Interview of Alan Bookbinder on 13.7.2023

AM: So it's a great pleasure to have a chance to talk to Alan Bookbinder, who right at the end of his career as Master of Downing, we come to talk. Alan, I always start by asking when and where you were born.

AB: Okay, I was born in Bristol in 1956. My father was a mature student at Bristol University at the time. He had left school at 15 and in later, well somewhat later life, he did courses with the Workers' Education Authority and then went to university as a mature student. I was born there the first of four children.

AM: Right. Somehow you got to Manchester.

AB: Yes. With my father's job. He was initially a prison psychologist, later moved into educational psychology and he worked for Salford, for the local education authority. And so we lived in Manchester and that's where I spent the largest part of my childhood and certainly all my secondary school years were in Manchester.

AM: I ask people to go back a couple of generations if they can or back to the Norman Conquest if they want. But did you know your grandparents at all?

AB: Only when I was very young. On my mother's side, it's an Irish family. My father's side, it's a Polish-Jewish family. So quite a different background for both my parents. And indeed when they got together in the early 1950s, it was a scandal in both of their communities because the Irish Catholic community and the Jewish community in Manchester were very separate and at that time a good deal of hostility. So getting together across that divide caused a lot of friction. They were both ostracised from their families for a while. Things relaxed later on. But it was for them a really kind of quite profound experience. I have to say it put them both off organised religion completely and they brought us up in a very secular way.

AM: Very strange but a coincidence. Last night I was watching a 'Play for Today' – (we are watching all the early 'Plays for Today'). We were watching one about precisely this problem. An Irish Catholic girl marrying a Jewish... I don't know if you know the play? It's cot some Irish name... It's about those two communities. Very strange, spooky that I'm talking to someone who's experienced this the next day. Is that life imitating art or life imitating life? Anyway, so tell me a little more about the personalities of your parents. How did that influence you?

AB: Well, because my father had missed out on education first time round, it was very important to him that his children get good education. And he was very supportive and encouraging and set great store by academic achievement. My mother, although she had done well at school, she had had to leave school early. And she briefly worked as a junior civil servant. But then once she started having children she became very much a traditional housewife. So sadly she didn't have a professional life of her own, which I think was a great shame because she could have done well. But I think it was a feature of the age really, especially with four children, that it was quite hard for her to have her own career. But she was the more nurturing character, the one I think more interested in her children being rounded personalities. My father was very keen that we realise our academic potential.

AM: So he pushed you on a bit in the academic way?

AB: Yeah, and he saw the value of that. In a sense he wanted us to enjoy and succeed in areas where his education had been delayed at best.

AM: You said they were Polish Jewish origins. When did they come to this country?

AB: They came in the early 1900s, following the pogroms of the 1890s.

AM: How did you get this interesting name? Because my wife is a bookbinder. How did you get the name bookbinder?

AB: Well, it came with the family from Middle Europe. I think it comes from the German Bockbinder. I assume that somewhere back in the mists of time they were actual bookbinders. But actually the family trade in Manchester was bakeries. The family had a whole chain of bakeries in North Manchester, particularly in the Cheetham Hill area, the North Manchester Jewish areas. Their other claim to fame was that a fairly distant cousin was the singer Elke Brooks, whose actual name is Elke Bookbinder. But she not surprisingly changed her name to something easier. So Elke Brooks is a distant cousin.

AM: Interesting. I usually ask people what their first memory was. Not a vague one from the pram, trees waving, but something more specific.

AB: I think the earliest thing that I remember because it penetrated was the day that my second brother was born. Because I remember having to play out, outside the house while everything was going on indoors. Not really being able to understand why I couldn't go in the house and why I had to keep amusing myself in the garden. Only later did I understand that probably having a four-year-old knocking around inside the house wouldn't have been a great idea.

AM: So did you go to your first school in Manchester?

AB: No, I went to primary school in Bristol. Curiously, in the light of recent events, this was called Colston's Primary School. As you probably know, lots of places in Bristol were named after Colston. Colston Hall, etc. But as it happened, although it meant nothing to us at the time, Colston's Primary School was in Redland in Bristol. And we moved back to Manchester when I was ten. So I had just a few months in primary school there and then went on to Grammar School there...

AM: Took the 11+ .

AB: Yeah, it wasn't called the 11+ then, but these were the entrance exams for Manchester Grammar which of course was a direct grant school rather than an 11+ grammar school.

AM: That's right. In between four and ten, were there any hobbies or interests you particularly had which might explain your later career? Or anything else? Did you like fishing or collecting or reading?

AB: No. I mean, certainly I did a lot of reading. I remember when I first went... When we moved to Manchester in my primary school there, being asked who my favourite writer was and being... the teacher greeting me with horror when I said Enid Blyton. Which even then, I think, was not thought to be worthy. It got worse since then. But also I did like television and I think that did influence me in being interested in the BBC later on. I particularly remember in Bristol, I must have been about seven, 1963, the first ever episode of 'Doctor Who', which for many kids of that age had a strong influence at the time.

AM: Well, you were born in the great year. I've written my autobiography and in 1956, '57 was when the modern world began with Elvis and the whole pop phenomenon and the age battles and mods and rockers of a little later. So it began in 1956, '57. 'One o'clock, two o'clock, three o'clock rock' was I think '56. Anyway, all sorts of social changes were occurring at that time and then in the 60s, as you say, the next wave with Beatlemania and so on. So let's go on to Manchester Grammar School for the viewers here. Manchester Grammar School was one of the two or three top schools in England for many years. I don't know if it still is. Many of my friends went there, came to Cambridge. Very distinguished. What was your experience of it?

AB: Yeah, I mean, the great thing about it was that it was a direct grant school. So about a third of the boys, it was all boys, were on scholarships as I was. And it meant that a much wider group of boys could attend. The other two thirds were fee paying. It was also very striking in that a third of the school were Jewish.

AM: Really?

AB: It had its own Jewish assembly room. There were Jewish services. So very, very strong identity. That may have remained the case until more recently, I don't know. But of course when it became an independent school, it had a very different kind of intake and different ethos. But at the time, it was a wonderful place of opportunity.

AM: And it sort of looked just like a public school. They all had masters war gowns and things like this.

AB: Yeah.

AM: And a lot of emphasis on classics.

AB: Yes, although it had a very state of the art science block. And it did really encourage subjects across the range. The really striking thing was the calibre, commitment of the teachers. I mean, I can remember even now some excellent teachers in Russian and English.

AM: Tell me about one or two of the teachers who really influenced you.

AB: Well, the Russian teacher had a big influence on me in that I had taken Russian as an O-level option on a whim really. It was a choice between Russian, German or Greek. And Russian just seemed to be the more exciting, more attractive one. But what was wonderful was that the teacher, Mr Austin, who was always called Tov, Tov for Tovarishch, which is Russian for comrade. So he was always known as Tov by everyone, was just really inspiring and encouraging and brought the subject alive and took us on a school trip to Russia. So it was a strong influence because I had done Russian partly because I think I had read one novel in English, a Turgenev novel, and it just sounded interesting. And it was a two-year commitment. But then after two years I got interested enough to then do it for A-level and then one thing led to another.

AM: And you went to Russia and we'll come to that later.

AB: It came from small beginnings really. But I think it's absolutely true what people say about the importance of inspirational teachers who take an interest in you, who convey their love of the subject, who make it exciting.

AM: Yes, I know that. Were there any other teachers who…

AB: I had a very good English literature teacher because I did English at A-level. And he, again, I do remember 'The Wasteland'.

AM: What was his name?

AB: His name was John Weeks. And one of our set texts was 'The Wasteland'. And he brought that alive and brought out nuances and made reading poetry a real pleasure.

AM: Excellent. What about sports, which is sometimes important?

AB: Sports. Well, I was an enthusiastic but not very good rugby player. But the one thing I did learn at Manchester Grammar, I trained to be a soccer referee. And refereed some games at school. But then at college I refereed and then a little while afterwards until the routine of the BBC made it impossible to be reliable at the weekends. But I loved soccer but wasn't good enough at it to play on the first team. But refereeing games just gave me a way into it. And in a way, learning to referee, to arbitrate, to hold two sides of the argument has held me in quite good stead.

AM: Yes, good training. Were there any other things at school like debating or music that you did with keenness?

AB: Not really. I belonged to a folk singing group and that was great fun. It was called 'Pagan'.

AM: Did you play any instrument?

AB: I played guitar but in a very sort of strumming chords rather than anything very elaborate. And I sang. And that was a sort of important thing for me.

AM: It is, It gets you confident in front of audiences I find.

AB: Yes, and helps you in a group of four, helps you kind of learn to rub along with different personalities and to feel part of a team and to respond to others.

AM: The other thing that is important in an odd way in your life is religion. You mentioned your parents. In a way they were put off from religion.

AB: Yeah.

AM: But were you bar mitzvahed or anything like that?

AB: No, no.

AN: Because you couldn't be actually…

AB: No, they had turned away from all of that. And I mean if they taught me anything about religion it was the way it can be a source of conflict. So in a way it was quite a negative lesson. And we were kept away from church or synagogue. And really it was very deliberately not part of our lives. But also the heritage of Judaism and Catholicism was just not part of how we were brought up. I mentioned Jewish assemblies in school, but I didn't go to those. I went to the Christian services which were actually quite secular. And it was quite odd to me to know that a third of the boys were Jewish and I had some Jewish background but I wasn't part of that.

AM: So how can you explain that you end up as head of religious broadcasting at the BBC?

AB: Well, this was to do with timing really. And this was at a time when the BBC was trying to be more inclusive. And so prior to me all the heads of religious broadcasting had been either ordained Anglican priests or people steeped in the Anglican world. And I think the BBC wanted in a way to make a statement. To say that they wanted someone who would be equally open to all religions and none. And so someone who was agnostic rather than kind of atheist. So someone who was not hostile to religion but who was prepared to kind of be even-handed among religions was seen as right for that moment really. And interestingly, two heads of religion after me was a Muslim.

AM: Really.

AB: And so there was a sort of sense of opening up. I mean this was 2001. But it was a very odd thing because when I took the job it was sort of seen as an interesting backwater. But six weeks in 9/11 happened. And so suddenly religion, Islam, shot to the top of the kind of political agenda and it became a much busier job. A job much more in the spotlight than I had intended or anticipated.

AM: Well, since we got on to it and we'll come back to your life, can you pick out one or two high and low points during your tenancy of that job? I mean one or two difficulties and one or two pleasures.

AB: Yes, the difficulties were all to do with the internal rows about the status of religion and religious broadcasting. The battle for budgets for prime-time slots. The BBC had a statutory requirement to broadcast so many hours. But it didn't say when they should be in the schedule. So the programmes there were tended to be relegated slots and it was a curious thing because the director general at the time, Mark Thompson, was very strongly religious himself. A devout Catholic. But beneath him, the people who actually made the decisions, the channel controllers and the schedulers, were secular metropolitans and didn't really get religion at all. And particularly they didn't understand that the audience was more religious than they were. Particularly outside the big cities. And they didn't get that quite large swathes of small town and rural England still went to church and still were interested. And also big numbers of Muslims and Hindus, growing numbers. It meant that I got into disputes that were sometimes quite difficult. And odd things happened like the Anglican bishop who was designated media responsibility, happened to be the Bishop of Manchester. And the department was in Manchester and that's where I was working then. And he said to me, I can see you're having difficulty. Would it help if I wrote to the Director General? And I said, yes, that would be. And he said, well, could you draft me something? So I did and it went off. About a week later, I got a call from the Director General's office. Could you draft me a reply to this, to the Bishop? And so I did. And there was a sort of exchange of correspondence that I was on both sides. And but that was a sort of illustration of the kind of delicacy of the role. I think that the pleasures were in meeting people from the different religious communities. I remember getting to know quite well Jonathan Sachs, then the Chief Rabbi, who I think was a marvellous person and really quite inspiring. And beyond his immediate brief, I mean, I think he was a wise teacher as well as a representative of the Jewish community. And across the religions were really thoughtful people who were men and women of faith. But their perspective on the world went well beyond the immediate beliefs of their particular religion. And that was really inspiring.

AM: Did any of this make you more interested or even a participant in religion later in your life?

AB: It made me appreciate just how important religion is for many people's sense of identity, their sense of purpose, their sense of belonging to a community. And it made me realise that so much has been done in the name of religion that is good, and so much has been done in the name of religion, which is negative and difficult. But it deepened my sense of how important religion is without bringing me to any particular faith. But I think it gave me greater respect than I perhaps had before. And a greater understanding that whether or not you're religious, there is much more to the world than the kind of purely material, practical side. And that deeper reflection, some people would call it prayer, but deeper reflection is something of value.

AB: So as Master of Downing you found no difficulty presiding, presumably you have a chapel there. Yeah, no, I very much enjoy the life of the chapel and evensong. We have an excellent chaplain, the choir is very committed. It's a significant part of the community and it's a community that I really value. And so the contribution of the chapel to college life is significant and something I really support.

AM: Coming back to your life, you've left Manchester. Why did you go to Oxford?

AB: I went to Oxford because Russian was taught well there and there was a clear path through. I was very lucky in that Manchester Grammar prepared its Russian students very well. And there was an established pattern of MGS boys going to different colleges to do Russian. So that our very best Russian student was always entered for University College, and our next best was entered for St Catharine's (that was me). And the next best was Merton. And although it was never automatic, it was a pretty regular path through. And I knew about that and I knew that Oxford didn't discourage people from doing a year abroad, because that was something I was very keen to be able to do. And I think more broadly Oxford appealed for all the obvious reasons really. I loved the idea of being part of a college rather than having to make your way through a huge university. I loved the idea that colleges, as I can see now even more, they provide a manageable social unit for students. They provide all that interdisciplinary connection. And Oxford then and now, as with Cambridge, they're just very beautiful places to live and be. So all that added up to a fairly clear choice.

AM: Didn't you read history rather than Russian at Oxford?

AB: Well, I started with Russian and French. And two terms in after prelims I dropped the French and did the joint Russian and history honours. So my degree is in modern history and modern languages. But I was doing roughly two-thirds Russian and one-third history. I was allowed to do history even though I hadn't done it at O-level or A-level. But I think they'd seen enough of me to feel that I could probably cope. But also I was very interested in connecting Russian with something more, broadly speaking, more political. Because I'd got very interested in politics and the politics of communism. But also I was interested in the developing world. And I wanted to study something that felt more relevant than pure language and literature.

AM: The first society I think I joined when I was at Oxford reading history was the Communist Society, because they had a very pretty secretary as I recall. And I never went to any meetings or anything. But were you a member of any societies?

AB: I was a member of the United Nations Youth Association.

AM So was I. What was it called? Cosmos?

AB: No, it was called UNISA.

AM: When I was there it was Cosmos.

AB: I took it on. The chair before me was Peter Mandelson, who was at my college a year older than me. So I did that and also I belonged to various sort of third world interest groups. And it led to me volunteering in Africa at the end of my first year.

AM: And you went there?

AB: I went to West Africa for the summer. Which was a complete eye-opener. I'd travelled a little bit in Western Europe, but not even very much. But going to Africa and flying overnight and suddenly the plane doors opening in Accra, in Ghana. And this kind of what felt like a sauna just sort of whooshing at me. And all those sounds and smells. It was a real culture shock. But quite formative because my interest in Africa has sustained throughout all that time. And quite a lot of the early work I did at the BBC was in Africa.

AM: Can you pick out a highlight or lowlight from your work in Africa for the BBC?

AB: The main period that I spent in Africa for the BBC was on a series called 'The Africans'. And the thing that was different about it, this was in the early 80s, was that it was presented by an African, Professor Ali Mazrui.

AM: Oh yes, famous.

AB: Yeah, historian of Africa. And it was the first time that any broadcaster I think tried to convey an African perspective on Africa. Even though we were a British production team, it was about giving him a voice. And about finding places and situations and characters that would reflect the kind of, not the Western colonial view, but a view from within Africa. And that felt quite special because it was new. And so it was a really enjoyable thing to be part of. It was a kind of way of facilitating, empowering and trying to convey a different standpoint.
AM: Was there any backlash from the public or anything about it?

AB: Not backlash. I think it struggled to get huge viewing figures because people were not used to hearing an African in front of them. So it struggled a little bit to get wide attention. Critically I think it was generally well liked. It was interesting that at the same time, Channel 4 was running a series about African history presented by Basil Davidson.

AM: Oh yes.

AB: Eminent African historian, but a white man. And I think that got a little bit more public attention. He's a very good historian and broadcaster so I don't begrudge that. But I think it just reminded me that we were maybe a bit ahead of our time.

AM: I didn't ask you if there were any teachers at Oxford, lecturers or others who influenced you in the same way as schoolmasters do.

AB: Not really in the same way. There were people whose tutorials I enjoyed. There was a particular man from All Souls called Charles Wenden CHECK NAME who taught 19th century European history. He was not himself a particularly eminent scholar, but he was a good teacher and he brought things alive, particularly for someone who hadn't studied history before. He was very encouraging. He was particularly interested in cinema and I helped him a little bit, separately from our tutorials, on reading some Russian articles for him on Russian cinema. And that was quite enjoyable to do.

AM: You got your year off and you went to Russia? Yes. Tell me about that year. Which year was this?

AB: This was 1976-7. So Brezhnev, SALT negotiations. So a time of relative détente which helped because the surveillance was much lighter than it might have been. The freedom just to mix with Russians and to be immersed. I was lucky in being in a provincial town rather than Moscow or Leningrad, as it was, because in the provinces there was just less paranoia. There were very few Western foreigners there. They wouldn't allow any Americans or West Germans. There were some Scandinavians and a lot of developing world students. The reason we were there was that the university had a specialism of teaching Russian as a second language. They had lots and lots of people, as I say, from the developing world, from Africa and Southeast Asia and Latin America, but a much smaller number of Westerners. And it was just possible to get really immersed in the place, which is exactly what you need for language. Although Russians were careful, they weren't afraid of making friends. I remember visiting Russians in their flats, in their blocks of flats, and walking up the stairs. They would either ask me to keep quiet, or if we met their friends or neighbours, bumped into them on the stairs, I was to say I was from one of the Baltic republics, because that would justify my accent without drawing attention to the fact that I was a filthy capitalist. But in general, it was terrific to be able to make friends and mix with people. I lived in a student hostel with a Russian, actually sharing a room with a Russian. There was a lot of interaction across the hostel. That was ideal from the point of view of a language student. When you're 20, as I was, you really don't mind if there's only potatoes, carrots and vodka to live off through the winter. There was really hardly any meat, very little fresh fruit or vegetables, lots of ice cream, even in the depths of winter, the little old ladies with their carts of ice cream were very common. The conditions were not great, the hostel was pretty primitive. Use of showers alternated between men and women daily, so you had to always remember which day it was, whether you could have a shower or not. Toilets were endlessly blocked in a pretty hideous way. But, as I say, when you're 20, that's not really what you're there for. We travelled a lot, the Soviets organised trips to lots of other republics. It was terrific.

AM: There's a lot of demonisation of Russia, particularly at the moment. So, it's important to ask, what was your impression then, and from your later visits, of Russians as people?

AB: Russians have this very odd thing, where they have a public facing side and a private side. The public side is rude, hostile, so that typically, certainly in the Soviet Union, and I think in Russia now, if they don't know you, they think of you as a sort of enemy and someone to be rebuffed. So, typically, shop assistants are incredibly rude, anyone in public service. But, the reverse to that is that in private, when they do know you, they are immensely hospitable and warm and quite emotional. I suppose, to an extent, all people are a bit like that. They're obviously friendlier to people they know than those they don't. But, in Russia, it's a real contrast, it's a real exaggerated difference. And it meant that you would feel very special once you did get to know people, and they would invite you to their homes and ply you with food and drink and be really curious about the West. One of the things that was very noticeable in the Soviet Union was how important culture was. Classical music, ballet, opera, reading. One of the things that I was able to do was to buy, in the foreign currency shops, to buy literature for people. So, you know, Pasternak and Akhmatova and Tsvetaeva and all these authors that you couldn't get in ordinary bookshops. People just absolutely lapped up. And it's one of the great sadnesses to me that after the Soviet Union collapse, you go to a Russian bookshop and all those books are there and no one's buying them. And it's what gives me a kind of nostalgia for the Communist era that is sort of about the value of culture, the value of dissidence and opposition, and that has somehow been lost in the kind of wild west of initially capitalist Russia and now something more of a reversion. I liked the spirit of opposition that expressed itself through culture.

AM: This is a question, an obvious question, but one you don't have to answer. There's at the moment a war going on between Ukraine and Russia and Western media is pretty one-sided on the whole matter. Are there any reflections you have on what caused this or what is happening?

AB: I think there is a repeating pattern in Russia's relations with the rest that go right back to Tsarist times, which is a kind of mutual paranoia. Paranoia that the other side is going to invade you, is out to get you. And in Russia it's used then and now as a sort of unifying force. We're going to be encircled, we're going to be invaded and indeed Russia has been invaded regularly. I think in this case Putin it's a complete, it's a manufactured thing. But we also have a paranoia about Russia, we in the West. And we missed opportunities in the 2000s to have a kind of negotiated settlement with Putin. Because we also didn't trust and didn't want to engage. It didn't suit us because to some extent we used the threat of, well once the Soviet Union and now Russia, as a way of unifying people in a common enemy. And that's why I talk about mutual paranoia. But I think in this case you can't come to any conclusion other than this is Putin's war. And he's not remotely justified. And he's actually bringing about the very thing that he claimed to want to avoid. Which is he now has many more countries belonging to NATO. You now can go from the Finnish border in the North right round to the Turkish border in the East and they are...

AM: Encircled.

AB: Yeah. So the paranoia has almost kind of been self-fulfilling.

AM: Well that's what you want with paranoia. If the paranoia didn't work out it wouldn't be proper paranoia. It's the same with Israel. I mean you need to feel the threat. You need the threat to be real. And then you have more counter-threat and it's a psychological...

AB: Well that's right. But it's a very dangerous game. Obviously. It's hard for me to believe that if you cast yourself as Russian leaders have done down the centuries as strong men. If you then get humiliated in war. I can't see a future there. It might not be tomorrow but before long that whole Putin thing fails because he has given himself the role as strong leader. And then if you have military humiliation. And this is being felt more and more in Russia as the body bags come back in their tens of thousands.

AM: Right. Well thank you for answering. Moving on to the rest of your career at the BBC. We've talked much of the time about religious affairs. Were there any other periods which were important?

AB: Yes. That was my last five years. But the thing that really propelled me and that I got great satisfaction from in the early years, was being part of the first ever documentary series made in Russia. It was called 'Comrades', 1985. And Russia had just started to open up. This was before Gorbachev. But under Andropov there were the first signs of relaxation. It was the first opportunity for a western broadcaster to get at the sort of fabric of everyday life. And we did. There were three of us and we did a series of twelve profiles of ordinary Russians and people from other Soviet republics. And so simply, say, profiling a teacher in Moscow, or a fur trapper in Siberia, or a soccer coach in Azerbaijan. Just fairly ordinary people, but just being able to see everyday life for the first time and to humanise the Soviets was really important, I think.

AM: Did it get a reasonable view?

AB: Yeah, it was on BBC2 here and on PBS in the States and was sort of bought around the world. And the film making techniques were very, very simple. But it was the fact that virtually anywhere where you pointed the camera there would be something revelatory. And anyone you interviewed. And these were people who were sort of approved by the regime. So it wasn't that we were kind of revealing something that was politically controversial. It was just being able to look at the Soviet Union through a different lens.

AM: Literally.

AB: Not a political ideological one but one that was about humanising and trying to understand. In a sense the ordinary everyday concerns of people that were similar to ours too. And that was a wonderful thing to work on but it also then helped me move through the system a bit more quickly than I might have done. And get more senior producing jobs. And I was in those few years going backwards and forwards to Russia for programmes like Panorama and Newsnight. And particularly in the Gorbachev period when Newsnight would be doing things twice a week, probably. So that was much more political. But it was great to have this feeling of having a kind of front row seat for a historical moment really. And because I was lucky enough to have learnt to speak Russian well. It was possible to get a bit behind what was being churned out officially. And to work with some really interesting presenters and producers to help them get a little bit under the skin of the whole thing.

AM: One last question and then we move on. Just today, yesterday, forever it seems, it was only the last week, BBC has been involved in a big scandal about one of its presenters. And it brings up again something I've always wondered about. To what extent the BBC can be independent given it's got a charter which makes it independent. But it's paid by licence fees and the government can just withdraw its funding at any time. So the question is, did you, in your years there, feel that someone was looking over your shoulder from the government?

AB: No. The only time that that was at all obvious. There was a time when the police raided a BBC office in Glasgow. There was a time when Thatcher cracked down on interviewing terrorists. All that obscuring and publicity.

AM: Irish terrorists?

AB: Irish terrorists, yeah. So there were some moments that were to do with national security where you felt a very obvious presence. I think there is a different kind of, what would I say, of sort of threat from government which is to do with objectivity, impartiality. Where, I mean, the best example was in the early years of climate change debate. Where the BBC felt it had to be impartial so that whenever there was someone who was saying, you know, man-made climate change is going to be a problem, you had to have a climate denier and give them equal weight, even though the scientific evidence was overwhelming on one side. Something similar happened with Brexit. And the BBC's overly crude idea of impartiality was you had to have exact balance. You know, you took a political issue, you found the dividing line and then you were equal on both sides. Even when the debate was not equal. And I think in many ways the government is able to cower the BBC sometimes. I mean, I think the current issue with Hugh Edwards is not about political neutrality. It's really about the conduct of someone very senior. And it's really about a culture within the BBC that allowed these things to happen. And I was in the BBC throughout the whole period of Jimmy Savile. And people had no idea. I mean, a small number of people who were close up may have known. But it's shocking in a way that the BBC had a culture that didn't expose this. But I think government kind of leaning on the BBC is rather more subtle most of the time. And you're right, there is this implicit threat about funding. But also the government appoints the Chairman. And as we've seen recently, if you appoint a Chairman who is not impartial...

AM: There seems to be several roles, because a friend of mine who was a little senior to me at school in Yorkshire, I went to Sedbergh School and Sir Christopher Bland...

AB: Oh yes.

AM: I knew him and his younger brothers and so on. Was he around when you were...

AB: Yes, yep. And again, a perfectly decent man, but a political appointee.

AM: We've only got five minutes or so, so two more things quickly. One is Sainsbury's. What was it like working with David Sainsbury?

AB: Yeah, well I worked with 13 members of the family. Did you? And each of them had their different trusts, their different...

AM: Did you work with Jessica? She was my student.. And David was of course at King's.
AB: Yes, I mean it was in many ways a wonderful job, because it was about helping them give away money. And trying to identify trustworthy organisations that would deliver on their promises, that would spend the money wisely. And the family were very much the decision makers, but the job was about presenting them with good options, in line with their particular interests. And they were very different characters, but really admirable in their way. And the thing about them was that they wanted to be proactive. They didn't want to be regarded as cash points that people just extracted money from. They had each of them very clear views about their particular areas of interest. And they wanted me and the others in the office to find things that were very much aligned with how they wanted to go about things. The lesson I very much learnt was that you can't just fund good ideas. The ideas have to be accompanied by people who can deliver. People who have enough of a track record, or who inspire enough confidence that they're going to pull it off, they're going to use money wisely. And that's why the family were always wanting to know about the people behind a charity or a project. Because that was the key. In a sense, anyone can have a good idea. And it reminded me a little bit of commissioning television programmes. You don't just commission the idea, you commission the producer, the director, the presenter, who can make it happen.

AM: We've got a very small time. You've been Master of Downing. One thought or memory of Mastership?

AB: I think the great thing for me has been being at the heart of a community. And I say at the heart of, advisedly, because the way, certainly Downing, and I think many colleges, think of the role of Master is not of the head of the place, but being at the heart of it. Being someone who is able to encourage the community in its different aspects. Able to be present for student activities, able to be a sounding board for fellows, able to, from time to time, iron out wrinkles between the various parts of the community. And it makes a huge difference when the community is thriving. So, Covid, for instance, was an obvious disruptor there. But when it works well, it works brilliantly, because as I said before, the college provides such a positive unit. A manageable thing from the student's point of view. Students leaving home for the first time, coming to a really huge university, the college gives them a focus that they can cope with and prosper in. And so that's,... in Downing's case, it's just a very beautiful place to be as well, and I think that makes a big difference. And to have our own theatre, to have our own gallery, to have so much going on the whole time outside the core academic purpose of the place, is also terrific, particularly for me as I'm not an academic, so I'm not teaching, I'm not researching. I have more currency in the non-academic side, and that's been a huge pleasure.

AM: In one minute, your family, you're married?

AB: Yep.

AM: And your wife is a jeweller?

AB: That's right, she's a silversmith and jeweller. She designs pieces based on architectural themes. So that could be earrings, cufflinks, pendants, or tabletop pieces, salt and pepper sets, in the shape of your favourite building. And most of the people who commission her are either architects or people with a particular love of a building or a city or a place, and they want it rendered in silver and gold. And it's been great over the years to live with someone who works with their hands, because if I've done anything at all, it's really been through cognitive skills. But to be alongside someone who depends on creative skills, and particularly physical creative skills, that's been great.

AM: Well that's a lovely note to end on. I'm going to commission her to make cufflinks in the style of King's College Chapel shortly.

AB: Wonderful.