marie Curie, who I think was known as Madame Curie.

5:45Dame Mary Archer: Yeah, so wow.

5:46Gyles Brandreth: Pierre Curie, her husband, was the star, and she was sort of added on. So it was Pierre and Madame Curie. So just three women held out as sort of figureheads. Now you, one, two generations later, when you were a girl, who do you think were the women who you would have looked up to?

6:09Dame Mary Archer: Well, there were far more. So, I mean, even people like on the news, like Kate Adie, I remember she was being, she was kind of big. And there were lots of female TV presenters, newsreaders. And then obviously there'd been Margaret Thatcher.

6:25Gyles Brandreth: Yeah.

6:25Dame Mary Archer: I mean, I don't think she was particularly popular when I was young.

6:28Gyles Brandreth: No, I'm interested. You very automatically mentioned Indira Gandhi, the first woman prime minister of India.

6:34Dame Mary Archer: Mother Teresa. Mother Teresa again from India.

6:38Gyles Brandreth: Mrs.

6:39Dame Mary Archer: Bandaranaika from Sri Lanka.

6:42Gyles Brandreth: Golda Meir from Israel. these are all interestingly enough and mrs thatcher figures really post my childhood yes so really the world has really changed and i think people like maybe your daughters and my grandchildren have no idea what it was like yes so recently they just take it all for granted so we thought for our this week because it's international women's day on sunday we would invite two interesting women to be our guests. Maybe that's a bit of a cliche, but we've chosen, I think, two very, very interesting women. Somebody on Friday happens to be a politician, a member of parliament, but it's her home story, her family story, her personal story that I think will make her a really gripping listen.

7:29Gyles Brandreth: And today we've chosen a scientist, haven't we? We have. Who have we chosen? Dame Mary Archer. Dame Mary Archer, yes. Mary Doreen Archer. Born December 1944. Described, I see here in Wikipedia, as a British scientist specialising in solar energy conversion.

7:49Dame Mary Archer: Yes, she talks about that.

7:51Gyles Brandreth: Good. Anyway, she's had so many interesting roles in her life. I think most recently she was the chair of the Science Museum. I think she's now Chancellor of the University of Buckingham.

8:01Dame Mary Archer: And she was very, very involved in Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge and in the NHS. And I think that's why she got her dame hood. So she's very interesting. Both as a scientist and as a public servant. You know, I think she almost would say, I think she says in this interview, that's where she feels she excelled with organising and running things.

8:22Gyles Brandreth: And we're talking about her and her life because we've invited her because we want to celebrate and learn about her. She's very brilliant, very clever. I first got to know her because I have been a longtime friend of her husband, Geoffrey Archer, the novelist, who's also been a guest on Rosebud. And so I think I've probably known her. Well, they've been married for nearly 60 years, 60 years this year, I think. So I will have known her almost that long. And she is fascinating. So it's Mary Archer, scientist, is our special guest. Cue the music.

9:05Gyles Brandreth: Mary Archer, born 22nd December 1944. Mary, what is your very first memory?

9:16Dame Mary Archer: Do you know, I believe it's earlier than I should remember anything. But as you see, I was born in December 1944. and we lived at that time in a nice little house in Sunnybank in Epsom and we were quite close to Epsom Downs. My elder sister remembers being taken onto Epsom Downs by our father and shown London burning in the war and he said never forget it. But anyway what I remember I think unless I was told it happened is that I was being bathed as a toddler in the kitchen sink and there was a blackout curtain, a rough, scratchy, thick, black, blackout curtain on the window just to my left. And I reached out to stroke it or something and scalded my arm on the hot tap.

10:18Dame Mary Archer: And I don't know whether I've been told that or I really remember it, but now it's imprinted.

10:23Gyles Brandreth: Well, we had discussions with somebody from the memory lab at Cambridge University, and that is just about a possibility because of the physical pain. And also, that must have been just at the end of the war. It must have been at the very end, yes. Wow.

10:39Dame Mary Archer: Yes.

10:39Gyles Brandreth: Gosh.

10:40Dame Mary Archer: But then the next one is a much more definite memory. Wonderful birthday present. My father gave those wonderful presents. and for my third birthday, I got a wonderful little cash register, red, with, you know, buttons where you pressed and the drawer came open and there were half-crowns and florins and pennies and hatemers and farthings. And so I could play all afternoon selling things to my mother.

11:10Gyles Brandreth: And this is made of tin, probably, not plastic.

11:13Dame Mary Archer: No, no plastic at all. No, it was made of metal. It was nicely made.

11:18Gyles Brandreth: And big enough to take those coins. Yes. Because half crowned the floor and they were quite large. Yes, it was quite a sizable thing. Quite a sizable thing.

11:26Dame Mary Archer: Perhaps half the real size. Oh, wonderful.

11:28Gyles Brandreth: Well, so who were these parents? Who were your father and mother?

11:32Dame Mary Archer: Well, my father was a chartered accountant by profession, worked for a number of years for a pharmaceutical company called Pains and Burn in Greenford in Middlesex.

11:42Gyles Brandreth: What was his name?

11:44Dame Mary Archer: Harold. Harold Norman. and my mother met my father when he was refereeing a hockey match that she was playing in age 14 and so childhood sweetheart really they married in 1937 and my elder sister Janet came along in 1939 so my father died when I was 27 of laryngeal cancer he was a heavy smoker and so I really you know felt his loss very very keenly he was a very he was very ambitious for his daughters in a way it wasn't normal in those days not in an unpleasant way but um were they just the two girls just you two you and then and then my younger brother david who came along in 1950 who wasn't as hard-working as his two elder sisters and our father always used to say to our mother well he said it's pity about david but you know when he grows up he'll just have to learn to do something with his hands oh my and he did he became a surgeon oh very good very good

12:49Gyles Brandreth: clearly an impressive family describe your father physically what does he look like um he had very

12:54Dame Mary Archer: dark hair which i inherited he was short-sighted as we all are actually um more those kind of slightly round nhs kind of specs he had the distinguishing feature of his right temple wasn't convex like everybody else's but was concave because he loved his cricket and aged about 13 or 14 he'd taken a hardball it was before helmets and remarkably it had just put a dent in his young soft skull didn't seem to affect his brain in any way but anyway so he had that odd indentation and he loved his cricket and those were the great days of Surrey and I thought it quite the natural order of things that Surrey should always be top of the county championships.

13:45Gyles Brandreth: So you followed cricketer's little girl because of him?

13:48Dame Mary Archer: Well I would sit at his feet while he watched the two by two inch black and white television if he couldn't get to the oval but I played cricket at school I went to that kind of school so I love cricket good so it's been a sustaining passion of your life I do like cricket yes and have you been pleased to see the way women's cricket now is yes given credibility yes no women's sport has come on so far I've even sort of come around to women's rugby which took me a little getting used to but women's football in many ways I prefer like I prefer women's tennis actually there's more to it more to it

14:25Gyles Brandreth: and you can see the detail. Yes. Perhaps not so fast.

14:28Dame Mary Archer: Not so fast, but yes. But more skillful. And yes, the skill and the precision. Yes, you can't generally overwhelm your opponent by just serving at a rate that nobody can respond to, reply to.

14:41Gyles Brandreth: Going back to your father, was he a funny man? Was he a solid man? What was his conversation like?

14:48Dame Mary Archer: So he was highly intelligent, didn't go to university. It was impossible for the family. his father, my grandfather, had also come up in the world, but they lived quite modestly, so there was no money. But he was a bookish man. I've got all his books, all the Winston Churchills, all the Arthur Bryant history, all the Samuel Pepys diaries, all that kind of thing. He was a good amateur pianist and organist. So his parents, my paternal grandmother, came from the Welsh Valleys. That's a long and interesting and rather sad story. But anyway, we were sent away to live with a married aunt in Clerkenwell.

15:31Gyles Brandreth: Just because why you say long and sad, give us a little background to that.

15:35Dame Mary Archer: So my paternal grandmother was the child of a relatively prosperous hill farmer in the Glantony Valley in the Brecon Beacons. But he drank and he drank his way through that farm and sort of ended up as a farm labourer. And so the two eldest were sent to go into service to a wealthy, unmarried uncle. My grandmother, bright girl, was sent to live with Martha Watkins in Clerkenwell. And that's how she met grandfather. And the next daughter down was put in a mental hospital and never acknowledged afterwards, otherwise they'd have to have paid for

16:18Gyles Brandreth: Gosh.

16:19Dame Mary Archer: Yeah.

16:20Gyles Brandreth: So was your father conscious of this, do you think?

16:23Dame Mary Archer: Yes, I think he was. So he brought with him, or my grandmother brought with her, a harmonium. And so, you know, those kind of things where you get the pedals going with your feet to get the air through the pipes. So my father learnt or taught himself, I'm not sure, which to play the harmonium and thence the piano and the organ. he would play the piano every day after supper and so very young I would sit on his knee and sort of find middle C and sing along to the carols or whatever it was so I've always loved music

17:02Gyles Brandreth: and I owe that to him what's the sweetest memory you have of him gosh

17:11Dame Mary Archer: gosh well um so at the age of just 11 I was sent to Cheltenham Ladies College across the country where rather terrifyingly my older sister Janet was head of house the house I was put in as the most insignificant junior in those days you really didn't see your parents much there were you know there's no no such thing as weekly boarding or anything like that um and even our letters home they had to be read before they could be sealed and sent. I did love my time there, but I was homesick. And I remember one time he and my mother came, and I remember walking down the long corridor in the kind of junior bit of the school and thinking, will they be there?

17:56Dame Mary Archer: Will they be there? And I opened the door, and there they were, right opposite me. And so that's a wonderful memory. I remember exactly what my father was wearing and my mother had a hat on, which you wouldn't do these days.

18:09Gyles Brandreth: So who was your mother?

18:10Dame Mary Archer: My mother was the eldest of four children of parents, interesting couple, my maternal grandparents, Doris, Granny Doris, as I thought of her. She was wonderful. She taught me to play bridge, not that I'm very good at it, but I still remember all the admonitions about cutting the cards and placing them on your right. And she wrote for the family the most wonderful pantomimes in rhyming couplets, which I still have. I'm a bit of a hoarder. And I was an irritating child. I was always the sort of principal girl, aged about sort of six, seven, eight, nine. And I knew not only my own lines, but everybody else's.

18:58Dame Mary Archer: so when auntie sheila couldn't remember her lines i could helpfully prompt and my elder sister janet made all the costumes and they lived my grandparents the maternal grandparents in a house on tatnam corner so just around the corner from the derby and they had one of those double rooms a dining room and a drawing room with big double doors so that made a wonderful stage you see in the dining room was the stage and then in the drawing room was the half of the family that couldn't learn its lines that was the audience was your mother a homemaker did she go out to work she was bank clerk before she married and then um no she was a housewife and mother which in the

19:42Gyles Brandreth: 50s you could do you could and were they happy together do you think yes i think they were as i

19:49Dame Mary Archer: say my father was ambitious for us going back to being sent away to boarding school I think my mother would have been much happier if I'd gone to the local school and she would always say of me she said you've had a tremendous education you must use it and he was aspirational he wanted

20:10Gyles Brandreth: he wanted you to achieve yes and was it because he felt he hadn't quite achieved himself he hadn't had the academic opportunities?

20:19Dame Mary Archer: Possibly. I got no flavour of that, but he was certainly, you know, proud when I got into Oxford and then I got a first and then I got a PhD. Yeah, you delivered for him.

20:31Gyles Brandreth: Did you feel, are you still delivering for him, do you think?

20:35Dame Mary Archer: Oh yes, definitely.

20:37Gyles Brandreth: Because you are somebody who's gone on delivering again and again and again, and even after you touched your 80th birthday, I think you were still applying for new positions.

20:48Dame Mary Archer: I was and I, yeah, I'm lucky to be in excellent health and I've always been a workaholic. I've always enjoyed what I've done and I very much enjoy the things I do now.

21:00Gyles Brandreth: Was Janet like that as well, your older sister?

21:03Dame Mary Archer: Yeah, she's a bit of a workaholic. So she married a lovely chap who died too young, had a rather sedentary life and then decided he was going to take up scuba diving, which he did. He did all the courses and everything and then had a heart attack, you know, at the bottom of the Red Sea, which was awful. Anyway, so yes, my sister started off at medical school and then she had an accident that more or less destroyed the sight in one eye.

21:36Dame Mary Archer: I think now she, in these days, she would have been encouraged to carry on. but in those days that was thought to be difficult and so she left medical school she did a secretarial course she became a very high class secretary she then went to the courts and became one of those stenographers you know who tap in that mysterious not quite shorthand but you are the one who has delivered most yes but i i always say i owe my success to her because she was a good little mother to me and I learned all my letters and my numbers before I ever went to nursery school

22:12Gyles Brandreth: that's intriguing because a lot of people are the middle child feel they're the one who's left out the first child is the golden one because it's the first one to arrive and then the third one

22:21Dame Mary Archer: comes along and it's a boy yes I know and that was wonderful our mother was totally over the moon

22:26Gyles Brandreth: yes exactly and you were the one in the middle but you obviously didn't resent that you accepted

22:30Dame Mary Archer: that and no maybe there was a bit more separation between us than usual um and yeah so were you a friend of your brother you um i remember when he came home in a blue carricot and looked at him red and crying and i wasn't over impressed but he's come on very well since good i'm pleased to hear that and at primary school were you good did you do well sit in the front of the class my primary i think about the second year i was there perhaps the first year i was there uh one of the mrs lock's reports on me was mary must learn not to cry if she does not come top of the class

23:19Gyles Brandreth: and this we're having to attribute we're either crediting or blaming your father for all of this

23:24Dame Mary Archer: No, no, I think Mrs. Locke had a hand in that. But no, I was a bright child.

23:32Gyles Brandreth: And were you conscious of it? Yes, you were. The very fact that the teacher is noting it.

23:37Dame Mary Archer: Well, I didn't... I only... If I'm honest, I remember sitting in class and not putting my hand up because I nearly always knew the answer. But that's just cleverness. it doesn't necessarily translate into great wisdom or anything else actually.

23:56Gyles Brandreth: Has that been, obviously in many ways it's been a huge advantage to you because of the achievements we're going to touch on. Are there any downsides to being the cleverest girl in the school?

24:07Dame Mary Archer: Well I don't think I was at Cheltenham but I was certainly in the top kind of sets. Disadvantages, yes. You're probably plainer than the prettiest girl and the sportiest girl. And they have more kudos than you do.

24:25Gyles Brandreth: Do you find other people irritating or boring? Did you?

24:31Dame Mary Archer: I used to a bit, yes. Yes, I used to.

24:38Dame Mary Archer: But as I say, you know, cleverness, it doesn't... People sometimes think if you're clever, you must be clever at everything, but you're not. I guess I was clever at science and maths. Yeah.

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26:52Gyles Brandreth: So you go to Cheltenham Ladies College, which I know about because I have three older sisters and they all went to col, as we call it.

26:59Dame Mary Archer: Col, yes, we did call it col. And we used the green knickers for years later as dusters. It's completely indestructible. Yes, the uniform was something. Yes, green knickers, white knickers, liberty bodices, green silk dresses for Sunday, suits and hats for Sunday, complicated gym slips and enormous box shorts kind of thing for hockey and lacrosse. I hated lacrosse. Oh, why? It's a vile game. It's dangerous. I mean, you've got this great cross up at eye level and you're trying to throw it into somebody's face, basically.

27:40Gyles Brandreth: and what was the best of Cheltenham and the worst of it the best for me I suppose was the fact that

27:52Dame Mary Archer: it was a atmosphere that was conducive to learning and it's given me I think a sort of love of order it was quite a strict school um no talking in the marble corridor and got a file on the right and all the rest of it which freer spirits found very tiresome but i kind of found it gave an order and a structure um the worst oh dear the food oh really yes uneatable uh i hated and hate with a vengeance still porridge.

28:30Gyles Brandreth: And that was the regular breakfast, was it?

28:32Dame Mary Archer: Yes, except on Thursdays you had a bun and that was lovely. Don't know why Thursday.

28:37Gyles Brandreth: And how was the discipline maintained? At boys' schools, at that time, they were still giving people the cane or the slipper. Yes, no physical chastisement.

28:46Dame Mary Archer: Withering interviews with the house lady, Mrs. Garner, Mrs. G.

28:52Gyles Brandreth: Was there a special teacher for you?

28:55Dame Mary Archer: I suppose the teachers who taught me my A-level chemistry, which is when I really got completely hooked on the subject, they were all terrific. Miss Kay, Miss Bone and Miss Ellis. I can see them all. Miss Kay, Margaret Kay, she had also taught Margaret Thatcher when she must have been a young woman. so I remember her very well I remember one lesson she was demonstrating that school girl and school boy hardy of dropping magnesium in water and it fizzes around and and somehow a draw in in the bench where she was standing behind came out and because she wanted to put this little fire safely in the fume cupboard.

29:46Dame Mary Archer: She wasn't looking where she was going and she gashed her leg quite badly on the sort of sharp corner of the old-fashioned wooden drawer. I remember, you know, she taught the rest of the lesson with blood going down her leg, but she didn't budge. Gosh. Yes. So that's a particular memory. They were impressive people.

30:12Gyles Brandreth: Explain to me the difference between us. because when I was a teenager, I had to do physics, chemistry, biology. I just about cope with the biology. I loathe the physics and chemistry. I mean, I scored things like 0%, not even 3%, 0%. It just wasn't for me. What is different in my mind than yours? What makes a teenage girl want to be a scientist? And what have you got that others don't have?

30:45Dame Mary Archer: well I guess I've got a mind that tends to compartmentalize things and I was first introduced to chemistry actually at primary school not that they had science lessons as such but they had this big old country style house and the attic had been turned into a room called the discovery room and there were all kinds of jumbly things in there and i loved that place it had a gold leaf electroscope with an emony rod and rabbit's fur when you rubbed the rod with rabbit's fur that transfers static electricity onto the rod and held it at the top the gold leaves diverge

31:26Gyles Brandreth: bit of elementary physics there well no i don't understand but what is happening it's

31:31Dame Mary Archer: Well, the charge is transferred to the little gold leaves that are hanging down. It's positive charge that's transferred. Positive light charges repel, so they repel. Anyway, also in this discovery room, there was a huge and gorgeous, I thought, glistening lump of crystalline sulfur. And when I was told the yellowing periodic table on the wall, you know, that's element number whatever it is. actually I should know it's probably something like element 30 32 um that's sulfur and that's the rest of the chemical elements I said oh are they all as interesting as this I think she lied a bit and said yes because they aren't and so as soon as I got to Cheltenham and I discovered I was going to get chemistry lessons and I remember that very well too it was how to light your Bunsen burner and then what you do with it and what's the difference between a blue flame and a luminous flame um that was for me and my father actually didn't really want me to do it he he would have loved me to do history because he loved his his you know autodidactic approach to history but

32:42Gyles Brandreth: so I was absolutely determined and from then on you knew this is for me and does one you know if you are a boy who loves football maybe want to play football for England if you're a boy like me who's theatrical you think I'm going to be an actor one day did you think I'm going to be age

33:00Dame Mary Archer: 14 science is for me yes yes I absolutely did and who were the role models were or did it not matter

33:06Gyles Brandreth: to you that there weren't a lot of famous women scientists which they probably weren't then or

33:10Dame Mary Archer: were there in the 1950s no there weren't of course we'd heard of Marie Curie a romantic story. The first role model I had, a very great chemist, I met much later, Professor Sir George Porter, as he then was, Lord Porter, as he became, who was then director of the Royal Institution, where I did a postdoc. And he became a real role model and a sort of mentor for me. He got me my job at Cambridge. But as a child, what were you thinking?

33:44Gyles Brandreth: You know, 14, 15, you're beginning to think about the life beyond yes what was going through your head i don't think i thought much

34:00Dame Mary Archer: beyond i like this subject and i'm good at it and boy i'm going to smash my a-levels but i don't know that i had a longer-term vision and with the other girls in the dorm

34:13Gyles Brandreth: Were you listening to music together, looking at magazines, reading books?

34:18Dame Mary Archer: I guess that my closer friends then became the ones who were in the chemistry set.

34:25Gyles Brandreth: But this is the late 1950s, and you are not reading whatever the girls' magazines of the time were, Honey, and listening to, I don't know, Tommy Steele, Adam Faith, Cliff Richard.

34:37Dame Mary Archer: No, I wasn't. And at home, I didn't listen to those things either. I would listen to my father play the piano, was first introduced to the Beatles at Oxford. And Geoffrey got them down to Oxford, which was quite remarkable before they were really famous. And I had my own record player. I remember that very well, too. And my Beatles LPs. And on a Sunday morning, the little year group, chemistry year group in St. Anne's, wouldn't go to hall, but we would cook ourselves scrambled egg and mushrooms and play the Beatles LPs.

35:12Gyles Brandreth: Well, that sounds quite normal.

35:13Dame Mary Archer: Yes. That's okay.

35:14Gyles Brandreth: But before we get you to Oxford, let's finish you at school, any girlhood crushes on other girls or the teachers?

35:21Dame Mary Archer: Oh, yes, that was absolutely... Pashes, they were called, yes. Everybody had to have one. Yes, everybody had to have one.

35:26Gyles Brandreth: Did you have a sweet one, or did people have them on you?

35:29Dame Mary Archer: No, I wasn't that kind of a girl, I don't think. Were you... I certainly wasn't aware that anybody did. Were you pretty? No, not particularly. No, not particularly.

35:38Gyles Brandreth: or i think probably you weren't conscious of being pretty but i suspect you were no but clearly not it didn't that wasn't in your no were clothes beginnings of makeup were these

35:49Dame Mary Archer: things that weren't important to you makeup no never got near it gosh no and was there an interest in boys because there's a cheltenham boys school yes there is with them um we were kept uh segregated so the girls could go to the promenade and the boys could go to the high street in town

36:07Gyles Brandreth: um this is two different parts of town yes the girls were allowed to one area and the boys had to go could you ever meet in the doorway of boots or something choral events so the first

36:19Dame Mary Archer: choral thing i did was hiawatha's wedding feast and great excitement that's got a lovely solo for a tenor on a way awake beloved beautiful piece a real young man a tenor came and sang it wow gosh we all fell totally in love with him I think but anyway and the boys um sang the tenor and bass chorus but they were very exotic creatures to me and I mistakenly thought they must all be extremely clever and it was one of the largest surprises of my life when I got to Oxford I found

36:53Gyles Brandreth: that was not in fact the case as a rule boys are not clever that's a generalization yes not cleverer

37:00Dame Mary Archer: Not cleverer, no.

37:01Gyles Brandreth: So were you still at school when you first held hands with a boy?

37:05Dame Mary Archer: So I had a boyfriend at home from the young conservatives. Remember those?

37:11Gyles Brandreth: I do. Bless you.

37:13Dame Mary Archer: Yes, called Keith. And shamefully, I've forgotten his surname.

37:16Gyles Brandreth: Yes, but it's not profound. It wasn't. Your stomach didn't turn and your eyes water the prospect of him.

37:24Dame Mary Archer: No, no, no. It was something that happened. No, but, yeah, I really, as it were, knew very few boys apart from my brother before I went up to Oxford. And then, of course, suddenly you're in a minority. Then it was still all single-sex colleges, of course. So I think the proportion of females in the chemistry class was 7%.

37:43Gyles Brandreth: Did you assume you'd go to Oxford? You got good A-levels, I take it.

37:47Dame Mary Archer: So in those days, you had to take university entrance after A-levels. That's an extra term. So the extra term, and you did your Oxford scholarship in the autumn term, and your Cambridge in the spring term. So I duly did the Oxford exam and was offered a scholarship, and so I said to my father, that's it, I'm leaving. Let's take it. He was cross, he wanted me to try for Cambridge. But I'm glad I went to Oxford, because Oxford chemistry was unusual. Way back in 1913, W.H. Perkins, Jr., great chemist, said, let's have a four-year degree. And so three years just being taught and doing practical classes and fourth year mini-thesis.

38:33Dame Mary Archer: Now, that's absolutely commonplace now, but it was the only chemistry course at that time that offered that. So that attracted me too. Whereas at Cambridge, of course, they did and they do do the tripos approach. Which means what? Well, if you're a scientist, a natural scientist, you'll do three experimental subjects say chemistry physics and cell biology in your first year then you can do two in your second year then you're finally allowed to do one in your third year chemistry if you're going to be a chemist so you end up knowing a lot more physics and materials science or biology or whatever and rather less chemistry and I always think of course I taught at Cambridge subsequently.

39:20Dame Mary Archer: That turns out people who are very good at interdisciplinary work so they morph into very good molecular biologists which needs a little bit of everything. Whereas at Oxford you did four years of chemistry and boy you knew your chemistry.

39:35Gyles Brandreth: Were you conscious then of something that may even be true today that you speak a language because you're a scientist that many people don't speak at all and don't even attempt to understand. when we were young there were the famous cp snow the two cultures yes yes where he tried to break this down and said this is ridiculous that we have arts people and scientists yes but i'm thinking here in 2025 yes you're speaking in a language of a world that i've observed but not really been part of have you felt that you've spent much of your life in a separate world

40:10Dame Mary Archer: Yes, in a way it is a separate world. I think it's a wonderful world. The great thing about science is, even if you're not a great research scientist, and I never was, you can put a little bit of nugget of knowledge in the sort of great house that's being built by all the research work and all the scholarship, and you're judged for what you do, and you're surrounded by evidence, not opinion. So it is a different world.

40:36Gyles Brandreth: so your time at oxford the science was lovely to you that was everything what was your social life like what were the hobbies you pursued what were the other things you did atst anne's singing

40:46Dame Mary Archer: singing so i joined the bar choir then later on when i went to oxford as a postdoc i became a clerk of oxenford you know the clerk the clerk of oxenford who sang so sweet in chaucer's canterbury tales. Well, the Clarks of Oxenford was an early music group.

41:05Gyles Brandreth: And did you have a fun social life? So my first boyfriend, one of the Glenley, that's my house at Cheltenham,

41:18Dame Mary Archer: year group that I remain friends with, Mirabel, her brother Sebastian was at New College Oxford a year ahead of when I went up. And she very kindly got me an invitation to go and have tea with Seb at New College and in the next room on the same staircase there was this lad called Nicholas Montague and he became my sort of first boyfriend but pretty soon I met Geoffrey. Nicholas Lloyd went on incidentally rather alarmingly to become chair of the HMRC. Oh goodness. Yes customs and excise yes.

41:57Gyles Brandreth: So not that Nicholas Lloyd became the editor of the Daily Express.

41:59Dame Mary Archer: Oh, that was, yes, no, Nicholas Lloyd was also a boyfriend, actually, a bit later on, yes, the second Nick. But then I met Geoffrey at a party that Nick Lloyd was throwing.

42:13Gyles Brandreth: Nick Lloyd, the HMRC Nick Lloyd.

42:16Dame Mary Archer: No, no, Nicholas Montague. Sorry, I'm muddling myself anew. So Nicholas Montague was the friend of Sebastian Walker, who was the brother of Mirabel Walker, who was a school friend of mine.

42:28Gyles Brandreth: Very good.

42:28Dame Mary Archer: Got it.

42:29Gyles Brandreth: So Nicholas Montague and you are an item.

42:32Dame Mary Archer: Only very briefly.

42:33Gyles Brandreth: Exactly. It's not heavy duty. This is not the big love affair.

42:36Dame Mary Archer: No, definitely not.

42:37Gyles Brandreth: This is boyfriend, girlfriend. We go out a little bit of holding hands and kissing.

42:40Dame Mary Archer: No, not even that. Not even that, no. Companionship. Yes, tea on the sofa or something. That's nice. Anyway.

42:47Gyles Brandreth: And then you go to this party. What year are you in?

42:49Dame Mary Archer: Second year by that time.

42:51Gyles Brandreth: So you're still very young. You're 20 years old.

42:54Dame Mary Archer: I suppose I am, yes.

42:55Gyles Brandreth: And you meet young Geoffrey Archer.

42:58Dame Mary Archer: I do. who is what's he doing there he's doing ostensibly doing a pgce postgraduate certificate of education because he'd been teaching taught you indeed young giles he did indeed not didn't teach me a great deal but he did so with great vigor that sounds like my jeffrey yes so he was just totally different he was a bit older he had a car that was rather special a rather nice morris minor you know one of those things that's all curves our first date he took me to uh see dr no at the cinema oh i hadn't even heard of james bond oh my god so he was different he was so well i don't think he was

43:44Gyles Brandreth: different i think he was normal i think you're the innocent different one hasn't heard of james bond i know i mean you're so wrapped up in your bunsen burners and your early english music oh dear the cocks of oxenford anyway i think you must have been very attractive because clearly he fancied you yes he was he was drawn to you yes he was and i imagine knowing him that he pursued

44:07Dame Mary Archer: you pretty relentlessly he was rather what's the word courtly curtly courtly um in those days yes i mean you know um so the the doctor no date that came in a little card in those days you had pigeonholes and there was um there was an intercollegiate postal service and um so there's a card saying you know we met at nick lloyd's party i wonder if you'd like to you know come to see dr no with me and i wrote back and i said yes that's when it's dr no the answer is yes

44:45Gyles Brandreth: it's very good and how quickly did it develop into actually this is my boyfriend um

44:57Dame Mary Archer: Quite quickly. I think we got engaged after my third year, when you take your sort of first lot of exams. Then we married after I did my thesis year, my mini thesis year, the fourth year I told you about, in the University Church of St Mary's.

45:12Gyles Brandreth: So you married within 18 months to two years of your first encounter?

45:16Dame Mary Archer: I suppose so, yes. I thought I was very grown up, and I remember my father cautiously saying, you know you are very young are you quite sure and I felt so grown up did your did Geoffrey

45:29Gyles Brandreth: go and ask your father being courtly yes yes yes he said I'd like to marry yes yes and what did

45:34Dame Mary Archer: your father say to him well he said yes but he said um just promise me one thing promise me you'll never stop Mary doing what she wants to do for her career I think maybe because he hadn't exactly stopped my mother but it wasn't expected that she would work um and jeffrey has been as good as his word never has yeah and what was what did you see in him during that 18 months because marrying

46:05Gyles Brandreth: somebody maybe didn't realize at the time is a huge commitment it is and yes i thought i was

46:13Dame Mary Archer: very grown up but at 21 you're not um and had i as it were stayed single for longer i think i would have been more cautious about marrying anyone and you can see that today people marry much later but um what did i saw um fun um energy different things so he's a good runner he became president of OUAC, the Oxford University Athletics Club.

46:42Gyles Brandreth: Because he wants to then have been very different from you.

46:45Dame Mary Archer: Oh, he still is, yeah. Well, he certainly still is. But I'm trying to picture the pair of you.

46:51Gyles Brandreth: Him, 23 or 24. Yes. You, 21.

46:55Dame Mary Archer: Yes. Yeah, I mean...

47:03Dame Mary Archer: I do remember at the time thinking, is this a good step? but somehow i'd done everything young i mean i took my a levels at 16 i was sort of two years ahead of the year group and so to me i i'd seen a lot of life yeah and i know i mean he always says

47:30Gyles Brandreth: what you gave him was youth beauty and high intelligence uh no no well as you know he loves that has always loved your achievements so he's been very kind no but but he has it's it's he feels that it reflects well on him uh you know you know that he always thinks you know look everybody if i could get her i've got something at the time and it's true i don't know about that yes yeah that's certainly is what he thinks so here you are 21 you know you're still actually at oxford when you get married get married in the university church yes yes what was that like

48:04Dame Mary Archer: who married you leslie styler who was the chaplain of brazenose jeffrey was attached to brazenose so it's rather nice you could walk from the church to the reception in brazenose he had a bullnose morris as well as his morris minor and we went away on honeymoon in the bullnose morris well we didn't really we went around the corner and then swapped it for the morris minor very good and where was the honeymoon uh ireland it was lovely i remember how green it was and

48:34Gyles Brandreth: you mentioned him bringing the beatles to oxford because he was already

48:37Dame Mary Archer: up to some of his wonderful schemes yes and it was before i met him actually yes one of them

48:44Gyles Brandreth: so you already had the glamour of fame when you met him at that party well that's true actually

48:47Dame Mary Archer: brought the beatles to oxford yes that's true some charity gig and they came yes it was for

48:52Gyles Brandreth: Oxfam well done it was for Oxfam yeah and there are those pictures of him with the Beatles yes

48:58Dame Mary Archer: that's right I think one of them holding an Oxfam tape yeah and he looks so young yes it's absurd

49:02Gyles Brandreth: yes it's ridiculous she'll be wearing shorts um yeah yes yes but basically you go on the honeymoon

49:09Dame Mary Archer: and then your academic life goes on so yes so we moved to London and I embark on my PhD at Imperial College. Geoffrey had political ambitions and he very soon got onto the Greater London Council as one of the three Tories for the London Borough of Havering which was basically Hornchurch and Romford.

49:33Gyles Brandreth: And were you supporting him in this or was this of interest to you or were you just carrying on with your work?

49:37Dame Mary Archer: I did support him but then when he became an MP which he did in Louth in Lincolnshire in a by-election. I supported him, but it was quite tough because wives were expected to, you know, go and open things. And that was tough. By that time, I was back at Oxford doing my first postdoc. Then Geoffrey and I decided we wanted to have children. And so I looked for a job in London. And that's how I came to work at the Royal Institution, got myself under the wing of George Porter.

50:13Gyles Brandreth: And he's a Nobel laureate. He's one of the greats.

50:16Dame Mary Archer: He is one. He was great.

50:17Gyles Brandreth: And what did he give you? I mean, people talk about the great man. Yes. What did he give you as an individual? How did he change you?

50:24Dame Mary Archer: He gave me a lot of latitude. I became very interested. He was a photochemist, the effect of light on chemical substances. And I was trained as an electrochemist. And first of all, he didn't really want me to go and join them because, as he rightly said, they did photochemistry and I did electrochemistry and I said brightly I'm sure there's an interdisciplinary field there and it turned out there was there was um the infant field of solar energy conversion the idea was you would be able to make a chemical battery that wouldn't need to be recharged by being plugged into the mains or whatever but could be recharged by sitting in the

51:02Gyles Brandreth: so you were one of the pioneers of solar powers and alternative energy are you yes I was well

51:09Dame Mary Archer: Well done.

51:10Gyles Brandreth: Congratulations. Is that the nugget you have contributed?

51:13Dame Mary Archer: Maybe a little bit, yes. So George was a Nobel laureate and much too busy and important to accept all the invitations that came his way. So I was lucky in that I got sent to some quite high-powered conferences. I remember there was a UNESCO conference in 1972 or three called The sun in the service of mankind and I came back to the RI and I said to George there's this thing called the International Solar Energy Society and Britain isn't a member of that society he said well do something about it so he let me have a little room in the top of the RI and founded the UK section of the Solar Energy Society which actually we finally put to bed a year ago after 50 years because it's moved so far beyond little academic societies.

52:08Dame Mary Archer: Also, the RI is the home of the Friday evening discourse, which used to be a very grand affair, white tie and tails. Goodness. From nine o 'clock to ten o 'clock, exactly. And there was an alarming clock that dinged on the hour, and you were meant to start on the first ding and end on the second ding. Goodness.

52:29Gyles Brandreth: And what happened to this? People said wise and brilliant things, did they?

52:33Dame Mary Archer: Well, they were rather grand events at which science was explained, as it were, to a lay but interested audience. George was good at that, very good at that. I remember the course he gave called The Laws of Disorder about entropy, which was great.

52:50Gyles Brandreth: What is entropy?

52:51Dame Mary Archer: Entropy is the tendency of systems to become disordered and to become uniform. So I'm sure you know you're Flanders and Swan. I certainly do. So heat won't flow from a cooler to a hotter. You can try it if you like, but you're far better not. So that's the second law of thermodynamics and entropy.

53:12Gyles Brandreth: Indeed. I do remember that because of the song. That's the way to teach it. Well, I know what songs. I was at a Tom Lehrer show the other night, and they did the famous Elements song. Oh, wonderful song. Which you can do, which I've heard you do.

53:23Dame Mary Archer: I can do it.

53:24Gyles Brandreth: And it's amazing, all the elements.

53:27Dame Mary Archer: Yeah, there's a lot of them. And it's a bit awkward for a chemist because they're not in a proper order. They're in the order that rhymes and scans. Mm.

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55:17Gyles Brandreth: so i'm just trying to picture you and jeffrey at this stage and this is the stage which i get to know though i knew jeffrey when i was 10 i get to know him properly in the 1970s and uh so i see what he's like because i spent time with him and he's fizzing with energy becoming an mp ceasing to be an mp because of a financial business he got involved in that threatened to go bankrupt and he couldn't be bankrupt as an MP, so he stepped down, etc. All of this I remember vividly. And meanwhile, I'm trying to think what was happening to you. What does this... I can see you with the great man, the man who becomes Lord Porter, but does the scientist spend the most of the time thinking?

55:59Gyles Brandreth: Are you thinking about these things?

56:01Dame Mary Archer: No, you're in the lab doing experiments. I started a line of work on a sort of type of photoelectrochemical cell turns sunlight into electric power but not very efficiently and spent some time working out why that wasn't very efficient i guess that was my rather negative contribution in some ways but i also had our two boys at that time so boolean was born in 72

56:26Gyles Brandreth: and james in 74 and was this a sacrifice for you or did you were you happy to be a mother were you

56:32Dame Mary Archer: frustrated oh no no no no no we did want children um and no i was very happy um i think jeffrey would have loved to go on and have a daughter but anyway we've got two granddaughters now so that's

56:46Gyles Brandreth: fine yes so compare and contrast you're this serious scientist yes and jeffrey is this extraordinary phenomenon um he hasn't yet i don't think begun writing he's about to begin writing

56:59Dame Mary Archer: so after the aqua blast debacle when as you rightly say he left the house of commons because he thought he might have to go bankrupt which he never did thank god so there he was basically without a job and i remember very well he said i'm going to write a book and i sort of said yes and um noel hall who was the principal of uh brazenose very kindly said to jeffrey go and sit quietly in my country home and write. So he went away for six weeks and came back with a sheaf of handwritten paper and that was the manuscript of Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less.

57:41Gyles Brandreth: He was very dependent on you. I'm very conscious of that because I remember him coming back to London one night, this is these early 70s, when LBC radio just started and I was doing night shifts and he was going to do an even later night shift than me and we came he arrived I met him at the station to take him to LBC it was his first night there and almost between every stint during almost every commercial break he telephoned you to say how was it what did you think was it all right and uh because you're not there when when when he's with other people you are not there by definition but he talks about you in every conversation i know to this day i know um uh was that wearing because i remember going back to michelle um my wife and saying god he's really quite needy really needs the the validation of of mary uh and yet he had so much bounce and energy yes um it didn't seem to matter i don't think he needs validation in that way now um no i am conscious that he's as it were proud of me which is nice and actually i'm proud of him he is very remarkable person also in a different way yeah we can we let's come back to that but i want to your career is what we're talking about your life so you go on being a scientist uh

59:10Dame Mary Archer: enjoying it you go back to it after the boys are yes i do i conclude my postdoctoral stint with George in the Royal Institution and look around for my, as it were, big job. And I secure a fellowship at Cambridge. Yay! This is wonderful.

59:29Gyles Brandreth: I mean, do you feel it's wonderful? Yes, I did. The first person you phoned is your father to say the good news.

59:35Dame Mary Archer: No, he died. He died in 1971.

59:39Gyles Brandreth: Oh, so he didn't see this. No, no. But he knew it was on the cards.

59:44Dame Mary Archer: um he saw my first he saw me get my phd um um and that was what he saw yeah never saw the children

59:57Gyles Brandreth: so children grow up we're going to go on you get a fellowship at cambridge and what's your

1:00:01Dame Mary Archer: life in cambridge like so i got a joint appointment between newham and trinity colleges and Trinity, a very wealthy college, was able to rent us a rather nice house on Grange Road. And so I was a chemistry don for 10 years. And I think when I started out, I thought it would be for life. But as I came up to that 10 years, I began to think, what am I going to do in the next 10 years and the 10 years after that? And I think it was because Geoffrey is not at all academic, I did realize there was a real world out there, which most academics don't really think.

1:00:42Gyles Brandreth: Had you got involved in college life? Yes, that was another thing. Did you become the dean of your college or moving up the ladder to become?

1:00:49Dame Mary Archer: Yes, so I was on the college council and I discovered I actually enjoyed that. It's rather sad, but I've always quite enjoyed committee work, provided the committee's got something useful to do. I became a school governor. I became the founder secretary of the Fitzwilliam Museum Trust which was a development body for the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge and yeah so to put down some roots in Cambridge and still have the lovely house that we were able to buy on the proceeds of Cain and Abel which was Jeff's third novel the big big seller the big big yeah the big seller

1:01:26Gyles Brandreth: well that is an excuse for me to ask you about the real love of your life we can come back to Geoffrey in a moment but would I be right in saying that the real love of your life is Rupert Brooke ah yes he is absolutely amazing so we were able to buy

1:01:45Dame Mary Archer: the old vicarage Grantchester about which he wrote the eponymous poem and lived in lodged in for a couple of years pre the great war we were able to buy it in the autumn of 79 and at that stage I knew the name and I think I knew if I should die think only this of me that there's some corner of a foreign field that is forever England etc and I knew the poem the great lover that he wrote I think I had to learn it at school these have I loved plates and cups clean gleaming ringed with blue lines and feathery fairy dust etc but that's about all I knew but obviously if you live in the old vicarage Grantchester you bone up and I came across his letters the ones that were edited and published by Geoffrey Keynes who was his great school friend and kind of a manuensis and he was still alive when we were at the old vicarage first and he came to lunch one day and told us about his memories of Rupert.

1:02:55Gyles Brandreth: And you think of him as Rupert, I know you do.

1:02:57Dame Mary Archer: Oh yes, of course I do, yes.

1:02:58Gyles Brandreth: And you've got a statue of him outside the house, a lovely statue of him. He is, I'm saying this, you can say yes or no, he is a kind of romantic figure in your head and he's quite a romantic writer.

1:03:11Dame Mary Archer: Yes, his poems are very romantic. His letters and his prose are less romantic and although he was romantic and knew damn well how very good looking he was there was a side of him that disliked that in himself.

1:03:29Gyles Brandreth: Would he have made good boyfriend, marriage material do you think?

1:03:33Dame Mary Archer: No I think pretty hopeless. His love life was quite complicated and involved some young men as well as young women. he was quite a complicated person emotionally.

1:03:49Gyles Brandreth: Are you complicated emotionally?

1:03:51Dame Mary Archer: No, I don't think so.

1:03:53Gyles Brandreth: Does that disappoint you? Do you think you've missed out, missed a few tricks there along the way? Are scientists on the whole less complicated emotionally than arts people?

1:04:05Dame Mary Archer: Gosh, that's a very good question. I've never asked myself. You might think there's a good reason they would be.

1:04:12Gyles Brandreth: the reason i ask you about rupert brooke at all is that clearly you are a scientist you have a very ordered mind uh your committee work is famous we're going to come on to some of the extraordinary achievements of your later life but they're all very precise that you deliver something and you turn up to deliver it and you do it well and and yet you have this passion for rupert brooke who have a passion for other things. I'm just speaking on that as an example. And I'm just wondering if in your head you sometimes think, oh, I wish I'd let go. I wish I'd been more complicated.

1:04:51Dame Mary Archer: No, I don't think that. But I do find Rupert's life story enormously compelling. And of course, he died young and beautiful.

1:05:01Gyles Brandreth: Yes, because was he still in his 20s? He died in 1916?

1:05:04Dame Mary Archer: He died on St. George's Day, April the 23rd 1915 when the when the Great War broke out Rupert became a second lieutenant in the Royal Naval Division they did see action at the fall of Antwerp which was autumn 1914 very early overrun and he wrote about it very movingly I think I may not have it exact but one of the things he remarked um not a bad time and place to die antwerp 1914 better than coughing out your life amid bedsheets and disinfectant in 1951 oh yes that was a remarkable thing that is an

1:05:46Gyles Brandreth: extraordinary prescient thing yes now the rest of your life after you've given up being a don is public service of different kinds.

1:05:56Dame Mary Archer: Yes.

1:05:57Gyles Brandreth: And of those, we're not going to go through all of them. You've done so much. Addenbrookes Hospital?

1:06:01Dame Mary Archer: Yes. Still with me.

1:06:03Gyles Brandreth: Oh, you're still part of that, are you? Yes, yes, I am. What was your main role there?

1:06:07Dame Mary Archer: So I was invited to join the board of Addenbrookes NHS Trust, as it then was, in 1992, and was to serve on that board for 20 years, 10 of them as chair, the latter 10.

1:06:20Gyles Brandreth: And is that why you got your DBE? Well, I don't think I got it because of that,

1:06:25Dame Mary Archer: but it was for services to the NHS, yes.

1:06:28Gyles Brandreth: So if you were going to improve the NHS now, because there was talk at one stage of you becoming the NHS, whatever the top person is, what would you be doing? What would be different? It's such a great monolith. I think I would introduce socially sensitive charging

1:06:48Dame Mary Archer: to visit a GP because a lot of people go to their GP for partly social reasons. But I am a great champion of the NHS, which saved my life when I got bladder cancer, when I was chairman of the hospital, ironically. But it is so very, very big. It would be a tremendous thing to move from the state being as it were the sole funder and insurer to the insurance model that is common on the continent but i do think that's a better system you know when the nhs was created the average life expectancy was sort of 70s 70 early 70s and people are living so long now and so much can be done i think it's a bit like you know our railways we were the first to build them and now they're rather old and creaky and the same is true of the

1:07:47Gyles Brandreth: NHS so of all these public things that you've done and there are so many which is the one that's

1:07:52Dame Mary Archer: given you the greatest buzz I'm always absorbed by and like what I'm doing now I can't really what are you doing now um so I've been recycled into hardcore chemistry um I have um joined the Salters Company, the livery company. It is encouraging young people into chemistry and with this particular angle on industrial chemistry, which is suffering badly at the moment, actually very badly because of high energy costs and so forth. So that's what I'm doing now. I'm Chancellor of the University of Buckingham and very importantly involved still with Addenbrookes, the east of england the six counties of the east of england the only area of england that does not have a children's hospital and we have planning consent and and the nhs consents nearly all of them that we need to build a children's hospital so i co-chair the campaign for that this is how

1:08:56Gyles Brandreth: you get the buzz professionally yes and i know the buzz that you get from having lived with Jeffrey before we get to our last three questions this is about you not about Jeffrey but I do want to know about your living with Jeffrey the upside we can talk about but the downside over the years there have been downs there have been bad moments yes one of the reasons that you're well known and when people I said you were doing this several people referred to you in relation to Jeffrey rather than referring you in relation to you which is I think you are very interesting because because my wife, Michelle, was at St.

1:09:33Gyles Brandreth: Anne's, almost overlapping with you. Indeed. And I remember there were very few girls. And they were, I don't think I met one female scientist when I was at Oxford.

1:09:42Dame Mary Archer: They were all in the lab.

1:09:44Gyles Brandreth: Yeah, they were, exactly. So you are an achieving person in this particular field, which is extraordinary. But you are famous, or you're known, because of being married to Geoffrey. How did you cope with the downs? downs I can see what the ups are because there were big downs you first became well known when

1:10:03Dame Mary Archer: Geoffrey uh took out a libel action in which famously you were described by the judge you

1:10:09Gyles Brandreth: know please please I won't use the phrase I promise you I won't but that was that's as it well how you became almost a household name and then later when there was a perjury trial that resulted in being in prison they were the downsides how difficult was it for you how did you cope

1:10:28Dame Mary Archer: well before i answer that i'll just say i like to say to jeffrey that you know the marriage vow is it what is it for richer for poorer for better for worse in sickness and in health and i feel we've explored the further extremes that more thoroughly than most couples um so how did i cope i've always been a coper my very amateur psychology is this much of your life is a bit like trundling along on a railway track you know you're at school you take your gcse's you take your a levels you're at university you take your exams and life trundles on and there are big events um but then you come to some big problem and it's like a fork in the railway line there's points and you could go this way you could go that way and one way is I can cope with this and the other is I can't cope with this and I've always thought if you go down I can't cope boy it's hard to cope when you come to the next one you have to cope you have to be resilient I don't know where I've got that from but I've always believed that so that and and also I mean we won't go into the rights and wrongs of it but I was also So I was furious at the way Geoffrey was kind of singled out.

1:11:49Dame Mary Archer: We wouldn't go there too far. But anger can be quite a positive emotion.

1:11:55Gyles Brandreth: And, of course, I've heard you being able to joke about it, saying, you know, when it comes to Geoffrey, I've never thought about divorce, murder often.

1:12:03Dame Mary Archer: Yes, indeed. I don't think I'm the first person to say that, but it's true. It's a good line. Yes.

1:12:09Gyles Brandreth: But he is remarkable, I must say. He is remarkable. Yes. And I think what I think, and I think it's what you use, because some people say, somebody was saying to me yesterday, I said, I was doing this, oh, my God, she's as bad as he is. I said, I don't think he's that bad. And I said, no, I don't think it's like that at all. She said, why is she with him? And I said, I know why she's with him. And I think, well, maybe you won't agree with me here, I think you're with him because we all have strengths and weaknesses, and his strengths and his weaknesses may be greater than those of many people.

1:12:41Gyles Brandreth: His achievements are extraordinary.

1:12:42Dame Mary Archer: They are. They are.

1:12:44Gyles Brandreth: And they brought you things that maybe you wouldn't otherwise have had.

1:12:48Dame Mary Archer: Indeed. We have a much more luxurious lifestyle than I grew up with. But no, I admire Geoffrey.

1:12:59Gyles Brandreth: What's the best thing? Your best moment with Geoffrey? The best thing he's given you? Because you've been together now for, gosh.

1:13:05Dame Mary Archer: Coming up to 60 years. Next year will be our diamond wedding anniversary. Yes. What's the best thing he's given me? The best moment.

1:13:15Gyles Brandreth: Your best moment with Geoffrey.

1:13:16Dame Mary Archer: Moment. It's not so much moments. I think I'm profoundly grateful to him for the support he's always given me. And he's been tolerant of the fact that in many ways I've been a very bad wife. I'm not always there. I'm not always there. I'm doing something else. I can cook, but I don't cook. he's very supportive um and i really value that i won't ask you about the bladder cancer only

1:13:48Gyles Brandreth: because the answer is now obvious it was one of those challenges and you had a choice which road to take and you thought actually i i know the best doctors this is a good hospital that i've helped yes develop into a good hospital they will look after me and you went through with it

1:14:06Dame Mary Archer: yes I did and um I'd be dead if I hadn't um I was I was fortunate um in that it was caught

1:14:14Gyles Brandreth: um early um enough were you frightened I mean do you have do you have these emotions are you someone who does get scared or are you so rational that you think ah this is better cancer I know what the odds are I think we've caught it early enough I know Dr. So-and-so I'll speak to her

1:14:34Dame Mary Archer: I did think exactly that, yes. The odds for my stage of cancer are pretty good. Bladder cancer is almost two separate diseases. Grade 1 and grade 2, OK. Grade 3, not so good. But no, I always thought I would come through it. I always thought I would.

1:14:53Gyles Brandreth: Almost at the end now. Regret.

1:14:56Dame Mary Archer: Bigger regret. I've had a few. Yes. I regret that I was a bad wife in many ways. And a bad mother, in some ways, not always there for my children either. Poor William, dear William, my elder boy, has never quite forgiven me for the fact that when he sang some tremendous solo, I wasn't there. That was bad. And I was choir mistress at the time, you know, at the church. So it was really, really bad. I wouldn't say I've neglected my family, but I would say I've taken them for granted and they have been indulgent in terms of my not always being there.

1:15:36Gyles Brandreth: But they feel they've been lucky to have you, so you don't need to worry too much about it.

1:15:41Dame Mary Archer: Well, I don't know.

1:15:42Gyles Brandreth: Last three questions. From particularly your early years, a moment of joy. Oi! What comes into your head?

1:15:50Dame Mary Archer: Well, we've already dwelt on the red metal cash register. Oh, yes. Yes. A moment of joy.

1:15:59Gyles Brandreth: I give you contrasting moments of joy. Charles Dance, when we asked him, it was undoubtedly losing his virginity. He gave us a lot of detail. I must listen to that one.

1:16:10Dame Mary Archer: You must listen.

1:16:10Gyles Brandreth: You'll enjoy that. But you will also enjoy Sir Martin Rees, Lord Rees, astronomer royal and brilliant man. His was rowing on a lake alone.

1:16:23Dame Mary Archer: And that moment of joy.

1:16:24Gyles Brandreth: And the moment of joy was just being him alone on the lake. moving the oars.

1:16:31Dame Mary Archer: Okay I can see okay interesting that tells me what mine was so I mentioned that I've always enjoyed singing and that I joined I think I was a founder member of the clerks of Oxenford and that introduced me to early music we were giving a performance of this wonderful will be magical draw on sweet night in midsummer but it must have been quite late because it was dusk. Anyway, I just remember this beautiful, beautiful, drawn sweet night, sweet night drawn, best friend to my complaining. It's a mournful madrigal. My life so ill for want of comfort fares that unto thee I dedicate it solely, sweet night drawn.

1:17:19Dame Mary Archer: And I just remember the beauty of the evening and this beautiful music was quite new to me. I'd never come across early music until I joined this rather pioneering choir. And so that was a moment of joy, I think.

1:17:38Gyles Brandreth: And a moment of sadness.

1:17:42Dame Mary Archer: Oh gosh. The death of my father. Were you there? No. So he was a heavy smoker. and got not lung cancer but laryngeal cancer. And I don't want to go into the horrors of it. But anyway, I did see him the weekend before he died, but he died at home. There was a wonderful Marie Curie nurse. And my mother was there, but I wasn't there, nor were my brother and sister. So that was awful.

1:18:20Gyles Brandreth: Well, you've gone on delivering for him. yeah so that's good life lesson what have you learned an extraordinary you've led an extraordinary life you're a most unusual person um well everyone's unique but you are i think more

1:18:34Dame Mary Archer: unique than most of our guests now you know that isn't possible either you are no i know yes

1:18:41Gyles Brandreth: it's possible when i say it

1:18:45Dame Mary Archer: so life lessons I do quite a lot of speaking for schools particularly girls schools and I always say to them what I've learned is that when you're your age 14 15 16 a lot of things that are exciting are going to happen to you quite quickly you'll leave school maybe you'll go to university, maybe you'll become an apprentice, maybe you'll take a gap year, maybe you'll go to drama school, then maybe you'll get married, maybe you'll have children, maybe you won't, you'll have a career, maybe you'll change jobs a couple of times. And, you know, probably by the time you're 35 or 40, you'll have packed in a lot of experiences.

1:19:33Dame Mary Archer: But I want you to think beyond that. It's impossible for you to think that far ahead. but life will go on so make sure that you equip yourself for a happy life journey I think that's the lesson I've learned I'm very grateful that the things I've done they didn't make me stop doing them when I was 65 or 62 or whatever the retirement age was for women in those days but I've been able to carry on because I don't feel I haven't done as well as I could have done or should have done. I've done what I could with my life.

1:20:17Gyles Brandreth: I think you've done that very well indeed. I'm giving you a first.

1:20:22Dame Mary Archer: Thank you very much. My second first.

1:20:24Gyles Brandreth: Exactly. Mary Archer, thanks so much.

1:20:26Dame Mary Archer: Thank you, Giles.

1:20:32Thank you.

1:21:13Gyles Brandreth: Rosebud is a Plain Jane production produced by Harriet Jane, hosted by me, Giles Brandreth, with music by Phil Leppard, and recorded this week at the JW Marriott Grosvenor House in London's Park Lane. Room service.

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