Elizabeth Jane Howard

Speaker 10:00

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 10:08

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

Presenter0:29

MY Castaway this week is a novelist. Her first book, The Beautiful Visit, was published in nineteen fifty, and it won the John Llewellyn Rees Memorial Prize. Her latest work is The Cazlett Chronicles, four novels about the life of a family in the thirties and forties.

Presenter0:44

The forty five years in between have been filled by many other books and three marriages. Peter Scott was her first husband, and Kingsley Amis her last. She left them, because writing is not the only passion in her life. She yearns for love. The trouble is, she says, falling in love uses the same kind of energy you need for writing, so you can't do both at the same time. She is Elizabeth Jane Howard.

Presenter1:09

So the fact, Jane, that you've produced four n volumes of these Cazalet chronicles over the past five years means that you haven't been distracted by the demands of love, does it?

Elizabeth Jane Howard1:18

I am afraid not. No, the nearest I have come to it is my Cavalier Spaniel.

Elizabeth Jane Howard1:24

And it is rather less demanding.

Presenter1:24

And with it.

Presenter1:25

But I don't understand why you can't do both. I mean, surely why do you have to compartmentalise?

Elizabeth Jane Howard1:30

I suppose if one was awfully good at both those things, one would be able to do both. I mean, people like Georgeson seem to manage it nicely. But um I think perhaps I'm not very good at either of these things, and so I'd have to use absolutely all the energy I've got for either of them.

Presenter1:46

Or is it the case that you can only be intimate with one person or one thing, so it it it's the husband or the writing?

Elizabeth Jane Howard1:53

I think really also it's I come from a generation, you know, where women are expected to put their hobbies, practices, professions, vocations second to the man in their life, and that it that dies very hard.

Elizabeth Jane Howard2:07

Um I I like to think that my granddaughters won't do that, but

Presenter2:12

So quite simply and in in in straightforward terms, you're saying you've spent so much time during marriages cooking for people and putting the washing through and whatever like the rest of we ordinary mortals that frankly you didn't have time to do what you love doing, which is right.

Elizabeth Jane Howard2:12

So

Elizabeth Jane Howard2:19

Yeah.

Elizabeth Jane Howard2:24

Yes, I think it's yes, it uh there's that, but also of course I'm very frightened of writing, so I expect I used a lot of those things as excuses, you know. I mean it's because it's a to me it's a very nerve-wracking process.

Presenter2:31

I was

Speaker 12:32

Yeah.

Elizabeth Jane Howard2:35

Um and now I'm sort of faced with h being able to do it all the time, I've got slightly better at doing it all the time.

Presenter2:41

It's gone well then for the last five years this writing.

Elizabeth Jane Howard2:43

I think I've learned a bit.

Presenter2:44

Which

Elizabeth Jane Howard2:44

Which

Presenter2:46

really begs the question how much do you miss the bit you haven't had, which is the companionship and the love?

Elizabeth Jane Howard2:52

Very much. I think one always would miss that,'cause I don't think people are constituted to live alone, really. I don't think I'm alone in in not liking being alone very much. I think you can get much better at it. I think I've got better at it, but I wouldn't choose it.

Presenter3:08

Well, it's going to be quite a a lonely business on a desert island. Tell me about the first piece of music that will keep you sane, we hope.

Elizabeth Jane Howard3:16

Well

Elizabeth Jane Howard3:17

Mozart is, I suppose, my very favourite, most serious composer, and I love the piano concertos, and this E flat major one is my favourite. It's Kirkle four four nine, and I think Marie Parra is a wonderful pianist, and so that's a good combination.

Presenter4:51

Part of Mozart's concerto number fourteen in E-flat major for piano and orchestra, played by Murray Pariah with the English Chamber Orchestra.

Presenter4:59

Of course, um, Jane, the characters who people your books are are therefore your friends and your company, and you've lived with these people for for for five years, the Cazletts. Um but you've now finished them off. Is there enormous sadness in that?

Elizabeth Jane Howard5:11

Yes, seven years actually I've been on them. Um yes, there is, because I think one always one is always sad about leaving people at the end of a novel. And at the end of four novels, of course, you know more about their lives because they've been growing up with you.

Presenter5:25

But in many ways you've lived with the Cazlitz for much longer than those seven years, because it's a very autobiographical work, isn't it? There's a lot of you in it.

Elizabeth Jane Howard5:34

Yes, the girls are all aspects of me and then invented aspects, you know.

Presenter5:38

So does that mean that that that your life, your early life, your childhood was as ostensibly idyllic as that, that there were these long hot summers in the country and raspberries for tea and ponies and gardens and so on?

Elizabeth Jane Howard5:50

Yeah.

Presenter5:50

Uh

Elizabeth Jane Howard5:50

Um yes. I think on the whole I did have, I suppose, by really m mo most of the time, I had a happy childhood, really.

Presenter5:59

But your your greatest problem you've confessed before now was, and I quote, trying to get your parents to care about you more than they did. What did they care about instead?

Elizabeth Jane Howard6:08

Well, I think my father cared about me, but he was, of course, you know, working and out all the time, really. Um I was trying to get my mother to love me, and I don't really think, poor dear, that she did much. And she loved my brothers.

Elizabeth Jane Howard6:22

And I loved her and that was very sort of debilitating.

Presenter6:26

How did it manifest itself with that dis dislike of money?

Elizabeth Jane Howard6:30

Putting me down in front of other people a great deal.

Elizabeth Jane Howard6:33

Um

Elizabeth Jane Howard6:35

Not knowing a lot of the time what was going on. I I was at a

Elizabeth Jane Howard6:39

very nasty day school where I was bullied sick.

Elizabeth Jane Howard6:43

And she had no idea of that.

Elizabeth Jane Howard6:46

And I feel in a way, looking back at it, that she should have.

Speaker 26:49

Hmm.

Elizabeth Jane Howard6:49

I did try very hard with her. I think I just never

Elizabeth Jane Howard6:53

measured up in some mysterious way. I don't know. She had a child before me that died.

Elizabeth Jane Howard6:59

And I think she probably had me much too soon afterwards and didn't want to have a baby because another girl called Jane.

Presenter7:03

What's that?

Speaker 27:03

Add a quick addict.

Elizabeth Jane Howard7:06

Hmm.

Elizabeth Jane Howard7:07

Um and I think uh

Elizabeth Jane Howard7:09

But, you know, she perhaps didn't want to start another baby so quickly and and felt um bad about it. But she loved your brothers who came after. She loved my brothers, yes. Um they could do no wrong, really. She was the most unloved child in her family. I think it it's probably, you know, that role model. I think she was probably behaving to me very much as her mother had behaved to her. And and that's how it goes on, doesn't it, till you stop it, till you recognise it.

Presenter7:33

Team.

Presenter7:34

When when did you recognize it? When did you

Elizabeth Jane Howard7:36

Well, I don't think I really got over her, um, completely until in the last ten years, I suppose. I feel I've sort of I've done a lot of therapy and I've sort of grown up a bit rather belatedly, but I have. And I now do feel very sorry for her. I

Elizabeth Jane Howard7:52

I think I felt very angry with her for a long time.

Elizabeth Jane Howard7:55

Because I think she

Elizabeth Jane Howard7:57

He did.

Elizabeth Jane Howard7:59

in a curious way, sort of

Elizabeth Jane Howard8:01

Bitch up my life, I suppose?

Presenter8:03

How did she in fact have this effect on the rest of your life? What do you think it it left you with?

Elizabeth Jane Howard8:07

Well see, I always felt that everything I did wasn't good enough.

Elizabeth Jane Howard8:11

I mean a lot of things I wasn't good at, but I wasn't encouraged.

Elizabeth Jane Howard8:14

Very much.

Presenter8:15

And you weren't much loved?

Elizabeth Jane Howard8:17

Well

Elizabeth Jane Howard8:18

I can't say I I was certainly loved by my father and and my brothers. I I I can't say she she wasn't

Elizabeth Jane Howard8:26

It's so difficult to say, isn't it? I think you sort of know, somewhere inside you, if somebody

Elizabeth Jane Howard8:32

Doesn't have the right feelings for you, however hard they try. I think she tried.

Presenter8:37

Tell me about your second record.

Elizabeth Jane Howard8:39

I couldn't think which Brandenburg concerto to have, and then I decided to have the opening of number five, simply because in a way I'm not sure that it's the first one I ever heard in my life, but it is the one which reminds me of all the others, and I feel on an island I'll need that.

Presenter10:25

The opening of Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. V in D major played by the Adolphe Busch Chamber players conducted by Adolphe Busch.

Presenter10:33

Tell me about being educated at home in London in the thirties.

Elizabeth Jane Howard10:38

Well, it was not even in then, those days, it wasn't a very usual education. I had.

Elizabeth Jane Howard10:43

the governess who had taught my mother.

Elizabeth Jane Howard10:46

And she seemed amazingly old to me, and my mother said that she'd always seemed old to her as well.

Elizabeth Jane Howard10:51

But she was the most astonishing woman.

Elizabeth Jane Howard10:55

She was nearly blind and remarkably ugly.

Elizabeth Jane Howard10:58

and very gentle and very intelligent.

Elizabeth Jane Howard11:02

And she would have taught me Greek much more than and Latin, but I wasn't very good at them.

Elizabeth Jane Howard11:07

But she let me read Shakespeare for an hour and a half every day aloud, which is what I wanted to do. I mean, she was quite right to do that, but a lot of people wouldn't have, you know.

Presenter11:15

So so there were advantages in that sense to being taught at home.

Elizabeth Jane Howard11:18

There were it was I loved it, I thought it was marvellous, and also by then I was terrified of my contemporaries and I started alone with her and then eventually

Elizabeth Jane Howard11:27

Two girls joined us and a boy called Johnny Craxton, who's a painter now.

Elizabeth Jane Howard11:32

and he joined us having been expelled, I think, he said, from eight schools.

Elizabeth Jane Howard11:36

the last one for biting the the matron because she uh tried to scrape his chicken pox spots with a knife. And I think he was completely justified. But by God we spanished all of us with no difficulty at all.

Presenter11:49

So there were some advantages, but what about through the rest of your life? Have you found suddenly great yawning gaps in your knowledge?

Elizabeth Jane Howard11:54

Signor knowledge machine

Presenter11:55

Yeah.

Elizabeth Jane Howard11:56

I mean, when I was sort of discharged from her, aged sixteen, and when I began falling in love with people, I mean, everybody I fell in love with made me sort of earnest reading lists, you know, and I of course never caught up with them because I fell in love with someone else, you know, before I had ten books.

Elizabeth Jane Howard12:13

And I think that they must to this day be incomplete.

Presenter12:17

But that would be because they couldn't believe you hadn't read whatever it was, The Riddle of the Sand.

Elizabeth Jane Howard12:17

Yeah.

Elizabeth Jane Howard12:21

They were quite shocked and they were all better educated. I mean, almost everybody is better educated than me. I just know a few

Presenter12:21

There is quite a bit of money.

Elizabeth Jane Howard12:27

View different things.

Presenter12:28

Is is that not your inferiority complex coming out of it?

Elizabeth Jane Howard12:31

You know, I think I don't feel educated. I don't really don't.

Presenter12:32

Yeah.

Presenter12:35

You you talked about your mother, but what about your father? In the books, the the girls, all of them, all three of them, have um rather intense relationships with their fathers, almost romantic ones, actually.

Elizabeth Jane Howard12:44

It's almost remote.

Elizabeth Jane Howard12:46

Yes. Well, my father was a very sort of attractive, romantic looking man, and he was very fond of me. I mean, I think he probably I was his favourite, and the boys were my mother's. But I didn't see an awful lot of him in my early years.

Presenter13:00

But was he like like Edward Castlett was he a bit of a philanderer?

Elizabeth Jane Howard13:04

Oh yes, he certainly was. Yes, yes. I mean, my parents really were a very ill match.

Elizabeth Jane Howard13:10

Ah, there's no question. I knew that from a very early age.

Presenter13:12

And he he left her in the end, I think.

Elizabeth Jane Howard13:14

He he left her in the end. He got, as it were, almost trapped by somebody, I think like philanderers ine inevitably do. And I don't know whether it made him happy. I think not, in the long run. Next record.

Elizabeth Jane Howard13:27

The next record is I'm having this because not not only because I love Chopin, but particularly because I love the playing of my oldest friend, Nina Milkiner, whom I have known since I was fourteen, and I met her when she was playing to my grandfather, who was a composer, when he was dying.

Elizabeth Jane Howard13:45

And we became friends, and we've been friends ever since, and she is a very remarkable pianist, I think.

Presenter15:10

Chopin's Mazurka in B Major Op. Forty one, number three, played by Nina Milkiner.

Presenter15:16

You were sixteen, Jane, when the war broke out. Did did that mean the end of childhood for you in many ways?

Elizabeth Jane Howard15:22

Yes, very much, I think. And it was something that I had been dreading for ages, uh all my childhood really. I I started dreading war because I saw this faded photograph on my father's dressing table of men in very baggy uniform, and I said, Who are they? and he said, They were my friends, and I said, Where are they now? and he said, They're all dead except me. And this was so shocking to me.

Elizabeth Jane Howard15:44

As I he then explained that they had died in the war, as I started reading books about the First World War, and the more I read about it the more terrifying war seemed to me to be.

Presenter15:54

You'd decided by that time to become an actress, have you?

Elizabeth Jane Howard15:56

That was a very early decision.

Presenter15:56

And you should have

Elizabeth Jane Howard15:59

Yes. When I was sixteen I went to a cooking school because I was so frightfully homesick and I realized you couldn't be a world famous actress and not be able to go out to lunch eating, let alone stay anywhere. So I got myself sent to a cooking school.

Presenter16:16

But all that fear of being away from home and of being a grown-up, if you like, and yet um by nineteen forty-two

Presenter16:23

At the age of nineteen ye you got married. You married Peter Scott, the artist and naturalist. W was that the war that made it happen so quickly?

Elizabeth Jane Howard16:31

I think the war is is what made it happen so quickly, and I don't even know, looking back on it, whether it would have happened at all if there hadn't been a war. I met him when I was sixteen, and I married him when I was just nineteen.

Elizabeth Jane Howard16:44

And of course we'd spent remarkably little time together because he was in the navy.

Presenter16:48

But how did you spend that time? Did he whisk you off to clubs and smart places?

Elizabeth Jane Howard16:51

He asked me off. He took me dancing, which he was extremely good at and I wasn't. He took me to the theatre, which of course I adored. And he drew me endlessly, which of course is tremendously flattering when you're that age, particularly if you felt, which I did, that you were rather plain.

Speaker 117:03

Particularly

Elizabeth Jane Howard17:08

You fell in love? We fell in love, yes. Or thought you did. Or thought we did. You see, it's so difficult to know that, isn't it, rarely? I mean, certainly we thought we were. And certainly in the back of the whole thing was the idea that he was going to be killed.

Elizabeth Jane Howard17:22

You know, every time I said goodbye to him I I thought, well, you know, I don't know if I'll see him again.

Presenter17:26

So it was romantic in the beginning and and then it obviously continued to be really rather dramatic.

Elizabeth Jane Howard17:31

Yes, it was hard, I think, for I'm sure it was hard for him too, having somebody so young who was I was terribly homesick when I got married, of course, and I w I don't think I was at all a good wife at any point.

Presenter17:43

Did you know anything about sex before then?

Elizabeth Jane Howard17:45

Jolly little actually. I remember my mother asked me if I knew about the nasty side of married life about two days before I got married and I quickly said yes,'cause I really didn't want her to talk about it.

Presenter17:56

And did you?

Elizabeth Jane Howard17:57

I did, because by then I had actually been to bed with him.

Elizabeth Jane Howard18:01

Uh

Presenter18:01

So he he taught you about the name.

Elizabeth Jane Howard18:03

You talk me about the nasty side of it.

Presenter18:04

And and w did you object to the word?

Elizabeth Jane Howard18:06

Oh yes, I thought that was I mean that that was just how my mother and her mother talked about those sort of things, if indeed they ever discussed them. And my grandmother was the kind of person who couldn't be seen going to or coming from a lavatory.

Presenter18:07

Hello?

Elizabeth Jane Howard18:22

That does complicate life, those sort of inhibitions.

Presenter18:23

Yes.

Presenter18:24

So when did reality hit you? Was there a moment, do you recall, when you thought, my God, what am I doing here?

Elizabeth Jane Howard18:29

Yes, I think it I think it hit me pretty soon, really. And I became pregnant and had a child when I wasn't feeling old enough to deal with that.

Elizabeth Jane Howard18:40

And then I began to feel I wasn't up to anything really. I I I wasn't up to dealing with my life at all.

Presenter18:45

How long before you left?

Elizabeth Jane Howard18:47

I didn't leave Peter until the war was over. I didn't feel one could do that to somebody when they were fighting. It didn't seem

Elizabeth Jane Howard18:55

fair or right to do it, but I think I sort of knew that I would have to.

Presenter19:00

And when when you did leave, you you left your daughter, Nicola, too?

Elizabeth Jane Howard19:03

I left him with her because I had no money, I had no job, I had no qualifications, I had half a novel.

Elizabeth Jane Howard19:10

I just went with two suitcases of clothes, really.

Elizabeth Jane Howard19:13

Um

Presenter19:14

Do you wonder now how you could have done that?

Elizabeth Jane Howard19:17

Well, how I could have left her?

Presenter19:18

Hmm.

Elizabeth Jane Howard19:19

I feel very bad about that. Um I saw her all the time. She was in London and I I you know, I saw her

Elizabeth Jane Howard19:27

Well, at all Nanny's time off and holidays and anxieties to take her away.

Elizabeth Jane Howard19:32

But I just felt she was having she had a better life with him, you know. She had more more things and more everything really. And that that's what one had to do.

Presenter19:42

Record number four.

Elizabeth Jane Howard19:44

Well, I regard Strauss, Richard Strauss, as almost the last great composer and

Elizabeth Jane Howard19:52

I've only heard the whole of that opera, Ariadne, at Lynborn once in my life, but I've never forgotten it. And I particularly love um Zelbinetta, her immense aria, and it's a bit of this.

Speaker 220:07

Eilse, Und Zen Schritz, Mach de Bichtun, Christehramen, for reform the world we find, Und the world.

Speaker 220:39

Is a God of Yeoman Header.

Speaker 220:45

Oh, they take it.

Speaker 220:50

First in walk on top of Steve

Speaker 221:02

Oh he is tall.

Presenter21:24

Part of Zerbinetta's aria from Richard Strauss's Ariadne Auf Naxos, sung by Ritter Streich with the Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Herbert von Carrion.

Presenter21:34

So you left Peter Scott, Elizabeth Jane had, with ten pounds in a suitcase and half a novel.

Speaker 221:40

Yeah.

Presenter21:41

But you very soon after that, I think, had that novel published, and you had a beautiful visit. About.

Presenter21:47

Uh

Elizabeth Jane Howard21:47

Two years afterwards, I don't think.

Presenter21:48

I want to talk about what you did after that, but I just want to talk about a little bit more about this walking out on marriage, because you were to do it twice more after that.

Elizabeth Jane Howard21:54

Yeah.

Elizabeth Jane Howard21:55

After that you

Presenter21:57

Called yourself a bolter, yes. Did you do you think it takes courage to bolt?

Elizabeth Jane Howard22:01

Uh

Elizabeth Jane Howard22:02

Yes, I think it does. It always takes some courage to divest yourself of the status quo, I think, because one usually has a very great deal invested in that, whatever it's like.

Elizabeth Jane Howard22:13

And the unknown is always a bit.

Elizabeth Jane Howard22:15

Alarming.

Presenter22:16

But it also implies that you're not only unhappy with what you have, but that you believe you can have better, that there is better to be had. Is that did you have some kind of remote

Elizabeth Jane Howard22:26

I guess I think I don't know how to live with somebody.

Elizabeth Jane Howard22:30

unless I have very good feelings about them.

Elizabeth Jane Howard22:33

and pretending that I have good feelings about them

Elizabeth Jane Howard22:37

Always seemed to me hopeless.

Elizabeth Jane Howard22:39

Um so I suppose that when I was clear that nothing was moving in the right direction about a relationship, I I did feel it was better to get out.

Presenter22:49

But you don't have to do it.

Elizabeth Jane Howard22:50

It was a failure.

Presenter22:51

But you don't think also that you do have some kind of idealistic view of of love?

Elizabeth Jane Howard22:56

I think probably then I did. I very much believed in love and I believe.

Presenter23:01

Don't you any more.

Elizabeth Jane Howard23:02

I believe very much in love now, but I think of it in a different way, I think. I think then I thought it was something that happened to you.

Elizabeth Jane Howard23:10

And I think now I think it's something which

Elizabeth Jane Howard23:13

comes about out of who you are to begin with. I mean, I don't think I was fit for love really. I mean the m the main thing I think

Elizabeth Jane Howard23:21

I

Elizabeth Jane Howard23:22

had, which I think a lot of women have, is the idea that they are somebody to whom things happen.

Elizabeth Jane Howard23:28

They're not remotely in charge of any of it. It all just occurs.

Presenter23:32

So do you think that it happens to many people? Do you think many of us know

Presenter23:36

what the love is that you would define as real love, as true love.

Elizabeth Jane Howard23:40

No, I think really good love, I'm not saying great love, is actually relatively rare. And I think people talk about it a lot, so there's the idea is that

Elizabeth Jane Howard23:51

People think that everybody because e everybody could fall in love or have love, they think that everybody does.

Elizabeth Jane Howard23:57

I think this is not true. I think it's a remarkable gift.

Elizabeth Jane Howard24:01

And I think that if it's something you hold very dearly, then all you can do is

Elizabeth Jane Howard24:07

get yourself ready to be that sort of person.

Presenter24:10

Next piece of music.

Elizabeth Jane Howard24:12

Well, Scarletti is one of my very, very, very favorite composers, and this sonata is my

Elizabeth Jane Howard24:20

favourite sonata and one of the nicest things that ever happened to me was when Rafe Kirkpatrick played sixteen Scarlatti sonatas in the double cube room at Wilton and as an encore he played this B minor which because he knew it was my favorite.

Presenter25:55

Part of Scarlatti's sonata in B minor, played by Vladimir Horowitz. You published your second and again very successful novel, The Long View, Elizabeth Jane Hard, in nineteen fifty six. It's a very grown up book, actually, for a what, a thirty two, thirty three year old.

Elizabeth Jane Howard26:10

Yes, I think it was quite grown up. It also was a curious uh structure. I mean, it was I was writing it backwards, and uh all the time I was writing it people told me you couldn't write a novel that way round.

Presenter26:21

To begin the story of a marriage with Ascley.

Elizabeth Jane Howard26:22

It's a story of a marriage told backwards and it seemed to me that you I mean you shouldn't use things like that in gimmicks or or they become gimmicks if they're just used for their own sake but in this particular case it seemed to me the right way to find out about this marriage, to have it at its denouement and to work back to its conception.

Presenter26:42

There are those who say that your your stepson Martin Amis has copied that technique in recent years.

Elizabeth Jane Howard26:48

Well, I don't I he certainly didn't copy. I mean, but I don't think that he knew that I'd done it. I didn't mention it at the time. I know that at the time everybody was talking about what a revolutionary thing it was, and I did I wondered mildly whether he'd ever heard of my book, but I don't think he had.

Presenter27:04

Ye you were of course his his stepmother when he was what when he was really a quite a small boy.

Elizabeth Jane Howard27:08

Um he was about thirteen, I think, when I first had him in my care.

Presenter27:13

Do tell me about the difficulties of being a stepmother, because I um it must be very hard work again trying to

Elizabeth Jane Howard27:19

It's a bit of a no-win situation, I think, really, because um I mean understandably I think children are the people who are most damaged by broken marriages in b of course they are. And they are very likely, understandably, to be hostile to the a new people or person who comes into their lives. Equally I think it's very difficult to be a good stepmother because

Presenter27:20

I think

Elizabeth Jane Howard27:42

I think it's very difficult for them to trust you. I mean, Martin in the end did trust me about his education and that worked, but uh

Presenter27:50

It's he's credited you for getting him to Oxford.

Elizabeth Jane Howard27:51

He's been very generous about that. Yes, he's very generous about that. But I mean I did want him to get there because he was exceptionally intelligent and exceptionally badly educated.

Presenter28:01

Do you still see, Martin?

Elizabeth Jane Howard28:03

I do see him sometimes. I am in touch with him. Not very often. I'd like to see him more rarely, but

Elizabeth Jane Howard28:09

I'm very fond of him.

Presenter28:11

I want to ask you one thing about your your marriage to Kingsley, Kingsley Ames, the novelist. I know you don't like talking about it, but I think one thing is quite important. You've said before now, I've read it, that he made you laugh and that that was a very important part of it. Does that come into this definition, let me ask you, of love? I mean, do do two people need to make each other laugh?

Elizabeth Jane Howard28:24

A very important part here.

Presenter28:33

Yeah.

Elizabeth Jane Howard28:33

Well, I think it's a good thing if they do. I mean, I'm terribly in favour of there being jokes in life and jokes in books. And he made me laugh. I mean, he was a tremendously funny man, and he was very good at making one laugh. And for me, it's one of the biggest turn-ons there are, really. I think I'm always very, very attracted to people who can do that.

Presenter28:54

Record number six.

Elizabeth Jane Howard28:56

Well, uh, in our family, that was Kingsley, we always called JS Bach Bach's father, because C. P. Bach was Bach, and that was a kind of joke. But I love him, and one of the things about him, the quality he has, is of it's very heroic music. And I think if I was alone on a desert island, one would need bracing up with a spot of heroism, you know?

Presenter30:55

Music by the son of JS Bach, part of the third movement of CPE Bach's concerto in D minor, played by the Slovak Chamber Orchestra conducted by Bodan Wachol.

Presenter31:05

How much do you regret, Jane, all those years you subjugated your writing then to the marriage, all the years you spent cooking and tending husbands and families? And of course, in in Kingsley's case, of course, so that he could get on with his writing?

Elizabeth Jane Howard31:17

I think that had to be done. I mean, I think it it's very difficult. I got awfully tired, and I think it's very difficult to write when you're tired. I got very seized up at one point I couldn't write at all. For about two years, I really wasn't able to produce anything.

Elizabeth Jane Howard31:33

And I think it was partly because I was nursing my mother and also other people who died there. You know, there was a sort of collection of sadness and

Elizabeth Jane Howard31:44

In the highs.

Elizabeth Jane Howard31:45

and I I had no energy, really, for doing it.

Elizabeth Jane Howard31:50

So I do I do regret it, but I don't think it's other people's fault. I think it was what I chose to do, and I think it was the wrong choice, but I chose it.

Presenter31:58

The Kazats are now finished and you're 72, but you're certainly not finished.

Elizabeth Jane Howard32:02

You're certainly not finished

Presenter32:04

Are there more novels in you yet, then, now that you've got the time and space to let them come out?

Elizabeth Jane Howard32:09

Yes, I've had three notions in my mind and I think I've picked which one I'm going to do next.

Presenter32:16

So what do you do? Do you sit at the typewriter or do you?

Elizabeth Jane Howard32:19

Yes, and I sit as a typewriter. And then I only write one draft. I only write books. I can't cope with, you know, drafts and fiddling about. So I do it rather slowly to begin with.

Presenter32:28

So you don't rewrite, you don't own it, it just

Elizabeth Jane Howard32:30

I don't own it.

Elizabeth Jane Howard32:31

I rewrote one bit of one novel once, because Kingsley thought I should, but I haven't otherwise.

Presenter32:36

And did it improve as a result?

Elizabeth Jane Howard32:38

I never will know. He said it did.

Presenter32:41

But do your publishers accept them as they come now? I mean, are you big enough? They just say, well, if that's the way you want it, that's the way it is.

Elizabeth Jane Howard32:46

Yes, I don't. I have a wonderful editor who cheers me on because I need a certain amount of straightforward flattery, I think, because I always write novels feeling I'm no good.

Elizabeth Jane Howard32:56

And I if I ever was any good, I'm not any good any more.

Presenter32:59

Let me ask you then a very difficult question because you're the sort of character you say you are. I mean, do you think now? that actually you you are a good novelist.

Elizabeth Jane Howard33:10

I think and possibly this is a good feeling to have I think I could be better. I think it'd be very uncomfortable if one felt, you know, if if I had to put at the bottom of my school report, couldn't do better if she tried. You know, I'd like it not to be that way round.

Presenter33:26

Mechan seven.

Elizabeth Jane Howard33:27

I love trumpets.

Elizabeth Jane Howard33:29

I think that all the trumpets sounded for him on the other side makes me cry as a line out of the Pilgrim's Progress. I love trumpets. I love Haydn because he loved Mozart and he was a lovely man and I love his keyboard work too. But this concerto is tremendous, is full of gaiety and excitement and I particularly fond of The Last Movement.

Presenter34:55

Part of the final movement of Haydn's trumpet concerto in E flat, played by Horton Hardenberger, with the Academy of Saint Martin in the Fields, conducted by Sir Neville Mariner.

Presenter35:05

It sounds, Jane, as if you live on a rather idyllic desert island of your own in Suffolk, in a way, because you have a a beautiful garden, a lovely house, you're expert at the garden, you have a wonderful, I'm told, well used kitchen, because you're a good cook. Would you give it all up? Would you risk your peace and your quiet and your own domain?

Presenter35:24

uh to have another go at sharing your life.

Elizabeth Jane Howard35:26

I would give a great deal up in terms of time and how I spent my life, but I don't think I want to give up this place. And I think I'd want the person to like the place. But that's, you know, really becoming tremendously picky, because they might have a sweet little basement in Pimlico that they'd rather I was in.

Presenter35:45

But would the motive be would it still be what you said you missed so much in your early life, to to be appreciated, to be loved?

Elizabeth Jane Howard35:53

Yes, I don't know what how it would be. It's very hard to imagine, isn't it, now, because I feel so old. But I think I would love to have a loving companion and somebody who I whose life I could be interested in and care for.

Presenter36:09

And do you think when you look back a across your life and and and the three

Presenter36:13

Marriages from which you bolted.

Presenter36:15

That that's it's your fault, therefore, that you're not still married and that you don't have that companionship you so crave.

Elizabeth Jane Howard36:23

Yes, I perhaps I didn't pick the right people, or they didn't pick me, or perhaps I wasn't a very

Elizabeth Jane Howard36:31

A very lovable kind of person. I think that also might be true.

Elizabeth Jane Howard36:35

I don't sort of shut the door on possibilities. I c there might be somebody who could make me want to go and live in a basement in Pimlico. I wouldn't can't even rule that out, I suppose.

Presenter36:46

Last record

Elizabeth Jane Howard36:48

I always feel very sad about this because I feel sad about Mozart's death and the manner of it, and this requiem is so much.

Elizabeth Jane Howard36:57

Connected with his death in a way. And also, it's conducted by my very dear friend, Jane Glover. We have many.

Elizabeth Jane Howard37:06

times when we talk about Mozart together, for she loves him and knows him of course much better than me.

Elizabeth Jane Howard37:13

And this is the DS Erie, which is

Elizabeth Jane Howard37:16

A marvellous bit.

Elizabeth Jane Howard37:17

For a great work.

Speaker 238:27

Yeah.

Presenter38:56

The Die's Ire for Mozart's Requiem, performed by the B B C singers and the London Mozart players, conducted by Jane Glover.

Presenter39:04

Now, if you could only take one of those eight records, Jane, which one?

Elizabeth Jane Howard39:09

I think I'd probably take the requirement.

Elizabeth Jane Howard39:12

It's a very difficult choice, it really is.

Presenter39:15

And what about your book?

Elizabeth Jane Howard39:17

My book would be All the Scarletta Sonata.

Elizabeth Jane Howard39:22

Because my luxury would be a piano.

Elizabeth Jane Howard39:26

And it's no good having a piano if you're me and you can't be a bend composer without some music.

Elizabeth Jane Howard39:32

And as there are six hundred sonatas, it would take me a long time to learn them all.

Presenter39:36

Elizabeth Jane Hard, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Speaker 240:40

Uh