Cecil Lewis

Speaker 30:00

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 30:08

The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen ninety one.

Speaker 30:12

And the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:30

My Castaway this week is an author and an adventurer. Now ninety-three and living in retirement in a house he built himself on Corfu, he can look back on a career of extraordinary variety. He was a fighter pilot in the First World War, tangled with the Red Baron and was decorated for bravery. In the thirties he wrote a book which prompted George Bernard Shaw to say he is a thinker, a master of words, and a bit of a poet.

Presenter0:55

After that he helped Lord Wreath invent the B B C, but, bored by the bureaucracy of the corporation, he went off to Hollywood and won an Oscar for a screenplay. I could go on, but instead let me tell you his name. He is Cecil Lewis.

Presenter1:09

It was in nineteen thirty six, I think, that George Bernard Shaw, mister Lewis, said that you led a charmed life. Has that gone on being true, do you think?

Cecil Lewis1:17

All my life. It's been just one wonderful thing after another, and that's gone on in an extraordinary way for forever and ever. Amen.

Presenter1:24

Have you been lucky in love as well?

Cecil Lewis1:27

Oh, this is a very difficult question. Yes, I would say I would be very, very lucky enough, but if I started telling you the details, it would be quite unprintable. So I think we'd better pass on from that wonderful subject, which I should have to spend all the rest of the day talking to you about. But we'll have to leave it alone.

Presenter1:43

Now, islands you know a lot about, not least because you live on one, which is is Corfu, um and you spend a very happy times on Tahiti, I think, haven't you?

Cecil Lewis1:51

I went there after I'd made some money, you see. The only time in my life when I had any spare money in my younger days was after I came out of Hollywood. You see, I did make a bit of money there. And so I thought, well, it would pity to be halfway to to the South Seas and all the girls and all that, you see, and not go. So I simply got on a tramp steamer. So that was wonderful to to get there and the place, you know, I had a little hut on the beach for a pound a month it cost me to rent it, you know.

Cecil Lewis2:15

And there was really nothing to do but have a good time and and swim in the lagoon, and that I did a good deal of, and you know, fishing and that sort of thing.

Presenter2:22

Well, we're offering you something quite similar here today, really. I mean, this is a completely deserted island. There are no girls, no Tahitian maidens on this on this desert island.

Cecil Lewis2:29

Well on this desert island. Oh no no, they're obviously lacking the girls, which is rather a pity, but still there you are, you know, it can't be helped. And uh well, I you know, I don't it doesn't worry me. I like being alone, particularly now as I get older I and I spend a lot of time alone and enjoy it. So I it's no no difficulty about that at all. I like it.

Presenter2:46

So what's the first record you'll put on your gramophone on the island?

Cecil Lewis2:50

Ah, that's quite a different thing, yes. Uh this is something uh that I think would be rather fun to do, uh because it it would be an introduction to the island, uh a sort of arrival, a sort of like uh r blowing a trumpet. Say, here I am. I'd like to play the small extract from uh Elgar's The Light of Life.

Presenter4:03

Elgar's the light of life. Tell me about your passion for flying, mister Lewis. When did it first take hold of you?

Cecil Lewis4:10

Ah, from when I was quite a child really, I I was already making little model aeroplanes, you know, in my bedroom and out of match sticks and things and putting them together and launching them across the room.

Presenter4:21

But you were, what, sixteen when when war broke out, weren't you?

Cecil Lewis4:22

Yeah.

Cecil Lewis4:23

2016 then, yeah. I was at Anvil, you see, I was at a boarding school, I was a danville.

Presenter4:25

Did you?

Cecil Lewis4:28

And I was had a passion, of course, to get in the air, like all us young men.

Presenter4:32

But weren't you underage at sixty?

Cecil Lewis4:33

Oh yes, I was underage. But you know, uh we could see uh Maynard Grebel and I, my great friend who we did it with, uh we could see that if we uh wangled it and uh played our cards properly we could get in at seventeen because there was a room with you could and we did in fact get in at seventeen, both of us.

Presenter4:48

And you you took your ticket, as they said, and

Cecil Lewis4:50

And you got

Presenter4:52

And you got your wings.

Cecil Lewis4:53

I got got my wings, yes and gosport, yeah.

Presenter4:55

And you flew off to France in February of 1916 as a a full flying officer. How many hours, how many flying hours had you done at that time?

Cecil Lewis5:03

I'd downed thirteen when I left for France, which is not really quite enough. You know, they decided when we got there that perhaps this chap ought to have a few more hours before he kills himself, so they sent me up to learn a bit more about flying, so I had a reprieve.

Presenter5:15

But did you have any idea, then, o of the reality of the situation you were flying into, or was it just kind of youthful romanticism?

Cecil Lewis5:22

Absolute ruthful romanticism and the aeroplane and the air and being able to get in an aeroplane and fly because this is a wonderful after all it is a wonderful, wonderful thing.

Presenter5:30

But death wasn't something you contemplated at all.

Cecil Lewis5:33

You weren't going to die. You're not going to die when you're twenty years old. You're eighteen, seventeen, sixteen, whatever it was. You don't ever think about death. I didn't, anyway.

Presenter5:40

But I bet your mother did.

Cecil Lewis5:42

Yes, I think she did. Yes. Yes, she did.

Presenter5:46

What did she say to you about your going?

Cecil Lewis5:47

She didn't say anything to me about my going, but uh once when I came back uh we kissed each other and I saw that uh

Cecil Lewis5:55

The uh

Cecil Lewis5:57

The front of my greatcoat was all trickling with tears that she shed.

Cecil Lewis6:03

But she never said anything.

Presenter6:06

Shall we have your second piece of music?

Cecil Lewis6:08

Well, now we go on to ah yes, very good, the pole fishers coming in there. The uh

Cecil Lewis6:14

Uh this this is a piece of music which has no particular significance for me except in its long sort of roaring, sleepy sort of rhythm, uh and the feeling it is written about people who fished and died for pearls, so it's very m pacific in its uh outlook.

Cecil Lewis6:30

That's what I wanted.

Speaker 36:33

Yeah.

Speaker 36:34

Let us live on the answer, we shall hear.

Speaker 36:47

Peace that sails for

Speaker 37:07

Yeah.

Presenter7:27

OF FON DUTEN PLESSIN, from Bizet's The Pearlfishers, sung by John Ayler and Gino Killico, and conducted by Michel Plassant, with the Toulouse Orchestra.

Presenter7:39

All through the summer of nineteen sixteen, Cecil Lewis, you flew over the front line of the Battle of the Somme. What was your job?

Cecil Lewis7:48

Well, we were uh what was called a reconnaissance squadron. That's to say, we we uh tried to to get

Cecil Lewis7:55

Morse Coney signals down down to the gunners underneath to tell them how to shoot across the line to hit the targets they were aiming at, which is the only way they could find out what it was was by asking us, so we flew over the top and told them.

Cecil Lewis8:07

And in addition to that, we also did a contact with the infantry in the front line to keep in touch with them and to find out, in fact, where they'd got to.

Presenter8:14

What was the average life of such a pilot?

Cecil Lewis8:17

Well, it's supposed to be I mean the figures the ordinary official figures are the departed lasted three weeks. I'm not quite sure that I would endorse that figure as far as our squadron was concerned, but we it was pretty heavy. I lasted about nine months altogether, six months of which was really active, and a little bit earlier before that which wasn't active.

Presenter8:35

So that that was lucky.

Cecil Lewis8:36

It was very lucky. It really was very lucky because the the risks were great, but one never never thought about the risks, of course.

Presenter8:42

It must have altered your perception of life. It must have altered you. How did it alter your personality? This this young schoolboy who'd gone to war?

Cecil Lewis8:50

You know, I'm ashamed to say that it didn't alter it at all. I mean, there were men were dying by the hundred thousand underneath us at the Sombattle, the most ghastly carnage the world had ever seen up to that point.

Cecil Lewis9:01

And you flew over it and you saw it happening underneath you without realizing it. I mean, you can have no conception of what the

Cecil Lewis9:09

What thee?

Cecil Lewis9:10

Fighting area was like during the final bombardments when it would look like snow on the ground because the bursting shells were continuous all day and all night and every bursting shell left a cloud of of white smoke. So there was all that going on. And then there was one's own personal danger, like, you know, when something went wrong, like it did with me one morning when the engine failed right over the front line at about five hundred feet. And it just so happened that again by this wonderful luck we were talking about earlier on that I was right over

Cecil Lewis9:37

A thing that surprised me, a little bit of green grass. In the middle of all this devastation, the most extraordinary thing. You talk about duck, you know. So with an engine that's not working, you've got to put the airplane down. And if it's green grass, well, it's better than mud, you see. So I simply dived for the green grass. When I got down to the green grass, it turned out to be the side of a hill. When I got to about 100 feet, I saw what I was over. It was marvellous. Hadn't got any shell holes on it because it was steep grass and the shells hadn't fallen there. You see, it was hidden in somewhere. Anyhow, there it was.

Cecil Lewis10:06

And so I put the aeroplane down on this steep hillside and'cause it went up and up and up like a like a crow and just perched, you know, dead. It didn't move at all. It came down and stopped like that on the green grass.

Cecil Lewis10:16

So it was my observer's birthday, and I said, many happy returns to the day, old chap. We trotted out of the machine.

Cecil Lewis10:24

And uh and we just walked off all home, you see, but then we began to see, you know, the the men who died and were left there lying and were half covered with with tarpaulins and all the

Cecil Lewis10:34

blue bottles and all that, not not not very nice. And then among these among these trenches and these great holes and craters, which it was all, you see, out in the spring the poppies had come up, you know, the Flanders poppies.

Cecil Lewis10:51

And we walked on, you know, as one has to, with our long flying boots up to our thighs and

Cecil Lewis10:57

And uh

Cecil Lewis10:59

A sort of extraordinary feeling of being in two worlds, of being this marvellous eternal world around us.

Cecil Lewis11:06

And uh

Cecil Lewis11:07

this really awful devastation in which it was mixed up.

Presenter11:11

Next piece of music.

Cecil Lewis11:13

Oh yes. Well now you stop me in a question. Really, the way you lead me about in these impossible directions. This is 1916 to 1943. And uh I was lucky enough to be the first or one of the first aeroplanes and one of the first chaps in the aeroplane.

Cecil Lewis11:30

Flying in from Cairo to Athens when we liberated Greece on the fourteenth of october, nineteen forty three.

Cecil Lewis11:37

It was magical to arrive at that particular morning in that particular way and with all the hope and promise of liberating Greece, you know, it was after all a great thing. All the Greeks came teaming out to the Aerodrome in their hundreds, you know, carrying flowers to throw at us and greeting us and, you know, giving us such a welcome as I shall never forget. It was one of those great glittering, sort of shaking moments in life when wonderful things happen.

Presenter12:58

A Greek song roughly translated as A Sergeant called Stamulis.

Presenter13:03

It was in the spring of nineteen seventeen, in May, I think, that you tangled with the infamous Baron von Richthofen. Did you know when you set out that night that y you and your squadron were going to meet the Red Albatrosses?

Cecil Lewis13:16

No, certainly not. We didn't know. We we we were in a new squadron and we b we were very high morale and we had some very good people. The whole squadron which uh turned out, you know, to have been almost a disaster because we nearly lost we lost over fifty percent of our chaps.

Cecil Lewis13:29

I was one of the five that got back, and we were eleven strong, I think, when we set out that evening.

Cecil Lewis13:34

It so happened that we did run right into the Red Baron and his chaps, and so we w we simply got into dog fight, which is like any other dog fight, you know, which is just uh free for all. And they were round on our tails, and we were round on their tails, so the thing became just just like flies buzzing in a room. You couldn't tell where it was going next, you know.

Presenter13:53

And how long did the battle last?

Cecil Lewis13:55

Well, the whole thing was over, I suppose, in twenty minutes, perhaps the whole thing was over. No more than that.

Presenter14:00

But how how do you decide when it's time to stop and turn for home, as it were?

Cecil Lewis14:04

Well, you don't decide that, you go on as long as you can. We started at about eleven thousand feet and I finished up having fought my way down, so to speak, without much success. I think I got one or possibly two on the way down, and escaped myself, and by that time I was down to fifteen hundred feet. And then you say, Well, you know, I'd got no more ammunition, I'd found all four more ammunition, so I just said home, John, and and uh we uh came over over the tree top height and landed.

Presenter14:27

And then you you discover that I don't

Cecil Lewis14:29

Then we discovered what had happened to the squadron, what had happened to everybody else. Nobody knew until then. I mean, I talk of it all as a sort of joke, but it wasn't in fact very jokey at the time.

Presenter14:31

Nobody

Presenter14:37

Next record.

Cecil Lewis14:39

I want to play the love duet from the Rosen Cavalier, and you'll think this is r absolutely ridiculous after this talk about the war to talk about this, and it is really.

Cecil Lewis14:48

But it happened in the way that I suppose is natural when the war was over.

Cecil Lewis14:54

when somehow or other I was invited or got to know a very rich and wonderful family who had a marvellous country house.

Cecil Lewis15:02

And they asked me down for the weekend, and I was very much interested in the young lady of the house.

Cecil Lewis15:07

And we agreed.

Cecil Lewis15:08

that we would get our Eider dance and we'd go out and spend the night together in the grounds. And so we went down to the huge cedar tree, you know, which had a hammock underneath it. And I wanted to ask you, Lily, have you ever made love in a hammock? Because it's rather difficult to do.

Cecil Lewis15:23

Anyhow, it was no luck as far as I was concerned, and really it didn't really very much matter because the thing was so wonderful. It was this marvellous aura of being in love with something, some dream, some marvellous possibility that was opening before. And then do you know what happened? A wonderful thing happened in the middle. There was a great patch of moonlight under this tree, and suddenly appeared, walking, you know, slow, sort of extraordinary, a huge toad. It was about the size of a top hatch, you know, it's an enormous thing. And it had these great shoulders and it worked with its shoulders like this. And it walked sedately right across our area, so to speak, and disappeared. That's all. And this remains in my memory as an extraordinary conjunction of an unexpected and rather ghost sort of situation in the middle of a wonderful dream. And so...

Cecil Lewis16:11

Some people can m maintain the dream, some people can keep it alive, you know, afterwards. And the people who do it best, of course, are the musician.

Cecil Lewis16:19

I mean, when Strauss wrote The Rosen Cavalier, he was writing about some memory of his own which is of of wonderful strength, and only had the genius to maintain that spirit long enough to put it down in music. And when he puts that sort of thing down in music, you'll get a thing like the Rosen Cavalier's up to it.

Cecil Lewis16:36

And that's why it's there.

Presenter17:17

The duet from Act three of Richard Strauss's Der Rosen Cavalier, sung by Helen Donart and Yvonne Minten, with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and the Vienna State Opera Chorus, conducted by Sir George Schulte.

Presenter17:30

Tell me, Cecil Lewis, about you, Lord Wreath and the BBC. It was nineteen twenty two and you decided to go into broadcasting. Did you know what broadcasting was? No.

Cecil Lewis17:39

No, I hadn't an idea. Nobody had, of course. That was the jolly wonderful thing about it. I'd come back from China, you see, where I'd been for some time, and uh I came back via Suez, and a great friend I'd met out there came back by America. So

Cecil Lewis17:52

He knew about broadcasting, which had just started about six months before, you know, in America, believe it or not. And so he said to me, you know, this is the thing for you. You should be going for broadcasting. And I said, well, I haven't any idea. What's it? I'll go in for anything. What's it all about? So he told me, and then this developed into a sort of no man's land while everybody was deciding what to do and the houses of parliament were having meetings about how many broadcasting companies there should be and all that sort of stuff. And finally they decided they'd have one and they must get somebody to run it.

Presenter18:21

So there was you and there was John Rees.

Cecil Lewis18:23

Yes, and there was Stanton Jeffries, the musician.

Presenter18:25

And Arthur and Arthur Burroughs, I think.

Cecil Lewis18:27

And Arthur Burroughs, yes.

Presenter18:28

The four of you, who were what, an average age of about twenty six. Yeah.

Cecil Lewis18:30

Yes, right, yes. I was uh I was I was actually twenty two, I suppose, at the time, yes, twenty two.

Presenter18:37

But what did you talk about between you, the four of you? What did you say you were going to do with this broadcasting business?

Cecil Lewis18:42

I remember very well our first what you might call our first company meeting, which is on the corner of the pavement between where you come down Kingsway and there you start to see the c the the crescent of of Bush House at the bottom there and we were standing on that corner and I remember Reith, you know, standing under he was rather smartly dressed, much smart, more smartly dressed than we were.

Cecil Lewis19:03

And uh he had an umbrella in his hand and what I viv most vividly remember what's remained of a memory all these years of the founding of the BBC was what a beautiful umbrella, how beautifully, beautifully it's rolled, you know. And this rolled umbrella fascinated me at that moment. And that's what I remember about the founding of the BBC.

Presenter19:19

But what do you remember about John Wreath? Because of course Lord Wreath, as we call him these days, uh we think of him as having been very, very strict, dogmatic, very puritanical Scot. I mean, was that your your view of him?

Cecil Lewis19:31

Well, partly. I mean, but you know, if you read anything about him, you know that uh he rode his horse up and down the front line, and anybody who does that is not only a very brave man, but also a bloody fool and an awful swank, you know. So there must be something wrong then. I mean, there must be something human to do that sort of thing.

Cecil Lewis19:46

I had a great affection for him, you know, I liked him very much. And I've always stood up for him against all these uh people who tried to do him down because he had s stricter and more decent, honourable principles than they had. That's what my view of it.

Presenter19:57

How quickly did it catch on broadcast? Did you do broadcasting yourself?

Cecil Lewis20:01

Oh, rather. Oh, yes, rather, absolutely. I know it's off the mac rather.

Cecil Lewis20:07

We started off the children's art of again, and then there was a programme evening so you announced. But you see, it was what a wonderful education. I was with every orchestra in London. The greatest artists living at that time came, as they very soon did. One heard everything, you know. One had an indoctrination into music that you couldn't have in any other way. I knew nothing about it. You see, I pretended I did, of course. I said, you know, I was an expert, but I knew nothing.

Presenter20:28

You sound as if you've had the most marvellous time, so why after four years did you give it all up and go away?

Cecil Lewis20:32

Oh, dear, you see,'cause I'm what I am, you know. It became a question of, you know, is this better than that? And should we ask this or should we ask that? And the old machine started to grind, and I thought to myself,

Cecil Lewis20:45

Why? You know, I had no money, I had no option, I had nowhere to go. It wasn't as if I was leaving it to go somewhere else, a better job. I had no job, I didn't know where I was going. I had a new wife, two and a baby, just just turned up.

Cecil Lewis20:55

What do you do?

Cecil Lewis20:57

You know, but I couldn't stand that. I said, No, I'm uh I'm a programme man. I want to build programmes. I don't want to talk to these idiots about uh this sort of way to approach it or that way to approach it or ought we to deal with a musicians' union or ought we to deal you know, all the things that Reith was doing eventually began to overflow onto us. So I just walked out.

Presenter21:15

Record number five.

Cecil Lewis21:17

Well, this is only just a bit of fun I heard hundreds of years ago, and it made me laugh like mad then, and it makes me laugh like mad now, and I hope it'll make the audience laugh like mad, too.

Speaker 121:27

All right, let's pull out into traffic. Now, what's the first thing we're going to do before we pull out into traffic?

Speaker 121:33

What did Mr. Adams do before he let you pull out into traffic?

Speaker 121:37

Well, I mean besides praying, let's say.

Speaker 121:41

Now what I had in mind was checking the rear view mirror. You see we always want to check the rear view. Don't fall!

Speaker 321:47

Ha ha ha.

Cecil Lewis21:50

Oh dear.

Presenter21:51

This is the driving instructor with Bob Newhart.

Cecil Lewis21:54

Yeah.

Presenter21:55

Well, can we follow him with George Bernard Shaw? Tell me how you came to know GBS.

Cecil Lewis22:01

I rang him up, only starting the B B C I rang him up and said, Look, this is something which is a new thing, it's an important thing, and you're a man that believes in the new age. Why don't you come along and have a look? And I got a reply, to my amazement, I got a a postcard, one of the famous postcards. He said, Yes, I will come on Thursday afternoon. I shall be interested.

Cecil Lewis22:20

Thursday afternoon was two days away and I'd forgotten about it. And uh suddenly there was the uh Commissioner ringing up from down below and saying, Mr Bernard Shaw to see you, sir. So I, you know, I was wildly excited because he was a sort it was a sort of hero worship, you know, it was wonderful, really.

Cecil Lewis22:35

And uh I got him up, you know, got him out and started showing him around talking like I'm now nineteen to the dozen, you know, leading up to the fact that we wanted him to broadcast, of course.

Cecil Lewis22:45

Eventually uh I got him sort of round to the subject, and then he started on uh

Cecil Lewis22:49

Uh what sort of an audience have you got? How many thousand people? I said, Well, we we we really can't tell you what we think. It's about a hundred thousand now, which Russia's enormous.

Cecil Lewis22:58

He said, Oh, a hundred thousand. Well, a hundred thousand at five shillings. It would be so much. And uh

Speaker 123:04

And uh

Cecil Lewis23:04

I take ten percent of that, shall we say, as a you know, as a modest uh pay on my services. That leaves us with um

Cecil Lewis23:13

A fee of about five thousand pounds for an evening for a for half an hour's entertainment. Could you afford that? I said, Of course we couldn't afford it. Naturally we couldn't afford it. I can offer you a hundred at the most. He said, A hundred?

Cecil Lewis23:25

Ridiculous amounts of murder. If you're if you're going to treat artists that way, you'll have no artist left who's going to come and work for you for those sorts of fees. This way down, you know, and eventually, of course, he said which this this is what cemented our friendship for me.

Cecil Lewis23:39

I'll do it for nothing, he said.

Presenter23:41

And he encouraged you to write, didn't he?

Cecil Lewis23:43

He yes, he did more or less when we that was when we were in Italy on holiday and I gave him my first play, you know. And he read it the next morning he said, I read it through and he had, he'd read it and made comments and changed it and written in lines and really rewritten the play for me more or less, you know.

Cecil Lewis23:57

And then he said, Your literary age I take to be about seven.

Cecil Lewis24:02

You know, that was a good lead in for me. It uh cut me down to size.

Presenter24:06

But he didn't say that, did he, when you wrote Sagittarius Rising, you wrote your account of your wartime?

Cecil Lewis24:10

Ah, well then he was yes, he was kind to me then.

Presenter24:13

Well, he he was but he was glowing, wasn't he? He wrote a eulogy, I think, about it in the New Statesman.

Cecil Lewis24:17

I think I've never think he never wrote another notice that I know like that.

Presenter24:22

Then when you um went off to Hollywood some years later you you wrote the screenplay for his Pygmalion for Paramount and you won an Oscar for it. I think it it starred Leslie Harden and Wendy Hiller. Did did you talk to him about doing that, about writing the screenplay?

Cecil Lewis24:28

For pair amounts.

Cecil Lewis24:36

You know, he was the other side of the Atlantic, of course. I was in Hollywood and he was in London. I wrote him letters all the time, and I wrote him letters saying, you know, this is ridiculous, this play of yours. It's no good as it is. You know, all it's talking about is the wonderful phonetic language that Professor Higgins has with his friend, I can't remember the Colonel's name now. But anyhow, that was the important thing, you see. But I saw at once that if you make a bet like that about a girl who's going to be a duchess, and you're going to make it so that she becomes a duchess, and if you don't show the duchess scene when she brings it off, when she wins the bet, you've lost the whole point of the play. So I wrote to him and said that. I got a furious letter back. I wish I'd kept that letter. I wish I'd got that. It was a wonderful letter saying it has nothing to do with it. You quite missed the point. The important thing is the phonetic alphabet.

Presenter25:21

Didn't you didn't you keep any of these letters or postcards or scripts of yours that he wrote on?

Cecil Lewis25:26

Oh yes, I did keep a lot of them. And then one day I had a when I was I was bro I was always broke, you see, I never had any money, I was quite broke, and he knew that, and so he sent me one of his famous postcards. There is a lunatic at present at large in London who is willing to pay large sums of money for my letters. I advise you to unload without delay.

Presenter25:44

Uh So you did.

Cecil Lewis25:44

I did. For four hundred pounds I unloaded letters that I get ten thousand for today.

Cecil Lewis25:51

It didn't matter, it was the going prize.

Cecil Lewis25:53

Record number six.

Presenter25:54

Yeah.

Cecil Lewis25:54

Well, now we're back in Greece again, you know, much, much later now, really. It could happen any day hearing this record. And this is a well known popular artist who sings in cabaret and has a lovely voice and obviously uh a high dramatic sense of of what happens to you when you're un in unsuccessful love. And somebody says they're going to ring up at Dodecker, which is twelve o'clock.

Cecil Lewis26:14

And the uh the the boy's supposed to ring at twelve o'clock and he doesn't, and this puts you in a terrific tizzy. And the song is really the result of longing for this boy to ring up, and it's got, you know, that sort of tragic excitement about it, which I find rather fun.

Speaker 326:43

Uh

Presenter26:53

DO DECA, sung by Anna Vissy. You retired, Cecil Lewis, although such a word I suspect is a misnomer for you, in the early seventies, which were your early seventies and you bought a boat and and drove to Corfu.

Cecil Lewis27:05

That's right.

Presenter27:06

How how did you drive to Corfu?

Cecil Lewis27:09

Well, you see, um we'd done it the year before in a caravan, so we thought we'd repeat this with a boat. Why not?

Cecil Lewis27:15

So we bought ourselves a little twenty-six-foot cruiser and we set off and so we had awful fun.

Presenter27:21

The we is you and your third wife.

Cecil Lewis27:24

Yeah.

Presenter27:24

And you you arrived um in Corfu and and ever resourceful then you decided to build yourself a house.

Cecil Lewis27:31

Well, we didn't really build it, but we it was a prefab, you see, and we d we decided that uh for various reasons it was is quite a technical thing. In order to put up a house in Greece you have to have an acre of ground where we couldn't afford an acre of ground. But if you put up a prefab which was a wooden house and therefore can be taken down overnight, it isn't a permanent structure. Nobody touches or dreams of taking it down, but you that's what you say, you see. So we bought a quarter of an acre of ground which he could afford and we put up this this uh I designed this prefab house, which is a charming house. We still live in it. And it was wonderful, and that went up in four days, you see. And on that little plot of ground we made our garden, and there we live today.

Presenter28:07

And when you sit there, you know, smelling the olives and listening to the cicadas or whatever, do you ever look back on on the life and all the things we've been talking about and and wish that you'd stayed somewhere long enough to to reap the profits, as it were? I mean, you know, the BBC or Hollywood. You seem to have been in on the start of so much and never stayed to and remained to take any of the.

Cecil Lewis28:27

Yes, I'm a born failure. You know, I couldn't I never could stay long enough for it for it to to work out or to work up. I have no career bills, I don't understand that. All the things I've done have always been great fun and they've been sort of half successes and people said, What a wonderful chap he is, and then he disappears, you know, so you don't really know if he's any good or not. So I get out of the the odium that would come from really people saying I'm a failure, but I inside that's how I feel it.

Cecil Lewis28:50

And I don't really care. It doesn't interest me. I'm here to live. I'm not here to make a success.

Presenter28:54

I was going to say if if failure you are, you're a happy failure.

Cecil Lewis28:57

Oh, you you bet, you know, you can judge that all right.

Speaker 128:59

Dread.

Cecil Lewis29:01

I can't be bound by the ordinary rules.

Presenter29:04

Record number seven.

Cecil Lewis29:06

Well, this is for the time we're talking about, when you begin to think uh about the inside of your life and when and you do. And there are wonderful things which help you to down into the those sacred sort of quiet parts which you don't talk about very much.

Cecil Lewis29:20

And I think one of them is this marvellous, marvellous uh cycle of songs by Marlowe, and after all it's sung by Janet Baker, who is no slouch when it comes to singing, is she? And this song which is the last, the final song in the cycle, the cycle of songs.

Cecil Lewis29:34

which talks of leaving the world behind and of the the marvellous quality of life that is to be found inside, if you look close to look for it.

Cecil Lewis29:44

which is there in my life very strongly, although I don't let it surface very much. And this is one of the most beautiful songs that I should like to keep by me.

Presenter29:59

Yeah.

Speaker 330:19

Praise our God.

Speaker 330:34

Opsy rushed to

Presenter30:49

Mahler's Ichbinder Welt Appanthen Kommen, sung by Janet Baker with the new Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Sir John Barbarolly. Were you on on your desert island to to sit and write two lines in memory of yourself, I wonder what you would write?

Cecil Lewis31:07

Well, certainly the young at heart, and secondly

Cecil Lewis31:11

The peace that comes from not having laws that you have to obey or things that you must do, that it should be spontaneous and it should bubble out of you every day.

Cecil Lewis31:23

and th that you should as far as possible shape it so that it doesn't hurt other people.

Cecil Lewis31:30

And uh

Cecil Lewis31:31

Make it as good for your friends as you can.

Cecil Lewis31:35

and leave the rest to God.

Presenter31:38

Shall we have your last record?

Cecil Lewis31:40

Ah yes. Well, this is a wonderful to end any programme on.

Cecil Lewis31:44

The Russians and their gorgeous singing takes me back, oh, again, may I go back again, right to my early days in China when I was a young man, and I was engaged to a girl there whom I married, my first wife, wonderful girl, wonderful wife.

Cecil Lewis32:00

It was Easter, and we went to the Russian service in the little church in in China, I believe, not in Ludlpiking, there was a little Russian church, and we went to the church.

Cecil Lewis32:09

and at the end of the service we were all carrying candles when we were sent out

Cecil Lewis32:14

to look for the body of Christ and make a circle of the church, you know. And so we all set out, about I suppose, a hundred of us all carrying our candles, and there's this this uh sort of uh beautiful procession going round, and when we came back to the church the door was locked.

Cecil Lewis32:30

And we went and knocked on the door, and they opened the door.

Cecil Lewis32:34

And the priest stood there with the cross in his hand, saying, Christ is risen.

Cecil Lewis32:40

And somehow the simplicity and beauty of that moment, you know, was so wonderful.

Cecil Lewis32:45

It uh lit me up inside, you know, in a way that only those things can. Then we all went off together to the house, still carrying our candles, you know, and everybody was laughing and singing. We had lovely marzipani cakes and all sorts of jolly things to eat, you know, and everybody was so happy, and life seemed endless and marvellous, as it does when one's very young.

Cecil Lewis33:03

And that remains with me as a mem memory, and then out of that comes this wonderful these wonderful, deep, gorgeous voices that come out of the depths of them, you know, and feel you feel you make your hair stand on end, you know, so that's why I chose this.

Presenter33:45

Breathe in the heart.

Presenter34:18

The Lord's Prayer sung by the Russian Metropolitan Church Choir in Paris. So, um, one of the eight records which you would have to have with you more important to you than any of the others.

Cecil Lewis34:29

The Mala, the Mala, unquestionably, yes.

Presenter34:32

And a book we have for you on the island there.

Cecil Lewis34:35

May I have my own that I've just written?

Presenter34:37

Is it really what you would take with you, or is there one work that you treasure among all others?

Cecil Lewis34:42

It's got a lot of my life in it. You know, it's it's a it's a good period. It was right in the Second World War, forty three, forty four, you know, full of excitement, I was full of life. I was in my forties then, it was great fun. And uh, you know, it's not a bad book, so why not tell you that I should like to have that with me?

Presenter34:56

Right. Sagittarius Surviving by Cecil Lewis and Luxury.

Cecil Lewis35:00

This is something uh you know that I can have to uh to really do me good.

Presenter35:04

To do you good, to uplift you, but not to help you in any practical way.

Cecil Lewis35:05

Do that.

Cecil Lewis35:08

In order to help me in oh, I I mean I want you to have a fax.

Presenter35:12

Who dear?

Cecil Lewis35:12

Could I have a fax? Because after all that would help me to get living thing. I not to send out. Don't have them coming in. All the girlfriends sending me faxes, you know, it's just my idea.

Presenter35:20

Right idea.

Cecil Lewis35:21

I thought that it helped to lighten the burden. I think we ought to be. Couldn't I be allowed that?

Presenter35:26

Well, we'll we'll argue about it, I think. I think we'll argue later. I think I have to say at that point, Cecil Lewis, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Cecil Lewis35:35

It was a wonderful pleasure. Thank you very much.