I started learning the violin at an early age. My teacher was Ruth Araujo, herself a pupil of Jelly d’Aranyi, who was the great niece of the renowned violinist Joachim. I therefore had distinguished ancestry to instruct me. My mother would practise with me and accompany me on the piano. At my pre-prep school (Wagner’s) in Queensgate, the headmaster announced at a school concert: ‘Thorpe will play’, and then ‘Mrs Thorpe will accompany’. The curtains were drawn back. She always swore that her nerves were worse than mine. I continued studying the violin during my years at school in America. But it was later at Eton that there were real opportunities for progress.
Edward Boyle, who was amongst the best informed people on almost every subject, long felt that there was insufficient encouragement given to string playing at Eton, and therefore presented a cup to be competed for annually by string players. There were three of us, all first violins in the school orchestra, who were level pegging: Eustace Gibbs, who went on to the Foreign Office; Simon Streatfield, who went on to play the viola in various internationally known orchestras, and myself. In 1944 I won the cup, playing one of the Beethoven Romances. In 1945 I over-reached myself by playing the slow movement of Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto. I still do not know how I managed the double stoppings – maybe I didn’t! Eustace won. In 1946, I played a real old teashop piece by Wieniawski and won hack the cup.
The school orchestra took itself very seriously, but looking back as dispassionately as possible, I think in fact we were surprisingly good. We tackled Beethoven’s Symphonies numbers 1, 5 and 8; once, for a glorious orgy without audience and solely for our own self-indulgence, we played all three symphonies one after another. What was the most exciting event for me was when Simon and I played the first two movements of the Bach Double Concerto with orchestra.
We had a variety of conductors. Dr Henry Lee, the precentor, used to mortify us by referring to us, the orchestra, as ‘Band’. This was in part, a Freudian slip, because although he was one of the finest organists in Europe, he was criticised for playing too loudly. Matters came to a head literally – when a large piece of plaster under the organ loft broke off while he was playing at his very loudest, and fell to the ground, narrowly missing an elderly beak (master). The situation was saved by the daughter of a previous provost, who said that when she went to church she did like a holy hullaballoo, and Dr Lee must keep up the volume! We were also conducted by Dr Thomas Dunhill; I particularly remember his Sea Shanties and reflecting what an experience it was to learn the innermost thoughts and feelings about a piece which the conductor had composed himself. Dr Sidney Watson was another maestro. I am afraid we were rather unkind to him. He had a terrible stutter, and for some unknown reason he was always stumped when trying to say ‘double bar’. At rehearsal we made a point of making some mistake, which would inevitably require him to instruct us to go back to the double bar!
Mention must be made of music in my House at Eton, attributable in my dame, Norah Byron, who was in charge of the well-being of the boys in the House. She was an accomplished musician and viola player and however esoteric the combinations of instruments in the House – for example two bassoons, one French horn, a clarinet and a violin – she would make a brilliant arrangement of an existing piece of music to bring in all the players available.
I wondered whether I should take up the violin professionally, but early on decided that I would not be good enough to succeed either as an orchestral player or, still less, as a soloist.
My violin, an early instrument by the English maker William Hill, has upon occasion been lent to young musicians who lacked an adequate instrument. This leads me to mention a campaign which I intend to wage to persuade museums who have priceless instruments in their collections to lend them out to reputable performers who cannot afford to buy an instrument worthy of their talents. Instruments need to be played, and deteriorate if not put to use. Perhaps as a compromise, great museums who have these rare possessions should stage concerts on their premises, drawing on their own collections.
My interest in Chinese art began at an early age. I admired and coveted three paintings on rice paper which hung in my parents’ bedroom. One was of a Chinese junk and the other two of an Emperor and an Empress. With those pictures happily hanging in my own room, having been surrendered by my parents, I started collecting. I gave a talk to the Eton College Archaeological Society, on the T’ang Dynasty (960–1279 AD). This was arguably the greatest period of the flowering of the arts in China. It produced China’s greatest painter, Wu Tao Tzu, the court poet Li Tai Po and the poet/painter Wang Wei, of whom it was said that his poems were paintings and his paintings poems. It was a period which produced some of the most magnificent pottery objects such as horses, camels, warriors, lady instrumentalists, birds and farm animals – some glazed, some unglazed. These figures were buried with the dead to attend to their needs.
The Han Dynasty (206 BC–220 AD) was more severe but also produced superb funerary objects. The Sung Dynasty (96–1280 AD) produced celadon and very fine jade and with the Ming Dynasty (1358–1643 AD), one immediately thinks of blue and white china.
One of my great excitements was to be invited by the Greek, British-born banker George Eumorfopoulos, to see his superb collection of Chinese art. It must have certainly been one of the greatest private collections of all time. An indication of its breathtaking dimensions was that he sold the collection jointly to the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum. Being a generous benefactor, he sold the collection for a nominal total of £100,000, it being worth millions even in those days.
His collection was displayed in large glass cases on a whole floor of his house in Cheyne Walk. He would hand me some priceless object and with great modesty would say: ‘Some people think this is rather beautiful’. His whole collection was photographed and published in catalogue form by Benn Brothers’. He gave me several pieces of Han pottery, all of which featured in the catalogue. At one stage my mother wrote to George Eumorfopoulos to say he mustn’t feel that he had to give me something every time I went to visit him; it was bad for me and an imposition upon him.
Another mentor was Peter Sparks of John Sparks, Chinese Art Dealers in Mount Street. When I was in my late teens he told me that there would always be a place for me in the Gallery and that in due course I would inherit the business from him. It was a great temptation.
One of the prize outings from Eton was to bicycle over to Bumham Beeches to call on Lord Courtauld-Thomson, who lived in a very splendid Queen Anne house called Dorneywood. Having no heirs, and being a rich man, he left the house and its contents to the nation for the use of a Cabinet minister. The Prime Minister had his official residence at Chequers. The Foreign Secretary now uses Chevening and the present occupant of Dorneywood is the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
I bicycled from Eton on several occasions and more often than not, Simon Barrington-Ward (subsequently the Bishop of Coventry) came with me. Courtauld, welcoming our arrival, would say: ‘You two gentlemen are two of the most remarkable travellers in Buckinghamshire’.
In his dining room there was a case of richly bound leather books, one of which stuck out slightly from the rest, and had inscribed on its spine the title: The Way to the Billiards, by Courtauld-Thomson. It turned out to be a door handle, which did indeed lead to the billiard room. Amongst his possessions in the games room was a bagatelle board, attached to which was the Golden Book, recording those who had exceeded 1,000 points at bagatelle. In December 1942 Churchill came over from Chequers to lunch with Courtauld and to see the house. He tried his luck at the bagatelle board, and having failed to score 1,000 points, asked if he could borrow the board, so that he could practise at Chequers. There is a certificate at Dorneywood from Chequers, Butler’s Cross, Aylesbury, Bucks., which says: ‘This is to certify at 16.00 on Sunday 6 December Mr Churchill scored 1015 (one thousand and fifteen) points at bagatelle in our presence. Signed Louis Mountbatten. Certified as to addition: Lord Cherwell, Averill Harriman. Received 8 December 1942’. It is some comfort to know that Churchill was able to relax at the height of the war.
This was part of the general tour of the house which Simon and I found fascinating. I remember that there was a Georgian cabinet which was a trompel’oeil, depicting a variety of objects, from silver spoons to crystal jam pots. He had a matching but real cabinet made, and spent years collecting objects to match the painted ones. In the hall I remember a particularly fine landscape of Dorneywood by Rex Whistler, who was tragically killed early in the war. In the bedrooms, there was a printed notice saying: ‘It’s particularly requested that no gratuities be given to the indoor or outdoor staff’. We asked Lord Courtauld-Thomson the reason for this, to which he replied: ‘Firstly, there is often embarrassment as to how much and to whom tips should be given. Secondly, I want to invite people who might not be able to afford wholesale tipping. And thirdly, I am a rich man, and do not deserve to keep a staff if I do not pay them properly, so that they are not dependent on tips for their income.’
Simon and I presented him, and hence the house, with a mother-of-pearl card case, which matched one already in his possession, as a small token of our gratitude for his hospitality. I gather both still exist, but are locked in a cupboard for safe keeping.
One of Courtauld’s rather charming follies was to commission a series of a stained glass windows in a converted barn, to tell the story of his life, ‘so that in the future people would know who the old gentleman was who left the house to the nation’. The windows therefore include his coat of arms, his places of education and his livery company. The last time I saw him he asked me to come and help him advise the stonemason on drawings for his tomb in the local churchyard. It should require no upkeep and not be too grand.
He was an instructive and enchanting person for whom I have retained great gratitude and affection.
I was called to the Bar in 1954 and served a pupillage with Rodger Winn. Later I gained experience in criminal law in the chambers of Edward Cussen. I started with the usual mix of magistrate’s courts and county courts and once made the rarefied atmosphere of the Court of Appeal, presided over by Lord Goddard. I joined the Western Circuit and built up a practice which involved appearances in Exeter and Plymouth.
It became apparent to me when I was elected as MP for North Devon in 1959, as one of only six Liberals in the House of Commons, that the job would be full time. Solicitors upon whom one depended for briefs would realise my preoccupation with politics, which was hardly the climate in which to build up the practice. I therefore retired within a matter of a few weeks after my election.
I remember very vividly a case before Bridgwater Sessions when I was appearing for a man accused of drunken driving. The undisputed evidence was that he hit a car containing the Superintendent of Police and his Deputy, followed by another car containing four police constables. All six gave evidence against him. After a two-day fight the jury must have obviously felt: ‘But for the grace of God, there go we’. And he was acquitted. I felt this was a suitable moment to retire and remind myself to be very careful when driving through Bridgwater.
A really hair-raising attempt to combine my Bar practice with my television commitments occurred when I was appearing before the stipendiary magistrate in Bow Street. I asked him at the beginning of the hearing whether he would be following the usual procedure of rising at four o’clock that afternoon. Were it otherwise, I would find myself in difficulty. He was helpful in indicating that he would rise at the usual time. As four o’clock approached (3.58, to be precise) he showed no signs of calling it a day. So I respectfully reminded him of his declared intention. He agreed to adjourn the case and asked when it would be possible for me to return to the court, so that he could continue the case. I thanked him and said I would be back in between thirty-five and forty minutes. This was accepted. I left the court as rapidly as I could and grabbed a taxi and made for Associated Rediffusion Television in Kingsway. I was in the studio by 4.25 p.m., interviewing Lady Mountbatten on world relief. Back in the taxi, I made for Bow Street and was back in the court taking part in the adjourned hearing of the case. The whole incident showed the extreme difficulty in combining two, if not three, careers at the same time.
Before becoming an MP, I was retained to advise the editor of a local newspaper whose case was referred to the Committee of Privileges of the House of Commons. During the Suez crisis a strict rationing regime was introduced for petrol. MPs received a special allowance which, to put it mildly, was regarded as generous. True to form, John Junor for the Sunday Express weighed in to castigate MPs for their behaviour, and was promptly referred to the Committee of Privileges. The committee ruled that he was contempt of the House of Commons and was duly required to appear at the Bar of the House to apologise, which he did. At the same time a Mr Dooley, the editor of the Romford Recorder, had made his criticism manifest and was likewise referred to the Committee of Privileges. I took the view that MPs had been looking after themselves rather generously and that he might consider running the defence of justification. I advised that he should petition the House for leave to be represented by counsel before the Committee of Privileges and, if necessary, at the Bar of the House. We lodged our petition, which was an exact copy of that of John Wilkes in the eighteenth century, which we obtained from the Public Record Office.
The committee met and obviously decided that this thing had gone far enough and recommended no action. Dooley was in favour of having a press conference to mark this outcome. I advised him that, as a matter of courtesy, he should write to the chairman of the Committee of Privileges that he intended to make known the recommendation of the committee. By return a messenger arrived with a note pointing out that by resolution of the House of Commons in 1837, all matters referred to the Committee of Privileges are themselves privileged unless and until the report of which they are a part has been considered by the House. The House never considered the Dooley case and therefore the outcome was not generally known. Nonetheless it was a valuable corrective for Parliament in its relations with the citizen.
One of the most memorable cases in which I was involved related to Colonel Douglas Roe – a larger than life personality, with infinite charm and a bubbling sense of humour. He had founded a co-operative egg packing station and was a pioneer in date-stamping eggs, as well as the number of the operative who examined the eggs to see that they had neither bloodspots nor any other imperfections. This was years ahead of its time, although now it is common practice.
Having reached his mid-seventies, he was prepared gradually to hand over responsibility to his younger colleagues at the marketing association known as ‘Supremo’ (Somerset Poultry Marketing Association). A clash was inevitable. If common sense had prevailed, they should have made him president with a pension, and listened to what he had to say, in return for which he would have relinquished executive activities.
At one board meeting he was asked if he would kindly mind leaving the meeting, as they wanted to discuss his pension. The minutes secretary was ill, so they decided to tape the whole meeting and omitted to turn it off while he was out of the room. Another secretary typed up the record of the proceedings, and sent a copy to each of the directors, including Colonel Roe. The chairman of the meeting asked: ‘How do we get rid of the old man?’ to which a colleague replied: ‘We’ve got to be jolly careful since when we need an overdraft, he is the only one the bank will listen to’. Another member said: ‘It looks as if we will need to stage a coup’.
Being fully informed of the intention of the board, I was retained by the Colonel to advise and act for him. He called an Extraordinary General Meeting. A leaflet was prepared and approved by me for distribution to all the members, which said: ‘What they say in public and what they say in private about Col. Roe’. Our leaflet was in red, and the board reacted by issuing a reply on a blue leaflet, which I advised was highly defamatory. In my view, he would win a libel action but would need to sue eleven directors and the company secretary. If he lost, the costs would be astronomical and would break him. Before taking the final decision I would ask a QC, who was an old friend, to give us his assessment without a fee. I therefore approached Archie Marshall (who subsequently became a High Court Judge), and he agreed to express his opinion, which concurred with mine. I also advised the Colonel that the board would wait until the last minute to settle the action, hoping that he might withdraw. His reaction was: ‘I am an old soldier; this is a battle which must be fought’. The day before the action was to be heard in the High Court, they settled and the battle was won.
I must confess that prior to the introduction of Independent Television (ITV) in 1955 I had serious apprehensions that advertisers would sponsor programmes that would lead to the lowest common denominator. Mercifully the Conservative government, with a degree of imagination, proposed that TV companies should produce and provide the programmes and merely sell advertising time in the slots which were known as ‘natural breaks’. Another aspect on which ITV should be commended was the insistence that the consortia applying for franchises should have a fair sprinkling of local interests to ensure that in the case of small companies they would not be swamped by the giants. What I find incredible is the move by a Conservative government to allow existing companies to take over, and/or swallow whole, the smaller companies. In my view this is a serious challenge to regional minority interests, and it is to be hoped that this policy will be reversed.
Early on, ITV struck a blow for freedom of speech. By the rule known as the ‘Fourteen Day Rule’, the government prohibited discussion by the broadcasting authorities of any subject which would be raised or might be raised within the next fourteen days in the House of Commons. Imagine the effect of that today. What was staggering was that not only was the rule obeyed but that it was introduced in the first place. I was asked how ITV should react to this restriction. My advice was: ‘Ignore it, it will die a natural death’ – which it did.
I first appeared on BBC television with Gilbert Harding in 1952 in a programme called Teleclub, for young people. Gilbert horrified the BBC by asking me questions of a political content which the producers were determined to exclude on this kind of programme. I was not invited again for a long time.
ITV however, was enormously exciting, and at its inception I would appear two or three different programmes a week. I gave a series of law lectures for schools for Rediffusion but inadvertently the recording tapes were wiped, so that no record exists. I chaired the scientific brains trust,’ The Scientist Replies’. I remember on one occasion I chaired a panel of four fellows of the Royal Society. One of them, whose blushes I will spare, travelled up to London overnight by sleeper from Penzance. Outside Falmouth he sensed an overpowering smell of burning and pulled the communication cord to stop the train. The railway people conceded that there was an acrid smell, but could find no trace of burning. The train proceeded on its journey and safely delivered the professor, who went to take breakfast at the Athenaeum (where else?!). On opening his briefcase he got a horrible shock: two chemicals in glass phials had leaked and joined forces to render the contents a soggy mess of illegible burnt-out paper including his notes for the programme!
Another alarming incident I recall on the programme was when one of those giant cameras operated by a seated driver got out of control and, like some mechanised dinosaur, bore down on me where I was seated at a table with my scientists either side. The red light was off which showed that the camera was not being used for filming. I resolved that I would carry on concentrating on cameras one and three as if nothing was wrong. Only when the camera actually hit the table would we beat a retreat. When it was within inches of the table, some benefactor pulled out the plug and the camera halted in its tracks! Another memorable instance was when I was conducting an interview during which a pneumatic drill came through the ceiling! We just carried on.
In 1958 I was asked by This Week to go to Jordan. Apparently there were three known assassination plots against King Hussein, and although it sounded ghoulish, the programme wished to cover any such possible crises. One trouble spot was Irbid, which the King included in his speaking tour. I was positioned on the balcony of the town hall, from which the King was to address the crowds. The King arrived, preceded by the Household Cavalry in their red tunics and astrakhan caps. He received a tumultuous welcome from the men in the street and from the women separated from the men on the roofs opposite. There were two exceptions: two women had positioned themselves by the main door, and I learnt that they were the mothers of two young men who had been caught gunrunning across the Syrian–Jordanian border, and were involved in a plot against the King. They were due to be executed the following morning. The mothers had come to plead for their sons’ lives. The head of Arab Radio, Abu Zeld, told me that the King would be making a dramatic statement.
In the course of his speech, the King said: ‘At this moment there are two young men who have plotted against the Hashemite dynasty and against the best interests of my people. They will be executed at dawn tomorrow.’ At this the women started wailing, and Hussein then ordered the two men to be brought before him from the central jail. They duly appeared handcuffed. Hussein proceeded to address them: ‘You have been discovered smuggling guns across the border, with the ultimate object of overthrowing the regime. Tomorrow you will be executed. What a waste of human resources. If I spare your lives, will you dedicate yourselves to the service of my people and to the greater glory of Jordan?’
To put it mildly, they hadn’t got much option, and swiftly agreed. Then Hussein said: ‘Remove their handcuffs. They are free.’ The crowd went wild and started shouting: ‘Long live Hussein, long live Hussein!’ He had shown panache and, as it turned out, had made a shrewd decision. Whatever assassination plans had been made must have been swiftly abandoned.
This Week was a constant source of excitement. I would be rung up and asked whether, at a few hours’ notice, I could go out with a camera team to some part of the world currently in the news. One such visit was to Iran in July 1961 to interview the Shah. He started off his reign as a reformer, dissolving the ultra-conservative Majlis (Parliament), and actively distributing title deeds of royal lands to peasants.
On arrival in Tehran, we were told that the Shah would be flying to Azerbaijan to give out land titles, leaving his private airfield at seven the next morning. He would give us an interview before take-off. I insisted that in view of the earliness and limited time made available to us, it was essential to get all the equipment in place and fully tested the night before.
The next morning, the Shah drove up on the dot of seven o’clock and said: ‘I gather you want an interview. Do you need to use the cameras?’ Somewhat puzzled, I replied: ‘Yes, Your Majesty. The alternative would be your voice over a still photograph.’ ‘When were the cameras brought down?’ he asked. ‘It was last night, sir’, I replied. The Shah turned to the head of security for a private discussion seemingly arising from our presence. After a few moments, the Shah agreed to give us a filmed interview. Following his departure, I asked the head of security what on earth the discussion had been about. He asked me whether I had noticed a hairline crack by the Shah’s mouth. He went on to tell me that the Shah had been photographed opening a new extension to the university, and amongst the battery of cameras was one containing a revolver, which was fired at him. One bullet went through his mouth and one through his shoulder. The Shah was immediately driven off to the hospital and the incident was hushed up. He was, therefore, not unnaturally somewhat inhibited about facing cameras. Our decision to bring down the cameras the night before was therefore wiser than we thought, since it had given the authorities the opportunity to inspect them for security.
About this time, Paul Adorian of Associated Rediffusion told me that the programme companies were considering creating the position of chief commentator for the network. Would I be interested? If so, he would like to put forward my name. I asked him how this would affect my position as a prospective parliamentary candidate. He replied that, amongst other things, I would be expected to mastermind the presentation of the general election results on television, and therefore I would have to relinquish my candidature. In fact, if I were returned in any subsequent election I would have gained a lot of national publicity; I would therefore be more likely to get elected and to get office. I told him that I did not belong to that sort of party. Then he said: ‘If that means you are a Liberal, surely you won’t ever get elected?’ I told him that I was likely to win North Devon even though it might be the only gain in the whole country, but if I was wrong, I would be tempted to reconsider his offer. In practice the North Devon and Torrington constituencies, next-door neighbours, represented the one Liberal gain and one Liberal loss of the whole 1959 election.
I was in fact signed up to do the commentary covering the route for Churchill’s funeral, whenever that might occur. At the time he died I had been elected to Parliament and it was not felt right that one MP should take up such a role.