Quiet heroism

When did you last hear something on the TV that was so true, so direct, so resonant that it keeps popping back into your mind? If you’re anything like me you’ll have a struggle to remember anything.

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Stephen Pollard

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When did you last hear something on the TV that was so true, so direct, so resonant that it keeps popping back into your mind? If you’re anything like me you’ll have a struggle to remember anything. But change one word in that question from ‘TV’ to ‘radio’ and you might well be faced with another problem: too many moments of positive connection. On the Today programme last week, Captain Sully Sullenberger, the pilot who miraculously landed his US Airways plane on to the Hudson River, saving 155 people from certain death, gave extraordinary witness of his character. What struck me was not so much his calm, measured reflection on what happened that day but his understanding of how he had managed to react with such cool-headed precision. He said he felt fortunate that he had found his passion early on. He cared about his work. He cared a lot. He was willing to ‘work very hard at becoming expert at it’. ‘I never thought I would be tested like this,’ he told us, but he knew as his professional responsibility ‘I had to remain vigilant, never knowing whether I would be tested in this way or not’.

The interview sparked a discussion later in the week with Alexandra Shackleton, the granddaughter of the Antarctic explorer, and the defence correspondent Robert Fox on what it is to be a hero. Neither would accept that in our post-chivalric times we might need to change our understanding of the word. Both believed it should be distinguished from courage and used only when someone has by conscious choice put themselves in a position of extreme danger for someone else.