Sir Eduardo Paolozzi

Speaker 20:00

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.

Speaker 20:08

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

Presenter0:29

My castaway this week is a sculptor. Born the son of Italian immigrants, he was brought up above his parents' ice cream shop in Edinburgh. Being enthusiastic fascists, they would send their son home every year for a stint at youth camp, an experience which he enjoyed but which earned him vilification and internment when war broke out in nineteen forty. Out of these inauspicious beginnings grew a love of art. He studied at the Slade, where he found the teaching doctrinaire and fled to the freedom of Paris and the world of Picasso, Brac, and Giacometti.

Presenter1:00

Now established as one of the great European artists of our day he was one of the founders of pop art he's widely admired as an innovator in both technique and subject matter. Unconventional but brilliant he has designed works as diverse as cooling tower panels in Pimlico, a school playground in Cologne, and glass mosaic murals for Tottenham Court Road tube station. At the moment he's working on a huge sculpture of Sir Isaac Newton. He is Sir Eduardo Paolozzi. Do do you use the title, Sir Eduardo?

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi1:32

Uh only if if it's necessary, only if one's trying to be correct and after a certain age you're asked to be, as I am, Tussie of the Portrait Gallery.

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi1:42

And it seems to be necessary sometimes for decision making. I think when you get a knighthood rather late in life, it doesn't really mean an enormous amount.

Presenter1:52

But it's useful.

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi1:53

It's useful.

Presenter1:54

Tell me how you begin, I mean, where you begin when the authorities of an international airport or of an English cathedral get in touch with you and ask you to create something to enhance their space. How do you start?

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi2:06

It's very difficult at times to visualize it. I mean, if it's something like half a kilometre and so on, the best thing you can do is make models. And you make tiny models and then you go up to a working size. And you have to do all that if you're going to have costs and timing. So that slightly lies out the province of just being the classical artist, working entirely on his own efforts in the studio.

Presenter2:30

And do you listen to music as you work? Do you need music to work on?

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi2:33

Sometimes I hate the idea of noble music being uh just a background. I really like to perhaps have a long period of silence working, because I think the noise of working and the street noises are very nice.

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi2:46

When I lived in Berlin,

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi2:48

We used to

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi2:50

have no music at all, but we used to listen to it properly in the evening when we used to have a pause.

Presenter2:56

And when you have a pause on your desert island and you sit and you ponder on life and what the future might hold or might not hold, what sort of music will you need about you then?

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi3:03

Where is

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi3:07

Well, I'm hoping that one of the my luxuries might be a musical instrument so I could actually play the kind of music that

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi3:15

that I dream about.

Presenter3:17

So what's the first record, apart from your musical instrument, what's the first record you'd put on the old wind-up gramophone on the island?

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi3:23

Well, it would be a record I've had which has become part of my life for some bizarre reason. And it's a record which represents to me a golden period in the in jazz. I go to a lot of the jazz clubs and it this particular sound reminds me of Ronnie Scott where I sometimes find time to go.

Presenter4:41

The Lenny Niehaus Octet and Have You Met Miss Jones? Can you describe your studio to me? I mean, they say it's full of.

Presenter4:48

paraphernalia of junk of bits and pieces that Appeal to you.

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi4:53

I'm very

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi4:54

I'm very selective about the kind of junk and a f a fair amount is basic

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi4:59

junk like wood, which I can recycle and use for reliefs.

Presenter5:04

But this is wood collected off skips and rubbish.

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi5:06

Yes, with this um kind of growing London, there's an amazing amount of uh skips with wonderful wood, which would cost quite a lot of money if you had to buy it.

Presenter5:16

What other sort of junk is there in your studio?

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi5:19

Well, at one time I found a large piano, which I sort of broke down and used, boiled and transformed a lot of the elements, which I made into a big relief for blind people.

Presenter5:30

But you also like trash for trash's sake, do you? You like things because they're cheap and nasty.

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi5:36

Not really, but I think cheap and nasty is something that uh has to be thought about. I mean people are now writing books about rubbish. And I did for a museum in Munich, I did um Raft of the Medusa, full size, and the raft was floating on a sea of rubbish. I think rubbish is very much um

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi5:58

a thing to be considered as as equally important. But we all define rubbish in our own kind of ways. I mean, a great deal of the normal world, I think, is rubbish and is expendable. There's a paradox there. But all creativity is involved with paradoxes.

Presenter6:15

Shall we have your second record there? What's that?

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi6:19

That said Eddie Sassen Django Reinhardt. And this is a record that my uncle used to have. And it's a record which to me is about my three uncles, who were the second generation of these Scottish Italians. All our parents belonged to the old world, and they come all from villages. And they brought their village culture with them. And the boys, like my uncles and myself, we had to live in two worlds at once, which wasn't a problem. But they were all rather naughty. They used to do naughty things like date Scottish girls, which was forbidden.

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi6:56

And they also were great makers, like my father, they all made things. And one of my uncles was a great guitar player. And this was my first exposure to hearing.

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi7:07

a certain kind of jazz music, and he could actually play part of it.

Presenter8:12

Django Reinhart with Eddie South and Sweet Georgia Brown, and memories of Scotland and the Ice Cream Shop. Tell me about the ice cream, were you involved in the making of it?

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi8:21

Yes, I used to I mean my father is a wonderful man and but he was a peasant which meant that

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi8:28

I had to rather live the life that he had as a boy, which meant that he helped his father, I had to help him. So when I used to come back from.

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi8:37

Fortunately, a very, very good school. I would put on a white coat and serve ice cream with him. Because it was ice cream, summertime was very intense. And he used to make the ice cream. The beginnings are are like an enormous custard, made in exactly the same way. If he was making the custard downstairs, my mother and I would be upstairs serving the ice creams.

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi9:00

And during the winter, when things slackened off a bit, he was a great maker and he used to spend winters making radios, so from a very early age.

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi9:09

I was lucky. He made a little one-valve radio for me, so I was listening to the wireless quite a lot.

Presenter9:15

Was there a big Italian community in Edinburgh?

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi9:18

There was an enormous one. I mean, there must have been there must have been about one thousand or two thousand.

Presenter9:23

So the language, I mean obviously your parents spoke Italian, you you spoke Italian.

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi9:27

My parents spoke village Italian. I mean, that must have been my first language, which isn't the same as classical Italian. So I was sent, because he belonged to the Italian club, which is a sort of fascist club,

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi9:40

I had to go two nights a week to learn real Italian from Italian books.

Presenter9:46

So so the language and the culture in this Italian community were were kept alive. What about the politics, though? How did they manage to keep that alive as well as the language?

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi9:55

Well, they kept that very live because I was sent practically for free every year for three months from the age of ten. And I was in actually in Rome when the war broke out between Britain

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi10:07

and uh Germany.

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi10:09

And in the back of our shop, we lived behind the shop as much as we'd lived above it.

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi10:14

And my father had a large map of the Abyssinian War, and there were two great Italian generals, one called Graziani in the south and one Badoglio. And my father used to put pins in. He used to listen to the Italian radio every day. I think it's the radio of Florence that has a nightingale, as a call signal.

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi10:32

But it wasn't very nasty. It all seemed very, as a child, all very clean and rather noble.

Presenter10:40

What about uh the youth camp that you were sent off to? You were sent off for three months a year, you know.

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi10:44

That's right. And this was on the side of the Adriatic and it was specially built futurist buildings. It was a little boy's dream. There we were on the Adriatic.

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi10:54

and in uniform and uh whereas my life in Scotland was

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi10:58

was very difficult to find a point to sometimes. Here everything was absolutely crystal clear and we were it's the first time I've ever touched a real airplane on its side is when I went there.

Presenter11:08

What sort of uniform did you wear?

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi11:10

sailors. We had a work uniform for the day, and then white trousers, black shirt.

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi11:16

a jersey neckerchief and a sailor hat with the name of the camp on it.

Presenter11:22

And were there huge portraits of Mussolini looking down at

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi11:24

I want there was a in the dining hall, there was a double life-size plaster figure of him.

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi11:31

in what I think might have been a T-shirt with at the helm of an imaginary boat.

Presenter11:37

Shall we pause there for your third record? What's that?

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi11:42

It's from a wonderful film called Oh What a Lovely War. And this in a strange way is about a certain point in my life. When I got to Oxford, I think I was about twenty. I went to the Slade, which was evacuated to Oxford.

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi11:57

And I'd just left the army and in a rather in a candined sort of way. I'd been I'd came out of the army through the military wing of the a lo of a lunatic asylum.

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi12:10

And but I'd also been in prison and I'd been through

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi12:14

as I said, had been through the Abyssinian War and also had been through the Real War. And this song, which is also a sort of jazz standard, reminds me of that particular period.

Speaker 312:28

When they ask us how dangerous it was, Oh, we'll never tell them, No, we'll never tell them.

Speaker 312:46

We spent our day in some cafe and thought while women highlighted

Presenter12:56

And when they ask us from Oh, what a lovely war

Presenter12:59

You came home then, Eduardo, from youth camp when war broke out. Um but then in in nineteen forty Mussolini declared war on Britain and and your family and you and your family suffered, didn't you?

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi13:10

Well, this wonderful life. There's I think with all the Italians in Scotland, they all knew each other, then they all played cards together, and it was a very beautiful world.

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi13:20

And it all came this disastrous night. Everything all came to an end. It was never the same again, because all the shops were there were rioting and looting of the shops. And my father was taken off, and I never saw him again. I used to put on a ship that was torpedoed.

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi13:37

My mother, but this was the consequence of being in the fascist club.

Presenter13:43

He died on a ship that was torpedoed. Where was he?

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi13:45

That's right. It was being taken to Canada. You see, you have to think back of how serious things were at that time. And this this was just after Dunkirk, and England was fighting for its life.

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi13:58

And I think it was Churchill who said that he wrote there was a book where Churchill just signed an order that everybody because of such problems, anybody in doubt, rather than have doubt, everybody was taken off. And my my mother, who was Italian,

Speaker 314:13

Uh

Presenter14:13

See you.

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi14:15

She had to also leave, but she wasn't arrested. She had to just live thirty miles from the coast.

Presenter14:21

What about your uncles?

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi14:23

After that terrible night, we all woke up in I woke up in prison. I was put in prison. It's called Sochton. And all my uncles were there.

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi14:32

Because we were all so busy helping our parents, us Italian boys, it's the first time I'd seen all my uncles together and we played cards and the thing it was very gentle and and there was no hostility. It was a bit rather nice period.

Presenter14:46

But you must have felt when eventually you realized the full import of everything that had happened when you were only about sixteen years old, you must have felt

Presenter14:54

Very angry or

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi14:55

No, it's very strange. I didn't feel any of that.

Presenter14:56

No, that's right.

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi15:00

I think I read the situation really, about the seriousness of it. And it just seemed to be fate in some strange way. It just seemed to be this is the way that life goes. I I seem to have that feeling.

Presenter15:14

Do you think you were always like that, or do you think that that experience made you rather detached, if you like, rather unmoved?

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi15:20

It may have done something like that, but it also makes one brave in a roundabout way, because when I eventually went to Paris, I mean, I didn't speak French properly.

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi15:30

And I went with little money and it was like a a bold adventure.

Presenter15:33

But before that you were in uh some form of the army, weren't you?

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi15:37

After I was let out of jail, I was put in the army and eventually arrived in Slough.

Presenter15:43

But you said earlier on that you then got out of the army through some military wing of a u lunatic asylum.

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi15:49

That's right. That was Banstead, which has now since been demolished.

Presenter15:49

What is map?

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi15:52

And I still have my army pay book, and it says he was psychologically unfit. I don't think I really fitted in very well. But as soon as I got out in my demorsuit, I went streaking down to Oxford.

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi16:06

Where I'd gone to see him, the head of the keeper of the Ruskin School, and I'd just showed him my army drawings, and he said, I'd like you to be here.

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi16:14

I mean, you don't have to pay any fees. When the war came to an end a year later, I transferred to Slade to their London.

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi16:22

buildings and they had a real sculpture school. I stayed briefly with a friend and then the slade found some houses in Bloomsbury, Cartrey Gardens, and I was given a rather nice empty room facing the front.

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi16:36

There was no furniture, and I made all the furniture myself because there was a lot of wartime material lying about. And there's that winter was very, very hard. And I think in a way that this setting to Blake by

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi16:54

Britain kind of brings me back to that room where I've sort of made all the furniture myself.

Speaker 317:13

The invisible one that blies in the night

Speaker 317:22

In an hour

Speaker 317:26

Oh, that's all I fade for crimson joy.

Speaker 317:38

I'm here.

Speaker 317:46

Love

Presenter18:00

The elegy from Benjamin Britton's Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings, Opus thirty one, sung by Peter Piers with Dennis Brain and the Boyd Neal String Orchestra, conducted by Benjamin Britton.

Presenter18:11

How had you known that art was something you wanted to spend your life doing when your parents had had little interest in art or the arts in any way?

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi18:18

But there's a long, long history of a lot of great artists coming out of unknown. I mean, that's the nature of.

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi18:26

I won't say genius, but that's the way it is. Art, as it was demonstrated at the sled, was not acceptable to me and a few contemporaries. And one of the brilliant contemporaries went ahead to Paris to report back, and I joined him. He's a very nice man. And he gave me his room that he used to live in, and so on. So that's when I got the feeling by seeing French artists and living in France. I thought this made some sense.

Speaker 318:47

Uh

Presenter18:47

So that's

Presenter18:54

But how did you find those people? I mean, you met Giacometti, Brach, Picasso. How did you find them?

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi19:01

Well the amazing thing was in 1947 Brancusi, Legerberg, they were all in the telephone book. And as I said earlier, I'm bold and immature and bold, but I just rang them up and asked if I could come and see them. And they were fortunate in some euphoria about the war had ended, these damn Germans had gone. And this person is from England and he's young. And I'm used to visitors because they were perfectly polished and nice when you got there. You were immediately shown into the studio as if you were an American millionaire.

Presenter19:35

And did you immediately, although, as you said earlier, you you couldn't speak the language particularly well or anything, you were rather a lost soul, and you were certainly quite poor did you immediately nevertheless feel in a way at home?

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi19:48

I felt absolutely at at home because it was such an absolutely different world from this grey London. It was I think London after the war was probably had that grey depressive feel of London before the war. And I think that Paris was the opposite. London Paris just

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi20:06

Swung into what they were like exactly like before the war, which is sort of exuberant, rustic.

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi20:13

fun-loving, sensual, everything open on Sunday.

Presenter20:17

But also artistic freedom. Nobody like your teachers at the Slade to tell you that something was decadent or dangerous.

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi20:24

Oh well, I mean I mean the all the bookshops were full of books on surrealism and a lot of surrealism is erotic and decadent anyway, you know.

Presenter20:33

Record number five.

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi20:34

Record number five, I had a great, great problem about Stravinsky, but I finally decided on the opening of Petrushka of Stravinsky, because before while I was not really agonizing about going to Paris and leaving England behind forever, there was a wonderful man I used to go to and he used to play the piano.

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi20:54

And he gave me the kind of stimulus about being a civilized man, which I didn't get at the slate at the time. But I think that I also like to live in a society where telling fairy stories, because Petrishka is really a wonderful, wonderful fairy story with the moor and the doll.

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi21:16

and Petrushka himself and the magician and the way it goes along. And I like very much, if you do see it staged, the way that that it opens and you see this unfurling of this fairy tale.

Presenter22:32

The opening of Stravinsky's Petrushka, played by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra conducted by Simon Rattle.

Presenter22:39

Who gave you your first break, Eduardo, your first significant piece of recognition?

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi22:44

Well, while I was still at the sled, I had to think about I could have stayed on the sled for another year. I was offered a grant, but I'd I'd really felt it was very important to get moving on, and I just couldn't bear that London at that time.

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi22:57

I decided if I was going to go there I needed a bit of money, so I had an exhibition at uh called the Mayor Gallery.

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi23:04

And it sold out and I was and I was given seventy five pounds.

Presenter23:08

But what did you exhibit? What kind of things were you?

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi23:10

I drew there were a lot of there were a few concrete sculptures, but there were a lot of black and white drawings of fishermen, rather picassoid.

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi23:18

of the kind of world that I used to know.

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi23:21

when I lived in Edinburgh.

Presenter23:22

So the British did recognize your talent before you went.

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi23:25

Oh yes, I had a sort of r at that time. I was a gold I've been sort of golden by and aging in and out for about 40 years, up and down.

Presenter23:34

But didn't the Daily Express about that time, I think it was nineteen forty seven, print a picture of one piece of your work from this exhibition with the headline over the top, Would you pay twelve guineas for this?

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi23:42

Oh yes. I mean Fleet Street hasn't changed that much.

Presenter23:47

Have you always um set out to be deliberately unconventional?

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi23:52

Well, I think the younger school of sculptors would probably think I'm incredibly conventional, particularly doing this large, almost neoclassical figure for the British Library. Sir Isaac Newton. Sir Isaac Newton. And other things that I've done. I mean, I've done, when I lived in Berlin, I did a lot of prints based on the life and work of Charles Ives. And I mean, they were submitted for an exhibition somewhere in Germany, and they were kicked out as being not forward enough.

Presenter24:21

But you have, um in your time, when when you first used

Presenter24:25

bits of broken wire or old toys or a comb for a head or a bent fork. I mean, that was deeply unconventional, wasn't it? Did you did you do it for the sake of being unconventional?

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi24:29

Yeah.

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi24:36

Well, I wanted to after the sled, which was deeply conventional, and where in order to get the diploma you'd have to do three studies of a very unattractive model. And I couldn't do that. It was important for me, when I was younger, to

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi24:52

Join the world of Picasso, and Picasso is exactly what you've just described, of using these kind of throwaway materials to make a wonderful object.

Presenter25:03

Yeah.

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi25:03

So we have some more music.

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi25:05

There have been times in my life when I've had small collections and I've sometimes these collections of records have been dissolved. I've sometimes when I've moved on I've given some of these records to friends. And I was at one time trying to make a collection of Lescis, a group of wonderful French musicians. And one of the stars in Les Sisse was Poulanc. But when I play this record, I think of when I finally having got to live in Paris. I lived on the Isle Saint-Louis in the middle of Paris. And I was given for nothing by a painter a studio.

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi25:43

on in the Ruby's Comte, which is in Saint-Germain de Prè.

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi25:47

I had high expectations when I left the cold grey London at that time to go to this wonderful Paris, and I found that it went way beyond my expectations. And this the Poulanque reminds me not only of Lycis, it also reminds me of that very, very happy first summer in Paris.

Presenter26:59

Francis Poulanque and Jacques Fevrier playing the opening of Poulanque's concerto for two pianos and orchestra, with the Paris Conservatoire Orchestra conducted by Georges Pretre.

Presenter27:10

Let me ask you the the impossible question, which of all the things you've done, created, has given you most pleasure? Which are you most proud?

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi27:18

Well, I don't know about pride, but I like doing a sculpture in Arne which was done in Austria, in a town called Linz. And Linz is where Bruckner oddly enough, I I haven't chosen a Bruckner because I don't I'm not that mad about the music.

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi27:32

As a matter of fact, I could do a whole programme about Stravinsky, he's my dearest love.

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi27:37

And but I'd you were asking also about commissions. I mean, this commission just started with a letter in the post asking if I was interested, and I went there.

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi27:46

And I made a model and they they made this giant iron sculpture which is outside Bruckner House and I like it very much because people can come out in the interval. It's indestructible and they can sit on it and it can weather the seasons and at times the with the elements, parts fill it with water and you can see the sky.

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi28:09

In the reflections. But what does it look like? What shape is it? It mirrors the the banks of the Rhine and the mountains beyond.

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi28:16

And it it's an invented shape, squarish, about four meters by seven meters, and parts of it referred to pieces of polystyrene. It and it's sounding rather rather jagged, but it's a homogeneous whole.

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi28:30

And at times, over the years, askets and then plants grow. And that that's the one that I like very much and enjoy looking at.

Presenter28:41

Some more music.

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi28:43

Another great hero of mine is Ravel, and I've actually done some prints where I've tried to.

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi28:49

visualize the sound of Ravel in some of the piano music by by using a series of abstract shapes. But I s used to have the record in Berlin um of L'Enfant Lisa Lage.

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi29:04

And that it's one of the few records I've preserved. And I was very lucky that when I was went to Covent Garden, there was a double bill. And the first half was The Chinese Nightingale by Stravinsky. But the second one, I'd never seen it before, was L'Enfant Les Sotilage in Stage.

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi29:25

And it's the most wonderful opera that I've ever seen. And it's also not unlike Petrushka in the sense that it's the unwinding of a most most marvelous fairy tale. And to me it's absolutely pure magic.

Speaker 329:50

Just call me the same as fire.

Speaker 329:55

Hey, oh my god, Leo, Mama, Leona.

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi29:58

What do you

Speaker 330:14

The whole thing.

Speaker 330:20

Srivija Goovikuda

Speaker 330:24

She'll be the faithful now.

Speaker 330:30

Baby Barclay

Presenter30:38

The opening of Ravel's L'Enfant Les Sautilege, sung by Flore Vent with L'Oquester de la Suisse Roman, conducted by Ernest Anserme.

Presenter30:47

You described your origins, uh, you know, being very much Italian and and yet a British citizen. Do you think in a sense that's all been an advantage to you?

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi30:55

Well, I think history is moving in a way that's that's becoming an advantage in a way. I think that I mean the society that I remember in the forties, that abysmal society.

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi31:06

I remember cooking at Cartrett Gardens and there was a boy who had never seen macaroni before, and he said he he couldn't possibly eat it because it looked like worms. But that's a that's a world you probably never knew, and it's a world that's disappeared.

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi31:19

somehow and people at that time used to think an omelette was foreign.

Presenter31:24

But now you're very much, and we all are much more, European.

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi31:29

When I was young, I mean, most of the people at the Slade were proud to be English in a very old fashioned way, and that was one reason they couldn't like Picasso or Matisse. That was all foreign rubbish to them. It's amazing to think of that now.

Presenter31:42

What do you think of yourself as being today?

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi31:44

Well, it all depends. I like to think that if I did go to Paris I might be mistaken as a as a Frenchman rather than another damned English tourist.

Presenter31:54

And finally, what about being nothing and nobody at all, that is to say, all alone, which I think you probably like, sitting on the island with your music? I I presume that has a tremendous amount of appeal for you, doesn't it?

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi32:05

Enormous. I mean, I spend every day improvising for things that people would normally discard.

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi32:13

Apart from rubbish being washed up, there might be some interesting bits of wood and so on. But I think I would enjoy it more than I enjoyed perhaps living in England at the moment. I mean, I don't have an answer. I hate all these things like answering machines, fax machines. I don't have any of that. And I think finally when I die, written on my tombstone might be he had no answering machine, he had no fax machine.

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi32:39

He didn't have a file of facts. He just had pencil and paper.

Presenter32:43

And he managed really rather well.

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi32:44

And he managed quite well.

Presenter32:46

Shall we have your last record?

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi32:48

I have a particular liking, and it's fitted very nicely in with certain parts of my life of seeing the Saba flotter for the first time in Salzburg, where I was teaching at sort of summer school. And I was absolutely enchanted by and quite moved in an unexpected way by the second daring, where the Queen of the Night appeared. And I was asked by the Royal Academy to do a print on Mozart, and I chose this particular moment in this opera to illustrate.

Speaker 334:04

Theoshul

Speaker 334:07

Bye, isn't it?

Presenter34:17

Roberto Peters singing the aria Ot Sitterer Nicht mein Lieberzohn from the Magic Flute with the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Karl Bohm.

Presenter34:25

So one of those records, Eduardo, you have to choose as being more necessary to you than any of the others?

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi34:31

The one I think is the most enchanting and the one that I absolutely adore would but and there's not much conflict there would be the Ravel, if I'm on that desert island.

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi34:40

in the evening looking out. I mean, that would be the kind of sound that bring me back that wonderful French world, that particular kind of French sensibility.

Presenter34:50

What about your book?

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi34:52

Well, one of the best subjects at school that I enjoyed very much was botany. And I'm also a friend of the Chelsea Physic Garden. So I seem to be warming up about plants quite a lot.

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi35:05

And um I would like either a nice man at Kew Gardens or the Physic Garden to to make me a book. I don't think it'd be too difficult about tropical plants. But I think of the Sunny Islands.

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi35:17

I'd go berserk if I didn't know what all these plants meant. And I'd also like the book to be

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi35:24

in Latin um with an

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi35:27

which was also a subject I was very good at at school.

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi35:30

So it would be a Latin book on Flanders. Would that be possible? With perhaps an English glossary at the end.

Presenter35:37

We could attempt to commission it for it.

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi35:39

That shouldn't be too difficult.

Presenter35:41

And a luxury.

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi35:42

Well, running through an awful lot of medieval paintings and paintings of Bruegel and Bosch, there's a wonderful sinister musical instrument called a hurdy-girdie. And a friend I told a friend of my enthusiasm, and they brought a hurdy gurdy kit back from America.

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi36:02

You probably know the hurdy gurdy is very simple. You grind, you have a ratchet, you turn it round and round, and you have a very simple keyboard. But I thought I'd do something clever. It would I think I'd have all the time to make it. And after I've made it, I think I might even set some songs in Latin from the book that I might be able to

Presenter36:23

Game.

Presenter36:25

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs. Thank you very much.

Speaker 236:38

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