Kaye Webb

Kaye Webb0:00

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.

Kaye Webb0:08

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

Presenter0:29

My Castaway this week is a publisher. Her professional life has been crowded with experience. In the thirties she worked for several magazines, becoming assistant editor of Lilliput, where she solicited contributions from such distinguished authors as Evelyn Waugh, Bernard Shaw, and Dylan Thomas. In the sixties she was made editor of Puffin Books, a job she held for nearly twenty years, presiding over a revolution in children's reading. Sales of Puffin Books increased three hundred per cent under her editorship and influenced a whole generation of children with titles such as Stig of the Dump and Watership Down.

Presenter1:03

Her idea, she says, was that children's publishers should not be in it for the money, but to create literate children. She is K. Webb.

Presenter1:12

Was that ever true, do you think, Kay, that Puffin was more interested in encouraging children to read than making money?

Presenter1:18

Well, when Sir Allen was alive it was, really he was frightfully good. He he used to say, Oh, swings and roundabouts, if we lose on this book we'll make better readers. He was the founder.

Speaker 41:29

It was

Kaye Webb1:29

Yeah.

Presenter1:30

Yes, Alan Dane. So did you never feel the accountants breathing down your neck? Did you always have a sense of freedom to to pick up whatever book you came across if you fancied it? Yes, I did, because Alan believed in me, you know.

Presenter1:44

Mind you, I didn't do them for nothing, and I had to make them pay, but it wasn't the first stricture. But the trick is, of course, to do both, isn't it? Which is what you did in the end, that if you encourage children to read more, then more books are bought for them.

Kaye Webb1:51

On your

Kaye Webb1:55

Or then more books are bought.

Presenter1:57

Yes. And if you got to the parents to tell them what kind of books. You see that I was terrified when I first got the job at the way I'd meet parents who'd say, Oh, yes, I used to read to them, but now they can read to themselves. I don't need to.

Presenter2:13

And I never stop saying you should go on reading to your children no matter what age they are. They're always going to be a year behind with their reading. They'll read at one level, but you can introduce them to books, much better books. Of course, great success is achieved in the literary world if a publisher comes across a book that perhaps no one else has spotted or hasn't picked up for some reason and possibly has been turned down lots of times. You did that with Watership Down, didn't you? Well, no, Watership Down had been discovered by a very good but small publisher called Rex Collins.

Presenter2:47

and he thought he'd have a go see if Puffins would like it.

Presenter2:51

And I did. It was such an unusual book that a lot of people just said, Oh, I know one man who sent it out to be read by one of his readers, and he said, You might like to look at this. It appears to be about rabbits, you know, kissing it off the most. So what was special about it when you picked it up? What did you spot that they'd missed?

Kaye Webb3:07

Yeah.

Presenter3:12

The way the rabbits talked, I was so impress I mean, I every time you publish a book with talking animals.

Presenter3:20

They usually have ordinary voices, or else they make imitation sounds. But this man had made them all sound like civil servants, and it was frightfully funny. So you agreed to publish it, and it was a great success, very good success.

Presenter3:34

And of course it won every award there was. And it sold a million within a year, didn't it? Yes, it was about a million, I think.

Kaye Webb3:39

Yes.

Presenter3:42

Let's pause there. I want to talk to you some more, obviously, about children's literature. But let's pause and have your first Desert Island disc. What's it to be?

Presenter3:48

It's to be an Elga song called where.

Presenter3:52

Corals Lie. I love this song and I go to sleep by it. A friend of mine recorded it for me and I usually play it quite often.

Presenter4:01

But I never knew the words until recently.

Presenter4:04

And they're not quite as good as the music. I have to warn anybody who wants to try it.

Speaker 44:16

The deeps have music soft and low.

Speaker 44:24

Winds awake, the air is strong.

Speaker 44:35

Yours be, yours be on to go and see the land play corners alone.

Presenter5:07

Where Corals Lie from Elgar's Sea Pictures, sung by Janet Baker, with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir John Barbarolly. Do you still, K Webb, although now approaching your ninth decade, do you still read children's books? Yes, I do. I'm astonished about how much I read them, because

Presenter5:25

I thought, well, once I'm really out of this, I can start reading adult books again.

Presenter5:30

'Cause I hadn't read adult books for years before and

Presenter5:34

I find I prefer the children's books. I think it's'cause I'm a fairly soppy person and and I like things to end happily and so on. And there's more chance in a child's book. But what do you think adults should do? I mean, do you when they're reading children's books, should you have a special button that you press which increases your suspension of disbelief, or should you not be too judgmental?

Presenter5:56

Well, I again I tried to be as much like a child as possible. I always read in bed.

Presenter6:02

as far as I possibly could, because you're a bit nearer childhood and there's no extraneous bother. I used to read about twenty, I suppose, a week.

Presenter6:10

and I put the the ones I liked the sound of aside, and I'd read them again in about two weeks' time, if I remembered anything about the plot.

Presenter6:19

If I didn't remember anything even when I picked it up, it obviously wasn't making much of an impact. The other thing I found out from children themselves when they were judging a book

Presenter6:29

If they liked a book they'd read it two or three times. And that rather put one's calculations out because

Presenter6:35

You know, children are supposed to only be able to read six hundred books in a childhood, and if they're going to reread their favorite ones three times, that cuts it down a bit. Do you think that there are certain books that they should read, or do you think it doesn't matter which six hundred they read as long as they're reading?

Kaye Webb6:51

Oh, I th

Presenter6:52

I think a certain proportion of books ought to have a great deal of imagination in them, to capture their imagination. But I don't think they're all the same ones. I'm appalled by this list.

Presenter7:03

that's come out now for the examinations. Are you? Well, you think it's too narrow? Yes. But do you think then it's all right as long as um an adolescent girl, for example, is is reading Jillie Cooper rather than Noel Stretfield's Balisha. I think it's a well, Balish was too young for

Speaker 27:17

Nice.

Presenter7:20

But I think it's a pity. But I'd rather she read that than nothing, you know. And with any luck I mean, it depends entirely on teachers and parents to get them excited.

Presenter7:30

Enough to want to try something new.

Presenter7:33

Record number two is Jack Buchanan.

Presenter7:37

Singing Good Night Vienna.

Presenter7:39

The reason I chose this is

Presenter7:41

He was so enchanting that I thought I'd like to remember him. Also, my children were very fond of the record we had of him. They played it endlessly during the holidays when they were younger. Then I met him properly.

Presenter7:53

at a dinner party.

Presenter7:55

in Worthing, after he'd been in a play,

Presenter7:58

And I said,

Presenter7:59

I wouldn't have anything to drink'cause I had to drive back to Brighton, and he said,'Oh, I'll drive you, don't worry, I'll drive you.

Presenter8:06

And

Presenter8:07

He's I said in my car and he's seditious. So we took this drive at hairbreadth speed.

Presenter8:14

from Worthing to Brighton.

Presenter8:16

And he kept saying, Oh, isn't this fun I say, isn't this fun?

Presenter8:20

When we arrived at his house in Brighton, his wife was standing on the doorstep, pale and anxious, and saying,'You're the bravest woman I've ever met' I said,'Why?' She said,'Jack hasn't driven for years. He was stopped for dangerous driving.

Presenter8:34

So I sort of remember him.

Presenter8:36

pleasantly but apprehensively.

Speaker 48:40

For the nine

Speaker 48:41

Ella.

Speaker 48:43

You city of a million melodies.

Kaye Webb8:46

Yeah.

Speaker 48:47

Our hearts are thrilling to the strings that you play, From dawn till the daylight dies.

Speaker 48:56

Good night at the end Where moonlight fills the air with mystery And eyes are shining to the jitsy guitars Well

Presenter9:07

Cling to the starry sky

Presenter9:12

Good Night Vienna, sung by Jack Buchanan. What did you read as a child in the twenties, Kay?

Presenter9:18

It was odd, really. I I got ill.

Presenter9:21

I had rheumatic fever and was kept in bed. In those days that was all we ever did, just keep you in bed, keep you quiet. And my mother couldn't get much time to go to libraries and things, so she just wheeled a bookcase into my bed and said get on with it.

Presenter9:36

So I didn't read children's books. You know, I w I went straight into Thackeray and and

Presenter9:41

So then I never went back to children's books, uh you might say. So you missed out in a way. Perhaps you've been catching up ever since? Yes, well I I have in a way. I was allowed to go and

Presenter9:52

choose my first book for a prize of something I'd won, and I chose Oscar Wilde's The Happy Prince.

Presenter10:00

And I've still got it, and I loved it more than anything.

Presenter10:04

You won that at boarding school, which in general I think you hated, but you had an English teacher whom you loved, which is a a fairly classic tale. Tell me about the English teacher, mister Gibbs. Well, he was not very prepossessing. I don't his widow's dead, so I needn't say that. He had terrible shiny suits, sort of purple coloured, and he he'd been a minor, I think, and he he had a very Welsh accent. And he had such enthusiasm for everything. You couldn't

Kaye Webb10:11

Tell me about

Presenter10:29

Not share it. And what sort of books did he recommend to you specifically? Well, specifically.

Presenter10:35

He recommended Walter Dela Mer, The Memoirs of a Midget, and then, of course.

Presenter10:40

He'd sent a copy of the school magazine to Walter de la Mer.

Presenter10:44

who he had a correspondence with.

Presenter10:46

And I never saw the letter, but he said that Walter Delamere wrote back and said there was one poem by somebody called Kay Webb which I was very impressed by.

Presenter10:56

And you should see she goes on writing, so of course I had a picture of what I did on my own front of my desk, you know, the lid of my desk. He was frightfully handsome in those days, and he was my sort of hero.

Presenter11:08

And you did in fact go on to to to have a rather

Presenter11:11

Gentle and nice relationships.

Kaye Webb11:12

Oh yes, well

Presenter11:14

I never wrote to him, or never thought I'd ever see him, but there there was a girl.

Presenter11:18

in the office when I was on I think it was when I was on Picture Post.

Kaye Webb11:20

Then I

Presenter11:22

And she said casually, Oh, yes, do you admire him? I said about something. She said I was his secretary, and I looked at her as if she was a goddess, you know. And she said, Oh, I'll take you to tea with him one day she didn't.

Presenter11:34

She didn't find the time.

Presenter11:36

But then I when I was working on Young Elizabethan, which is a children's magazine,

Presenter11:41

I went down unto the desk of the proprietor, and I saw a manuscript with Walter Delamere's name on it, and I said, Do you mean to say you know him? because it was a letter.

Presenter11:52

He said, yes, I'll take you to tea with him and I thought, Here we go. It's going to be another four years instead of which he took me to tea the next week.

Presenter11:59

and we became such friends. He used to say, Come whenever you like, and I used to go, mostly Wednesday afternoons. For tea. For tea. He was usually in bed in his blue cardigan.

Presenter12:09

looking still

Presenter12:11

charming and and and he was such a loving man. And he used to write inscriptions into my books. He used to give me his books or I'd bring them from Science.

Presenter12:20

And he rang me up once after I had tea with him, and he said

Presenter12:24

Have you ever thought that kindness also begins with a K?

Presenter12:29

I I treasured that particularly. It was a sort of love affair, really. Yes, it was a sort of love affair, yeah.

Kaye Webb12:30

Yeah.

Kaye Webb12:32

Yes, it was

Presenter12:34

We better have your next record, I think.

Presenter12:37

Which is

Presenter12:39

Walter de la Mare?

Presenter12:41

I think somebody called this Isn't This a Marvellous Day? because he wi he greeted one with such enthusiasm.

Presenter12:48

And

Presenter12:49

This is a bit of him talking about a tree which stood out his side of his window.

Speaker 412:54

What a lovely day it is. It's rather a nice view, isn't it? At the end of that you see just

Speaker 413:00

Where the break comes is is the Thames.

Speaker 413:03

The famous ferry is just down here.

Speaker 413:07

Trick nom fair.

Speaker 413:09

I'm very fond of that tree.

Speaker 413:12

We might have a look at that tree,'cause it's a rather rare

Speaker 413:16

That tree I saw, reflected in a looking glass,

Speaker 413:19

Struck by lightning.

Speaker 413:21

It's a wonderful trees, a hundred and five feet high.

Speaker 413:25

I can't remember the noise.

Speaker 413:28

Must have been a terrific bang, you see, with it. I felt nothing about that at all. I didn't feel any kind of shock or

Speaker 413:35

I was in bed.

Speaker 413:37

Best place you would be, isn't it?

Presenter13:39

Walter de la Mer.

Presenter13:41

Let's just take a a snapshot, K. Webb, of your rise through the magazine world. The early thirties you worked for Picture Goer and were, among other things, George the Inquiry names. What did he do?

Presenter13:53

There were endless letters saying, Please, I'm so in love with such and such a film star, please will you send me all the details about them.

Presenter14:01

It drove me nearly frantic'cause they wanted to know the names of every single film they'd ever made. Then you were Mickey at another point. Oh, well that's when I was before I

Kaye Webb14:08

Oh well.

Presenter14:10

Before I'd actually got the job on the picture girl, I was looking for a job.

Presenter14:15

And um

Presenter14:17

The man who started Mickey Mouse over here said would I like to answer the letters that the children wrote to Mickey?

Presenter14:25

So I used to do them for twopence a letter and print Mickey my hand at the end of the day. Was that t tuppence to you or did the children pay tuppence to let you? Oh no, it was tuppence to me, such as it was.

Kaye Webb14:30

Yeah.

Kaye Webb14:33

Um

Presenter14:36

Then there was a stint on Caravan World and Sports Car.

Presenter14:41

I hadn't known anything at all about caravans, and I was writing lady I was called the Lady Edgentress, and I can remember having to write household hints.

Presenter14:52

And I said

Presenter14:53

Well, if you have trouble opening and shutting your drawers, you will put soap at the bottoms of them, underneath them.

Presenter15:00

And the editor he must have known what he was doing put it in under the heading Difficult Draws.

Presenter15:05

And I was we had a stand on the motor show. It was the most embarrassing time I've I ever had.

Presenter15:13

But I learnt about caravans. And then came Picture Post in nineteen thirty eight, where you worked for the editor and again you replied to readers' letters there, didn't you?

Presenter15:22

Yes, yes. I just replied to letters and then almost immediately.

Presenter15:26

I did some stories for them, rather apprehensively.

Presenter15:30

They'd lost somebody on Lilliput and they said, Would I like to go and have a go? And that was a little pocket magazine. And it was a combination of of short stories, odd bits of articles.

Presenter15:43

It was fairly intelligent, but not a great strain, and the articles were quite short, and the it was full of jokes, and

Presenter15:51

For me it was very exciting because the war did come.

Presenter15:55

And I was able to

Presenter15:57

ring up anybody I wanted and say would they write an article and this as long as they weren't fighting the war. So who did you ring? Well I rang Bernard Shaw at one point.

Presenter16:06

That was we had two conversations. His voice was so marvellous on the phone, my limbs turned to water, you might say.

Presenter16:14

And also H D Wells wrote

Presenter16:17

And Dylan Thomas yes, I asked him to write some captions, and we became great friends. We used to go out a bit after that during you know, in the blackout.

Presenter16:28

fumbly aware about, and he used to say, Well, come out tonight and we'll have a drink.

Presenter16:33

And I'd say, Well, perhaps not tonight, tomorrow and he'd say, I shan't have any money tomorrow, I've only just got paid He was a very spontaneous man, it's quite true And he introduced me to Mervyn Peake, whom I did admire enormously. And then there was Osborne Sitwell and John Betchman, all writing for you. Yes, they did. I didn't get to know them particularly well, I don't know. But it must have taken some guts to ring them up in the first place.

Kaye Webb16:53

But it must have

Presenter16:57

Yes, I don't know why I was I wasn't in the least alarmed about it in those days. When I'm keen on a job, I'm so keen on the job itself, you know, I don't mind what I do to make it.

Presenter17:08

Work.

Presenter17:09

Should we have record number four?

Presenter17:12

Well, record number four is James Mason.

Presenter17:16

Not singing but speaking.

Presenter17:18

And

Presenter17:19

He was another perk, you might say, of my job on on Lilliput, because

Presenter17:24

One day a new manuscript arrived on the Slashpal.

Presenter17:28

The man who was helping me turned it down and I said, Why have you turned that down? I just

Presenter17:33

as it happened, looked at the pile to see what had happened, why there have been so few stories accepted and looked at.

Presenter17:40

And this one was an article entitled Yes, I Beat My Wife.

Presenter17:44

By James Mason. I said, But that's exactly what we need. He said, Who's James Mason? He was a bit of an intellectual, this chap.

Presenter17:53

So James we had a correspondence and I I've accepted it, and so I went down to see him.

Presenter17:59

And we got on rather well.

Presenter18:02

So we went and had dinner in the Savoy. And did you discover why he beat his wife?

Kaye Webb18:04

And did you

Presenter18:07

Yeah, CJ is one of these.

Presenter18:10

One of those headlines that didn't mean anything. But he became a really great friend.

Kaye Webb18:10

One of those headlines that didn't mean anything else.

Presenter18:14

When he knew I was going to have twins, he said,'Oh, I'll be a godfather' and his wife said,'She'd be a godmother.

Presenter18:21

So they became my children's godparents. He's always been part of our lives and we've got lots of records by him and I couldn't really have not included him in this. So what's he going to do on your record?

Presenter18:35

I've chosen a poem I like very much by Browning called My Last Duchess.

Speaker 218:40

That's my last Duchess painted on the wall.

Speaker 218:44

Looking as if she were alive.

Speaker 218:47

I call that piece of wonder now.

Speaker 218:51

Fra Pandolf's hands worked busily a day, and there she stands.

Speaker 218:56

Will please you sit and look at her?

Speaker 218:59

I said Frau Pandolf by design, for never read strangers like you that pictured countenance, the depth and passion of its earnest glance.

Speaker 219:10

But to myself they turned, since none puts by the curtain I have drawn for you but I.

Speaker 219:15

and seemed, as they would ask me, if they durst,

Speaker 219:19

How such a glance came there

Presenter19:23

James Mason reading Browning's That's My Last Duchess.

Presenter19:27

One of the people who tentatively offered drawings to Lilliputt during the war years was Ronald Searle. I think he sent you his first St Trinians cartoon, yes.

Presenter19:36

I hadn't met him of course. I'd just got a batch of cartoons in, including the first St Trinier's one. And the first one was published.

Presenter19:44

And he he'd been ordered overseas and he came up to the Liniputh to find out what else he could sell, I suppose.

Presenter19:51

And my secretary said I never saw anyone without an appointment.

Presenter19:56

Can you imagine? So he went back overseas and he I never met him that time at all.

Kaye Webb19:58

So you never saw it.

Presenter20:02

And then three years later

Presenter20:05

The Reynolds News, I think it was, had a stories by Tom Dreiberg saying and they've discovered Ronald Searle, the Lilliput cartoonist, in in Japanese prison camp.

Kaye Webb20:14

And

Presenter20:16

How did you feel when you heard he'd been released? It was ridiculous. I was so pleased, and I I loved his writing. And I remember rushing downstairs to my mother and saying, Ronald Searle's alive. I'd assumed he was dead. You see, we'd heard nothing for three years.

Presenter20:31

And um But it was a large reaction, considering you'd never met. Yes, it was, wasn't it? I thought he he wrote he used to write charming letters. He had lovely writing and he so he did very funny

Presenter20:42

Jokes. And then he came back and you did meet. Yes. And and things went rather fast after that.

Presenter20:49

And um we were very happy for a very long time. You were married and uh and you you had twins. I mean so it was really quite a fairy tale, wasn't it? Yes, it was a fairy tale.

Kaye Webb20:55

I mean

Kaye Webb20:58

Yes, it was, if you were.

Presenter21:00

But I think um I think it was a bit hard on Ronald because I don't think he'd been

Presenter21:05

back in England long enough to really know what was going on. And did you put your professional life on hold, as it were, because you became a wife and a mother?

Presenter21:13

Yes, I did, I suppose. But um we did a lot of things together. I mean we did a series of drawings for the News Chronicle. I I f found the articles and wrote the articles and he did the illustration. And then somebody suggested, a publisher, a very sensible publisher, said, you two ought to do a book together. He said what would you like to do? And we both said, without consulting each other, Paris would like to do a book about Paris. So we went to Paris.

Presenter21:41

And we were there several weeks, and we did a book called Paris Sketchbook, which was, of course.

Presenter21:47

Really Ronald's brilliant drawings and enough text for me to hold them together.

Presenter21:53

But uh my next record is apropos because I we were walking

Presenter21:57

along the Champs Elysees and we saw a crowd of

Presenter22:00

people waiting outside a music hall and we thought, Oh, well, we've gothing to do, let's go and see what they're queuing up for.

Presenter22:06

And we got in, and we sat down, and then the music played, and suddenly the curtains opened, and there was a tiny little figure with a great hoarse voice coming out.

Presenter22:15

Saying Sir Lot, Code, La Rue, whatever.

Presenter22:20

That was Pieff, and it was our first experience of her.

Presenter22:23

And we were both absolutely thrilled.

Presenter22:26

The Lord called you.

Speaker 422:30

Here a fire, a para fierce, who has toused the superfluous.

Speaker 422:39

Lord could allow it.

Speaker 422:43

Et la de la d'ét misou de quaitour.

Speaker 422:47

Des bazons, des maisons, despouis.

Presenter22:57

Edith Piaff singing the Lautre Coted La Rue

Presenter23:01

Your marriage to Ronald Searle broke up in the early sixties, Kaywet. That must have been quite a blow.

Presenter23:07

Yes it yes it was, I suppose, but it was

Presenter23:10

I can understand many of the reasons for it.

Presenter23:15

I think he

Presenter23:17

He wanted a a completely other kind of life, not a domesticated life with kids bawling and not that they bawled, they were too grown up for that, but you know, I and I was always shouting up and down, organising parties, which he probably didn't want to go to, I don't know. But it anyway, it it was obvious that it wasn't it wasn't a good thing to go on.

Kaye Webb23:25

In

Presenter23:38

And you've learned to be philosophical about it.

Presenter23:40

Yes. But it was the call from Puffin to become editor that helped you through that. Yes, it was an amazing bit of luck.

Kaye Webb23:46

Yes, it was an amazing thing.

Presenter23:48

It's my whole life has been like that. I've had very good luck in the working sense and not quite such good luck in

Presenter23:55

Private sense.

Kaye Webb23:56

But but then perhaps

Kaye Webb24:01

No, no, no.

Presenter24:03

So many million children might not have read quite such good books. I tell myself that anyway. I'm sure it's true, true. I said at the outset that that sales increased enormously under your editorship by some three hundred percent very quickly. Why do you think there was that sudden change? I mean, obviously you you had an undeniable instinct for choosing the right title, but there must have been other things. It was after the Labour government. It was money in the

Kaye Webb24:22

But there must have been other things.

Presenter24:29

school they they started school libraries everywhere and they

Presenter24:32

The libraries, ordinary libraries, had much bigger branches for the children's books. And so publishers suddenly discovered that they could make money out of children's books. And you gave the whole business total commitment. It's a phrase that crops up when one reads about you all the time. Total commitment from K Webb.

Presenter24:51

Um and obviously you expected it in return from your staff and from authors and booksellers and parents and teachers and the children and you often got it. Do you think that made you a a difficult person to work for? Or were you quite easy, do you think?

Presenter25:05

I don't know. They've ever practically everybody who's worked with me still speaks to me and they give me

Presenter25:12

lunches and things. What was nice about it was because working with children is such fun, and I think we made it more enjoyable when I started a Puffing Club.

Presenter25:23

I'm going to come to that in one second because I think we ought to pause for your next record there.

Kaye Webb25:26

Yeah.

Presenter25:28

Well

Presenter25:29

When I first got there and I found there were some marvellous books, but nobody seemed to know about them, so

Presenter25:35

I went to see the sales manager of WH Smiths, and said

Presenter25:39

I want to spend some money promoting them.

Presenter25:42

What would you do? I mean, what do you think would be the best thing? And he said

Presenter25:46

Why don't you have a puffin' song and we'll play it in the in the shops?

Presenter25:50

And so we we made a puffin' song. I mean

Presenter25:53

really very jolly, and everybody went round the office singing it all the time. But the song itself has gone on still, you know, b when I ring people.

Presenter26:03

They sometimes, you know, old friends sing it and the

Presenter26:07

We had a reunion a little while ago for founder members.

Presenter26:11

And they all sang it all the way through the party.

Presenter26:15

So that's why you've got to hear it. That's why you've got to have it on your desert island. Yes, absolutely. To remind myself of the good times we had.

Speaker 426:22

There's so much in a puffin, It's full of soup and stuffin'.

Speaker 426:27

Enough to keep you happy all day long, all day long. So for boys and girls who're needing some extra special reading, all you've gotta do is sing this puffin' song.

Speaker 426:39

There is not

Speaker 426:42

Nothing like a muffin.

Speaker 426:44

Nothing like a puffin' book to read, yes indeed. A puffin' so exciting, it's the finest kind of writing.

Presenter26:53

The Puffin Song

Presenter26:54

Nineteen sixty seven it was, I think, that you started the Puffin Club, which won thousands and thousands of members very quickly, didn't it? Yes, it did.

Presenter27:03

They put my name on the books which said editor K Webb so they had somebody to write to. And this is really what made me realize how important a club could be, because what they wanted was anybody, somebody out in the world outside, to whom they could write. It developed into a sort of a cult. There have been other children's. And you had your secret codes and things like that. Yes, well we had a secret code.

Kaye Webb27:22

And you had your

Presenter27:27

And we used to get kids writing to say, I don't like to tell you this, but my brothers discovered the secret code or they'd say, My parents are reading the magazine and I've told them it's not for them. And the code was? It was s s sniff up.

Presenter27:44

I said, always puffins backwards, you know. And the rest of the code, they could they used to write me letters and they'd go really long letters.

Kaye Webb27:47

And the aggressive

Speaker 427:48

Uh

Presenter27:51

And I had to ha you get somebody in the office to

Presenter27:54

translate them'cause you couldn't not in case they were saying something important. And and that we had badges and when they'd been members for four years they had black badges. And we very soon discovered that

Kaye Webb28:03

Okay.

Presenter28:05

They kept things all very well as a club, but we don't meet each other, so the next thing we had to do was to devise ways of

Presenter28:12

meeting them. So we had a series of zoo picnics all over England. But then we started the puffin exhibitions because in that way we used to save five thousand ch children. And then you got the authors out to meet you. We got the authors, yes. We had

Kaye Webb28:23

And then you've got

Kaye Webb28:24

We've got the authors, yes.

Presenter28:26

Darling Knoll Stretfield, who used to turn up until she was really very, very old and a bit too tired to do it, and they would queue all the way down the mile to get to her. We ca we had to keep finding bigger and bigger locations for the club, because more and more children came.

Kaye Webb28:36

Oh we

Presenter28:41

They're smashing memories. Do you do you miss it all, or are you exhausted at the thought of how much you did?

Presenter28:48

Yes, I do miss it all. I and it was exhausting. I thought I was going to really rather enjoy

Presenter28:55

not having the responsibility, because I used to have nightmares, especially about the exhibition not being ready and people turning up.

Presenter29:02

But, you know, to find everything un unready and the children disappointed. It seemed to me the most important thing in the world was not to disappoint the children. That did keep me on the go a bit.

Presenter29:13

But now I'm

Presenter29:14

I miss it.

Presenter29:15

A quite a lot.

Presenter29:17

Really?

Presenter29:19

Record number seven.

Presenter29:21

This is sort of this dates back to my first magazine when I was on

Presenter29:25

Uh Young Elizabethan, I was editing it.

Presenter29:28

And um I went to see a very jolly show.

Presenter29:32

called Salad Days, and somehow or other it seemed to me to epitomize everything that was nice about the office and the way we worked together and everything, so we all went to seek Salad Days.

Presenter29:43

And this particular song

Presenter29:46

ties in with the fact that

Presenter29:48

Our president of the Puffing Club, after Allen had died, was Yehudi Menuin.

Presenter29:54

and he'd sent us a letter to the children.

Presenter29:57

and he'd said everybody should sing every day.

Presenter30:01

And I kept repeating this to children trying to make them.

Presenter30:05

But this is a very suitable record, because it's from Saladay's and it says it's easy to sing a simple song.

Speaker 430:12

It's easy to sing a simple song if you sing it after me. It's easy to sing a simple song as it is to climb a tree.

Speaker 430:23

It's easy to catch a simple snatch Of a tuneful melody.

Kaye Webb30:27

Mallad

Speaker 430:29

It's easy to sing a simple song if you sing it all.

Speaker 430:34

Sing, sing, sing. Yeah.

Speaker 230:37

Sing You don't got me.

Presenter30:41

John Warner, Eleanor Drew, and Michael Meacham and It's Easy to Sing from Salad Days. You still review books, I know, Kay, and you've published some anthologies recently, so work goes on. Oh yes, and I I've got a new one coming out.

Presenter30:55

in two or three months about it's just going to be called the family and it's really a whole different collection of aunts, uncles, cousins, quarrels, fathers and mothers, you know, to underline to children that everybody's family isn't the same. And that was because I had a letter from a little girl who wrote and said, could you tell me what books there are with quarrels in them?

Presenter31:19

Because my family are always quarrelling, but nobody else's seem to be. And I thought it's true, you know, they you want to be reassured about

Presenter31:28

My mother used to say damn, and it worried me to death.

Presenter31:33

I'd have been pleased if I'd known other mothers said it.

Presenter31:36

So you enjoy working, I'm Oh, yes, I loved it. And you'll hate being cast away, I'm sure. Yes, I I will, I know I will, and I'll behave very badly.

Presenter31:46

I've I really don't like being alone. All the records I've chosen have been happy ones, with a lot of words, and so that I could hear human voices.

Presenter31:57

And you'll be singing a lot, I think,'cause you've been singing along today. Yes.

Kaye Webb31:59

Yeah.

Kaye Webb32:00

Here

Presenter32:01

Yes.

Presenter32:03

That's quite true, although I know I sing flat.

Presenter32:06

When my children were young, I can remember I tried to sing them to sleep, and after a time, about six months, they put up with it, and one of them said, No more, mummy.

Presenter32:18

Such agony in their voices.

Presenter32:20

Let's have the last record. What is it? Well, it's Die Vlademaus from Strauss's Die Vlademaus. And it's just a a cheerful, happy, hopeful sort of song. It'll make me think of my family. It'll make me think of all the the Puffin stuff and the t good times we had and I might not be miserable. I'm not guaranteeing, but I try.

Presenter33:44

Part of the chorus Brudelein und Schwesterlein from Johann Strauss's Die Fledermaus with the Vienna State Opera Chorus and the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Clemens Krauss.

Presenter33:53

If you could only take one of those eight records, K. Which one?

Presenter33:57

I've been chewing over it up to this very last minute, but I think it would have to be the um where the corals lie, because I'd think the dolphins might come and play nearby me if they listened. And she sings so beautifully.

Kaye Webb34:12

And she sings.

Presenter34:15

What about your book as well as the Bible and Shakespeare? This has been the most difficult cho well, yeah, it's always a difficult choice. But it's bound to be for you. Yes.

Kaye Webb34:22

Yeah.

Presenter34:23

But I've just had a new edition of a collection of poems by a great friend of mine, and I think it's such a remarkable collection of poems that I shall take it with me and learn them by heart. And it's called Messages, and it's by Naomi Lewis. And she's a friend of yours, is she? Yes, she's one of the best children's reviewers in the business.

Presenter34:43

And what about your luxury?

Presenter34:46

I would like to have a a really big photographic album and enough things to I'd spend the rest of my life sticking in all the photographs I've had of

Presenter34:56

both of my family and the Puffin Club events and everything in one and it could be

Presenter35:02

on a wheeling table, if that's possible, so that I can wheel it about. And I can rearrange photographs or stick them in, put all the hundreds that I haven't already stuck up, and it will keep me happy for a year or two.

Presenter35:14

K Webb, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs. Love doing it, thank you.

Speaker 235:23

Uh

Kaye Webb35:26

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