1
00:01:07,320 --> 00:01:09,560
Do you have any heroes?

2
00:01:09,560 --> 00:01:12,800
Great men that you admire,
this side of idolatry?

3
00:01:14,520 --> 00:01:17,320
I don't believe in heroes.
I don't know.

4
00:01:17,320 --> 00:01:22,640
It's rather a feminine term,
I would suggest, Mag, heroes.

5
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I can imagine a woman having a hero,

6
00:01:24,680 --> 00:01:27,000
but I can't imagine
a man having a hero.

7
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There's something almost
indecent about it.

8
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All right.

9
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Tell me about the...men of greatness
in any field

10
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that you particularly admire.

11
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Well, I've had four,
four in the whole of my life, four.

12
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I've thought of this, actually,

13
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and have come to the conclusion that
of all the people I have known...

14
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..many have been able people,
some less able,

15
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but only four of them
could classify as geniuses.

16
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If you ask me to define the word
genius, I'm not going to attempt it.

17
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No, but tell me who the four are.

18
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The four are, well,
the late Winston Churchill,

19
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with whom I worked for a year.

20
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Who else? The painter,
Augustus John, whom I knew well.

21
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Sir Flinders Petrie,
the Egyptologist,

22
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whom I've known on and off
all my life.

23
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I went to see him
on his deathbed in Jerusalem.

24
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And fourthly, Sir Arthur Evans,

25
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the discoverer of the first
civilisation in Europe.

26
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Those four, I think those four,

27
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I can't think of anybody else in the
same class. They were all geniuses.

28
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They were all almost
superhuman people.

29
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They all had something that nobody
else that I can think of had.

30
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And if you want heroes,
if you want to call them hero,

31
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a beastly word,
you can apply it to them.

32
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But I should begin immediately
to find faults in all of them.

33
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Which wouldn't be difficult.

34
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Well, Flinders Petrie, for instance,
do you find fault with him?

35
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Anybody can find fault with
Sir Flinders Petrie.

36
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I tell you, he was a man who
focused his mind on whatever

37
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he was thinking about at the time
to the exclusion of everything else.

38
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For instance,
one of the first things he did

39
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when he went to Egypt
was to make a minutely accurate

40
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plan of the great pyramids,
which nobody had done before.

41
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Down to the fraction
of a millimetre. That kind of thing.

42
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He...

43
00:03:45,480 --> 00:03:49,200
But he... When he got an idea
in his head, that idea was there.

44
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And the curious thing
about the old man was this.

45
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I knew him well in the latter years.
That, for instance,

46
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he had his own ideas
about the chronology of Egypt,

47
00:03:59,320 --> 00:04:03,240
of the timetable of the Pharaohs
and so on.

48
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And his chronology
differed by 15 centuries or more,

49
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it varied,

50
00:04:08,760 --> 00:04:16,760
from any other chronology
in any university in Europe.

51
00:04:19,200 --> 00:04:22,160
He was almost a laughing stock.

52
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If he had been a lesser man,
he would have been laughed out,

53
00:04:25,480 --> 00:04:27,320
laughed off the stage.

54
00:04:27,320 --> 00:04:33,880
But no. To his dying day,
he was at least 15 centuries out.

55
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And he was so absolutely devoted
to his subject, right or wrong,

56
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that you felt, here is a devotee...

57
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..a man who in some mysterious way
belongs to his subject.

58
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He began in Egypt at a time when
Egyptology was in a very poor way.

59
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It was really he who started
the modern science of Egyptology

60
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at a time when it hadn't even
become the beginnings of a science.

61
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He had a methodical mind, however
wrong his conclusions might be,

62
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he threw off a whole number of ideas
which themselves produced

63
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other ideas.

64
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He pointed to the methods.

65
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And it was for others to shape
the method and to make it logical

66
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and productive.

67
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It was 1925, I remember vividly,

68
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that I first really got to know him
and his wife, Hilda.

69
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We had been in contact with one
another. He was back from the East.

70
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He wanted a holiday.

71
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He hadn't the faintest notion
of what the word holiday meant.

72
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I don't know much about that.

73
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But he and Hilda wanted to come
into the Welsh countryside.

74
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I was then, at the time
I think I was a thing called

75
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Director of the
Welsh National Museum,

76
00:05:56,520 --> 00:05:59,120
something of that sort,
and as a sideline

77
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I was digging up a Roman fort
near Brecon in South Wales.

78
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Before the end of the same week,
he and Hilda had

79
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arrived at my farmhouse
and they'd dug themselves in.

80
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Day by day, they went out
into the countryside.

81
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He'd set himself a holiday task,
he always had a task.

82
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His task was the task of recording
stone circles and stone cairns.

83
00:06:27,760 --> 00:06:30,560
I said to him,
"What instruments have you got?"

84
00:06:30,560 --> 00:06:34,080
"Ah-ha," he looked at me with
a smile of ineffable cunning.

85
00:06:35,680 --> 00:06:39,840
He produced a pea-stick,
a bamboo pea-stick,

86
00:06:39,840 --> 00:06:42,080
to hang peas on to, I suppose...

87
00:06:43,360 --> 00:06:47,280
..with one hand and a visiting card
from his pocket with the other.

88
00:06:47,280 --> 00:06:49,040
"They are my instruments.

89
00:06:49,040 --> 00:06:54,200
"I put the pea-stick in the ground
to show me where I'm going, and

90
00:06:54,200 --> 00:07:00,440
"I use the two sides of the visiting
card to give me a right angle.

91
00:07:00,440 --> 00:07:02,320
"That's how I work."

92
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And bless my soul,
at the end of the day,

93
00:07:04,480 --> 00:07:07,800
he came in with a notebook
full of figures.

94
00:07:07,800 --> 00:07:13,760
After dinner, in this farmhouse,
with its oil lamps,

95
00:07:13,760 --> 00:07:18,360
he sat by an oil lamp, produced
the figures and a logarithm table

96
00:07:18,360 --> 00:07:22,280
and worked it at all out in a
mysterious fashion known to himself.

97
00:07:22,280 --> 00:07:24,520
His was that kind of mind.

98
00:07:25,880 --> 00:07:28,800
A mind full of the most intricate

99
00:07:28,800 --> 00:07:32,200
and difficult solutions to
the most simple problems,

100
00:07:32,200 --> 00:07:36,880
and a simple mind when the problems
became really complicated.

101
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It was very interesting.
Interesting psychology.

102
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Well, we were together then.

103
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And later on
when I was establishing a,

104
00:07:46,360 --> 00:07:50,520
an Institute of Archaeology at
the University of London,

105
00:07:50,520 --> 00:07:55,440
he handed over to me
a sum, a considerable sum -

106
00:07:55,440 --> 00:07:59,680
£10,000, it was,
which was a lot in those days -

107
00:07:59,680 --> 00:08:02,440
Which had been given to him
for this sort of purpose,

108
00:08:02,440 --> 00:08:04,440
just handed it over to me.

109
00:08:04,440 --> 00:08:07,400
He said, "I'm going
to Palestine, to Jerusalem.

110
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"I can't pay your damn taxes
any longer.

111
00:08:10,120 --> 00:08:11,880
"I'm going to live in Jerusalem."

112
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And he went out to Jerusalem.

113
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"You might as well take this
before I go,"

114
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and he handed me £10,000.

115
00:08:17,400 --> 00:08:20,920
That showed that we had got
a rapport with one another.

116
00:08:20,920 --> 00:08:26,240
And from that point onwards, I went
ahead and founded this institute.

117
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And he went on to Jerusalem.

118
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I must tell you one little incident
that happened which rather

119
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showed that aspect of his mind
when he was staying with me

120
00:08:40,640 --> 00:08:43,520
in that farmhouse in Brecon,
in Wales.

121
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One morning, before he went out for
his day's tramp over the hills,

122
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he said, "I found a curious cairn
yesterday." Heap of stones, you see.

123
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"There's something about it
I don't understand.

124
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"Would you lend me a couple of your
men and we'll have a look at it?"

125
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I said, "Yes, of course, take them."

126
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So, he went off into the blue with
a couple of my workmen...

127
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..and for an hour or two,
all went quietly and well.

128
00:09:13,280 --> 00:09:16,000
And then one of these men came
running back with his eyes

129
00:09:16,000 --> 00:09:19,720
starting out. "Oh, sir, oh, sir!
Come with me, come with me!

130
00:09:19,720 --> 00:09:22,240
"There's a bull chasing
the gentleman,

131
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"a bull chasing the gentleman."

132
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And so I picked up a surveying pole,

133
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which was the only thing
accessible in the form of a weapon,

134
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and traipsed a mile
across the countryside behind

135
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this excited Welsh farm labourer.

136
00:09:39,160 --> 00:09:41,800
When I got to
the scene of operations, there was

137
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a sloping hill, with fields
stretching down it and two fields

138
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in particular with
a hedge between them

139
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which had been
carved off at the lower end

140
00:09:52,080 --> 00:09:55,040
so there was a way through from one
field to the other, you see?

141
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At the bottom of that hedge,
there was a flaming bull,

142
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almost visibly flaming.

143
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With its four legs stretched out
and flames, if you will,

144
00:10:08,440 --> 00:10:13,120
a very close approximation to
flames, coming out of its nostrils.

145
00:10:13,120 --> 00:10:17,280
And looking up the hedge, there
on one side was Flinders Petrie's

146
00:10:17,280 --> 00:10:21,400
magnificent grey beard sticking
out of the hedge.

147
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And on the other side was
Hilda's bottom,

148
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covered with thick riding cloth,
as she used to wear.

149
00:10:31,440 --> 00:10:33,280
I took a little step forward,
timidly,

150
00:10:33,280 --> 00:10:35,600
and then another step
timidly forward...

151
00:10:36,720 --> 00:10:39,120
..and when I got within about
ten feet of the bull,

152
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12 feet of the bull,

153
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it actually drew back one of its
four feet, and then the other one,

154
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and the battle was over.

155
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Over his shoulder I saw the farmer
coming in,

156
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rather irately into the field with
a pitchfork over his shoulder.

157
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He drove the bull off.
Down came, from the heights,

158
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came the beard and Hilda,
down the two sides of the hedge.

159
00:11:10,400 --> 00:11:15,760
And they, the farmer went up to
Petrie and said,

160
00:11:15,760 --> 00:11:17,680
"You ought not to be here, sir!

161
00:11:17,680 --> 00:11:19,520
"You ought not to be here!

162
00:11:19,520 --> 00:11:22,360
"This bull is dangerous."

163
00:11:22,360 --> 00:11:24,320
We'd gathered that.

164
00:11:24,320 --> 00:11:26,920
He drove the bull away with
a pitchfork.

165
00:11:26,920 --> 00:11:30,880
I tried to calm
the farmer by telling him that

166
00:11:30,880 --> 00:11:33,960
this was a very famous professor
who knew all about pyramids,

167
00:11:33,960 --> 00:11:36,760
he thought this might be a pyramid
and he wanted to look at it

168
00:11:36,760 --> 00:11:39,320
and so on. However...

169
00:11:39,320 --> 00:11:45,000
Eventually, the Petries went off
on the rest of their day's walk,

170
00:11:45,000 --> 00:11:48,000
or day's exploration,
and the bull went,

171
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or was driven back through the gate,
and I got back.

172
00:11:51,920 --> 00:11:54,120
But the point was this.

173
00:11:54,120 --> 00:11:56,800
This was characteristic
of the old gentleman.

174
00:11:58,120 --> 00:12:03,520
He never referred to the bull
incident again in his life.

175
00:12:03,520 --> 00:12:06,000
He was hardly conscious of
this little interruption

176
00:12:06,000 --> 00:12:08,120
in what he was doing.

177
00:12:09,520 --> 00:12:14,880
His mind was focused entirely upon
this heap of stones,

178
00:12:14,880 --> 00:12:18,120
simply a heap of stones
thrown there by the farmer. And...

179
00:12:19,800 --> 00:12:22,680
..neither at dinner that night,
nor ever again,

180
00:12:22,680 --> 00:12:24,600
was the incident referred to.

181
00:12:26,080 --> 00:12:29,880
He...
In fact, it had gone from his mind.

182
00:12:29,880 --> 00:12:35,360
His mind was perennially
focused on whatever he was doing.

183
00:12:35,360 --> 00:12:38,520
On the one subject,
and nothing else mattered.

184
00:12:39,720 --> 00:12:44,320
The last time I saw the old boy
was on his deathbed in Jerusalem

185
00:12:44,320 --> 00:12:46,520
in the first months of 1942.

186
00:12:47,920 --> 00:12:50,360
I happened at the time to
be doing some

187
00:12:50,360 --> 00:12:53,720
fieldwork of a non-archaeological
kind in Egypt

188
00:12:53,720 --> 00:12:56,600
and heard by the grapevine
that the old boy was dying,

189
00:12:56,600 --> 00:13:00,880
so I took 24 hours of leave,
drove across Sinai,

190
00:13:00,880 --> 00:13:06,880
in the course of which
my old staff car shed its track-rod

191
00:13:06,880 --> 00:13:10,720
and turned upside down. However,
crawled out again and got in somebody

192
00:13:10,720 --> 00:13:16,440
else's car, went on and got to
Jerusalem, to the hospital there.

193
00:13:16,440 --> 00:13:20,720
It was a haven of rest,
of peace and quiet.

194
00:13:20,720 --> 00:13:26,400
And in the little room, lying on
the bed outstretched, was the form

195
00:13:26,400 --> 00:13:30,400
that I knew
so well of dear old Petrie.

196
00:13:31,480 --> 00:13:34,160
With his magnificent profile

197
00:13:34,160 --> 00:13:39,240
and around his head
a sort of turban of white linen.

198
00:13:39,240 --> 00:13:43,560
It looked to me exactly what my
picture is of a Biblical patriarch.

199
00:13:43,560 --> 00:13:45,040
Well...

200
00:13:46,400 --> 00:13:49,360
He looked at me and smiled.

201
00:13:49,360 --> 00:13:53,560
And then he began talking,
talking at a great rate,

202
00:13:53,560 --> 00:13:58,800
as though he had a great deal to
say before, before the end came.

203
00:13:58,800 --> 00:14:01,840
He talked about bronze
implements in Mesopotamia,

204
00:14:01,840 --> 00:14:06,920
about the incidence of the malarial
mosquito in Gaza and so forth.

205
00:14:06,920 --> 00:14:11,120
His mind never rested, never rested
until the very last moment.