Look Who it Was Random video

John Julius Norwich - My mother's plan backfires (66/136)

1,350 views · Published 21 June 2018 · 2:42 · Indexed 22 September 2026

Channel: Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People · 2018 · Science & Technology

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John Julius Norwich (1929-2018) was an English popular historian, travel writer and television personality. He is the author of histories of Norman Sicily, the Republic of Venice, the Byzantine Empire and 'The Popes: A History'. [Listener: Christopher Sykes]

TRANSCRIPT: I knew it was my mother. My father, I should've said, my father had died on the first of January, 1954, and my mother was in a pretty bad way. She was missing him quite, quite dreadfully and it's true to say she... she felt she needed me. She was living in Paris and she was always determined that I would be sent to Paris, which would've been ideal, obviously, from her point of view. But I always told her that there was no way I was ever going to be sent to Paris because it was less than 10 years and she and my father had been these very, very famous, hugely successful ambassadors in Paris and me, as a very junior diplomat, to be there again, it would've been impossible for my boss, for the new ambassadors, you know. I mean, me going off to these sort of, to all my mother's smart friends every weekend and meeting them all the time and my mother, obviously, having to invite them and me being the third secretary. It would've been terribly embarrassing for them and my mother, I think, frankly, would probably rather have overshadowed them, you know. And she had this lovely house in the country looking at, you know, it would've been terrible. And I always told her it's never going to happen and they never would. 'Oh, don't you be silly, darling, I'm sure I can fix it.' And she couldn't, she never did, but what she did do, I think, she rang up... when she heard I was going to Moscow, she rang up the Foreign Office and said, 'Please, please, don't send him to Moscow, send him to Paris.' They said, 'Look, well, we can't send him', yes, I'm making this up, but I know that it's what happened. And they said, 'I'm sorry, we really can't send him to Paris, he's the last person in the world we can send to Paris at this moment.' 'Well, then if you can't send him to Paris, send him somewhere at least a bit closer.' And I think she was thinking of Belgium or Holland, you know, or something like that. So, they sent me to Belgrade, which was, in fact, much, much, perhaps deliberately, I think, you know, it was nearer than Moscow, but it didn't have an airport and Moscow did. I could've flown back from Moscow in four hours. To get back from Belgrade would've taken me two days on the Orient Express. And so that one blew up in her face, rather, and Belgrade it was. Blew up in my face too, because I'd much rather have gone to Moscow.

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