Colin Dexter

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 eight and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:30

My Castaway this week is a crime writer. He has much in common with the fictional policemen he's created. Well educated, even a bit of a pedant, he enjoys real ale, crosswords, and classical music.

Presenter0:42

He wrote the first of his novels at the age of forty three, as well as working for most of his life first as a teacher of Latin and Greek and then an A and O level examiner. Altogether he's written thirteen novels, their popularity and success greatly enhanced by their translation into the television series starring John Thor and Kevin Waitley. He is the creator of Inspector Morse, Colin Dexter. Morse is Dexter as policeman, really, isn't he, Colin? I mean you have so much in common, you two.

Colin Dexter1:10

Well, I think unless you're a genius, which w w which I'm not, I think if you start writing fiction it's going to be semi-autobiographical. And certainly some of the things which uh

Colin Dexter1:19

Morse enjoys very much. I do. I like some of the things you've mentioned. But I hope I'm not like him in many ways. I mean, he's a bit of a miserable old uh man.

Presenter1:27

Well, yes, there is a downside to him, whether he he

Colin Dexter1:29

Well, he he he's awfully mean with money, which seems to me the very worst of the social sins, and he lacks any any sort of grace and gratitude.

Presenter1:36

But he never congratulates Lewis, does he? And Lewis sometimes has a knack of putting his finger on the right spot.

Colin Dexter1:41

He doesn't treat Lewis at all uh kindly, does he?

Presenter1:44

Why did you make him like that? Why has he got to have this nasty sky?

Colin Dexter1:47

Well I

Colin Dexter1:48

not to be uh too goody goody when I started thinking about more. So I thought it'd be a good thing to have a few good qualities and some of the ones which I loved and some of the ones which I despised. And certainly meanness with money I think is the the w the one I despised most of all in him. Yeah.

Presenter2:02

Yeah.

Presenter2:04

So Beer Crosswords, classical music, and the Archers, I mean, Lewis in the book, certainly, I don't think it comes through in the television series, Lewis never dare ring him until after twenty past seven in the evening.

Colin Dexter2:13

Se c certainly have to wait until five past and then keep it until twenty past, however important the message was.

Presenter2:20

Having a list

Colin Dexter2:20

Yes. I've been listening to the Archers since uh nineteen fifty three when I started teaching, and the man who was in charge of the household where I was staying just said Quiet, please, everybody, on the archers.

Presenter2:33

But obviously also, you know, Morse like you is well read. A. E. Hausman is his favourite poet. He's yours, isn't he?

Colin Dexter2:39

Yes, I I don't think he's the greatest poet ever born, but certainly is the one that uh seems to me. I take him to bed more often than anybody else. I think there is a streak, a slight streak of melancholy in me.

Presenter2:43

Yeah.

Colin Dexter2:51

And I think when I was a boy at school somebody, bless his heart, read one of the poems to me, one of the Hausman poems, which contained the lines, And I will friend you, befriend you, and I will friend you if I may.

Colin Dexter3:07

in the dark and cloudy day, and I remember that so clearly when I was about sixteen or seventeen, and ever after that I had been a huge fan, not just of Haussmann as a poet, but as a classical scholar, that that idea of the scholar poet has always appealed to me very much.

Presenter3:23

Let's pause there for your first record. Tell me about that.

Colin Dexter3:27

Well, I no longer believe in the Almighty or or in any future life, but I I've always loved a lot of church music. And I I think if there is a future life I I shall long to be paraded into eternity by the in paradisum from the Foray Requiem.

Presenter4:39

The choir of Westminster Cathedral singing in paradisum from Foray's Requiem, with the City of London Sinfonia, conducted by David Hill. Tell me first of all about the birth of Morse. Is it true that he was born one wet afternoon in Wales?

Colin Dexter4:53

Yes, it's not unknown for it to to rain in North Wales, is it? And I don't think there's any anything really that's worse than being with a family when it is raining outside on a holiday when you promise your children that they can catch crabs and, you know.

Colin Dexter5:06

Lollin' the sealed, eh?

Colin Dexter5:08

And it was raining, and I had nothing to do there. I think there were two detective stories in the house where we were staying.

Colin Dexter5:14

And I read both of'em, and I didn't think that either of'em was any good. And I I just had this idea, well, I've nothing to do, you know, I I might.

Colin Dexter5:22

be able to do something which is probably as good as this stuff and that's

Presenter5:24

So it wasn't that you'd thought before, one day I'll write a detective story.

Colin Dexter5:27

Tyster.

Presenter5:28

Just just a a whim on hold.

Colin Dexter5:30

Indeed, I'd always been interested in detective stories. When I was a lad I used to read Sherlock Holmes, Sexton Blake, Agatha Christie, John Dixon Carr, especially the Whodunit type of things. And I thought, well, I've nothing to do. And I sat down at a kitchen table and wrote, I don't think very much, probably only about two or three paragraphs of a detective story.

Presenter5:53

What the opening or did you map out the planet?

Colin Dexter5:54

No, no, I I I had one idea that I always have some idea of how it's going to end, but only vaguely on this. But I'd I'd met a girl

Colin Dexter6:03

on the Woodstock Road in Oxford, I I think about two or three months before hitchhiking. And I remembered this and I thought this might be very interesting, and I started writing that up.

Presenter6:13

And she ended up dead, of course, in a car park. That was last week.

Colin Dexter6:15

They all end up dead with me, don't they? How many people have you murdered? Now, corpses, body bags.

Presenter6:17

How many people have you murdered?

Colin Dexter6:25

In Oxford, and this girl, as you say, was one of them.

Presenter6:28

And how easy was it then to get that first book published? Because you'd you'd published a few uh academic uh books beforehand, hadn't you? Yes. But but d what did you do? How did you go about it?

Colin Dexter6:38

Well, I had a list of three publishers. I I thought I would do it scientifically almost. And I said, who are the best three crime publishers? Somebody said Collins Goulanx and Macmillan. So I sent it to the first one, and they kept it for a long, long time, and then sent it back and said it wasn't really very satisfactory. And somebody in the meantime had said, forget Goulanx and go to Macmillan. They're up and coming. And a dear man there called Lord Harding of Penshurst, who died recently, rang me up within twenty-four hours of him getting it. He had flu at the weekend, so he told me afterwards. He didn't say that this had affected his judgment, but I wonder a little bit later on whether it did. And he said to me, look here, it's full of faults and warts and everything. But he said, I'm going to publish it exactly as it is. So that was a wonderful Philip. But that was one book I didn't think about writing any more at that time.

Presenter7:34

Second record.

Colin Dexter7:35

Then clear a butt.

Colin Dexter7:37

singing Abide With Me for lots of reasons. M my father ha had had quite a a gentle, light, baritone voice, and he used to sing this, and I've always myself enjoyed very much all this sentimental stuff. In fact, I'm not at all sure I know what's wrong with sentimentality.

Colin Dexter7:54

And above all, this reminds me o of Stamford School where I was a boy, because when I was in the classical six,

Colin Dexter8:02

The first line of Abide with Me

Colin Dexter8:05

Fast forwards The Even Tide was the first line I ever translated into Latin verse. Now this was no great checks, because it told you how to do it at the bottom of the page. Uh gave you all the instructions, and I came up with this beautiful line, Sis mihi criste comes, toto ruit etere vesper, and I was so proud of that. Of course I hadn't realized that everybody else in the class had got exactly the same line, but this would remind me of so much.

Speaker 48:33

I do with me.

Speaker 48:38

Fast falls the even atide What darkness the events

Speaker 48:50

Lord with me abide.

Speaker 48:56

Mother Hill

Speaker 49:22

Uh

Presenter9:27

Dame Clara Butt singing Abide With Me and that was recorded in nineteen thirty. Morse's Christian name turned out to be, as we've learned in the past year or so, um and another twelve books on Endeavour, a word which uh seems to me to pretty much characterize your early life. Which parent was it who pushed you and why?

Colin Dexter9:47

Well, I I think both uh both uh my mother and father left school at the age of twelve.

Colin Dexter9:53

And so they they they had no formal education themselves. And I think when we were children, my brother John and my sister Eva and myself we had a strange upbringing in one sense, and that is we were never the victims of of these civil wars w which are the cause of so much dissension in so many families, and about who's going to do the washing up or empty the the the uh pots because we didn't have an inside lavatory or anything like that, or clean the shoes or anything. We never had any trouble like that because our parents wanted us to sit down.

Colin Dexter10:25

and and open the books and do the work. But I think we used to feel we wanted to do well for our parents, perhaps even more than for ourselves.

Presenter10:32

Script.

Presenter10:33

What did they do themselves? Your father was a taxi driver, wasn't he?

Colin Dexter10:36

Yes. And my m my mother uh started off uh in a butcher shop, in a little village in Rutland. She she was the uh I think she kept the accounts. And then later on she became a mother. We had a little shop uh that she used to look after.

Presenter10:50

And were there books in the house, or any history of authorship in the family?

Colin Dexter10:53

No, we we weren't in any k in any sense an i illiterate family. They weren't, but they were non-literate. I think when I was a boy we had four books in the house. I think one was sort of the general doctor from about eighteen eighty six. And I know one was an almanac which gave you all the ranks of the uh you know, the army and the navy which we used to learn of. One one one was a sort of uh

Colin Dexter11:14

A nineteenth century Mills and Boone called Jessica's First Prayer. I I I I never had that. Another one was Sacred Songs and Solos from the Moody and Sankey era. But we we didn't have many books, but of course as children we had plenty from school.

Presenter11:28

What about music in those early days? W did that feature in your life at all? Classical music?

Colin Dexter11:33

N no not very much, no. No. My brother used to listen. I remember very, very, very, uh, vividly once when I we used to sleep together. Uh we had a double bed.

Colin Dexter11:45

I I know that uh I I was trying to go to sleep and I I went uh down and he was listening to Beethoven's Ninth and I I remember he was about fifteen or so and I could see the tears down his cheeks as he listened to this and I I began to

Colin Dexter12:00

get the feeling as a boy, you know, that here was something.

Colin Dexter12:04

to which I was not as yet initiated at all, and I think that was the moment when I began to feel a door was opened.

Colin Dexter12:10

uh to the appreciation of classical music.

Presenter12:14

Next record.

Colin Dexter12:16

I want to hear a thing my brother used to play very often at Shop Annette Tude.

Colin Dexter12:20

Opus Twenty Five No. Five used to play this and practice it quite regularly, and it's a very beautiful melody.

Presenter13:18

Vladimir Ashkenazi playing part of Chopin's Etude No. five, Opus Twenty five.

Presenter13:23

You went into the army, Colin Dexter, just after the war. A Morse expert of a different kind, a Morse operator. Had had did that have anything to do with your calling your policeman Morse?

Colin Dexter13:34

No, it didn't. No. I called Moss Morse in the um in the books because uh I

Colin Dexter13:40

Great crossword buffer, always have been. And the two crossword.

Colin Dexter13:45

Clue writers I enjoyed more than anybody else were Sir Jeremy Moores, who was chairman of Lloyd's Bank then, and a woman called misses B. Lewis.

Colin Dexter13:53

You know, it's awfully difficult to get names, isn't it? I mean, most people look or look around and

Colin Dexter13:58

Look, a book title, mister Heinemann, mister Macmillan, or whatever it is. But I chose all these people in the first book I wrote who had been first prize winners in Zimmenes, except one, and the one who hadn't been was a murderer. This was for for my own gratification.

Presenter14:14

And then after the war you went up to uh Cambridge to read Greek and Latin, and you became a teacher when you were twenty three. Were you a good teacher?

Colin Dexter14:21

I think that it it's probably the best thing I ever did teaching, really. I was a very, very good.

Colin Dexter14:28

schoolmaster in a sense. I don't think I was a very good educationalist, but I had a great skill, and still have to some extent, although I had to back it up because I became too deaf to cope. But I was very, very good at getting people who were not naturally enormously clever through examinations at grades slightly higher than they should have had, you know.

Presenter14:49

In last

Colin Dexter14:50

Well, in Latin and in Greek, yes, the only things I use to

Presenter14:53

You've gone quite public in your criticism these days of education. I mean I think you you you pretty well deplore the the kind of lack of grammatical and syntactical skills amongst young people now.

Colin Dexter14:58

I mean, I think

Colin Dexter15:06

Yes, I'm not very happy about things. I we had some awful I I think some pretty awful teachers came into the profession and they

Colin Dexter15:13

Remember the late sixties and seventies from training colleges who didn't know very much anyway and who had very few pedagogic skills as I see it. I think we had a I think that's a lot better these days.

Presenter15:25

Do you? I thought you called it a public confidence trick that people said that standards have gone up and they haven't proven it.

Colin Dexter15:28

Well and it was hit that stat

Colin Dexter15:30

I think it's getting better in terms of the profession. Where I think we're suffering from a public confidence trick is in this belief that things are getting better and that standards in education, certainly, let us say, at ordinary level and advanced level, which is what I did when I was at Oxford, are going up. I don't believe this is true. And I think that almost everybody whom I employed during my 22 years at Oxford would agree with me. This is when you were at the

Presenter15:56

This is when you were at the examining board, which is where you went after teaching. I mean, just clarify that for me. If you compared a paper that you might have set, an O-level Latin paper that you might have set in the nineteen sixties, say, with a GCSE Latin paper today,

Colin Dexter15:58

Indeed,

Colin Dexter16:00

Yeah, I mean it

Presenter16:12

How would they compare?

Colin Dexter16:13

Well, you'd par you'd pass uh far more pupils now than you did. You'd pass far more of them at higher grades. You would have smaller demands upon the uh children, boys and girls, in terms of how much they read or what was expected. You would take out the difficult things that's the first thing you always take out if you reduce syllabuses and so on.

Colin Dexter16:31

And as I say, I think the big thing is that all the people who worked for me during those years would say that standards are going down.

Colin Dexter16:38

People say this is anecdotal evidence. I don't know what's wrong with anecdotal evidence at all.

Speaker 116:40

Wrong with it.

Colin Dexter16:43

But certainly, I'm very sad to see that so many people say we can look at O level, for example, and say what was once twenty five percent getting in the top three grades, now we've got fifty percent.

Presenter16:56

And what's the problem?

Colin Dexter16:56

Yeah.

Colin Dexter16:59

Yes, when I was doing A-level, we found it awfully difficult, for example. I used to look after English as well, to pass seven out of ten. Very, very difficult to do that. These days, instead of seventy percent, you can pass ninety per cent almost. And when when you take out the people who are bone idle or or utterly incompetent, I mean, I think they're giving these things away. And I don't mind getting people getting pieces of paper. I'm all for it.

Colin Dexter17:22

But I think we ought to be far more honest about what those pieces of paper mean.

Presenter17:27

Record number four.

Colin Dexter17:29

I I want to have a record of the Beatles beque I have two children, Sally and Jeremy, and when I was teaching in in the early sixties when the Beatles came on the scene,

Colin Dexter17:39

I was quite contemptuous of all these silly boys and girls who came along, you know, and wrote in their satchels. They had satchels then, you know, Ringo and Paul or whatever it was. I thought how stupid they all were. And then in the mid seventies, when the Beatles had a re a renaissance of interest,

Colin Dexter17:57

My my children uh started playing the Beatles, and I realized what a silly man I had been.

Speaker 418:03

The long and winding road

Speaker 418:12

To your door.

Speaker 118:19

They'll never disappear.

Speaker 418:21

Yeah

Speaker 418:26

I've seen that road before

Presenter18:28

Oh.

Presenter18:32

The Beatles and the Long and Winding Road. You said just now, Colin, that you intended that first Morse book to be a one off. What persuaded you to write more?

Colin Dexter18:42

Well uh

Colin Dexter18:43

There is this perpetual challenge when the publishers about what they call the second book hurdle, isn't there? Well, it's all right, everybody's kind to you in a when a first book and they say, Well, the boy's trying, that sort of thing.

Colin Dexter18:55

And I I I I know my my editor said to me, Why not try another one just to see if you can do it? You know. And I I felt this was a challenge because there are a lot of people who who only write one book really and the second one's a bit of a come down. And so I I thought I would try to do two. And then they say, Oh, you that's not too bad at all. What about three? So it's very cumulative, as I think all my life has been. I never thought of uh

Colin Dexter19:19

you know, write writing any more than one or two.

Presenter19:22

And how do you write? Do you need to check each chapter as you go with your wife or your editor, or do you just sit down and let it flow?

Colin Dexter19:29

I I have no discipline in writing uh whatsoever. Never. I used to write really a for a long time when I was working for the university between the archers finishing twenty-five past seven and going up for a pine a beer at half past nine. But I I I I've never learnt if there is a if we do come back at all, I shall certainly, amongst other things, learn to type. I've never learnt to type.

Presenter19:33

Never, I

Presenter19:50

So you write them all out in your mind.

Colin Dexter19:51

Yes, I do, but I I I can write very quickly and fairly legibly and uh I write everything out in in in long hand and I go from A to Z.

Presenter20:00

Mm-hmm.

Colin Dexter20:00

Well, really, I don't. I go from A to B, but I know what Z is, so that's all right.

Presenter20:04

You said that before. You know what Z is. So it's merely a case then of filling in the middle and creating all these little

Colin Dexter20:10

I don't know about merely. I mean, that's where all the hard work comes in.

Presenter20:12

There are

Presenter20:13

Yes, I take back me.

Colin Dexter20:14

I write right to the end, and then I start at the beginning, and I rewrite in long hands.

Presenter20:21

Mm.

Colin Dexter20:21

Everything.

Presenter20:22

But but what you what you put into the the middle there is all that lateral thinking that Morse it's a very cerebral business, Morse, isn't it? There's not a lot of action in these books. It's it's Morse's thinking, and he goes up a lot of blind alleys, really, doesn't it?

Colin Dexter20:29

Yeah, there's nothing.

Colin Dexter20:30

Folks it

Colin Dexter20:34

Indeed so, yes. I I think that with me, the only thing that um I I would say I do is a twisting and turning and so on. I think the plot for me is rather more important than it is for many crime writers. I think, you know, this dichotomy people talk about between plot and characterization, I've often thought, secretly, that it's a bit easier to characterize people, you know, they put on the back of bookstore and they're fleshed out and all these other things.

Colin Dexter20:59

And I I feel that I I've always had a story before I start, and I I think that I I stick in a bit of a tart up a few things of characterization in the middle. Not not not many other people would say this, but for me the plot is very important not all important, obviously.

Presenter21:16

Next piece of music

Colin Dexter21:19

When we started on Morse a wonderful man came to see me, called Kenny MacBain, and we went for some beer in North Oxford. He was a wonderful man.

Colin Dexter21:31

He died very young, forty one, and and and uh at his memorial service we had the uh

Colin Dexter21:40

Slow movement to the Mozart clarinet concerto.

Colin Dexter21:43

And since then I I've been at one or two things when Jack Brimer has been playing and a combination of those would be for me extremely poignant.

Presenter22:51

Jack Brymer playing part of the slow movement of Mozart's clarinet concerto recorded live at the Royal Albert Hall with the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir Malcolm Sargent. Inspector Morse hit the television screen in 1987. The biggest change, I I I think anyway was that Sargent Lewis became a completely different age of chap. He was in the books or is in the early books the same age, isn't he, as as Morse.

Colin Dexter23:15

Is it here?

Colin Dexter23:16

Yeah, I think he was a grandfather. I I can't can't quite remember, but certainly he was of a vaguely Welsh provenance, about the same age as Morse, and and uh this man, Kenny McBean, said you'll have to, you know, be prepared to say yes to a few changes. And I just said I'd say yes to everything, you know. Almost said I'll pay you if you like.

Presenter23:35

But you've gone on saying yes to everything, haven't you? I mean, I think you've been a a joy as an author to be adapted for the screen because, you know, a lot of authors t keep saying you can't do that and you can't change that and this must remain the same.

Colin Dexter23:47

I think I realized from the very word go that I wasn't quite so important in this whole business as perhaps I thought, you know, the writer of Moore's creator of Moore's

Colin Dexter23:56

All right, and there are all these other people, you know, a producer and a director and a music man and a casting director and

Presenter24:05

Yes, but without your original thought, you know. I mean, don't you have any kind of sense of possession about him?

Colin Dexter24:10

This is true, but all these other people also are right at the top, aren't they? Atop the topmost twig, all of them, the cameraman and everything. If anybody deserves the the the greatest accolade, I think, for Morse on television, it it should be the casting director who chose John Thor and and Kevin Wedley, because uh those two I mean, we've done what, thirty thirty one two hour films now, and those two have never given anything except one hundred percent and whatever they've done.

Speaker 124:28

Yeah.

Presenter24:28

Three.

Presenter24:37

But I wonder if television has changed the way in which you write. I mean, it probably would have changed anyway over the twenty three years. But reading your first and then your last book, there's a great difference in style, it seems to me.

Colin Dexter24:48

Well is

Presenter24:50

Well, there's more dialogue. It's m it's more akin to a screenplay these days than long long prose that you used to write.

Colin Dexter24:57

I I know that my brother I mentioned earlier said to me I'm the greatest writer in the whole of the world for one reason only and that is he said I write the shortest chapters of anybody he knows. He said when he goes to bed at night you know he can read one chapter usually without falling asleep and since they're only about four or five pages anyway I I don't think th think this is a great compliment. But I know what you you mean yes'cause I'd never thought of it before. But you're right in a way when you see a television um screenplay you you you've got about you know seventy or eighty or ninety individual little scenes as they don't get anybody going on for more than thirty seconds, whatever you do. I think that may well have influenced me a bit.

Presenter25:30

Yeah.

Presenter25:36

Record number six.

Colin Dexter25:38

Well, this w uh will remind me very much o of my schooling in Stamford. A man called Gerard Hofnung who came along. I think he was two years older than all the boys.

Colin Dexter25:49

Absolutely useless as a teacher. He taught us German, taught us Goethe Faus Part II, I think, because they were the only books available in in the storeroom. We never knew what happened in Goethe Faus Part I, and he never got round a German anyway because we used to rag him mercilessly. And yet he was a wonderful man, and I remember him with a huge affection, enormously civilised fellow. And so I'd like to hear him at the Oxford Union, partly because I've been honoured myself once or twice to go along and talk there.

Presenter26:17

And can you tell me a little bit about the story that he's telling here?

Colin Dexter26:21

But I think he's on a building site, isn't he? And I think his job is I can't imagine anybody worse than Gerard Hoffnam on a building site with a load of bricks that he's got to put into a barrel. I I think if anybody in the world was going to make a mess of it, Gerard would.

Speaker 426:34

I hoisted the barrel back up again and secured the line at the bottom.

Speaker 426:42

Then went up

Speaker 426:43

Listen.

Speaker 426:44

And fill the barrel

Speaker 426:46

With extra bricks.

Speaker 426:49

Then

Speaker 426:50

I went to the bottom.

Speaker 426:53

And cast off the line.

Speaker 427:04

Unfortunately the barrel of bricks

Speaker 427:14

Was heavier than I was.

Speaker 427:24

And before I knew what was happening

Speaker 427:28

The barrels start to down.

Speaker 427:32

jerking me off the ground.

Presenter27:34

Gerard Hofnung at the Oxford Union and part of the famous Bricklairs Story recorded in nineteen fifty eight.

Presenter27:41

Your other claim to fame, Colin Dexter, is that you're a cruciverbalist and and a champion one, in fact. Can you explain that?

Colin Dexter27:50

Well, I was always interested in crosswords, I think, from the word go as a schoolboy. Somebody showed me, I think, when I was about thirteen or fourteen.

Colin Dexter27:58

That that little clue, you mean nothing squared is cubed, you know, that O to O times O, oxo, nothing squared is cubed, three letters. And I thought how clever this is, and I I I began to start I started doing the News Chronicle, Hubert Phillips, and then I joined uh the elitist sort of group in the fifties after leaving Cambridge, uh who used to do the Zimmenes and then the AZ now and the Observer. And I did, you're quite right, yes. I became uh a champion for, I don't know, three, four, five years perhaps, in the in the late sixties, in the mid sixties and early early seventies, yes.

Presenter28:35

You also have fun in your books, apart from sprinkling clues all the way through them, so it's the same kind of approach that goes on. You also create entirely fictitious figures whom you then quote from at the top of your chapters, don't you? Chaps like Diogenes Small, who, according to the dates you give him, you know, died at the age of eight, and yet he wrote a dictionary.

Colin Dexter28:55

Yes, and he he he wrote uh uh an awful lot of works on politics and sociology, history and so on, yes. People say to me, You must know an awful lot to put all these quotes at the top of the chapter.

Colin Dexter29:07

And uh I say yes, of course. Well, it's not really true. If I get stuck, I just make a few up and nobody ever queries.

Presenter29:14

So it's a joke, but do you uh you also quite like catching people out, presumably? You trying to sort of prick pretentiousness along the way.

Colin Dexter29:20

A little bit, yes. I don't think one ought to regard uh, you know, detective stories as the greatest thing in the world. I can't think what's too much greater, but uh we ought not to get too self important.

Presenter29:33

Record number seven.

Colin Dexter29:34

I'd I'd like to hear one of the four last songs, uh the Baun Schlaffengeen, and uh there's so many recordings, but I I think Lisa Della Casimovi um does something to the songs which few of the others do.

Presenter30:42

Recorded in nineteen fifty three, that was Lisa de La Casa singing part of Beim Schlaffengen on Going to Sleep, the first of Strauss's four last songs, with the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Carl Bohm.

Presenter30:53

If we're being pedantic, Colin, I think Morse must either be approaching or or rather past pensionable age by now. Has he has he solved his last case?

Colin Dexter31:02

Yeah. I I keep being bullied to write one more book, but I I I think I I've alm I don't think any of us get better as we get older. And I I've killed enough people in Oxford. It's become the crime capital o not just the United Kingdom, but of the European common market. And I I I think as you say he's probably must be in his mid seventies by now. I think it's almost time he finished.

Presenter31:25

But is it is it finished? Or do you think you might still be tempted?

Colin Dexter31:27

Do you think

Colin Dexter31:29

I might write one more.

Presenter31:31

Ah, just one more.

Presenter31:33

Um, he wouldn't, uh Morse, I guess, be any good at coping on a desert island'cause he has very few practical skills. What about you?

Colin Dexter31:42

I used to be reasonably good in my hands at school, but I can't do it now. In fact, I think almost anything mechanical wages war against me. I can't cope, for example, with these instructions from the do-it-yourself, you know, when you have to assemble a wardrobe or a bookcase. I get I get hopelessly confused. So I don't I don't think that he would have been any good and I don't think I was.

Presenter32:06

Yeah.

Presenter32:07

He might, and you might, think up an ingenious way of escaping. You never know.

Colin Dexter32:12

I don't think I would be courageous enough. I don't think I would have the courage to to uh try to escape. And I I would hate above all on this desert island, these creepy, crawly things. I've always been frightened of spiders and things like that.

Presenter32:26

So you'd lie down and die with Wagner, would you?

Colin Dexter32:28

Yes, indeed.

Presenter32:30

Shall we hear him?

Colin Dexter32:31

Yes, and I uh it reminds me uh uh a lot about Cambridge when when I know my brother and and other people were always playing Kirsten Flagstadt, either prob b in the Liebestode or or Bits of the Ring and so on. And I've always uh thought that Kirsten Flagstadt has slightly more musical and warm voice than some of the Brunhildes, so I'd very much like to hear the uh

Colin Dexter32:52

Immolation scene from Agedi Demeru.

Presenter33:53

Kirsten Flagstadt as Brunnhilde in the final act of Wagner's Goethe Demmerung, recorded in nineteen fifty, with the orchestra and chorus of La Scala Milan, conducted by Wilhelm Furtwengler.

Presenter34:03

If you could only take one of those eight records, Colin, which one would it be?

Colin Dexter34:08

Well, shall we say that say that Mozart would be a fairly close second, but it it would it would have to be a

Colin Dexter34:15

Wagner for me.

Presenter34:17

And what about your book, as well as the Bible and Shakespeare?

Colin Dexter34:20

I'd very much like you if you if you could to to to uh bind together the collected poems of A. E. Hausmann with all his classical papers as well. Uh that will keep me going and give me enormous joy.

Presenter34:32

And your luxury.

Colin Dexter34:35

Well, please, miss, if I can.

Colin Dexter34:38

I would like.

Colin Dexter34:40

A pair of nail scissors.

Colin Dexter34:42

For some deep

Colin Dexter34:44

reason way down in the psyche. I I've always been anxious to keep my fingernails clean and tidy. And when I go away on holiday I sometimes forget a pair of

Colin Dexter34:56

Nail scissors

Colin Dexter34:58

And I I I think if you could do that.

Presenter35:00

I'll tell you what, you can have a whole manicure set.

Colin Dexter35:03

I'd be delighted.

Presenter35:04

So am I, Colin Dexter. Thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Speaker 135:16

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