Nigel Nicolson

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 five, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:29

My Castaway this week is a writer and publisher. He's the child of one of twentieth century England's most unconventional marriages. His parents loved each other deeply, but they enjoyed homosexual affairs. Their son, brought up in beautiful isolation at Sissinghurst Castle in Kent, went to Eton and Oxford, co founded a famous publishing house, became a Tory MP, and then settled back to writing his books, the most famous of which, Portrait of a Marriage, is all about his extraordinary parents. He is Nigel Nicholson.

Presenter1:01

Those parents were, of course, Harold Nicholson and Vita Sackville West, who would probably to day be mainly remembered for creating the Gardens of Sissinghurst if you hadn't written that book about them, Portrait of a Marriage, instead of which perhaps we think first of their Homosexual Affairs. Do you therefore regret doing that, regret writing that book?

Nigel Nicolson1:21

No, it was it was a great um problem of whether to publish my mother's autobiography or not, which she wrote when she was only late twenties about this dramatic affair when she eloped with another woman called Vali Tefusis. And I showed the her manuscript, which I found after her death, to one or two of her friends and my brother.

Nigel Nicolson1:45

And the general opinion was, not unanimous, that this was something which was so excellent as a bit of an autobiography, so interesting, so vivid.

Nigel Nicolson1:57

that it should be published.

Presenter1:58

Nevertheless, it took you, what, we we waited ten years before you published it.

Nigel Nicolson2:02

Yes, I had to wait obviously until after my father had died and Violet and Trefusius had died. And it was during that time, those ten years, that I could ponder the the rightness or the wrongness of exposing my mother to what some people call matricide. I don't think so at all. I think it actually enhanced her reputation.

Presenter2:26

Many critics did, though, of course, think that it was quite wrong. Bernard Levin, I think, said that you should have burnt it the minute you found it, the manuscript, and and other people called it treachery.

Nigel Nicolson2:28

Yeah.

Presenter2:35

How can you be sure that your parents would have wanted their story told?

Nigel Nicolson2:41

I think my mother wanted it told. But what about you? But I don't I have more doubts about my father.

Presenter2:43

But I

Nigel Nicolson2:48

because in a sort of way he was the more reticent about that sort of subject than she was. She was all for um

Nigel Nicolson2:57

uh telling well, what was really the most dramatic incident in our whole life. But to him it was a very painful memory. And when I did p decide finally to publish the book,

Nigel Nicolson3:11

It was of him that I was thinking more than of her.

Presenter3:16

What about of you? I mean, you would have been in your mid-forties when you found this manuscript in the bottom of a Gladstone bag after the evening.

Nigel Nicolson3:23

Yeah, I think even older, isn't it?

Presenter3:26

You obviously had no knew it had become gossip about your mother's grand affair with with Violet Trefusis in her twenties, but nevertheless to discover in middle age

Presenter3:37

From her own hand, the the deep passion that she had felt for another woman. How did it affect you?

Nigel Nicolson3:44

Well, as you say, I I had known vaguely about the story. She'd never mentioned it. My father had never mentioned it. We never discussed sex in our family. It was that sort of family.

Nigel Nicolson3:56

And so it it didn't come as a great shock to me.

Nigel Nicolson4:00

I was fascinated by her account of it, every detail supported, of course, by the letters which she had kept, the diaries which she had kept.

Presenter4:10

More of that later, but let's let's turn to you and music. What's the first record that you'd play on your desert island?

Nigel Nicolson4:16

All my records really are very light music, because we weren't a musical family. But all the same I have loved music all my life, and the sort of tunes that I enjoyed most were Audrey Hepburn in I Could Have Danced All Night from My Fair Lady.

Speaker 24:35

Once for night.

Speaker 24:38

Duns one night.

Presenter4:39

Good night.

Speaker 24:40

And still have begged for more I could have spread my wings And done a thousand things

Presenter4:53

Audrey Hipburn, and I could have danced all night. Let's talk about Sissinghurst, where you still live, although it's owned now by the National Trust, isn't it?

Nigel Nicolson5:02

That's right, yeah.

Presenter5:03

Can you remember the first time you saw it?

Nigel Nicolson5:05

Very well indeed. It was um in April 1930.

Nigel Nicolson5:10

A horrible day. It was pouring with rain. And I went there with my mother. And the place was really virtually derelict. It was just an accumulation of rubbish of several centuries, old tin cans and bottles and warnetting and that sort of thing. With no electricity, no water. There was no glass in the windows, and many of the doorways had no doors. It was awful. And we walked round in the rain with my mother, and suddenly she turned to me and said,

Nigel Nicolson5:40

I think we shall be very happy here. And um I said, but we haven't got to live here, have we? thinking of a nice, comfortable little house about twenty miles away.

Nigel Nicolson5:52

And she said, Yes, I think we could make something rather beautiful out of it.

Presenter5:56

So work began and and um you and your brother lived separately from your parents in a separate cottage, didn't you? And each of you, each member of the family, had his or her own sitting room. That's right. Very unusual.

Nigel Nicolson6:07

That's right.

Nigel Nicolson6:08

Um it was a sort of

Nigel Nicolson6:11

Family University, really. I mean, it sounds very prickish, but we did work awfully hard.

Nigel Nicolson6:18

My brother and I always won the holiday task prize, because we'd read the allotted book six times over, nobody else had read it once.

Presenter6:27

And your mother's sitting room was up in a tower.

Nigel Nicolson6:30

That's right.

Presenter6:30

And you weren't allowed up there.

Nigel Nicolson6:32

I went there, I think, twice in thirty two years. It was her sanctum.

Nigel Nicolson6:39

and although there was no written or even spoken rule about it, we knew that she didn't want to be disturbed there.

Presenter6:46

So it must have been a very strange experience for you when she died in nineteen sixty two to go up into that sitting room?

Nigel Nicolson6:54

It was very odd indeed. I'd been twice, as I said, but I didn't really understand what she did there.

Nigel Nicolson7:02

All her books were still there, her manuscript, the letters which she had

Nigel Nicolson7:06

Received the day before she died. It was so intimate and strange. You tried to then occupy it, didn't you? Only for a couple of days I thought I would take her place at her desk and

Presenter7:13

And

Nigel Nicolson7:18

Do my work there became totally impossible.

Nigel Nicolson7:22

It was impregnated with her personality.

Nigel Nicolson7:26

And so we've left it, and the National Trust have agreed, exactly as it was on the day she died.

Presenter7:34

Record number two.

Nigel Nicolson7:36

Well, my second record is Paul Robson singing one of the songs from Saunders of the Ripper, which was a movie he made. And I saw, or heard rather, this song first when I was in Athens, when I was an undergraduate at Oxford. I was very much moved by it, and also I associated with my love of Greece.

Speaker 28:01

I need your clothes.

Speaker 28:04

I don't coke. I really don't coke.

Presenter8:08

Are you

Speaker 38:08

Uh

Nigel Nicolson8:09

Uh

Presenter8:09

Uh

Nigel Nicolson8:09

Are ye a body?

Speaker 38:11

No.

Presenter8:23

Bye.

Speaker 38:27

Oh.

Speaker 38:28

Oh yeagander, the current sweeps, the water seems

Presenter8:35

Paul Robeson singing the canoe song from Sanders of the River. Your mother also had a brief affair with Virginia Woolfe, but a a long friendship when you were a small boy. What are your memories of Virginia Woolfe?

Nigel Nicolson8:48

I adored her. She was like a favourite aunt. And whenever my mother said Virginia's coming to lunch or coming to stay, I was delighted, because I knew that there would come a moment when she would say, Vita, go away. Can't you see I'm talking to Ben and Nigel? Ben's my brother. And then she would ask us about our simple lies, our school lies. She'd say, what's the Frenchmistress like?

Nigel Nicolson9:17

And we would say, as children do, oh, she's all right. No, no, no, no, no, that won't do.

Nigel Nicolson9:22

What sort of shoes does she wear?

Nigel Nicolson9:25

She was really t teaching us to observe.

Presenter9:30

So she was very inventive and great fun, but with children. But did you ever see her more challenging side with grown ups? Did you ever see her get angry, or or did you ever see that?

Nigel Nicolson9:41

Madness? I well, I never saw madness. I saw the challenging side of her, and it could be rather formidable. I remember once my mother took me to a Bloomsbury party. I was about twelve years old then.

Nigel Nicolson9:55

And Virginia tells one of her funniest stories. She could be very funny.

Nigel Nicolson10:01

And then when the laughter had died down, she turned to one of the youngest people in the room, apart from myself, who was a girl of about eighteen or nineteen.

Nigel Nicolson10:12

And she said,

Nigel Nicolson10:13

Now you tell us a story.

Nigel Nicolson10:16

Of course, and all these Bloomsbury characters, these formidable creatures like Lytton Svetze and T. S. Eliot, you know.

Nigel Nicolson10:24

Turn to this poor girl, who burst into tears.

Presenter10:28

Your mother didn't like it. Your mother called it the Gloomsbury set.

Nigel Nicolson10:28

Yeah.

Nigel Nicolson10:31

Yes, she didn't really fit in, and they they didn't really accept her, because she was Virginia's friend, you know, and apart from Clive Bell, she didn't really know the others. She hated Lytton Street, for example, who could be very unkind.

Nigel Nicolson10:47

For some

Presenter10:47

So what did Virginia then see in your mother if the others didn't like?

Nigel Nicolson10:50

She saw in her beauty I mean there was undoubtedly an a physical attraction between the two women and she saw in her aristocracy Virginia was a bit of a snob

Nigel Nicolson11:03

And Vita came from the Sackville families, from Nero, she had all that in her background.

Nigel Nicolson11:09

and also s a certain motherliness towards Virginia. She cared for cossiteter, one might almost say.

Presenter11:18

But your father was

Presenter11:20

Terrified, obviously mixed emotions, when it was discovered that your mother was having an affair with Virginia, wasn't he? He he said it was like lighting a flame over an open petrol tank.

Nigel Nicolson11:29

My father, who was a very understanding man, was said, This is marvellous. She will do all the good in the world. But for Heaven's sake be careful. You might

Nigel Nicolson11:42

trigger off a new attack of her insanity.

Presenter11:46

Record number three.

Nigel Nicolson11:48

Record number three is my only, so to speak, classical record, which is the famous Bolero Ravell, which I like for its mounting.

Nigel Nicolson11:59

Exhilaration.

Presenter13:02

Part of Revelle's Bolero played by the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Herbert von Carrian.

Presenter13:07

So, Nigel Nicholson, you went up to Eton, and then to Balliol, and then into the Grenadier Guards, aged twenty two, and war broke out about a year later. Did you have a good war?

Nigel Nicolson13:19

I had, I suppose,

Nigel Nicolson13:21

The best sort of war, if war can ever be described as good.

Nigel Nicolson13:26

Best in the sense that I was in a regiment where I felt at home with grenadiers.

Nigel Nicolson13:33

I was never wounded.

Nigel Nicolson13:36

And yet I saw uh action both from the front line a little bit in Tunisia.

Nigel Nicolson13:42

and also when we moved on to Italy.

Nigel Nicolson13:46

I remember once uh saying to my writing to my father

Nigel Nicolson13:51

There's nothing more enjoyable, you know, than liberating or conquering a country.

Nigel Nicolson13:57

And he wrote back and said, Hitler feels exactly the same way.

Nigel Nicolson14:03

reminding me that what I was engaged in might be very dramatic and romantic when one actually occupied lovely towns and was greeted by all these lovely Italian girls with roses and wine.

Nigel Nicolson14:16

But all the same it was a wicked thing to happen.

Nigel Nicolson14:20

And

Presenter14:20

And and then at the end of the war you were involved in the forcible repatriation of some anti Tito Yugoslavs from Austria back into Communist hands. That you described as horrible.

Nigel Nicolson14:29

Yes.

Nigel Nicolson14:33

I think it was the worst incident in all my war career. I had to um

Nigel Nicolson14:40

put these uh men and and women and some children to whom we had given asylum in southern Austria, people who were flying from Tito. They were Yugoslavs, but they were anti Tito.

Nigel Nicolson14:54

And we had to send them back to Tito by an arrangement made by some superior headquarters.

Nigel Nicolson15:01

And as they would have refused to go mount the trains if they had known where they were going, we had to lie to them. We had to tell them that they were going to Italy.

Nigel Nicolson15:13

when I'm afraid we were sending him over the frontier to almost certain death.

Presenter15:17

You were obeying orders, obviously, and as a young captain that was your job, but you you do you retain an awful guilt about it?

Nigel Nicolson15:24

I do, but less so than if I had made no protest at the time.

Nigel Nicolson15:30

And um, in retrospect, nothing pleases me more than I did protest in writing at the time.

Presenter15:37

More music.

Nigel Nicolson15:39

Well, the next one is um also connected with the war, and it's the famous tune Lilly Marlene.

Nigel Nicolson15:46

This of course was the um war song of the Rommel's Afrika Corps. And when at the end of the North African campaign in Tunisia we um surrounded the Afrika Corps and they surrendered,

Nigel Nicolson16:01

They marched off into captivity in long lines. I was there with them, with a handful of British soldiers as to keep guard.

Nigel Nicolson16:11

And as they marched slowly they began to sing this haunting song.

Nigel Nicolson16:16

which had also become Arso.

Nigel Nicolson16:19

and our soldiers joined in.

Nigel Nicolson16:21

in English, while the Germans sang in German.

Presenter16:33

Yeah.

Presenter16:36

Here on Smith, I never tell me.

Presenter17:25

Billy Marlane, sung by the Eleventh Army Officers' Training School of Hamburg.

Presenter17:30

Back home then to London, and you bumped into a chap called Weidenfelt, and you decided to set up a publishing company. Was it as simple as that?

Nigel Nicolson17:39

Uh it wasn't quite as simple as that because Weigenfeldt at that time was publishing a magazine called Contact.

Nigel Nicolson17:46

And um he wanted an assistant editor.

Nigel Nicolson17:50

And I had no profession, no qualifications really.

Nigel Nicolson17:55

and he invited me to join him, at the salary of five hundred pounds a year. I was never much good at business. What I contributed was the uh literary side, the editorial side. And we went on with this magazine for about twelve issues. It was losing money, and we didn't have much money, much capital, and so um we decided to give up the magazine and turn to general publishing.

Nigel Nicolson18:22

But we had no books to publish, and no author would want to publish with a brand new publisher, and so George met in in some way a young politician.

Nigel Nicolson18:34

who said to him, I have a book which I can't find a publisher for. It's about the coal industry.

Nigel Nicolson18:41

And George said, Well, send it along. I'll get one of my people to look at it. One of my people being me. There wasn't anybody else.

Nigel Nicolson18:50

And we published it, and the point of the story really is the name of the author.

Nigel Nicolson18:55

His name was Harold Wilson.

Presenter18:58

And then, of course, much later on you published Lolita, which was a great publicity coup. That was a coup. That was the sixties, wasn't it?

Nigel Nicolson19:05

But

Presenter19:06

But it had been officially condemned as obscene, so how did you get it into print?

Nigel Nicolson19:10

Well, what we decided to do was to publish one copy, which is technical publication.

Nigel Nicolson19:17

By selling this one copy to a girl in the office to one of the secretaries, you see, and then we sent this one copy and her receipt to the director of public prosecutions and the attorney general of the time, saying, Now, if you want to prosecute us for obscene publication, do so on this one copy. And if we win the case, we will publish the next day. If we lose it, we will destroy the entire edition.

Nigel Nicolson19:47

And then we leaked this proposal to the press. It made a very good story, really.

Nigel Nicolson19:53

And uh we heard nothing except uh an acknowledgment, and then we decided on the eve of the expiry date we'd give a party. We took the whole ground floor of the Ritz, which we could ill afford, and asked all our uh friends and journalists to come, and the author, Nabokov.

Nigel Nicolson20:13

and in the middle of the party a note was handed to me.

Nigel Nicolson20:17

From the Attorney General.

Nigel Nicolson20:19

Saying we've decided to take no further action, have a good party.

Presenter20:25

And how much money did you make out of that book?

Nigel Nicolson20:27

I don't know how I know we sold eighty thousand copies in the Hardback in within the next three weeks. And of course, today, Laolita would be regarded as so inoffensive. I mean, it's a wonderful story and a great work of literature.

Presenter20:43

Let's have some more music. Number five.

Nigel Nicolson20:46

Number five is A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square.

Nigel Nicolson20:51

Which is a v another very soppy tune, but I associate it with um the period when I came back from the war with so many other young officers and we took up what we had missed, which was girlfriends, dancing, and the social life of a sort of debutante. And the Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square was the theme song of that particular year.

Nigel Nicolson21:19

That certain night the night

Presenter21:33

Dinner.

Presenter21:35

At the risk.

Speaker 221:38

Yeah.

Presenter21:38

And uh

Speaker 221:38

Rising gale sang its bar

Speaker 221:43

Yeah.

Presenter21:54

Maybe wrong.

Presenter21:57

But I'm perfect

Nigel Nicolson22:07

And smiled at me.

Speaker 222:13

Uh

Presenter22:19

Glenn Miller and a Nightingale sang in Berkeley Square.

Presenter22:23

You became Nigel Nicholson an MP in the fifties, but you've confessed since, if I may quote you to yourself,

Presenter22:30

I wasn't much good at politics the most I ever did was persuade the Government to allow Spanish waiters to work in Bournemouth hotels for two months, not six weeks.

Presenter22:39

Which is is a very good line, but I think it's a little hard on yourself, isn't it?

Nigel Nicolson22:43

It's a bit hard, because I did two other things of which I'm proud, although in combination they lost me my seat.

Nigel Nicolson22:50

I was a a strong advocate of the abolition of capital punishment.

Nigel Nicolson22:57

And I was opposed very publicly the sewers operation.

Nigel Nicolson23:03

Well, now my constituency in Bournemouth were of course very right wing, and I was rather left wing or left of centre.

Nigel Nicolson23:12

And they approved of both these things, capital punishment and the serious operation. And I was ostracized by my constituency. They thought that my behaviour was fairly disgraceful.

Presenter23:25

But you did say, did you not, that the Prime Minister, Antony Eden, had had lied?

Presenter23:29

Yeah.

Nigel Nicolson23:29

I didn't say that then, although I knew it. We all knew in the House of Commons at that time that when he said that our purpose was to separate the combatants, the Israelis and the Egyptians

Nigel Nicolson23:44

He actually had stimulated the Israelis to attack Egypt.

Nigel Nicolson23:49

with the intention of having the excuse to intervene and regain control of the canal.

Nigel Nicolson23:56

Well, I thought that this operation was foolish because it wouldn't work, and grossly immoral.

Nigel Nicolson24:03

And it wouldn't work because it was immoral. You can't lie to Parliament. And um I uh lost my seat as a result.

Nigel Nicolson24:12

But I can say quite honestly, it's the thing I'm most proud of having done in all my life.

Presenter24:17

Is it?

Nigel Nicolson24:18

Yes.

Presenter24:19

Why do you say that?

Nigel Nicolson24:20

because I not only risked but knew that I was destroying my political career. It wasn't much of a career, but it was something. I knew that that would happen, and yet I felt so strongly that one must speak out against a form of corruption, not money corruption.

Nigel Nicolson24:39

But um moral corruption in Parliament.

Presenter24:43

No music.

Nigel Nicolson24:44

Well now then and the next one is

Presenter24:46

It's not music.

Nigel Nicolson24:47

Because Is not music exactly. It's reading. And it's reading.

Nigel Nicolson24:53

By one of my favourite actresses, Patricia Hodge, of a passage from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice.

Nigel Nicolson25:02

And the um passage comes towards the very end of the novel when Lady Catherine de Beau

Nigel Nicolson25:09

is trying to um force Elizabeth Bennett, who is the heroine, to promise her that she would never marry Lady Catherine's nephew, Darcy.

Nigel Nicolson25:21

And I chose this not only because Jane Austen is my favourite author, but also because I think it shows very well how young women could stand up to bullying.

Nigel Nicolson25:35

in round about seventeen ninety five.

Nigel Nicolson25:38

as well as our young women do to-day.

Speaker 325:42

I know it must be a scandalous falsehood. Can you declare that there is no foundation for it? Has he, my nephew, made you an offer of marriage?

Speaker 325:52

Your ladyship has declared it to be impossible.

Speaker 325:55

Miss Bennett, this match to which you have the presumption to aspire can never take place. mister Darcy is engaged to my daughter. Now, what have you to say?

Speaker 326:09

If he is so, you can have no reason to suppose he will make an offer to me.

Presenter26:15

Patricia Hodge reading an extract from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, abridged by Elizabeth Bradbury.

Presenter26:21

Strong stuff, as you say. Uh your mother was represented as rather stronger stuff in the BBC's dramatization of Portrait of a Marriage than you represented her in the book.

Presenter26:32

How did that affect you? Were you persuaded that perhaps you had been wrong?

Nigel Nicolson26:36

My objection to the um the way the m B B C dramatized it was was much too much overt sex in it. I didn't

Nigel Nicolson26:44

Obviously rarely relished the idea of seeing my mother.

Nigel Nicolson26:48

played by an actress in bed with another woman. I felt that it could have been done more subtly and gently, um by s suggestion, by looks, by words, so no concealing the fact that they had a physical affair, but I felt this was rather too stark.

Presenter27:05

But as I say, Janet McTyr, the actress who played your mother, did play her as rather a strong, formidable character, not as the victim, which is

Nigel Nicolson27:08

Do you have a

Presenter27:15

how your book has it. Were you persuaded that perhaps you'd been you'd interpreted your mother wrongly?

Nigel Nicolson27:21

No. Um after all, I knew my mother and Janet, um, well as she did this, didn't know Vita. And uh Vita was rather shy person, and I think she was very much uh uh seduced by Violet refuses. I think Violet was really almost an e evil character in those days. She changed later in life.

Presenter27:41

I only ask you that because your son Adam has said that that portrait of a marriage, your account, is a very romantic account of the relationship, and he he actually, I think, used the word he said it developed into a a hagiography.

Nigel Nicolson27:47

Yeah.

Nigel Nicolson27:52

Oh, I I doubt that. I I think my mother behaved extraordinarily badly to my father during those three years.

Nigel Nicolson28:01

And she really spent the rest of her life making up for the cruelty she had shown towards him during those years. But while she was at it to desert him, whom she loved,

Nigel Nicolson28:14

And her children, her two boys, was really an outrageous thing to do, and I don't conceal it.

Presenter28:21

Your son Adam goes on. He says that, in fact, in writing the book you were perhaps trying to love your mother as she never loved you.

Nigel Nicolson28:22

I'm good.

Nigel Nicolson28:30

I didn't know Adam had said that. I shall get at him about this when I see him afterwards. It's um not not true that. What is true, and he suggests it, is that there was a a distance between my mother and me. I never knew her very well.

Nigel Nicolson28:47

And I do rather regret now that I didn't make a greater effort to know her better.

Nigel Nicolson28:53

She was a shy person, and reticent, and kept her writing, and, of course, her love affairs, and even her garden, very much to herself.

Nigel Nicolson29:03

With my father I was very much more intimate.

Nigel Nicolson29:06

But now I think that she would have welcomed a a more um

Nigel Nicolson29:10

A subtle approach from my side, instead of just keeping quiet about all these things. We could have discussed the

Presenter29:19

Record number seven.

Nigel Nicolson29:21

Number seven.

Nigel Nicolson29:22

is my old Kentucky home.

Nigel Nicolson29:26

Now this of course is a tribute to my lifelong affection for the United States of America. About seven years ago I attended the Kentucky Derby at Louisville in Kentucky, the Great Horse Race. Before the race began the whole crowd were led by sort of choir master.

Nigel Nicolson29:47

into singing this wonderful song, My Old Kentucky Home, which I associate now with the whole of the United States.

Presenter29:56

The sun shines bright in the old Kentucky home.

Presenter30:03

Tis summer the loved ones are gay.

Presenter30:11

Corn tops strong and the male was in the blue, While the birds made music all the day.

Presenter30:25

The young folks roar on the little cabin floor, O Mary all happy and bride.

Presenter30:40

High hard times comes a knocking at the door.

Presenter30:46

Then my old friend Tony Homewood

Presenter30:52

My Old Kentucky Home, sung by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. You write a weekly column, Long Life, for the Spectator these days, and you're writing a book about George the Third. You wrote in one of your travel books about ten years ago as you mused about yourself

Presenter31:08

This is what you put it. But where's the reputation? It's the reputation of a grasshopper.

Presenter31:14

Is that how you think of yourself?

Nigel Nicolson31:15

A bit of a dilettante. Oh dear. Yes, it is true. A bit of a dilettante. I mean, after all, what have I been? I've been a soldier, a publisher, a member of parliament, a writer, an editor of other people's letters and that sort of thing. And although each one of these has given me a great deal of pleasure at the time, I don't think I was a very good soldier, a very good publisher, even a very good politician. If I'd stuck to one of them. To writing, do you think? Well, perhaps to writing. I would have missed a very great deal of experience and pleasure that I've had from the other occupations.

Presenter31:57

And um you've written your autobiography.

Nigel Nicolson31:59

Well, I I don't know how you know that, because I I have, in fact, but it's locked up, and it won't be published, I don't think ever, because it's a very, very truthful autobiography. All my weaknesses come out in it.

Presenter32:13

I understand that the opening words are This is not for publication.

Nigel Nicolson32:16

I think that's right, yes, that's what I is right.

Presenter32:18

And

Nigel Nicolson32:18

Nobody's read it.

Presenter32:20

What will happen if it is published?

Nigel Nicolson32:23

Well, I think it might be for my children rather the same experience as I had when I found my mother's autobiography.

Nigel Nicolson32:32

Because you know, by reading a document like my mother's, and possibly my own children, if they ever read mine.

Nigel Nicolson32:40

will enable them to understand things which

Nigel Nicolson32:43

At the time they didn't quite understand.

Presenter32:47

So the words this is not for publication are not meant entirely seriously.

Nigel Nicolson32:52

Well, I think that they might think that it it hasn't really been an interesting enl enough life. It hasn't been a dramatic life.

Nigel Nicolson33:02

And therefore it might be not worth publishing, but that would be for them to think, not me.

Presenter33:07

Last record.

Nigel Nicolson33:08

My last record is um my my pop song.

Nigel Nicolson33:14

Puppet on the String. When uh Sandy Shaw won the Eurovision um song contest with this song in the nineteen sixties, I was um uh about to leave for a long trip through Europe. That's not only Western Europe, but behind what was then the Iron Curtain as well, writing a book about

Nigel Nicolson33:35

European Architecture.

Nigel Nicolson33:37

And we I and my photographer, Ian Graham, and we had an American girl along as a secretary, in three months travelled through twenty five thousand miles of Europe. And everywhere we went,

Nigel Nicolson33:54

They were singing this song.

Nigel Nicolson33:57

and I felt it to be the sort of theme song of the New Europe.

Nigel Nicolson34:02

It made me very pro-Yorub, I think, in a rather soppy way.

Presenter34:09

I wonder if one day that can say that you care If you say you love me madly, I'd gladly be there like a puppet on a sc

Speaker 234:18

Uh

Nigel Nicolson34:18

Uh

Nigel Nicolson34:20

Uh

Speaker 234:20

Eeeeee

Speaker 234:24

Like a puppet on a string.

Presenter34:30

Puppet on a string and sandy shore. Are you going to be all right on this island, do you think?

Nigel Nicolson34:34

Yes, I once actually spent a whole month alone on an island, or in three little islands, which I bought as an undergraduate for £1,500, and which my son Adam now owns. I gave them to him. And I was very lonely there, I must say. I mean, a month alone on an island is pretty grim. You find yourself talking to the sheep. And I think I would be quite competent, but I wouldn't be able to do very much in the way of cooking or growing vegetables. But I would survive.

Presenter35:09

Now which of these records, if you could only take one of them, would you have with you?

Nigel Nicolson35:12

Well, I think I could choose the Balero, because um I think wandering around my island this would stimulate me uh very much and make me feel happy.

Presenter35:22

What about a book?

Nigel Nicolson35:23

and I thought that it would be very pleasant on the island to take up a new study.

Nigel Nicolson35:29

and the study which would be very suitable would be astronomy.

Nigel Nicolson35:35

So what I would really like would be a an up to date book, written for the layman, but but very full, uh a sort of guide to the universe, to the firmament.

Presenter35:45

And your luxury?

Nigel Nicolson35:46

Well, the luxury of course goes with the book. It's got to be a telescope.

Presenter35:52

Nigel Nicholson, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Speaker 236:04

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