Interviewing the Interviewers

To start this developing series, Andrew Green here interviews the veteran radio and television journalist, Peter Snow CBE. In his distinguished career, Peter worked as a correspondent for Independent Television News, going on to become one of the principal anchors of BBC2’s Newsnight programme. Peter also found fame through his energetic analyses of General Election results as they were declared. He enjoyed an extensive, wide-ranging career on BBC radio, not least in the area of history programming. Indeed, history has been at the heart of Peter’s output as an author. Everywhere his career has taken him, Peter has had to work out the best ways of eliciting accurate and telling information from those he has interviewed.

Interview with Peter Snow- Oral Histories Team

Sir Anthony Seldon is arguably the most celebrated political biographer of our times. He has been compiling accounts of the terms in office of successive British Prime Ministers since the days of Margaret Thatcher. Each biography has been rooted in substantial quantities of interviews with observers of each Prime Minister’s tenure..

Anthony Seldon’s interest in oral history dates back to the beginning of his career, when he studied oral history practice intensively in the USA. In 1983, he and his late wife Joanna Pappworth produced an immensely practical and helpful guide to oral history interviewing, By Word of Mouth.

Sir Anthony has been headmaster of several independent schools. He was the co-founder of the Institute for Contemporary British History. His list of publications extends well beyond political biography. Sir Anthony’s walk along the length of the Great War Western Front was the basis of his hauntingly memorable The Path of Peace.

However, the interview below was focused very much on the work that goes into his political biographies, the latest of which is Truss at 10, an account of the brief tenure of Liz Truss as Prime Minister.

How does Sir Anthony begin the exercise of assembling each new biography?

Interview with Anthony Seldon- Oral Histories Team

Libby Purves OBE is one of Britain's most admired broadcasters as well as being a highly respected author and journalist.

As the daughter of a British diplomat, much of Ms Purves’s childhood was spent outside the UK. After taking a first in English at Oxford University she soon laid the foundations for what would become a long career in broadcasting. A key formative experience was her time as a reporter/presenter on BBC Radio Oxford, where the range of subject matter and types of interviewee she handled was extraordinarily wide.

Ms Purves first gained nationwide recognition on becoming the first woman (and youngest-ever) presenter of BBC Radio 4’s flagship news programme, Today. Many other significant broadcasting assignments followed, but Ms Purves is perhaps best-known for presenting Radio 4’s Midweek programme across more than thirty years. Here the mix of round-the-table studio guests was astonishingly broad, requiring remarkable interviewing skill and adaptability

Libby Purves’s bibliography runs to more than twenty books, including novels and volumes which reflect her passion for sailing – she lives close to the East Anglian coastline. Her longstanding regular column in The Times newspaper covers an array of topical subjects, all handled with a characteristic mix of journalistic flair and colourful common sense.

See the interview here.

Ellen J Langer, Professor of Psychology at Harvard University has been dubbed ‘the Mother of Mindfulness’. She describes the term as ‘the simple act of noticing new things’ in any area of everyday life.

Professor Langer’s influential 1989 book Mindfulness has been followed by a series of other best-selling volumes which have enjoyed a global reach, finding applications in many areas of human activity/behaviour. Her latest highly praised book, The MindfulBody, explores the idea that positive, ‘mindful’ mental attitudes can have a direct impact on the health of an individual.

So…can there be such a thing as a mindful approach to interviewing…and, indeed, to devising research projects – including those rooted in oral history?

Click HERE.

When major media outlets need an authoritative source for information on voting intentions and social attitudes in Britain, they routinely turn to Professor Sir John Curtice. Across a long and distinguished career, Sir John has been deeply involved in devising the right questions to ask the British public at the right time…and then interpreting the answers given.

So, a fascinatingly different slant on the art/science of interviewing for this series.

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Paul Heiney has enjoyed an especially rich broadcasting portfolio across more than five decades. Many television viewers fondly recall his contributions to Esther Rantzen's hugely popular series,That’s Life. Paul went on to a distinguished multi-dimensional career in radio and television, while at the same time working as a journalist and authoring a string of books covering two passionate interests - farming and sailing…the latter pursuit even seeing him tackling the span of the Atlantic.

Interviewing has performed a key role in Paul’s work. He’s currently engaged in a project,’Trinity Voices’, which is capturing the memories of former Trinity House lighthouse-keepers - a job which has become extinct - and those from other significant sea-related historic professions. The interviews are being made available on the Trinity House website: www.trinityhouse.co.uk .

In this lively conversation, Paul offers a wealth of practical advice on the art of asking questions which will be more than useful to those engaged in any kind of interviewing exercise.

Watch here: Interviewing the Interviewers - Paul Heiney