Elizabeth Jennings

Elizabeth Jennings0:00

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.

Elizabeth Jennings0:08

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

Presenter0:29

My Castaway this week is a poet.

Presenter0:31

Acclaimed in literary circles, she's won both the Somerset Maugham and WH Smith Prizes. She's also been awarded the CBE. Despite this fame, she lives in modest circumstances in Oxford, where she grew up, and where, just after the war, she went to university. Each day she leaves her cluttered rented room and travels to a local cafe, where she spreads out her papers and works. It is in these unassuming circumstances, or at home in bed, that she's written much of the work which one distinguished critic has called some of the finest lyric poetry of the twentieth century. She is Elizabeth Jennings.

Presenter1:08

Elizabeth, do you think you were always destined to be a poet, or did you have some choice in the matter?

Presenter1:13

No, it wasn't till

Presenter1:15

Reading poetry at school. I was really very, very lucky in my education when poetry hit me and I became hooked on it. Was it always poetry that you wrote? Were you never tempted to write prose? No. I think I did try to write stories. And since I've tried to write novels twice, and I can't do it. But the poetry just pours out, I understand. Not now.

Elizabeth Jennings1:34

No no.

Presenter1:35

Doesn't it? No, it doesn't.

Elizabeth Jennings1:36

Uh

Presenter1:37

Not as much as it did.

Presenter1:39

There are many times when you feel that perhaps it's finished, and far more of that than being happy about it coming. Is that your greatest fear?

Presenter1:47

worrying that the muse has flown.

Presenter1:50

Yes. And in fact once about before a book called Growing Points came out, it was the mid early seventies, I think.

Presenter1:58

It was just that somebody mentioned Writer's Block to me, and I don't know why I became almost obsessed by it, and I didn't write for anything for three or four months, and I really thought it had gone.

Presenter2:10

Right.

Presenter2:11

But it it can't in any case be a very easy way of making a living, even when you get on to the best seller list, which you do.

Elizabeth Jennings2:16

It's on to the

Presenter2:18

But even a bestseller poetry isn't like a bestselling novel. You can't live on it. But I was very thrilled when a couple of my books were put on A levels. I thought, at last, I shall be rich. What on an A level?

Elizabeth Jennings2:29

What on an A level syllabus?

Presenter2:30

Yes, and uh the collected, and I think the selected. But of course you're not, because you've got to keep the price down so low, so the schools can buy it. But I was very thrilled, but I thought this might be riches.

Elizabeth Jennings2:38

Yeah.

Presenter2:43

But it wasn't. No. I is that one of the reasons that you spend your days in a cafe in a way that it it saves on lighting and heating bills? Or or is it that you need the company and the surroundings?

Elizabeth Jennings2:44

No, yeah.

Elizabeth Jennings2:50

Why don't you need the

Presenter2:53

Sometimes in the winter it is to get into a a cheap, warm place. I like the feel of hubbub of life in that people are not going to interfere if they don't want. And then at other times I love talking to people. So you need people, although you live alone. Not when I'm actually writing.

Elizabeth Jennings3:09

In Northwest.

Presenter3:13

I would rather be by myself, and it seems you see, I'm a night bird. I come awake at night, and I usually write at night. So in that sense, a desert island sitting there in the moonlight would be ideal, would it?

Presenter3:25

I don't think it would, because I would miss the contrast in the co admiss conversation.

Presenter3:30

And what about music? Is that part of your life, or doesn't it matter to you?

Presenter3:34

It matters to me. I don't listen to it regularly, but

Presenter3:38

No, a world without it would be inconceivable. I hate pop.

Presenter3:43

I've been waiting for twenty-five years for it to go. So how have you chosen these eight records then?

Presenter3:48

Sometimes by association.

Presenter3:51

In fact, I think almost entirely.

Presenter3:55

What except for Mozart?

Presenter3:57

And I could have done I think almost anybody could do eight records of Mozart because if there's a music of the spheres.

Presenter4:04

I would think it was Mozart, though probably Purists would think it was Bach.

Presenter4:08

So what's the first record that you want to play on the Desert Island? Well, I would like someone who seems very English, and that's Elgar. I did once hear

Presenter4:17

Yehudi Manuin at the at the Albert Hall, he wasn't playing this, but I remember standing, not at a prom, but sort of high up.

Presenter4:26

So I would love to hear him play what I believe he played as a boy.

Presenter4:31

Elzar's violin concerto.

Speaker 45:11

Uh

Presenter5:31

Yehudi Minuin playing part of Elgar's violin concerto in B minor with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir Edward Elgar, and that was recorded in nineteen thirty two.

Presenter5:42

You draw in the main, Elizabeth, on your experiences in in writing your poetry, from childhood and religion and love to to mental illness and the death of a parent.

Presenter5:53

The poems are therefore inevitably very revealing of you. Do does that worry you? Do you mind?

Presenter5:59

The mental illness poems have brought me I have sometimes felt like suppressing that book they brought me so much trouble.

Presenter6:06

And the odd thing is that I don't feel those poems are either.

Presenter6:10

To me the word confessional I know I've said this in the introduction to one of my books that

Presenter6:15

is con confessional poetry to me is really a contradiction in terms. I mean, why should something that is sick and it is particular to you

Presenter6:27

be of interest to other people, because I feel that what we share is really most interesting. I suppose people want to share those moments that with you because they've experienced them themselves. So that's why you'd get the reaction to the the poems written in the mental hospital. Because there are only one or two that are about me. They're mostly in in that book. They're not the Soviet plaque kind of, which are very

Presenter6:49

Reveal her later promise was really revealing. But what about your anger, for example, at the at the psychiatrist when you wrote the interrogator?

Elizabeth Jennings6:55

Yeah.

Presenter6:57

That's a very angry poem. You're very annoyed with this man who thinks he knows everything. I never got on with him at all.

Elizabeth Jennings7:01

I love your

Presenter7:04

I have a rather low view of psychiatry, I'm afraid.

Presenter7:07

particularly of Freud. I have a a Freud not that this man was particularly Freudian, but

Presenter7:11

I do seriously think Freud's done a great deal of harm.

Presenter7:15

Would do you want to would you read just a couple of the first two verses of that of the interrogator?

Presenter7:21

And then people can hear the anger there.

Presenter7:25

He is always right.

Presenter7:27

However you prevaricate or question his motives, whatever you say to excuse yourself, he is always right.

Presenter7:35

He always has an answer. It may be a question that hurts to hear.

Presenter7:40

It may be a sentence that makes you flinch.

Presenter7:43

He always has an answer.

Presenter7:46

Do you write then to heal yourself or to

Elizabeth Jennings7:49

Yeah.

Presenter7:51

No.

Presenter7:53

Well, I suppose I started writing because we had a an anthology at school called The Dragon Book of Verse, and one day we did that marvellous battle poem of Chesterton's Lepanto, and I'll never forget it. That was one of the really key experiences of my life. It hit me.

Presenter8:09

And I wrote a Purple Patch essay about it. And I think probably after that I started writing things. They were pretty bad, but I did try to use forms. I mean, my form was already rather too ambitious. But I still don't quite understand why you do it. Whether you do it to heal yourself or to help other people heal or to throw a light on the human experience. It's not conscious like that. It's the sum of the healing. It's the writing itself.

Elizabeth Jennings8:26

You do it.

Elizabeth Jennings8:29

To throw a line

Elizabeth Jennings8:30

Do you experience

Elizabeth Jennings8:32

It's the writing it

Presenter8:35

It sounds awfully pompous, but I suppose

Presenter8:39

I feel it is the one thing I can do.

Presenter8:42

Shall we have your second record?

Presenter8:45

Well, this goes back to childhood. I think it is possible that when my parents used to we were in the nursery and nanny and so on, and I think they used to go to dances sometimes. And of course I've heard it since Predestair's top hat.

Speaker 48:59

Brushing off my tail.

Speaker 49:01

I do nothing, Sheriff Brown.

Speaker 49:05

What man the shirt died?

Speaker 49:07

Polishing my nails, I'm stepping out, my dear, to breathe an atmosphere that simply reeks with mass.

Speaker 49:15

And I trust that you'll excuse my dust when I step on again.

Speaker 49:20

Or I'll be there.

Speaker 49:22

Put down the top hat, muster up the white tie, dancing in the tail

Speaker 49:28

Uh

Speaker 49:29

Yeah.

Presenter9:29

Tredister and top hat, white tie, and tails. You were born Elizabeth Jennings in the mid twenties in Lincolnshire. Your father was a doctor, and you had an older sister you have an older sister and an imaginary brother. When when did he come into being?

Presenter9:45

We lived in Boston, Lincolnshire from

Presenter9:49

Well, I was born then, and was there till I was six.

Presenter9:52

And he lived in a greenhouse there, so I suppose

Presenter9:56

Photo five.

Presenter9:57

Did you talk to him?

Presenter9:59

Yes.

Presenter10:00

He only once became embodied because he came to Oxford, and when we moved he lived in the garage. But I think I did talk about him to my family. They took him for granted, and I wasn't teased about it. What was his name? Jack Baycock, and I don't know where I got the names. I simply don't know.

Elizabeth Jennings10:12

There's no

Presenter10:17

But one day my sister and I were looking out of a window,

Presenter10:21

Watching a a game of rugger acro North Oxford then was so countrified, which it isn't now.

Presenter10:27

And I said the centre forward, That's Jack, and that's the only he became incarnate and that's the only time. And you you went to school in Oxford, um a Catholic school.

Elizabeth Jennings10:32

Isn't that just a

Presenter10:36

But you didn't get on very well, did you? I hate it. I couldn't get on at all. You stole things.

Elizabeth Jennings10:37

So did

Elizabeth Jennings10:38

Well

Elizabeth Jennings10:40

Stone

Presenter10:42

Yes. I had absolutely all the symptoms of a classic juvenile delinquent. Things I didn't want. What did you steal? I remember once stealing a bit of a Hornby train. I mean, what was the use?

Presenter10:54

bits of a card that came out of some lesson.

Presenter10:59

It really was extraordinary, but But that was just because you were unhappy and it was your belly. But you I mean you still collect I mean you don't steal any more, but you you still collect little bits and pieces.

Elizabeth Jennings11:08

Yeah.

Elizabeth Jennings11:11

Uh

Presenter11:14

I've given up. I was collecting dolls' houses, but rather beautiful things. It's got far too expensive. Um and I have I've still got four of those and I am at the moment selling some of the things because they're very beautiful. You've got music boxes too. But I'm now that I'm collecting those instead. I've banned my all of my family have collected something.

Elizabeth Jennings11:27

Uh

Elizabeth Jennings11:30

I banned it.

Presenter11:33

But apparently your your room is is cluttered as well with books.

Elizabeth Jennings11:36

Yes, and with box across as well.

Presenter11:38

I ask you all that because I wonder if uh it seems to me again reading your poems that you long for childhood again. I mean there's more than just a reminiscence of childhood. It's a

Presenter11:48

It's almost as if you'd quite like to be a child, if you can. No, I don't think I'd like to be a child again, but I like some of the.

Elizabeth Jennings11:50

And that

Presenter11:54

The toys of charge were mostly the old ones. I hate all these new things of so many plastic. But there's something about the miniature.

Elizabeth Jennings11:59

Yeah.

Presenter12:03

Which I find very fascinating. But it's not because you long to be a child. Oh, no. No, I wouldn't want to be a child again.

Presenter12:09

Let's have some more music there.

Presenter12:11

Mozart.

Presenter12:13

I'd love part of one of his small concertos, please.

Presenter12:16

I feed it almost heavenly music.

Speaker 412:37

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

Speaker 412:46

Yeah.

Presenter13:18

Part of Mozart's Horn Concerto No. Four in E-flat major, played by Dennis Brain, with the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Herbert von Karrian.

Presenter13:26

You've said since that the years between the ages of fifteen and eighteen were the worst years of your life. What went wrong?

Presenter13:33

It was adolescence. It's extraordinary to think of it. Now, though I have spoken sometimes to schoolgirls.

Presenter13:40

Often though when I do readings of boys and girls, but sometimes when there are girls, only this summer.

Elizabeth Jennings13:43

Don't

Presenter13:46

And I did say it is still hell sometimes, isn't it? They said, Yeah.

Presenter13:50

Um it was a very, very dark period. But in many ways it must have resolved itself to an extent because um by all accounts, not least that of your friend and contemporary Kingsley Amis, by the time you were a student at St Anne's College, he said you were very pretty and had lots of admirers.

Presenter14:09

Yes, um I was very shy at first. Well, he said he wrote She seemed on her bicycle and in her T shirt, very advanced for those days.

Elizabeth Jennings14:13

B-Sox

Presenter14:20

I mean by the sound of it, that's not how you felt at all.

Elizabeth Jennings14:20

But it's not

Presenter14:23

I was agonizingly shy at first,'cause you see, not having been at a girls' school, not having a brother

Presenter14:29

But

Presenter14:30

When I first fell in love and it fell in love, that was very romantic, and it was at a party, and I was picked for a team, it was at a Christmas party.

Presenter14:38

Yes, I suppose when I knew Kingsley. But then

Presenter14:41

I don't think I would be very good at marriage because

Presenter14:45

Well, quite apart from jumping out of bed to write poetry, that sort of thing, but

Presenter14:49

I don't think I would like the romance part when it wears off, because when I did first fall in love, it was marvellous for about a year. It was absolutely idyllic.

Presenter14:57

But then we I started being very interested in other people.

Presenter15:02

Was this the young man you became engaged to? Yes. And do you know, even at that time I was already interested in one or two other young men, I have to admit, and there's that funny Oxford story about asking my father's permission.

Presenter15:13

Um he bought a ring. We had rather liked this ring, but he my father used to watch the cricket in University Parks and it was a Saturday, and I don't know which annoyed him more, having his cricket interrupted, or a young man buying a ring and getting engaged I mean, I suppose he thought it was on the cards, without his permission. I shall never know. And did he refuse the young man permission? Oh no. No, but he did when it did finally bust up.

Presenter15:39

He said then

Presenter15:41

It wouldn't have lasted six months, and I suppose if we'd got ma I imagine if we'd really got to this point and he was he would have been absolutely right. I was much too young.

Presenter15:51

Should we have your fourth record there? Is is this an appropriate one?

Presenter15:54

Oh yes, this is um I'd love something from Oklahoma which I saw.

Presenter15:59

When I was very in love, and I liked the sally with the fringe on top, please, I saw it with that young man.

Speaker 216:06

The wheels are yellow, the upholstery's brown, dashbones genuine leather. With eyes and glass curtains, you can roll right down. Can't serve the change in the weather. Two bright side lights winking and blinking. Ain't no funner, rake, I'm a thinking. You can keep your rake if you're thinking at a care costwap. For that shiny little surrey with a fringe on the top.

Presenter16:36

Surrey with the Fringe on Top from Oklahoma, sung by Howard Keel.

Presenter16:41

You've obviously fallen in love quite a few times, Elizabeth, but uh you, as you say, don't regret never marrying. Um you've written a poem which I wonder if you Maybe if it had been a sailor, or somebody who was rich, I didn't see too often. But I don't know.

Elizabeth Jennings16:49

Maybe

Presenter16:55

Otherwise marriage wasn't for you. Um but there's a splendid poem in your most recent collection about about the differing moralities of then and now, which is called The Way They Live Now. Oh, that's a sonnet, yes. Would you like to read that?

Elizabeth Jennings17:04

Well that's

Presenter17:08

You make love and you live together now, where we were shy and made love by degrees.

Presenter17:14

By kiss and invitation we learnt how our love was growing.

Presenter17:18

You know few of these tokens and little gifts, the gaze of eye to eye.

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The hand shared with another hand.

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You know few frustrations, seldom cry with passion's stress

Presenter17:31

Yet do you understand the little gestures that would mean so much, the surging hope to be asked to a dance?

Presenter17:39

You take the whole of love we live by touch And doubt, and by the purposes of chance And yet I think our slow ways carried much That you have missed the guess, the wish, the glance.

Presenter17:55

But during all this time that that you were or weren't falling in or out of love, um you were writing poetry. I think your your first

Presenter18:03

Published poem was in The Spectator when you were eighteen, wasn't it? And then the Poetry Review. And then a thing that's long since dead called The New English Weekly and Poetry Review and um

Elizabeth Jennings18:07

Yeah.

Elizabeth Jennings18:11

Right.

Presenter18:14

in Oxfordshire the fantasy press and they did it.

Presenter18:17

what has I supposed become quite a famous series of um pamphlets because it's people like Tom Gunn and uh King's Lee Amy and Larkin and so on. And then they did my first book.

Presenter18:28

And that won the Arts Council Prize. For her first book, which was very, very lucky, yes.

Elizabeth Jennings18:30

For a fed

Presenter18:33

And then your second book, published when you were about twenty eight, twenty nine, you won the Somerset Maurem Award with that, and and four hundred pounds. I know, which was an enormous amount of money. Which the conditions? You see oh, I think I should say this, I never thought that I could live by poetry. I was working then at the public library at Oxford, and I did eight years' hard labour there, but it was the most marvellous uh prize because

Presenter18:57

The conditions were that you spend at least three months abroad in a foreign country.

Presenter19:02

Of your own choice. What, living on the four hundred pounds? Yes. And it w I bought eighty back. Well, you see now that would be what, five thousand?

Elizabeth Jennings19:03

Yeah.

Elizabeth Jennings19:04

Yeah.

Presenter19:09

To live as I live ki I didn't live luxuriously, but I lived comfortably. You went to Rome? Spent most of it in Rome. I think we should have your next record there then.

Presenter19:18

I spent the whole of April, May, and June.

Presenter19:21

abroad, and I was just far enough into July, I think.

Presenter19:27

To go to the opera and the caracalla baths. And I don't know whether it was Turin Dot or the Stars, but.

Presenter19:35

I would like a piece of that music because it brings it all back to me and the happiness.

Speaker 420:05

Where is the song?

Speaker 420:10

Father.

Presenter20:38

Barbara Hendricks singing the Aria Signore Ascolte from Puccini's Turundotte with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Herbert von Carrion.

Presenter20:46

and memories of Rome for Elizabeth Jennings, where you climbed the holy steps on your knees.

Presenter20:51

It is hard, and it hurts. It's painful business. Yes, and of course these are supposed to be the steps leading up.

Presenter20:58

to where Pilate washed his hands, while I was told by somebody in Rome, a priest, I think, that anything that came over with the Crusades was likely to be bogus, and can you imagine that? But I do think there are certain relics

Presenter21:12

like that that have been hallowed by centuries of penitence.

Presenter21:16

But you're obviously very happy i i in Rome. You again you

Elizabeth Jennings21:18

Oh again

Presenter21:20

written lots of poems about it, and there is one called Happiness in Rome, about the sparkling lights of the great city. And it it ends up I had come home at last, I had come home. How much do you mean by that? I had come home. I think that being at the heart of Catholicism.

Elizabeth Jennings21:32

I felt

Presenter21:37

I suppose I rarely found happiness in it for the first time. And and seeing it lived with the Italians, I loved the Italians. So it was one of your hap the happiest times of your life. It was a very happy time, yeah.

Elizabeth Jennings21:46

It was a very happy time, yeah.

Presenter21:48

'Cause it it was some years after that, wasn't it, when you were later into your thirties that you became very unhappy and very depressed? Um I had left the library to freelance, and then I was offered a job at Chateau and Windows.

Presenter22:04

As a general reader.

Presenter22:06

and I hovered and havered I took it. And of course it was marvellous in many ways. The thing was, it was trying to do two jobs. You see, reading manuscripts all the time and writing blurbs. It started with physical illness. I can remember getting out of bed one morning with such a peculiar pain, just like a doctor's child, didn't do anything about it.

Presenter22:25

And it turned out to be an I'll say gorebladder.

Presenter22:29

and taking anodine and sucking mints and things, and then

Presenter22:34

I can remember going to the cinema with some friends, and it was a funny film. It was I'm All Right, Jack, and silent hot tears pouring down. I didn't know anything about breakdowns. I was cracking up. Well, in the end, I did leave.

Presenter22:46

But it was a bit too late for it. I suppose quite often a what they call a nervous breakdown does follow.

Presenter22:52

physical illness'cause I was pretty low physically.

Elizabeth Jennings22:53

Yeah.

Presenter22:55

So how long were you in the end in in um mental health? Well, I was you see, I was two years, but most of that time, except for the first few weeks, I was out all day.

Presenter23:06

And um

Presenter23:08

I'm not really a manic depressive. I do think that you're easily labelled. The silver lining of all of that was, of course, that that when you came out and when you ceased to have treatment, you suddenly had a great burst of poetry, didn't you?

Presenter23:21

You know, the strange thing is that it was a liberation and I started writing

Presenter23:27

It's absolute flun.

Presenter23:28

Dozens and dozens of poems.

Presenter23:31

from which one of my longest well, at that time, my books had always been about forty poems, and it was a book called Growing Points.

Presenter23:38

which had uniformly good reviews.

Presenter23:41

Next record: Well, all my life I've loved the theatre.

Presenter23:46

And

Presenter23:47

Another high spot like Lepanto and Verome was seeing John Gielgud's Hamlet. I've seen him in a lot of plays before and since, and I saw his last.

Presenter23:58

at Oxford, and then, because of Child and the War.

Presenter24:02

My first London theatre was seeing it again at the Haymarket.

Presenter24:07

and is something that is with me forever and has alternate does.

Presenter24:12

And he is a very great actor.

Presenter24:14

M

Presenter24:15

I haven't met him, but I do correspond, and he writes most witty and enchanting letters. But a man of such gentleness and generosity and magnanimity I would love to have Sir John reading

Presenter24:27

A soliloquy from Hamlet, I think Oh, what a rogan peasant slave am I, please

Speaker 424:31

Oh, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!

Speaker 424:36

Is it not monstrous that this player here, But in a fiction, in a dream of passion, Could force his soul so to his own conceit, That from her working all his visage won?

Speaker 424:49

Tears in his eyes, distraction in his aspect, a broken voice, and his whole function suiting with forms to his conceits.

Speaker 424:57

And all for nothing.

Speaker 425:00

For HECUBA.

Speaker 425:03

What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba?

Speaker 425:07

that he should weep for her.

Speaker 425:11

What would he do?

Speaker 425:14

Had he the motive and the cue for passion that I have?

Speaker 425:17

He would drown the stage with tears, and cleave the general ear with horrid speech, Make mad the guilty and appall the free, Confound the ignorant, and amaze, indeed, the very faculties of eyes and ears.

Presenter25:32

Sir John Gilgood and the soliloquy, Oh, what a rogue and peasant slave am I from Hamlet.

Presenter25:38

You've had and have many notable admirers, Elizabeth. See Day Lewis was one, Kingsley Amis, we've mentioned. Peter Levy, the Oxford Professor of Poetry, has said that you're one of the few living poets one could not do without.

Presenter25:52

You find it, though, quite difficult, I understand, to enjoy those kinds of accolades, don't you?

Presenter25:58

I find them hard to believe.

Presenter26:01

Two or three good ones don't make up for one bad I I do read reviews. I think that you've got to, really. I think

Presenter26:09

Perhaps even just curiosity. But I think you ought to know what's going on, and just occasionally you can have a review that is really constructive.

Presenter26:18

But do you think sometimes that reviewers are are more cruel than they need to be?

Presenter26:23

I do.

Presenter26:24

I do think but somehow

Presenter26:27

I don't know why, but

Presenter26:29

People seem to be.

Presenter26:31

Some people seem to be more cruel about poetry than they are about fiction or other books, and there are certain reviewers who, if you've had any sort of success, it's anathema to them.

Presenter26:46

What what do you then what do you

Presenter26:48

Ask from life. I mean, you you obviously feel like

Elizabeth Jennings26:51

Yeah.

Presenter26:52

Yes.

Elizabeth Jennings26:53

I would

Presenter26:59

But probably not so much. I mean, I wouldn't want to be I pr

Presenter27:03

huge amounts of money, but it would be nice to have a bit more.

Presenter27:07

But you obviously don't have any great desire for things material. I mean, you live.

Presenter27:13

No. I mean, I like good food and wine sometimes, but I don't sort of want it all the time. Now and then to have something very grand, but it still has a romantic flavour about it, which is lovely.

Elizabeth Jennings27:14

But

Presenter27:24

So you uh you'll be on the other side.

Elizabeth Jennings27:25

I do have the

Presenter27:28

But you'll be ideal on the desert island because you don't have much there, but you do have one great luxury, which we'll find out about later. But I mean, again, in a sense.

Elizabeth Jennings27:35

Friend this

Presenter27:37

Thank you.

Presenter27:38

Yes, I would miss people.

Presenter27:40

I'd miss conversation.

Presenter27:42

But you wouldn't miss things.

Presenter27:44

No, I suppose not.

Presenter27:46

No one asked whether I started collecting shows or something.

Elizabeth Jennings27:49

Shall we have your seventh record?

Presenter27:51

Well, I couldn't do without Beethoven.

Presenter27:54

With Beethoven I feel that there's great humanity. There's a sort of angelic quality, I think, about Mozart. So I thought I would like

Presenter28:04

Something from the Leonora number three, which they usually I've never seen Fidelia, but they usually use the overture to his one opera.

Presenter29:14

Part of Beethoven's Leonora overture played by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sir George Schulte.

Presenter29:20

Tomorrow, Elizabeth, you'll perhaps do what you do most days, which is to take a taxi, sort of late morning to your Oxford cafe. You order a coffee, and you begin work.

Presenter29:30

Do did you ever discuss your daily residence in this cafe with with the owners, or d is it something that's just happened?

Presenter29:39

I tend to run up quite a bill, so they don't mind

Presenter29:43

I usually only stay for the morning. On Saturdays I don't I often stay all day, and then I go to an evening mess, and then it's one of my nights a week. I have two nights a week of colour T V.

Presenter29:54

And uh Saturday's one. She was rather a good one to have. What you allow yourself? No, no, uh with a friend. I I there is a T V at my room, but I haven't got

Elizabeth Jennings29:58

Yeah.

Presenter30:02

Coloured T V. So it's a treat. But back in your cafe, do you feel at all self-conscious? Do you think that, um

Presenter30:09

You know, people might be looking at you and thinking who is this woman who's always here?

Presenter30:13

No, because there are some others who go regularly.

Presenter30:16

Oh, there's a lot of you? No, I mean there are others who do go quite regularly, but not as much. But so that and there are a lot who only come once or twice, a lot of undergraduates and uh

Presenter30:26

So that I know that I'm not it's not a self-conscious business at all.

Elizabeth Jennings30:28

It's not as

Presenter30:32

Do they know who you are though? Do they they can't? And they don't think it odd.

Elizabeth Jennings30:32

Yeah.

Elizabeth Jennings30:35

Yes.

Presenter30:38

No, they don't think it odd. But um and they tell me

Elizabeth Jennings30:40

And they tell me

Presenter30:42

Do do you think it's odd that you that you sit down?

Elizabeth Jennings30:43

No, did you see it?

Presenter30:47

I don't all write poems all that often there, but I do sometimes.

Presenter30:52

You've written a lot of poems about your mother, who died less than two years ago, aged eighty seven. I wondered if you'd like to end by reading one of them. There's one called Grief.

Presenter31:03

which I think a lot of people would identify with because it's um

Presenter31:07

It's all about suddenly not having to do things that you've done for years.

Presenter31:11

I was very fond of my mother, and I think perhaps paradoxically, when you've only got happy, grateful memories, it's much easier to accept a death. It's when you've I well, once or twice when you've awful rows, not with a relation and trouble, then you feel such guilt when they die and so on. But so this was happy, if you can say a happy grief.

Presenter31:31

I miss my mother to day.

Presenter31:33

I went into a shop and saw the mothering Sunday cards in bright array.

Presenter31:39

I always used to send her one, and nah

Presenter31:42

There is nothing to write or say.

Presenter31:45

Grief can strike you when you least expect it.

Presenter31:49

It's an emptiness, easy to fill with pain.

Presenter31:53

My mother had no rage, was always kind.

Presenter31:57

When would she come again?

Presenter31:59

and darken and haunt the large room of my mind.

Presenter32:05

So we have record number eight.

Presenter32:07

Well, I would like on this island to be reminded of my religion, and some really soaring music I think would be

Presenter32:16

Monks of Solemn, singing the Gloria.

Speaker 432:19

Mm-hmm. I don't know how much name you know easy I was name

Elizabeth Jennings32:31

I'm not sure.

Elizabeth Jennings32:37

You know

Speaker 432:43

But see us a juice or the menu.

Elizabeth Jennings32:48

For them.

Elizabeth Jennings32:51

I'm a holy

Speaker 432:58

Nothing would change.

Elizabeth Jennings33:05

Yeah.

Speaker 433:08

They would spy on the side of the world.

Presenter33:19

The monks of the Abbey of Saint Pierre de Soleme singing part of the Gloria from La Maisse de l'Anoncia.

Presenter33:25

Well now, if you could only take one of those eight records with you, which one would you choose? It would be very diff it's between two, really. I'm afraid it's not the

Speaker 433:30

I hate it.

Elizabeth Jennings33:30

Do you

Presenter33:35

It's not the monks.

Presenter33:37

I think it would probably be the Mozart.

Presenter33:40

When I heard Lil Eonora again I thought about that, but it also made me feel very sad, but I think I'd feel great

Presenter33:47

A certain amount of exultation, happiness. So I think I'd take the Mozart. The horn concerto. Yes, please.

Elizabeth Jennings33:51

Yeah.

Presenter33:52

And your book as well as the Bible and Shakespeare.

Presenter33:55

I thought of various things. I thought once of George Herbert's poems, but I don't

Presenter34:01

You can tire of anybody.

Presenter34:03

Once so what I would rarely like is Richard Ellman's

Presenter34:07

The new

Presenter34:09

Oxford Book of American Verse,'cause I want to know more. I'd like to know more about American poetry, especially today. So I think I'd take that, please. And what about your luxury? Ah, well

Presenter34:20

I've thought of endless supplies of champagne, but probably endless supplies of fresh water might be better.

Presenter34:26

Then I thought of a tent with films and cinema, but no.

Presenter34:31

I would like, please, a large pad.

Presenter34:35

and felt pens and barrows, because I did at one time I have no gift for it, but I did do some sort of drawing bit of painting.

Presenter34:44

But I would like to have some because

Presenter34:47

I hope I might write some poems, but also I could make a flag.

Presenter34:52

with a large piece of white paper, because I think I'd want to get away and I'd wave it. You no, you can't do that. It's too practical. Tell me that's not what you're going to do with the paper and you can't. I won't use it, but if you let me have a large pad I promise not to.

Elizabeth Jennings34:55

And I'll wave it.

Elizabeth Jennings34:57

I can't

Elizabeth Jennings34:58

All right.

Elizabeth Jennings35:01

Allows us

Presenter35:05

Thank you. Elizabeth Jennings, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs. Thank you for having me.

Elizabeth Jennings35:19

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