Professor George Steiner

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 18 February 1996

⏱️ 38 minutes

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Summary

The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is Professor George Steiner. One of the most prominent intellectuals of our time, he'll be talking to Sue Lawley about how the English academic establishment has taken decades to accept him despite his early popularity as a Cambridge lecturer, and about the problem of reconciling the love of beauty with great acts of evil. He'll also be describing how his family left Austria for France in the 1920s and how he was one of only two boys to survive in his class in the largely Jewish lycee he attended in Paris.

When asked to select just one record to take to the island, Professor George said that for him, it was all or nothing.

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

Book: 500 year ahead calendar and appointment book Luxury: Computer

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hello, I'm Krestey Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.
0:05.0	For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.
0:08.2	The program was originally broadcast in 1996, and the presenter was Sue Lolly. My castaway this week is an intellectual. He was born into a Jewish family who lived in Paris and
0:34.8	fled with them in 1940 to America. This early experience of being brought up in a secure
0:40.6	happy home surrounded by a world of terror has influenced much of what he's said
0:45.6	and written since.
0:47.3	The English academic establishment has taken decades to accept him, despite his huge early
0:52.3	popularity as a Cambridge lecturer, despite his huge early popularity as a Cambridge lecturer.
0:54.4	But his books have always been influential.
0:57.1	His mind is a warehouse of knowledge which in works such as language and silence and in Blue
1:02.0	Beard's Castle has been channeled into a
1:04.4	ferocious advocacy of the values of European culture. He's well aware of the
1:09.5	pitfalls of such convictions and stays close to his father's advice and I quote always
1:15.2	have your bags packed he is George Steiner advice George guaranteed to give you a
1:21.8	sense of impending crisis.
1:23.6	Did your father intend you to take it literally?
1:26.0	Oh, very much so.
1:27.4	Remember that Hitler was coming nearer and nearer.
1:31.0	And the important thing I think was to say,
1:33.0	we're going to see that, I hope, in some of the music.
1:35.6	Don't be afraid.
1:36.8	The world is a very large and very exciting place.
	...

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