Quentin Crewe

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

Presenter0:29

My castaway this week is a journalist and author. Since the age of 29, muscular dystrophy has kept him in a wheelchair. Nevertheless, at the age of nearly 70, he can look back on a life more vivid and exciting than most able-bodied men. He was sacked from Eton and sent down from Cambridge. He's crossed deserts and driven 24,000 miles across South America. In between, he's worked as a gossip columnist, film critic, and perhaps most famously as a writer on restaurants. A friend of the rich, famous, and influential, he's also been married three times. Nothing, he says, debars a disabled person from the really important things in life: love, happiness, and achievement. He is Quentin Crewe. In fact, you wrote that, Quentin, in a letter to Christopher Reeve, who's paralysed, of course, after a riding accident. On the whole, it has to be said your attitude to disabled people seems to be fairly merciless. It's kind of put up and shut up, isn't it? Well, sir.

Quentin Crewe1:24

that. It's more that I feel that one can do everything. I mean, if the thing I'd like to give to everybody was confidence, uh, which of course is a hard thing to give. I mean, I think the people who complain

Quentin Crewe1:36

About

Quentin Crewe1:38

rights and all that stuff.

Quentin Crewe1:40

You you know, you've just got to accept you can't do some things. I'm not going to walk along Hadrian's wall, nor do I want it to be d despoiled.

Quentin Crewe1:48

for the disabled by putting a lasted tarmac road beside it.

Presenter1:52

But you've got to be blessed with a certain very positive frame of mind, a strength of character, haven't you, in order to do this quite possible, you can't just affect it, can you?

Quentin Crewe1:59

No. But I think I'd been uh I mean, my parents were very austere with me about that, and that helped me in a way.

Quentin Crewe2:07

'Cause they weren't gonna have any nonsense from me.

Quentin Crewe2:10

and told me to get on with it.

Presenter2:12

But w at what age were you diagnosed as having musculosis?

Quentin Crewe2:14

Oh, about six or seven.

Presenter2:16

And what were you told, then?

Quentin Crewe2:18

Well, my mother was told I'd be dead by the time I was sixteen.

Quentin Crewe2:21

and I was told I'd be all right by the time I was sixteen. Perhaps he had a thought of I'd be in heaven. I don't know. And anyhow, so I rather fatuously, although it was perfectly plain,

Quentin Crewe2:33

Went on hoping that somehow round about sixteen that everything would come right, but it didn't.

Presenter2:38

But could you feel yourself getting steadily worse between the ages of six and sixteen?

Quentin Crewe2:40

Two ages are six and sixteen.

Presenter2:42

But presumably your family then cossetted you rather because they believed you were going to die.

Quentin Crewe2:46

No, they didn't cost it me at all.

Quentin Crewe2:49

I mean that wasn't their nature.

Quentin Crewe2:51

It's certainly not my mother's nature.

Quentin Crewe2:53

If you were going to die, you were going to die, and you had to get on with it, too.

Presenter2:57

So are you saying that that's why you feel you have this kind of positive attitude, that the family

Quentin Crewe3:03

I think to yes, to to a large extent.

Presenter3:06

Of course that perhaps makes it different for you from, say, Christopher Reeve, who suddenly overnight is rendered.

Quentin Crewe3:13

Oh yes, it's absolutely terrible for somebody who

Presenter3:13

Kairaza.

Quentin Crewe3:16

One day is a young athletic man, and the next day

Quentin Crewe3:21

Can't do anything.

Quentin Crewe3:22

But I feel he's got a spirit and that uh he will overcome a lot.

Presenter3:26

Tell me about your first record.

Quentin Crewe3:28

My first record really is because I've had many associations with France. My father was British consul in the Riviera, he we lived in Nice. I've always been going back to France a lot, and then I lived in France for ten years. So Charles Rene's singing Douce France is to me very evocative.

Quentin Crewe3:53

Who safes, sir?

Quentin Crewe3:56

Chair a paid demon font, second.

Speaker 24:10

Mon village.

Quentin Crewe4:13

Ocla cheers maison sagé.

Quentin Crewe4:18

Boudais enfant de monard.

Presenter4:21

Charles Trunet singing La Douce France.

Presenter4:24

I suppose one would expect, really, as a result of not being able to play sport, that you would have been quite a studious chap, but nothing of the kind, apparently. You were you were a slacker.

Quentin Crewe4:33

Yes. I mean, I couldn't play football or anything, that was that. But when I got to Cambridge I did become very interested in r in rowing. I was a Cox steering the boat, and that I found great fun.

Presenter4:47

But tell me about Eton,'cause you've written that it was absurd and unnatural. In what ways was it absurd and unnatural?

Quentin Crewe4:52

Well, in the way that I mean the rules were so preposterous that you couldn't walk about, you had to carry your umbrella not rolled up, but flapping like a rook at your side. And uh you had wear your collar turned up, you weren't allowed to turn your co overcoat collar down, you had to walk on one side of the street, not the other, even if you were going to go from one shop to another, that were

Quentin Crewe5:19

Thirty yards apart it went across the road and then crossed back again.

Quentin Crewe5:23

So many idiotic rules. And then on top of that, you had the boys disciplining one another, beating one another, and that seemed to me unreasonable.

Presenter5:34

But what you describe, obviously, is that you are a a non a natural rebel, a non conformist. You've also written some very nasty adjectives about yourself, actually. You said you were tiresome and unlikable. But perhaps the most frequent adjective you use about yourself is is sly.

Presenter5:50

He was so

Quentin Crewe5:51

Yes, I think I was quite crafty. I mean, my housemaster would eat

Quentin Crewe5:55

Wrote a letter to the

Quentin Crewe5:57

other masters who were teaching me to beware of my charm because I would get round them.

Quentin Crewe6:04

And I thought, well, yes, who wouldn't?

Quentin Crewe6:07

And uh so yes, there was a bit of that.

Presenter6:09

But how much do you think your

Presenter6:12

The coldness in your family, which you mentioned just now, it had to do with that, that you just felt rather on your own and you had to get out there and manipulate the world rather.

Quentin Crewe6:21

Oh, no, I had a brother, you see. I had a full brother. I had m many half-brothers and sisters.

Quentin Crewe6:27

And my forebrother was

Quentin Crewe6:30

I mean the most amazing friend I've ever had.

Quentin Crewe6:33

Really?

Presenter6:34

But your father wasn't always very kind to you, was he? Well, he he was v

Quentin Crewe6:38

Remember they were so much older than

Quentin Crewe6:40

I mean my father was forty-six when I was born, and my mother forty-five.

Quentin Crewe6:45

So I mean the gulf was huge.

Quentin Crewe6:47

And he had ideas that you should be.

Quentin Crewe6:51

afraid of your parents, and so he used to set out to make us afraid of him.

Quentin Crewe6:56

I mean he had very eccentric ways about

Quentin Crewe6:58

Teaching one things, I mean he.

Quentin Crewe7:00

He thought fencing would be a good thing for me to do when I was at school, and so he was a champion fencer originally. And so we used to fence on the terrace at home. Every time we came for a joust, or whatever you call it, he would, by some trick, flick my sword out of my hand, and half way down the garden I had to run down and fetch it. But he'd do this again and again.

Quentin Crewe7:25

It seems odd in that way.

Presenter7:26

You've written that when your mother died eventually you were remarkably unmoved by her death.

Quentin Crewe7:32

Yeah, I was, really, because I wasn't close to her. I mean, there were moments of being close to her in the sense she was always good company.

Quentin Crewe7:40

And she laughed a lot.

Quentin Crewe7:42

But uh

Quentin Crewe7:43

There was no warmth for her, and she didn't particularly like her children, I don't think two of her sons.

Quentin Crewe7:51

by her first husband were killed in the war.

Quentin Crewe7:54

and she was not really that distressed.

Presenter7:55

Yeah.

Presenter7:58

So are you saying that the only genuine affection you knew in your childhood was really from from your brother?

Quentin Crewe8:03

Yes, largely. Oh, no, no, my well my oldest half sister was very affectionate.

Presenter8:09

But not you didn't know parental love.

Quentin Crewe8:09

Yeah.

Quentin Crewe8:12

Uh no.

Presenter8:13

Tell me about record number two.

Quentin Crewe8:15

Level number two comes from the Hopperforcendadel D'Astino.

Quentin Crewe8:20

in which Don Alvaro and Don Carlos are swearing eternal friendship.

Quentin Crewe8:26

And it doesn't actually work out like that, but that's what the ugly to my mind.

Quentin Crewe8:31

Friends have been the most important thing in my life, and music largely.

Quentin Crewe8:36

It reminds me of particular friends.

Speaker 28:40

Evolve, evolve.

Presenter9:36

Placido Domingo and Giorgio Zancanoro singing the duet Amici in vita e in morte from Verdi's La Forza del D'Estino.

Presenter9:44

There seems to have been, Quentin Crew, the odd Canaletto knocking round the family home, and a a copy of Kubla Khan in Coleridge's own hand. How much impression did those kinds of things make on you as a boy?

Quentin Crewe9:57

Oh, I think a lot. That sort of thing my father was good at. He sent me.

Presenter9:57

Yeah.

Quentin Crewe10:01

to go through all the books in the library, which was vast, and to find myself sitting with Philip Sidney's copy of something, or King Charles Second's copy of something, was fantastic, and there was a

Quentin Crewe10:17

book, unbelievably odd book, called

Quentin Crewe10:20

Glauber's furnaces, and this had belonged

Quentin Crewe10:23

to Oliver Cromwell.

Quentin Crewe10:26

and he'd sketched a battle on the front.

Quentin Crewe10:29

or some page at the beginning, and uh you got me and Fairfax, all noted down, and then enemy at the other side, and you've got the the pan plan of the battle. I don't know which battle.

Quentin Crewe10:44

and why he had a copy of Glauber's Furnaces, which were literally boilers of

Quentin Crewe10:48

whatever. Heaven knows. But that sort of thing was so vivid.

Quentin Crewe10:53

to hold in one's hand.

Presenter10:54

You had in your mid twenties, I think, um what some might think of as an idyllic job, reading out loud to a blind man in a beautiful villa that tumbled down to the sea, which gardens tumble down to the sea anyway in in Italy. Um what did you read to him? Who was he, and what did you read to him?

Quentin Crewe11:10

He was called Percy Lubbock, and he was a person who had been a great friend of Henry James and of Edith Wharton, so he was full of anecdote from that period and those people. And we spent I don't know how many hours a day reading. In the morning I'd read the newspapers in Italian, in the afternoon and evening I'd read things like The New Statesman, then a serious book perhaps about science. I don't know, he was interested in science and astronomy. And then later after dinner we'd read Anna Karenina or something of that sort. And it was wonderful education.

Presenter11:50

Yeah.

Quentin Crewe11:50

Lovely.

Presenter11:50

Yeah.

Quentin Crewe11:54

You must

Presenter11:56

You must have learned so much as well.

Quentin Crewe11:57

I learnt a lot. Certainly I would have been much too lazy to have sat down and read all that stuff for myself, I think.

Presenter12:04

But you were perhaps in in in the mood to be there and to take such a job, because of course you'd escaped from a love affair well you'd run away from from a lost love, from Sarah MacMillan, daughter of Harold, hadn't you?

Quentin Crewe12:15

Yes, I had, really.

Presenter12:16

You were you were twenty two, I think, when you'd first fallen in love with her, and it had gone on for some years. Was she the first woman to break your heart?

Quentin Crewe12:25

Yeah.

Quentin Crewe12:26

Absolutely.

Quentin Crewe12:28

She was wonderful, and I was immensely fond of her and of her whole family. It was a curious

Quentin Crewe12:34

Relationship really because her mother became extremely close to me.

Presenter12:39

I want to ask you some more about that, but let's pause there for your third record. Tell me about that.

Quentin Crewe12:41

Yeah.

Quentin Crewe12:42

Well, the third record really does remind me of Sarah. I had anyhow at that time.

Quentin Crewe12:47

a great enthusiasm for swing and jazz and and sort of Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw and all that. But Sarah was very fond of her fat swallows.

Quentin Crewe12:58

My very good friend.

Speaker 313:01

My very good friend, the milkman, said.

Quentin Crewe13:05

Then I've been losing

Quentin Crewe13:07

Yeah.

Quentin Crewe13:09

He doesn't like

Quentin Crewe13:12

But I'll fucking

Quentin Crewe13:14

He suggests that you should marry me.

Quentin Crewe13:21

I'm tired of it.

Quentin Crewe13:22

I don't know.

Quentin Crewe13:27

Then here.

Quentin Crewe13:28

Thank you.

Presenter13:31

Fat Swaller, and my very good friend the Milkman.

Presenter13:34

You were, Quentin Cruve, virtually adopted by the Macmillan family they became your surrogate family. You you moved into Birch Grove, the family home.

Quentin Crewe13:41

Yeah, absolutely. I used to spend every weekend there.

Presenter13:44

But as you say, you were you were really almost closer to Lady Dorothy than to Sarah.

Quentin Crewe13:44

But this

Quentin Crewe13:49

Well, in some ways, I mean she well, particularly after Sarah had

Quentin Crewe13:53

decided she wasn't gonna marry me, but

Quentin Crewe13:56

Wanted to marry somebody else.

Presenter13:57

Lady Dorothy apparently used to just sit on the end of your bath and talk to you, is that right?

Quentin Crewe14:01

Right.

Presenter14:03

But what did she t were you her confidante?

Quentin Crewe14:06

Yes.

Quentin Crewe14:07

She would tell me anything, really.

Quentin Crewe14:09

And did.

Quentin Crewe14:10

And uh

Presenter14:11

Yeah.

Presenter14:13

Well, particularly.

Quentin Crewe14:15

Well, particularly about her relationship with Boothby.

Quentin Crewe14:18

I think it was tormenting for Harold.

Quentin Crewe14:21

Because he was fond of her, no doubt. One of the things that I'm absolutely convinced about is that I think John Juneau or somebody suggested that he was homosexual. I don't know who.

Quentin Crewe14:33

did put that suggestion, but anyhow there it was. And one day Dorothy said to me, Look, go through all those letters in that

Quentin Crewe14:42

cabinet over there, and I went through them, and they were all intensely intimate I mean, very intimate indeed, and had even letters from Harold apologising for bothering her. And so, I mean, he certainly

Quentin Crewe14:59

was keen on her, but she wasn't on him, I mean it was very sad.

Quentin Crewe15:04

Perfect. But I think she was a passionate woman.

Presenter15:06

The Macmillans, in a sense, weren't your only surrogate family, were they? You you'd also lived at one point with the Bonham Carters and and got on very well with Lady Violet.

Quentin Crewe15:14

Well, that was much earlier. That was when I first came.

Quentin Crewe15:17

to work in London, and she used to have

Quentin Crewe15:20

P. Gee's, really. She was a funny lady, really.

Quentin Crewe15:23

So powerful.

Quentin Crewe15:25

So

Quentin Crewe15:27

Determined and so.

Quentin Crewe15:29

upright, you know them and there's this searing honesty which was

Quentin Crewe15:33

quite frightening. I mean, she'd

Quentin Crewe15:35

I remember going to a party once.

Quentin Crewe15:38

And there was Tom Dreyberg there.

Quentin Crewe15:40

And she said, Oh, there's Tom Drabeg. I must go and tell him what a bad thing he wrote the other day.

Quentin Crewe15:47

So

Quentin Crewe15:48

I said, Well why do you have to tell him that way?

Quentin Crewe15:52

Conter just ignored. He might think I approved of it, she said. And she was formidable.

Presenter15:57

But she used to wait up for you at the end of an evening when she didn't even want to talk.

Quentin Crewe15:59

Well she did no, she just never went to bed, really, so I just tiptoe in and tried to creep up to my bedroom, but she'd call out for she liked to chat.

Presenter16:11

But what was in all of this for you? Did you just enjoy sort of middle-aged women in the sense of mother figures? Do you think? Or was this your.

Quentin Crewe16:18

No, no, she was not that at all. Certainly no.

Quentin Crewe16:22

Sad mother.

Presenter16:23

Or with Lady Dorothy.

Quentin Crewe16:25

Well more with Lady Dorothy, yes. I think I thought of her as assigning it but

Quentin Crewe16:29

Really?

Presenter16:30

You did, did you?

Quentin Crewe16:31

I did, yes.

Presenter16:33

And you went on corresponding for a long time after you left Birchgrove.

Quentin Crewe16:36

Oh yes, I'm in from Italy. I wrote a lot of letters and she wrote a lot of letters to me.

Quentin Crewe16:41

And then when I came back to England,

Quentin Crewe16:43

I then used to continue to go down there to Birchgrove.

Quentin Crewe16:47

Every weekend.

Presenter16:49

Tell me about record number four.

Quentin Crewe16:51

Uh record number four is Windel Marsalis playing.

Quentin Crewe16:56

Who rules concerto for the trumpet?

Quentin Crewe16:59

I think I'm very keen on wind instruments, really.

Quentin Crewe17:02

And this is the supreme example.

Presenter18:00

Part of Johann Hummel's concerto for trumpet and orchestra in E major, played by Wynton Marsalis, with the English Chamber Orchestra conducted by Raymond Lepard.

Presenter18:10

How did you get your first full time job in journalism, Quentin?

Quentin Crewe18:15

When I'd come back ready for the coronation in nineteen fifty three.

Quentin Crewe18:20

And I was asked to lunch by Boothby.

Quentin Crewe18:23

and there happened to be at lunch

Quentin Crewe18:25

John Juneau later became the

Quentin Crewe18:28

a famous editor of the Sunday Express. But he was then a deputy editor, newly appointed, of the Evening Standard. And he asked me what I was doing, and I told him, and then he said, Well,

Quentin Crewe18:39

Would you like to come and work for us on the Evening Standard?

Quentin Crewe18:42

So I joined the Evening Standard and we

Presenter18:45

You'd have been, what, about, twenty seven by that? And you became a kind of roving reporter, didn't you? How did you manage? Were you still'cause you were still on your on your feet, as it were, at that stage.

Quentin Crewe18:55

Uh well, yes, I got a wheelchair back then, but I used to get around, I had a car, I drove, and.

Presenter19:01

But you were being asked at at ten minutes' notice to go to Edinburgh or go to somewhere in the middle of the morning.

Quentin Crewe19:06

Yeah, I loved that. I that was just exactly what I liked. I think my first job I was sent off to Monte Carlo.

Quentin Crewe19:13

Because they'd got an idea that

Quentin Crewe19:16

Aristotle Anasis was going to turn it into a

Quentin Crewe19:19

A port, I mean a serious.

Quentin Crewe19:22

port with the stevedores and all the rest of it, as I was then sent down to discover whether this was true or not.

Quentin Crewe19:29

And came back saying no, I didn't really think it was, and anyhow I wrote quite a funny piece.

Quentin Crewe19:37

And so that I think was my first feature.

Quentin Crewe19:40

article, and then I was taken on to the Londoners' Diary.

Quentin Crewe19:43

And it went on.

Presenter19:44

Uh

Quentin Crewe19:45

I'm sorry.

Presenter19:45

But you you said since that that journalism or you've written since journalism asks for many compromises with principles. Did you find yourself writing things that you'd really prefer not to have done?

Quentin Crewe19:56

Uh, well they were working for a gossip column, well, like the Londoners' Diary, yes. And uh I very often used to lie. They'd say, ring up so and so. I'd always in fact was somebody I didn't

Quentin Crewe20:09

Want to write about it? I say they won't eat it. I mean, it's quite simple. So you put

Presenter20:12

So you protected your friends, did you?

Quentin Crewe20:14

Yes.

Presenter20:15

So then by the nineteen sixties, decade on, you were you were very much a man about town, weren't you, with such figures as Ken Tynan and Jocelyn Stevens and Mark Boxer, Anthony Armstrong Jones and so on. You by then you were as an assistant editor of Queen Magazine. What was your role there?

Quentin Crewe20:30

Really, it just

Quentin Crewe20:32

a feature writer and commissioning articles and that kind of thing.

Presenter20:35

That kind of thing. But great fun.

Quentin Crewe20:37

Yes.

Presenter20:38

Best time of your life?

Quentin Crewe20:40

No, no, no, I don't think so. And I wouldn't ever know which was the best time of my life. The best time of my life is when I'm travelling.

Quentin Crewe20:47

Really?

Presenter20:48

Which I want to talk about, but let's have another record there.

Presenter20:52

Number five.

Quentin Crewe20:53

Number five is

Quentin Crewe20:55

The original girl from Ibanima Astrid Gulberto, but the

Quentin Crewe21:00

The reason I pick this is partly because of later travels in South America, but also it's somehow n nearer what I used to enjoy in those days.

Quentin Crewe21:10

which was Caribbean music and calypso.

Quentin Crewe21:14

But as we can't have too many records, I thought

Quentin Crewe21:17

that this would have to do for both the Caribbean and South America.

Speaker 321:21

Old and ten and young and lovely The girl from Ibanima goes walking and when she passes Each one she passes goes

Speaker 321:35

When she walks she's like a samba that swings so cool and sways so gently That when she passes each one she passes goes

Presenter21:50

Astrude Gilberto and the original Girl from Ipanema.

Presenter21:54

Then, Quentin Crewe, you became later on a restaurant correspondent meals on wheels, as you were known by the stage. Um some credit you with inventing the restaurant column as we know it today. Is there some truth in that?

Quentin Crewe22:06

I think there is, really, because there was an emergency on Queen Magazine, because the girl who did the little short things about restaurants

Quentin Crewe22:14

was ill and we had a blank half page.

Quentin Crewe22:17

And I said, Well, I guess I got to learn so write about it.

Quentin Crewe22:19

I went to Wilton's.

Quentin Crewe22:21

very posh restaurant and again I made it funny, but the difference was that I always thought it was rather disgusting writing about food, and people go to read this paper breakfast and they didn't want to hear about a greasy veal chop. And so I wrote less about the food itself, except to say whether it was good or bad, and more about

Quentin Crewe22:46

the kind of restaurant, the kind of people who were there, the decor of the restaurant, and reviewing it more sort of o all over. And I remember that show was lucky there, but Wilton's, because it was full of rather a lot of toffs and uh and the bills were enormously high and I

Quentin Crewe23:05

Remember writing that the bills, as befitted the clientele, were aimed more like death duties, at capital rather than income.

Quentin Crewe23:15

So I took that sort of light.

Presenter23:18

But as a result of that reputation that you then won for writing about restaurants and you ended up writing a restaurant column for Vogue and so on.

Quentin Crewe23:21

Yeah.

Presenter23:25

You got much later on what your friend Bernard Levin has described as as the as the fantasy commission from a publisher to to write a book about all the Michelin three star restaurants in France outside Paris.

Presenter23:37

a job which would require extensive and painstaking research.

Presenter23:42

W was it the joy that it would seem to be that?

Quentin Crewe23:44

Absolutely, yes. Except that I used to get so full, because I used to stay about three days in each restaurant, and uh to try and eat a sort of full gastronomic three-star meal every night twice a day for

Speaker 223:56

Every night.

Quentin Crewe23:58

Three days is impossible. Used to take a young man to help me and drive and that kind of thing. And I hit on one, luckily, who could eat twice as much as anybody else, and so if I couldn't finish it, he ate it all up.

Presenter24:12

So you could sample everything.

Quentin Crewe24:14

Yeah.

Presenter24:14

But but what is your your favorite kind of restaurant, Quentin? I mean, where would you go out of choice? What kind of restaurant would you go to?

Quentin Crewe24:21

Well I do in the end always prefer French food.

Quentin Crewe24:25

to any other. But I mean that's of course

Quentin Crewe24:27

Except if one's in Italy. I love that too, and I love good Chinese food.

Quentin Crewe24:32

But when people ask well, what is your favorite restaurant?

Quentin Crewe24:36

That is always a question. It depends, and in what for? To take your granny, to take your mistress, to take your boss, or where, you know.

Presenter24:43

Hmm.

Presenter24:45

Next record, record number six.

Quentin Crewe24:47

One of the four last songs of Jesse Norman by Richard Strauss. While I was living in France, somehow music came into my life much more, and in particular because the Hamlet where I was living, very often there came the opera producer Richard Carson, and one day he brought me.

Quentin Crewe25:08

A tape of Jesse Norman and the four last songs.

Quentin Crewe25:12

And by curious chance.

Quentin Crewe25:14

One day I was flying out of from Marseilles airport.

Quentin Crewe25:18

And there I suddenly saw Jesse Norman getting out of a car laden with flowers.

Quentin Crewe25:23

This majestic figure

Quentin Crewe25:25

And

Quentin Crewe25:27

I sort of fell for her because not only because I liked her singing, but because she was so nice.

Quentin Crewe25:34

to everybody who was happier she was modest.

Quentin Crewe25:37

and unassuming at the check in counter, and really such a delightful person, plainly.

Speaker 225:48

Fish crammed swimming since

Speaker 226:05

I am fine to live.

Speaker 226:10

Big a shape.

Speaker 226:15

Yeah.

Presenter26:28

Jesse Norman singing by Mschlaffengen, one of Richard Strauss's four last songs, with the Gewanthaus Orchestra of Leipzig conducted by Kurt Mazur.

Presenter26:37

You've had, Quentin, what you've described as as a third life, apart from your professional and personal life, into which you've disappeared from time to time, and that's travel.

Presenter26:46

You've crossed the empty quarter of Saudi Arabia, you've explored South America and the Caribbean, and you've lived in India and Japan. Wh why have you done it? Have you been searching for something, and if so, have you found it?

Quentin Crewe26:57

I think I'm a nomad by nature, really. All travel excites me. I like

Quentin Crewe27:02

Meeting the people, I like everything to do with it, and I like seeing new things. I'm in the South America, in the landscape.

Quentin Crewe27:09

It's just something you can't ever forget, I mean it just impresses itself on you.

Quentin Crewe27:13

But then of course there also the

Quentin Crewe27:16

I mean the Caribbean islands and the

Quentin Crewe27:18

People, mostly, the architecture in some places.

Presenter27:22

Have you brushed with death on these travels?

Quentin Crewe27:25

Oh, in the desert, yes both in Saudi Arabia, where it was dangerous for all sorts of different reasons, and in the Sahara, where I drove into a minefield and got blown up.

Quentin Crewe27:38

And in the Saudi Arabian desert the interpreter I had went mad. He attacked me and my friend who I was travelling with, a photographer, and all that was very alarming.

Presenter27:51

So as you say, it's it's it's another whole life you've led somewhere else, a another kind of freedom you've found.

Quentin Crewe27:54

Somewhere else.

Quentin Crewe27:57

Tess rate.

Presenter27:57

Trevor Burrus

Quentin Crewe27:58

Yeah.

Presenter27:59

How much is that connected though with your disability, with the need to prove that you you can do it, as you were saying at the beginning, that you can do anything if you really want to?

Presenter28:08

Yeah.

Quentin Crewe28:08

Yeah.

Presenter28:08

Proof one.

Quentin Crewe28:08

I never know. I mean, I really don't know whether I do it.

Quentin Crewe28:12

prove something. And with the Sahara trip, which did take nearly a year and a half, I did during the International Year of the Disabled. And I thought, well, this is quite a good way of showing

Quentin Crewe28:25

what the disabled can do.

Presenter28:27

But you have a lot of help. You take fit young men to work you with.

Quentin Crewe28:30

That's why I had on that occasion, a photographer and a mechanic to look after the cars and a young man to push, really.

Presenter28:38

You've also, of course, had three beautiful wives, Martha, Angie and Sue.

Quentin Crewe28:41

That's true.

Presenter28:43

All of them with each other and with you and with the five children, all of you remain friends. Yes, absolutely. All of you speak to each other, which is an achievement in itself.

Speaker 228:49

Yes, absolutely.

Presenter28:53

Let me ask you this. How much did your disability have to do with the fact that those three marriages ended?

Quentin Crewe29:00

I think a lot, actually. It's very

Quentin Crewe29:02

Demanding living with somebody who's disabled.

Quentin Crewe29:05

I think it's a burden for them that.

Quentin Crewe29:08

Some people manage it better than others. Again, it's a bit like one's favourite restaurant, one can't pick one's favourite wife, what for, so to speak, again.

Quentin Crewe29:16

Each of them had different qualities. All of them were admirable, and they taught me many things.

Quentin Crewe29:22

But uh

Quentin Crewe29:24

It is a burden, I mean I always feel sorry for the wives of people who are disabled.

Presenter29:29

Next record, number seven.

Quentin Crewe29:31

The next record is really to do with the desert.

Quentin Crewe29:34

Those desert trips the reason I loved them was you are reduced to really three things water, food to some extent, and the way.

Quentin Crewe29:46

Finding the way

Quentin Crewe29:48

And

Quentin Crewe29:49

It's that austerity which I like.

Quentin Crewe29:51

The fact that you are.

Quentin Crewe29:53

reduced to that, and no other considerations really the matter.

Quentin Crewe29:58

So this song by Nellie Lutcher, a blues singer.

Quentin Crewe30:01

which is about the desert and

Quentin Crewe30:03

Cool water, it's called.

Quentin Crewe30:06

And it's about mirages and what you see and how you must

Quentin Crewe30:11

not be deflected by a mirage.

Quentin Crewe30:15

I'll keep on moving dancing

Presenter30:17

Don't you listen to him then, he's a devil, not at all

Speaker 330:21

Uh

Speaker 230:21

Uh

Speaker 330:21

Uh

Presenter30:21

He sprays the burning sand with water

Speaker 230:26

Yeah

Speaker 230:29

And can't you see that big green tree Where the water's running free?

Presenter30:36

Uh

Speaker 230:36

It's waiting there. Let me

Speaker 230:39

Uh

Presenter30:39

Uh

Speaker 230:39

Uh

Speaker 230:40

Yeah.

Presenter30:43

Nelly Lutcher, singing Cool Water. You didn't, as the doctor had predicted, die at sixteen, Quentin Crewe. You're in fact seventy later this year. Wha what is the state of your muscular dystrophy to day?

Quentin Crewe30:57

Well, gradually I can do less.

Quentin Crewe30:59

Various bits of it get to be.

Quentin Crewe31:02

That's useful.

Quentin Crewe31:03

But I seem to manage a lot of things. Again, I'm helped by the boys who

Quentin Crewe31:08

Help me round and so I.

Quentin Crewe31:10

Get to where I want to get to.

Presenter31:12

So it's just not something that that occupies your your thoughts.

Quentin Crewe31:15

Yeah, I do I think if you start

Quentin Crewe31:17

Bruh, I think that's another problem of today, actually, is people so self-absorbed fussing about themselves. I don't fuss about myself, I don't want to fuss about myself.

Quentin Crewe31:27

And so I just like to get on with things.

Presenter31:29

Because again, you've written happiness versus unhappiness, hope versus fear. For me, those are questions of choice. Is is it really possible to exert such control over your emotions?

Quentin Crewe31:42

Yes, one sees people surrendering to unhappiness.

Quentin Crewe31:46

And

Quentin Crewe31:48

I just hope. I mean, well, it may not work, but

Quentin Crewe31:51

Let's try, I think.

Presenter31:53

So that rather

Presenter31:56

sly, fickle young boy that you you described.

Presenter31:59

Has become, some would say, stoical. Perhaps you're just capable of supreme intellectual self-control, is that what it is?

Quentin Crewe32:07

Well, I don't think I'd put it as grandly as that myself.

Quentin Crewe32:11

I think it's a

Quentin Crewe32:12

An assouciance, if you like.

Quentin Crewe32:16

I feel happy most of the time. All right, of course one has days when one feels gloomy.

Quentin Crewe32:21

But I really feel.

Quentin Crewe32:24

Very happy.

Presenter32:25

Last record.

Quentin Crewe32:27

Now the last record is really a tribute to one of the young men who has looked after me.

Quentin Crewe32:32

Who came?

Quentin Crewe32:34

some years ago and he

Quentin Crewe32:37

introduced me to a lot more music. He introduced me to Schubert's string quintet, but and and much, much more. He himself is a musician, mad cricketer, and he's just got married and it's lovely. So it is the adagio from Schubert's string quintet.

Presenter33:57

part of the second movement of Schubert's string quintet in C major, played by the Melos quartet with Mitslav Rostropovich. If you could only take one of those eight records, Quentin.

Quentin Crewe34:08

I think probably that one. Any mood it suits in a way. So it would be that.

Presenter34:13

What about your book? Bible and Shakespeare are there?

Quentin Crewe34:16

They'll take Montaigne's essays.

Quentin Crewe34:19

Because they're shed light on such such an extraordinary light.

Quentin Crewe34:23

are things we all think about.

Presenter34:25

And what about your luxury?

Quentin Crewe34:26

Or my luxury.

Quentin Crewe34:28

I think I want to have

Quentin Crewe34:30

The whole of the cellar.

Quentin Crewe34:32

Prom

Quentin Crewe34:33

Trinity College, Kim.

Presenter34:38

The complete works of Trinity College Cambridge Seller.

Quentin Crewe34:38

The complete works

Quentin Crewe34:40

That'll keep me gay.

Presenter34:42

I'm certain it will. Quentin Crewe, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Quentin Crewe34:46

Thank you very much.

Speaker 234:55

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