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1-800-Flowers.com-slash-ACAST. On

1:20

Last Word this week, the left-wing playwright Trevor

1:22

Griffiths, we have a tribute from

1:24

the actor Jack Shepherd. Also

1:26

the long-serving Guardian foreign correspondent,

1:29

Heller Pick, and the

1:31

African-American soprano Margaret Tynes. But

1:34

first, Professor Peter Higgs, who gave his

1:36

name to the Higgs boson and

1:38

won the Nobel Prize in Physics, has

1:40

died aged 94. Researchers at

1:43

the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva think

1:45

they've discovered what some

1:47

call the God particle because it

1:49

helps us understand how the universe

1:51

began. Getting a short and succinct

1:53

explanation of the Higgs boson is

1:56

not easy, as Jim Alkalini found

1:58

when he interviewed Professor Higgs. on

2:00

the life scientific. For me

2:02

that's a beautifully eloquent explanation of

2:04

what the Higgs field is. Not

2:07

for most people. So his

2:09

challenge number two, could you encapsulate that

2:11

explanation in say 30 seconds?

2:14

No. So

2:18

we turn to Roland Pease, the presenter of

2:20

the BBC's Science in Action, to see if

2:22

he could help. The idea

2:24

is that the universe is filled with

2:26

this essence, a field, a bit like

2:29

an electric field, but this is called

2:31

the Higgs field, and it interacts with

2:33

the fundamental particles of physics.

2:36

You can think of it a

2:38

bit like this, a celebrity trying

2:41

to press through a throng of

2:43

fans and finding, you know, the

2:45

path is impeded by that pressure.

2:48

In the same way, a particle moving

2:50

through the Higgs field feels the

2:53

pressure, as it were, the

2:55

essence of this Higgs field. And

2:58

some particles feel it more and some particles feel

3:00

it less. So the electron feels

3:02

it a little bit and

3:04

it gains a small amount of

3:06

mass. Other particles get more mass,

3:09

light particles don't feel it at all, and

3:11

they just whiz on at the speed of

3:13

light in straight lines. So

3:15

that sort of helps make the

3:17

difference between the different particles of

3:19

the standard model. If

3:21

it was just a matter of giving mass, I

3:24

don't think that would be so

3:26

exciting. What is really important is if

3:28

it wasn't for the Higgs, then

3:31

you wouldn't have atoms. If

3:33

electrons had no mass, they

3:36

would not be bound into atoms. And

3:39

if you don't have atoms, you don't have chemistry,

3:41

and if you don't have chemistry, you don't have

3:43

life, and you don't have radio for programs talking

3:45

about what a Higgs particle is. Or

3:48

another one is if you don't have the Higgs,

3:51

then the sun would burn in

3:53

a completely different way. The reactions

3:55

that go on in the sun

3:57

are controlled ultimately by the Higgs

3:59

field. Higgs boson. So again,

4:01

the Higgs is fundamental

4:03

to the heat and light that we

4:06

get from the Sun. I asked Peter

4:08

Higgs' colleague of 50 years, Dr Alan

4:10

Walker, if Peter was upset when the

4:12

Higgs boson was referred to as the

4:15

God particle. Yes, he

4:17

was. The problem was, actually Peter

4:19

thought it elevated it to a

4:21

level which was not sensible and

4:23

it sounded as though God

4:25

had invented the particle, whereas Peter's attitude

4:27

was nature. He didn't want it to

4:29

be called Higgs boson particularly, but I

4:32

think he preferred Higgs boson to God

4:34

particle. Peter Higgs was the son of

4:36

a BBC studio engineer. He was born

4:38

in Newcastle, but as a young child

4:40

moved with his family to Birmingham. Just

4:43

before the Second World War he moved again,

4:45

this time to Bristol, where it was thought

4:47

he would be safer. At school

4:49

he didn't immediately fall in love with

4:52

physics. I did better in

4:54

school in mathematics and chemistry than I

4:56

did in physics, which I found a

4:58

little bit uninteresting in the way it

5:00

was taught at the time. I

5:03

think it's probably fair to say that

5:05

my interest in going in that direction

5:07

developed during my school days from thinking

5:09

I would fall in my father's footsteps

5:12

as an engineer, first of all, to

5:14

realizing I wouldn't be very good in

5:16

the practical way as an engineer and therefore

5:20

head for pure science

5:22

rather than applied science. Peter

5:25

completed a PhD at King's College

5:27

London before landing a job at

5:29

the University of Edinburgh where he

5:31

developed his thinking on the question,

5:33

why do some particles have mass?

5:36

The lead up to the first publication of his theory in

5:38

1964 was not easy. Peter

5:41

was plowing a pretty lonely furrow

5:44

and at least one of the people

5:46

involved in doing these studies actually

5:49

was advised by a senior

5:51

professor, stop doing that, you'll get nowhere

5:53

if you keep on doing that. Nobody

5:55

else talked what I was doing seriously.

5:57

I mean it was a

6:00

a rather kind of minority

6:03

occupation at the time, doing this kind of thing.

6:05

And I was thought to be a bit eccentric

6:07

and maybe cranky. It was quite a long

6:10

time coming. 64 to 2012 was 48 years. This was a long

6:12

time. He

6:15

was confident he was there, but he wasn't

6:18

sure he was going to be around to

6:20

see it. No one has detected the Higgs

6:22

boson until maybe now. Here

6:25

at CERN, scientists have been searching for the

6:27

Higgs deep under the Swiss-French border. I was

6:29

sitting next to him in the seminar at

6:31

CERN on the 4th of July 2012. At

6:35

one point, a colleague, Frank Clos in

6:37

Oxford, said, give Peter a nod, his

6:40

eyes are closed and he's on international

6:42

TV. But he actually

6:44

was listening and pandemonium

6:46

broke out in the lecture circuit. Well,

6:50

I would like to add my

6:52

congratulations to everybody involved in this

6:54

tremendous achievement. For

6:56

me, it's really

6:58

an incredible thing that has happened

7:00

in my lifetime. It's

7:05

been most of 50 years and

7:08

the experience of the seminar at

7:10

Geneva was quite amazing.

7:12

Was it an emotional time? I

7:15

rather think it was partly the result of the

7:17

way the audience responded to

7:19

it, which was to get

7:21

up and cheer and applaud. It was

7:24

a really amazing occasion. What was

7:26

his response on receiving news

7:28

of the Nobel Prize? Or how did he get the

7:30

news of the Nobel Prize? Well,

7:33

that's interesting. He made plans. I

7:36

understood that he would be away, but he

7:38

was being very secretive, even to me and

7:41

to his family. I'd gone out

7:43

about 11 o'clock just to avoid

7:45

the media attention that I thought

7:47

would follow the announcement. On the

7:49

big screen, we watched the prolonged

7:51

announcement of the discovery from the

7:54

Nobel Committee. The Royal Swedish Academy

7:56

of Sciences has decided to board

7:59

the... 2013 Nobel

8:01

Prize in Physics to

8:03

Professor Francois Anglaire and

8:07

Professor Peter Higgs at University of Edinburgh,

8:09

United Kingdom. When the announcement came we

8:11

adjourned to our offices and went there

8:13

assuming that Peter's nowhere to be contacted.

8:15

So when did you first hear the

8:17

news? Unofficially, I heard

8:19

it when I was on my way back

8:22

home who the car pulled up across the

8:24

street and the lady of

8:26

about 70 got out and crossed the

8:28

road and very excitedly said, congratulations, my

8:30

daughters just told me the news and

8:33

I said, oh what news? Knowing

8:36

full well what news? Knowing what

8:38

the answer was like to me. And

8:41

then I got home and listened to the messages on

8:43

my phone. He may

8:45

have had an answering machine, but

8:48

in his top floor Newtown flat

8:50

this world-renowned scientist was not surrounded

8:52

by the latest technological gadgets. The

8:55

only modern technology you have would be

8:57

a CD player because he loved music.

9:00

There was no television in his house. He

9:03

really didn't use a phone, a

9:06

mobile phone until much later. I

9:08

won't say never had a laptop. He decided to buy

9:10

a laptop and I gave him a lesson and he

9:13

said I've had enough today and he never touched it

9:15

again. How did he

9:17

deal with the celebrity? Not very

9:19

well. I mean he didn't look

9:22

for celebrity. He was really

9:25

quite selfie-facing. What is it like being

9:27

famous? It's a bit

9:29

of a nuisance sometimes, frankly. The

9:32

worst feature of it is that if I go

9:34

to a lecture or something

9:36

where there are a lot of students, they all

9:38

want to use their mobile phones to take photographs

9:40

with me. For a long time, he was

9:43

still saying the scalar boson,

9:46

not the Higgs boson and later

9:49

when it became more accustomed to it, he

9:51

would say the scalar boson that bears my

9:53

name and on

9:55

one occasion he wrote a

9:57

lecture that he used to give which was

10:00

called My Life as a Boson, which

10:02

was a play on this Swedish film

10:04

My Life as a Dog. Dr. Alan

10:06

Walker on Professor Peter Hicks, who's died

10:08

aged 94. Now Trevor Griffiths

10:11

was the left-wing stage and screenwriter

10:13

who created some of the most

10:15

influential plays of the 1970s. They

10:18

included Comedians, The Party and

10:20

Bill Brand. The actor

10:23

Jack Shepard often appeared in Trevor's work.

10:25

He told me how he first encountered

10:27

the writer. I was in the Actors

10:29

Company in the

10:31

early 70s, which

10:34

produced a high standard of work, but it was

10:36

not about the society that I was

10:39

living in. It was middle-class people from around

10:41

who came to the play and not the

10:43

people living in the towns. And

10:46

I left the company

10:50

thinking I'll start one of my own. And

10:53

I'd already begun that and a

10:56

text arrives, All Good Men by Trevor

10:58

Griffiths. And I really, I

11:01

was astonished. It was about the world

11:03

that I was living in. It was about the Labour

11:06

Party and the problems within the Labour Party. I

11:08

was intrigued, so I dropped my own plans

11:11

and I jumped on the bandwagon and did

11:13

the play, playing William, the

11:15

revolutionary son of Bill Fraser.

11:18

Reality is taking people with

11:20

you. It's causing

11:22

with people who disagree with you passionately.

11:24

It's fighting hostile

11:27

influences. Trevor's

11:29

always brilliant at his writing, at giving

11:31

both sides to the question. Always. So

11:34

there was a contradiction in the play,

11:36

a tension. You could pick either side,

11:39

but in that tension you

11:42

were asking the audience to think for themselves. Is a

11:44

socialist reality the same as the Tory one then? Well,

11:46

we live in the same world, don't we? And it

11:48

doesn't change because you shut your eyes and dream. It

11:51

doesn't change unless we shut our eyes and dream. The

11:54

writer and broadcaster Paul Allen met

11:56

Trevor several times. Trevor Griffiths was

11:58

brought up in my in

12:00

Ancoats actually, kind of place he would

12:02

associate with LS Lowry paintings. His

12:05

father was Welsh and his mother

12:07

was Irish, so both immigrants to

12:09

Manchester. Trevor Griffiths told the British

12:11

Film Institute about his childhood. I

12:13

mean I was one of

12:16

three kids and knew the pain

12:19

of not having your mother to yourself

12:21

or your father to yourself.

12:24

Both of them were working. I

12:26

learned to write quite young and

12:29

to read and I started writing not

12:31

with a pencil but with a nail

12:33

in the wall of the bedrooms that

12:35

my brother and I slept in. He

12:38

was one of those very bright kids that

12:40

went straight on through education to the point

12:43

to which he became an educator himself

12:45

before he was known as a

12:47

writer. In fact, Trevor worked

12:49

as an education officer at the

12:51

BBC until his play Occupation about

12:53

a real strike at the Fiat

12:55

factory in Turin in 1920 was

12:57

staged by

12:59

the Royal Shakespeare Company. This

13:02

brought him to the attention of Kenneth Tynan

13:04

at the National Theatre who commissioned him to

13:06

write a play called The Party. Lawrence

13:09

Olivier in his final stage

13:11

role played a Glaswegian Trotskyite

13:13

called John Tag. It

13:15

is said that Olivia didn't

13:17

really understand very much of this. It wasn't

13:19

his background. His life had been in the

13:21

theatre. He was a son of a clergyman

13:24

but he beautifully learned the whole thing

13:27

and would I believe recite the

13:30

most recent page he'd learned to Trevor with

13:32

a phone every night to see if he

13:34

was getting it right. Perhaps we

13:36

should talk about Through the Night which was a

13:38

much more personal piece based

13:40

I think on Trevor's wife's

13:43

experiences when she breast

13:45

cancer. Yes, it was based

13:48

on her diary. It was an

13:50

account but fictionalized of what she'd

13:52

been through and what was the

13:54

same with both events was

13:56

the politics of it, the criticism of

13:58

the National Health Center. in the

14:00

way in which people were treated.

14:03

It's a very harrowing pace about

14:05

the individual being the

14:07

last person to know when medical

14:10

science is having its way with you. They

14:13

treat us if you're already dead. Especially

14:17

if they never even looked at me, let alone

14:19

spoke. In the play,

14:21

the character played by Alison Stadman, he said

14:23

sort of very ordinary working

14:25

class girl with Dave

14:27

Hill playing a sort of bumbling

14:29

husband. You were the doctor,

14:31

I think, Jack. I played Dr. Pierce, yes, who

14:34

won't play the game that they played in hospitals

14:36

at the time. I

14:38

want to know what I'm facing. It's

14:41

not my case, you know that, don't you? I'm

14:44

a trainee. You appeared in so many

14:46

of his pieces on TV. Why

14:49

was it that you always accepted the

14:51

invitation to take part in a Trevor

14:53

Griffiths drama? His characters were

14:56

always extremely thoughtful, extremely knowledgeable. In his

14:58

heart, he wanted to change society. He

15:00

wanted a different world for us all

15:02

to live in. And he did it

15:05

through his writing. So

15:07

writing is always an act of discovery about

15:12

the world we live in, about ourselves,

15:15

about the possibilities of

15:17

change and the needs

15:19

for change. There was a lot

15:21

of left wing writing at the time, but

15:23

nobody else, I think, writing with kind of

15:25

thorough understanding of Marxism

15:28

and of working class life. His

15:30

perspective on it, if you like,

15:32

is different. The great television

15:35

series that for me was his breakthrough,

15:38

Bill Brand, actually

15:41

follows a Labour

15:43

MP who starts out with

15:46

great idealism, great commitment to the

15:49

cause. But it's

15:51

endlessly compromised. And

16:00

I don't know whether that was Trevor or not feeling

16:03

that. But I think he certainly

16:05

did feel that about parliamentary policies. Do

16:07

you think there was a period in his life when

16:10

his work went out of fashion

16:12

amongst television commissioning executives and obviously

16:15

the revolutionary change that perhaps he was

16:17

thinking of wasn't happening. Do you think

16:19

there was a time of sadness in

16:22

his life when he wasn't in the

16:24

mainstream? No, I definitely do.

16:27

The play he wrote about Alarm Bevan, which

16:29

Brian Cox played, was really gloomy.

16:32

I think that the change began

16:35

when he went to America and he

16:37

met up with Warren Beatty to make

16:39

Red and he met

16:41

Jack Nicholson. And he was hugely affected

16:43

by that lifestyle and those

16:45

people that he met. Affected in

16:47

what way, Jack? I mean, affected because he was

16:49

drawn to it and wanted to have it or

16:52

disillusioned with it? It

16:55

was the freedom they got and the pleasure that

16:57

they had in their lives. It

16:59

was a big contrast to his own experiences

17:01

growing up in Manchester. How should we evaluate

17:04

Trevor Griffiths? Where should we place him in

17:06

the pantheon of writers of the second half

17:08

of the 20th century?

17:10

Well, in terms of his understanding

17:13

of politics and political change, we

17:15

should think of him very, very highly. If

17:17

he believed in such things, he would

17:19

be the patron saint of trying to

17:22

articulate argument, no

17:25

compromise. Yes, we should be

17:27

angry. We can also be entertaining and do

17:29

it all at the same time. Paul

17:32

Allen on Trevor Griffiths, who's died aged

17:34

88. Now,

17:36

Hela Pick covered international affairs for the

17:38

Guardian newspaper for over 30 years. She

17:42

was trusted by world leaders from many

17:44

countries and became friends with some of

17:46

them. Her friend and colleague,

17:48

Linda Christmas. I would

17:50

describe Hela as charming,

17:53

erudite, energetic, sociable,

17:56

hospitable, resilient, for

17:59

the time she could. be prickly, arrogant

18:02

and is indeed well known for

18:04

her imperious treatment of her colleagues.

18:07

Hela was born in Vienna, the

18:09

daughter of an Orthodox Jewish father

18:11

and a non-practicing mother. They

18:13

divorced when Hela was a toddler. Her father

18:16

moved to the USA and she never saw

18:18

him again. In

18:21

1939, as the Nazi threat loomed, Hela's

18:23

mother put her on the Kindertransport to

18:25

the UK, as she

18:28

recalled. The Jewish organisations literally

18:31

paid the Nazis money to ship the

18:33

children out and they were put

18:35

onto trains, cursed from Germany

18:37

and then from Austria and brought

18:39

to England and here other Jewish

18:42

organisations organised for these children to

18:44

be taken in by families. She

18:46

came aged 11 with a number around her

18:48

neck but fortunately, very

18:50

fortunately, her mother followed three months later.

18:52

I think I'm correct in saying

18:54

that in those days, as

18:57

a refugee, you can only get a job as

18:59

a domestic. Hela's mother

19:02

was taken in by this

19:05

wonderful Chorley family and they

19:08

looked after her. I had a very happy

19:10

childhood there but I

19:13

became totally English. I

19:15

refused to speak German. This is

19:17

an obvious reaction to the whole

19:19

uprising that has taken place. So what

19:22

effect do you think that experience at

19:24

such an early age had on her

19:26

later life? I am not qualified to

19:28

judge. I think it is

19:30

perfectly obvious that it had a profound effect on

19:33

her entire life. This

19:36

can be demonstrated

19:38

quite simply by looking,

19:41

for example, at the books Hela wrote that

19:43

she wrote a book on

19:46

Simon Wiesenthal, Holocaust

19:49

survivor and Nazi hunter. That

19:51

was followed by a second

19:53

book on Austria starting

19:56

at the Holocaust and ending

19:58

up in the year 2000, which is when the book

20:00

was published. So you can see

20:02

from that alone, from the description of those two

20:04

books, that the Jewishness

20:06

and the Holocaust and Austria

20:09

were a profound part of her life. How

20:12

did she first get involved in journalism? By

20:15

accident. When she was at

20:17

LOC, she applied for a job at the

20:19

UN at the United Nations, and she didn't

20:21

get it. That meant

20:23

she was just looking around for a job

20:26

that took her out of England and enabled

20:28

her to have a lot of traveling. And

20:30

she saw this advertisement for a magazine called

20:33

West Africa, and she applied, and

20:35

she got it. And it was

20:37

a very, very seminal moment in her life.

20:40

I was virtually the only European

20:42

woman journalist covering that whole

20:44

field. So obviously I was

20:47

young, I was quite

20:49

good looking, everybody was running after me,

20:51

but in the nicest possible way, I

20:54

got to know all the leaders of

20:56

West Africa. And I had

20:58

a very good time. To track Heller's

21:01

career from then on, she was

21:04

not interested in grassroots journalism. Her

21:06

career developed and flourished

21:09

in the corridors of power. Heller

21:12

joined the Guardian in 1961 and worked as the

21:15

paper's correspondent at the United Nations

21:17

and in Washington, D.C. She

21:20

also covered events in Eastern Europe, recalling

21:22

a memorable encounter with the Solidarity Union

21:24

leader, Lech Farwensa, on the day when

21:26

he was blocked from leaving Poland to

21:29

collect the Nobel Peace Prize. Some

21:31

years earlier, she had got a little too

21:34

close to President John F. Kennedy. Once, because

21:36

I used to travel a lot with the

21:38

White House press corps, and

21:40

we went to his

21:42

holiday home and came cod for some

21:45

reason or other, and we were all sitting

21:47

around, and I slipped and I fell straight

21:49

onto his arm. What

21:51

qualities do you think she had

21:54

that made her successful at gaining

21:56

the confidence of senior figures in

21:58

politics and diplomacy? Helen

22:01

Nutchita contacts, to the point where

22:03

her contacts dined around her table.

22:05

I'm not saying they became her

22:07

friends, but they became happy to

22:09

dine around her table. You

22:12

gave me a sense in your opening

22:14

answer in our conversation that

22:16

she could be very difficult to deal with for

22:18

her colleagues. Can you give me examples

22:20

of how that manifested itself? She

22:23

vigorously, vigorously preserved her

22:26

turf. So where would I hide

22:28

you if you put a foot on it? Some

22:30

people would say that they found

22:33

Helen intimidating. I

22:35

was in the delegates lounge one lunchtime looking

22:37

for one of the British delegates and I

22:39

couldn't find anybody and suddenly another

22:42

diplomat comes after me and said, you

22:44

know, the strangest thing happened. I just

22:46

went into the men's

22:48

cloakroom and I found the whole British delegation

22:50

from the ambassador down standing in there and

22:52

I said, what are you doing there? And

22:54

they said, escaping from Helen pick. I

22:57

dined at her table. She was a good cook.

22:59

But I have to say the times I enjoyed

23:02

most repeller was when we traveled. We went to

23:04

Burma. We went to Cambodia. We

23:06

were just two people and

23:08

she had no contacts and I had no

23:10

contacts and we weren't working. We were just

23:13

two friends going into a

23:15

new country and wanting to find out as much

23:17

as we could. That was a real pleasure. Linda

23:20

Christmas on Helen Pick, who's died aged 96.

23:23

This week, last words also go to

23:26

the football manager, Joe Keneer. He worked

23:28

at a number of clubs, including Wimbledon,

23:30

Newcastle, Luton and Nottingham forest. And

23:33

we remember Joan Morcom, the dancer who

23:35

was married to the comedian Eric Morcom.

23:37

Their son described her as the engine

23:40

room of the successful Morcom and Wise

23:42

double act. But now

23:44

let's enjoy the powerful voice of

23:46

the African-American soprano Margaret Tynes, who's

23:48

died aged 104. Margaret

24:02

was born in the USA but

24:05

made her name in European opera

24:07

houses. She was noted for her

24:09

leading roles in Verdi's Macbeth and

24:11

Aida, Richard Strauss's Salome and Bizet's

24:13

Carmen. The opera singer Michael

24:16

Harper is a lecturer at the Royal

24:18

Northern College of Music but is originally

24:20

from Margaret's home state. She was brought

24:22

up in a family where her father

24:24

was the minister of her Baptist church

24:26

for 26 years. So I

24:28

don't know if that would have been a

24:30

strict religious upbringing but having come from Virginia

24:33

as well, religion is very

24:35

important in the African American community.

24:37

How did she make her professional

24:39

debut? With Sidney Poitier

24:41

on Broadway in a

24:44

piece called Sing Man Sing. There aren't

24:46

any recordings of that but that's where

24:48

she made her debut. I

24:58

think it was her performance as Lady Macbeth

25:00

at the New York City Opera that brought

25:03

her to the attention of Duke Ellington. How

25:05

did that happen? He heard her

25:07

sing and the story goes he called her

25:10

in the middle of the night and said, I'm Duke

25:12

Ellington and I'd like you to be involved

25:15

in a project that I've gotten. She said

25:17

yes and I'm the president of the United States

25:19

and she hung up on him. He then

25:21

rang again and said that he was Ruth

25:23

Ellington's brother and she had gone to school

25:25

with Ruth Ellington and so she

25:27

believed him and he got her to come

25:29

and sing on this very interesting,

25:31

curious project of his called A

25:33

Drum is a Woman. And

25:56

it is an allegorical approach to the

25:59

American music. I

26:01

guess the drum as the

26:04

idea of African-American history and

26:06

the history of music and

26:08

the African-American community, a very

26:11

interesting and curious piece, very specific

26:13

to its time, I think. I

26:16

believe that she had greatest operatic

26:18

success in continental Europe. Her career

26:20

really took off when she traveled

26:23

to Europe. That's

26:25

right. One of the common mistakes was that

26:27

many African-American singers

26:30

could not get work outside

26:32

of concert work. They couldn't get work in

26:34

opera. So many of them

26:36

went to the continent of Europe to

26:39

sing. She

26:46

did a production of Zalame

26:48

with the Spillato Festival, John Cavoro

26:50

of Menotti's Festival. I mean, it

26:52

was a very successful production. And

26:58

someone called her the sexiest

27:01

Zalame since Lubia Velic. And Lubia Velic was

27:03

very, very well known for her Zalame. And

27:05

I've listened to her recordings though in a

27:07

very, very beautiful voice. And

27:14

that performance of Zalame was seen

27:16

as very sexy, I think. Did

27:18

that cause trouble for her coming

27:20

from a Baptist upbringing? There is

27:23

one story that says that she

27:25

prayed after having done a pray

27:27

to God thing that she didn't

27:29

really want to have John

27:31

the Baptist's head, but it was

27:33

just a performance. I imagine that

27:35

if you grow up in

27:38

a religious family like that, this would

27:40

cause you trouble. How would you describe

27:42

the quality of Margaret's voice? Wow.

27:46

I would say that she's a

27:48

lyrical spinto. She

27:57

has a lyric, soprano voice. with

28:00

a bit of push in it. So there's drama

28:02

in it. It isn't a fully full

28:05

dramatic voice, but it certainly has a

28:07

lot of drama in it. There's so

28:09

many colors from the very dark

28:11

and rich sound at the bottom

28:13

of her voice to the very

28:16

highest and lightest spinning

28:18

sound at the top. It's so beautiful

28:20

and stunning how

28:22

she expresses herself emotionally

28:25

through the voice. The

28:28

voice of Margaret Tynes, who's died aged

28:30

104. This week you

28:32

also heard last words on the journalist, Heller

28:34

Pick, the playwright Trevor

28:37

Griffiths and the physicist, Professor Peter Higgs.

28:39

Don't forget there are hundreds of other

28:41

fascinating life stories in the

28:43

last word archive on BBC Sounds.