Letters That Changed The World from Leonard Cohen, Alan Turing, Rosa Parks and more

[Music] Hannah thank you very much thank you all for coming what a fantastic crowd I'm so glad to see so many people here I hope for what will be a wonderful evening which will leave you both enriched and enthused we're here too we're here to hear some letters being read out letters that change the world letters in this book written in history put together by Simon seabag Montefiore it's a perfect companion a book which you can just dip into at random and get a sense of something as as seabag says in the introduction something that is both authentic and at the same time something that is captures just a moment there's something so wonderful about reading something that has just been caught in in in that moment the immediacy of it whether it's something that was from thousands of years ago or even just a few years ago who of us here doesn't like receiving letters I feel particularly sad but it appears to be largely a habit that we've lost but perhaps a bag will correct me and say that it's coming back back into fashion one of the things that he says he quotes cursor in the introduction and I love what he said about letters that they are the most significant memorial a person can leave that they represent the immediate breath of life which is really rather beautiful I'm delighted that we have some fantastic speakers here with us I'm going to introduce C bag first Simon C bag Montefiore a prize-winning historian and novelist whose best-selling books have been published in more than 48 languages his book Catherine the Great and Potemkin was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson prize and is being developed as a feature film by Angelina Jolie Stalin the court of the Reds are won the British Book Awards in history and his latest book written in history which I just held up letters that changed the world Kate Mosse to my left international best-selling author known for her multi-million selling longer dock tip trilogy labyrinth Sepulchre and Citadel her latest number-one best-selling novel is the burning chambers it's the first in an epic historical adventure series and it's out in paperback next week she is also the founder director of the women's prize for fiction and only until last week was the Deputy Chair of the Royal National Theatre and the actors on the stage delighted to welcome you all right at the very end we're going to start at the other end is Jade Anika award-winning actor who has starred in the Donmar Warehouse Shakespeare trilogy she played Queen Margaret in the play of that name last year at the Royal Exchange and starred in the ITV drama cleaning up alongside Sheridan Smith Jack Loudon sitting next to her Scottish actor who starred as an RAF fighter pilot in the film Dunkirk and most recently played Lord Darnley in the film Mary Queen of Scots and he also appeared in the BBC's production of war and peace and next to him is Tamsin Greig award-winning actor widely acclaimed for her stage performances perhaps most notably playing the role of Malvolio in the National Theatre 20 2017 production of Twelfth Night her television roles include Green Wing and episodes and on film she starred in Tamara Drewe and the second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and next to her is Kwame quake armour artistic director of the Young Vic Theatre also an actor playwright singer broadcaster his plays include of course the award-winning El Nina's kitchen and his series of eight 15-minute films soon gone a Windrush chronicle is currently being shown on BBC Four I'm going to take a breath so that you can give them a round of applause so we're going to just start by having a little conversation with si bagging and and Kate si bag as a historian just outlined for us the importance of lessers that give us a sense of what they've meant to you and you've discovered them in the writing of of these books well and many of these are many of the letters in this book are well known but many of them are letters I actually discovered in in the archives myself and all my history books are really based on original correspondence and there is something incredibly exciting in in finding a letter that no one's seen before I remember some of Stalin's letters you can actually smell his pipe smoke on them still and so letters are something with an immediacy and an excitement that really that really is is as Goethe said you know the spark of life and he also said you know to destroy a letter is to destroy a piece of life itself and yet many letters are destroyed so some of these letters in the book I've actually seen the originals of and some of the ones were reading tonight and that's why that that's why I letters are so exciting they catch a moment they may not be true before they may not be true afterwards but the moment that someone puts pen to paper that is truth that is the present in its most essential form and that's that's the wonderful thing about these letters okay in writing historical fiction to what extent is there the same exhilaration when when you you know that you'll may in fact be fictionalizing nothing that you've discovered well yes I mean I write imaginary friends against the backdrop of real history but what seabag says is absolutely right because most of my novels are led by unheard women and the ones that don't appear in the history books actually it's through letters and sometimes wills that you can build up the texture of what a woman's life would be so what would it mean to live in France in the 16th century if you're not a princess or a queen you don't appear anywhere so when you're trying to find those lost voices particularly women's voices it is in the letters when they say I leave this Bible to my beloved daughter I leave this to my beloved son I leave a pair of and that actually often is letters is what is the foundation of historical fiction - so I grub around in the archives as well you know and all you ever want is to find that one thing that will suddenly make your book take flight that one woman's voice that would never have been out there otherwise and it is always in the letters that you find them so I want I want to know from both of you whether you have received a letter that you treasure and that you might want to share a little bit of story we don't want to share but I certainly get some pretty bizarre letters from readers and cuz I wrote a book about the Romanovs recently I received a letter just about every week from someone who claims to be one of the Romanovs the other day I received a letter it was on a letter from a reader that just said it was just one line long and it just said I know you know your history but do you remember your history and I looked at the name at the bottom and I gradually realized it was the first girl I kissed 40 years ago so yeah that's young I'm just just before we move on I'm just going to share a little letter anecdote I once wrote a letter to my tutor at University to say that I couldn't finish the essay because I was dead I think the thing with the letters that you get sent as an author is that sometimes it is just so clear that the person has missed the point so I was really pleased with a beautiful description in in the burning chambers of my new book of an owl taking flight and all of that you know all of this malarkey before the battle started and I got this letter from someone saying madam and that's always bad side when it's our madam your description you know I love your books I think it's really great all the rest of it but I would like to point out that owls do not make any noise when they fly and he enclosed a membership form for the owl appreciation society and I felt that was a result I'm assuming you've kept all these messes there's something wonderful about that sieve Oh God can I ask you to introduce the first letter that that we're going to discuss and then here read captain ad Chater to his mother Christmas World War one well this is from Christmas 1914 it's an extraordinary moment in history it's an extraordinary human moment and World War one as was supposed to be over by Christmas and yet here they were at Christmas and the war was still going on but on Christmas Day something quite extraordinary happened and it's described in a letter and this is a letter from a young captain in the British Army Tonkin Chater and and I think you'll agree it's one of the most bizarre and special moments in world war one before the war really turned into the great slaughterhouse that we recognized and just to say captain che to have survived and lived until the 1970s so this letter is going to be read by Jack thanks jack dearest mother I am writing this in the trenches in my dugout with a wood fire going and plenty of straw it is rather cozy although it is freezing hard and real Christmas weather I think I have seen one of the most extraordinary sights today that anyone has ever seen about ten o'clock this morning I was peeping over the parapet when I saw a German waving his arms and presently two of them got out of their trenches and came toward those we were just going to fire on them when we saw they had no rifles so one of our men went out to meet with them and in about two minutes they'd grown between the two lines of trenches were swarming with men and officers of both sides shaking hands and wishing each other a happy Christmas this continued for about half an hour when most of our men were ordered back to the trenches for the rest of the day nobody has fired a shot and men have been wandering about at well on the top of the parapet and carrying straw and firewood about in the open I went out myself and shook hands with several of their officers and men from what I gathered most of them would be as glad to get home again as we should we have had our pipes playing all day and everyone has been wandering about in the open unmolested but not of course as far as the enemy lines the troops will probably go on until someone is foolish enough to let off his rifle we nearly messed it up this afternoon by one of our fellows letting off his rifle skywards by mistake but they did not seem to notice so it did not matter I am writing this back in billets the same business continues as yesterday and we had another parley with the Germans in the middle we exchanged cigarettes and autographs and some more people took photos we are at any rate having another truce on New Year's Day as the Germans want to see how the photos came out it is really very extraordinary that this sort of thing should happen in a war in which there is so much bitterness and ill feeling the Germans in the front of the line are certainly sportsmen if they are nothing else of course I don't suppose it has happened everywhere along the line although I do think that indiscriminate fighting has more or less stopped in most places on Christmas Day your loving son Duggan that's so poignant I just want to see back how how many letters there were about that incident and and what made you choose that particular one I mean maybe they weren't that many there weren't that many there were a few there was another incident further down the line where they actually played football between each other they kicked at the Germans kicked the football and they had a football game in the middle of the trenches but the letters less-good and I wanted to I wanted the most descriptive letter of all of them and this is this is the best of the letters and it's quite nice because there are the letters in the in the book where you say afterwards unfortunately he was killed three days later but the fact that he survived to live a long life and have children and grandchildren it makes this a rather nice one to start with lovely humor is wonderful and it's also that the real poignancy of it that these boys don't want to be doing that and the boys on the other side don't want to be doing that really and they therefore kind of sorting it out and you know that back in London and back in Berlin they are keeping it going and that sort of letter really brings that home I think I mean it's beautiful letter and it is lovely that you survived you're right because it's very few teeth really the next lesson we're going to hear was written to Jessica Mitford by Rosa Parks Kate will you introduce that letter for us yes I mean like one of the reasons I love the book and I love this letter is that sometimes those most significant moments of history turning are not clear at the time we with hindsight know how much this mattered but she didn't at the time and so Rosa Parks you know wrote this in 1956 and she was already a very well-known activist and when she took on the race laws in Alabama you know the notorious Jim Crow laws and sat on the back of that bus in December 1955 and she was arrested in 1955 and her case was used of course and we know the rest was history but she's writing this letter to her friend who is known as mrs. Troy haft that was Jessica Mitford at the time was married to a civil rights lawyer and it's in the middle of that case and she doesn't know and so therefore this letter which isn't a beautiful piece of literature one might say but we know that this is when history happened but she doesn't and I think that's what's so wonderful about this letter it's just an ordinary letter Jade dear mrs. joy oft I am very happy to hear from you again thanks very much for the contribution and the names of other contributors we are having a difficult time here but we are not discouraged the increased pressure seems to strengthen us for the next blow my first case was heard in the circuit court february 22nd i was found guilty and sentenced to 70 days in jail the appeal was made to the state Supreme Court I was immediately arrested again with the leaders of the bus protests we have received very generous contributions from over the country although no specific appeal has been made through the mail the widespread publicity we are getting is most disturbing to the local governing group they resent outside interference therefore I will have to take the matter of direct appeal to the Montgomery Improvement Association the Claudette Colvin case is one of four filed with a federal court at present I will write again soon Sincerely Yours Rosa Elle Parks I love the formality of the Rosa l yeah absolutely and the case you know it was won in november 1956 so this is right in the middle but I think one of the things that I do like about it so much is it's a reminder to all of us that the little things also matter the fact that people from outside the state are writing letters and the governor doesn't like it and it's so easy to think that big history is only about the people in charge but actually that for me that is everybody can do something and I just think that's you know I think it's a great letter in a way it's interesting isn't it see you back because there is a in the entire book you get a real sense of the different uses of letters you know this is this is a private exchange of course alluding to a really big historical moment but there are public letters there are you know huge letters of significance that we know did change history well that's right I mean obviously my my definition as you'll see of letters that change the world is very broad but I'll explain I can explain why every letters in there by the way if you challenge me but but yes I mean obviously there are public letters there's Chairman Mao launching the Cultural Revolution there are private diplomatic letters the blank check letter that we've all heard of in World War one that launched world war one most people have never actually read it and it's in the book there are also many private letters that were never meant to be published and yet are fascinating to read and there are letters by kings and emperors but also by ordinary people we've already heard some of those tonight so that's what I was trying to get was a complete variety of voices and levels and and you're right you know great historical moments and private moments for had great significance so the idea of Rosa Parks and a Mitford girl being in touch that really quite blew my mind it's like that's so interesting that they were you know they're not everywhere they go let's focus on a real specialist subject for you where so we're going to turn to Lenin writing to the Bolsheviks of Penzer well this this is the real prepare to hear the real voice of Lenin because you know for and decades we were taught at school that Stalin was the monster but Lenin was essentially a decent sort of almost could have patriarchal figure in the Russian Revolution well-intentioned and then Stalin turned it and turned it cruel and nasty and killed millions of people and I was actually taught that at school pretty much and probably many of you are and you know nowadays more than ever at this moment in our in our history it's key that we know this stuff and so this Nessa was only revealed after 1991 these letters were all locked up and shown to no one they were state secrets in the Soviet Union only when the Soviet Union fell were these red and now you can see the real Lenin the Lenin who said a revolution without firing squads is meaningless and here you see that in action and Jack will you read the letter and by the way ladies and gentlemen listen out for the last line that tells you all you need to know comrades the insurrection of five Kulik districts should be pitilessly suppress the interests of the whole revolution require this because the last decisive battle with the kulaks is now underway everywhere an example must be demonstrated number one hang and make sure that the hanging takes place in full view of people no fewer than 100 known cool acts rich men bloodsuckers number to publish their names three seize all their grain from them and four designate hostages in accordance with yesterday's telegram do it in such a fashion that for hundreds of kilometers around that people might see tremble no shout they are strangling and will strangle to death the blood sucking cool acts Telegraph receipt and implementation use Lenin find some truly hard people it's a real measure of precision in ruthlessness they're astonishing yeah and he was he was install and also did that they used to number everything and I'm number their orders and you know when when he was when he people was as I said people always said that Stalin was a terrible distortion of Lenin but when he was first introduced to Stalin and someone said Stalin's you know Stalin's killed people Stalin's done all these terrible things he said he said let's let's use him that's exactly the type I'm looking for and so you can see the real Lenin Lenin Trotsky star and they were all very much the same they believed in terror and they believed in mass killing as a way to change society and these letters which this is just one all demonstrate just how absolutely terrifying Lee fanatically ruthless they were but also there's a contrast in the book with a letter of Stalin's daughter that's right I mean they also led normal lives at the same time you know one of the letters which I found actually is a letter from Stalin's daughter aged nine stet Lana in which what if you were Stalin's daughter aged nine what would you do to to play she pretends to be the dictator of Russia and so and she signs her orders I'm spent on a Stalin first secretary of the Communist Party the boss actually and she writes it to starlet Comrade Stalin Molotov barrier and one of them which I think I've got in the book says I hereby order that all homework in the Soviet Union should be abolished for a year and and Stalin and all the Politburo signed the letter and stuck it on their fridge in their apartment in the Kremlin I think the other thing that's so interesting about that letter and what you say see a bag about what you discovered and what we were taught about Lenin and Stalin oh the goodie and the body essentially is that you know it's a shabby old cliche the idea that history is always written by the victors but there is a something more insidious about it which is history is also written with an agenda the story that people want to tell and I think this letter is a really good example of that that the decision is made that Lenin is the paternalistic one he's the good one really and he did things reluctantly and his own words condemn him and that is actually the architecture of war and terror is the same whether it's in the 12th century the 4th century the 21st century it's the same architecture shame people name them treat people as an example and it and that's why that letter I think is so so chilling me ok let's talk about the letter that Barbra wrote to his son who Mayan which has some real lessons for us today - it's a beautiful letter and it was written in 1529 and it's a letter of tolerance and it's very much you know father to a son and Bob or himself who was born in 1483 he was a prince descended from a great line but his his family had fallen from its glory if you like and almost single-handedly he restored the glory and he restored they took over the conquest of India and he founded his own dynasty the moguls and here he's writing when he's about 45 and it's only just shortly before his death but he is giving this beautiful advice to the boy that will come after him as summer come after him and as you say we should be listening to this now and kwame's gonna read it for us oh my son the realm of Hindustan is full of diverse Creed's praise be to God the righteous the glorious the highest that he had granted unto thee the Empire of it it is but proper that you with heart cleansed of all religious bigotry should dispense justice according to the tenants of each community and in particular refrain from the sacrifice of cow for that way lies the conquest of the hearts of the people of Hindustan and the subjects of the realm well through royal favor be devoted to thee and the temples and abodes of worship of every community under imperial sway should not be damaged dispense justice so that the sovereign may be happy with the subjects and likewise the subjects with their sovereign the progress of Islam is better by the sword of kindness not by the sword of oppression ignore the disputations of Shearson and the and Sonny's for therein is the weakness of Islam and bring together the subjects with different beliefs in the matter of the four elements so that the body politic may be immune from the various ailments and on us is but the duty to advise just hearing that again having read it in the book see bag I mean it couldn't be more prescient given that we've got two nuclear powers in South Asia eyeing themselves up you know edging towards the brink and pulling pulling themselves back I mean it couldn't be a greater lesson for tolerance and and and being calm in the face of difficulty well Bob o is one of the most extraordinary characters and lovable characters in history I mean he wrote a memoir which is really the kind of first kind of modern memoir has written in in the 1520's and he writes about his love affairs with boys his love affairs with girls a few battles chopping off a few heads many parties a lot of drinking he writes up he write he's a poet and and he found he's a great great nephew of Tana Tamil a in the great Conqueror he fails to win Sam Samarkand and instead he's left to take Kabul and Afghanistan which he doesn't want and then just by luck he sees a chance and he invades India and he founds the Mughal dynasty and he he gets the absolute heart of ruling India which is to tolerate every every you know that the shears the Sunnis and the hint and the Hindus which of course is the great lesson which the present Government of India could learn the British the British also could have learned lessons from all these things that all the rulers of that part of the world could still learn from this it's a wonderful letter of tolerance I wonder how you reflect on on it having just read it again I I think one thinks about how prescient it is to today you know we just have to look at the news right and see and see as we've said that these two countries are at the brink of war and it's also there's something beautiful about about reading letters of many centuries ago and knowing that that we still think at the same that we still believe in the same things that quintessentially our hearts seek peace and love and tolerance that was very beautiful to read that and and muse on that I suppose also the the the wisdom of a father passing something on to his son in the hope that he'll absorb it and continue in that vein but as well is yes and it's also the beauty of the way that he addresses the son oh my son and immediately you're kind of melting around that audio and there a book you know other letters in the book that are being written you know obviously in Tudor England at exactly the same date with a very different sort of tenor so you believe for me reading that that that father loved that son this is not just an official letter it isn't just I don't want my dynasty to go down the tubes you know because I'm about to die you've just believed that there's love there as well and that there's a purpose to what he was doing so and and I didn't know very anything about him really at all so I'm you know grateful to this book because I thought no he sounded he's more interested in Tudors we've had enough of the Tudors we'll stay with the family theme but again against a much bigger backdrop Vilma Grunewald to her husband Kurt I think this is the most heartbreaking letter in the book and I can never really hear it every time I hear it it's it's it breaks my heart again this is one of the very few letters that were actually smuggled out of the death camps not the labor camps run by the Nazis in World War two during the Holocaust but the actual death camps and this letter is also extraordinary because it contains a Sophie's Choice decision which is which is unthinkable and unspeakable to all of us the Grunwald family a doctor his wife and his two children one of whom was mildly handicapped arrived at Auschwitz in in 1944 and when they went to the selection process on the railway on the railway station at Auschwitz they faced the the appalling judgement of Josef Mengele the angel of death the doctor who made the selections and as he went down as he selected them there was left those to the left will die and be gassed immediately those to the right will survive and when he came to this family he said to the Father to the right he's a doctor and he's a healthy man he'll survive he said to the mother to the right you'll survive he said to the other son the healthy son to the right but he said to the handicapped son to the left and the mother in that split second made an unbearable decision but a marvelous decision she said I'll go with him even though she'd been chosen to live and so she went to the left and when they were waiting they realized by talking to other people and some of the kind of guards that they were going to be murdered immediately and they didn't know how and so she got a bit of paper and she wrote this letter and and you know she gave it to a guard and the chances of this been given to anybody to reaching her husband were very low but amazingly the letter was given to her husband Kurt in the in the labor camp he survived the war and he later gave this to one of the Holocaust the Holocaust Museum in in in the States I think and you'll judge for yourself what she said Tamsin's gonna read it to you you my only one dearest in isolation we are waiting for darkness we considered the possibility of hiding but decided not to do it since we felt it would be hopeless the famous trucks are already here and we are waiting for it to begin I am completely calm you my only and dearest one do not blame yourself for what happened it was our destiny we did what we could stay healthy and remember my words that time will heal if not completely then at least partially take care of the little golden boy and don't spoil him too much with your love both of you stay healthy my dear ones I will be thinking of you and Misha have a fabulous life we must board the trucks into eternity bill No [Applause] slightly speechless by your reading rad dude if you ran yeah I'd like you just to reflect on on you having to prepare for it and just read yeah I'd like it you like now - oh yeah if that would be okay only because I can't answer well a director that I worked with many years ago gave me a very sound piece of advice and he said that he felt that an actor should decide whether the character therapy they're playing is seeking to express emotion or deal with emotion and he said that most actors do a lot of expressing and the interesting ones are dealing with him and so what strikes me in this letter is that it's a woman who is so beautifully and compassionately dealing with her own devastation and giving so much life you know beyond that and we are I think we have fallen into the rather dangerous position of expressing ourselves rather than loving others by asking them to have a fabulous life we're choosing to have a fabulous life the generosity of that last time is wonderful yeah thank you so much [Music] let's see beg you you split up this book into it somatically rather than chronologically and and this next letter appears in the in the creativity section this is a letter that Michelangelo wrote to Giovanni the pistoi and Kate I think you're going to introduce well actually I mean see bag nose double well I think we put this one here obviously after that beautiful last letter but it's quite a good reminder of how some of the things that give us such pleasure is so beautiful in this case the Sistine Chapel and everybody knows the story of Michelangelo being asked to do that and building all the structures around it and it was Genesis and the story of humankind and God's gift to the world and how beautiful that is and whether you see it in a picture or we've stood underneath it it is one of those things that makes your heart sing and then you read this letter and you remember the real artist and what he suffered to make this piece of beauty that has long outlasted him and will hopefully outlast us all and the thing about Michelangelo apart from obviously being a great painter and a sculptor he was a beautiful wordsmith and he often sent his poems as letters which of course we all want that friend who sends these beautiful letter stirrers in in poetry form and this of course you know this was letter was written in 1509 but the chapel's ceiling was not finished until 1512 and it really he was writing this in the middle of it so it just makes you think of what people do to give us all pleasure and kwame you're gonna read the letter for us I've already grown a greater from this torture swollen up here like a cat from Lombardi or anywhere else where the stagnant waters poison my stomach squashed under the my chin my beards pointing at heaven my brains crushed in a casket my breasts twist like a harpy my brush above me all the time tribbles the pain so my face makes a fine floor for droppings my haunches are grinding into my guts my poor are strains to work as a counterweight every gesture I make is blind and aimless my skin hangs loose below me my spines are knotted from folding over itself I'm bent taut like a Syrian bow and because I'm like this my thoughts are crazy perfidious tripe anyone shoots badly through a crooked blowpipe my painting is dead defend it for me Giovanni protects my honor I'm not in the right place I am NOT a painter I love the resistance to creativity in that and it's just so witty I mean he was just I mean as Kate said I mean he was one of these people who could do everything you know he could he could go down to the mines and cut out a block of marble and and and work out and know how to transport it and know how to choose it he could he obviously he was a sculptor he didn't think of himself as a painter at all but of course I mean you know look look at the Sistine Chapel he was he was also against Kate said a great poet you know he was more than his poetry is amazing his love poetry you know often to young young boys but also to female friends is so beautiful and so amazing and he published it I mean he I mean he he was proud of his poetry and this was an early achievement an incredibly long life and he went on to run the building of some Peters and and and then of course this is you know he had he's kind of he was an impossible person to work with and he had this kind of completely vicious relationship with the Pope pope julius ii who commissioned this so anyway all of it you can get the sort of grit and his personality and that letter which you read so beautifully let's move on to another parent-child letter this is a maria teresa - Marie Antoinette know we've missed that one oh it's our favorite letter okay okay so the next one apologies Sarah Bernhardt - mrs. Patrick Campbell Kate tell us about this one well I mean I think probably everybody knows Sarah Bernhardt you know this this incredible great woman who was an actress a thinker free spirit a dancer she was the daughter of a Parisian Jewish what was here she was a courtesan really I think we're using word courtesan and and no I think that's fair enough and an unknown client were using that word as well so she didn't really know about it but she was completely self-made and she was just one of those women that was going to just do stuff regardless and of course she became legendary and all over France in but wherever you go every single hotel that is older than a hundred years says Sarah Bernhardt slept here you think she must have spent her entire life asleep frankly but this letter you know mrs. Patrick Campbell was also a very famous actress known as mrs. Pat and she lived life to the fall but also things sometimes went wrong and you will understand why I'm giving you the detail of this before Tamsin reads from the letter and this letter was sent in 1915 and one of the things that she was known for was that whatever happened she just got up the show must go on so she fell during a performance of of lattis Kerr in Rio de Janeiro's she fell 15 feet from a balcony quite early in her career and she broke her knee and it never really mended properly and she was in agony for most of the rest of her life and here a long time after the accident she's 70 years old now she is writing to her friend mrs. Pat in 1915 just to say that she has decided to sort her knee out Tamsin dr. will cut off my leg next Monday and very happy kisses all my heart sarah bernhardt I don't think that requires any commentary what Maria Theresa - Marie Antoinette a mother writes to her daughter Kate yes well this is I mean if ever you want to say to a teenage girl listen to your mother this letter is it I mean it really is so Mary Theresa she's in her late 50s at this moment it's 1775 and she is one of those real grand Doughty Empress's of France and she has worked all of her life to build this structure of being royal and the royal family and all of this thing and she is pulled off this incredible coup which is that she has essentially married her daughter Marie Antoinette off to a rather aging well the ermine he's dull he's boring louis xvi and he's you know he's supposed to be this is obviously a great catch though she's now married into the world family but it is entirely clear that this 19 year old ain't so keen on her husband and obviously there's been many letters before this particular one that we're going to hear where she's clearly saying look just just calm down love calm down listen to your mother and then finally she she writes a letter which is half in sorrow and half an anger and of course the thing is again the brilliance of these letters is with hindsight we know that she is right to talk about the misfortune that might fall upon her daughter and she's giving her advice because she loves her and she will as she asks in the letter not lived to see the French Revolution and she will not live to see her daughter beheaded and I think that is for a slightly longer letter back to Tamsin madam my dear daughter I cannot hide from you that a letter you sent to minister Rosenberg upset me most dreadfully what style what frivolity where is the good and generous heart of the Archduchess Antoinette I see only intrigue vulgar spite delight in mockery and persecution an intrigue which would do very well for a pompadour or a de berry but never for a queen a great princess still less a princess kindly and good of the house of Lorraine and Austria all the winter long I have trembled at the thought of your too easy success and the flutter is surrounding you while you have thrown yourself into a life of pleasure and preposterous display this chasing from pleasure to pleasure without the king and knowing that he takes no joy in it and only goes with you or lets you do what you want how to shear goods Nature has made me right before to express my fears I see now from this letter that these were all too well justified your luck can all too easily change and by your own fault you may well find yourself plunged into deepest misery that is the result of your terrible dissipation which prevents your being Sidious about anything serious what have you read and after that you dare to opine on the greatest states matters on the choice of ministers what does the a bay do and mercy you dislike them because instead of behaving like low flatterers they want you to be happy and do not take advantage of your weaknesses one day you will recognize the truth of this but then it will be too late I hope I shall not survive until misfortune overtakes you and I pray to God to end my days quickly since I am no longer of any use to you and I could not bear to lose my dear child or see her unhappy whom I shall love tenderly until I die [Music] don't make me talk I'm not going to I've learned my lesson it's extraordinary isn't it that you learn so much about the person who's written the letter and to whom it's being sent yeah yeah and I think with those letters there are there are quite a few obviously parent to child letters in the book but for me one of the things about that letter is not just the hindsight that we know she's right regardless of how the master nations have got her there but we know what's coming but I think it's also the cry of older overlooked women everywhere that she has been the Empress she has been that person in charge and she is aging and getting older and she's kind of no longer got the stomach for this she loves her daughter and she wants her daughter to pull herself together but she knows that her power is gone and actually that's why I find that letter so moving it's the it's it's the cry of all parents don't leave me don't leave me I mean by that stage 75 she ruled for 35 years so and she'd been you know Empress of Austria the greatest Anna Habsburg so you know the grandest family in Europe and she'd managed to marry her daughter to the king of France who was extremely dull bored a boring mediocre man who was really happiest not with his beautiful young wife but with his collection of clocks and she loved to watch and and and so she writes this letter in absolute despair but also there's a great sort of I mean you can hear in that the house of Austria is the House of Habsburg and you know and she's talking about the dew berries and the pompadours and those are the mistresses of the old king of France the very the very disreputable the kardashians of their day but she's denouncing that let's move on to a love letter C bagnat sir here you talk about free DeCarlo writing to Diego Frida Kahlo I mean her letters are as colorful exotic brave and sensuous as her paintings and in a way that they come from the same place and they're one of examples in the book of artists like Michelangelo like Mozart who write these these letters that show that they were also incredibly articulate in words as well she had an incredibly tragic life she was she was in some ways she symbolized the the the racial variety of Mexico she was she was part American Indian she was part Jewish and German to his part Spanish as a young girl she wanted to be an artist but she had suffered from polio then she endured this nightmarish accident in a bus which those of you who've seen the movie with Salma Hayek or remember when a steel girder went right through her uterus and she survived this crippled always in agony always wearing braces and special supports and undergoing nightmarish treatments and yet she survived us to become an incredible liberated woman who had affairs with Trotsky with Josephine Baker and married Diego Rivera the great artist and she the two of them became the artistic personification of Mexico and still are and this is is just one of her letters and Jade's going to read it for us Diego nothing compares to your hands nothing like the green gold of your eyes my body is filled with you for days and days you are the mirror of the night the violent flash of lightning the dampness of the earth the hollow of your armpits is my shelter my fingers touch your blood all my joy is to feel life spring from your flower fountain that mine keeps to fill all the paths of my nerves which are yours I think when the take-home from this evening is going to be flower fountain I think isn't it si bag let's talk about Catherine the Great and Prince Potemkin these are wonderful letters well well this is this is this is the best way to end a quarrel and Catherine and Potemkin were really one of the probably the most successful political partnership in all of history and we forget about Napoleon and Josephine or Ava Peron and and Perron Antony and Cleopatra Potemkin and Catherine were equals they were incredible passionate love affair but they also succeeded amazingly well politically and they were very different he was Russian undisciplined oftentimes when she was talking to ambassadors in it the French ambassador in a formal Imperial audience the door were at one door at the end of the room would open and Potemkin would walk through the room just in a pair of Turkish pantaloons chewing on an apple and wearing a bandana like a rock star and just walk through he wouldn't say anything to he just walk out and walk out the other door and the Empress had to continue as if nothing had happened while she was very oddly very Germanic would wake up at 6:00 in the morning cook her own coffee and get to work so but the two thing one thing they had in common was talent they were both incredibly brilliant intellectuals brilliant politicians but their relationship was very very confrontational he wanted to be the Prime Minister bizarre almost she was bizarre and they had to work it out so in the end they secretly married and they arranged an amazing sort of form of marriage whereby they would rule the country together be married and yet each have young lovers which you know some might say it's a very civilized way to organize your life country and it's a big country it's a big country so now this this letter really captures their one one side of their relationship and the personal side and and we're going to start off with Prince Potemkin x' letter to Catherine which is going to be read by Kwame let me my love say this which will I hope end our argument don't be surprised that I'm disturbed by our love not only have you showered me with good deeds you have placed me in your heart I want to be there alone and above everyone else because no one has ever loved you so much and I have been made by your hands that you should be happy and being good to me that you should find rest from the great labors arising from your high station in thinking about my comfort she receives she receives this letter from Prince Potemkin now you have to imagine their each separate ends of the Winter Palace and you know how long the Winter Palace is so imagine it's like an email except actually each reply would be carried by servants running the length of the Winter Palace so between each line you've got a man you've got to hear the pitter-patter of a feet as a as a servant runs the whole length of winter pants and hands the letter to the to the other one and this amazing couple and now Tamsin is going to read the reply so if you both read the letter in its full panoply let me my love say this I allow it which will I hope end our argument the sooner the better don't be surprising I'm disturbed by don't be disturbed not only have you showered me with good deeds you have placed me in your heart I want to be there alone and above everyone else you are there firmly and strongly and will remain there because no one has ever loved you I see it and believe it and I have been made by your hands happy to do so but that you should be happy and being good to me it will be my greatest pleasure that you should find rest from the great labors arising from your high station in thinking of my comfort of course give rest to our thoughts and let our feelings act freely they are most tender and will find the best way end of quarrel [Music] wonderful thank you so much we are going to press on let's see back introduce for us letters between so again it says it yes time it's not what I've got on my snow nobody told me okay so these are letters between Simon Bolivar Manuela scions and James thorn I think it is yeah you're welcome to know I mean this is this is again what happens when you write a letter to your lover telling them it's over and they write back and say no it isn't and this involves two of the great characters of history that are less well-known in England and that's right it's why it's one of the fun things is putting these for the characters in this in this anthology I mean Bolivar is the genius of the storm is how he described himself modestly and he was the man who liberated three-quarters of South America I think eight countries including Bolivia which has causes named after him but Venezuela Colombia and he ended up as president of a country that included Colombia Venezuela Bolivia Ecuador and Peru so quite a man and this was before he was before he was about forty he deliberated these countries he was also a great lover and he said his best ideas came to him when he was dancing at a ball and with a beautiful girl and when he met Manuela science he'd really met his match she was much younger than him and she was already married to an Englishman called James thorn but they fell passionately in love but he had to live the life of a warlord and he wasn't thought sure and the relationship could last and beside she was married so let us begin with Jack I'm writing to Jade who is Manuela who's also going to join him on the stage I want to answer most beautiful Manuela your demands of love which are entirely reasonable but I have to be candid with you who have given me so much of yourself it's time you knew that long ago I loved the woman as only the young can love out of respect I never talked about it and I'm I'm pondering these things and I want to give you time to do the same because your words lure me because I know that this may well be my moment to love you and for us to love one another I need time to to get used to this for for a military life is neither easy to endure nor easy to leave behind I I have fooled death so many times now that death dogs might every step but allow me to be sure of myself of you I I cannot lie I never lie my passion for you is wild and you know it just give me time well Manuela as you might have guessed is not the sort of person who's gonna take no for an answer so she was incredibly formidable character who liked to dress up I like to ride into battle dressed as a colonel and who was a complete free spirit and but she was still married to her Englishman mr. thorn so what she does is she's not gonna be sent back to mr. thorn she writes a letter to mr. thorn which she copies to Simone Bolivar and and this is the letter which um Jade is going to read no no no hambre a thousand times no sir you are an excellent person indeed one of a kind that I will never Dena me I only regret that you are not a better man so that my leaving you would honor Bolivar more I know very well that I can never be joined to him in what you call Honor do you think I am any less honourable because he is my lover not my husband ah I do not live by social conventions men construct to torment us so leave me be My dear Englishman we will marry again in heaven but not on this earth on earth you are a boring man up there in the celestial Heights everything will be so English because a life of monotony was invented for you people who make love without pleasure conversation without grace who walked slowly greet solemnly move heavily joke without laughing but enough of my cheekiness with all the sobriety truth and clarity of an English woman I say now I will never return for you you are a Protestant and I a pagan that should be obstacle enough but I am also in love with another man and that is the greater stronger reason you see how precise my mind can be your invariable friend Manuela but you are a boring man she just gives us women so much strength I wonder if we can just have a real change of mood and tone now and Kate if you would introduce the letter that Alan Turing wrote to Norman ravage yes and I mean I think for me this was one of the most heartbreaking letters in the entire collection and it was written in 1952 when homosexuality was still illegal in the UK and at this moment Turing was living in Manchester and he was having an affair with a young man and the most extraordinary sequence of bad luck really happened in that this young man was burgled and the police came and in the course of just being a normal citizen being looked after by the police it came out that they were lovers and as a result Turing was arrested and you just imagine how they had been hiding all of these things for so long and then it was something so other that actually caught them if you like and he was you know try it was was arrested for gross indecency and he avoided a prison sentence by agreeing to undergo a chemical treatment which is quite similar to chemical castration and now looking back in his biographers safe this was the beginning of the end for him kind of finished him off and as you will know he committed suicide a couple of years later and so he didn't live to see a homosexuality being decriminalized in the UK in 1967 and he also didn't of course live to see Turing's law in 2007 which finally pardoned all of those people who were so wronged by the country that should have been grateful to them so jack is gonna read this really wonderful letter which just reminds us actually in these difficult times how some things are better than they were My dear Norman I've now got myself into the kind of trouble that I've always considered to be quite a possibility for me though I have usually rated it at about 10 to 1 against I shall shortly be pleading guilty to a charge of sexual offences with a young man the story of how it all came to be found out as a long and fascinating one which I shall have to make into a short story one day but haven't the time to tell you now no doubt I shall emerge from it all a different man but quite who I've not found out I'm afraid that the following syllogism may be used by some in the future cheering believes machines think Turing lies with men therefore machines do not think using distress our see bag where there are other letters that he had written and you chose this one in particular this is the this is the one that really displays the sort of sheer agony he was going through and you know when he talked about the machine you know he was really this is the man who'd kind of really been those of you there's been a movie on it recently as you know as you probably many of you have seen but you know he'd been absolutely brilliant at the it codifying the codification jingle war he'd been it works on breaking the Enigma code at Bletchley Park and he'd had the first concept of how a computer would work and that's what the machine is talking about there yeah artificially intelligent he'd invented or these units of this man is a towering genius and he's been brought down by this incredible injustice and cruelty and the punishment they devised I mean it reminds me a little bit of with another letter that's also near which is the Oscar Wilde letters the letters that brought Oscar Wilde to his downfall and you know it's just a heartbreaking thing that there's a very unjust law against homosexuality destroyed this man and this sentence of art of castration by chemical treatment it was just appalling you know beyond medieval torture really and it just it literally destroyed him as a man so heartbreaking heartbreaking that erm and I think one of the things that is so moving about that for me reading it is that we there are lots of letters in the book and we've heard some of them this evening where you are aware that history is being made you know Lenin is saying hang them all published their name so we know that this is history but there's also we know that the way that history works is often you know that the poem for the want of a nail and the fact that he would have been hiding all of his life but he was found out because a burglary happened actually nothing to do with him really and I think that that's the thing that is always worth remembering these letters that it's the way the different way that history is made and it's just those tear all terrible moments of bad luck when the light that tiny moment of light and as a stumble and that was actually the end of him and it but also the fact that we know that if he'd been alive today he would be the most kind of honored man in our society he would be a member of the order of merit he would be in the you know he would have been knighted and yet just just the fact that he was born at that time sentenced him to this great injustice yeah but I think it's also worth I mean that is one of the things that you know we all sit here in the context of everything that goes on around us and what we think and the things we read and all the rest read but sometimes it is good to remember that this was awful and the Lord did change and it's not that law here now it is in other countries but it's not here and I think that's one of the things that I think is so great about the pattern in the book that you can see that things do get better in some ways even if they also get worse than others and I think that's quite important that this book gives a bit of hope we're almost approaching the end of the evening we've got one more letter but we're going to open up the floor to questions if there are any happily waving excellent thank you so my question is to Simon about the the sort of criteria that you had for choosing each letter and whether you also considered the fictional you opened with a quote from Goethe and as far as I'm aware the surahs of Young Werther did change the world made him a literary star he work was carried by Napoleon during his campaign and it is the first recorded instances of copycat suicides that were generated from that book and also about if you could comment a bit more about Oscar Wilde and perhaps the greatest letter ever written the 50,000 word De Profundis thank you yeah a good question I mean De Profundis I absolutely love De Profundis but it was too long there's so much bit there's so much of it but there are actually bits quoted in here because there are a few bits of that that I love so much that I've put in I've put in here because the great thing about this collection of letters is I could put what I like to knit which is a great thing and I love this there's a moment in De Profundis when Oscar Wilde comes out and everyone is spitting at him and and booing him and he's been destroyed he's fallen from the heights and as he walks through the crowd everyone is just sneering at him and his face is covered and spit and he sees his friend Robbie Ross standing in front of him and Robbie Ross takes his hat off and boughs to him and Oscar Wilde says in day profundus the men have gone to heaven for lesser things he's so grateful so it's such a touching moment but but there are no fit there were no fictional letters in here obviously is it but but but there are many letters by artists by creative people by novelist there's a letter from Paul Zak there's a letter from Mozart my criteria was letters that change the world in some way that only I can define and I mean for example you know Frida Kahlo is in there because I love Frida Carlo but also because she really defined for the first time the arc the woman as artists and that is that is a way that that is a way that changed the way she changed the world and I asked Nina is in here and in her letters with Henry Miller they're wonderful love letters but she defined how women can write about love and sensuality in a way that no one had before so actually even even even the letters that seemed kind of barking that they're in here are in here for a reason I'm sure you could produce several books when you chose choose completely different letters and it would be as enjoyable well we had to throw out you know we had to throw out a lot of letters that we couldn't put in here because we we had to be like I mean I mean I found so many and the criterias just letters that I'd like to read really that I wanted to read myself so that's that's right isn't it of course did you have a microphone go ahead yes thank you well we're talking about letters that change the world but I think that if we don't write the world there's also going to change in another way so I am for the preservation of handwriting all of us collectively and sometimes I'm 38 and sometimes you blame into the new generation that they are not writing but it is us who stopped doing it to show them the way so I wonder and this is my question how are you preserving handwriting and what you recommend us to keep this going thank you that's that's a great question and one of the themes of the book is like let's write letters more you know this is like a celebration of letter-writing I mean a historian historic - there were a 500 year period when people wrote I mean care from the great described herself as a graphic maniac she would write all night every night and I'm too many different sorts of letters many too many different people and the telephone and then he internet and texting of course have destroyed it one of the interesting things is that the late the latest the fact that like emails and so on are so insecure now have started to change that and I think letter-writing will come back just as the book has come back people said the book was going to be extinct but actually we love holders it's actually coming back and books are selling more than they were a few years ago and I'm you know talking to people I talk to people in them in government in the intelligence services they all now much prefer writing letters with an old pen because you know the security services of all of the CIA and and so on are all harvesting our emails to read them and they're not secure anymore when I speak to someone in the Kremlin they said I said well does President Putin use and they said well he used to use he used to use black braid and then he used whatsapp and then he used Telegraph and when they when they owned as a telegraph wouldn't give him the codes he's gone back to writing on paper with a Montblanc pen and I said well I said why and he said like look we're the Russians you know where the people who really know about Internet insecurity and so if we're using more blog pens now so should all of you you've all read these letters so beautifully do any of you hand write letters you know I haven't written edges but I received a beautiful letter maybe a few months ago the teacher that made the difference to my life you know that we all have that of that battle that one and and she came to see a show of mine and and I was like a child in the lobby when when I met her and then I didn't hear anything for like days afterwards I wasn't really nervous as I had she hated it and then she wrote me this four-page letter and and III I felt like I could I could have wept there was and it's it's really special it's gonna stay with me all the days of my life I thought I do remember the day at High School where I it was we had social education up in Scotland I can't even remember what that is but I remember being so bored in that class continually that one day I decided to change the slant of my handwriting to the other side and it's literally been that way since that day because I was sat not listening and when did you write you are a boring I got a letter says very quickly I got a letter and I don't know how it got to me sent from a woman who's that who was a nurse working in a a camp on the Burmese Thai border I don't know how she got the Sesame's handwritten letter to say that she was there she'd been there for a long time she had her young son with her and the and her son had night terrors and the only thing that would calm him down was watching VHS tapes of a show I did on telephone called black books I'm not gonna take any credit for that because you know it was a great show because of those two guys but the fact that she wanted to tell me and I and wrote this long beautiful letter and got it to me and you know that's the treasure that's success that's nice I think you've got the microphone to say yes I did I attempted to say that was my question but if she wanted to take you to the very beginning of discussion when one of you ladies I don't remember which one I'm sorry mentioned that lets us seem to be coming back to fashion apart from KGB and all that do we have any evidence of that I mean one of the bizarre things about these matters is some of these letters were written to be to be published I mean especially 18th century people wrote letters in order to be copied I mean but then there's a whole lot of other letters in here which were written in such secrecy it would have like been unthinkable that these letters would I mean that like the letter we heard from Mary Ann Toinette you know the Empress of Austria to the Queen of France that is a letter between heads of state that was never meant to have been to been read all seen by anybody and yet we're seeing it and of course there lots of erotic letters in the book that of course no one was meant to see and yet they were capped so let us our secret thing as well as a public thing and that's one of the joys of letters let's have one more question hi were there any letters that were never sent and you think if they had been sent would have changed the world well yeah there's one there's one letter in the book that wasn't saying that is in the book and that's the letter that on just in June 1944 just as just before d-day on the day of d-day General Dwight Eisenhower who was the Supreme commander-in-chief of d-day wrote two letters and the first letter was to say we have successfully landed in Normandy you know and congratulations to all the forces of the American British armies we have begun the liberation of Europe and the other letter he wrote was the letter that said I'm afraid there's been a major debacle we have failed to land on the beaches of Normandy we've been we've been totally defeated and and the disaster is totally my fault and I take full responsibility for it so he wrote both these letters by hand and and he put them on his desk and he went out to order he checked the weather and then he ordered d-day to begin so he never sent the second letter and lettin key letters not being received that though the marriage you know between Henry of Navarre and Margaux Marguerite and it was supposed to bring peace to France and you know Wars of Religion in sixteenth-century and the Pope had sent a letter that had to our special permission for these the Catholic and the Protestants to be married and there is a lot of evidence that catherine de' me she shut all the gates so that the Pope's letter could not be received and the Pope's letter said they cannot marry but by the time the letters you know it was clear that she it was another plot as it were they have been married and those were letters as well the idea that they're out there but they never got to where they were supposed to get I mean that's just fascinating it's matched a Finnish honor that's sort of definite though because my name is Simon C bag there's a famous plastic surgeon in London called does he cook Joseph multi called dr. C bag and I regularly receive letters that amount that I meant for him at my house obviously and because and because the two names are next door to each other they're always from people that I know really well and I should just say I haven't put any of those letters in the book but you should read them thank you all very much for your questions we have one final letter that we are going to hear this evening and it's a letter written by Leonard Cohen to Mary Ann it 'ln and a C bag you're going to introduce that well I mean I think the greatest art and letter writing is to know how to say goodbye and you all know who Leonard Cohen was he was the great singer songwriter poet who wrote great songs like Suzanne and Sisters of Mercy and Matt I'm so long Mary Ann and Mary Ann in those songs was his love affair that he had on the island of Hydra in Greece in the 60s with a beautiful Norwegian girl called Mary Ann ebloom and jump ahead many many years he's in his 80s it's 2016 she's she's the same age and she finds out that she has leukemia and she's dying in a hospital in Oslo and she calls in her best friend who later wrote to me and told me the story in detail she called her best friend she said I'm dying can you let Leonard know and they hadn't been in contact for over 40 years at all but they knew that each that they were the greatest love of their lives and so this guy who was her best friend went to his email got her found she gave him the Leonard's email she sent a mini-me sent her a minute email and he said like you know Ariana's here with Mia she's dying and I hope this reaches you in time because I'm not sure she's going to last the night and they went to and he went the heath had a sleepless night in the hospital and it dawn and checked his email and this this was the letter that he found from then a cone which Kwame is going to read to close the proceedings tonight dearest Marianne I'm just a little behind you close enough to take your hand this whole body has given up as yours has to and the eviction notices on its way any day now I've never forgotten your love and your beauty but you know that I don't have to say more safe travel was our friend see you down the road endless love and gratitude [Music] [Music] thank you so much just leaves me to say thank you to Jade Anika Jack Loudon Tamsin Greig Kwame way Armour Simon C vague Montefiore and Kate Moss and of course too intelligent squared for putting on a fabulous event thank you so much everyone for coming you

Channel: Intelligence Squared

Views: 57,911

Keywords: letters, simon sebag-montefiore, kate mosse, kwame, Kwame Kwei-Armah, Jack Lowden, Jade Anouka, Tamsin Greig, Razia Iqbal, Michelangelo, Catherine the Great, Sarah Bernhardt, Rosa Parks, Virginia Woolf, Alan Turing and Leonard Cohen

Id: luMEjKFt5Qk

Length: 86min 44sec (5204 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 29 2019