He was accused of listening too much to the ‘wrong people’, of being ‘too deferential’, not judgmental enough. Sometimes those he interviewed afterwards said that he was like ‘a ferret’, who pried too deeply into their lives, ‘looking for the facts that he wanted’. But Tony Parker, who died in 1996, gave a voice to those who were not usually heard or cared about. He made their lives sound special, individually important. In books such as Life After Life, The People of Providence, Lighthouse and Red Hill he opened up the lives of murderers, working people on a south-east London estate, lighthouse-keepers and miners, telling their stories in their own words. On Archive on 4 on Saturday, that other ‘great listener’ Alan Dein looked back on Parker’s work to find out how he did it. How did he get thieves to let slip their wallet-lifting methods? Why did murderers tell him about their awful past lives in such a frank but totally unsentimental way? What made repeat offenders explain to him, without pity, how shutting people up in institutions for even just a month or two will change them, ‘and not for the better’?
Little archive footage now remains of Parker’s own voice, but on Saturday we heard him explaining his technique.
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