Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Desert Island Discs
Presented by Roy Plomley
A clergyman and children's author, best known for his railway-themed books.
Eight records
Rhythms of Steam
Sound effects record of a two-cylinder steam engine pulling a passenger train up a gradient.
Elijah – Baal, We Cry to TheeFavourite
Huddersfield Choral Society, conducted by Sir Malcolm Sargent
Chorus 'Baal, we cry to thee' from Elijah. 'It takes me back to my school days.'
The Bugginses Prepare for a Party
Mabel Constanduros and Michael Hogan
Comedy sketch 'The Bugginses Prepare for a Party'. 'It takes me back to my family.'
Arranged by Harvey Grace. 'It reminds me of my time in Jerusalem.'
Arthur Sullivan / W.S. Gilbert
From HMS Pinafore – 'When I Was a Lad' (Song of the First Lord of the Admiralty). 'Reminds me vividly of my Odium days.'
Engines on the Licky Incline
Field recording: 'Engines on the Licky Incline' from the disc 'Trains in the Hills'. The guest describes a goods engine labouring up the incline.
Story 'Edward and Gordon' from The Three Railway Engines. 'As a memory of the start.'
The Old Lady Drives to Dolgellau
Recorded on the Talyllyn Railway. 'To remind me of all the friends I've made in the Talyllyn Preservation Society.'
The keepsakes
No book or luxury recorded for this episode.
In conversation
Presenter asks
On a desert island, what would you be happiest to have got away from?
the continual spite of seculars in forms which I'm expected to fill in [which come every day by post].
Presenter asks
How did you set about making this list of eight records – are you choosing for nostalgia, inspiration, or what?
My family had great fun in helping me choose. But you mustn't allow your family to influence you. This is very personal thing. I didn't in the end. I got my own way.
Presenter asks
The recording
Timestamps play the recording from that turn
Speaker 2
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 2
This is a recording as it was being broadcast, rather than the studio recording.
Speaker 2
and for that reason you may hear some interference, and some degradation in the sound quality.
Speaker 2
The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen sixty four.
Reverend W Awdry
Desert island discs.
Reverend W Awdry
Each week a well known person is asked the question
Reverend W Awdry
If you were to be cast away alone on a desert island, which gramophone records would you choose to have with you?
Reverend W Awdry
As usual, the castaway is introduced by Roy Plumley.
Reverend W Awdry
How do you do, ladies and gentlemen?
Presenter
Uh
Reverend W Awdry
Yeah.
Presenter
Uh
Reverend W Awdry
Our castaway this week
Presenter
Peake is a well-known writer of children's books and he's also a railway enthusiast. It's the Rev. W. Awdry.
Presenter
Now, mister Audrey, on a desert island, what would you be happiest to have got away from?
Presenter
the continual spite of seculars
Presenter
in forms which I'm expected to fill in.
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which come every day by post.
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Would you call yourself a musical person? No, not specially. I did compose.
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Some music once which was published in one of the books.
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Uh but the publishers had grave doubts about it.
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But it really was music.
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How did you set about making this list of eight records that might have to last the rest of your life? Are you choosing for nostalgia, for inspiration, or what?
Presenter
My family had great fun in helping me choose. But you mustn't allow your family to influence you. This is very personal thing. I didn't in the end. I got my own way.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Presenter
And I chose records which
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reminded me of some of the stages.
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In my
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Great.
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What's the first record you have then? The first record is called
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Rhythms of steam
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And I choose it.
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because it reminds me of the sort of background
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I had as I grew up
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from about the age of five to seventeen.
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where we lived.
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within sight and sound of the Great Western Main Line between Wellington and Bristol. And what do we hear on this record?
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We here a two-cylinder engine in good condition.
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Expertly driven.
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Pulling a passenger train up a gradient.
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The sound of a passenger train going up a gradient from a disc called Rhythms of Steam.
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What's your second choice, Mr. Audrey? My second choice would be Mendelssohn's Elijah. Which part of it?
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The chorus I choose for the moment is
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Bail we cried then.
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It takes me back to my school days.
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When as a new boy I was shang-haid into the School Coral Society.
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I am an enthusiastic uh music master.
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Some of us were rather bored with it.
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Yeah, but we enjoyed being able to let rip in such choruses.
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Make him tear his hair.
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However
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He instilled it into us.
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And I'm very glad he did.
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Because the Elijah
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has stayed with me for the rest of my life.
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and I constantly find myself singing snatches from it.
Speaker 1
Men in fighting for Heroes Men in Fighting Born.
Reverend W Awdry
Yeah.
Presenter
Bale, we cry to thee from Mendelssohn's Elijah, the Huddersfield Choral Society, conducted by Sir Malcolm Sargent. mister Audrey, how good would you be as a castaway? Could you look after yourself on this island?
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I think given tools I could
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Manage tool
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make myself reasonably comfortable, erect a shelter and make furniture and so on. You wouldn't be given tools so it it'd take a bit longer. Could you endure the loneliness?
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I should hate it.
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But I think, as was said of a great man,
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He had such great faith in God
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that he was never less alone
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than when he was alone.
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Could you live off the land?
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I'm no enthusiastic gardener, but I know a fair amount of it in theory, and I think that I should be able to grow enough for my own needs. If you could build a shelter eventually, you should be able to build some kind of craft. Now, if this craft or raft was reasonably seaworthy, would you try to escape?
Presenter
I certainly would, provided I knew roughly where my island was. This is information we could give you only very roughly. Let's get back to record number three. What next?
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Record number three takes uh me back to my family.
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It's The Buggins is Buggins family by Mabel Constantioris and Michael Hogan.
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We heard them on the wireless first in the late 1920s. We bought several of their records and I should like to play one, The Bugginsies Prepare for a Party.
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We played them over and over and over again, and my brother and I got to know them by heart.
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Even after this space of time, my brother was staying with us recently.
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Something in the conversation sparked him off to a quotation from
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Grandma unlicensed, I answered, and before we realized it we had a performance of the whole thing.
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Anyway, here are the Buckingers preparing for a party.
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What's the matter now, grandma?
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I've lost the key.
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What again? Oh my goodness.
Presenter
Father Elf, look for her teeth while I finish getting tea. And give Alfie a rub with a towel, will you? The heat of his head's turn in that butter. Now how can I look for teeth and dub the kid's head and shave at the same time? Anyone'll think I got eight hands like an ocalisk. You've got eight tongs like either room. Do worry your ups I'll be here in a minute.
Presenter
Where did you have your teeth lost, Grandma? I put them on the window ledge to cool after dinner.
Presenter
Oh, good gracious, Father. Baby's been playing with the treacle. Bring your shaving water and a towel, quick. Ah, dirty girl. Hurry up, Father. She's gone up with treacle from head to foot. And have you found Grandma's seat? No, of course I haven't. You don't leave anyone time to think. I found them, Mother. Baby's dropped him in the treacle can. They've sunk right down to the bottom. Oh, good. Ems are knife. Father, get them out while I wipe the treacle out of Baby's hair.
Presenter
The Bugginses, Mabel Compton Duras, and Michael Hogan. mister Audrey, where were you going?
Presenter
Born at Anfield, near Rumsey, in Hampshire. Was there a precedent in your family for the ministry? My father was a country parson. He was vicar of Amfield.
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At what age did you feel that the church was your vocation?
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It wasn't really.
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Till now I got to ox.
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What were you reading about?
Speaker 1
We're uh
Presenter
History
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For the Church did you cast aside any earlier ambition?
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Not really, except the usual boy's ambition to be an engineer.
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Particularly connected with railways? From Oxford, where did you go?
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I went to theological college for a year.
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Then my tutor, who had been appointed to the headmastership of St. George's School Jerusalem,
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asked me to go out with him.
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On the staff for three years. What was the school? It was a.
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A missionary school
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founded by the Anglican Bishop in Jerusalem.
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and designed to be run on public school lines.
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We had boys there of all ages.
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From kindergarten age.
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Up to
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Seventeen, eighteen
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Boys of all nationalities, Jews, Arabs, Syrians, Armenians, Greeks, almost any nationality you'd like to mention. I believe you met your wife in Jerusalem at this time.
Presenter
Yes, we met at a Christmas party.
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We got engaged.
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Er Petra of all places in Transjordan.
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And the week after Easter. What was she doing out there? She was teaching in a mission school at Haifa for girls.
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Well, let's have another record now. What next?
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I think I'd like to play
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Jeez your joy of man's desiring.
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Because
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It reminds me of the
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My time in Jerusalem
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It was a favourite organ voluntary.
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Which used to be played by Hugh Sharp.
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Also on the staff of the school and organists at St George's Cathedral, Jerusalem.
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Bach's Jesuit Joy of Man's Desiring, an arrangement by Doctor Harvey Grace, played on the organ by DJ Rees.
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When you returned to England from Jerusalem, what was your first post after you were ordained? I was curate of Odium, near Basingstoke.
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Then from there, after two years, I went to
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Great Chevril with Little Chefferell in West Livington in Wiltshire. Lovely spot.
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And then in nineteen forty,
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We moved
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To Kingsnorot and Birmingham just in time for the Blitz. How long are you in Birmingham? I was there for six years.
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And from 1946 I've been in charge of parishes.
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in East Anglia in the Diocese of Ely.
Presenter
Well, that brings us up to date with your church career. Let's have your fifth record now.
Presenter
My fifth record takes me back to the Odium days.
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When
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I joined the local operatic society and took part.
Presenter
in the production of HMS Pinafold.
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The Song of the First Lord of the Admiralty
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Sung in this case by Henry Lytton, reminds me vividly of those days.
Presenter
When I was a lad, I served a term as office boy to an attorney's firm. I cleaned the windows and I swept the floor. I polished up the handle of the big front door. I polished up that handle so carefully that now I am the ruler of the Queen's Navy.
Speaker 1
Yeah, but
Presenter
As office boy, I made such a mark that they gave me the post of a junior clerk. I served the rich with a smile so bland, I copied all the letters in a big round hand. I copied all those letters in a hand so free, that now I am the Robin Bee Davy.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Presenter
Serving rich I made to name, and an article clerk I soon became. I wore clean collars and a brand new suit, for the pass examination at the Institute.
Presenter
Sir Henry Lutton is the Right Honourable Sir Joseph Porter in HMS Pinafor.
Presenter
Mr. Audrey, you've written a score of children's books, very successful children's books. In fact, I believe that the total sales is uh quite enormous.
Presenter
The publisher says that they're getting on towards the three million mark. It is enormous. And they're all about railway engines with personalities. Specimen titles Thomas the Tank Engine, Gordon the Big Engine, Percy the Small Engine.
Presenter
Now, railways have had this fascination for you, as you told us since you went to live by the main line from Paddington to Bristol.
Presenter
Train spotting as an organised occupation hadn't really started when you were a small child, had it. Oh, yes, it had.
Speaker 1
Uh
Presenter
My father and I used to train sponsors.
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He used to spot trains.
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with a telescope from his dressing-room window.
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And if I was there and saw the engine and he could read the name through the telescope, we could both put it down in our boxes.
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Great Western engine, express engines all had names. We didn't bother about the ones which had numbers only.
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and we collected most of the names of the available engines.
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and he went through the usual schoolboy phase of model railways.
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Yes, my brother and I had a model railway, and my father had had a two and a half inch gauge model railway in his Vicarage garden before he retired in 1916.
Presenter
And you're still train spotting, and still I believe you have a model railway? Not so much train spotting, but uh I have got a model railway.
Presenter
which I showed at the Model Rover Club exhibition last Easter week.
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And you've explored quite a number of railways in the British Isles. Yes, railways.
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Both running and defunct.
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Now can you explain this railway fascination? To most of us, railways are
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rather necessary evils that chop up the landscape and provide transportation. Now where does the the romance of railways come in?
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The real fascination for me
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is that
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Avoor
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mechanical contrivances made by man.
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The steam engine is the most human.
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I think it was Paul Jennings in The Observer who said
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that an electric engine
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It's got a worm soul.
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An underground train, for instance, you could cut it in half and it wouldn't mind.
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Steam engine, on the other hand, is an extrovert.
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Unless he's at rest with his fire drawn,
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He's always got something to say.
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He likes you to know how he's getting on and what he's feeling about things.
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And on the move
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locomotives
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Always have something to say.
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There's the
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BOASTFUL BUSTLING EXPRESS ENGIN
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hauling a train of calm female carriages.
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who, like dutiful wives, say just as you say, yes dear of course, just as you say, yes dear of course, in order to make him think that they're listening to what he's got to say. But really, one is quite sure that they're thinking about more important things, about when they're going to get a new coat of paint, to replace the one of which they're thoroughly tired. And then there's the goods engine.
Presenter
Which whether it's got one triple
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Or fifty behind, it always complains that it's very badly treated. I can't
Presenter
Well this personalization of the moods and characters of of engines is the basis of your books. But before we talk about your books, let's have another record.
Presenter
Well this time we will have trains in the hills. And on this record you will hear a goods engine hauling a train up the famous one in thirty seven Lickie Incline on the Midland Main Line between Birmingham and Gloucester.
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And the goods engine is as good as saying
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It's no use it's no use it's no use
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And there's the banking engine behind.
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A great western pannier saying, don't be silly, don't be silly, don't be silly, don't be silly.
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Engines on the Licky Incline from a disc called Trains and the Hills. Now your books, Mr. Audrey, when did you start translating your railway knowledge and railway fantasies into children's stories? When I had a son of my own.
Presenter
He was three, he had measles, and he needed amusing.
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So I started telling him stories about engines, and he liked them, and I told them so often
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that the wording became fixed,
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So I wrote them down.
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illustrated them on on bits of paper with stick men.
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I didn't think anything of them.
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My wife did.
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and insisted that I do something about it. were given to an agent.
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And um
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and he helped them about for about a year.
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Until Edmund Ward.
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took them in the first book.
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which has, surprisingly, always sold the best.
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The three railway engines came out and so
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As a memory of the start.
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I should like to have
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One of the
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Records from this book read by Johnny Morris to take with me on the desert island. What's it called, the story? Edward and Gordon.
Reverend W Awdry
A good strain.
Reverend W Awdry
A good strange
Reverend W Awdry
The shame of it.
Reverend W Awdry
The shame of it.
Reverend W Awdry
The shame of it shh.
Reverend W Awdry
Oh dear.
Presenter
Oh dash.
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He went slowly through with the
Speaker 2
Trucks clattering and banging behind him.
Speaker 2
Edward La.
Speaker 2
and went to find some more tracks.
Speaker 2
Soon afterwards
Presenter
A porter came and spoke to Edward's driver.
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Yeah.
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Uh
Reverend W Awdry
Uh
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Gordon Kang Get up the hill. Will you take any Edward and push him, please?
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They found Gordon halfway up the hill.
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And he was very cross.
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His driver and fireman were talking to him severely.
Reverend W Awdry
Uh
Presenter
You're not trying, Gordon.
Reverend W Awdry
You're not trying at all.
Presenter
EDWIT and GORDON, read by Johnny Morris.
Presenter
There have been several illustrators in the books, haven't there? Yes, we've had four altogether.
Presenter
During the series of nineteen books. What age children are the books directed to?
Presenter
from the age of four upwards, and I have had appreciative letters from grandfathers and grandmothers.
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All the stories, I believe, are technically accurate. Given the assumption...
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that a steam locomotive has personality.
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can express its feelings, everything else.
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has to have happened to some engine somewhere sometime. Now your railway system run by the FAT controller and others has a definite geographical location.
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The geographical location was evolved in self-protection because I continually, after the first four books have been written,
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and letters from indignant children saying that
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The pictures of the same location varied.
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From one book to another. You couldn't write back to a child of five and say the artist had made a mistake.
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So I had to invent a story to account for the discrepancy.
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and life began to get a bit too short.
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So
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Well, I had to live all over the place.
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where the railway could run, which is the island of Sodor, discovered by my brother and myself.
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And you use some quite long words for four-year-old.
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I don't believe in talking down to children.
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Children like high sounding words.
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If they don't grasp the exact meaning, that doesn't really matter.
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The context should help them to understand what it means.
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Some of the Serdol railway activities I believe bear quite an astonishing resemblance to certain
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branched lines on the mainland, uh one in particular.
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Yes, uh three have the book.
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I have been based on the Tunnethlyn Railway in Wales. That's a narrow gauge railway. The narrow gauge railway, of which I am a member of the Preservation Society. And being a member of the Preservation Society, I've been able to do not nearly as much as I should like to help. I've been a guard, I've been a booking clerk, I've been a plate layer.
Presenter
And also I have in a small way, I think.
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Help the society.
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by doing homework in the matter of the books.
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Yes, indeed and publicity.
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And so for my last record
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To remind me.
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Of all the friends I've made in the
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Telethyline Preservation Society.
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I should like
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The record of
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The old lady drives to Dolgach.
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Who's this old lady?
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The old lady
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is tanithlin
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The first engine built for the Telethlyn Railway and she'll be celebrating her centenary.
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Next year, and so
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I am trying to produce a book to celebrate that auspicious occasion.
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Now driver Di Jones.
Speaker 1
Give it whistle.
Speaker 1
And Tariet Lynn sets out on the last little run of the day. No fats, it's just me.
Speaker 1
Away now from North Station, under the road bridge.
Speaker 1
Another cutting.
Presenter
The old lady drives to Dolgog.
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Recorded on the Tallislin Railway.
Presenter
Now if you could only have one of the eight records you've chosen, which would it be?
Presenter
I think I should choose the Elijah.
Presenter
Yeah.
Speaker 2
You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For more podcasts please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four
How good would you be as a castaway – could you look after yourself on the island?
I think given tools I could manage to make myself reasonably comfortable, erect a shelter and make furniture and so on.
Presenter asks
At what age did you feel that the church was your vocation?
It wasn't really till I got to Oxford. I was reading History. For the Church? Not really, except the usual boy's ambition to be an engineer.
Presenter asks
Can you explain this railway fascination? Where does the romance of railways come in?
The real fascination for me is that a [steam engine is] a mechanical contrivance made by man. The steam engine is the most human... an underground train, for instance, you could cut it in half and it wouldn't mind. A steam engine, on the other hand, is an extrovert. Unless he's at rest with his fire drawn, he's always got something to say.
Presenter asks
When did you start translating your railway knowledge and fantasies into children's stories?
When I had a son of my own. He was three, he had measles, and he needed amusing. So I started telling him stories about engines, and he liked them, and I told them so often that the wording became fixed, so I wrote them down.
“the continual spite of seculars in forms which I'm expected to fill in.”
“He had such great faith in God that he was never less alone than when he was alone.”
“The steam engine is the most human. ... an underground train, for instance, you could cut it in half and it wouldn't mind.”
“I don't believe in talking down to children. Children like high sounding words.”