Molly Keane

Molly Keane0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

Molly Keane0:08

The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen ninety, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

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MY CASTAWY THIS Week is a novelist. She began writing in the early twenties, using a pseudonym to conceal her identity from her sporting friends. She wrote with great success about the Anglo Irish world in which she lived.

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She described with agonising accuracy the fading fortunes of its gentry eking out their lives in a mixture of poverty and snobbery behind the façade of the big house.

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Then, after a period in the early fifties as a successful West End playwright, she fell silent, to emerge under her real name twenty five years later as one of today's most highly acclaimed writers.

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So Desert Island Discs welcomes on the one hand the author of Full House and Loving Without Tears, MJ Farrell, and on the other the novelist whose book Good Behaviour just missed the Booker Prize in nineteen eighty one and who's also given us Time after Time and Loving and Giving. We recognize her to day as Molly Keane.

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Say, Molly, no no question of a pseudonym this second time around. You're now required to be famous. Do do you mind being famous?

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I never realized that I am. If I want to know, the one time I realized that I really was famous was when I came home to my fishing village in Ardmore, and the postman came to bring me my letters.

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And

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He put his arms round me and kissed me to congratulate me.

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Which really was very unexpected and absolutely enchanting. But do you enjoy being famous?

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At moments very much. Yes, and

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When people like that recognize me, I think, well, it must have got through, you know. How real was the need for the pseudonym the first time around? Well, my dear, I was growing up in the atmosphere of hunting, hunt balls. It was out entirely out of the literary world. My mother wrote

Molly Keane2:12

Yeah, I was

Presenter2:23

She wrote quite good poetry of the kind of rather Eva Gorbooth kind of poetry. You know, the little roads of Brefney go running through my heart. Well, my mother's was a damn sight better than that. But then why did you have to hide the fact that you were a writer? Why did you... Because her writing was classical.

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Vulgarity was her unfavourite word, and anything I wrote was incredibly vulgar. In what way was it vulgar? Mentioned love.

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So, if your friends and your mother had known that you were writing this stuff, what would have happened to you? Would you have been cast aside? Would have thought of.

Molly Keane2:56

And what might be cost aside?

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I would have been an unpopular girl. I'd have been ge the girl that went and dances and I was literally and I wasn't much sought after.

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So you took this name, M. J. Farrell. MJ Farrell, so that my books wouldn't, if they were ever published, wouldn't be recognized as Molly Screen. That was before I married and before I was Molly Keene.

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And the story goes that you picked up that name from a a pub sign, an inn sign, is that right? Yes, from some riding home from hunting, one often stopped and had a booze up with a chub. And it was some some pub marked MJ Farrell. I thought, well, that's so far away from me that that'll do fine. Within this society of your youth you rode very well, but they obviously were a hunting, shootin', fishing crowd. I mean, could c can you could you do any of those kinds h do you have any of those kinds of skills?

Molly Keane3:44

Can you could you do

Presenter3:49

Well, you know, sort of the riding was my chief one. I was brought up on a salmon river and I was never very good at it. So so you're not going to be able to fend for yourself on our desert island?

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I'm not in that way. No, I'm not.

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What about music?

Molly Keane4:04

Music

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Did the society you lived in teach you anything at all about that? Well, when I was very young, we had I had this mad arm.

Molly Keane4:07

Well please I

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who was the only one who had any sort of music, and she used to vary her music to us between a tune called Yip I Addie I A I A and Mozart.

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She really was she was very brilliant and very unkind. So is there a piece of music that that you could take to your desert island that would remind you of your aunt, of this aunt? Not that I want to remind her, just it'd remind me I'd escape from her.

Molly Keane4:31

Mind me a

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Um well that would have been

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So something she always called the tune in F played by Arthur Rubenstein.

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Arto Rubinstein playing part of Chopin's Baccarolle, Opus Sixty, and memories of Aunt Bijoux, wasn't it, Molly? Yes.

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Now there were five of you children altogether, I think. Did you have any respect for your elders, or did you make their lives hell? Well, we saw terribly little of them.

Molly Keane5:50

Z

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When we were very young, we had to have great respect for Nanny, because she was the power.

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And my father I didn't know and and and and just didn't know at all. And what about your mother?

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When I was a child I was very

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I adored her. I was very under her influence. I didn't see that one saw nothing of her, and that one was pretty neglected.

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She had no experience or knowledge or feeling about children. She should never have had children, much less five. The mothers in your books are rather heartless, really often quite cruel people.

Molly Keane6:33

Uh Uh

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My mother was ignorant. She wasn't heartless, but she minded terribly. And when I went the ra wrong way and

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News of the

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The sort of amusing people the use amusing people wanted to know me that she didn't know.

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She was very frightened, rather like a mum today would be frightened of someone they thought someone was joining the drug group.

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which that wasn't such a thing.

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And well in my early days women girls generally didn't drink drink very much. But as the time went on a bit, it's always a theory that Trenties girls know never went to bed with anybody. It just isn't true.

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But it was discreetly done. It was very discreetly done, and I don't think one ever told one's best friend what was happening.

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Did you think it was frightfully naughty and frightfully wild of you?

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When I can only talk about myself, I thought I'd discovered the greatest thing.

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which I really had.

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You obviously in your life found great love, but going back to um your childhood, did you feel very loved as a little girl?

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No, I didn't. I felt that I was the unattractive and I think rather the unloved child because I was a liar and I was affected and I think that I was very much a Molly Mitty, like Walter Mitty. I grew my families and my excitements in my head. And I'm not at all sure that that wasn't what

Molly Keane7:56

Yeah.

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in a way made me a writer.

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because I had families and things in my own head really from the time I was six. When then I went to school much too late, I think I was in fourteen or thirteen, and I was hated.

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Why?

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I I don't know why, I just didn't have what what said

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anybody going then. And all the girls, I don't know what they thought about me. And another thing was my I had a my sister Susan, who had a miserable life, and she was tremendously literary minded, and I think she imbued me in things like literature, which weren't a bit popular.

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Let's pause there and have that second record, shall we?

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I'd like to have green sleeves because

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It was a pure recollection of the country home I had left.

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when I was condemned for

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Two years to this prison outside Dublin.

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when nobody loved me and everybody hated me and I suppose the strong sort of romance in it was valuable to me.

Speaker 39:07

It will rest in that singing Who angels create with love from swing It was sharp as

Molly Keane9:18

Leave it without consuming

Speaker 39:28

This, this is Christ the He, who shall but worship angels here.

Speaker 39:41

Faithful Living praise the ring the sun.

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Greensleeves played by James Galway with the B B C singers.

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Which reminded Molly Keene of home when sent away to boarding school. But you had lots of governesses, didn't you, Molly? Oh, well, a string of governesses. I had One of them knew less than the last. They rarely except this wonder woman who came. I don't know how my mother got her, but she absolutely took charge of everything. She was

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Heaven, she was so amusing She cured the dogs of mange she cured my li one of my little brothers of eczema.

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We adored her. She was called Miss Belle. Was she the one who told you about the evil knowledge?

Speaker 310:35

Yeah.

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enormously so. She told everything in the m really in the most clear cut, accepted way, you know, this is it, you know, and explained it all. And I protest that

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My father and mother couldn't do that. They couldn't do a filthy thing like that. Oh, couldn't they? she said.

Molly Keane10:56

Help!

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And it changed my feeling towards them very much. And I remember seeing them sitting one on each side of a lamp.

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Daddy reading Horse and Hound and my mother was looking at a book of poetry, I should think, and I thought they can't have.

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It's too filthy, they can't have because they had been sort of rather holy to me.

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And did you tell them that you knew?

Molly Keane11:21

Uh

Presenter11:23

It was deadly till I guilt seized me Oh, it must have been

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months later, because that was in the winter, and this was summer holidays and my father had gone away shooting somewhere, and my mother used to hear our prayers at night in with the window still in her bedroom.

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And I

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I was seized by the most awful guilt and

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An absolute agony to tell all and get it out of my mind. And my dear, I tried for hours and hours, and she wouldn't listen.

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And finally the terrible words came out and what do you think they were?

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She told us about babies being born.

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That was all.

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What I nothing about and she told us exactly what put the babies there, too.

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She was absolutely shocked, but I think the the thing was that I think now was rather shocking. My father suddenly arrived back, and she just wanted to go down and talk to him. Forget this. And she flew.

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And I was left sitting on the windowsill with all that still in my head. And what happened to Miss Bell?

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She was fad for having told you the facts in life.

Speaker 312:28

Do I

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The end.

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How did you feel when that happened? Oh, miserable. It was a dreadful sort of fascist one after that. Oh, how I missed Miss Bell

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There are lots of governesses in i in your books and they're often rather rather tragic figures actually. I think they were. They had a terrible time.

Molly Keane12:43

Uh

Presenter12:46

Let's have your third piece of music.

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Well now that really belonged to a

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That when I first

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I had my first

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It wasn't just terribly innocent sex, but it was a wonderful, wonderful change.

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We all went to stay in an uncle's house.

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Much

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More glamorous house than ours in the fourth. And everything was.

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Oh, it was so different one was so free, one was so liked the cousins were little tiny bit older, were so adorable to one.

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Oh, they were and I remember after dinner we would go to the dark drawing room.

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After lunch with a wind-up grammar phone.

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and we would dance and dance and dance, and I had another a cousin called Archer.

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Who? I don't think he r fancied me in a way, I suppose. He taught me to dance, and I thought it was quite wonderful. And I think that was whispering while you cabbled near me.

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But oh dear, it was it was really bliss.

Speaker 313:48

You're whispering just wide wheel

Speaker 313:54

With spring just wild never green

Molly Keane14:01

You'll never read.

Speaker 314:04

Well as Marsal I do believe

Speaker 314:12

Whisper that I love.

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Where is

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That was Denny Dennis and the Whisperers singing, Whispering.

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When was it, Molly, that that you felt you wanted to write, that you you weren't deterred by this lack of education and you were going to write something? Well, it was after I left school.

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And

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I was sick.

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I don't know, I had some sort of bug and they thought I had T B. The only cure for T B was to put me to bed. And I was put to bed and told I had to stay there. And I had nothing to do, so that was when Molly Mittie came to the fore. And I wrote this terrible book. All every page I thought I was more like misses Shakespeare. And when it was actually bought and published, I just

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Well my feet left the crown. What was it called? It was called oh, it was such some terrible meal. I'm so terrified that Viraga will find it.

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They haven't found it yet, thank God.

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It was called The Night of Cheerful Countenance. What was it about? It was a very innocent hunting story.

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With a lot of love in it.

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Love and confounded love too.

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And who published it? Middles and Boone. But of course. It wasn't a bit dirty, it was just absolute slight.

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And then I somehow is picked out of all that by Billy Collins.

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And of course that was magic. But you you left your parents' home, didn't you? You you went in search of I went into this divine house in Tipperary. Well

Molly Keane15:40

Went in search of something.

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They loved media and love was what I wanted.

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And what took me away from it was really the old man, a wonderful old, famous old man called Willy Perry, who owned the house and took a great fancy to me and thought he was going to be a great sugar daddy, as indeed he was, providing horses and everything. But he had the most divine wife called Dolly. Oh, Dolly was wonderful, and she'd been tremendous in the hunting world and and they had this son, Johnny Perry, you see, who made me write the plays.

Presenter16:14

So he became a sort of collaborator here. What was the first play you wrote that was a success? A spring meeting. And what was that about? The very first play I ever wrote.

Molly Keane16:21

Yeah.

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to play about the intricacies of one's own young life.

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And it was a great success. It was actually an incredible success.

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And wasn't Margaret Rutherford in it? She was the marvel of it. I mean, you might really say she took London.

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You know, she'd never been in a fanny piece before.

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And this was I I must say, even I never really look at things I've written, but once or twice I've had a glance at that play when someone has asked me about it. And I do see that it was a very good comedy. I mean, even old Agate gave it tremendous plays.

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So it you know what he was like.

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Well, he compared you to Noel Coward, didn't he? He said you were an impish young girl, and you could uh could well rival Coward and

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Yes, he did, which of course was absolute nonsense.

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John Gielgood directed your plays, if you'd like to.

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Darling Johnny oh, but he was so perfect and wonderful. He had

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He had utter genius, I think. People often crab him as a director. But because he had such speed, I think it was, he could be quite firm.

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Now, darling.

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Could we have a funny line here to morrow morning? Well, Johnny, I'll try. Sat up all night. Thought I'd produced a funny line, brought it to Johnny in the morning. Oh, well

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Is that a funny line, darling? Not very funny, is it, darling?

Presenter17:46

But you enjoyed yourself, nevertheless.

Molly Keane17:48

No exactly.

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And you'd got married in the meantime, haven't you? After it, I did.

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This was Bobby Keane. Was he a was he an aspiring writer too? No, no, not at all. Far from it. He was just a country fellow.

Molly Keane17:55

He is.

Presenter18:01

And did you fall for Bobby the minute you saw him?

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Very nearly as it was very nearly like that.

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He was the most enchanting creature.

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And he had a brain, too.

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And did he pursue you from the start?

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Yes, I think he did.

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I did my share too.

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Oh, he was a darling creature.

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Let's have some more music then. What do we have now?

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The Savoyophans playing the Charleston. Well, now that rather belongs to the dancing days when we all learnt that terrible Charleston and ruined our legs.

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holding on to the dining room chair and practising with it as a partner.

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A Savoy Orpheans playing The Charleston.

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So they were, Molly, um, married, running your own house and you had your own servants and you had your two children, I think, by then, Virginia and Sally. Only Sally,'cause Virginia

Presenter19:18

It was born just the year before Bobby died. There was a long gap.

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Now he died terribly suddenly, didn't he?

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Had he been ill?

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No, they've had a thing wrong with him and

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Suddenly we were I was in London about to do a play with Gilbert Miller was about to do a play, which seemed pretty big then. We were both there. Someone had lent us a rich flat.

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And um we were there the night we arrived he was suddenly taken over.

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But these you know sort of such pain as this one doesn't one can't remember. It was a burst you deal.

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From nowhere.

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And and he was taken away and I was well, I mean to say I just sat up clearing up all the

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mess of tiles and bladdons and everything.

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When the telephone rang they said the operation's over and it's completely successful.

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It really was unbelievable. It was I don't know, your feet again left the ground, it was too much.

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That was fine.

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For a week he was supposed to be getting better and better and so on.

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And he was even supposed to be coming out and I came to

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See him one morning.

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When I was supposed to be going to do a thing with Gilbert Milan, I thought I'm going to see Bobby first.

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walked gaily into the nursing home to tell them, and was met by the matron, who said, You must be very brave, misses Keene, your husband's dead.

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Just that it it's really awful. Worst thing. Incredibly heartless.

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I know. I don't know what she was to do, but still she had to say.

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How old was he?

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That is them.

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And were were the children much affected or were they too young? Virginia was much too young.

Molly Keane21:02

Seven.

Presenter21:04

But Sally, I think, had made a frightful change in her life.

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because she absolutely adored him.

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I, like a fool, didn't let her cry and howl, or cowl to cry and howl with her. I thought that was bad. No, I gave her the best time I could. I took her to Switzerland to ski. I bought her a new pony. I

Molly Keane21:21

Yeah.

Presenter21:23

I did everything when I should have just stayed at home and cried with her.

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He one does make such terrible mistakes.

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You've written since that you were catapulted into a different and more responsible life.

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What did you mean by that?

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Well I had to cope with money.

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I had to make all the decisions about the children and about where we lived and what we were going to do.

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It wasn't a dull life altogether. People were terribly kind to me and I had great great great many friends. But it was obviously all a terrible struggle for you. Oh, it was bad after bad.

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And is that really then the main reason in the end that the writing had to stop? I think so. I was too shocked and disturbed.

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But then after all

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In about five or six years' time I thought I must try and I wrote this other play.

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with John too, Johnny and John Gilgard directed it and

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And it worked. I can't think how I remember sitting there.

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Thinking I must be with the children, looking after them and amusing them, and thinking, Well, what am I what am where am I going for money if I don't do this?

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And was it a success? Yes, it was. It made quite a lot of money.

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Then came the next one, and that flopped.

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So silence set in for um MJ Farrell. So silence set in. I may have I think perhaps I wrote a book, but not very exciting.

Presenter22:53

Let's have your fifth record there, Molly.

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Hen is from heaven.

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Why would you like that?

Presenter23:00

It just belonged to the period, I think. It belonged to sort of period when the Charleston was beginning, didn't it?

Speaker 323:07

Every time it rains, it rains Pennies from Heaven Don't you know each cloud contains Pennies from Heaven You find your fortunes falling all over town

Speaker 323:32

Be sure that you're um

Presenter23:35

Bob Eberley singing Pennies from Heaven with Jimmy Dorsey and his orchestra. It it's difficult to um understand, Molly, what you, a woman of so much talent and energy, then did for those next twenty-five years. Did you simply focus on that? I saw a lot of my friends, I stayed with my friends, I I had the children growing up.

Molly Keane23:49

Exactly.

Speaker 323:49

Uh

Molly Keane23:49

Yeah.

Presenter23:58

and getting their new their their first jobs, and I bought a little left Ireland, to my horror, and bought a little house on Barnes Common.

Presenter24:06

And I felt it was my business to cook and do things like that. And it wasn't an easy time, because children of that age are never easy.

Presenter24:14

You mention your cooking and and you simply have to be a splendid cook because you talk about food with such relish in in your life.

Molly Keane24:22

But I think

Presenter24:24

Jolly well and I made I only started when I was about forty because that was when um everything went

Presenter24:32

You're obviously though, Molly, a um a very resourceful person, a a survivor. Does that mean you'll survive on the desert island? Will you find food and create something out of nothing?

Molly Keane24:40

Uh

Speaker 324:40

It's something out of nothing.

Molly Keane24:40

Oh.

Presenter24:41

I dread snakes, and I thought I had a way round that.

Presenter24:46

But I thought for my luxury present

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I'd have a bed that could be outdoors or indoors.

Presenter24:53

and would be absolutely netted.

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from snakes and anything that flies.

Presenter25:00

Oh, you can have that. Can I help that? Yes, that's entirely permissible. Could you escape? Would you want to escape? If I met a lovely native who would row me away, I'd give him anything to do it. Not that he'd want anything from me, but So you wouldn't you wouldn't look forward then to all those long empty hours in which to write?

Molly Keane25:11

Maybe but

Presenter25:17

No

Presenter25:18

I wouldn't. I think I'd look forward to long empty hours to have a rest from writing. But do you actually like writing? No, I hate it.

Molly Keane25:24

Night

Presenter25:26

So

Presenter25:27

It's really

Presenter25:28

Tremendously hard work. So when you wake up in the morning and you know you really ought to write that day, does your heart sink? Do you have a job to persuade yourself to settle down to doing it? Yes, I have to keep my certain discipline or I'm lost.

Presenter25:42

And is it possible to sum up, Molly, what it is you want to achieve in your writing?

Presenter25:47

Obviously, m much of it is lyrical and beautiful and very moving, but there's another part, isn't there? There's a part of you that's really

Presenter25:55

quite sharp. Do you ever set out to be cruel when you um

Presenter26:00

describe the the pathetic love of the governess for the master of the house or the uh the awful humiliation when the the the the sister who is a kleptomaniac is exposed in front of her brothers and sisters

Molly Keane26:01

Yeah.

Molly Keane26:06

Yeah.

Presenter26:12

Desperately sorry for her.

Presenter26:15

I'm terribly sorry.

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My heart bleeds. And yet you've created them. Yes.

Presenter26:22

But I think there's got to be a bit of heart's blood, whether it's nasty or nice, i in any worth.

Presenter26:28

Let's have another record. What's this one to be?

Presenter26:31

I'd like to hear two of the voices.

Presenter26:35

It pleased me more than any that

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have ever spoken to me.

Presenter26:39

One is Peggy Ashcrofts, and the other is John Gielgood.

Speaker 226:43

I do love nothing in the world so well as you.

Speaker 226:49

Is not that strange?

Presenter26:52

As strange as the thing I know not.

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It was possible for me to say, I love nothing so well as you.

Presenter27:00

But believe me not.

Presenter27:02

And yet I lie not, I I confess nothing or I deny nothing.

Presenter27:06

I'm sorry for my cousin Pi.

Speaker 327:08

What?

Speaker 227:08

I saw Beatrice, thou lov'st me

Speaker 327:10

Do not swear and eat it.

Speaker 227:12

I will swear by it that you love me, and I'll make him eat it that swears I love not you.

Speaker 327:15

Will you not eat your word?

Speaker 227:17

With no source that can be devised to it, I protest I love thee.

Presenter27:21

Well then God forgive me.

Speaker 227:22

What offence, sweet Beatrice?

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You have stayed me in a happy hour.

Presenter27:27

I was about to protest.

Presenter27:29

I loved you.

Speaker 227:30

and do it with all thy heart.

Presenter27:33

I love you with so much of my heart.

Presenter27:36

That is not left to protest.

Presenter27:38

That was Peggy Ashcroft and John Gielgood as Beatrice and Benedict, for Much Ado About Nothing. It was Peggy Ashcroft, Molly, wasn't it, who played really a rather leading role in your rebirth as a novelist, as it were.

Molly Keane27:40

John

Presenter27:51

Well, indeed. I mean, you see, I wrote a book called

Presenter27:56

good behaviour and I just sort of I hid it in drawers. I was ashamed. I thought it's like writing your first book and no one's going to see or a failure. I didn't tell the children or anything about it.

Presenter28:08

And then uh Peggy came to save, which she sometimes, very rarely does, love oh, I love her.

Presenter28:15

and had bad flu.

Presenter28:17

When she was recovering, wanted something to read and said, Maul, haven't you got anything you've written lately? and I said,

Presenter28:23

No, Peg, nothing except what's absolutely hopeless and I'm not going to let you see it. It's dreadful. She said, Oh, well, just let me have a look at it.

Presenter28:30

And I got it out and thought, well, it's jolly worth her opinion anyway.

Presenter28:35

and she was really mad about it.

Presenter28:38

She really was.

Presenter28:40

So in nineteen eighty one Good Behaviour was finally published and it was an enormous success, wasn't it?

Molly Keane28:44

It was an in

Presenter28:48

Were you

Presenter28:49

A little bit cross that it didn't win the Booker Prize.

Presenter28:52

disappointed, who know I have no opinion of myself, so I thought it was amazing to get on the book Alice. But of course I was disappointed, because so many people who ought to have known told me it was bound to, you know.

Presenter29:03

And so many people still do rather say it.

Presenter29:06

We've had two more novels from you since then. We've had time after time and loving and giving. Are there more novels in you yet, Molly? Have you more than that?

Molly Keane29:06

Which kind of thing?

Molly Keane29:08

And two

Presenter29:18

Sue, if I have the strength and the quickness of brain.

Presenter29:23

Talents to amused, I've tried it.

Presenter29:25

It'll be rather funny to write a bo

Presenter29:28

Not not a jokey book, but an amusing book about old age.

Presenter29:32

I m ought to know about that now, shouldn't I?

Presenter29:35

I think people will have gathered that you are well into your ages.

Molly Keane29:39

Mm-hmm.

Presenter29:40

Does it frustrate you then, your old age?

Presenter29:45

But if you wrote about age, would it be a funny book?

Presenter29:49

I'd only write it more or less as a funny book.

Presenter29:52

The way people talk to each other.

Presenter29:55

And you still always do you see the funny side of everything, or do you

Presenter29:59

become grimmer with age.

Presenter30:02

when I don't know ought more merciful

Presenter30:07

We'll assume more understanding of what's behind it.

Presenter30:11

I mean, I a very, very black thing happened to me in my life.

Presenter30:15

'Twas blacker than black.

Presenter30:16

and I'd never, ever, ever write it.

Presenter30:19

Because I'm very fond of the children of them.

Presenter30:22

perpetrators of the blackness

Presenter30:25

And I can understand the blackmouth. I have understanding of why they treated me like that.

Presenter30:32

Well, that's not unmerciful.

Presenter30:36

Let's have record number seven.

Presenter30:42

That I thought was a

Presenter30:43

Adela star, whose friend

Presenter30:46

Fredstaire's wonderful sister.

Presenter30:49

It's one of her dancing records, Lady Be Good.

Presenter30:52

Fredge was the stooge in that early days.

Presenter30:55

And they had this wonderful mother, who I knew well, old misses Estair.

Presenter31:28

George Gershwin's Lady Be Good.

Presenter31:31

Molly, you're someone who quite obviously inspires an awful lot of love in people. I remember our mutual friend Russell Harty describing you as one of life's radiators, the sort of person that people took warmth from.

Presenter31:44

Are you are you a collector of people?

Presenter31:47

I I've had a terrible lot of people that I've been very fond of. I don't mean lovers because I haven't had so many. I wish I'd had more, but I've had a few.

Presenter31:56

But I love people.

Presenter31:58

And I am terribly interested in them, and I always want to give them what I have, whatever I have.

Presenter32:04

But does it mean that all of these people constantly drop by? Are they constantly dropping in on you? And can you suffer? I do have a good many s southern fans who I welcome but I could do without, you know. But I think as I'm very greedy, that it's a shame to turn down fans who could go back and buy a book. Where do you live then these days, Dan? I live dead in the country in a little fishing village that's toppling over the cliff into the sea, and I'm on top of the cliff.

Presenter32:33

So quite a cosy little house, but it's not the big h it's not the big graciousness.

Presenter32:38

But you love it, nevertheless. Oh, I love it. I wouldn't go back to the big graciousness for anything.

Presenter32:43

And neither would you forsake Ireland, would you? No, I wouldn't.

Presenter32:47

I love Ireland. I I I don't think I'd ever leave it.

Presenter32:50

There's something so near one.

Presenter32:53

And you see I've lived in it since I was born.

Presenter32:56

You live, um, as you said, high on a cliff above the sea. Do you look out across the sea? Bang, yes, you look straight into the sea. And how important is all of that to you, the the the sea, is that? Oh, yes, I do. I love it.

Presenter33:09

I love it specially too when I've got someone to enjoy it with.

Presenter33:13

It's slightly saddening because you've got no one to throw, isn't it wonderful too?

Presenter33:18

But at the same time it eats me up and it probably is better for giving me i ideas.

Presenter33:23

I think we should have your last record there.

Presenter33:26

Danny Boy

Presenter33:28

It's called the Londonderry Air. I think if I was on that desert island that it would give me such an

Presenter33:35

Great breathful of al

Presenter33:38

that it would bring Ireland into my raised netted bed.

Speaker 333:41

Oh Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are holding.

Speaker 333:50

From glen to glen and down the mountain side The summer's gone and all the flowers are dying'Tis you,'tis you must go And I must die.

Speaker 334:16

But come you back when summer's in the meadows Or when the world is hushed and white

Presenter34:33

Benjamin Luxon singing Danny Boy.

Presenter34:38

Well, now, Molly, you you must choose one of those records which which you must have above all others.

Presenter34:45

that I wouldn't sick of me. What about Chopin's banker roll?

Presenter34:50

I mean, I'm not musical, I know.

Presenter34:53

I see it's not really the one I'm I'm very fond of green sleeves. Do you think it'd be awfully common to ask for that?

Presenter34:59

I don't think so at all. No, I think I'm not sure.

Molly Keane35:01

Yeah.

Presenter35:02

We know what your your luxury is, which is your netted bed, which sounds very grand and luxurious. Um what about the book? I'd like a bound copy.

Presenter35:13

of the spectators.

Presenter35:15

Because I'd be educated in literature, in the theatre, in politics, and I've had no education in my life. But I mean, I'd be content with, I think, from nineteen hundred.

Presenter35:28

From nineteen hundred. I'm quite sure, Molly, that I shouldn't allow it, but I'm not going to say no, because I can't.

Presenter35:33

I shall simply say, Molly Keene, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Molly Keane35:46

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists Archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.