Brian Sewell

Speaker 20:00

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

Speaker 20:08

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

Presenter0:30

My Castaway this week is an art critic. He's been the subject of much criticism himself. Earlier this year thirty five prominent members of the art world denounced him for homophobia, misogyny, and hypocrisy.

Presenter0:41

Now sixty two, he didn't go to school until he was eleven. He worked at Windsor Castle, he worked at Christie's, and then came into the public eye in nineteen seventy nine, when he publicly defended his friend and mentor, Sir Antony Blunt, the keeper of the Queen's Pictures, who had been unmasked as a spy.

Presenter0:59

Since then, writing for the Evening Standard, he has frequently and vituperatively attacked what he regards as the excesses of contemporary art. We live, he says, in a society that for too long has been indulgent to the new. He is Brian

Presenter1:15

There may be those, Brian, who are over indulgent to the new. You, on the other hand, often denounce it without even seeing it. Is that fair?

Brian Sewell1:22

No, that is that's that's neither true nor fair. It's an accusation made in the Sunday Times and repeated by somebody who frequently broadcasts the B B C. But you never

Presenter1:32

Go to

Brian Sewell1:32

You a private view, do you?

Brian Sewell1:34

No, but that's a rather different matter. If you go to a private jewel, you certainly don't see the pictures. If you want to see pictures, you must go when there is nobody else there.

Presenter1:41

But if you want to be topical and write about it, you've got to get on with it and see them quite quickly and write about them.

Brian Sewell1:47

Most people are very kind and understand that I am an intensely shy person, though you may find that difficult to believe.

Brian Sewell1:56

And they let me in early eight o'clock in the morning at the National Gallery or

Brian Sewell2:02

A week before the Royal Academy of Summer Show opens and I'm let in.

Presenter2:06

But isn't it, Brian, too easy to heap criticism on the infamous bricks at the Tate or a sheep in formaldehyde or melted chocolate sculpture? Isn't that what tabloid newspapers do for fun, really? Shouldn't you as an art critic be being more generous, more permissive in your opinion?

Brian Sewell2:24

Yeah.

Presenter2:24

Uh

Brian Sewell2:24

Yeah. No.

Brian Sewell2:25

I have never heaped opprobrium on the bricks anyway, the bricks work of art that I defend, but smearing chocolate on the walls seems to me to be a rather low form of interior decoration, and I have seen much finer things done by um professional interior decorators with bits of uh sort of smudgy sponge and other rather prettier colours than chocolate.

Presenter2:47

And sheep in formaldehyde?

Brian Sewell2:49

Oh, well, you know, that's rather a stale joke. It's like so many um aspects of modern art.

Brian Sewell2:56

At the moment will cost

Brian Sewell2:57

The inside of a hot water bottle with plaster of Palace, you have said all that there is to be said about interior space. There's no need to go on to the point where we have to cast Canterbury Cathedral.

Presenter3:09

So your point is it isn't art, it simply ain't art.

Brian Sewell3:13

It seems to me absurd that when there are

Brian Sewell3:16

beautiful materials to handle for sculpture and painting, that uh young artists should utterly neglect them and heap um sandbags in the corner and take photographs and so on, anything to avoid the problems of

Speaker 23:31

The middle of the

Brian Sewell3:34

Technical demands and abilities. It is as though.

Brian Sewell3:38

you expected somebody who had never played the piano to put on a rip roaring performance at the Albert Hall, and you would sort of dump them on the piano stool in front of a Bechstein and say play when all they can do is with luck bang out chopsticks.

Presenter3:53

You moved to music, so let's talk about it. I mean, I'm sure that that your eight records are um indisputably and classically beautiful, aren't they? They're pieces of art, are they?

Brian Sewell4:04

Oh, I don't know. Music uh does appalling things to me. I'm I'm a great embarrassment to my friends when I go to the opera and I have to choose companions very carefully, because um I almost invariably weep.

Brian Sewell4:18

It is the emotional draw of music that um undoes me, and it's it's on that basis that I've chosen my pieces.

Presenter4:27

So what's the first one that's your undoing?

Brian Sewell4:30

It's a violin concerto.

Brian Sewell4:32

It's Max Bruch, who was nineteen when he began it, and 1929 when he finished it.

Brian Sewell4:39

It's in motion from beginning to end.

Presenter5:45

Part of the first movement of Brooks' violin concerto in G minor, played by Zeno Francescati with the New York Philharmonic, conducted by Thomas Schippers.

Presenter5:54

What then, Brian, is your artistic provenance? I mean, other than your your education? I mean, has art always been a part of your life?

Brian Sewell6:02

I think that my earliest, my very earliest recollections.

Brian Sewell6:07

Or a being.

Brian Sewell6:09

so small in the National Gallery that I could lean against the wall underneath pictures and look up at the frames. This had a curious by product many years later when I went to Christie's.

Brian Sewell6:21

where occasionally the porters would lose a picture in the racks and not know um what they were looking for, and they'd come and say we've lost the so and so and I would remember the frame from the edge.

Brian Sewell6:35

And go down and recognize it in the right. Say, try that one.

Presenter6:38

Who took you there?

Brian Sewell6:39

True my mother.

Presenter6:40

Sh she was deeply interested, or she was an artist, or

Brian Sewell6:44

Though my mother was a deb hand as a painter, and knew um a great many. Um I remember again as a as a very small child being lugged along the beach at Lulworth.

Brian Sewell6:54

with um Paul Nash. It was he who taught me to look at um twigs and pebbles and things and see more than is there on a whole landscape in a rock.

Presenter7:05

But your father was not around, Samuel.

Brian Sewell7:07

No, my father committed suicide before I was born, which was a I think a traumatic thing for my mother and was probably the reason for our comparative isolation from all other people.

Presenter7:20

Well you were

Presenter7:23

It it was a claustrophobic existence, was it?

Brian Sewell7:25

Oh, I didn't find it claustrophobic at all, no. I mean, um uh no, not at all. But it was marvellous. We we we spent our whole lives sort of wandering round museums and

Presenter7:30

It was moved

Brian Sewell7:35

Talking to people like Paul Nair.

Presenter7:37

But you're saying she was possessive of you as a result of having lost her husband?

Brian Sewell7:39

Of who as a result of having lost her husband. Yes, I mean parents don't know know what what damage they're doing.

Presenter7:46

Hm. What damage was this parent doing?

Brian Sewell7:49

Oh, I've simply never known how to deal with people. If you if you reach the age of eleven without really coming into contact with other children of your own age, or even not of your own age, other children, only adults, then then you end up by being rather queer fish.

Brian Sewell8:06

Record number two.

Brian Sewell8:07

Record number two is more romantic music. It's it's Schwarzkopp singing um the first of the four last songs by Strauss the Feeling, and I want uh I want the very beginning. The whole statement about all four songs is made by the orchestra, and then the voice, which begins very dark and swiftly becomes light and beautiful.

Speaker 38:39

In January and Bertha Tried I each law.

Presenter9:31

Elizabeth Schwarzkopf singing the first of Richard Strauss's four last songs, Freuling, with the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Otto Ackermann.

Presenter9:39

Your mother grants you married again when you were ten. How dramatic an effect did that have on your life?

Brian Sewell9:47

Um, I think my stepfather, who is an exceedingly nice man, acquired

Brian Sewell9:51

The most uncooperative of stepchildren.

Brian Sewell9:55

Until I went in the army I think I behaved quite shamefully.

Brian Sewell9:59

towards him. I deeply regret it now, but I you know, it was inevitable.

Presenter10:02

You must have been quite odd,'cause you've never been to school, I mean you've never mixed with other children.

Brian Sewell10:06

To know that it was he who made me go to school.

Presenter10:08

And that was a disaster.

Brian Sewell10:10

Well

Brian Sewell10:12

It was a disaster in in in the sense that I think the only thing I learnt in that benighted school was a contempt for authority.

Presenter10:19

And you were bullied at school. This is Haberdash's in North London, yes?

Brian Sewell10:23

Yes, I'm pretty.

Presenter10:24

Why were you bullied?

Brian Sewell10:27

Prissy accent, I think, more than anything.

Presenter10:29

And where does that come from?

Brian Sewell10:31

My mother.

Presenter10:31

Mm-hmm.

Presenter10:32

S she she spoke.

Presenter10:34

Very precisely.

Brian Sewell10:35

Yes, yes. I remember quite early on.

Brian Sewell10:39

some wretched boy at school saying, Where did you have your elocution lessons? which was

Brian Sewell10:44

Something I didn't understand. They were going home saying what elocution lessons. My mother simply saying, Something you'll never need.

Presenter10:54

I mean, it it is one of the first things people notice about you, as you know. I mean, ha ha is it something that you've tried to change?

Brian Sewell11:01

No, I would fear heaven's egg. Where I speak is where I am.

Presenter11:04

Didn't they think you were mad at Haberdash's when you said you wanted to study history of art?

Brian Sewell11:10

Yes, it was a school that I

Brian Sewell11:12

That I

Brian Sewell11:14

I have I have no no words for you. You render me inarticulate when I think of Haberdashers. It was a school run by low church um masters who sought to expunge this sort of residual Roman Catholicism that I'd inherited from my mother and um the the perfectly decent sort of Anglican strand of my stepfather's um training.

Brian Sewell11:38

It was a school which

Brian Sewell11:41

thought that science was everything, mathematics was everything. Anything to do with the arts was was of secondary importance. It was a school full of absolutely contemptible masters.

Presenter11:52

But you insisted.

Brian Sewell11:53

Yes, I insisted on taking the history of art in in what was then called high school certificatory into BA. They didn't teach it.

Brian Sewell12:01

I taught myself.

Presenter12:02

But you sat the exam.

Brian Sewell12:03

But I sat the exam. I sat it alone in the examination room, which was the men's school hall.

Brian Sewell12:11

absolutely alone but for the invigilating master.

Brian Sewell12:15

who was a science master called Payne.

Brian Sewell12:18

who wore steel tip.

Brian Sewell12:20

shoes, and he did nothing but walk up and down in the examination room, from the moment I turned my paper over until the moment the examination was concluded.

Brian Sewell12:31

And I had right to bite for Angelico and others, with that tip, tip, tip, click, click, click noise going on all the time and that was a measure of the cruelty of that school.

Presenter12:43

And how did you do?

Brian Sewell12:45

Here I got a distinction.

Presenter12:47

Yeah.

Brian Sewell12:47

I go number three.

Presenter12:47

B

Brian Sewell12:49

It's Margaret Price. It's the Ar the Area Porgemoor from the first act of the Marriage of Figaro. It embodies the state of mind and emotion of, let us say, the middle aged when they are still capable of falling in love and almost hope that um it won't be

Brian Sewell13:12

Matched by the recipient of one's love, because the whole thing is going to be too painful.

Presenter14:10

Margaret Price singing the Aria Porgi Amor from the first act of Mozart's Marriage of Figaro with the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Riccardo Mutti. There's a plethora of female voices in these choices for a man who's meant to be a misogynist.

Brian Sewell14:24

Uh Ah well if you believe that you believe anything.

Presenter14:26

So you don't deny women can sing, but you just don't think they can paint?

Brian Sewell14:31

Oh, what a difficult question to answer. Um women have, o in spite of innumerable opportunities, and I mean innumerable, um, really largely failed to paint. I think that there is an intellectual honesty in women which is absent in men, and that is that women, recognising that they can't paint at a fairly early stage, um, give up and go on and do other things. Men, however, are so vain that although they realize that they can't paint, they continue to do so.

Presenter15:01

If you're not then anti-women, are you homophobic? Um maybe you

Brian Sewell15:07

I don't know what the I'm I that's that's I'm

Presenter15:07

And I do

Presenter15:10

Well, let me give you an example of something you've written in which you might have been both, in fact, because you made a particularly nasty comment that a certain frightful nude, as you called it, by Vanessa Bell could hardly be the favourite of even a purblind lesbian. Pretty nasty.

Brian Sewell15:28

Well, you know, it's one of these exhibitions that was challenging, and I think it was intended to challenge, put together by a bunch of feminists.

Brian Sewell15:37

And they deserve to be a little teased from time to time, you know. The trouble is feminists take themselves so serious.

Presenter15:45

It's a fairly harsh tease, I suppose, is what they would say. I'm sure it's what they would say.

Brian Sewell15:50

Well, you know, they're big, tough, strong women in their boiler suits and boots. They can take a little teasing from time to time.

Presenter15:57

But you do enjoy it.

Brian Sewell15:58

No, I have no humour. Of course I enjoy teasing.

Presenter16:01

Yes, you do. And you also like shocking. It is what you do, isn't it? That's what you set out to do.

Brian Sewell16:06

No, no, no, I don't. I deny that. It is it is simply not true. I tell an uncomfortable truth from time to time.

Presenter16:13

It's not then just that you're perhaps even ahead of your time, that you're

Presenter16:17

against political correctness and are determined to insult and upset whenever you can.

Brian Sewell16:24

I think political correctness is is something which is doing enormous cultural damage.

Brian Sewell16:30

And has to be.

Brian Sewell16:32

opposed and from time to time I have the opportunity and I use it.

Presenter16:37

We know. Music.

Brian Sewell16:41

It's Beethoven, it's Fidelia.

Brian Sewell16:44

And again it's it's a woman.

Brian Sewell16:48

It's um Leonora singing Com Hofnong.

Brian Sewell16:52

Yeah.

Brian Sewell16:53

Again, this is an example, I think, of my passion for the human voice. I don't think I could bear to be on this island without the human voice.

Brian Sewell17:02

It seems to me such a miracle for a woman, often quite small.

Brian Sewell17:08

To subdue an orchestra simply by standing there and using her lungs and her larynx.

Speaker 317:19

This one finished with myself deeply for you.

Presenter18:09

Christer Ludwig singing the aria Kom Hofnung from the first act of Beethoven's Fidelio with a Philehamonia orchestra conducted by Otto Klemper.

Presenter18:17

Your study at the Courthold Institute was interrupted by National Service, which you have described since as the best two years of your life. Why was it such a good experience?

Brian Sewell18:27

It taught me, amongst other things, that um there is nothing I cannot do if I have to.

Presenter18:36

What does that mean?

Brian Sewell18:37

Well in nothing one c you know, um in a street accident you don't you don't fold up, you you do whatever is necessary. You have to use your common sense and get on with it.

Presenter18:47

So good in the practical sense, but but are you also saying good for you in that you you learn to come to terms with yourself, you learn to look after yourself?

Brian Sewell18:55

Hmm, here he is. Yes.

Presenter18:56

You could cope with anything.

Brian Sewell18:58

I think so. I'm not

Brian Sewell19:00

dismayed by the idea of the desert island,

Presenter19:04

I was thinking all of the thirty five members of the art establishment who wrote that very nasty letter about you saying you shouldn't be an art critic. I mean, are you not distressed or upset when such things happen?

Brian Sewell19:16

Yes, I I was disturbed, but um it it is difficult to come to terms with the idea that people actually hate you, and what emerged from that letter was a measure of hatred by some of the signatories.

Speaker 319:30

Hmm.

Brian Sewell19:31

hatred, they were loathing, that is you know, and they have seized every opportunity since talk.

Brian Sewell19:37

But I'll stick the stiletto in again.

Brian Sewell19:40

Well, never mind.

Presenter19:41

But never mind. I mean, did you find you could cope or?

Brian Sewell19:45

Um

Brian Sewell19:47

Of course I could.

Brian Sewell19:48

Catcoat

Presenter19:49

And have you come face to face with them since?

Brian Sewell19:53

Yes.

Brian Sewell19:54

But I don't know, I don't think we should go into that.

Presenter19:57

Fine.

Brian Sewell19:57

Uh

Presenter19:58

Yeah.

Brian Sewell19:58

No, not pleasant.

Presenter19:59

They've been not pleasant to you, or you've been not pleasant to them.

Brian Sewell20:03

Okay.

Brian Sewell20:07

Yeah.

Presenter20:07

Big good number five.

Brian Sewell20:07

I could number five. Keeping as good as I get, I suppose.

Brian Sewell20:12

Well, now.

Brian Sewell20:14

I vowed there would be no callas on my island, and then I played my callous tapes.

Brian Sewell20:19

I I went to one of her final performances, you know, one of the seventy three or however many there were, and the voice had so declined that one wondered whether there had ever been a voice who had all been seduced by some argument. It was terrible.

Brian Sewell20:37

And then I played th the the tapes and there's an early recording of her singing an aria.

Brian Sewell20:42

from an opera written by Spontini early in the nineteenth century. And it's got enough of her faults in it for you to realize that the voice was going to decline. It's a point at which she sounds as though she's got a mouthful of razor blades.

Brian Sewell20:56

My God, she makes some noises.

Speaker 320:58

Feel host.

Speaker 321:14

Oh too.

Speaker 321:18

Yeah.

Presenter22:00

Maria Callas singing part of the Aria Tuque in Voco from Spontini's La Vestale with the orchestra of La Scala Milan conducted by Tullio Serafine.

Presenter22:10

It was at the Courtauld Institute that you first met Anthony Blunt. That would have been in the early fifties. You would have been, what about nineteen, twenty. A wonderful and stimulating teacher, you've called him. Did you immediately become firm friends?

Brian Sewell22:17

Alternatively.

Brian Sewell22:23

I was fortunate in that the syllabus ran in what was essentially the right order, so that one reached one's final year, which is the year in which I did my special period, which was the seventeenth century. And so Antony was my tutor in terms of French architecture and painting.

Brian Sewell22:44

Yeah, great architects like Monsaur, great painters like Poussin, and so on.

Brian Sewell22:49

I remember one day I'd done an essay on Monsanto and something had come up in that essay which was an idea, a reinterpretation of.

Brian Sewell22:58

A ground plan.

Brian Sewell23:00

an elevation or something.

Brian Sewell23:02

And

Brian Sewell23:03

It struck Antony.

Brian Sewell23:05

And in a moment it seemed, um, the floor was covered with comparative maturity material, more ground plans, more elevations.

Brian Sewell23:14

Philgraph of the phase graph.

Brian Sewell23:16

And he's saying, My God, you're right, you're right.

Brian Sewell23:19

Gosh, bonver, you know And one one thought this is a marvellous way to teach.

Brian Sewell23:25

Here you have the most distinguished man in his field, and he is prepared

Brian Sewell23:30

Take on.

Brian Sewell23:31

An idea from a student.

Brian Sewell23:33

This is a generosity of spirit which is

Brian Sewell23:36

Unheard of in so many universities, amongst so many teachers.

Presenter23:41

And then as time went by he he came to rely on you rather a lot, didn't he? I mean he turned to you he would always turn to you in a crisis. So it wasn't uh anything unusual or unnatural that he should turn to you some, what, twenty-eight years after you'd first met, when he was about to be publicly unmasked as a spy? Did you already know about his past? Had he told you?

Brian Sewell24:01

Oh, yes, I knew. It was something we didn't talk about, but I knew.

Brian Sewell24:06

I was away in in in in Dartmoor, walking with with my dogs in in august, nineteen seventy nine, and I got back to the pub at which I was staying to find there was a telephone call.

Brian Sewell24:17

And I rang him and and said, What what? and he said, Oh, I need to speak to you. I can't talk on the telephone. When are you coming home? And I went back a couple of days later, I went straight to see him, and he explained about the book that was impending. What shall I do? and I said, Do do nothing.

Brian Sewell24:35

Everyone knows you were in MI five. All you have to say is that you're um still under the Official Secrets Act, and you cannot defend yourself. Leave it don't do anything.

Brian Sewell24:46

He was given very different advice by his lawyer.

Brian Sewell24:49

advice that he chose to follow, and the consequences were appalling.

Presenter24:54

Hmm.

Brian Sewell24:54

I'm sure that if he had just said I cannot defend myself,

Presenter24:58

But it was the statement to the House in the end, wasn't it?

Brian Sewell25:01

You should have said

Presenter25:05

But he must always have feared that it would.

Brian Sewell25:08

He'd been given assurances that it wouldn't.

Presenter25:12

Because he had confessed in exchange for immunity against prosecution. But you can't buy immunity against publicity, can you? That was his point.

Brian Sewell25:13

Linux j

Brian Sewell25:16

Yeah.

Brian Sewell25:20

No, that that is why he should simply have said, um, I cannot defend myself against these charges. I I'm constrained by the Official Secrets Act.

Presenter25:29

As it was, you became his frontman, as it were.

Brian Sewell25:33

Oh, he's clown, I think, rather than his front.

Presenter25:33

Uh

Presenter25:35

Which clown? First of all, you spirited him away, didn't you? Yes, well, that was part of the clown. That was the clownning.

Brian Sewell25:37

That's well that was part of the planning. That was kind of the diversion. Everyone seemed to think he was in my attic.

Presenter25:43

I suppose what that is.

Brian Sewell25:44

Which is useful.

Presenter25:45

What we also all thought was that that you were adeu, you were lovers.

Brian Sewell25:51

Well, I know that that's what a lot of people thought, but um it's it's actually a preposterous idea.

Presenter25:58

But it brought you to public attention, didn't it? What effect did it have on your personal life? Did you lose friends? Did you gain?

Brian Sewell26:05

It's the sort of thing that sorts your your sheep from your goats.

Presenter26:09

Hmm.

Brian Sewell26:10

I think friends are cards quite often.

Brian Sewell26:12

I was betrayed to perhaps by.

Brian Sewell26:14

A friend.

Presenter26:16

More music.

Brian Sewell26:19

Oh, back to Strauss. Um

Brian Sewell26:22

It wasn't by any means the first opera I saw, but it was one that I saw fairly early after the revival of of Covent Garden after the war.

Brian Sewell26:32

and the performance of Risen Cavalier.

Brian Sewell26:35

It was the last act, that trio, where all three of the women are singing together, and it's mad

Brian Sewell26:41

To hear it the first time is never, never to forget it.

Presenter27:46

The trio from the last act of Richard Strauss's De Rosen Cavalier, sung by Christa Ludwig, Gwyneth Jones, and Lucia Popp, with the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Leonard Bernstein.

Presenter27:56

You said just then that um it was your function during the Anthony Blunt affair to play the fool, be the entertaining frontman.

Presenter28:05

Was that in a way a a familiar function for you? Are you one of life's natural court jesters, do you think?

Brian Sewell28:11

New.

Presenter28:13

I wondered.

Brian Sewell28:14

Short answer to cost.

Presenter28:15

Of course. Well, yes, except that that of course in an in a sense is what you do in your column in the Evening Standard. You make people laugh, you make people smile, you want to attract people to read columns on art criticism who wouldn't otherwise do so. You like to entertain.

Brian Sewell28:30

I like to instruct.

Presenter28:33

Why haven't you done the other thing, which is write the straight stuff, the book, on your special period on the seventeenth century?

Brian Sewell28:39

It's very difficult, if not impossible, for somebody who is not an academic.

Brian Sewell28:45

To be accepted as an expert on anything, who are you? is the answer.

Presenter28:50

But that's what they say about your art criticism in the Evening Standard.

Brian Sewell28:54

Well, I suspect that there's a great deal of envy attached to that kind of comment. But there is quite certainly some justification. I mean, I don't know who who in America, for example, would buy a book on Hieronymus Bosch, but written by Brian Sewell? They would just say, Who the hell is he? An art critic for an evening paper? No, no, no, no, no.

Presenter29:13

But is that what you would like to have done? I mean, do you have any sense of frustration or even

Presenter29:20

But what do you think you're achieving with your column?

Brian Sewell29:25

It's a very gratifying and pleasurable way of applying a discipline to something that I would do for pleasure.

Brian Sewell29:33

And I think I'm very lucky at my age to be doing something that I so thoroughly enjoy.

Presenter29:38

Rip.

Brian Sewell29:39

Record number seven.

Presenter29:39

Uh

Brian Sewell29:40

Oh, Flagstadt. Um Flagstadt came into my life immediately after the war. I had a

Brian Sewell29:47

A friend then who was a good deal older than me, was a church organist, and who's since become very distinguished, young Alan Harveson.

Brian Sewell29:54

And it was Allen who first exposed me to the joys of listening to Flagstadtzeu. I want her belting out in Lieberstadt, good old Wagner.

Presenter31:01

The Liebestaut from Wagner's Tristan und Desolde, sung by Kirsten Flagstadt with the Philharmony Orchestra conducted by Wilhelm Fortwengler.

Presenter31:08

You live alone in Kensington, in West London, but for three dogs and other pets, too?

Brian Sewell31:14

Ooh.

Brian Sewell31:15

Pets come and go. Um there's a cat box on the front doorstep which has, as it were, caught two cats in the last ten years.

Presenter31:25

But the dogs are the loves of your life.

Brian Sewell31:28

Well, they're such an intimate part of my life. Um, don't you know? They govern it in fact.

Presenter31:32

So life on a desert island is a pretty odious prospect, isn't it?

Brian Sewell31:37

I had thought of taking a dog as my luxury, and then realized that I could never kill anything for the dog.

Brian Sewell31:44

Um that I couldn't bear it if anything went wrong with with the dog. I probably couldn't bear it if it died, so better to leave it.

Presenter31:52

Would you would you therefore wither away on this island, or will this this army spirit of self-preservation come to the rescue?

Brian Sewell31:58

Well, I think I think pro provided there are fruit trees, I'll manage. Let's hope for breadfruit.

Presenter32:05

And more importantly, would your would your bile, your your reserves of rage against contemporary art gently

Presenter32:12

dissipate in the sleepy lagoon.

Brian Sewell32:14

A nice warm desert island with coconuts and breadfruit.

Brian Sewell32:18

And um I shall forget all about Damien Hirst and

Brian Sewell32:22

Sheep in formaldehyde

Presenter32:25

Last record.

Brian Sewell32:26

Last record is a song I spent a long time wandering around Turkey.

Brian Sewell32:33

One of the tapes that always goes with me is um

Brian Sewell32:38

Schubert Songs

Brian Sewell32:40

Song by Ian Partridge.

Brian Sewell32:42

And I've I've chosen out of them all a a Aufleuson.

Brian Sewell32:46

And when you hear it, you'll you'll note the strain of melancholy and of loss.

Speaker 333:37

Uh

Presenter33:51

One of Schubert's leader, Auflezung, sung by Ian Partridge, accompanied by his sister Jennifer Partridge. This is the difficult bit now. If you could only take one of those eight pieces, what would it be?

Brian Sewell34:00

The Fidelio? I there's a question in my voice, but I think no, I've only just made up my mind.

Presenter34:03

Yeah.

Brian Sewell34:06

It goes in all directions. It looks back, it goes forward, it is romantic, it conjures paintings, German romantic paintings. Oh, well, yes, Beethoven, it'll better be.

Brian Sewell34:18

What about your book?

Brian Sewell34:19

At home I have all Schubert's songs published in an edition in, I think, the eighteen eighties, with a rather crummy Victorian translation of each of these narratives. And it's it's a piano accompaniment. And I th my music is good enough to

Speaker 334:31

Uh

Brian Sewell34:39

conjure the silence and mess about with

Presenter34:42

You can sight read, you can sing.

Brian Sewell34:43

Itm I can't sing.

Presenter34:43

It um

Brian Sewell34:45

Not with this voice.

Brian Sewell34:48

That's quite preposterous. Bad enough speaking with it. What about your luxury? It's Michelangelo's Pietà.

Brian Sewell34:55

When he was twenty four, made it for the Pope. It's in the Vatican now.

Brian Sewell35:00

It is unimaginably beautiful and so surprising when you think of it twenty four hacking that marvel out of a great trunk of marble.

Brian Sewell35:11

And it it gives me hope that there is the possibility that young men might one day again produce great works of art.

Presenter35:21

Brian Sewell, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Speaker 235:33

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