Dr W E Shewell-Cooper

Speaker 10:00

Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a recording of Desert Island Discs as it was being broadcast, rather than the studio recording.

Speaker 10:08

and for that reason you may hear some interference, and some degradation in the sound quality.

Speaker 10:14

For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in 1965.

Speaker 30:21

Desert Island Discs

Speaker 30:31

Each week a well-known person is asked the question, if you were to be cast away alone on a desert island, which aid gramophone records would you choose to have with you?

Speaker 30:40

As usual, the castaway is introduced by Lloyd Plumley.

Speaker 30:45

How do you do, ladies and gentlemen?

Speaker 30:46

Castaway on our Desert Island this week is a well-known horticulturalist. He's frequently on the air in sound or vision and is a prolific author, Dr. W.E. Shewell Cooper.

Speaker 30:57

How well do you think you could adapt yourself mentally to solitude?

Presenter1:01

Well, I think basically I should hate it because I love people. I'm gregarious. I like talking.

Presenter1:06

So I don't think I really should like it very much.

Presenter1:09

What would you be happiest to have got away from?

Presenter1:12

Oh, I'd be happiest to have got away from noise and chemicals of all kinds, particularly chemical fertilizers, machinery and smoke and soot. Is music important to you?

Presenter1:26

No, I don't think really. You play records much.

Presenter1:30

No, we don't. On Sunday afternoon after tea, my boy will come and...

Presenter1:35

And put on some

Presenter1:37

The religious records and we'll sit and listen, but other than that we don't. How did you set about choosing this meagre allowance of eight records that may have to last the rest of your life? Did you have any plan or pattern?

Presenter1:49

Oh, it was nostalgia. I'm tremendously...

Presenter1:52

interested and keen on the past and my father and others who have played a great part in my life.

Presenter1:59

It's these peaks somehow in my life and career that made me choose these records. What's the first peak?

Presenter2:09

Well the first peak is my father and I can see him as a boy and I sitting in the drawing room and my father sitting at the piano. Maybe my sister playing but usually he's sitting at the piano and singing to us.

Presenter2:21

If he stood, then he would look at my mother and sing this lovely song. He had a lovely tenor voice.

Presenter2:28

And I love to hear him.

Presenter2:30

And what's the song with which you're going to remember him? Oh, it's passing by.

Presenter2:35

And who's going to sing it on this occasion?

Presenter2:37

Webster Booth is going to sing it. I'm very fond of him as a singer, and he's got a voice, the timbre of which is something like my father's.

Presenter2:54

Is a lady sweet and kind Was never a face so pleased my mind I did but see her passing by And yet

Speaker 13:14

My dear Fire law

Presenter3:23

I don't

Speaker 13:25

Only one.

Presenter3:26

Uh

Dr W E Shewell-Cooper3:26

Uh

Presenter3:26

Web hole singing passing by.

Speaker 13:26

Yeah.

Presenter3:29

Did your father sing professionally at all? Oh, no. Um he was a colonel in the army, but

Presenter3:34

When I was born, he was a major in the gunners, and he

Presenter3:37

Just love to sing for singing's sake.

Presenter3:40

Where were you born?

Presenter3:41

I was born at Waltham Abbey in Essex when he was assistant superintendent of the gunpowder factory there.

Presenter3:49

So what's your second choice?

Presenter3:51

My second choice is the Moonlight Sonata.

Dr W E Shewell-Cooper3:55

Why do you choose this?

Presenter3:57

Well again, it's nostalgia. I am a boy and

Presenter4:01

My aunt suddenly says to me, I want to take you to a concert.

Presenter4:04

I don't want to go.

Presenter4:06

And, however, I decide I will go and I go with her and we walk down this big auditorium and we sit in a couple of seats side by side and I'm wondering what's going to happen.

Presenter4:17

And then this man comes on the stage and sits down at the piano and starts to play. And I am absolutely entranced. I am gripped by this wonderful playing of this wonderful pianist.

Presenter4:28

And well, I learnt to love the moon night sonata that day.

Speaker 14:28

And

Presenter4:33

And who was the pianist? Mark Hamberg.

Dr W E Shewell-Cooper5:40

Mark Hamberg saying the opening Yeah.

Presenter5:42

Turban's Moonlight Sonata.

Presenter5:45

Your family background was military. What was your first ambition?

Presenter5:50

Oh, I always wanted to be a gardener.

Presenter5:52

I never wanted to be anything else. How did that interest start?

Presenter5:55

It started as a boy of five or six. I started collecting flowers.

Presenter6:00

I started to press them, as my governor showed me. Then I stuck them into books and...

Presenter6:06

Well, I've still got that first book I ever did with every plant labelled today. And this was your interest right through your school days. Right through my school days. I was just as happy working and digging and sowing in the headmaster's garden at Moncton Coombe as I was playing cricket in the first 11. A part of your childhood was spent in South Africa, wasn't it? Yes, my father was sent out to South Africa in command of the Royal Artillery and took me with him. So I went to school there at the Darsison College.

Presenter6:38

And I'm glad I did because I made friends with a great fruit farmer at

Presenter6:43

Constantshire and so I went on to the fruit farm and learnt to grow grapes. Where did you study horticulture formally?

Presenter6:51

So when I came back to England, I got myself a job as a gardener.

Presenter6:56

Then having done two years hard graft,

Presenter6:59

I got a scholarship to Y College.

Presenter7:03

um and took the horticultural diploma there.

Dr W E Shewell-Cooper7:06

Mm-hmm.

Presenter7:07

When I done that, I got a job at the East Morling Research Station. It's a fruit research station.

Dr W E Shewell-Cooper7:13

Uh

Presenter7:14

But I wasn't a research worker, and I soon found this out I'm a practical man.

Presenter7:20

And so I left that to manage a fruit farm in Devon.

Presenter7:23

For a number of years you were connected with horticultural colleges, weren't you?

Presenter7:27

Yes, I had a job in Warwickshire, then I was head of the horticultural department of the Cheshire College, and then I moved down to Swanley to become superintendent of the Swanley Horticultural College. Well, that takes us...

Speaker 37:40

It's up to when.

Presenter7:41

That takes us up to the mid-30s.

Presenter7:44

Uh during the war you became a horticultural officer in the army.

Presenter7:48

Yes, I didn't know there was such a thing, but I joined the army and suddenly one day I was sent for by the commander-in-chief.

Presenter7:56

and asked if I would do this particular work.

Presenter7:59

There was a financial incentive for a unit to grow its own vegetables, I believe. Oh, yes. W we used to get every unit that had any land at all to to grow food, and then they underdrew their vegetable rations, which were valued at a certain sum.

Presenter8:14

And for every unit that they underdrew, they got 50% of the value and the government saved 50% of the value. And they could spend that on welfare or whatever. They could spend it as they liked. This was the great joy of this scheme.

Dr W E Shewell-Cooper8:23

Second.

Speaker 18:24

Uh

Dr W E Shewell-Cooper8:27

And you've stayed.

Presenter8:27

Yeah.

Dr W E Shewell-Cooper8:27

in that job after the war, I believe, and he worked uh with the British Army of Occupation.

Presenter8:33

Yes, in Germany you see the Germans were starving of food and we had to get the units in Germany to go

Presenter8:39

The food on the land they occupied. So I flew three thousand pounds worth of seed in three aeroplanes to Germany and we ran that scheme. You also ran a rehabilitation scheme, I believe. Yes, when. The BAOR scheme was over. I was asked by the Education Corps and the Welfare Department if I would run three horticultural colleges for the Army and this I did, found the personnel and we trained every man who wanted to do that sort of work before he left the Army.

Speaker 39:11

And when you put your uniform away?

Presenter9:14

Well then we decided, my wife and I, that we must start a horticultural college that would be a compost horticultural college. That is to say we would use no chemicals at all. And we bought Prior's Hall at Thaxtead in Essex and took students there. Well now you're instructing a much wider public in the Good Gardeners Association.

Presenter9:36

Yes.

Presenter9:38

We did that for 10 years. We trained the people who came.

Presenter9:41

And then we could see that there were millions of people, literally 18 or 19 millions, who were wanting to know about these things and we couldn't tackle them. So we bought Arklay Manor near Barnet.

Speaker 19:48

Uh

Presenter9:53

which is much nearer to London and easier to get at. And there, with our seven and a half acres, we're throwing the gardens open to anybody to come and see and learn this easy and wonderful method of growing food and flowers.

Dr W E Shewell-Cooper10:08

Let's have your third record now.

Presenter10:10

For my third record I've chosen because again I'm back in South Africa. It's called Van You Good and Track.

Presenter10:17

And we always used to call it Yanimed Yopalbin, and we used to sing it round the campfire.

Presenter10:24

And it reminds me of those wonderful days in South Africa on the wine farm at Constantia.

Dr W E Shewell-Cooper10:30

But you could have

Dr W E Shewell-Cooper10:35

Yeah.

Dr W E Shewell-Cooper10:38

Your foot and fair

Dr W E Shewell-Cooper10:43

Oh yeah.

Dr W E Shewell-Cooper11:02

Also, Instagram

Presenter11:34

Dr. Cheryl Cooper, which came first? Books or broadcasting? Oh, definitely broadcasting. When and how?

Presenter11:42

Well, when I was in the north, Mr. Pettigrew was the park superintendent of Manchester, and he was broadcasting regularly and decided he didn't want to go on with it, and he rang up one day.

Presenter11:53

and asked if he might recommend me to the BBC folk, and he did.

Presenter11:58

And so I started and was there for eight years. You had, I believe, a BBC title at that time. Oh, yes, I was called the Garden Editor, BBC Northregion.

Presenter12:08

In recent years you've concentrated more on television.

Presenter12:11

Yes, we want to show people again

Presenter12:14

that what we write about in books and in articles we actually do.

Presenter12:18

And so we have this seven and a half acres and

Presenter12:22

There we do an afternoon television program, usually from half past four to half past five, so that people can actually see us on the ground where we work.

Presenter12:31

And how many books have you written?

Presenter12:34

Well, I counted them up before I came. It's actually 63 now.

Presenter12:38

It's a very large number.

Presenter12:40

You must hold some kind of championship for the number of gardening books written by any one man, I think. One of the papers called me the champion gardening author.

Presenter12:50

And a lot of journalism too.

Presenter12:52

Yes, we write for a number of newspapers and magazines because we're trying hard to get the truth over and this is a way of doing it.

Presenter13:01

Let's have your fourth record now.

Presenter13:04

where my fourth record is the less with a delicate air.

Presenter13:08

And it's being sung by Gwen Catley.

Speaker 313:10

Why'd you choose it?

Presenter13:12

Well, I fell in love one day with a most beautiful girl.

Presenter13:16

And she was a singer, not a professional.

Presenter13:19

But she did sing with Muriel Brunskill and with others.

Presenter13:23

She was such a good amateur.

Presenter13:26

And the song I loved that she sang at that time was The Lass with the Delicate Air, and I'd like to have it with me. This is Mrs. Shural Cooper. This is Mrs. Shural Cooper.

Speaker 313:50

Young Molly who lives at the foot of the hill, whose fame

Speaker 113:58

If I can wear them, they just fill.

Speaker 114:02

A beauty is blessed with soul and so much love.

Speaker 114:09

Men of call a hung on girls with

Speaker 114:16

Yeah.

Speaker 314:16

We found it.

Dr W E Shewell-Cooper14:24

Men are cooler than sweet.

Dr W E Shewell-Cooper14:29

Yeah.

Dr W E Shewell-Cooper14:32

Gwen carefully singing The Less with a Delicate Air.

Dr W E Shewell-Cooper14:36

Uh

Speaker 314:36

Now Dr. Shulker, we got compost theories using only natural

Presenter14:41

and organic fertilizer. This is presumably because you believe that chemical fertilizers and powerful insecticides lead, as many alarming reports tell us, to the poisoning of the soil and indeed to the poisoning of people. Yes, this is one of my beliefs, very definitely so.

Presenter14:57

And how do you how does your compost theory carried out practically?

Dr W E Shewell-Cooper15:01

Yeah.

Presenter15:02

Well, what we're worried about are the millions of living organisms in the soil. If I have a handful of my soil, I have 28 million living organisms in my hand. And these are the wonderful creatures that God has given to do the work in the soil, together with the worms. And so we rot down every single bit of...

Presenter15:24

of organic matter that we can get hold of. Whether it be the tea leaves in the coffee grounds and the banana peel from the house, or whether it be the tops of the peas and beans, the tops of the potatoes and the like from the garden. And this is practical in a small garden? Oh yes, anybody can do it.

Presenter15:42

We have a a special leaflet we give to our members called The Rotting Down of Vegetable Refuse and you can do it in a small bin three foot by three foot or a large bin eight foot by eight foot. How is it done? It it isn't just a matter of this organic matter being left to rot.

Presenter15:58

No, you must have what we call an activator, something that will help the bacteria to do their job. Is this a commercial product? No, you can use poultry droppings or poultry manure, but most people like to use fish manure because you can buy it, it's easy to get. And you use three ounces to the square yard for every six inch thickness of vegetable waste you collect. Now, is compost growing practicable on a big scale for farmers?

Presenter16:26

Oh yes, it is. We have a a farm connected us in in Hawley, uh and um there they do this. But you see the great problem is the vast bulk

Presenter16:37

of um organic material that has to be carted. It's the cost of the cartage of this tonnage of material. So it's more expensive, although you may get a big bigger yield at least.

Dr W E Shewell-Cooper16:40

It's fine.

Presenter16:49

I wouldn't say necessarily the yield was bigger, but it is better. The better flavour, the better colour, the better texture, the the better value for money, i the better health giving properties. Well, the health is worth paying a little extra for.

Speaker 117:01

Uh

Dr W E Shewell-Cooper17:01

Yeah.

Presenter17:04

Well, we think so, yes. Let's have another record now, number five. Well, I've chosen...

Presenter17:09

Yehudi Benouin and the Bath Festival Orchestra.

Presenter17:13

Handles Concerto Gosso.

Presenter17:16

Number one in G major.

Dr W E Shewell-Cooper17:18

Why do you choose this?

Speaker 317:19

Yeah.

Presenter17:20

Well, because Yurimenuin is a great composter, he's a great believer in whole food.

Presenter17:26

a great believer in health in the soil,

Presenter17:28

And

Presenter17:29

I discussed this with him and he has a a belief that

Presenter17:34

Man, fed with the right food from the right soil, it has an influence on his music.

Presenter17:42

as well as on his health.

Presenter17:45

And I want to take something with me that will remind me of Yehudi and all the help he's given to the compost world, and this is the record I've chosen for that reason.

Presenter18:55

Candles Concerto Crosso, number one in G major, Yehudi Menmen and the Bath Festival Orchestra. The first movement.

Presenter19:05

You've done a lot of work on the continent since the war, haven't you? Yes, we've been used to advise a number of countries. The last one almost was Cyprus.

Presenter19:15

Where I saw Kuchuk, the head of the Turkish community, and Makarias, over this plain which runs from Nicosia to Famagusta, which is fast reverting to desert conditions. Because of artificial fertilizers. Because of not putting back into the soil the organic matter which should go in. Every single week, 250 tons of vegetable waste is burnt outside Nicosia, and it could easily be composted and go onto this land and save it. Which are the most enlightened countries about natural growth, natural composting? I think those that haven't had the opportunity of being able to buy chemical fertilizers, countries like Spain, for instance, where they're still using compost and manure because they can't afford to buy chemical fertilizers. This is sad, but it's true.

Dr W E Shewell-Cooper20:04

Yeah.

Presenter20:04

Yes.

Presenter20:06

We got now to record number six.

Presenter20:10

Record number six is uh

Presenter20:13

George Beverly Shea

Presenter20:15

singing that lovely song of his, He's Got the Whole World, in His Hand.

Presenter20:21

I've chosen it because I know him. He's a personal friend of mine.

Presenter20:25

I've known him right from the early days of Billy Graham, and I'm talking of 1946, not the later times.

Presenter20:33

And

Presenter20:34

Well, it's a tremendous comfort to know on a desert island that God has got you in his hands, and I know that this is going to be a great comfort to me when I'm lonely and I hear Bev singing this.

Presenter20:46

He's got the whole wide world in his hands.

Dr W E Shewell-Cooper20:50

Um He's got the whole wide world in his hand.

Dr W E Shewell-Cooper20:57

He's got the whole wide world in his hands. He's got the whole world in his hands.

Dr W E Shewell-Cooper21:07

He's got the son

Presenter21:08

And the moon in his hands He's got the wind and the rain in his hands

Presenter21:18

George Beverly Shea.

Presenter21:20

Have you any hobbies or is horticulture enough?

Presenter21:24

I haven't really any hobbies in that true sense of the word, but I've always

Presenter21:29

Been interested in young people.

Presenter21:31

So I started life.

Presenter21:33

Running boy scouts, I became

Presenter21:35

Assistant County Commissioner for Kent and then I switched over to another movement called the Campaigners which is more evangelical in its outlook and I'm still working with them.

Presenter21:46

The assistant clan's chief, as it's called, of the whole movement. Mm-hmm. Well, I knew we needn't worry about you starving on this desert island, and with the Boy Scout training you should be able to put up some shelter as well.

Presenter21:58

Yes, I think I can do that all right. I'm not very good mechanically, but I can do a bit of that. And with some good boy scout knots perhaps make some kind of craft, uh a raft, or something of that sort.

Presenter22:08

Yes, I might have a shot at that. Would you have a shot at escaping?

Presenter22:13

No, I don't think so. I'd have to be...

Presenter22:15

Quite sure about it. I'm a great believer in God having a plan, and I would want to be in that plan before I did any escaping.

Presenter22:23

Let's have record number seven.

Presenter22:26

Number seven is

Presenter22:28

A record by Michael Flanders and Donald Swan. It's a record which is

Presenter22:34

Amusing.

Presenter22:35

And it's about a couple of plants which climb up one another and it's called the mesians.

Presenter22:42

And I remember first hearing it when I was driving from Thaxted.

Presenter22:46

To Bishop Stortford. Now everybody must have thought I was dart because I was laughing my head off. This record is going to be my amusing record, and I want to take it with me.

Speaker 322:59

Said the right-handed honeysuckle to the left-handed vine weed, Oh, let us get married if our parents don't mind. We'd be loving and inseparable, inextricably entwined. We'd live happily ever after, said the honeysuckle to the vine weed.

Presenter23:22

Messrs. Flanders and Swan.

Presenter23:24

What's your last record?

Presenter23:27

Well, my last record is again nostalgia. One of the jobs it was in Germany.

Presenter23:32

My wife was with me and we heard of a German Bible college started by a Canadian by the name of Parsha. His parents had emigrated to Canada and

Presenter23:41

He'd come back to Germany to help the German people and we called in there and they welcomed us and they turned out of their bedroom and gave it to us and they fed us.

Presenter23:51

And after breakfast the following morning, we were standing on the stoop, as we should call it in South Africa, walking down to the car.

Presenter23:59

And suddenly this little girl of seven

Presenter24:02

with her father playing the guitar,

Presenter24:04

Sang this song.

Presenter24:06

She made a record of it shortly afterwards and they gave it to me. I love it because my stay in the desert island is not the end. Heaven is where I'm going to. And, well, this talks about it. This is why the Lord Jesus Christ came, that we might know that we have eternal life. And, well, I'd love to hear Donna Parsha singing this song as she sang it to me that day a few years ago now.

Speaker 124:36

And where saparations come

Dr W E Shewell-Cooper24:46

If we never meet again this side of heaven

Presenter24:56

I will meet you on that view.

Speaker 125:01

Tea for sure.

Presenter25:07

Donna Parshauer singing If We Never Meet Again. If you could only have one of these eight records, Dr. Shulkooper, which would it be?

Presenter25:15

I think it'd be Beville Shay.

Presenter25:18

Singing He's Got the Whole World in His Hands. And one luxury to take with you.

Presenter25:24

Well, I want to take my box of seeds with me so that I can have a good start.

Presenter25:29

All right. And one book apart from the Bible and Shakespeare?

Presenter25:33

I want to take Matthew Henry's commentary with me so that when I'm reading my Bible I'll

Presenter25:39

I have a Matthew Henry to help.

Presenter25:43

Well, thank you, Dr. W.E. Schewell Cooper, for letting us hear your choice of desert island discs.

Presenter25:48

And thank you so much for helping me. And as I used to say regularly on the BBC North region.

Presenter25:54

Good luck in your gardens.

Dr W E Shewell-Cooper26:11

The guest in today's recorded program was Dr. W.E. Schull Cooper.

Dr W E Shewell-Cooper26:15

The interviewer was Roy Plumley and the producer Monica Chapman.

Dr W E Shewell-Cooper26:19

The program was first broadcast earlier this month.

Dr W E Shewell-Cooper26:23

On Saturday at 1.40, the castaway will be Bill Shankley, manager of Liverpool Football Club, and next Monday at 10.1...

Dr W E Shewell-Cooper26:32

The castaway will be the actress Sheila Hancock.

Speaker 126:38

Yeah.

Speaker 126:39

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