Also see
Daw Suu's Speech, the Video
"Your Majesties, Your Royal Highness, Excellencies, Distinguished members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Dear Friends,
Long years ago, sometimes it seems many lives ago, I was at
Oxford listening to the radio programme Desert Island Discs with my
young son Alexander. It was a well-known programme (for all I know it
still continues) on which famous people from all walks of life were
invited to talk about the eight discs, the one book beside the bible and
the complete works of Shakespeare, and the one luxury item they would
wish to have with them were they to be marooned on a desert island. At
the end of the programme, which we had both enjoyed, Alexander asked me
if I thought I might ever be invited to speak on Desert Island Discs.
“Why not?” I responded lightly. Since he knew that in general only
celebrities took part in the programme he proceeded to ask, with genuine
interest, for what reason I thought I might be invited. I considered
this for a moment and then answered: “Perhaps because I’d have won the
Nobel Prize for literature,” and we both laughed. The prospect seemed
pleasant but hardly probable.
(I cannot now remember why I gave that answer, perhaps because I
had recently read a book by a Nobel Laureate or perhaps because the
Desert Island celebrity of that day had been a famous writer.)
In 1989, when my late husband Michael Aris came to see me during my
first term of house arrest, he told me that a friend, John Finnis, had
nominated me for the Nobel Peace Prize. This time also I laughed. For an
instant Michael looked amazed, then he realized why I was amused. The
Nobel Peace Prize? A pleasant prospect, but quite improbable! So how did
I feel when I was actually awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace? The
question has been put to me many times and this is surely the most
appropriate occasion on which to examine what the Nobel Prize means to
me and what peace means to me.
As I have said repeatedly in many an interview, I heard the news
that I had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on the radio one evening.
It did not altogether come as a surprise because I had been mentioned as
one of the frontrunners for the prize in a number of broadcasts during
the previous week. While drafting this lecture, I have tried very hard
to remember what my immediate reaction to the announcement of the award
had been. I think, I can no longer be sure, it was something like: “Oh,
so they’ve decided to give it to me.” It did not seem quite real because
in a sense I did not feel myself to be quite real at that time.
