The Levin Interviews

Former American Secretary of State, joint-winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for ending the Vietnam War, survivor of the Water-gate scandal, DR HENRY KISSINGER is a man of power and paradox. A consummate tactician, he combined ruthlessness with political vision, and played a major role in America's relations with the world during the Nixon years. Now he is out of power, critics are questioning the value of his long-term political achievements. Was he ' the man who balanced the world' or ' a man pedalling downhill fast through an earthquake, the wreckage closing in behind him'?

This year the dramatic tenor jon VICKERS celebrates his 25th season at Covent Garden. He started his working life as a businessman, and what makes his transformation all the more surprising is that he claims: ' I had no ambition to be a singer, and in honest truth I have no ambition to be a singer.' In constant demand in all the great opera houses of the world, his ability to reveal what motivates an operatic character has been described by Sir Colin Davis : Jon is a tremendous force. He's the only one who brings those obsessive operatic characters to life: Tristan, Florestan, Peter Grimes and Aeneas in The Trojans.'

DR JONAS SALK , discoverer of the Salk polio vaccine, is both a scientist and an idealist. He is currently involved in developing theories which suggest a positive alternative to the visions of nuclear holocaust and world starvation which haunt the 20th century. At the Salk Institute in California one of his major projects is promoting the exchange of ideas between science and the arts.

PETER BROOK has been fascinating and bewildering audiences for over 35 years, as a director of theatre, film, television and opera. Since his highly acclaimed production of A Midsummer Night's Dream in 1970, he has devoted his energies to setting up and experimenting with his International Centre of Theatre Research at the tiny Bouffes du Nord Theatre in Paris. In trying to discover a form that's totally new, and in constantly challenging accepted theatre conventions, his philosophy is: ' Never stop. It's a golden rule -one always stops as soon as something is about to happen.'

At 81, Pritchett still works from 9.0 to 5.0 every day of the week, weekends included, lest he should forget how to write. Preferring the ' darting glance ' of the short story to the novel, which he feels has to tell the reader everything, Pritchett has also written two brilliant autobiographies, A Cob at the Door and Midnight Oil.

Bernard Levin talks to Field Marshal Lord Carver who finished his Army career as Chief of Defence Staff, never intended to remain a soldier when he joined up. Considered a radical within the Army, he incurred a degree of unpopularity as a result of his pruning of the Territorial Army. Even in retirement he has not shunned controversy. He is a persistent critic of the Government's decision to buy the Trident nuclear missile system.

Like Lord Byron, LEONARD BERN STEIN awoke one morning to find himself famous. At 25 he substituted for Bruno Walter and conducted the New York Philharmonic entirely without rehearsal. Bernstein sees himself as a composer who conducts, and wants ' to keep on trying to be, in the full sense of that wonderful, word, a musician ... ' He has written everything from song-cycles to symphonies, but is probably still best known as the creator of West Side Story.

Editor-in-Chief of The Oxford English Dictionary, he has been variously described as the ' master lexicographer of our generation ' and ' the custodian of the English language '. He prefers to see himself as a marshaller of words, ' the study of which has turned out to be the central intellectual passion of my life'. The publication of the fourth volume of his life's work, the supplement to The Oxford English Dictionary, is due in 1985. It will stand at two million words, and will have taken nearly 30 years to complete.

Recognised as one of the greatest pianists in the world, Alfred Brendel is famous for his interpretations of the music of Beethoven. Mozart, Schubert and Liszt. Renowned for his scholarly attention to the musical text, he is often described as an ' intellectual pianist '. He qualifies this by saying that ' feeling must remain the alpha and omega of a musician'. At a less rarefied level, Brendel is known among his colleagues as a man who relishes a good joke.