0:01

BBC Sounds, music, radio,

0:03

podcasts. On

0:06

Last Word this week, the author Lynne

0:08

Reed Banks, the artist Joan Hills and

0:11

the luthier Amnon Weinstein. But

0:14

first, Sir Paul Fox was one of

0:16

the pioneers of British television and one

0:18

of its most respected senior executives. After

0:21

starting his career in BBC Sport,

0:23

where he invented the sports personality

0:25

of the year show, he became

0:27

editor of Panorama, head of current

0:30

affairs and controller of BBC One.

0:32

In the late 1960s and 70s, he oversaw the

0:35

launch of many hugely successful programmes,

0:38

including Dad's Army, The Generation Game

0:40

and The Parkinson Chat Show. Paul

0:48

Fox was born in 1925.

0:51

After military service during the Second

0:53

World War, he started his career

0:56

in local newspapers before moving into

0:58

film and then the fledgling BBC

1:00

Television Service. I had come

1:02

from the cinema newsreels, I came from pathway news

1:05

and I felt that the cinema newsreel days

1:07

were over, even in 1950 and

1:10

that television and the immortal

1:12

Wilford Pickles phrase was the

1:14

coming thing. When

1:20

Paul Fox was controller of BBC

1:22

One, his counterpart at BBC Two

1:24

was Sir David Attenborough, who has

1:27

fond memories of working alongside him.

1:29

He loved competition, he

1:31

loved winning and within

1:33

the meaning of what he

1:36

thought public service television should be doing,

1:38

he was intensely competitive. He wanted to

1:40

win, which explains why he spends

1:42

much of his career publicly

1:45

with sports television. Good

1:49

evening sports fans and welcome to another BBC

1:51

Sportsview programme. We have ten items again for

1:54

you this evening with a special treat I

1:56

think for boxing fans. He

1:58

invented Sportsview. he was

2:01

crucial in having his

2:03

ear to ground and knowing what was happening.

2:05

So that, for example, he had

2:07

cameras there ready for Roger Banister's

2:09

running a four-minute mile when nobody

2:11

else knew anything about it at

2:13

all. The

2:16

most sought-after target in athletics, the four-minute

2:18

mile, was achieved yesterday evening on the

2:20

Oxford University track at Ipley Row. And

2:22

those of us who didn't know much

2:24

about sport, nonetheless, became very

2:26

well aware that it was a big,

2:29

historic and newsworthy item and

2:31

the BBC television, directed by

2:33

Paul in that instance, was

2:35

there. The tape is

2:37

broken and so is the record athletes have

2:40

long been dreaming about. But at first, Banister

2:42

knows little about it. He stumbles into the

2:44

arms of his coach, completely exhausted by

2:46

his magnificent efforts. The Sports View was

2:48

a magazine, but basically it was a

2:51

news programme. I mean, it emphasised the

2:53

news regularly. It was innovative, it was

2:55

exciting, it was different. Again, those were

2:57

pioneering days. And the enormous advantage of

3:00

working in television in those days, in

3:02

the days of the Monopoly, were that

3:04

one could try things. And

3:07

everything you tried was new and

3:09

revolutionary. He had huge presence. I

3:12

mean, he was a big man and a

3:15

very knowledgeable man. I

3:17

mean, he exuded power in my eyes.

3:19

I mean, I was very, very impressed

3:22

by Paul. He had been

3:24

a paratrooper and that didn't come

3:26

as a surprise. He had been

3:28

wounded when he crossed the Rhine

3:30

in the arm. There

3:34

was no sign of that. But

3:36

he was not only a big

3:38

man, but he was a very competitive man. And

3:41

he had his ears to the ground and he

3:43

was more knowledgeable about what was

3:45

actually going on than anybody else I'd

3:47

ever met. I suppose there's a danger

3:49

that if you are a controller of

3:51

BBC One and you are working with

3:53

somebody who's a controller of BBC Two

3:55

that there might be competition for ideas

3:57

between the channels. Was there a relationship...

4:00

of competition or cooperation between the

4:02

two of you? There

4:04

was cooperation with the capital C.

4:06

I mean, my predecessor Mike Peacock

4:08

had started BBC2 with almost nothing.

4:13

I mean, and life was

4:15

secretive then, I think, he

4:19

kept it quite quiet as to what his

4:21

plans were. But when I

4:23

was appointed and Paul was appointed to

4:25

those two jobs, we got

4:28

together and we said, look, we

4:30

have to plan our two networks

4:32

together, they're going out together, and

4:35

so we could have really no secrets from

4:37

one another as far as programming is concerned.

4:40

And we arranged that the carbon

4:42

copies of our correspondence, of

4:44

our various memos and so on, were actually

4:47

at the end of the day, carbon copies

4:49

went from his office to mine and my

4:51

office to his. I knew

4:53

exactly what decisions he was taking and what

4:56

memos he'd sent, and he knew mine. David

4:59

was the most generous of colleagues

5:01

and the most warm-hearted of colleagues and

5:03

the most loyal of colleagues. And

5:06

with Hugh Weldon running the television

5:08

series, I thought he was a very

5:11

good set-up and one that was certainly the

5:13

most enjoyable time I ever had in

5:15

the BBC and also the

5:17

time when I learnt more than anything and

5:19

any other time. He's

5:21

associated with commissioning the

5:24

two Ronnies, the Generation

5:26

Game, Dad's Army, Parkinson's. I

5:29

mean, these are era-defining programmes and he

5:31

must have had some sense of what

5:34

would be popular with the viewer. Was

5:36

he very much in touch with what the viewers were wanting? Yes,

5:40

he was. And he

5:42

had one blind spot, actually, and that was

5:45

Monty Python's drawing circus. When

5:49

the first ones of those went out on BBC Two,

5:53

he didn't think it was at all funny. I have

5:56

to say, he changed his mind very quickly and

5:58

they became a lot of great... I

6:06

look backward hat Hacker Anything I did

6:09

during my time or control. The

6:11

Bbc wants I'm sure to the

6:13

moon news moved from Eight Fifty

6:15

and Nine Sustain where did been

6:18

swimming him as I moved at

6:20

nine o'clock advise some devious means

6:22

we managed to install of Nine

6:25

O'clock was it read that was

6:27

once the second thing when also

6:29

showed the pronouns wintertime when there

6:31

wasn't a lack of discipline management

6:34

Bbc programs and one time and

6:36

they ran Longan on thirty minutes

6:38

longer than system over the are.

6:41

And ran just any old lady was

6:43

a was around to time I saw

6:45

no reason I kind of asuncion round

6:47

town said need it He said at

6:49

one time I think that there are

6:51

three great jobs to have in the

6:53

B B C and the Editor of

6:55

Panorama. The considers Bbc once and the

6:58

Director General and he held to of

7:00

those positions but not the third. Do

7:02

you think he would have been a

7:04

good Director General of the Bbc. Yes,

7:07

us and to and the fact

7:09

that he he was up for

7:11

the position when became say cent

7:13

of Director General but didn't add

7:15

city Guess it's him to leave.

7:17

Decide to decide that his suit

7:19

and the Bbc was was not

7:21

bright and he's asked for your

7:23

key television. Was that seen as

7:25

an act of betrayal by the

7:27

Bbc at the time knows the

7:29

Bbc Salt a mean the Bbc

7:31

Here it is they wanted to

7:33

keep initially given the job. One

7:35

of the things. That attracted me to

7:37

the German Yorkshire A was a change I

7:40

wanted to change on quests me I wanted

7:42

to and the Bbc were unable to provide

7:44

a chance for me and I thought of

7:46

i didn't move them at the age of

7:49

forty eight I would never move and wanna

7:51

rethink. Said certainly persuaded me was the fact

7:53

that somebody said to me and hi T

7:56

V will be much closer to Pro Guns

7:58

and cause he was hugely influential. in

8:00

commercial television and I think it's quite rare

8:02

for somebody to have played such significant

8:04

roles on both sides of that

8:07

divide. Yes, indeed. He wasn't doctrinaire

8:10

and he was able perfectly easily

8:12

without any betrayal of any principle

8:15

to work for commercial television as

8:17

he worked for the puppet television.

8:19

Sir David Attenborough on Sir Paul

8:21

Fox is died aged 98. Now,

8:23

Lynne Reed Banks was the author

8:26

best known for her novel The

8:28

L-Shaped Room and her children's story

8:30

The Indian in the Cupboard. In all,

8:32

she published 40 works in different

8:34

genres, including a biography of the

8:36

Bronte family called The Dark Quartet.

8:39

Lynne was born in Barnes in West

8:41

London. Her father was a doctor and

8:43

her mother an actress. At

8:45

first, Lynne followed in her mother's footsteps,

8:47

but a stint in weekly rep convinced

8:50

her to abandon the stage. She

8:52

landed a job at the newly launched

8:54

ITN News Service, one of only two

8:57

women news reporters on British television at

8:59

that time. Lynne is

9:01

credited with pioneering the technique of Vox

9:03

Popping or conducting interviews in the street

9:05

with members of the public. Her

9:08

son, Gilon Stevenson, told me she

9:10

also reported on show business. She

9:13

interviewed incredibly famous people. She

9:15

interviewed Charlie Chaplin. She interviewed

9:17

Audrey Hepburn and she interviewed

9:20

Rita Hayworth. Miss Hayworth, this

9:22

is the first time you've been with your children

9:24

for quite a few weeks, isn't it? You're very

9:26

excited to see them again. Of course I am.

9:28

They arrived yesterday morning and this morning they

9:31

have never been in England. Then at

9:33

one point she asked a question that

9:35

she wasn't supposed to ask somebody and

9:38

then after that they said, right, Miss Banks,

9:41

you are banished to write scripts now.

9:43

But that obviously was good news for

9:45

her future career as a writer because

9:48

I believe it was while she was

9:50

doing that that she began to write

9:52

her book. It was. She

9:55

sat there and while the boys were going off

9:57

to lunch saying, what's the matter with you Banks?

10:00

Why are you sitting here, you little swat?

10:03

And she would sit there, and she

10:05

would work, and she just started writing

10:07

this book, and it became

10:09

the L-shaped room. My room was five

10:11

flights up in one of those gone-to-seed

10:13

houses in Fulham, all dark

10:15

brown wallpaper inside, and

10:17

peeling paint outside, on

10:20

every second landing was a chipped sink

10:22

with one tap and an

10:24

old ink-written notice which said, don't

10:26

leave tap dripping. The story of

10:28

the book is about a girl who has

10:30

had a shorter fare with an

10:33

actor, and is now pregnant,

10:35

and is ashamed of it and afraid.

10:38

She has a middle-class father like my

10:40

mother did, and she's afraid to

10:42

tell him, and she goes and finds

10:44

herself a squalid room,

10:47

and my mother always said that that was,

10:50

you know, the room itself is a kind

10:52

of a manifestation of squalidness within,

10:54

a sort of a kind of a

10:56

place for atonement, you know, somewhere that

10:58

was awful. And she meets

11:00

a group of very interesting eclectic

11:03

characters that live in this five-story

11:05

house, and gets

11:08

to know all of them. There's a writer

11:10

called Toby. Make

11:15

up for this. If

11:19

anything for you when you wake up, it

11:22

will be me telling you I love you. The

11:25

L-shaped room, the

11:27

setting for a love story such as

11:29

you have never seen before. Was she

11:32

happy with the film adaptation? Oh,

11:34

she hated the film adaptation. She

11:36

didn't like the way that he ended it.

11:39

That was, I think, a big problem, because

11:41

it was very important to my mum, the ending, and

11:43

he changed it. He sort of

11:45

taken away some of the gold power, the

11:48

independence, the life that was going

11:50

to be lived on Jane's terms.

11:53

Nothing's ever the same after your first book's

11:55

published, and if you have the good fortune

11:58

to have it be a success... You

12:01

think about yourself quite differently. It's

12:03

not a question of getting a big head.

12:06

It's like coming home. It's

12:08

like a ratification of

12:10

what you are, which

12:12

I had somehow never had. I'd

12:14

never really been secure in anything else

12:16

that I'd ever done. I'd always had

12:19

a bit of an inferiority feeling. Three

12:21

weeks after the premiere of the L-shaped

12:23

room film, Lynne left Britain to

12:25

live on a kibbutz in Israel. On

12:28

her return to London, she met and fell

12:30

in love with a sculptor called Heim Stevenson.

12:33

The couple married and went back to the kibbutz,

12:36

where Lynne taught English and worked on the farm. She

12:39

continued to write and in 1980 came

12:41

up with her best-loved children's book, The

12:44

Indian in the Cupboard. It

12:46

was a story that she developed for my brother,

12:48

Omri, my younger brother, developed in

12:50

the sense that she would make up stories for

12:52

us when we were kids, you know. She

12:55

started telling Omri a story. Of course,

12:57

she was using props as a good

12:59

actress does. The cupboard was a present

13:01

from his brother, Gilon. It

13:03

was actually a bathroom medicine cabinet that someone

13:06

had thrown away. But Omri

13:08

liked it. All it needed was

13:10

a key so that he could lock it, and

13:13

then it would be his secret cupboard. It's

13:15

a story about a boy who is given

13:17

a cupboard by his brother for his tenth

13:19

birthday, and is given a key by his

13:21

mother that belongs to his granny, and

13:24

he likes putting things away, and he takes

13:26

his Native American toy and puts it in

13:28

the cupboard and locks the

13:30

cupboard door and goes to bed. And

13:32

that is the key to the magic,

13:35

because when you lock the cupboard, whatever you've got

13:37

inside comes to life. Try

13:40

it. Me? I'm

13:43

awake. Believe

13:45

your eyes. I have a

13:48

magic cupboard that has a magic key. I

13:50

put a plastic in the cupboard and it

13:52

came alive. You are so

13:54

real. I

13:56

think that my mother at that point had

13:59

realised that... was a very

14:01

big difference between films and books and

14:03

had kind of accepted it. So when

14:05

the film came out she was a

14:07

little bit more ambivalent. Were there times

14:09

when she was criticized later on as

14:12

attitudes changed? Was her work criticized by

14:14

some who said it was very much

14:17

of its time? Yeah definitely. I mean

14:19

I think somebody whose career expands over

14:22

70 years is just going to get that.

14:24

My mum wasn't writing about necessarily,

14:26

I mean writing about her own opinion.

14:28

She was writing about the opinions and

14:30

thoughts of her characters. But certainly

14:32

there were things that were just okay to

14:34

say in the past and are no longer

14:36

okay to say now. And I think my

14:38

mother was a progressive person in the sense

14:40

that she didn't stay in her lane, she

14:42

was very open to change, she

14:45

was open to new mores, new

14:47

ways of thinking. If I

14:49

couldn't be a writer, well

14:52

I would have said once if I couldn't be

14:54

a writer like I'd be dead because my work

14:56

has been terribly important to me all my life.

14:59

But now I'm getting on in

15:01

years, I feel that it

15:03

wouldn't be so terrible if I couldn't write.

15:05

She wanted the world to be a better

15:07

place, she never wanted to

15:09

show off, she always wanted to give. And

15:12

she was a wonderful, loving,

15:15

loyal mother. I

15:17

loved her with all my heart. Gilon Stevenson

15:19

on Lynne Reed Banks who's died aged 94.

15:22

Now Joan Hills was a leading artist

15:25

who worked with her husband Mark Boyle

15:27

and children Georgia and Sebastian to form

15:29

the Boyle Family Collective. They're

15:32

best known for creating extraordinary random

15:34

facsimiles of the earth's surface. Their

15:37

work has been shown at the Venice

15:39

Biennale, the Hayward Gallery in London and

15:41

the National Galleries of Scotland. Joan

15:44

was born in Edinburgh. Although

15:46

she wanted to study art, her father

15:48

persuaded her to study structural mechanics instead.

15:51

In the 1950s she married a grain merchant

15:53

and had a child but the marriage did

15:55

not last and Joan took her baby to

15:58

live in a flat over a cafe. in

16:00

Harrogate, where she earned money by running

16:02

a beauty salon. It was

16:04

here that she met Mark Boyle, as their

16:07

daughter Georgia told me. One day

16:09

she went down to complain about the noise of the coffee

16:11

machine and the guy who ran

16:13

the cafe said, let me introduce you to

16:15

the man who's ordering all the coffees. This

16:17

is Mark. So he moved in

16:19

with her very quickly, which was at that

16:21

time a very brave thing to do for

16:23

her to have him move in. But

16:26

it seemed like the kind of obvious thing that

16:28

they were going to be working together for a

16:30

very long time. Joan

16:35

and Mark moved to London and became

16:38

key figures in the underground art movement

16:40

of the 1960s, meeting Yoko Ono and

16:42

the Beatles and other influential people from

16:44

the counterculture. Part of their

16:47

practice was also that they were doing

16:49

light shows, which are now known as

16:51

the kind of psychedelic light shows. But

16:53

they would show down at this club

16:55

called Yufo, which was a famous club

16:58

where the underground was. Where Pink

17:00

Floyd played in Soft Machine. They

17:03

basically did the lights for Soft Machine. One

17:05

day when they were down there doing the

17:07

lights and the guy jumped up on the

17:10

stage, that's Jimi Hendrix. When Hendrix then went

17:12

off to tour the States, he

17:14

was supported by Soft Machine and Mark and Joan

17:16

went along as well. The

17:22

art world then was much smaller than it

17:24

is now. If one person was

17:26

having an opening or doing something, then they

17:29

would all go to that. One of the

17:31

events that Mark and Joan did was the

17:33

thing called Big. We sent out

17:35

a printed invitation to friends, which said

17:37

at the top, the annual big of

17:39

the Institute of Contemporary Archaeology. People turned

17:41

up in all their glad rags thinking

17:43

they were going to some kind of

17:45

opening and then they were put on a bus

17:48

and taken down to Shepherd's Bush. We told

17:50

these people they were indeed to

17:52

dig and they really couldn't believe it.

17:54

But they did go ahead and start

17:56

to dig and they were moving this

17:59

rubble and concrete And

18:01

then, out came a fashion

18:03

of hate, or the

18:05

foot of a broken statue.

18:07

And indeed, the whole place

18:10

was a demolished golden statue

18:12

factory. Whatever they found was going

18:14

to be the exhibition. The

18:16

idea was to treat those pieces

18:18

as though they were archaeological finds,

18:20

very important. One day we did

18:22

find a smashed television set, and

18:26

beside it was lying the

18:28

grey rectangle that is

18:30

the kind of anchor piece for the

18:32

glass between the glitters from the cabinet.

18:35

And inside that grey

18:37

rectangle looked absolutely remarkable

18:39

and beautiful. And

18:41

we realised that this was a way of isolating

18:44

this enormous sight

18:48

and really focusing on something without

18:50

touching it. They realised

18:52

that what was lay within that was actually

18:55

far more interesting because it was random, and

18:57

that was something that was really important to

18:59

them. They started off at

19:01

first by doing transition pieces where

19:03

they would start moving the pieces

19:06

from where it was onto a grid and

19:08

a board, but they realised that they

19:11

were missing all the small particles

19:13

of dust. They then decided that

19:15

they would work on techniques where

19:17

they could both freeze

19:19

the surface and then translate

19:21

it into something that hung on a wall.

19:23

And they were throwing darts at a map

19:25

of the world as I understand it. As

19:28

people came into the exhibition, we would

19:30

blindfold them. That was my brother and

19:32

myself, and we would give them an

19:34

air rifle, and we'd

19:36

explain that they had an area that they

19:39

could fire at. And wherever those darts landed,

19:41

we would go and make a piece. And

19:44

I understand that the random

19:46

idea, the idea of chance

19:48

entering into the artworks, also

19:52

influenced the way that your parents lived their lives.

19:55

Yes, someone had written to Mark

19:57

from an architectural magazine and asked him

19:59

what was his... favorite part of Britain.

20:02

And Mark said, well, actually, we don't have favorite

20:04

parts like that. And what I suggest you do

20:06

is get a map and you put a dart

20:08

in it and where if that lands, go and

20:10

look at it. And the guy sent

20:12

back this thing saying, well, random selection

20:14

was Colville. And years later,

20:17

they decided that they could go and

20:19

get married in Colville with this random selection

20:21

that had been done. And my mother had

20:23

run up a charity shop and asked them

20:25

if they gave a donation, could they provide

20:27

them with witnesses? And they turned up in

20:30

Colville and there was these two witnesses and

20:32

they just went to the registry office and

20:34

did it. I'm just interested in your mother's

20:36

character in particular, since we're talking about her.

20:39

So what was she like and what was

20:41

her role in the family dynamic? I

20:43

suppose she was in some ways a foil for my

20:45

father, who was much more loud and a big

20:48

rack on term. My mother was quite,

20:50

very quiet, very gentle, but was always

20:52

there, was always quietly doing the

20:54

things. She

20:56

was modest and very brave. The

20:59

joy of this work is that you

21:02

find beauty in the

21:05

most random and neglected places.

21:08

It's not the we necessarily find beauty

21:10

or because that's for each individual to

21:12

work out for themselves. What

21:15

it is, is it's something that's very familiar

21:17

that is suddenly hanging in front of you.

21:19

You're used to having your head down looking

21:21

at things and then suddenly it's hanging in

21:23

front of you and you're able to

21:25

really look at it and really examine it and really

21:27

think actually the world

21:29

is pretty amazing. Georgia Boyle on her mother

21:32

Joan Hills, who's died aged 92. This

21:35

week, last words also go to the cricketer

21:37

Derek Underwood, MBE. He

21:39

was one of Kent and England's greatest ever

21:42

bowlers, taking 297 wickets in 86 tests, the

21:47

most by any England spinner. And

21:50

we remember Angela Redgrave, MBE, the

21:52

dance teacher who was principal of

21:54

the Bristol School of Dancing for

21:57

over 50 years and inspired thousands

21:59

of students. But now

22:01

for the Jewish Luthier, Amnon Weinstein,

22:03

musical instruments were his whole life.

22:06

He'd learned how to make and repair

22:08

violins from the great Luthiers of Cremona

22:11

in Italy, and taken those skills back

22:13

to the dusty workshop in Tel Aviv

22:15

which he'd inherited from his father. A

22:18

chance encounter there was to inspire Amnon

22:20

to create a collection of violins which

22:22

had been played in the most terrible

22:24

of circumstances, in the Nazi

22:26

concentration camps of the Second World War.

22:30

Amnon's Violins of Hope project is

22:32

now being carried on by his

22:34

son, Afshalon, who told me the

22:36

family suffered terribly in the Holocaust.

22:38

My grandfather was one of eleven brothers

22:40

and sisters, and only one of

22:43

his brothers survived. My grandmother had

22:45

seven or eight brothers and sisters, and

22:47

none of her family survived. Every

22:54

single camp had an orchestra.

22:57

Those had to play in the morning and in the

22:59

evening when the inmates would go out and come back

23:02

for work. The

23:07

Canadian composer Jap Nico Hamburger is

23:09

the child of two Holocaust survivors.

23:12

He's dedicated his music to remembering those

23:14

who were lost. Some of

23:16

the musicians who were at gunpoint

23:18

ordered to play music at the

23:21

entrance of gas chambers. That's

23:23

an unimaginable, cruel

23:26

and cynical situation to be

23:28

in. Amnon

23:34

himself was intensely moved by these

23:36

stories. It was forbidden to

23:38

the Jewish to pray, and

23:40

the violin was praying for them.

23:43

And to be out of this horrible

23:46

place for five minutes, and all

23:48

the value of that, for five

23:50

minutes in the free world, that's

23:52

the power of music. After

24:05

the war, my grandfather bought

24:07

many German and Austrian made

24:09

instruments, because after the war with Israel,

24:12

nobody wanted to touch anything

24:14

German, including musical

24:16

instruments. They came to

24:18

my father and said to him, if you

24:20

are not buying this violin, I'm breaking it

24:22

or burn it. And for

24:24

my father, this was sacrilege, and

24:27

he bought every instrument that people bring

24:29

it to him. In

24:44

1979, a guy came to

24:46

the workshop with the violin that he got from

24:48

his ex-employee. His

24:51

employee was playing all the

24:53

way to the God's chambers in Auschwitz. I

24:56

opened the violin. I remember

24:58

it was inside black

25:00

powder because it was played. He

25:03

had the camo to you, and he had

25:05

all these horrible places. And

25:07

I asked him questions, and he told me

25:09

about what happened there. So what

25:11

was the impact on your father of that

25:14

violin and the ashes that he found inside

25:16

it? Honestly, I can't really

25:18

tell you. He didn't, I mean, he repaired the

25:20

violin, he gave it back to the owner, and

25:23

in a way that was the end

25:25

of it for him. But soon, families

25:27

from all over the world began coming

25:29

to Amnon's workshop with violins that had

25:31

been stored away in attics and cellars,

25:33

each with its own haunting story. As

25:36

the collection grew, it came to the

25:38

attention of Jap Hamburger, who was determined

25:40

to write a piece to allow the

25:42

violins to be heard again in the

25:44

concert hall. I'm a composer. The

25:46

topic of the symphony was children

25:48

at war, and

25:51

some of those instruments were actually

25:53

present in

25:56

the concentration camps where my parents were

25:58

prisoners and survivors of the Auschwitz.

26:01

And just as Anand Weinstein

26:03

had thought and

26:05

realized was to save some

26:07

of those instruments that actually

26:10

had been there and

26:12

bring them back to life

26:15

in the sense that they're not just

26:17

artifacts in a collection or artifacts

26:19

in a museum, but actually instruments that

26:21

do what they were supposed to do

26:24

to perform music. What

26:33

was your father's reaction when he went

26:35

to one of these concerts and he

26:38

saw the fruits of what he had

26:40

done by collecting the instruments?

26:44

Listen, it's a big crowd. And

26:47

you hear the crowd, you hear

26:49

the reaction after the

26:51

concert when people come to congratulate you

26:53

and when they speak

26:55

and they talk about their experience. It's

26:58

amazing. The

27:02

Holocaust is a story of death,

27:05

but the Holocaust is also a story of

27:07

hope, because many people survived

27:10

and the music was

27:13

a part of it. When you know

27:15

all the stories of the violin, you

27:17

find that many violins brought

27:20

hope with them. Anand

27:32

Weinstein has died aged 84. This

27:36

week you also heard last words on

27:38

the artist Joan Hills, the author Lynne

27:40

Reed Banks and the TV executive Sir

27:42

Paul Fox. Don't forget there

27:44

are hundreds of other fascinating life stories

27:46

in the Last Word Archive on BBC

27:48

Sounds.