Alice Thomas Ellis

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 10:09

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

Presenter0:31

My Castaway this week is a writer. Born in Liverpool and brought up in Wales, she was married for forty years to a publisher, became the mother of seven children, and didn't put pen to paper herself until she was forty two. She's made up for it since. She's now written more than twenty books, mainly novels, as well as regular journalistic columns, and is regarded as one of this country's best writers. Eccentric, fond of a drink and the odd expletive, she's also a devout and traditional Catholic, deeply opposed to the liberal movement in her church. The basic lesson, she says, is to put other people first. If there's a mankey orange and a nice one, you have the mankey one. She is Alice Thomas Ellis. Do you manage to live according to your own lessons then, Alice, or are you a a secret good orange snaffler?

Alice Thomas Ellis1:18

I would take the Mankeep Orange. I wouldn't enjoy it, but I think I'd try and take it.

Presenter1:22

But is that'cause somebody might see you if you took the good one, and think the worse of you? Is that why?

Alice Thomas Ellis1:26

No, it's because my conscience would um would give me bother.

Presenter1:30

But you'd feel guilty.

Alice Thomas Ellis1:31

I feel guilty, yes.

Presenter1:32

It's not very fashionable, though, is it? Do don't you think that people look at you strangely sometimes these days when you do something as selfless as that?

Alice Thomas Ellis1:39

Well, I think they think it's unhealthy. I think we're meant to love ourselves first and then everybody else will love us. Self-esteem, I think, is the order of the message.

Presenter1:47

Self-esteem, I think, is the order of the day.

Alice Thomas Ellis1:50

Don't think that's a very rational point of view.

Presenter1:53

So you aspire to be good. Did you always aspire to be a writer? Because as I've just said in the intro introduction, you didn't write until you were forty two.

Alice Thomas Ellis2:02

No, but I think what it it's like that story of the little boy who didn't talk for years and years and years.

Alice Thomas Ellis2:10

And then one day he said, Mamma

Alice Thomas Ellis2:13

I did not greatly care for the cocoa to night.

Alice Thomas Ellis2:17

And she said to him, But, Don, that's amazing. You've never talked before. Why did you never speak before? And he said, Well, everything's been all right up until now.

Presenter2:28

So what what was the catalyst? What made you suddenly find your voice?

Alice Thomas Ellis2:33

10.

Alice Thomas Ellis2:37

When um of course it was the sixties, so I think everything went a bit mad.

Alice Thomas Ellis2:42

And I was just

Alice Thomas Ellis2:46

Well, I felt bereft and angry, and as though I had to do or say something.

Presenter2:51

But can you explain that? What were you angry about?

Alice Thomas Ellis2:54

I was angry about the way they'd um well, really they'd changed everything without much as a buy or leave they'd decided that they were going to alter.

Alice Thomas Ellis3:03

The Mass, the Liturgy, everything.

Alice Thomas Ellis3:05

And just gone ahead and done it. I mean, the first time I started going to church after it had all happened, I didn't know where I was, I didn't even recognize.

Alice Thomas Ellis3:14

The church is Catholic Church.

Presenter3:15

So there was that anger, but was there also a kind of anger

Presenter3:18

About what we think of as characterizing the sixties as well, you know, sort of free love and high-rise living.

Alice Thomas Ellis3:25

Yeah.

Alice Thomas Ellis3:26

I'd have thought everybody had gone completely nuts.

Alice Thomas Ellis3:29

And of course that was awkward, because you never is out of step with old Charlie. You think, well, if I think everybody's gone mad, perhaps it's me.

Alice Thomas Ellis3:35

But I really didn't like the sixties at all.

Presenter3:37

So you published uh The Sin Eater in nineteen seventy seven, which was a kind of portrait of of of a of a kind of contemporary British life, wasn't it? Yes. And Rose, the main character, was she very much you, do you think? She she was deeply disenchanted with Catherine.

Alice Thomas Ellis3:53

Catholic Church, of course. Well, she said what I thought, but apart from that, I don't think um I'm very like her. She did things. I don't think I'd actually do things. I might think um ungenerous thoughts, but I would try not to put them into action.

Presenter4:07

Tell me about your first record.

Alice Thomas Ellis4:09

Well, the first is I'm Billy Holiday singing For All We Know.

Alice Thomas Ellis4:14

And this is just because I think it's so beautiful when her voice is nearly gone, it's so poignant.

Speaker 44:21

Arling now.

Alice Thomas Ellis4:22

Are we now?

Speaker 44:26

We may never leave again

Speaker 44:35

Miss I'll go

Speaker 44:40

Make this moment sweet again

Presenter4:44

Yeah

Presenter4:50

Billy Holiday with the Ray Ellis Orchestra singing For All We Know.

Speaker 44:50

Ah

Presenter4:54

Alice Thomas Ellis is in fact your pen name. Why did you your real name's Anna Haycraft? Why did you adopt a pen name? Why do you want one?

Alice Thomas Ellis5:02

Well, I thought it would make me invisible.

Alice Thomas Ellis5:04

Uh

Presenter5:04

A fraud home.

Alice Thomas Ellis5:07

Well, from everybody really, I thought I could be completely anonymous and sort of stand there, you know.

Alice Thomas Ellis5:13

Roaring really, complaining about what was going on, and never have to answer personally for any of my opinions, but it didn't work like that.

Presenter5:19

You never have to have to stand up in your kitchen and sort of put the argument face to face with somebody.

Alice Thomas Ellis5:24

Mm, that's what I

Presenter5:24

I didn't want to do. But it didn't work. Didn't work. Uh so do you regard them as two different people, Anna and Alice?

Alice Thomas Ellis5:31

How are you?

Alice Thomas Ellis5:32

Well, I think I do rather. I don't like Alice very much. Um just never really warmed to her.

Alice Thomas Ellis5:39

I think I lack self-esteem or um or I lack the self-esteem that

Alice Thomas Ellis5:43

Alice might like to have had, I don't know.

Presenter5:46

Religion, as we've already established, is a very strong theme in your life. It runs all the way through it.

Presenter5:53

And in fact, I think you were probably nineteen, twenty when you nearly became a nun.

Alice Thomas Ellis5:58

Well, I did for a time. I was a postulant.

Alice Thomas Ellis6:00

And then I got a slip disc.

Alice Thomas Ellis6:04

And it was very nasty. I hadn't realized, you know, these things could be quite so painful. And I had to go into hospital and I was on traction, and they said I'd never be any use, certainly in a an active order.

Alice Thomas Ellis6:16

And so I left, and that was that.

Presenter6:19

But why did you want to become a nun? What what drove you? Was it a you know, were you seeking calm, or was it intellectual fulfilment, or was it?

Alice Thomas Ellis6:27

It seemed the quickest way home, but its simplest.

Presenter6:31

Can you enlarge on that?

Alice Thomas Ellis6:35

Well, I mean, people say this life isn't a rehearsal. I think it is. And I wanted really to get it over quickly and

Alice Thomas Ellis6:42

Get to where I wanted to be. But why did you think of that as home? Your parents weren't Catholic, were they? No, uh, my papa was a humanist.

Alice Thomas Ellis6:52

But a lot of my family were Catholic, and I had, as it were, been exposed to Catholicism.

Alice Thomas Ellis6:59

And it just seemed to me.

Alice Thomas Ellis7:02

The total logical way to live your life.

Alice Thomas Ellis7:06

with that end in view of getting back to God.

Alice Thomas Ellis7:10

So

Presenter7:10

Yeah.

Presenter7:11

Having solitude, being in a private place, being able to be at peace with yourself.

Presenter7:18

It is

Presenter7:19

quite profoundly important.

Alice Thomas Ellis7:21

It's very important.

Presenter7:23

So

Presenter7:24

Alice Thomas Ellis, Anna Haycroft on a Desert Island, is

Presenter7:28

Complete paradise, then.

Alice Thomas Ellis7:30

Well it is really, yes, as long as there are no snakes.

Presenter7:35

Tumba

Alice Thomas Ellis7:35

Yeah.

Presenter7:35

Your second record.

Alice Thomas Ellis7:36

Well the second record is um I'm not very good at music, I don't really like music very much, um not what you would call good music, um but the music I think I love most of all is plain song, and I've got some friends at Downside Abbey and so I thought I would like to take their version of Gregorium Plain Chan.

Speaker 47:59

There's very best for heaven, there's no best knowledge for

Speaker 48:11

Lord grace and gifts to hear and know as the Lord goes.

Speaker 18:11

Lord, what is great?

Speaker 48:30

They would have been in every city without

Speaker 48:37

Has not free fog dias descend clouds feels

Speaker 18:47

And that's the hard part.

Speaker 48:50

Ye len de ges au la da.

Speaker 18:51

Yeah.

Speaker 18:53

Yeah.

Presenter8:59

The monks of Downside Abbey singing a Gregorian chant Rorate Caeli de Super.

Presenter9:04

The other thing we know, or think we know, about Alice Thomas Ellis if we've read her writings, is that she's Welsh, but uh it turns out she's not, she's Liverpudlian.

Alice Thomas Ellis9:13

Well, half I'm liver partly and I'm half Welsh. My mum was Welsh and my father's father was Finnish.

Presenter9:19

But do you remember anything about Liverpool? It was a pre war.

Alice Thomas Ellis9:22

Yes, I do. I just have some rather vague memories. Um but oddly enough they seem to be of things like pool halls. Um I do remember people playing billiards and I remember the smell of breweries and the sound of those huge horses and wagons. And I know a Wiffy Ever Went Back um when I was still a child, I used to absolutely hate it. I hated that sense of crowd and noise.

Presenter9:50

Because you fell in love with with the countryside.

Alice Thomas Ellis9:53

By then I'd fallen in love with the countryside.

Presenter9:54

You you were evacuated to Wales, really? Yes.

Alice Thomas Ellis9:56

Fears.

Presenter9:57

And and what was it you fell in love with there, then?

Alice Thomas Ellis10:02

It was simply so beautiful and so peaceful, and it was the setting for a perfect childhood. I mean, there were dangers. If you went too far over the mountain or fell off a cliff, that wasn't a good idea, and, you know, there was the sea with all the implicit dangers in the sea. Um but apart from that, we used to just roam absolutely free. What about school?

Alice Thomas Ellis10:24

Well, first I went to the National School in Pennmain Maar, which was wonderful.

Alice Thomas Ellis10:29

Terribly well taught.

Alice Thomas Ellis10:31

And then I went on to the grammar school.

Presenter10:32

School in Bangor.

Presenter10:34

You you've said since I can think of no better start in life for a person who's going to end up a writer as that early schooling. Why? What what happened? What did you get from it?

Presenter10:42

Uh

Alice Thomas Ellis10:42

Will the teachers

Alice Thomas Ellis10:45

They knew the district, they knew the the locality, all the legends, all the local stories, and that brought, oh, certainly, history to life.

Presenter10:55

But what kinds of legends and stories?

Alice Thomas Ellis10:57

There was talk of um the phantom funerals and the corpse scandals.

Alice Thomas Ellis11:02

It was still talked about. And how much do you believe in it? There was certainly something there. There were too many eyewitness accounts. Of what kind of thing?

Presenter11:10

Of what kind of thing?

Alice Thomas Ellis11:12

Um well the Phantom Funerals, where somebody would see

Alice Thomas Ellis11:16

A funeral procession.

Alice Thomas Ellis11:19

Where there was nothing, and then a week later somebody would die, and the procession would take exactly that route in exactly that form.

Alice Thomas Ellis11:27

And there were corpse candles, sort of little blue lights used to flicker at people's gateways. That was bad news. And there was the Deranemeru, which was the bird of death, and he'd come banging on the window, and I think most people believe in that.

Alice Thomas Ellis11:41

When the bird bangs on the window, that's not good news either.

Presenter11:44

Your latest novel, The Fairies, is is very much about this kind of thing, and you it's it's about a a changeling baby that's that's given to a girl who goes to live in Wales. For someone who's so deeply religious, you you you obviously believe or feel there's something in the supernatural. You're not supposed to be have anything to do with all that stuff, are you?

Alice Thomas Ellis12:01

And I have to make allowances for myself there.

Alice Thomas Ellis12:05

But I mean have you seen ghosts? Do you believe in

Alice Thomas Ellis12:09

But there's a sort of knocking that we get from the barns.

Alice Thomas Ellis12:13

But I don't mind it. If there is anything there, I don't think it's hostile.

Presenter12:19

Record number three.

Alice Thomas Ellis12:21

This is Aunt Paul Robeson singing the canoe song, and it's from the film Sanders of the River.

Alice Thomas Ellis12:28

And I saw this, I must have been very young, it was when we were in Wales, and at that time all I wanted to do was grow up and be Paul Robeson.

Alice Thomas Ellis12:36

That wonderful voice.

Speaker 412:38

I need your go.

Speaker 412:41

Are you born? Are you holy?

Presenter12:55

Paul Robeson singing the Canoe song from the film Saunders of the River.

Presenter12:59

Grammar school in Bangor, art college in Liverpool, then the failed attempt to become a nun in Sussex, and then at the age of twenty two you found a husband. How did you do that?

Alice Thomas Ellis13:09

Well, I'd somehow ended up in Chelsea by that time staying with friends, and I had a friend who was just um opening a delicatessen.

Alice Thomas Ellis13:19

Very good cook, she was called Françoise, um but her meat pies and her apple pies were identical.

Alice Thomas Ellis13:25

And this chap came in one day, bought one or the other, and took it home. Then he came back the next day and said he'd ordered a meat pie and he'd and he'd ordered an

Alice Thomas Ellis13:36

What had he ordered?

Alice Thomas Ellis13:37

It was one or the other, he'd got it wrong, and he'd put either gravy or custard on whichever it was supposed not to be.

Alice Thomas Ellis13:43

Then we got married about.

Alice Thomas Ellis13:45

Uh

Presenter13:46

Oh, not more than a couple of months later.

Alice Thomas Ellis13:47

Uh

Presenter13:47

Uh And you had lots of children? I mean, pretty relentlessly, really. About every eighteen months, I think, didn't you, for a while?

Alice Thomas Ellis13:53

Yeah.

Presenter13:55

Um

Presenter13:55

There's a kind of contradiction at first glance there, isn't there? This this girl who wanted to be a nun suddenly enters relentless motherhood.

Presenter14:03

Or do you think there's, you know, something in common, strangely?

Alice Thomas Ellis14:06

Oh, I think it's very similar because um a lot of those nuns have terrific motherly capacities.

Presenter14:14

There's also the matter of of discovering the love of a mother, mother love, isn't isn't there? I mean, did did you get hooked on that quite quickly?

Alice Thomas Ellis14:24

Well it came as the most

Alice Thomas Ellis14:26

Amazing surprise to me because I'd never felt like that about anybody, and then suddenly there was this baby.

Alice Thomas Ellis14:33

And then you know you'd die for it or you'd you'd kill for it and

Alice Thomas Ellis14:38

Haven't you ever felt like that previously about anything?

Presenter14:41

But it is a a huge thing, as we're saying, the love of a mother. So that the death of a child is completely terrible and it's something you've had to experience twice, isn't it?

Alice Thomas Ellis14:51

Yes, it's the um I sometimes think

Alice Thomas Ellis14:54

I sometimes think the death of my son is, in a way, the only thing that ever happened to me, because everything else is.

Alice Thomas Ellis15:00

Seven significant in comparison.

Presenter15:02

Because he he was nineteen, he was like

Alice Thomas Ellis15:04

Dean.

Presenter15:05

And he fell from a roof in Euston station. He was train spotting, wasn't he? Yeah.

Alice Thomas Ellis15:10

Yes.

Presenter15:11

We should say that the the other child you lost was it was two days old.

Alice Thomas Ellis15:15

I was two days old and I thought that was the worst thing, and I missed her absolutely dreadfully. But then I'd known Joshua.

Alice Thomas Ellis15:23

for nineteen years and that was

Alice Thomas Ellis15:26

It's just such a blur.

Presenter15:28

I suppose we just don't

Presenter15:30

expect to be pre-deceased by our children, really. It's just not something we're prepared for, is it?

Alice Thomas Ellis15:35

No.

Presenter15:36

Can never be.

Alice Thomas Ellis15:37

Never.

Presenter15:37

Uh

Presenter15:38

Is it something you can ever get over or does it?

Alice Thomas Ellis15:42

No, you don't get over it. You learn to live with it.

Alice Thomas Ellis15:47

But you never ever and if you have a limb amputated, it doesn't grow again. You never you're never completely whole again.

Presenter15:56

Even if you believe as as deeply as you do that um

Presenter16:01

When someone dies they go to a better place and that you'll meet them again one day and all this. Is there no colour?

Alice Thomas Ellis16:06

Well that's the only consolation. And it's also quite interesting because when something like that happens, and I think we always perceive death as a threat.

Alice Thomas Ellis16:16

And then if you lose somebody you love very much, it becomes much more of a promise.

Alice Thomas Ellis16:21

that there will be

Alice Thomas Ellis16:23

A fitting

Alice Thomas Ellis16:25

Ending

Alice Thomas Ellis16:26

To all the pain, that you will see them again, that you will somehow know what it's all been about, you'll come to a state of understanding.

Presenter16:34

Record number four.

Alice Thomas Ellis16:39

Well, this is um some caught his eyes on the sparrow.

Alice Thomas Ellis16:43

And I heard it first of all in a film. I think it was a member of The Wedding.

Alice Thomas Ellis16:49

in one of my depressed moods and somebody took me out to see this film. I don't remember much about that. But I found this this song very cheering, and also it now reminds me of Joshua's nurse, Lillian.

Alice Thomas Ellis17:02

In the hospital, who was a cozer and who was one of

Alice Thomas Ellis17:08

the most good people I've ever met in my life. She had complete authority in that ward and she was capable of complete compassion.

Alice Thomas Ellis17:17

And she was one of the

Alice Thomas Ellis17:19

Only good things that

Alice Thomas Ellis17:20

came from that terrible time.

Presenter17:23

And have you remained friends?

Alice Thomas Ellis17:24

This

Speaker 417:24

And not both

Speaker 417:28

He watches.

Speaker 417:39

Me

Speaker 417:43

I see.

Speaker 417:44

Because I'm happy.

Speaker 417:48

I see

Speaker 417:50

Because I'm free His I, his Lord is familiar, and I know

Speaker 418:01

Be watching.

Presenter18:22

Michael Brown, singing His Eye is on the Sparrow from Jack Levin's nineteen seventy seven musical Bubbling Brown Sugar. Um Lillian the Nurse is not the only person you've adopted in your life, I think. There seem to be quite a few of them. Didn't you adopt as a godfather to one of your children a young man you caught burgling your house?

Alice Thomas Ellis18:40

That's Alfred. He was only about nine or ten at the time he'd burgled the house, but he broke in with a lot of his little friends. We were having the house rebuilt. It looked like a bomb site, so they thought there was nobody there. And they were in the habit of going round looking for places like this, and they'd um they'd take any sort of furniture or unconsidered trifles and then they'd go off to various fences and sell them and get money for sweeties.

Alice Thomas Ellis19:05

And of course I caught the littlest one.

Alice Thomas Ellis19:08

And then he burst into tears. So

Alice Thomas Ellis19:11

Gave him a sandwich and

Alice Thomas Ellis19:13

sent him off and then he came back and

Alice Thomas Ellis19:17

He's been more or less with us ever since.

Presenter19:21

Your that first novel we were talking about, The Sine Eater, was published in fact when when Joshua was in hospital, wasn't he?

Presenter19:28

It turned out that that he'd dedicated it to himself, hadn't he?

Alice Thomas Ellis19:32

Yes, I noticed it was before he fell. I

Presenter19:32

Uh

Alice Thomas Ellis19:34

found the manuscript one day and he'd put on it to Josh.

Alice Thomas Ellis19:39

And then he fell, so of course it was to Josh after that.

Presenter19:43

But obviously life became completely different after that. I mean you were a different person. You were

Presenter19:49

A woman who'd lost one of her sons and and you were a novelist.

Presenter19:53

Was there solace in the one for the other, as it were? Did your writing help?

Alice Thomas Ellis19:59

I think it probably did. I s I think when you have a bereavement like that, I think you go mad.

Alice Thomas Ellis20:09

And we each have to bear it, I suppose, in our own way.

Alice Thomas Ellis20:13

But doing something.

Alice Thomas Ellis20:15

It does help. It's not that it takes your mind off it, but it gives your mind something else to chew on, as it were.

Presenter20:20

Mechu number five.

Alice Thomas Ellis20:23

This is Tom Lehrer, and this is Poisoning Pigeons in the Park, and it's

Alice Thomas Ellis20:28

It's just it's got this gleeful anarchy about it that I find very, very engaging.

Alice Thomas Ellis20:35

Sir Geoffrey Bernard used to absolutely hate pigeons, he said they were flying rats.

Speaker 420:39

Spring is here, a suffering is here. Life is Skittles and life is beer. I think the loveliest time of the year is the spring. I do, don't you? Of course you do. But there's one thing that makes spring complete for me and makes every Sunday a treat for me.

Speaker 421:03

All the world seems in tune on a spring afternoon when we're poisoning pigeons in the park.

Presenter21:11

Tom Lehrer, poisoning pigeons in the park. I'm I'm glad we we sort of paused for a laugh, because I've just got the feeling we might have made you sound too sombre a person, sort of and when in fact, as I say, there's this witty side to your life and you

Presenter21:23

If your column in The Spectator was to be believed, there was a kind of eccentric chaos to your life. I mean, do you do you plead guilty to that?

Alice Thomas Ellis21:31

But it seemed to be perfectly normal. And a lot of people did say, gosh, that's exactly how it is in our place. And I never exaggerated. I mean, sometimes people would say, well, it can't be like that. And I'd think, well, you don't know the half of it.

Presenter21:46

But what form does the chaos, or did the chaos, take, or is it still there, the chaos?

Presenter21:52

It is a bit

Alice Thomas Ellis21:52

Yeah.

Presenter21:52

Yeah.

Alice Thomas Ellis21:52

Yes. But if you've got a large family and you all live together, I think chaos is inevitable to some extent.

Presenter21:59

sort of l cats lost around the house, shut in bedrooms, mislaid manuscripts.

Alice Thomas Ellis22:05

Well, the other day my son was in the country in the barn, and a sheep left leapt through the window.

Alice Thomas Ellis22:11

Well, it wasn't open the window, it just came through the glass.

Alice Thomas Ellis22:14

But maybe she was sort of get about a bit or

Alice Thomas Ellis22:16

Even just live a normal domestic life, the most extraordinary things do happen.

Presenter22:20

It does sound a bit, I have to say, it sounds a a bit like a sort of life in a novel, m a sort of Margaret Drabble novel, you know, life in a North London kitchen, with kind of friends and novelists called Beryl popping in. You shall come home.

Alice Thomas Ellis22:34

Home for lunch with me.

Presenter22:34

In the

Alice Thomas Ellis22:34

Uh Yeah.

Presenter22:35

Uh

Alice Thomas Ellis22:35

Uh

Presenter22:35

And he is

Alice Thomas Ellis22:35

And see what it's like.

Presenter22:38

In your novel, The Fairies, there are two women, and I wondered if they did have anything to do with you and Beryl Bainbridge, because it it's a sort of two women who live in London, who have a very close relationship. I mean, a lot of familiarity, bit of contempt.

Presenter22:52

the vodka bottle or sort of ice is clinking in the glasses, you know, as they tootle down to Wales to sort of try and sort things out and

Alice Thomas Ellis22:59

Well, it is. It is in a way it's my relationship with my female friends. I think women friends are enormously important.

Presenter23:07

What do you think they give you then? How would you sum it up?

Alice Thomas Ellis23:11

Well, a lot of the time they make you laugh.

Alice Thomas Ellis23:14

I think that's very important.

Alice Thomas Ellis23:17

Of course, men can be very funny, but I sometimes get the feeling that they've got a rather

Alice Thomas Ellis23:23

gloomy undercurrent that

Alice Thomas Ellis23:27

things are going to get worse and women seem to me to be able to put that

Presenter23:30

And and there's a woman called Janet who came as a nanny years ago and has never gone away since.

Alice Thomas Ellis23:37

Well now she's just part of the family. It's not a good idea.

Presenter23:39

You adopted Uh

Alice Thomas Ellis23:39

Extremely.

Presenter23:39

Two years.

Presenter23:41

Yeah.

Alice Thomas Ellis23:41

Record.

Alice Thomas Ellis23:42

Oh this is You've Gotta Have Heart, um and it's from Damn Yankees.

Alice Thomas Ellis23:48

It hits some note and it gets Janet too, and if we chance to hear it on the radio, then we break into a into a little dance, into a little song and dance routine.

Speaker 423:58

Mister, you can be a hero

Speaker 424:02

You can open any door, there's nothing to it but to do it. You gotta have heart Miles and miles and miles of hearts. Oh, it's fine to be a genius, of course.

Speaker 424:17

Keep that old horse before the cart. First you gotta have part.

Presenter24:27

Russ Brown singing Heart from the nineteen fifty five musical Damn Yankees. So we get this picture, Alice Thomas Ellis, of a really rather liberal, comfortable person who isn't averse to the odd temptation. And and and then we hear that she's taken on the Catholic establishment, that she's really very stern about her religion, and that she's gone on the attack against an archbishop who's hardly cold in his grave. This was nineteen ninety six, and you attacked and the recently deceased Archbishop Derek Warlock of Liverpool. Why did you choose that moment to sound off?

Alice Thomas Ellis25:01

Well, I didn't it was nothing personal. I didn't have a go at um at Derrick Warlock at all. But Liverpool had been without an Archbishop for some time, and a lot of my chums in Liverpool were very worried. They didn't really want another Liberal, for want of a better term.

Alice Thomas Ellis25:17

And I had tried and tried and tried to see Derek Warlock, and he just wouldn't talk to me.

Alice Thomas Ellis25:23

And I tried for years to get a sort of rise out of the establishment, out of the hierarchy. I wanted them to tell us what was going on.

Presenter25:31

This is trying through your column.

Alice Thomas Ellis25:32

Trader the column, and I'd write and I'd telephone and be this appalled silence and they wouldn't talk to me.

Alice Thomas Ellis25:39

And

Alice Thomas Ellis25:41

All I said was um, I don't know, something like I hope we don't have another Liberal pointing out that mass attendance in Liverpool had dropped I mean, you know, so much while he was there and vacations had fallen off.

Alice Thomas Ellis25:55

But I think it was the editor in the Catholic Herald who chose the headline My War with Warlock.

Alice Thomas Ellis26:01

which really put the cat among the pigeons.

Presenter26:03

Yes, but you did go on the attack. I mean, you said some pretty stern, as I say, things in that article.

Alice Thomas Ellis26:09

I'd been doing it for years, but I'd been getting no response.

Presenter26:12

Well, because I think a lot of people felt that that that Derek Warlock and his Anglican counterpart David Shepherd had actually been rescuing Liverpool from all kinds of sectarian and racial prejudice and possible violence and so on, that they were doing a grand job.

Alice Thomas Ellis26:25

Well, it's all very fine and large, but I don't think there was ever much tension between the Catholics and the Anglicans. I mean, there were sort of religious riots in New Fort Ages ago, but that was the Catholics and the Orange Order.

Presenter26:40

Yes, but as David Shepherd said at the time, you know, the Church had enough problems without one Christian slagging off another. Why did you lay in at that moment?

Alice Thomas Ellis26:49

Because I was still looking for a response to our questions.

Alice Thomas Ellis26:53

You know, what is happening? Why is the church being

Alice Thomas Ellis26:57

as it were, dismantled in this way. But

Presenter26:59

You knew what the response was, that it was in the the best interests of the ecumenical movement.

Presenter27:05

That's what they always say. But do you really believe that the Catholic Church shouldn't attempt to make any allowances for the twentieth century for the equality of women or for family planning by contraception, if not by abortion? I mean, surely if it doesn't address the realities of life, then then its congregations do and will diminish.

Alice Thomas Ellis27:24

No, they only diminished after um Vatican Two had been, well, more or less hijacked by the Progressives and the Modernists. That was the nineteen sixties. Yes, but an enormous amount of heresy crept into the Church then.

Presenter27:36

But but

Presenter27:38

I wonder why it falls to you to be so stern about it. Why do you have to fight this corner? One can't help feeling it's the kind of zeal of the convert.

Alice Thomas Ellis27:45

Yeah.

Presenter27:45

Yeah.

Alice Thomas Ellis27:45

No, I was more or less elected to Bell the Cat, because there are thousands of us who feel as I do. But you got sacked as a result. I got sacked, yes. No, I was Muggins, you see.

Alice Thomas Ellis27:56

But I didn't mind. You didn't mind at all.

Presenter27:58

Yeah.

Presenter28:00

Record number seven.

Alice Thomas Ellis28:01

This is Nancy Kerr singing The Great Silky. It's a song for enticing seals. And I just thought if I was on a desert island and I got lonely,

Alice Thomas Ellis28:11

I could put this on and some seals might come and visit.

Speaker 428:16

In or away there lived a maid By Loo, my baby, she begins Allow not I, my babe's father

Speaker 428:32

For if Landor sees living in

Speaker 428:39

Then there arose at her bedside

Presenter28:44

Nancy Kerr, singing The Great Silky. You almost, I thought, began to say earlier on that you might still consider becoming a nun.

Alice Thomas Ellis28:53

Oh yes, I think about it a lot.

Presenter28:56

You don't think you've developed too many worldly ways to be acceptable.

Alice Thomas Ellis29:01

Now, the only thing that gives me pause is they do kick the most awful hours. They get up terribly early in the morning. And having had all those children and all those broken nights and absolutely no time to sleep, um I really do like a lion if I feel like it.

Presenter29:16

You said that we should we should try to be selfless, but it it doesn't seem to me

Presenter29:21

that you believe we should expect to be happy.

Presenter29:25

that that happiness is a kind of bonus if it happens.

Alice Thomas Ellis29:28

Well, that's what I think. I think we're not put here to be happy. I think it's absolutely pointless to go looking for it.

Presenter29:34

What are we here for then if it's not to be happy?

Alice Thomas Ellis29:37

The Pennicatechism said to love and serve God in this world and be happy with Him forever in the next, at its simplest.

Alice Thomas Ellis29:47

Does Reich

Presenter29:48

She make you happy.

Alice Thomas Ellis29:49

Okay.

Alice Thomas Ellis29:54

More contented, I think.

Presenter29:56

What makes you happiest, then?

Alice Thomas Ellis30:01

Oh, moments of peace.

Presenter30:02

But in your life, how often does that happen? Yeah.

Alice Thomas Ellis30:05

Uh

Presenter30:05

Frequently

Alice Thomas Ellis30:06

Uh

Alice Thomas Ellis30:07

Now

Alice Thomas Ellis30:08

Um I'm not I don't get as depressed as I used to.

Alice Thomas Ellis30:13

Also I think having more time to myself.

Alice Thomas Ellis30:19

It makes me very much more contented, peaceful.

Presenter30:24

Fast record.

Alice Thomas Ellis30:27

Oh, this is um Chrissy Field singing The House is Haunted.

Alice Thomas Ellis30:31

And I first heard this years and years and years ago.

Alice Thomas Ellis30:35

I was staying in the Lake District. It was a house on Windermere.

Alice Thomas Ellis30:39

We used to play this record and it used to sort of float out across the lake and it sounded absolutely wonderful.

Alice Thomas Ellis30:45

It reminds me of my youth.

Presenter30:48

And does it remind you at all of your husband, who died a few years ago?

Alice Thomas Ellis30:52

Well, of course the is that, it's just that.

Alice Thomas Ellis30:55

It says

Alice Thomas Ellis30:57

very much what one tries not to

Alice Thomas Ellis31:01

Go on about.

Speaker 431:03

I'd hate to be alone on any evening form.

Speaker 431:09

I'm so afraid of all these empty halls, doors and walls.

Speaker 431:23

House is haunted by the echo of your last goodbye.

Presenter31:31

Gracie Fields and the house is haunted.

Presenter31:34

If you could only take one of the eight records, I wonder which one it would be.

Alice Thomas Ellis31:37

It will be the plain song.

Presenter31:39

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

Alice Thomas Ellis31:42

Will, um it was an anthology called Come Hither, Walter de la Mer.

Alice Thomas Ellis31:46

which is full of poems, and then at the end it's got these wonderful notes and asides and little observations. I think I'd take that.

Presenter31:56

And your luxury.

Alice Thomas Ellis31:57

Well of course I would have said a sort of portable bar with, you know, vodka and cigarettes, and I thought that's too babyish and self-indulgent.

Presenter32:06

That might make you feel better though.

Alice Thomas Ellis32:08

Yes, but um there wouldn't be a lot of cocktail parties, I probably wouldn't need it. And then I thought, well what I really like is a very comfortable sofa.

Alice Thomas Ellis32:18

I think that would be perfect.

Presenter32:20

Anna Haycroft, aka Alice Thomas Ellis, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Alice Thomas Ellis32:25

Thank you.

Speaker 132:26

Uh

Speaker 132:34

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