#1 Talisker House, Podcast, The Master Betrayed

Oliver Trace: [00:00:00] I think it will help to have something that connects viewers to your story.

Iain McGilchrist: [00:00:04] Right. Is this a sound thing or a...?

Oliver Trace: [00:00:06] Only sound.

Iain McGilchrist: [00:00:08] Oh, okay. I was going to say I'd be surprised if it's recording me because it seems to be beaming off over there.

Oliver Trace: [00:00:15] So let's let's begin with this house, Talisker House, house which I'm sure has a story. It's a beautiful place. Could you give us a bit of its history?

Iain McGilchrist: [00:00:24] Yes. There's been a Talisker house since the 12th century, and it was the second house of the family MacLeod, who are one of the big families here. Their castle is at Dunvegan. And the second son's portion would have been Talisker house. This one dates from 1720 with additions into the 19th century. And it was one of the things that interested me was that it was visited by Johnson and Boswell when they were doing their tour of the Highlands in 1773, and Johnson was a bit of a hero of mine in my past life as an English don. And so the fact that they'd stayed here in the room that's actually now my library seems to me pretty, pretty amazing. So it has quite an interesting history. The history of how I came across it was that my then wife and I were up here on holiday, and we both have Scottish roots, and she hadn't been to Skye before, but I had and I was just looking at the map and I said, let's go to Talisker. It looks rather interesting. It's right out on the West Coast, you know, at the end of a single track road. So we came down here and this was over 20 years ago and…

Iain McGilchrist: [00:01:42] It was very much quieter and we just parked. And it was a lovely, sunny September evening. We walked down to the beach and there's this amazing bay with views out to the islands and great cliffs with a waterfall that comes pouring over the top of them into the sea. And we just thought, wow. And then we turned around and looked back and saw this great mountain behind the house and this house nestling at the bottom of it. And we walked back in the evening sunlight and the garden was just filled with light, and it looked rather interestingly formal. It looked a bit like an Oxford College Gardens stuck down in the middle of, you know, wilderness. And I thought, that's a really fascinating idea and what a beautiful place. I almost put a piece of paper to the letterbox saying, if you ever think of selling, let me know. And I thought they never will. And a few years later, I was just, you know, once or twice a year I'd idly Google the things that are sort of on your long term job list. And so I just would idly Google, find a place to live in Scotland. This house came up for sale, so we got on the next flight and the rest is history.

Oliver Trace: [00:02:49] Okay. And where were you born originally?

Iain McGilchrist: [00:02:52] I was born in Yorkshire. My father was a GP. His father was a GP. And I was brought up in Yorkshire, then Lancashire, and then we moved to the South, Hampshire. Where I simply went to the local school, which was Winchester College. Which I loved. And then I went to Oxford and I went up intending to read philosophy and theology. I've always thought the most interesting parts of philosophy were those that were congenial to theology rather than entirely reductive. And I also thought the most interesting part of theology was its philosophical base. So I thought, this is perfect. And there was a course called philosophy and theology. So I applied for it. When I went for interview I had to take the exam in some school subject, so I just chose English really almost at random. And I was interviewed by John Bailey, who's a great English critic. He's better known to some people as the husband of Iris Murdoch. But anyway, there it was and Christopher Tolkien, who was son of J.R.R. and who was in the end my Saxon tutor. And they said, come and read English. You obviously like this.

Iain McGilchrist: [00:04:08] You shouldn't do philosophy and theology. That's not even an honours degree. So believe it or not, in 1971 philosophy and theology wasn't an honours degree at Oxford, largely because it had only just been founded. And so I did English, and then at that stage I decided I didn't want to do the theology so much. I wanted to pursue the philosophy and psychology. So I got myself a fellowship at All Souls pretty much straight away after I graduated. And also, this is an interesting college. It's the only one at Oxford or Cambridge that has no students at all and no graduate students, no nothing. It's purely for research and it gave me freedom for seven years to do what I wanted. And during that time I tried to explain what I thought was wrong with the philosophically speaking, with the way we were approaching literature in the arts. And I wrote a book called Against Criticism, which was published by Faber in 1982 and was unceremoniously remaindered about after selling a few copies, a few hundred copies. And rather to my pleasure now, if you want to buy a copy on Abebooks, if you can find one, it costs about £2,000. So that's rather pleasing the irony of this story. But anyway, I went there, I studied this, I wrote against criticism and I realised that what was important was the mind body problem. This was important to why I thought we were getting our study of literature, for example, wrong. We were doing it all in a too disembodied way.

Oliver Trace: [00:05:43] And how about your family life? I'm aware that you have a brother who's an art historian. That's right, yes. And do you have other siblings?

Iain McGilchrist: [00:05:54] No, it's just the two of us. We've always been very close. He lives on a Greek island. I live on a Scottish island. We had a sort of pact about 20 years ago in which we have a lot of likes and dislikes in common and we agreed that the two magical places in life to live, antithetical as they seemed, were the Greek islands and the Scottish islands. And like most things that looked like an antithesis, they actually have an enormous amount in common. And he was living in the Mediterranean. Always has done. He lived in Italy before. He now lives in Greece. And he said, Oh, I'll find the place in Greece. You find a place in Scotland? Well, I found this place 18 years ago and it took him till about three years ago to find a place in the Greek islands and there he is.

Oliver Trace: [00:06:44] So that will be our next trip! Ok, we wanted to do a Desert Island Discs style approach to some of this questioning. Let's begin with a place you've already spoken a lot about, Skye, being of particular significance, if that is a place that you'd like to highlight or is there somewhere else that you think?

Iain McGilchrist: [00:07:11] It certainly is. And I think it's a very magical place this and everyone who visits it feels that. And I would like to think that I will stay here for the rest of my days. But I think that if I had to choose one place in all the world, that seems to me most special, it's a place on a Greek island, not where my brother lives or anything, in fact, on the island of Evia. I've been visiting it off and on for about 40 years and it just is overwhelmingly not just beautiful, but truly awe inspiring. Unfortunately, the word awesome has become disgustingly debased. It is a true, awe inspiring place and it is also a very numinous place, i.e. there is a sense of something spiritual in it. It's also an incredibly peaceful and beautiful place where if one gives oneself time, one slows right down and enters into sort of rhythm and flow with nature, which is just unbelievable and rich and the times I've spent there have been some of the most important for me. Unfortunately, in Scotland, although it is very beautiful, you can't have that sense of just stopping and letting everything... I mean, I do spend a lot of time just sitting and staring and people said, Won't you be bored up there? And I've never been bored in my life. I don't know what it means to be bored. And I kept saying, look, all I need to do is sit in a chair and look at the landscape all day and never see the same thing twice. Which is true. But there isn't that sense of deep relaxation because of the warmth and the fact that you don't have to really wear very much clothing and you can be in and out of the sea, you feel very close to things.

Oliver Trace: [00:08:58] And how about your own family? Have you had children?

Iain McGilchrist: [00:09:04] I have three children.

Oliver Trace: [00:09:04] And where are they based? On islands?

Iain McGilchrist: [00:09:08] They're not, they're very different from me. They grew up in South London and my eldest has just made me a Grandfather. Well, a year ago or so, which is something really special for me. And she lives in California. She lives in the Bay Area with her husband who comes from around there. Interestingly, that's where her mother, my first wife, also came from. And then I have a son who is a rock musician and he's been living in Nashville for some of the last two or three years, and he's now back in London and is releasing his first commercial CD this year. And then I have a daughter who is a, well, one of the most remarkable things about her is that she's a brilliant skateboarder and she's been used in ads and things because she's quite tall, unlike me, and has long blonde hair, so she's quite striking on a skateboard. And she lives in Brighton where there are plenty of good hills you can go up and down, so she's quite a well known local figure. And anyway, at the moment she's training as a jeweller.

Oliver Trace: [00:10:35] I was not expecting to hear that your daughter is a skateboarder.

Iain McGilchrist: [00:10:38] No. Or the sons a rock musician!

Oliver Trace: [00:10:40] Your son is a rock musician. Well, in fact, music is a key feature of The Master and His Emissary, so that doesn't surprise me as much.

Iain McGilchrist: [00:10:48] We don't share the same musical preferences, but I like his music and I know he understands my passion for Bach and so forth.

Oliver Trace: [00:10:58] And do you play?

Iain McGilchrist: [00:11:00] I do. Very badly. I learned too late to play the piano in my teens, and it was a bit of a struggle. I got to about grade five and then didn't really touch it. I have a piano and it was one of my ambitions in, quote, retirement to have time to do that. But I don't, I'm spending all my time traveling and writing and talking.

Oliver Trace: [00:11:18] It's never too late.

Iain McGilchrist: [00:11:19] Never too late. Fingers are now rather arthritic, so I don't know.

Oliver Trace: [00:11:23] It might be, then, it might be a little bit too late.

Iain McGilchrist: [00:11:26] But I mean, to give you some idea of, to upturn your stereotype of me, it was quite a long period in my life when I on a Tuesday night would go to... all my life I've sung in choirs. One of the great pleasures of my life is singing in an unaccompanied choir in polyphony, and I would sing Renaissance Church music on a Tuesday night, and on Wednesday night I'd go rock and roll dancing, which I also found enormously exhilarating.

Oliver Trace: [00:11:57] So there's not so much movement in Church Renaissance singing, I presume.

Iain McGilchrist: [00:12:03] There isn't. Although in all music, there is this movement implicit and indeed not only implicit, but is actually sensed, I mean, can be detected in the body. If you wire up your muscles to a micrograph that would record electrical activity. Your body is in fact dancing to the music all the time you're listening to it.

Oliver Trace: [00:12:24] That is interesting.

Iain McGilchrist: [00:12:25] Also, when we were playing, when we were singing in the choir, the most wonderful thing we did and I always used to look forward to it, was that once we got to a stage where we didn't need the sheet music, we would walk around the room just intermingling, singing our part and coming close to another part and moving away. So I mean, these again, were sort of like out of this world experiences. For me.

Oliver Trace: [00:12:49] That does sound like something rather special. Sounds like something out of Glastonbury, to be honest.

Iain McGilchrist: [00:12:53] Well, quite possibly, yes. Glastonbury doesn't get everything wrong!

Oliver Trace: [00:12:58] No, no, it doesn't get everything wrong. It's a liberating place where a lot of the normal bounds are no longer present.

Iain McGilchrist: [00:13:08] Yeah.

Oliver Trace: [00:13:08] Which does enable…

Iain McGilchrist: [00:13:10] It does enable a powerful thing sometimes.

Oliver Trace: [00:13:12] Moving around and dancing. Let's get on to some music that you'd like to share. It's incredibly challenging to pin pleasures down to one.

Iain McGilchrist: [00:13:25] Almost impossible.

Oliver Trace: [00:13:26] But if forced, which is what we're doing now, then what would be your answer?

Iain McGilchrist: [00:13:33] Well it depends what for. I mean, if you gave me literally a desert island disc, ie. something that was all I could listen to, it might well be the Offices of the Dead by Cristobal de Morales, who was a 16th century Spanish composer, which is something I can listen to almost every day and find greater depth and beauty in. It's astonishing. He's not very well known.

Oliver Trace: [00:14:01] How about music that you... because just when you said that it's something that you can go back to every day, personally, when I listen to Chopin's Nocturnes, each time I listen, it's as if listening for the first time. But it's also something that I don't listen to every day. But there are particular periods of my life where I realise this is when I need to be listening to Chopin's nocturnes. It's usually melancholic moments. So let's break the rule of only having one album or one musician composer. Can you think of something that you go back to in particularly melancholic moments.

Iain McGilchrist: [00:14:44] Certainly, one would be Mozart's G Minor Quintet, K 516. And another might be Schubert's last and the second to last piano sonatas, d959 and d960. And possibly you've rather narrowed things by saying moments of melancholy because these are the things that speak very profoundly about it. But I suppose that Bach is always good for every kind of possible mood that one has. And the thing that I come back to time and again is the Sarabande from the fifth Cello Suite. I think it's the Sarabande, it's a completely amazing piece on a score in which it's preserved, it has written "le droit de dieu", the finger of God, on it. It is quite an amazing piece. It's simply a line, of course, because it's just a solo instrument. But it is spectacular.

Oliver Trace: [00:15:50] I'm glad we got a few more in there. I also do enjoy breaking rules, even if it's one as miniature as that. There is a strange satisfaction. Let's go to your time at medical school. You began your career lecturing at All Souls in English literature.

Iain McGilchrist: [00:16:11] Well, not strictly lecturing, because it's a non teaching college, but I did do some tutoring while I was there.

Oliver Trace: [00:16:17] So you were writing against criticism?

Iain McGilchrist: [00:16:20] I was writing, reading, very widely. One of the wonderful things about it, it wouldn't be possible nowadays in almost any academic setting, was that I was given free rein to read and think and write what I wanted.

Oliver Trace: [00:16:31] And it has had some wonderful luminaries through its door. Amartya Sen.

Iain McGilchrist: [00:16:36] Oh yes.

Oliver Trace: [00:16:37] Isiah Berlin

Iain McGilchrist: [00:16:37] Oh yes.

Oliver Trace: [00:16:39] And they all say similar things.

Iain McGilchrist: [00:16:41] Both of whom were colleagues when I was there and lots of other amazing people. It was a very, very rich place to be from a point of view of a conversation. Somewhat gladiatorial. I mean, there's a sort of style in which Oxford dons get, which is a sort of slightly unrelaxed cut and thrust. I very much value, I mean. Unfortunately, a couple of people I was very fond of there have died. They were older, older colleagues. One of the things I've found is that there were people at school that I knew that now still remain. Some of my very closest and dearest friends and have been so therefore for 50 years. And we have an awful lot in common. We're very fond of one another and we can get together and talk about anything and enjoy it.

Oliver Trace: [00:17:36] And this is a bit of a segway, but there's a common phrase that goes, you know, friends you make at school are friends for life, which I take a little umbrage with because I...

Iain McGilchrist: [00:17:49] You didn't have that experience?

Oliver Trace: [00:17:50] No, the friends I've made at school are friends I still have now, but they're only friends for life because I've continued to give them a certain amount of attention over time. And in fact, those whom I was close to at school, but whom I haven't kept in touch with, when I see them, which happens rarely, but occasionally, there's a distance that I find hard to bridge. And I'm wondering what your take is on that.

Iain McGilchrist: [00:18:17] Well, I think you can have both. I mean there are one or two people that I was particularly close to at school who I have met since, and I thought strange, you know, at one time we were so, so much buddies. We travelled together and now I don't know what it is, but there are others with whom, you know, it's as though nothing has changed, you know, and I can pick up with them any time. And we've stayed in close contact pretty much all the time. It doesn't feel on my side, at any rate, like a chore.

Oliver Trace: [00:18:57] I wonder if it has something to do with attitude to the life that those characters have taken from the time when you first met them until now. For instance, you know, you talk a lot about the unknown and the known. And I'm sure everyone is aware of friends who prefer the known, versus friends who prefer the unknown.

Iain McGilchrist: [00:19:19] Yes.

Oliver Trace: [00:19:20] And if you're someone who prefers the unknown...

Iain McGilchrist: [00:19:23] Yes.

Oliver Trace: [00:19:24] And you pursue a life with that as a founding principle, or as a guiding principle, I should say, then perhaps it's easier to come into contact with someone who's also had that guiding principle, because you've got a lot of similar attitude and similar outlook. And lots of stories to share.

Iain McGilchrist: [00:19:44] That's right. That's right. I would think that the people I've stayed in touch with, we would share broadly a philosophy, you know, and approach to life. I mean, we're very different in many particular respects. But I think that basically I wouldn't want to be friends much... I mean, there would be a choice, it just wouldn't happen with somebody whose life was governed by certainties.