More Rosebud - Gyles's diary, episode 11: the second half of 1964 - a road trip, election fever and school reports

0:18One of the reasons I love more Rosebud is that I get a chance to chat with my friend Harriet Jane, who is our producer. Harriet Jane. How do we spell that? J-A-I-N-E. And it's an interesting name from an interesting part of the country? Not really. I think it's from Herefordshire, Giles. Well, that's an interesting part of the country. I've never been. What? Sorry. Sorry, Herefordshire people. Why have you never been? I don't know. I mean, I haven't been. It's from the forest. I think I've said this on the podcast before. But I think it's from the forest of dean and i've never been to the forest of dean from lehminster is that how you pronounce it lemster lemster i think it is but there may be different views on that i think it's lemster i think you're right it's such a problem you know it's like shrewsbury is shrewsbury if you go to the boys school that's there but it's shrewsbury who actually live in the town these things are delicate i was pretty sure i was pronouncing it wrong i just was sested it and it's Yeah.

1:20That's difficult too, isn't it? Is it Worcestershire sauce? I say Worcestershire sauce. I think it's Worcestershire sauce. I think I say Worcestershire sauce. Is it? Exactly. Is it Worcestershire sauce? Is it? Oh, dear. Anyway, is Lemster a very nice place? I think it's quite pretty, isn't it? Yes. I first went to Lemster so many years ago. Well, it may feature in my diaries eventually, because in the early 1970s, I belonged to a speaker's agency run by a man called Cyril Fletcher and his wife, Betty Estelle. She'd been a film star in the 1950s, very beautiful. And in those days, there were still ladies' luncheon clubs.

2:03And I was sent out to speak to these ladies' luncheon clubs for a fee. And I would give a talk. And I was clearly very, very young and the ladies seemed to be quite mature i think they were some of them were in their 40s maybe 50s oh not that old well no but if you're 23 24 they seemed a bit mature they seemed almost your mother's age but this is the point this is i suppose 50 years ago now they all wore hats ladies who lunched and there were luncheon clubs there would be 200 300 women in the room they were all wearing a hat how lovely do you wear a hat do you have a hat to wear Only to weddings.

2:40Yeah. And I wear a cap sometimes when I'm walking my dog. A cap? I wore one this morning. Like a sort of working man's cap. My children tease me that I look like a postman in it. Do postman wear? No, you're talking about... I don't know. They say I look like a sort of Romanian postman or something. I don't know. I think that's mentally a compliment. It's kind of rustic. A flat cap, is it? No, it's a peaked cap. A peaked cap? You mean like a MAGA cap? No, it's not a baseball. Anyway, it's a Japanese cap, actually. Oh, very good. I thought that was a kind of contraceptive device. Let's move on. We've had emails.

3:18You're in charge of the emails. And actually, can I just say thank you to people? You've shown me where the reviews are on the, when people come and listen to the bottom. There's a review section. Yeah, it's really nice, isn't it? Well, occasionally it's not. I know. But I don't mind that in a way. Yeah. Because that leavens the nice ones. makes you think, oh, the nice ones are really real, because there's occasionally somebody who just doesn't get it, or thinks, why did you interview so-and-so? I have to say, we choose to interview people who we think will be interesting. That doesn't mean to say we necessarily buy into their life story, their views, their opinions.

3:55We like to, don't we, hear from anybody and everybody who may have a story to tell and may have made their mark on the world. We also appreciate emails. You get them all. And look, one's come in from Emma Young in Walmerley, near Birmingham. What has she got to say? She says, Dear Giles and Harriet, I discovered your wonderful podcast about four months ago and since then have been trying to catch up. I'm happy to say I'm almost there. That's a lot of podcasts to listen to in four months, Emma. Well done. During your recent episode with Lucy Fleming and Simon Williams, there was a conversation about how people don't write letters anymore.

4:35I wanted to let you know that I'm one of the few people who still does. At the age of 40, I do, of course, use text and email, but handwritten letters are still my preferred method of contact to keep in touch with my friends across the country. I find people really appreciate the personal touch and are relieved to receive something that isn't a bill or junk mail through their letterbox. I'm a member of the Handwritten Letter Appreciation Society, a group who are trying to keep the art of letter writing going. And she gives the website address, thehandwrittenletterappreciationsociety.org. There's something therapeutic about writing a letter.

5:15I still try to write several handwritten letters a month. I think my very first memory is looking up at a massive sunflower in my back garden when I was a toddler. Strangely, I have no memory of the garden itself or the house in which I lived with my parents. I think we moved there when I was about three. Just of this massive happy sunflower smiling down at me, bobbing about slightly in the breeze. I recall it being very tall indeed, but of course I was very small back then. Thank you so much for all the memories, interviews and stories. I found them highly entertaining and comforting. Quite frankly, I don't know where my week would be without Rosebud now.

5:52love Emma from Warmly near Birmingham. There you go, Giles. That's nice, isn't it? That's fantastic. Yeah. Do you know, I've since begun Googling this, and it turns out that the Handwritten Letter Appreciation Society has nearly 2 ,000 members across 38 countries. So what an intriguing idea. Yeah. Wow. And do you write handwritten letters? Yes, I do. They take time. I've got some nice notepaper on which to write them. I mean, I've always been in the habit of writing letters. And when I was a member of Parliament, I got into the habit of writing notes to people because there was an internal postal system where you could pop into the libraries, just scribble somebody a note, put it in an envelope and then throw it in a box and it would then be given to a colleague.

6:38Oh, how fun. It was fun. Yeah. But I love the idea of writing them and I love receiving them quite unexpectedly. We had Sir James Dyson as a guest not that long ago, you know, fifth wealthiest man in the country. We went to Malmesbury, is it Wiltshire? To see his place of work and the university that he runs there. And clearly, he's a very busy person. But the point is, a few days later, I got, and I'm assured you, a two-page handwritten letter from Sir James Dyson, thanking us for taking the trouble to go to Malmesbury. So kind. And actually handwritten, not typed and then signed. No, no, no.

7:17Two pages in his own hand. Gosh. And as you will see, a beautiful calligraphy. Of course, he was an artist. Do you remember that? I'm sure he's got good handwriting. And it was a very elegant notepaper. Mentioned there of the sunflower in the lovely letter from Emma, I had a friendship with an artist called John Bratby. I'm sure I've mentioned him before and I don't think you've heard of him. No. He was part of something in the 1950s called the Kitchen Sink School of Artists. And he was very famous in his day. And he did a lot of, well, pictures of kitchen sinks. But he also did pictures, wonderful pictures of Venice and portraits of people.

7:58He used to write. It's quite a clever way of getting work. He used to sort of leaf through who's who or the radio times, TV times, and write to people. a wonderful letter on notepaper onto which was printed a sunflower beautiful sunflower that he'd done the piece of notepaper was a work of art and then he had a handwritten letter in which he said dear whoever you happen to be you know dear Margot Fontaine dear Yehudi Menuhin I'm giving you the period in which he was riding high dear Queen Mother or even dear Giles Brandreth he wrote I collect unique personalities I sense you are one I would love to try to capture you in oils.

8:39No commitment to buy, but do come down to my house, somewhere like Worthing or Hove. It was called Cupola of the Tower of the Two Winds. My wife will provide a bacon sandwich on the side, and we will talk and I will paint. Well, that was a handwritten letter that commanded a reply. But this is making me think, this is exactly what I should be doing. On Rosebud. I shouldn't be emailing people. You certainly shouldn't. I should be sending a picture of a Rosebud with a handwritten note saying, I sense that you are a unique personality and we need to capture you in the medium of podcasts, not oils.

9:23But you're absolutely right. Yeah. We're very thrilled, for example, that one of our future guests is going to be Dame Penelope Keith. and she wrote back a sweet letter saying she had not heard of the phenomenon of the podcast they had a wireless she'd heard there was a thing called the radio but she had the wireless still tuned to a station called Hilversum and she mostly listened to the light program she's she's probably still writing letters she definitely is still writing letters I know that um in the sense that if you send her an email she does receive it but she will reply to you with a letter, which is lovely.

10:01That is lovely. When I went to see this artist, John Bradby, he painted this picture of me. And it was exhausting. He gave it his all. He had paintbrushes, but he also did a lot of putting the oil onto the canvas with a knife. I'll show you. Oh, yes. I'll take you upstairs later and show you some. We're recording this at my home, by the way, in my basement studio. And so I'm going to take Harriet upstairs later because we've got a couple of pictures by this man. You'll see the kind of work he did and the kind of vibrant colours he used. Anyway, he was painting this and he would occasionally leave the room, either to recover or go to the loo.

10:39Sounds exhausting. But as he left the room, he would call out to Patty, his wife, who'd be in the kitchen preparing the bacon sandwiches. Blue paper, blue paper! He'd disappear and she would then run into the room and leave a little note, a little piece of blue paper folded. And he'd come back to the room, he'd glance at the blue paper and then scrumple it up and throw it on the floor. Then he'd carry on painting. And occasionally, while he was painting, this went on for four or six hours, her cry would go, oh, blue paper, blue paper. And she'd come running in with a little scrap of blue paper.

11:10And during the afternoon, towards the end of the session, when he went out to the loo again, I thought, well, he's just gone. I'd better check out what's on these bits of blue paper. And I picked several of them up and opened them up. And on them, Patty had written, John, this is your finest work. John, you've never been more powerful. John, the colour you're using today is extraordinary. John, I love you. You are a great artist. Wow. She was giving him the reassurance he needed. That is fascinating, John. Touching, isn't it? Yeah. So when you shout out blue paper halfway through your interview with Ed Balls next week, I'll know what I need to do.

11:47Oh, is it Ed Balls next week? Yes, possibly. We've got some good people coming up. Good people. Aren't we lucky? Do you feel you need reassurance and bigging up during a podcast interview? Not doing. Actually, during the conversation, I'll be honest with you, I find them really quite tiring. Not at the time, but afterwards. I'm amazed by how, and you often point out at the end of them that I burst into tears. And it's sometimes because what we've heard is quite emotionally intense. and sometimes people telling us stories involving great sadness or great emotional engagement and you pick up on that and so you're full of emotion yourself but other times I think it's simply because actually listening is I've told you I'm sure this line of Oscar Wilde's I told you told me by a man who actually knew Oscar Wilde who will feature in the diaries because he was the founder of my school, B-Dows in Hampshire, who told me that Oscar Wilde had said to him that people regarded Oscar Wilde as such a great conversationalist, not necessarily because he spoke so well, though he did, but because he listened so acutely.

13:01And Oscar Wilde had said, when it comes to conversation, talking is the craft, listening is the art. So I love listening to people. I love hearing from people. I love a handwritten letter. And we're very grateful to people who respond enthusiastically, who encourage us with their reviews. Have we got time for one more letter? We have. And actually, I was going to say, Giles, that we received a hand. You've received two handwritten letters to Grosvenor House, haven't you? I have, because we record many of the programmes at Grosvenor House in Park Lane, London. I think it's SW1, W1. Anyway, people find out the postcode.

13:38And somebody has sent me something. It's called Verve. Optimise your everyday. and are these what are these are these sort of is it atomizers i think it's herbal sleep supplement it's something because you mentioned a couple of times how you weren't sleeping very well and is that still going on it's got a bit better thanks in part to our special guest the great paul mckenna paul mckenna but also i think because i've delivered half of my book Oh, so you're just a bit less anxious. I've got a book to deliver by the end of May, and I've delivered half of it to my publisher, who said all the right things.

14:21Well, he said the right things. Four words. And they were, don't change a word. Five words, actually. Don't change a word, Giles. Really? That's all you want to hear. I thought you were going to say, he said, where's the second half? But that's given me the incentive to get on with the second half. Anyway, Luke heard you talk about this at some point and very kindly sent you these herbal sleep supplements. Yes, Luke Brocklehurst, thank you for the herbal supplements. You didn't enclose your address, so I can't write back to you. But I'm thanking you here. Luke also asked if the chap ever came to Chance's house to collect his coat 20 years on.

14:58I think it was more than 20 years on. Anyway, apparently, you, Harriet, are in touch with this guy. Yeah, Harry Scoble. And you're going to try to arrange for him to come one day to talk about the coat, pick up the coat. In fact, I was thinking about inviting him today, but then we didn't have... I thought you were a bit busy because you had a meeting to go to after this, so I didn't. But Harry is ready and waiting to come and look at the coat, if it's his or not. We're not sure if it is Harry's coat. The truth is, and I realise this, I am too busy. Yes. And I think one of the reasons you say, because somebody said to me this week, we just need 10 minutes on the phone and i looked in the diary and i thought actually i have not got 10 minutes this week that i could give them because my diary was filled from 7 a.m till 11 p.m when i get back in gosh and the car journeys i was on i already had calls booked in the diary to take at 10 minute intervals during those car journeys that's terrible charles And that's, I think, why I'm not sleeping at night.

16:04Of course. That's too much. It is too much. If you're waiting for a reply to your email and I haven't sent it, this is the reason. Yeah. Okay. So maybe try Luke Brocklehurst's herbal remedy. Because I think it's got magnesium in, which somebody recommended, and chamomile, all the things which are good. And he said it's the only thing which has helped him to sleep. So it sounds good. Lovely. One more quick letter before we get on to the diaries. Okay, yeah. Have we got time? Have we got a 10-minute window? Well, I have to say, the best time, I'll be honest with you, the best time of the week for me is Rosebud.

16:43Is it? It is. Rosebud is my enchanted place. It's my safe space. That's so nice. I love that. I love it. I tell you, it's rather like going onto the stage. age i do a one person show and in april and may well i must start to plug it in april and may or maybe it's may and june i'm going back on the road a series of sunday matinees all sorts of places oxford aylesbury swindon i can't remember where they are but they're not tickets available at some are sold out so i must remember which ones aren't and i must plug those yeah but the joy of a show is you get there and the moment you walk onto the stage it's just you in the audience and you're safe nobody is going to stop you there's going to be no phone calls and it's just you it's your safe space so actually i love being on stage and similarly i love the rosebud conversations because you sit down with whoever it may be you know great international film star like Sigourney Weaver, you sit down, you know, actually, we've got an hour together.

17:56Everything's going to stop us. We can just unwind. Yeah, which is good. This is, we like to think when we've got good people, intelligent mindfulness. That's a good way of thinking about it. So we're just going to do one more quick email and then we'll start the diaries. This could be a relative of mine, because I may have mentioned before that one of my forebears was a Kenyan undertakers who I think were the undertakers, they became famous, they were the undertakers for Queen Victoria's funeral back at the beginning of the 20th century. This is jazz Kenyan. What has jazz got to say? Dear Harriet and Giles, my grandmother travelled a lot with my step-grandfather in the 1950s and 60s and wrote letters to us regularly.

18:46I still have many of them and my mother adopted the habit. Whilst I was at boarding school in the 60s, she wrote to me twice a week and when the letters were delivered to our house room, my friends used to take bets on how many pages she'd written, usually at least eight sides. Wow. I still love to write thank you letters with a fountain pen. Best regards, Jazz Kenyon. So it's another one about letter writing. Letter writing is so important. I am, before you go today, Harriet, going to take you from this room across the corridor down further into the memoirs room, which also is the jumper room, and we might open just a couple of boxes.

19:31I'll show you the boxes where my parents' letters from the Second World War are, which I've never read, which maybe we should look into one day. You've never read them? I've never looked at them. Because you were worried there'd be two? I don't know. I just never have got round to it. We should definitely do that. So I'll look at those. And I'll also show you, I can open it, the box will make you laugh, the letters from my childhood. And all the letters from Gail and Jackie and Sally and Bob's. Is Bob's in there? Bob's is in there. She wrote you a letter? Well, we read it out. The letter you said, oh God, she will have had a good life.

20:11That's so sensible. Oh, that was a letter? Oh, that's in that box? Well, some of them you'll see are letters. Many of them are simply notes. Oh, that was actually, before we start the diaries, so did you have a system at B-Dales for sending notes around the place? Yes. There was a kind of wooden thing, A, B, C, D, E, F, G, like a letter. Yeah, like pigeonholes or whatever. A pigeonhole, forgive me. That's what they're called, pigeonholes. Yeah. So there was a pigeonhole from A to Z. Yeah. So if you've written somebody a note, you just popped it in their pigeonhole, and you would check your pigeonhole several times a day.

20:44Yeah, because I always loved that. I remember at my primary school at Christmas time, you'd send Christmas cards to people in the other classes and some of the children would come to the class and deliver them round. And it was so, I remember being so excited to get cards just from someone in the next door classroom. But for some reason that was fun. Okay, shall we do some diary now? Yes. we're in the mid 1960s 1964 i think we got to the summer holidays hadn't we and i'm going on holiday do we need to recap no we can assume that if people are going to listen to this episode they've heard the earlier diaries yeah so we we did the first half of 1964 in the last episode of diaries which was episode 10 um and yeah if you want to catch up go back to that episode and have a listen so with summer holidays and that's when we used to go abroad usually to france or belgium or germany or switzerland somewhere like that thursday the 13th of august 1964 we are in dinar that's in france pa is going home tonight and i'm staying here with ma and ben that was my younger brother for another 12 days i'm staying very reluctantly and only after ghastly scenes I want to be in London, where I have work to do and people to see.

22:06I've been in France since the 29th of July, and I'm now more than ready to go home. Besides, I have just endured ten days in hell. That's written in capital letters. I've been to ten countries in ten days. It may sound like fun. It was anything but. What happened was this. Ma, Pa and Ben stayed in Dina, enjoying the sun and sand, while I was sent off in the family Ford Cortina to spend ten days travelling around Europe with, as my driver and sole companion, my eighteen-year-old cousin from Canada. He's a very nice chap and all that, I'm sure, but he and I have nothing in common. And he eats with his mouth open, making the most revolting noises.

22:58As we travelled, I wanted to visit theatres and cathedrals and buy books. He wanted to find Hitler's bunker. Hitler's bunker in every one of the ten countries we visited. And the only thing he wanted to buy was picture postcards of big busted beauties in bikinis sitting on beach balls. These cards he duly sent to his assorted girlfriends back in Canada. the whole thing was a nightmare on the first day we drove to nard and picked up a dutch hitchhiker called jan who persuaded us to drive to the coast to a bar in pornique where he said we would find jean paul sartre because he's always there he wasn't the three of us slept sitting up in the car in a side street.

23:50The next day, we drove to Tour, where, thank the Lord, I found Jackie, as planned, and stayed secretly in her room. After that, for the next ten nights, we spent every night sleeping in the car. I slept on the back seat, but the seat wasn't long enough, so I had to sleep with my feet sticking out of the window. There is now a permanent ridge on the back of my ankles. Cousin Johnny spent the nights in a sleeping bag beside the car looking at disgusting magazines and doing unspeakable things. He is obsessed. In Marseille, he drove us round and round the red light district, honking the horn, trying to make the prostitutes come out of their flats to wave at him.

24:40The ten countries. One, France. Two, Spain. We fled the country almost as soon as we arrived, thinking we were being pursued by the police. Cousin Johnny stole a painting from a street market in Lanza, ran down the road with it, jumped into the car and off we went. Three, Monaco. Four, Italy. Five, Switzerland. Six, Austria. Seven, Germany. Eight, Holland. Nine, Belgium. Ten, Luxembourg. The driving never stopped. but our conversation did. I came to hate him so much that after a while I couldn't bear to sit next to him in the car. I sat directly behind him instead. We played a word game for hours on end and I cheated using a dictionary behind his back so that I won every time.

25:35It drove him mad but he was driving me mad, literally. I didn't spend any of my spending money. I saved it all so that on Monday in Paris at Magasin Réuni, I was able to buy all the books I wanted. Baudelaire, Molière, Sartre, Cocteau. In each case, the complete works. That's something. And in the interests of total accuracy, there was one good day. On Saturday, the 1st of August, Near Aix-en-Provence, I visited Paul Desorgues. He was a former French teacher from my school, B. Dales. On his family farm. And after lunch, tasted the sweetest, juiciest, most perfect peach you can imagine. It was the taste of a lifetime.

26:26And in the evening, in Avignon, I went to see Nicomède at the Palais des Papes. Johnny went looking for Hitler's bunker. Gosh. Interesting enough, those books, I still have them upstairs, you know, nearly, oh gosh, 60 or more years later. Probably haven't looked at them, but I don't want to lose them. I love knowing that they're there on the shelf.

26:58Tuesday 25th August 1964 I'm going home Hallelujah I'm on the SS St. Patrick from Saint Malo reaching Weymouth at 4.30am Pa has sent me two pounds so that I can buy him some cigarettes He knows what he wants 25 shillings worth 200 filter tips They have Du Maurier in the upper bar only Dumollier for preference, otherwise Stuyvesant. I can keep the change. Tuesday, 8th September, 1964. O-level results. Fail Latin and German. Not good. Retakes in November. Bristol Old Vic production of Love's Labour's Lost at the Old Vic. Very good. Near perfection. It may now be my favourite play. Friday 25th September 1964 The new term has started with a bang A starting pistol in fact The general election has been called Nominations open on Monday Polling day is set for Thursday the 15th of October I am to be the Conservative candidate in the mock election at school Chris Irwin for the Socialists Liberal still to be confirmed I shall probably ignore the Liberal altogether It is going to be good and a close-run thing.

28:18However, we can win. I'm going to see Mrs Gunning tomorrow. She was a local Conservative Party activist to discuss what I can do for her in Steep Village, put up posters, deliver leaflets, etc. I have all the campaign material I require. I shall start work on my speeches now. We are to have hustings in the quad, debates organised by John Slater, the housemaster. David Creamer, my friend, will be my campaign manager. Prosperity for a purpose And a power for peace These are our themes Onward Sunday the 11th of October 1964 So far so good But it isn't in the bag According to today's observer Labour knows ahead on the last lap Tories in mood of weariness Not so on the Brandworth campaign We fight on and we fight to win I think my quad speeches have gone okay.

29:18There's been some heckling, but that's been fun. And Master Owen's speeches have not been good. Too full of boring detail and complicated arguments that nobody understands. I've been putting up posters everywhere and changing them regularly to keep them fresh. I've also been writing new messages for the policy board every day, even managing to include some of the wit and wisdom of Sir Alec. the 14th mr wilson is still my favorite i'll to explain that um harold wilson who was the leader had mocked adic douglas hume for having been before he renounced his peerage the 14th earl of hume and uh hume had responded well mr wilson when you come to think about it is the 14th mr wilson which i thought was quite clever other news the queen set foot in french canada today under the strongest guard ever thought necessary anywhere for a british sovereign in this century she was greeted with freezing indifference by the citizens of quebec this was a time when freeing quebec french-speaking quebec from Canada and the Commonwealth was a big issue.

30:36I think Charles de Gould had been there and said, Vive le Québec libre. And I was interested because my mother was born in Canada and I had these Canadian cousins. Oh, right, yeah. Who you hated, by the way. Well, I did hate this one, Johnny. Oh, dear me. Sorry, Johnny, if you're listening. And here, yours truly has been cast to play Newton, Isaac Newton, in The Physicists. The part played on stage by Michael Horton and on television by Michael Goodliffe. Chris Irwin is Einstein, Peter Harris, Möbius. Wow, I can't imagine you playing Isaac Newton, Giles. I loved it. We've got some photographs of it.

31:16In fact, I must remember to give you, before you leave today, some pictures from these years because we can put them up for people to see. Yeah, that would be good. It's quite a fun one of me doing the campaigning. Oh, that would be a good one to put up. Isaac Newton was famously a horrible person, wasn't he? Oh, well, not the way I played him. Oh. Really? I didn't know that. Yes, I think he was famously really not very nice. Well, I don't remember that in the play. This is a play by Durenmatt, Swiss playwright, and in it these characters come together, you know, the great physicists come together.

31:51I can't remember much about it. No, well, physics isn't... I don't think it's your specialist subject, is it? one of the few things you're not a world expert forgive me i'm not a world expert a lot of things you see that i failed latin and something else german latin and german yeah that wasn't comfortable i'm surprised you're not good at latin yeah yeah yeah you can't be good at everything well no also it requires conscientious application and i didn't think i applied properly to the subject right yeah tuesday the 13th of october 1964 I'm just in from supporting our candidate. That was a genuine candidate in the real election, the local candidate for Petersfield, which was the constituency, Joan Quennell, at our public meeting in Steep Village Hall.

32:35It went quite well, but I don't think we can pretend that Miss Quennell MP is ever going to set the Thames alight. Her only claim to fame is that she's responsible for an amendment to the Rating and Valuation Act 1962 affecting agricultural buildings cooperatively owned. We will win in the Petersfield constituency because this is rural Hampshire, but nationally I'm not so sure. Thirteen Tory wasted years is a line that can be rebutted quite easily, in my opinion, but time for a change is a more difficult nut to crack. On we go. I have my final batch of leaflets ready. What's interesting here is that I learned a lesson at that election which is after you've been 13 14 15 years in power inevitably the electorate feel it's time for a change yeah i don't think you'll find any government probably in the history of the country that survived longer than that well it's real echoes of 2024 isn't it 2025 absolutely thursday 15th october and indeed of 1997 yeah thursday 15th october 1964 64.

33:50We lost. The B-Dales poll closed after supper and the results were announced at 8.40 p.m. Labour, 115. Conservatives, 98. Liberals, 72. I'd only prepared, this is very funny, I'd only prepared a victory speech, so I gave it anyway. you gave your victory speech even though you'd lost yeah by 17 votes yeah i'm interested now in retrospect that i polled as many votes as that that's good giles 98 for the conservatives at beedales yeah that i'm interested because i don't think that i thought i was necessarily a much loved figure i was a noticeable figure i don't know how much loved i was anyway possibly kindly and Bob and Gail and Jackie all rallied round.

34:43So is that 98 different girls that you kissed? Don't be silly. But anyway, there we are. Saturday the 17th of October 1964. I'm writing this in the first year's sixth common room. I've made myself some toast, slightly burnt as I like it, with butter and marmite and a mug of tea. And I'm sitting on the disgusting sofa underneath the window studying the general election results in the times with just two seats still undeclared this is the picture labor 317 conservatives and associates 302 liberals eight non-party one that was the speaker at 48 harold wilson is the youngest prime minister of the century.

35:36He's in by a whisker, but he's promising strong government, regardless of his tiny majority, and has announced 100 days of dynamic action. He has begun to form his cabinet. Mr. George Brown, the character of the election campaign, gets a new post as Secretary of State and Minister for Economic Affairs. He will also act as Deputy Prime Minister. It has to be said, it's all looking good for Labour and we are looking pretty sad. Already there's the question of Sir Alec Hume's future, according to the Times. The Conservative Party historically does not spare the feelings of leaders who have served their turn.

36:17Yes, time to move on. By seven o 'clock last night, I'd removed all our posters and every other trace of the campaign. i'm now going to concentrate on the play and the chronicle i've joined the chronicle committee this is so funny ridiculous i've joined the chronicle committee and i have plans to change it completely it's not just in moscow the change is afoot so jiles what's the chronicle sorry because you've mentioned roundabout before the roundabout was the wall magazine the wall magazine Chronicle, which was changed every week, Chronicle was the printed school magazine. Okay. And so I got involved there.

37:00I wanted to change it. And as you will discover, well, I won't, mustn't be a spoiler here, but it was because I edited the Chronicle that I first came to meet, when I was about this age, 16 or 17, Richard Branson. Oh, yeah. who was at another boarding school editing his school magazine. And that's how we got in touch with each other. And that's how we met. And he suggested we might go into business together. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I thought he was going nowhere. Well, you can't win them all. And was the Chronicle sent to parents or was it just... Yes, it was sent to parents. It was a school magazine.

37:40Fine. But it was official in that sense in that it was overseen by the staff. but it had a one of the students was the editor right and my aspiration was to be the editor so there was a kind of teacher who was in charge but there was a student who was the editor and there was a committee and i joined the committee clearly this was one of my ambitions clearly i had ambitions to change it completely and as you will discover that i'm still proud of this i did oh i really was pleased with what i did the moscow change i want to mention that um nikita khrushchev the soviet leader throughout my childhood he'd been deposed in a kremlin coup just a few days earlier oh wow so the world was changing yeah you know i should add that the paper is full of news besides the election khrushchev associates dismissed chinese explode their first atom bomb americans continue to dominate tokyo olympics president de gaulle is back in paris after his four-week state visit to ten Latin American countries.

38:48The British Museum has a lantern lecture on English watercolours today. And Mr Cole Porter has died. Oh, Barney, that's my friend, we called him Barney, his real name was David Creamer, has arrived with photographs he has taken of the campaign trail. I must go. I'm going to see if I can find some of these boxes of pictures to show you. because I know I did find one the other day. I was intrigued and appalled by how young all these people were, including me. Yeah, quite shocking, isn't it, when you see yourself. And we'll try and put them on social media. So if you're following us on Instagram or Twitter, or following Giles, then you can see them.

39:31When we get to the end of this, I might just open a little box of them for you in front of the microphone so you can leave through them and go, oh my, who's this? Anyway, most of them were taken by this boy, Barney.

39:46Sunday, 25th October 1964. I've had to cancel tea with Mr and Mrs Cox. They are the old couple that I'm now visiting each week at Mary's, their bungalow in the village. They are very nice people. He is timid and serves the tea. She is large, strong-willed and does most of the talking. They're very much Mr and Mrs Jack Spratt. I like them and they like me. I'm supposed to do a bit of gardening for them first, voluntary work, outdoor work, but really we just have tea and he sits quietly while Mrs Cox tells me about the struggles of women in Victorian England. I'm now regularly having tea and playing Scrabble with the chief.

40:30That was the nickname for Mr Badledge or Badly, the school's founder. So that my first-hand knowledge of all things Victorian is considerable. the chief incidentally wins every scrabble game we play he uses words that are obsolete claiming that he's allowed to use them because they were current when he learned them nearly 100 years ago his favorite word is joe a scottish term for a sweetheart my favorite word is yex it means a hiccup i've canceled the coxes because i'm having lunch at foxcott for jane reed's birthday jackie two years anniversary on Tuesday. Jane was her mother. And then I have physicist's rehearsals.

41:15At half term, I shall be making my first visit to Nathan's, theatrical costumiers of Covent Garden to see Miss Dolly and have my Isaac Newton wig fitted. I'm also meeting up with Biddles, the printers, to discuss the printing of the Chronicle. I am now business manager and plan to change everything. Look, lay out the lot. For a start, We're going to take advertising, and if biddles aren't biddable, we shall look elsewhere. Mustache. Tootlebip. Tuesday, 3rd November, 1964. I had lunch with Pa at the AA. That's the Automobile Association, where my father was the legal advisor. I'm now on the train back to school, reading about the Queen's speech in the Evening Standard.

42:03Immediate moves to raise retirement pensions. sick, unemployment and widow's benefits, to abolish prescription charges and restore rent controls are promised. Also, nationalisation of steel and other strong socialist medicines for industry. And the supersonic Anglo-French airliner Concorde is to be scrapped. I shall get back to school in time to watch the US Election Day programme by satellite with Richard Dimbleby and co. on the Housemasters TV. but too late to catch compact or he is harry i never watch compact or emergency ward 10 but i do like harry worth sunday 29th november 1964 i have a letter published in this week's spectator good i've written countless letters to potential chronicle advertisers good i've learned my lines good i'm up to speed with latin revision bene and important i've had a long walk and talk with Jackie.

43:02Not good. Tuesday, 15th December 1964. The term has ended wonderfully well. The play was a great success. I survived an attack of cramp mid-performance. TWS, he was the headmaster, has asked me to be in charge of the celebrations for the Chief's 100th birthday. Quite a compliment, given the Chief is 100 and I am 16. I had lunch at Foxcott on Sunday and Jackie and I are going to be friends I had tea with the chief yesterday last night was the school dance I am with Pobbs again thank you Pobbs wait, wait, wait, wait Charles I know it's nearly the end what do you mean I'm with Pobbs again? at the dance?

43:53well, clearly there was a school dance you can imagine, it's a boys and girls school and there are dances and there's a last dance and all that sort of thing going on. I think the teachers kept a vague eye on what was going on but there was probably, you know, it's a school dance. Yeah. We're 16. Yeah. It's not that I'm only interested in your school romance, Giles. I'm interested in all the other stuff. But clearly it was exciting. Look, it was exciting. It was thrilling. So I was able to write in the diary, I'm with Pobbs again, triple exclamation mark, brackets, thank you, Pobbs. And I echo that all these years later.

44:27All I remember is just happy fun times. Thursday, the 31st of December, 1964. The Post has brought a letter from Jackie, typed, and my school report. Jackie, here's to next year. Let's hope it'll be a happy one. Not that 64 has not been happy. On the contrary, granted, it has contained some of the worst moments and hours of my life, but I think it has been the happiest year that I can remember. and most thanks to you, happiness and unhappiness alike. This year all my dreams of the beginning of the year came true, proof in my diary. It's just a pity they had to be shattered again at the end. But as you say, such is life.

45:11And the school report. First, John Slater, housemaster. Giles has accepted the responsibility of being a dorm boss with unruffled good sense. He's already shown himself aware in a kind and perceptive manner of other people's problems. He also has authority without being authoritarian. Now, Rachel Carey Field, speech and drama. I admire enormously his energy, enthusiasm, savoir faire and diligence. His heroism when suffering cramp was magnificent. What I think he finds difficult is getting away from himself in a part. He needs to observe others more. he has much technical skill but is a little afraid i believe of the heart underneath next the form mistress ruth stewart charles's zest for life and its various experiences is immensely refreshing and this does not prevent him from being genuinely interested in other people although i think he can be too carried away by the volition of his own activity to really understand what other people's doubts and difficulties are i find this difficult to say and a little puzzling as he could not be a more friendly cooperative member of the form that's a nice thing to write in a report well let's get to the end of it finally the headmaster a very active and successful term in many directions as usual but the reports on his approach to his part in the play and from his form teacher are most perceptive i think he is still being carried away by his own cleverness to an extent where he does not consider enough its effect on others who may be more deeply sensitive.

46:55And I end the diary with these words. What do you make of that? So clearly, I read the report, I wrote out bits of it, and I pondered on it looking back on it obviously the ups and downs the tide going in and out with jackie that's me being 16 her being 17 i hope we can forgive me after all these years the school report though is quite interesting isn't it and do you think it's still true i'm now thinking that sometimes i'm sending you these texts saying got to raise our game yes Do you know what, Giles, I was thinking about myself when you were reading that, because I was thinking, oh, am I one of these more deeply sensitive people that gets carried away by your volition?

47:47And all I was going to ask you is, do you think you have changed at all since then? I know you joke that you haven't and you're still being the 16 year old and interested in all the same things. But do you think any of those, do you think it's possible to change? do you think those comments perceptive that your teachers made were possible it was possible to act on them or do you think you just carried on i remember anthony clear the great psychiatrist telling me once the people on the whole don't change it's very difficult you can modify your behavior yeah uh but i do think as you grow older you become less interested in yourself that's true and uh obviously when i was a child i was totally preoccupied with myself the very actor writing a diary um and my relationships with these um lovely young people at school was very much about me and i'm sure i was selfish within my relationship with jackie and other people and i had my schemes i think my projects and schemes have not changed my enthusiasm for things have not changed um but i hope i'm more sensitive and i think over the years i have learned softly softly catchy monkey sometimes it's better to pull back i've also learned that if you let others feel they have the ownership of the project it gets achieved more quickly oh that's interesting so i've learned over the years you can do almost anything if you don't want the credit for it yes uh so um you can you know get in there change things bring people with you uh and then get things get done i think then i was going to do it all myself and i couldn't quite understand it people didn't have the same bounce and energy and desire as i did yeah um so i don't know that i wooed them as well as i might have done um the other thing i think you are which is really important is you're aware of your failing you know you know that sometimes you can be a bit over enthusiastic or but you're aware of it and you can laugh at yourself and the very fact of writing these extracts down the critical extracts yeah is interesting to me i had forgotten that i'd failed latin and german o-level until i read this have you been writing them on your cv No, I don't have a CV.

50:13I never put my modest academic achievement down there. But no, because I think I blanked it out of my mind. Yeah. Because failure you do. But it's interesting to me that I was sufficiently aware to actually put down in writing the bad things and was sufficiently perceptive to realise that these observations, I mean, gosh, it was a good school though, wasn't it? Yeah. Yeah. I think that these teachers, these two women in particular, Rachel and Ruth, their poor mistress in the speech, took the trouble, you know, because they're writing about... Hundreds. Literally, a hundred children. Yeah. Are they writing this, are they observing a hundred children in the same perceptive way?

50:55No, it's wonderful. And writing these marvellous. Wonderful. So, do people have school reports like this still? No. Do your children get school reports like this? No, they just get numbers, you know, there are nine in this and a seven in that. and it's a bit more tick, very tick box. Do they have a kind of, like a house tutor or somebody who keeps an eye on them at their school? Yes, but nobody writes this sort of thing. But they were still writing things when I was at school, but that really has gone out of fashion. In state schools, unfortunately, they just don't feel they have the time. Well, there you go.

51:26Now, before we go leave this room, this has been rather a long episode, shall I show you a box of pictures, if I can? Yes, bear with us, everyone. I hope you haven't turned off yet. Giles is getting a box. Oh, is it right here, Giles? That's good. I was looking at some of them the other day. It may not be all of them. I'm going to pass you some stuff here. These are some holiday pictures of Giles. I'm just going to see if I can find... Most of these will be for a later date. Is this you giving a speech in the school election? Yes, that's me at the election. That's the election picture I thought would be fun to use.

52:04Oh, that's fun. And yeah, Giles has got his rosette on and he's got his mouth wide open as if he's shouting out, announcing something. And he's got papers in his hand. Campaign mode. Oh, this is interesting.

52:20Oh, is this Jackie? Yep. Oh, I've got a picture of Jackie. Taken by me. Looking lovely. Oh, there's another one. Oh. autumn 1964 that's nice we can take a break now because I want to take Harriet into the other room to show her all the boxes of letters whether she can cope with that as well as everything else today I don't know but anyway I think that's been a long enough podcast don't you? It's been a really long one Normal service will be resumed on Friday with another wonderful guest it will indeed meanwhile thank you for indulging us today again i found it a bit of an emotional roller coaster ride yeah thanks for listening bye bye

53:54That was more Rosebud with music by Phil Leppard, production by Harriet Jane, and in the chair, me, Charles Brandreth. Thank you for listening.