So, this is radio drama studio. Hello, im john wilson. Welcome to this cultural life, a radio four podcast in which i ask leading creative figures about the influences and inspirations that have fired their artistic imagination. My guest in this episode is sir kenneth branagh. A huge talent, a star of stage and screen for more than four decades now. Hes an actor, director, writer and film maker whose credits range from hamlet to tenet, from henry v to thor. We spoke in the very atmospheric radio drama studio of bbc broadcasting house. Ken, welcome to this cultural life. Thank you. A show about cultural inspiration, cultural influences. What is your earliest cultural memory, do you think . Something that had a big impact . I think, early doors, i can remember Winston Churchills funeral, i think it was 1965, seeing it on the television and just being told about the great man. The World Cup Final of 1966, where the nation stopped, and in our own household, my brother had a sort of flirtation with meningitis which was very dramatic, as you know, those can be fora minute, and then he was fine, thank goodness. But i watched the World Cup Final in a neighbours house and ijust remember in both those cases, in belfast, as i was, i was very aware of a national event, or at least it seemed to galvanise everybody and everything, and i was looking at images that said, the world is watching. Wow. And you mentioned belfast there. Some people, i think, are still surprised when they hear that you grew up in working class belfast. Uhhuh. And youve now written and directed a film called belfast. Uhhuh. How autobiographical a film is it . Well, erm, its seen through the eyes of nine year old buddy. Its seen at 50 years distance from me. So, inevitably, not everything happened absolutely as per but a vast amount of it is very directly autobiographical and where it isnt, i think theres a sort of emotional truthfulness about what the film embraces which is, that at nine years old, when the world for this young lad, literally turns upside down, where the ground is taken from beneath his feet, the pavements on which we stood 20 minutes previously are lifted up by a rioting mob, and a few hours later, the populations scared and back in their houses, spills out, lifts those same Paving Stones and suddenly, theres a barricade at either end of the street, so there was a quality of dream, nightmare, that a nine year old was trying to cope with that is part of the nature of it but a lot of its true. Even though there is humour and a sense of optimism throughout the film, i mean, this is a moment in history, 1969, where real violence erupted on the streets. I mean, the idea of the father in the film being threatened by the protestant hard men for refusing to go along with the gangs and threatening his catholic neighbours, was that something that directly happened to your father . There was a sense, you couldnt be in that part of belfast at that time, at least through my nine year old eyes, you couldnt be, unless there was some sense of threat and the possibility of intimidation. And are they really vivid memories that you have . I mean, just taking yourself back to those moments, of those Paving Stones being dug up and the barricades being erected, was there a sense in your mind, as a young kid, that something very dangerous was happening, that there was some kind of weird Seismic Shift happening on the streets outside . Yes, because for a while, what had been really a sort of wonderland where the street where you lived was your wild west town, it was your castles, it was your place for dragons, it was the place of dreams, became somewhere that you had to check in and out of, suddenly, you had to sign to leave your own street and go through a barricade and a sort of primitive checkpoint charlie. What i was aware of was being put on a high alert so, as it were, your emotional engine was revving really high and it was exhausting. Thats what i remember, and for everyone, it was absolutely exhausting, and on every side. And families were moving in and out of streets, you know, it was a time of tremendous change and also where the media and the explosion of everything in terms of social activity and political activity in the mid to late � 60s was being reflected and shouting out loud from the televisions and from the radio, and so the sense of being in a sort of tumult was very, very palpable. Were you scared . Most certainly scared. I mean, theres a scene at the beginning of the film which recreates the moment where it kicked off for us. And, you know, it was very alarming, really, to see ten year old jude hill, under this table in the back room as my brother and i were, reallyjust, unable to comprehend what was going on but we knew that stones and bricks were flying through the windows, it turned out, of neighbours, but it could easily have been ours. And, erm, it puts you in that position of sort of facing the world with your shoulders hunched, ready for the unexpected. It means that what follows is not easy but sometimes, it means that you rush to every possible means of losing that feeling so any humour to be found, any distraction, any entertainment to be found, you run towards. Hmm. Your father was working in england and eventually, you moved as a family in what, 1970, wasnt it . Correct, yeah. And there is, listening to you now, theres no trace of a belfast accent there at all. Yeah did you consciously, did you make an effort to lose the accent . It took about two or three years, i suppose, for it to go but what i absolutely wanted to do was to sort of fit in, ijust wanted to disappear. I, like the rest of the family, i think, felt very uprooted, that sense of certainty about who i was was removed, and i just didnt want to, i didnt want to stick out. I kept my head down and became, i say, a much more introverted individual. Ive often thought that when i started working in the theatre and was involved in the formation of Acting Troupes and companies, that the sort of larger family, creative family that that involved was part of a kind of hearkening back to having a place in a larger group that i found more comfortable, where somehow burdens were shared, and so, for me, yes, its taken a long time to sort of return. In a way, the writing of belfast, creatively, is a return to the sort of creative spirit of that kid. Well, were here to talk about the big influences that have shaped your life, made you the artist that you are today. And weve asked you to choose some of your formative works and moments. Tell us about your first choice. Well, when i was about 1a or 15, i was at Meadway Comprehensive School in reading where we moved to. And, erm, in the english stockroom, which i would pass, the door was open a lot, thered be endless textbooks, perhaps more than there are these days but i saw two long playing records, as they were, one was the ages of man by sirjohn gielgud. Id never heard of either the phrase � ages of man� orjohn gielgud, and the other was laurence olivier, Extracts From Shakespeare Films with music by sir william walton, and i asked our head of english if i could borrow them. I liked the bright, shiny nature of them. I think i half heard in some distant part of my memory this name, olivier. Anyway, i took them home and i was bowled over. Already aware of sort of two extremes. In the olivier excerpts which were from the soundtracks of the films, things like his account of hamlet� s to be or not to be soliloquy which, in his brilliant film, has him atop a rocky outcrop, looking down onto the Wild Sea Crashing against the rocks while he contemplates suicide. So he begins to be or not to be and goes through it, and william Waltons Music is soaring, shouting and trilling and supporting and the Sound Effects of the water and the wind and the waves. I mean, its shakespeare plus a lot of bells and whistles in addition to olivier� s beautiful voice. Olivier to be. Or not to be. John gielgud by contrast, the ages of man being an account of his recital of great speeches from shakespeare that more or less sort of looked at, indeed, the different transitions that a human being might have across their life, was the human voice, single, alone, and i guess i understood that both worked. And that the tonal range in gielguds voice in itself was a sort of self contained mini orchestra. So i began to understand a bit more about poetry and what a performer could do with it but i also was very thrilled by what, if you want to put it crudely, what you could do with the boring bits, if you used an orchestra and Sound Effects and all the rest of it so they were wake up calls to me for what the human voice could do but i suppose, more profoundly than that, what great writing could do. And these records were your introduction to shakespeare . They were, yes, they were. The first thing youd ever heard . Yes, id really, these two titans were the people who really introduced me to the sort of clarion call, the music of this particular language. In both cases, it was very muscular, it was very direct. Even gielgud, although people accused him of the opposite, was very grounded, and he then made you understand it and so, and the other thing, in fact, they really made me understand was that i didnt have to understand all of it, particularly with gielgud, his gift in understanding it himself, somehow he gave me permission to have just an intuited experience of the language. And so youd have listened to these at home, in the bedroom, studied them . Absolutely. You borrowed these lps from school . Well, i did borrow them although theyre still in my possession so i suppose borrowing is not exactly, not precisely. Do we have them here . Yes. Yeah. So these are circa, i suppose, i can tell you this, john, circa. Because 1977, that meadway comprehensive School English store cupboard had these and i borrowed them for a mere 45 years the school doesnt exist any more so i suppose they dont have a home to go to. You are fessing up, finally im fessing up. If Berkshire County council wish to retain these and give them to some other shakespeare starved youngster, im very pleased to hand them back but. You know the thing that strikes me is they are in fantastic nick. Youve obviously looked after them very well. I have. It also suggests they hadnt been borrowed or listened to or used before. This your Sherlock Holmes mind is correct i was very. I read the sleeve notes copiously and then these two titles became rather important to me in the end, hamlet and henry v. Did you study the record, did you learn the speeches . Did you. . Well, i sort of, i. Speak along . I copied them a bit. I did a bit of. Mimics olivier 0, that this too, too solid flesh would melt, thaw and resolve itself into a dew its a bad version if it or gielgud doing his, erm. He does a speech of hotspurs which goes, my liege, i did deny no prisoners. But i remember, when the fight was done, when i was dry with rage and extreme toil, breathless and faint, leaning upon my sword, came there a certain lord, neat, and trimly dressed, fresh as a bridegroom. Etc. That was, you know, you couldnt get it out of your system really. I bet if we overlaid that alongside the original, it would be very, very hard to tell the difference i mean, the thing is, you have been compared to olivier throughout your career, havent you . Yes, and partly because he, he. He. He was a role model. Exactly, well, he was the inspiration, an actor, Acting And Directing Films Of Shakespeare and so, yes, anybody who trod the same path was going to be compared, whether it was a worthy comparison or not but he was certainly an inspiration. Some other people may have been compared but you really took the mantle, didnt you . I mean, it was for a while, it was the new olivier. Was that, did it feel like a burden or was it flattering . I think i was too young to see it as flattery. I think it was more of a burden, i think it annoyed more people than. And so that gave you a certain kind of aggravation, so i think expectations a tough thing, you know, so if youre expected to be the next big thing. In a way, im proud that ive sort of found my faltering, stumbling way to this point when ive seen other people whove had those Great Expectations laid on them early doors, and ive seen people and ive worked with people who feel the weight of it and if one thing im sort of proud of is im not always very well, but ive managed to sort of keep going. You know, theres a line in a movie i wrote a long time ago, in the bleak midwinter, a black and white comedy about a man trying to puts on hamlet who, in the end, couldnt explain how you got on in life much better than saying, well, you fall down, you get up, you fall down, you get up. Its like the beckett line, isnt it, which is, fail, fail again, fail better, and i guess ive tried to, you know, do Something Like that. Was there a moment do you think, in, i dont know, teenage years, when you realised that you had to perform, that you were going to be on the stage . There was at 16 or 17, the sense that id had intuitively, that. I mean, my father was a joiner, a sort of master carpenter, and he loved what he did. All i knew was that i wasnt very good atjoinery, i think, but i knew that i liked the idea of loving what you do. So both my mum and dad said, look, as long as youre happy, we dont care what you do. You can have anyjob, you can clean, you can be a dustbin man, you can be. I think, practically, i could be anything except an artist, actually, because i think they did get shocked when it was suddenly acting that i was interested in. But i had that feeling of a Sense Of Purpose and lightness in school plays where i suddenly realised, my goodness me, this feels so correct and so right. When i knew that there was something serious about this for me was in the development of a voracious appetite for reading and researching around the subject and with the certainty that i didnt mind what level of achievement was possible. Any kind ofjob in any kind of theatre at any point was going to be enough for me. Right, lets move on to your next big cultural influence. Its from 1982 a Landmark Television drama series. Yeah. The boys from the blackstuff by alan bleasdale. I started watching it in belfast i was doing my very second job, a brilliant play by graham reid, part of a Trilogy Of Plays Called The Billy plays and i was watching it there, and few things struck me. It was very gritty and authentic i felt i absolutely believed its working class reality. But at the same time, it had a surreal and poetic quality as well. It had a heightened quality. And in bernard hills performance as yosser hughes, it really seemed to reach something quite beyond what a Television Drama could do. It connected his story, connected to the heart of the nation. In a way, it was a story about a certain kind of male coming to terms with how that role was changing already, how male insecurity was going to be sort of high on the agenda, where actually, a concept we would never have understood back in 1982 but Mental Health, as it were, concerns in the lives of ordinary people. Gizza job. Go on. Gizz it. Gizza go. Go on. I could do that. You only have to walk straight. I can walk straight. Go on. Gizza job. Go on, gizza go. I can put the nets up as well. These simple challenges getting the kids to school, keeping the kids while youre out of work and while these Mental Health issues are at play were titanic issues for him. They were like the stuff of greek tragedy but they existed in what i understood to be the sort of rather banal features of a sort of working class life or anybody� s life, basically, where, you know, the youre not living with a hollywood soundtrack, youre not in a big screen adventure, youre in a much more prosaic existence but, from the inside, the soul is being crushed. It was the kind of thing that made Television Watching an event. Your last big cultural moment that youve brought in is the olympics Opening Ceremony, 2012. You had a really key role that night. Central, you know, middle of the stadium, you appeared, dressed as Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Yes. Reciting shakespeare. Yes. With the soundtrack of elgar. Yes. All very english. Very english thered been a great tragedy for the great, great actor, mark rylance, who was due to do that role and so, he had to pull out. Danny boyle called me hes the director of the ceremony, and a brilliant director and a great man and he said, would you do it . And i said, well, yes, ok what was it you need me to do . And he said, come down to the stadium and ill show you. I went into the stadium for the first time and it seemed like all of england was rehearsing. It was absolutely packed with people doing pirouettes and jumping and dance routines, and danny wove his way through it like the pied piper, he seemed to know everybody� s name. And then he leads me up to one end of the stadium, and to a high mound and says, lets have a go at this piece its caliban from the tempest. The isle is full of noises. He said, i want this, the single human voice at the beginning of this ceremony. And so, we did it. And i was looking at this packed auditorium and we finished and he said, thats great. Isaid, well, ok, thanks, danny. Well, ill do this. Where will the autocue be . He said, oh, there wont be an autocue. Isaid, no, no, no i dont think you follow me. No, i mean, where would i be able to look at the lines if i had some sort of brain fudge . And i needed to keep going. He said, well, there wont be anywhere because wed see it. Isaid, but, ijust want to check something, danny. So, theres a billion people watching this live, right . He said, yeah. I said, so ijust, you know, things can happen. I just dont want to let you down. And if theres a billion people watching, it would be visible if i messed up without a safety net. And he looked at me for a while, sort of slightly uncomprehendingly and then, said, youll be all right. Thats im going to take that with me. Youll be all right. We then, a few weeks later, he got me back in and he showed me, for the first time, that Opening Ceremony. I was the only person in the entire side of the stadium, so it was empty, watching a full rehearsal of what became this very, sort of, notable Opening Ceremony and i was deeply moved by it. I felt as though hed put the whole of the whole of britain there and what i was struck by at the time im notjust saying this with the benefit of hindsight but i was thrilled that the nhs were right in the centre of it. Something that, given everything that we know now, im very, very glad that ahead of, you know, national crisis, there was a moment there where someone like danny understood that it was time to say one of many, many thankyous to an amazing institution. And it also had a certain kind of wonderful british lunacy to it, you know . And variety like this, you know, these islands have. So, it was a hell of a night. The night itself was ive never known such energy. As i went towards that stadium on the night and saw blimp balloons up but realising, blimey, literally, the world is watching us. And somehow, danny boyle had got, it seemed to me, as many people as you could possibly have in that Olympic Stadium were there i mean, as many people as could be a contributing factor to that event. And to be part of that energy was really pretty incredible. It was dazzling to watch and i think a lot of people were quite surprised. I think there was an expectation, it was, like, come on, then, this is not going to work, is it . And then, it was so complex. Did it all go as smoothly as it looked . Do you know what . It, it. Somehow, the goodwill on the night was such that, when i left my Dressing Room and i was in a temporary structure which was shaking because, on the top floor were all the kids who were invited. They were, youd have thought this was it was just the energy of the day but it was as if youd given all the kids 17 chocolate bars. They were manic and delighted and thrilling. So, literally, the building was rocking. On one side, im hearing for the 1000th time, the Arctic Monkeys going, ding diddle ding, ding diddle ding, because theyre doing. Come together. Come together. And they didnt want to get that wrong because mccartney is another couple of doors down and hes practising. Ive got, on the other side, im hearing simon rattle and Rowan Atkinson talking like two engineers over a bonnet about the comedy of their mr bean orchestra sketch. It was like hearing two Nuclear Physicists talk about the rhythm of comedy very, very serious, for something that was about to be hysterical. Then, im hearing danny boyle going down to the other end of the corridor. Hes talking Jk Rowling Off The Edge because shes got a story to read, and all i can hear is, im not a professional, ive never done this before and the place is rocking. Meantime, carol hemming, who im working with, is trying to stick two Isambard Kingdom Brunel sideburns on the side of my face and everything is moving and im starting to shake, im so nervous. So, then, on the way down to the sort of entrance, i had to go down because i needed to calm my nerves. It was about half an hour when they emptied just before people started coming in and i went out to one of the auditoriums, so im looking at an empty stadium, more or less, and i do my lines for the last time, just on my own, very quietly, and id just finished, and from behind me, i hear the applause from two hands and its two girls from the Cleaning Crew who were behind me. They said, very nice, son. Youll be all right. And that was an amazing personal moment. Then, i go back up, we get changed, we come down, it felt as though i shook hands with everybody in england on the way down, and they all shook hands with everybody else in england and the kind of the excitement. For all the people who werent so called professionals, they were the ones who were completely and utterly lit up with the joy of this and so, you couldnt then get, you know, all worked up. For all of us, we had to do it was a sense of such unbelievable pride, and you saw Bradley Wiggins out there and he starts it all off, and then you thought, my god, this is an amazing moment of course, im not going to mess this up and somehow, even if i did, ill make something up, i dont know but in the end, it worked out all right and i thought after that, you know, you probably shouldnt get too worked up about stuff after this. I think that probably takes the biscuit. Your biggest ever audience, i guess . Yeah. Thinking back, you did the Caliban Speech from the tempest, was it on the gielgud record that you borrowed . It was. It was is it there . So it goes all the way back there . Yeah, yeah, absolutely, 100 . Ken, youve enjoyed, what, more than four decades of work on stage and screen and youre still continuing to work. What drives you on, creatively . The pursuit of excellence. From my point of view, im at a Point In My Life where ive acquired enormous amount of experience and the idea of being able to understand how to apply that in the pursuit of that phenomenon of somehow letting the inspirational happen, if you can get yourself to the point of lift off to do something with great writing that lets you know, has a chance to head somewhere towards the sublime in the minds of the audience, its pretty elusive. Its pretty elusive but its an exciting challenge. When i see it, im thrilled by it and it always makes me want to go back and see if i can get anywhere near it myself. Kenneth branagh, thank you very much for sharing your cultural life with us. Thank you. Voiceover for podcast episodes of this cultural life, go to bbc sounds or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello. July has been a very wet month across the uk. And as we look towards the very end of the month, and, indeed, into the start of the new one, well, theres more rain on the way. Spells of wind and rain this week, rather cool as well. Now, looking back at the rainfall weve had so far, these figures are valid up to 10am on sunday. Can see that in preston 285 of the averagejuly rainfall. That means preston has had close to three times the rainfall we would expect in a typicaljuly. And those figures got a further top up as sunday went on because we saw a band of Heavy Rain Pushing Northwards And Eastwards In Association with this frontal system still with us for monday morning. All tied in with this area of low pressure, which will be wobbling its way eastwards through the day. So a band of Rain Pushing Northwards across scotland, some sunshine, at least for a time in the north of scotland, and then to the south of that, for northern ireland, for england and wales, large amounts of clouds and mist and murk, some splashes of rain and, actually, some really heavy and persistent rain across the Channel Islands that may just graze into southern counties of england at times. Temperatures 17 21 degrees in most places. So at the oval for the crickets, i think we are going to see some showers at times. Im hopeful of some lengthy dry spells as well to allow some play to take place. And then as we move through monday nights, well, quite a mishmash of weather. Some areas of clouds, a bit of mist and murk, some splashes of rain. We mayjust see a few more clear spells working into the mix by the end of the night, temperatures of 12 or 13 or 1a degrees. Now, tuesday looks set to be one of the drier days of the week. I cant promise its going to be completely dry. Therell still be some bits and pieces of rain, some showers around. But we should at least get to see some spells of sunshine and some decent dry gaps between the showers. Rain, though, youll notice, returning to the far South West Of England later in the day. And temperatures at best 17 21 degrees, not particularly impressive for the first day of august. And then for wednesday, well, this deep area of low pressure pushes eastwards. This is a very autumnal looking weather chart. There will be some really strong winds, particularly on the southern flank of this low around the South West Of England, also through the Channel Islands can be very windy indeed. Some outbreaks of rain, and then it looks like staying decidedly cool towards the end of the week. Welcome to newsday, reporting live from singapore, im monica miller. The headlines. At least 44 people have been killed in a bomb blast at a political gathering in pakistan. Hundreds of supporters of nigers Military Coup Protest outside the French Embassy as france stops aid. Hours after russia said it had downed three ukrainian drones over moscow, ukraines president zelensky makes a stark warning. Ukraine is getting stronger. Gradually, the war is returning to the territory of russia. And we have a Special Report where we talk to a mother about why its getting easier to be a single parent in china. Live from our studio in singapore this is bbc news. Live from our studio in singapore this is bbc news. Its newsday. Hello and welcome to the programme. We start in pakistan where at least 44 people have been killed, in what Police Suspect was a suicide bomb attack, at a political rally, in the north west of the country. Well over 100 were injured in the blast, at the event in the bajaur district, near the border with afghanistan. Our pakistan correspondent, Caroline Davies has the latest,