Professor James Fenton

Speaker 40:00

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 40:08

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

Presenter0:29

My Castaway this week is a poet and a writer. Born in Lincoln, the son of a clergyman, he went via public school to Oxford, where, appropriately, he walked off with the Newdygate Prize for Poetry.

Presenter0:41

As a foreign correspondent, he travelled with the Viet Cong when they captured Saigon and fled from the Khmer Rouge when they entered Phnom Penh.

Presenter0:48

He's worked as a political and literary journalist and as a theatre critic.

Presenter0:53

Many of those experiences are recounted in his poetry, which ranges, like that of his hero, WH Auden's, from song to dramatic verse. He is the professor of poetry at Oxford, James

Presenter1:04

So the professor of poetry was a a foreign correspondent and a a political animal too. I mean it's it sounds like an odd combination, is it?

Professor James Fenton1:13

Well

Professor James Fenton1:14

If you decide to write poetry in life, it's improbable you're going to spend all your time writing poetry. So you set out to have something el you know, something else to earn your bread and butter, to um keep you busy for the rest of the time. A proper job, yes, that's right.

Speaker 41:29

Proper job.

Professor James Fenton1:33

And I looked for all kinds of proper jobs.

Professor James Fenton1:37

I was going to be a clinical psychologist, but I wasn't good enough at it. So then I went into journalism. Going into journalism I thought I wanted to be do proper journalism and proper journalism to me meant being a foreign correspondent.

Presenter1:50

But obviously, those experiences in Vietnam or Cambodia or Berlin and all the different places you've been have informed your work. So, in a sense,

Presenter1:58

Was there part of you that was choosing that kind of job because you knew you would find inspiration for your poetry?

Professor James Fenton2:03

I didn't think of it like that at the time.

Professor James Fenton2:06

And the other thing about it is that the poems that I wrote about, say, the Far East and the war and so on, were written a long time after the experiences that they were inspired by.

Professor James Fenton2:21

And so there isn't a kind of necessary connection. And I also I didn't think that it would be right to go off to places in the hopes of writing poems about them. I thought there was something wrong with

Presenter2:34

But but you've talked in lectures lectures about the um the excited passion, which which Byron believed was was the root of of poetic expression. I mean, and that's of course what what you went out there to, to war and revolution and death and neo-Nazism in Berlin. I mean strong, passionate subjects which were perhaps bound, however long it took, to inspire strong poetry.

Professor James Fenton2:57

I think that there is an unexplained connection between having an experience and writing a poem about the experience. You can I mean, I've had all kinds of experiences in life that I've not written poems about, and I never know what the what the effective connection between an experience and writing a poem about it is. Do you see what I mean?

Presenter3:16

I do, but you also, I think, believe that that that the best poetry is the simplest poetry and is inspired by the sorts of things we've been talking about, by love and war and death.

Professor James Fenton3:25

Oh, this is the classic corpus of poetry, yes, absolutely. You know, th this this expression like um

Professor James Fenton3:33

The little black cocktail dress in in fashion. The poem that says I love you. That's the little black cocktail dress. It's the sort of classic thing that everyone would like to have written one of. And all that poem is going to say is, I love you. It's just

Professor James Fenton3:47

You know, it's a plain job that that little poem has to do.

Presenter3:51

And and have you written such poems, do you believe?

Professor James Fenton3:54

I wrote a poem.

Professor James Fenton3:56

which, I heard later, somebody had used.

Professor James Fenton4:00

in order to get his girlfriend back and he got her back with it.

Presenter4:03

What the poem that said I love you.

Presenter4:05

It worked.

Professor James Fenton4:05

It worked.

Professor James Fenton4:07

So I was of course I was thrilled with that.

Presenter4:10

Is there much poetic passion to be found for you on a desert island, do you think?

Professor James Fenton4:13

Well, I've spent quite a bit of time in the Far East, uh in the Ph Philippines, on not a desert island, but a stretch of

Professor James Fenton4:23

Sandbar with palm trees and there's quite a bit of poetry there to be found there.

Presenter4:29

You'll do all right there, will you?

Professor James Fenton4:31

Yeah.

Presenter4:31

Let's hear about your music. What's the first record?

Professor James Fenton4:34

I've tried to choose things that have more than one purpose. This one is from the Beggars Opera and it's called Fill Every Glass. It's from my childhood. I remember it as being an English carol and it was the carol called What is This Fragrance? And it used to be my favourite tune as a kid. But it's also a French carol and originally. So it went from a French carol called Quelle C'est aux de agréable to

Professor James Fenton5:00

an English carol and also to an English drinking song, which is in this version is a drinking song.

Speaker 45:07

Fill every glass, for wine inspires us, And fires us with courage, love and joy. Women and wine should life employ. Is there aught else on earth desires? Fill every glass, for wine inspires us, And fires us with courage, love and joy.

Professor James Fenton5:27

Uh

Speaker 45:32

Women and wines are live and lie.

Professor James Fenton5:34

Bye bye.

Speaker 45:36

Is there aught else on earth desires? Fill every glass, For wine inspires us and fires us with courage, love and

Professor James Fenton5:43

Finally,

Presenter5:52

Fill every glass from the beggar's opera sung by Paul Eliot.

Presenter5:56

James Fenton, you're the forty first Oxford Professor of Poetry, and you will earn four thousand and fifty nine pounds a year for being it. You very much wanted that post, didn't you? And it can't have been for the money.

Professor James Fenton6:07

No, it's um

Professor James Fenton6:09

What you do fundamentally is you do three lectures a year. So it's not like doing a full-time job. But then there are other things you do. And it's a pleasant task for the next uh.

Presenter6:22

Yes, but it's more than that. I mean, you really, really wanted it and you lobbied very hard for it.

Presenter6:29

Well, you interviewed yourself in the Times.

Professor James Fenton6:30

This is true. This is true. That was part of the Dirty Tricks department at the end when it seemed that there was a bit of a hiccup in the campaign.

Presenter6:37

So you rubbished your main rival, Les Murray.

Professor James Fenton6:40

Well, he he asked for it, I think.

Presenter6:43

And you held a vote rigging party, didn't you?

Presenter6:46

Invited all the MAs who were going to vote in this competition.

Professor James Fenton6:49

Now the thing that happens, I just ought to get this clear, the thing that happens with the voting day is MAs come from all over the country. It's just a wonderful occasion when people sort of reunite, come back to Oxford and so on.

Professor James Fenton7:04

So this year, getting me through a bash.

Professor James Fenton7:07

And I suppose at this time round I would have been rather annoyed if I if if it hadn't worked.

Presenter7:14

But why did you want it, Timmy?

Professor James Fenton7:16

Although there have been these forty previous professors, it's a relatively recent thing that poets have done it. And since the war, a series of poets have held this post. Now there are very few jobs in England

Professor James Fenton7:30

that are traditionally filled by poets. And this tradition seems a nice thing to keep going. So there should always be a choice of poets, I think.

Presenter7:39

And it's a recognition of poetic artificial.

Professor James Fenton7:41

And it's a recognition, yes, of course.

Presenter7:43

And y some very famous predecessors, Matthew Arnold, Robert Graves, and and Auden, your hero. So again, perhaps that was part of it. You were following in his footsteps?

Professor James Fenton7:52

That's true, yes.

Presenter7:53

Record number two.

Professor James Fenton7:54

This comes with another great memory of childhood. It handles Let the Bright Seraphim.

Professor James Fenton8:00

Chosen It sung in a completely different way from the way we used to sing it at Durham. And it's sung by Kathleen Battle.

Professor James Fenton8:07

And it has a real trumpeter, Winton Marsalis. I the reason why I chose this is that I used to love it when we did this as as an anthem at Durham. It was accompanied with an organ, of course, and the tuber stop used to

Professor James Fenton8:22

Make me laugh with joy. I I really adored it. But I think this version is absolutely lovely.

Speaker 48:33

Amen, a burning room, a burning burning room, the Lord uplifting to trumpets bro.

Speaker 49:06

Lift the light to draw it blow.

Presenter9:19

Handels let the bright seraphim sung by Kathleen Battle with the trumpeter Winton Marsalis and the Orchestra of Saint Luke's conducted by John Nelson.

Presenter9:27

And that you used to sing in Durham Cathedral as a prep school boy.

Professor James Fenton9:31

And we didn't sound like that, I have to tell you.

Presenter9:35

It always strikes me as a bit of a raw deal being a boy chorister. I mean, you you have to be there on all high days and holidays, don't you?

Professor James Fenton9:41

Do and in a way other people might think it's a raw deal, but there was something about it. You felt very special.

Presenter9:47

And you've got a rigorous musical education obviously there at the chorister school. Yes. But but a rigorous academic education as well. I read that at the age of nine you were determined to be a professor of Latin.

Professor James Fenton9:58

This

Presenter9:59

Okay.

Professor James Fenton9:59

Uh

Presenter9:59

But why on earth would a boy of nine want to be a professor veteran?

Professor James Fenton10:02

I think any boy wants to do in life probably what you know, what he's

Professor James Fenton10:08

Best at, don't you think?

Professor James Fenton10:10

And I knew I was good at Latin. I was never as good at Greek. My Greek held me back a bit, you know.

Presenter10:17

And did you write poetry at that stage as well? I did a bit, yeah. Yes.

Professor James Fenton10:21

Yeah.

Professor James Fenton10:22

I certainly I can remember

Professor James Fenton10:24

One of the masters going round the classroom saying what he thought people would be. When he came to me he said,

Professor James Fenton10:32

that I would be a writer. So I w I was thrilled. I probably went off

Professor James Fenton10:37

and set about doing it then and there.

Presenter10:40

And there was also um a young boy, one of your underlings,'cause you became head boy, didn't you?

Professor James Fenton10:44

Yes, I was headboard.

Presenter10:45

One of your underlings is a certain Anthony Blair, now the leader of the Labour Party. How well do you remember him?

Professor James Fenton10:50

Well, I remember him very well, but I was in correspondence with my headmaster the other day. He said, Well, he was nine when you left the school. You must be thinking of his brother or something. But no, I remember him I remember him perfectly clearly. He was a keen debater.

Professor James Fenton11:05

I remember him as being a very bright, enthusiastic spark.

Professor James Fenton11:09

And suddenly he looked.

Professor James Fenton11:12

Exactly the way he looks now. He hasn't changed one bit since he was nine.

Presenter11:16

And you don't, I take it.

Professor James Fenton11:18

And that I look very different, I assure you.

Presenter11:20

Slightly less hair than you had.

Professor James Fenton11:22

I in those days I had hair.

Presenter11:22

I

Presenter11:23

There's

Presenter11:25

So, is it possible that the professor of poetry will have one day a direct line to Downing Street? I mean, we never know.

Professor James Fenton11:31

My attitude is that I'm still his head boy, and he's got to obey.

Presenter11:36

So you'll stand outside De Downing Street and send for him and tell him what to do.

Professor James Fenton11:39

That's right. That's my attitude, yes.

Presenter11:41

A a terrible thing happened when you were ten, which was that your mother died very suddenly of leukemia. Um that must have been a terrible shock.

Professor James Fenton11:50

Well, it it was indeed. It um

Professor James Fenton11:52

By then we were living in Litchfield. She'd put me on the train in Litchfield to go back to Durham. And I would say something like two weeks later she was dead.

Professor James Fenton12:02

It was a big shock, but it was also there was something else happened, which was.

Professor James Fenton12:08

Um before then I'd been quite b uh bullied quite a bit.

Professor James Fenton12:12

And at that point, I stopped being bullied. There was a kind of month, at least, when nobody could treat me badly. And...

Professor James Fenton12:23

I took off.

Professor James Fenton12:25

as a student and I really took off as

Professor James Fenton12:28

Somebody who was

Professor James Fenton12:31

planning his own life in a kind of way and I got a lot of attention particularly from my headmaster but also from the staff. So in my case, I don't think this happens to every child who loses a parent, but in my case it meant that I was treated specially, different from other people.

Presenter12:52

It also meant though that the the family was rather dispersed as a result, wasn't it?

Professor James Fenton12:57

Yes, my younger sister and I went to live with my aunt in Wales and I spent a lot of time in North Wales as a result of that.

Presenter13:09

Some more music.

Professor James Fenton13:12

This next one is Kathleen Ferrier singing a Brahm song, Geistliches Vegenlied, but it's two for the price of one because the accompaniment is a carol. It's Christ is Born of Mary Free.

Professor James Fenton13:27

And then the song is laid over on that.

Professor James Fenton13:33

And Kathleen Ferrier is a voice that I recall from seventy eight records in in childhood in this period. Uh she had died in fifty three, I think, but

Professor James Fenton13:45

And she was very much.

Professor James Fenton13:47

people's ideal of a singing voice, you know.

Speaker 414:16

Yeah.

Presenter14:52

Kathleen Ferrier singing Brahm's Geistliches Vegenliet, accompanied by Phyllis Spur and Max Gilbert. So you went uh to public school to Repton and then you went to Oxford via Florence first. You kind of took a gap here before it was fashionable. And then you changed courses from from English when you got there to psychology and philosophy.

Professor James Fenton15:12

That's right, yes.

Presenter15:13

This is when you saw yourself as becoming a clinical psychologist.

Professor James Fenton15:15

Yes, I in a way I made a big mistake because the course that I chose wasn't appropriate for me at all. Um but in another way I felt that as far as the study of English literature was concerned, that was something that I was going to do anyway. I was going to read, I was woo I would read those books and so on.

Professor James Fenton15:35

And I wanted to study anthropology, which was very fashionable in those days.

Professor James Fenton15:39

And you couldn't study anthropology in Oxford as an undergraduate. So I did philosophy and psychology first of all as a prelude.

Professor James Fenton15:48

to anthropology. But then

Professor James Fenton15:52

It turned out to be a prelude to Nothing.

Presenter15:55

'Cause you didn't get a very good degree. Did you not work or?

Professor James Fenton15:57

Did you not work or I got a what we call a derisory third. I mean the opposite of a congratulatory f third. Yes. I didn't do very much work, no. But I I was in the wrong course anyway. I you know, I d

Presenter16:05

But I

Professor James Fenton16:09

Did a paper on neurophysiology. Well, that's not my

Presenter16:12

Not quite your thing.

Professor James Fenton16:13

No, no.

Presenter16:14

But you followed a noble tradition, of course, because Auden only got a third of his starters.

Professor James Fenton16:18

He got a third, yes. It's it's also called a poet's third.

Presenter16:21

Oh wait.

Professor James Fenton16:21

Yeah.

Presenter16:22

Orden had become a friend, hadn't he, at this stage?

Professor James Fenton16:25

I met Alden.

Professor James Fenton16:27

And he was very kind to me in my first two years at Oxford. I mean he used to come through Oxford once a year, just at the beginning of term, he'd come and...

Professor James Fenton16:39

Uh take me out to lunch, so that was thrilling. Terrifying as well, of course.

Presenter16:43

Yeah.

Professor James Fenton16:44

Are you tongue-tied? Yes, terribly tongue-tied, yes. I said silly things when I opened my mouth and, you know, yes, yes, I'm afraid.

Presenter16:46

Wait.

Presenter16:51

But I mean, you must have been delighted when you won the New Decade Prize.

Professor James Fenton16:55

Um, he was very sweet. He thought some of my rhymes were completely preposterous.

Professor James Fenton17:00

He quoted one and he said

Professor James Fenton17:03

Shame on you.

Presenter17:04

Which one was that?

Professor James Fenton17:06

I mean, it was a purposeful effect, but it was rhyming Japan with sampan. And he said, Japan, sampan, shame on you.

Presenter17:14

Have you have you consciously modelled yourself on him to some extent? I mean, the you know, the travelling and being involved in war and

Professor James Fenton17:19

You can't

Presenter17:22

political interest and commitment. I mean, you even tried Berlin.

Professor James Fenton17:25

Yes, but that was really for a different reason. You can learn from

Professor James Fenton17:30

Another poet

Professor James Fenton17:32

But modelling yourself on somebody can only go so far and after that you just have to move on elsewhere.

Professor James Fenton17:40

Recently I've been re-reading Auden, but, you know, for m it maybe ten years will pass and I don't pick the volume up.

Professor James Fenton17:49

because I don't necessarily want to be too influenced by it. But it's always a great pleasure to pick up his poems.

Presenter17:55

Let's have record number four.

Professor James Fenton17:56

Oh, this is just a very, very simple spiritual. This is Jesse Norman singing it. Perhaps a bit sad for a desert island, but perhaps one would be contemplating death, which is the subject of this song.

Speaker 418:11

Ooh.

Speaker 418:11

Difference that man taking names.

Speaker 418:22

Oh, death is the mum take it.

Speaker 418:32

He has taken my name.

Speaker 418:42

And he's left my heart in pain.

Speaker 418:50

Oh, death is that man.

Presenter19:04

Jessie Norman, singing There's a Man Going Round. You write, James Fenton, in in several different styles, from cantering ballads to sonnets to two and four line simple poems, but there's usually a lot of rhyme going on. Is this what the what the school of new recklessness, as you've called it, is is all about? The sort of you can write in any way you like, as long as there's a lot of rhythm and a lot of rhyme.

Professor James Fenton19:26

Well, now the yes, the new recklessness idea was that many people write using poetic forms, but a lot of them use them in a very kind of apologetic way. So they want to have the thing roughly rhythmical, but they don't want you...

Professor James Fenton19:42

To know that it's

Professor James Fenton19:44

written in a meter. My feeling was that you should do

Professor James Fenton19:49

Quite the opposite of that.

Professor James Fenton19:50

Like those buildings that that show the way they're constructed, that take a delight in their own technology, you could write a poetry that had

Professor James Fenton20:02

such strong rhythms that they will absolutely

Professor James Fenton20:06

Unmistakable.

Presenter20:08

That it had to be read like you that you shouldn't be afraid of the rumpety tumper.

Professor James Fenton20:11

Absolutely, yes, yes.

Presenter20:12

Yes. Well c can you give us an example of that?

Professor James Fenton20:16

I'll give you a really strange example.

Professor James Fenton20:19

I was doing an article for Granta about President Marcos and the fall of Marcos in the Philippines.

Professor James Fenton20:25

Well, he hadn't fallen. There was an election going on. And

Professor James Fenton20:31

Suddenly things began to get out of hand.

Professor James Fenton20:35

It appeared that Marcus was was about to fall, and we went down to the

Professor James Fenton20:39

the the the the palace and helicopters in the sky and so on.

Professor James Fenton20:44

And it it appeared that Marcus.

Professor James Fenton20:46

had left.

Professor James Fenton20:47

And then the crowd started pouring over the gates and into the palace and

Professor James Fenton20:52

We went along with them.

Professor James Fenton20:54

And while this was going on, other inconveniently I had this

Professor James Fenton20:58

idiotic thing in my

Professor James Fenton21:00

in my head it was going on and it

Professor James Fenton21:02

That night I wrote it down because I thought I mustn't lose it. And the thing went: It's the same chalk on the blackboard, it's the same cheese on the sideboard, it's the same cat on the boardwalk, it's the same broad on the catwalk.

Professor James Fenton21:18

It was this.

Professor James Fenton21:19

Sort of mad little nonsense, but da da dum dum da da dum dum. Da da dum dum da da dum dum.

Professor James Fenton21:25

And

Professor James Fenton21:26

I wrote it down that night and then later I was back in Manila and

Professor James Fenton21:32

I'd got one or two more bits of it.

Professor James Fenton21:34

Also that night, just while these things were going on, just it was something to do with the excitement of the crowd.

Professor James Fenton21:40

And later

Professor James Fenton21:42

I got into the habit I used to

Professor James Fenton21:44

Go for walks in the afternoon round Quezon City, which was the bit of Manila where I lived.

Professor James Fenton21:50

And I would

Professor James Fenton21:52

Walk along the street.

Professor James Fenton21:54

But the same

Professor James Fenton21:55

Rhythm

Professor James Fenton21:57

And I wrote th the um the po the poem i is is too long to read, but it's called H Here Come the Drum Majorette, and it's all just to do with verbal explosions and rhythm.

Presenter22:08

But it's interesting that you talk about about the rhythm of it and and and you know, being so heavy and so necessary. I mean, you also don't see uh a great division, do you, between poetry and song?

Professor James Fenton22:21

No, that's true. That's true. And I've done...

Professor James Fenton22:24

A certain amount of work, like I did some opera translation, which is sort of how it began, and I've written songs and sounds and and writing for the singing voice forces you to write simply.

Presenter22:39

But you wrote your poem Out of the East, didn't you? As a kind of ballad. And that that's a that's a poem

Professor James Fenton22:43

Yeah.

Presenter22:45

Seeing things through the eyes of a member of the Khmer Rouge, it's not a problem.

Professor James Fenton22:48

That's right, yes.

Presenter22:49

Can you can you give us a quick burst of that one?

Professor James Fenton22:52

It's got a sort of chorus and then a little ballad section, so it's two things. And the the chorus goes Out of the south came famine, out of the west came strife, out of the north came a storm cone, and out of the east came a warrior wind, and it struck you like a knife.

Professor James Fenton23:06

Out of the east there shone a sun As the blood rose on the day, And it shone on the work of the warrior wind, And it shone on the heart, and it shone on the soul, And they called the sun Dismay.

Professor James Fenton23:17

And it's a far cry from the jungle to the city of Nompen, And many try and many die before they can see their homes again. And it's a far cry from the paddy track to the palace of the King, And many go before they know It's a far cry, it's a war cry Cry for the war that can do this thing

Presenter23:34

And again it's that unashamed chorus, isn't it? Because that chorus repeats and repeats and it's it's very long. I mean it's longer than some of the the verses, isn't it?

Professor James Fenton23:39

Yeah.

Professor James Fenton23:42

That's right, yes.

Professor James Fenton23:44

It's more than a ballad used to be. It's more than like those border ballads, the sort of Northumberland ballads. It's more than they used to be. It has.

Professor James Fenton23:54

A narrative that's a bit like an old-fashioned English ballad, but then this very big

Professor James Fenton24:00

Chorus. And that really expansive verse forms comes from Kipling. He was very good at them.

Presenter24:08

More music.

Professor James Fenton24:10

I assume on on this desert island that I've got pretty good speakers and I wanted something really very loud for days when I just wanted to blast the silence of the island and this is a very exciting piece of loud music. It's the Die Zire from Verde's Requiem.

Presenter25:20

The Dieziere from Verdi's Requiem sung by the Ernst Zenf choir with the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Carlo Maria Giulini.

Presenter25:28

The cliched view of of the poet, of course, has him rather like Dylan Thomas Wild and drunk and penniless. I mean, I don't know if you're either of the first two, wild and drunk, but you're certainly not the third. You you made a fortune by accident.

Professor James Fenton25:42

Um, not by accident. I if you you you mean I'm working on Les Miserable?

Presenter25:47

Hmm.

Professor James Fenton25:47

It was a

Professor James Fenton25:49

A a French

Professor James Fenton25:51

musical that had been done.

Professor James Fenton25:53

in in Paris for a

Professor James Fenton25:55

A couple of brief seasons.

Professor James Fenton25:58

I worked on it.

Professor James Fenton25:59

And was

Professor James Fenton26:01

rather slow, and in the end was bumped off it.

Presenter26:04

But were you translating the French musical or were you writing it from scratch for the novel?

Professor James Fenton26:07

There were two things going on. One was translating what was there and the other thing was adding more stuff. There is a song in that musical that

Professor James Fenton26:17

Although the words had been completely rejigged, it was my song. It was a piece of um music that existed elsewhere in the musical and that I turned into a

Presenter26:28

Which one is this?

Professor James Fenton26:28

Song

Professor James Fenton26:29

A song called Empty Chairs and Empty Tables.

Professor James Fenton26:33

What Cameron McIntosh wanted to do at a certain point was to take anything that I because time was running short to take anything that I had done and use it as he wanted. So then that meant that I got us a small percentage from the...

Professor James Fenton26:47

The takings

Presenter26:48

But that that small percentage, whatever it was that that you got, has has made you a a millionaire.

Presenter26:54

More multimodal.

Professor James Fenton26:55

Not well.

Presenter26:56

Anyway, the money keeps coming in.

Professor James Fenton26:58

The money keeps coming in.

Presenter26:59

What have you done with it?

Professor James Fenton27:01

I wish I knew. I wish I knew.

Presenter27:03

Well well I can tell you you bought a prawn farm in the Philippines, isn't that right?

Professor James Fenton27:07

Right. There's well I I was out in the Philippines uh working as a foreign correspondent.

Professor James Fenton27:13

And a group of friends were interested in starting a a prawn farm. We put some money into a small prawn farm that turned out

Professor James Fenton27:21

when the um sort of typhoons came to be not

Professor James Fenton27:26

Up to it.

Professor James Fenton27:28

So then we tried to improve that.

Professor James Fenton27:31

And we put together, it's like a kind of agricultural project.

Professor James Fenton27:36

And it has fish farms.

Professor James Fenton27:39

Does a pig farm?

Professor James Fenton27:42

It has coconuts?

Professor James Fenton27:43

It has free range turkeys which are a novelty in that area.

Professor James Fenton27:47

Uh and nobody's got ovens, so they're you know a bit puzzled as to what to do with them.

Presenter27:52

And it provides employment.

Professor James Fenton27:53

And it provides quite a bit of employment, has done, yes.

Presenter27:57

It's half record number six.

Professor James Fenton27:59

Well, this is a very surprising version of While Shepherds Watch Their Flocks. And it's the way this would have been sung in the eighteenth century in sort of Norwich. And you find that they sing it

Professor James Fenton28:13

Not in standard English, as most people sing, but they sing it with an accent.

Professor James Fenton28:17

And this is

Professor James Fenton28:18

Provincial 18th century church music, I think terrific.

Professor James Fenton28:22

Rediscovery by It was conducted by Andrew Parrott.

Speaker 428:31

See the on the ground.

Speaker 428:39

And God's summer

Speaker 429:14

Say before but his reign, but she's been strong, that died in for praise.

Professor James Fenton29:14

Before bird is raid and sweet.

Presenter29:17

Tis their trouble.

Speaker 429:23

Uh

Presenter29:25

An eighteenth century version of While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks by John Foster with the Tavern Achoir and Players conducted by Andrew Parrott.

Presenter29:32

Literary circles are are well known for their bitterness, James Fenton, and after you were elected Professor of Poetry and lauded in the New Yorker as the greatest poet in all England,

Presenter29:43

The poet Adrian Mitchell couldn't take it any longer, and he he challenged you to a a public poetry bout at Hackney Empire. But you haven't accepted. Why not?

Professor James Fenton29:52

Um well, the it's a trap, you see, because what he's saying is

Professor James Fenton29:58

Um

Presenter29:59

He's probably saying he's the greatest poet in the world.

Professor James Fenton30:01

Well, if he's saying if he's saying that, he can be he can be the great he doesn't have to challenge me for that. He can be it if he wants to be it. It i it implies that I'm defending a a title when I'm not defending any title, not against him.

Presenter30:13

He he he says if he pummels you for long enough you'll come out fighting. He's even written you a little couplet to tempt you. He says, Are you too posh for the rough and tumble, Jim? It's time for the poetry rumble.

Professor James Fenton30:23

Yes, he's always pretending not to be posh himself. He's as posh as the next man.

Presenter30:27

And you're not falling.

Professor James Fenton30:28

Absolutely not.

Presenter30:29

Didn't you once eat a bowl of live ants out east? Perhaps you should make that a precondition for entering this bout of

Presenter30:37

Should we have record number seven?

Professor James Fenton30:39

Um well, this is not music, this is Shakespeare, Fear No More the Heat of the Sun, which I thought might be appropriate for a desert island.

Professor James Fenton30:47

It's Edith Evans reciting it.

Speaker 330:50

Fear no more the heat of the sun

Speaker 330:53

Nor the furious winter's rages

Speaker 330:56

Thou thy worldly task hast done

Speaker 331:00

Home art gone, and tain thy wages

Speaker 331:04

Golden lads and girls all must

Speaker 331:08

As chimney sweepers come to dust.

Speaker 331:13

Fear no more the frown of the great Thou art past the tyrant's trope.

Speaker 331:19

Care no more to clothe and eat

Speaker 331:22

To thee the reed is as the oak.

Speaker 331:26

Preceptor learning physics.

Speaker 331:29

Must all follow this.

Speaker 331:32

And come to dust.

Speaker 331:35

Fear no more the lightning flash

Speaker 331:38

Nor the all dreaded thunderstone

Speaker 331:42

Fear not slander, censure rash

Speaker 331:45

Thou hast finished.

Presenter31:47

Be sh

Speaker 331:47

Uh Yeah.

Presenter31:47

Joy and Moan.

Presenter31:50

EDITH EVANS reciting Fear No More the Heat of the Sun from Act Four of Cymbeline. So life for James Fenton is now occasional forays to Maudlin College and the Senior Common Room. Has all thirst for adventure gone?

Professor James Fenton32:04

Sometimes when I'm

Professor James Fenton32:07

ask questions like that, I realize that people have a rather sort of concertina idea of my life. You know, I spent quite a long time, say, in Westminster, just working there, or in

Professor James Fenton32:20

the theatre, reviewing books, but not an awful lot of time gadding around the world on adventures.

Professor James Fenton32:29

I I mean of the of the sort of foreign corresponding kind. What actually happens is maybe in sort of five year periods or something like that there will come some particular story or some particular moment in some countries

Professor James Fenton32:46

development that that gets me and I think yes I would love to do that.

Presenter32:50

So you'll go when you when you hear the right call, William, when you hear the right story?

Professor James Fenton32:55

Yes, the great point is that

Professor James Fenton32:57

I always felt w when I was writing about wars and trouble spots I always felt that one shouldn't get into a position where

Professor James Fenton33:06

You felt that the only way of truly living was being in a danger zone.

Professor James Fenton33:11

And some people do get a a bit like that. You can find yourself.

Professor James Fenton33:17

addicted to it or unable to to be satisfied anywhere else.

Professor James Fenton33:22

I think it's something that you do at...

Professor James Fenton33:24

one period in your life and then

Professor James Fenton33:26

Another period you do something completely different.

Presenter33:29

So for now it's it's the column and the lectures and poetry. Do you hope that um again, like Orden you will become

Presenter33:38

poetically prolific, or will it always be really quite a slow business for you?

Professor James Fenton33:42

It's normally quite slow. I seem to be on a sort of schedule of producing one book in ten years of poetry.

Professor James Fenton33:50

Now, I personally feel that is fine.

Professor James Fenton33:54

Of course it would be nice to be prolific, but a lot of my favourite poets weren't particularly prolific, they just wrote a few poems. In the end, if you end up with a handful of poems

Professor James Fenton34:06

Then

Professor James Fenton34:07

That's very good.

Presenter34:10

Last record.

Professor James Fenton34:12

The last record is it's a song by Reynaldo Hahn. It's called A Cloris. He wrote it, I think, when he was quite a young man. And it's another of these two for the price of one songs because the accompaniment is is very beautiful and is set in a musical style older than the the style of the song itself. So because you've only allowed me this very small number of songs I've had to sort of double up.

Speaker 434:40

Of Surrey for two

Speaker 434:45

For me, so my fortitude

Professor James Fenton34:47

Or

Speaker 434:51

Pur la fis it

Speaker 435:01

Who said he no longer was he?

Speaker 435:08

Let us promise la fontes, au pride des cra tisier.

Professor James Fenton35:17

Uh

Presenter35:24

Martin Hill singing Aclorisse by Reynaldo Hahn, accompanied by Graham Johnson. Now if you were only allowed one of those pieces of music, James.

Professor James Fenton35:32

I think

Professor James Fenton35:33

I'd have to go for the Diazire from the Verdi Requiem.

Presenter35:36

and play it loud.

Professor James Fenton35:37

And play it as loud as.

Professor James Fenton35:39

Possible.

Presenter35:40

A new book.

Professor James Fenton35:41

I'm not allowed a complete Goethe, that would be several volumes.

Presenter35:44

Well, I suppose technically it's against the rules, I mean.

Professor James Fenton35:47

Well, it I I think I'd better play the by the rules and make it Dante.

Professor James Fenton35:53

A good edition.

Presenter35:54

Alright.

Professor James Fenton35:54

of the Divine Comedy.

Presenter35:56

And your luxury?

Professor James Fenton35:57

I want a snorkel.

Professor James Fenton35:59

Because

Professor James Fenton36:00

On a desert island if there's not much to do except swimming, swimming is very boring.

Professor James Fenton36:05

If you can't see things, but very interesting if you can see things and a snorkel makes it.

Professor James Fenton36:11

Awesome.

Professor James Fenton36:12

More of a pleasure to swim.

Presenter36:14

So we'll give you a mask as well, shall we? Throw it in, you know.

Professor James Fenton36:17

If you could throw in a harpoon that would be terrific.

Presenter36:20

James Fenton, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Professor James Fenton36:24

Thank you very much indeed.

Speaker 436:33

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