David Shepherd

Speaker 30:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen ninety nine, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:30

My castaway this week is a painter. Successful and popular, he was rejected by the Slade School of Art in London on the grounds that he had no talent whatsoever. Such criticism has never deterred the man who wanted to be a game warden but ended up painting the animals he longed to protect. His pictures of elephants, tigers, and other wild animals are some of the best known in the world, and the huge sums of money they make has enabled their creator to raise millions of pounds for wildlife conservation. As far as the critics are concerned, he says I'm the lowest form of animal life, but I laugh all the way to the bank. He is David Shepherd. You have, David, enjoyed the most phenomenal success, and indeed still do at the age of 67. Do you still enjoy it? I mean, can you still lose yourself in the studio?

David Shepherd1:14

I don't know about losing myself, but I am the luckiest man alive, I honestly am, because I'm doing something I love and above all else I'm managing to return something to wildlife. And uh I like to think I'm still a small boy at heart too, because life is so fulfilling. The older I get, which is a rapidly increasing process, it's frightening actually. It just feels like it. Oh goodness, the more exciting life becomes, and I have to live every minute.

Speaker 21:30

Uh

Presenter1:30

Are you ready?

Presenter1:35

But you haven't only painted wild animals. You hate, don't you, being known as the man who paints elephants?

David Shepherd1:36

Yeah.

David Shepherd1:40

Um well, it's nice to be known as anything. I mean, in a way, in the artistic field, it's rather the equivalent of being on East Enders, you know, when you've you have done other things, but that's all you're known for. But you've done.

Presenter1:48

But you've done aeroplanes, steam engines, you've done Jesus Christ, you've done the Ark Royal. Obviously what you like doing is is anything that's big, dramatic. Is that

David Shepherd1:52

You've done the Ark Royal.

David Shepherd1:59

Yes, that's a lovely point actually, because when I painted the Queen Mother's Portrait, I just had finished painting The Art Royal, and she said to me, How do you manage to paint such a diversity of subjects? And it was very I I was in a tough spot here, because I'd nearly put it the wrong

Presenter2:07

First of all

David Shepherd2:12

When I say there's no difference, ma'am, dear, oh dear, halfway to the tower when you say things like that.

Presenter2:15

Yeah.

Presenter2:17

But that's the appeal, isn't it?

David Shepherd2:18

Yes, I mean the she said how do you manage to paint everything from the art world to my portrait and elephants and steam trains? And the common denominator for an artist who has been well trained this is the point, because I owe all my success to the man who trained me is uh enthusiasm. And I get excited about anything big and lovely and

David Shepherd2:34

Pref preferably old rather than modern.

Presenter2:36

But let's just go back to this elephant that made it all possible in the first place, because uh it it was that print, and just to remind people, it's the elephant coming sort of center-screen, as it were, across the savannah, looking wonderfully in boots as in chemists, because it it became a print. It topped the best this was about thirty-five. Oh, I was corporate.

David Shepherd2:47

My elephants and boots.

David Shepherd2:54

Oh, I was called Britain's top pop artist and I began to groan with a lot of publicity like that.

Presenter2:59

Because you took over, I think, didn't you, from Trechikov's Eurasian green face?

David Shepherd3:02

Absolutely.

David Shepherd3:03

Absolutely. It's nice to be known, but it's how you're known that matters. And I began to see the red lights, you know, when all these dreadful articles are written about me. But it's on the other hand, it's a lot of fun. But it makes it a lot for me.

Presenter3:11

On the other hand, it's a very important thing. But it made you.

David Shepherd3:14

People still talk about it.

Presenter3:15

Yeah.

David Shepherd3:15

And the publishers didn't even want to publish it. They said nobody's going to buy a print of an elephant. And a hundred thousand people did.

Presenter3:21

But I'm right in saying, I think, that you used to be one of those artists who hung their work on on the railings at the embankment, didn't you?

David Shepherd3:28

Indeed, my career started on the Victorian Map and Garnes outside the Savoy, yes. Honestly, I mean, it's derided by the critics, but it I think in many ways there's better art down there than than there is in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition.

Presenter3:39

So le I mean, this is a difficult question'cause it it you know, it it it requires no modesty on your part. What was different about you? How come you got off the railings and you know laughed all the way to the bank when others did?

David Shepherd3:49

When others did

Presenter3:49

Wouldn't

David Shepherd3:50

Well, one of one of the things that happened was that I met my publishers there thirty eight years ago, goodness knows when. Um they came walking through the gardens in the sunshine, in the lunch hour, and they met me and I've been with them ever since.

Presenter3:59

But were you so much better than the others? That's really what I'm asking.

David Shepherd4:02

Well, it depends what you mean by better. I mean, there were some jolly good artists painting some very strange pictures, and some dreadful artists who used to sell their pictures like strawberries off an Oxford Street Barrow. Um there was tremendous mix. This was the fun. And in that um scenario I met painters which I probably would never met have met otherwise.

Presenter4:18

But were you that much better, or were you just luckier?

David Shepherd4:21

I think I was luckier.

David Shepherd4:22

But how do you judge what's better? I mean, some people loathe my work, some people like my work, some people like Damien Hurst and some people like me. Gosh, there can't be more different than

Presenter4:29

Different than that.

Presenter4:32

Tell me about your first record.

David Shepherd4:33

I wallow in nostalgia.

David Shepherd4:35

And by the end of the programme we'd all gathered I'd highly emotional as well, and I love music that stirs the inner motions. I can't paint when I hear people like Sebelius, for example. And Sebelius was the first classical composer I was introduced to when my mum and dad gave me the old seventy eights of his first symphony in my stocking at Christmas, centuries ago.

Presenter5:47

Part of the final movement of Sibelius's Symphony No. One in E minor, performed by the City of Birmingham Orchestra, conducted by Simon Rattle. Now, as far as I understand it, David, it was an RAF officer who did the trick for you. You were out in Kenya, and he said, Stop painting aeroplanes for me, go and paint some wildlife. But you'd never done it before, had you?

David Shepherd6:03

I hadn't even painted a rabbit. That's what happened. It changed my life.

Presenter6:07

But why did he want you to do that? What was the point of that?

David Shepherd6:09

Well, he's it was in Nairobi when the Aria for in Nairobi, in the Keno colony days, when the Brits were there, and he knew I was coming down to Keno and he met me and he said, We've got fifteen guineas to spare. Fifteen guineas? You're too young, you don't know what a guinea means. And he said, We don't want a picture of aeroplanes because we fly the things all day. Do you do animals?'Cause those are the things around us in Keno. And I said, Heavens, I haven't even painted a gerbil. But I'll have a try. And I did, my very first wildlife painting of Weather or Air Force. It was of a rhino, actually, chasing a twin pioneer, which there's only one flying, I think. Now it was an early twin-engined little passenger plane, which is a very good one.

Speaker 26:33

What was it wrong?

Presenter6:42

Oh so the aeroplane still got into the picture. Indeed.

David Shepherd6:44

Indeed, yes, he said, chasing a twin pioneer off the airstrip at Nyeri, in Kenya.

Presenter6:48

But but obviously when you started doing wildlife you discovered you could do it. Did you re recognize in that moment that you'd found your niche, your speciality?

David Shepherd6:57

Yes, in the most dramatic way, because the moment I'd finished that painting the world start it's awfully difficult to avoid sounding pompous, but the world started coming to me. And I've never looked back. People in Nairobi saw the painting. They said, Goodness, look, how come we have one?

Presenter7:08

And then I can

David Shepherd7:09

And then I came back to England and had a one-man show in London and that did it.

Presenter7:12

and sold, I think, thirty eight out of forty pennies in the first half an hour.

David Shepherd7:14

It was almost a physical fight. And uh

David Shepherd7:18

I mean, it's so long ago, but I I mean that's when my career that was the year that changed my life, 1960.

Presenter7:22

Five.

Presenter7:23

But in the midst of all of this you got besotted by the elephant.

David Shepherd7:25

Yeah.

Presenter7:27

Why? What is it about the elephant?

David Shepherd7:29

Well, it's coming back to my earlier remarks, I get excited about anything big and dramatic, and I will never ever to my dying day forget when I saw elephants for the first time in the wild.

David Shepherd7:38

That I mean, I you can't describe the feeling when you first see those marvellous gentle giants in the wild. You feel so blummin' small for a start. You know, I al I said then, you know, you should bring some of these pompous people in the world down to earth by putting them on foot in front of a herd of elephants. You it makes you realize how vulnerable and small man is.

Speaker 27:44

Mm-hmm.

Presenter7:54

And they're very family oriented, aren't they?

David Shepherd7:55

Oh, they're wonderful. I mean we talk for hours about elephants. They've got a sense of humour. They're always doing something funny. They've got brains bigger than we have. A friend of ours drove from well, she was driving from Nairobi down to Mombasa in Amoris Minor, and she saw this herd of elephants crossing the road. So she got out of her car, left the doors open and hid in the bushes. And the last matriarch elephant crossing the road saw this thing in the middle of the road, thought it had a scratch because it had an itchy backside.

David Shepherd8:19

And she watched her car being flattened like a pancake. And that elephant was doing it for fun.

Presenter8:24

What rubbing is bush on the

David Shepherd8:25

Rubbing his bottom on a blessed Morris Minor, and it's wonderful. I mean I have a million stories like that. And yet, of course, they can be I mean, if if you face an elephant which has been shot at with an arm light rifle, of course it's a very different matter.

Presenter8:36

Hmm.

Presenter8:37

Next piece of music.

David Shepherd8:39

Well, I was the archetypal little snotty nose schoolboy with a cloth cap and gas mask and short pants in the Battle Britain, living in North London, having all our windows blown out by the Germans, and gosh, wasn't it exciting. You know, you didn't realize people were killing each other going to school in the Battle Britain. And so I'm passionately interested from the artistic point of view, painting World War II, which I've done for the services on numerous occasions. And there was a film I made by the Crown Film Unit called Western Approaches, and this is a very little-known piece of music. It fitted the documentary of these old tramp steamers chugging across the Atlantic, waiting to be torpedoed. You know, it was an incredibly evocative film. And the music fits so well, Western Approaches.

Presenter9:44

The London Festival Orchestra conducted by Stanley Black playing part of the score for the film Western Approaches.

Presenter9:49

Now all of this happened, as I said in the introduction, David, to a boy who was told by those who were supposed to know, that's to say, at the Slade School of Art, that he had no talent whatsoever.

David Shepherd9:59

How do you explain this? Well, if you saw my very first bird painting, which I have, the only painting I've ever done of birds, you would say, My God, you're right, you haven't got any talent.

Presenter9:59

Yeah.

Speaker 210:06

Uh

David Shepherd10:07

The only reason why I painted that bird picture, which I've just referred to, was that when I was at Stowe School I was paranoid about playing rugger, because I was one of these weedy little boys you see and I couldn't see the fun of having my neck broken in a in a great heap of mud. And so I fled into the art department and painted this ghastly painting, and that no thought no more of it, because I just wasn't interested in painting.

Presenter10:27

But you'd apparently won a competition run by the Nursery Time.

David Shepherd10:30

Was at some point in your childhood. Well, I'd forgotten all about that. Yes, I think I was twelve years old when I entered a painting competition. All you had to do was to fill in a drawing of a tiger with colour, that's all. That didn't take much.

Presenter10:39

So that didn't mean anything. So there was no clue. It's interesting, isn't it? There's no clue to this talent of yours in your childhood.

David Shepherd10:40

And it doesn't

David Shepherd10:45

Well I didn't have any Sue. I didn't have any talent. I was totally untalented.

Presenter10:49

But what did you think you wanted to do?

David Shepherd10:50

Well, I I had this obsession with being a game board, you see. When I was growing up in the nineteen thirties, I collected books on Africa. Goodness knows why, I don't know why.

David Shepherd10:58

They gave me this romantic idea that being a game modern was frightfully exciting, you know, walking around with leopardskin brim around my hat and short pants and a suntan, enjoying the sunshine.

Presenter11:07

That's exactly what you've done, of course.

David Shepherd11:08

Ironically, yes, in very different circumstances. And so I trotted out to Kino when I left Stowe in nineteen forty nine and knocked on the door of the head game warden in Nairobi, Moe in Cowie, and I said, Here I am, I've come to be a game warden. What arrogance accepting uh thinking he was going to say, Gosh, how super and he didn't. And I came home again with my world in tatters.

Presenter11:09

PS

David Shepherd11:27

And I then had the choice of either.

David Shepherd11:30

Starving as an artist.

David Shepherd11:32

Or else living as a bus driver and driving up and uh up and down Oxford.

Presenter11:35

That's a serious but you were thinking of being a wise mother.

David Shepherd11:36

Thinking of being a little bit of a business. I mean, I had a public school education, yes, which cost my dad a fortune, but I didn't do any work at Stowe. I never did you never did in those days when you were at school, never did any work at all. And um I thought, well, rather than drive a bus, you know, I'd I'd try and pursue this incredible lack of talent and I'd go to art college.

Presenter11:54

But why, you see, where did it come from then, that thought? If you had no talent, if you'd been told you're going to, why did it come back into your head?

David Shepherd11:58

Tell you.

David Shepherd12:00

Well it was the l the lesser of two evils, really it was. And so daddy said, Well, if you really want to be an artist old chap, you've got to have some training. Uh go to the slade and they saw this bird picture and they said, Go and drive a bus. End of story. Really, honestly, it's true. And I was getting worried by that.

Presenter12:16

So am I, more to come, record number three.

David Shepherd12:20

Well, three, of course, this again going back going back to the thirties and forties,'cause I wallow in nostalgia in the past, and of course thinking of my darling wife who's still incredibly married to me after forty something years, haven't it a bit. This is what we used to neck to, you see this awful word neck, which we don't use any more now. Albelly singing Good Night, Sweetheart,'cause that's the record I courted her to.

Speaker 212:43

Will we meet tomorrow?

Speaker 212:47

We're for you.

Speaker 212:51

Him and be right.

Speaker 212:54

Fortnite.

David Shepherd12:56

It's hard.

Presenter13:06

Al Bolly singing Good Night, Sweetheart, and that was recorded with the New Mayfair Dance Orchestra in nineteen thirty one. So we come to another very important man in your life, David, and that was the artist Robin Goodwin. He taught you to paint how.

David Shepherd13:20

Well if I hadn't met Robin Goodwin I wouldn't be here talking to you. It's as simple as that. It's a case of being in the right place at the right time. That's why I said earlier I'm so lucky. Because having been thrown out by the sledge, you know, and not wanting to be a bus driver I was getting worried. And I went to a party and normally I don't particularly enjoy cocktail parties when you don't know know anybody and all that. But I was introduced to this guy called Robin Goodwin who I'd obviously never heard of. Well I say obviously because he wasn't that well known.

Presenter13:44

But he's a working artist.

David Shepherd13:45

He was a working artist, mainly a marine and portrait artist.

Presenter13:49

But how did he teach you? I mean, did he want to pupil? Did he want to take you on?

David Shepherd13:49

Yeah.

David Shepherd13:51

I met him and I told him on my tale of disasters, which my life was, you know, chucked out of Kenya National Parks and the art school. And he said, Well, I'm not going to teach you, David. I haven't got time. But he said, If you want me to see your work, I'll confirm you're useless. So I showed him this ghastly bird painting, which I can keep talking about, and he said, Do you want me to teach you? And all these years later, I'm still trying to analyse why he took me on.

Presenter14:11

Well, you must have thought there was a modicum of talent there, mustn't he?

David Shepherd14:12

I think he took me on as a challenge.

David Shepherd14:15

And he took me on for three years, and I'd only been with him a couple of hours when he rammed things into my head, which I didn't expect, like you were going to be painting seven days a week to pay the bills.

David Shepherd14:26

In Sund in in your studio on Sundays, even if you don't feel like painting, and work it's discipline, in other words. I burst into tears the first morning'cause he said, I'm never going to say anything good good about anything you do,'cause I assume you know the good things. I'm only going to tell you the bad things. So everything during that three years he tore to shreds.

Presenter14:41

I

David Shepherd14:42

I did many times. There was one time and I was actually shouting at him almost literally shouting at him and stormed down the stairs into Chelsea and getting into my car.

David Shepherd14:51

And he leaned out of the window and he said,'Don't be so guttous, I am still teaching you, so you must be worth teaching.

Presenter14:55

And did you always paint in oils?

David Shepherd14:57

Yes, always, always.

Presenter14:58

Yeah.

David Shepherd14:59

It's more exciting. It's it it suits my

David Shepherd15:02

Explosive personality, I suppose if that's the word. You know, I couldn't do watercolours,'cause if you make a mistake with a watercolour, you go through the paper. Where an oil painting you can put two paintings on top of it.

Presenter15:10

But when you're doing it, are you are you

Presenter15:13

Painting something that you can see and it is a process whereby, whether it takes one hour or twenty five hours, you get this picture onto the canvas. Or is there a point at which the picture takes over, the painting takes over, you get lost in it?

David Shepherd15:27

Uh you know me better than I thought,'cause I'm getting a terrible mess practically every picture I do. I'm so impulsive, you see. I never prepare enough for the pain for a painting. I barge into it like a bull in a china shop. I'm a tourist guy, you see, so that explains everything. And uh I get into paintings where I've painted the elephant on a blank canvas, almost finished, and then suddenly realise it doesn't fit, so I paint out the elephant and move it two inches to the left. I'm mad, but that's the I can't change. I give myself awful problems.

David Shepherd15:55

Because I'm so impulsive and impetuous.

Presenter15:57

And how do you know when the picture's finished?

David Shepherd16:00

You don't, and that's a lovely point too, because Robin Goodwin told me about the point of no return, after which you go backwards, leave it. And a lot of people see my what I call cameos, half finished pictures, you know, with a lot of cameras around them. Oh, Davy, that's super leave it, don't do a finished picture.

David Shepherd16:16

I mean, any artist will tell you that it looks overworked.

Presenter16:20

Neil.

Presenter16:21

But at some at some point you've got to say I'm satisfied with that.

David Shepherd16:24

Yes, and again Robin said never let a painting leave your studio until you're happy with it, even if an American or anybody's waving his cheque book at you. Never ever leave a painting uh let a painting leave your studio unless you're happy with it.

Presenter16:35

So you're always happy with all of your pages.

David Shepherd16:36

Happy with all of your businesses. Well, yes, I hope so, but at the same time, you must always strive for perfection. You'll never reach it.

Presenter16:37

Um

Presenter16:44

Next piece of music.

David Shepherd16:45

Well, again, uh one is often tempted to choose the obvious things like Rachmaninoff,'cause I wallow in Rachmaninoff. But uh I caught a record which I'd never or a composer I'd never heard of, a chap called Borkovitz, who wrote the most gorgeous piano concerto, as good, I think, as the Rachmaninoff second. And so I'd love that because I love choosing different bits of music.

Presenter18:01

Stephen Coombs with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra conducted by Yeji Maksimjuk playing part of the slow movement of Sergei Botkiewicz's Piano Concerto Number One.

Presenter18:11

The Commissioners have rolled in, David Shepard, as we've said, and you've done many other things, including the Ark Royal. It's it's a bit like being a a little boy playing with all these fantasy toys, it seems to me. That must have been very memorable.

David Shepherd18:22

The thrill of that, I was raising money for the Fleet Air Arm Museum and they said, Would you paint the art rod? And I said, Yes, as long as I can play with it. And they flew me out to Malta. And I came back on a last voyage to the scrapyard, this was 1978. And most of the time I was in the Air Sea Rescue Chopper, which they always have to have when they're catapulting buccaneers and phantoms and whatever off the flight degree in case they ditch. And I was able to speak to the captain down below, 400 feet or whatever it was in the Blue Mediterranean. And I got carried away with the excitement of this, because I started by saying, Can you turn a little bit to starboard? Because I want to see what the shadow does on the overhang of your flight delivery. And after eight days, it was so I'm awfully sorry, but the sun's in the wrong position. Do you think you'll go back to Malta? And the feeling of power that somebody was never even worn in uniform to see 58,000 tons of Her Majesty's aircraft carrier go run in a circle from back to Malta. It just gave me a tremendous kick. And the captain was so sweet, he said when I sort of apologised, he said, Well, it's all right, David. It gave the navigator something to do instead of going home in a straight line.

Speaker 218:55

Love sh

David Shepherd19:19

And then the next thing

Presenter19:19

And then the next thing you got up to was you were buying steam engines. How did that come?

David Shepherd19:21

There you go.

David Shepherd19:24

Oh golly, well you see this again comes back to the success of my wildlife paintings because my wildlife paintings have brought me such material success. We live in a house in Surrey which I'd never have dreamed of living in with my wife and family if I was just painting landscapes. And I had a sell-out exhibition in New York in 1967 of wildlife paintings. The whole lot sold on the first evening. And I came back in a state of total euphoria and before I realised what I was doing I rang up British Rail and said can I buy two steam engines? I mean that was another world in 1967 but I paid £3,000 for a locomotive which weighed 140 tonnes and she was only eight years old. She was going to go to the scrapyard and they said we've just overhauled her. You can have her. We'll take her straight out of service because we're going to scrap her in six months anyway. What a waste of money. And I named her Black Prince and she's now well known all over the country in the railway preservation movement. And I've owned her now for four times her working life with British Rail.

Speaker 220:03

Yeah.

Presenter20:14

She's got a name. Has she got a character?

David Shepherd20:16

Absolutely, steam engines are alive. I mean, again, a whole day to talk about this, which I can't, but anybody who knows a steam engine as opposed to a diesel, in my view, a diesel is inanimate. You just switch it on and it goes like a modern car. But a steam engine responds to how you treat it. If it knows you can't fire it, push the fire into the belly and all that lovely fire and glowing machinery. If it knows you can't fire it, it'll respond. And the boiler pressure needle will go down and it'll stop. I've been on Black Prince when it's done that to a farmer who didn't know how to fire it. And I said, why the hell did he do the job then? Because he was moaning and he was practically knackered out of his mind when we carried him off the foot plate. And then the next guy got on and said, what's the matter with you, you old cow? And he gave her a kick. And the needle went up. And, well, you can gather I'm besotted with steam engines.

Presenter20:58

And have you got more?

David Shepherd20:59

Well, I've got one in South Africa, yes. The South African Railways gave me a two hundred ton steam engine, which I'm determined to bring back. It was built in Britain, and I'm looking for somebody to bring it back. My wife, you see, is getting fed up with me now. She says, Can't you stop collecting large toys?

Presenter21:08

My wife

Presenter21:12

You get to drive him.

David Shepherd21:13

Oh yeah, I'm not a qualified driver, but to drive Black Prince it's a thrill. But very quickly it's a very different world from when I bought her all these years ago, because now you have to think in terms of sixty thousand quid every ten years for the border ticket, new border ticket, MOT and others, and it's a nightmare now to keep these things.

Presenter21:25

I can do

Presenter21:29

But you you run them all together. It's the East Somerset Railway.

David Shepherd21:31

Well, yes, I set that up and funded it. It's a registered charity, but I'm I'm taking a back seat now because every thought everybody thought it was David Shabbat's railway, which it wasn't, and I'm a millionaire, which I'm not. And so I've taken a back seat.

Presenter21:41

You must be a millionaire.

David Shepherd21:42

Thanks very much. Well, it's what a million there. I don't know what a million is. I'm doing very nicely, thank you.

Presenter21:46

We've got a lot of Darshan.

David Shepherd21:47

Yes, how crude, how crude, Sue!

Presenter21:50

Next record.

David Shepherd21:52

Well, on your ghastly desert island I mean I'm I'm going to have a horrible time'cause I'm going to be so miserable. But I want to hear the human voice, I must do. And uh Sir Laurence Olivier's Half Leur speech in Henry the Fifth is so moving, so exciting, I don't think anybody could do it better.

Speaker 222:15

Once more, and to the beach, dear friends, once more, o'er close the wall up with our English day.

Speaker 222:24

In peace, there's nothing so becomes a man as modest stillness and humility. But when the blast of war blows in our ears, then imitate the action of the tiger. Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood, disguise fair nature with hard-favored rage. Then lend the eye a terrible aspect. Let it pry through the portage of the head like the brass cannon. Let the brow o'erwhelm it as fearfully as doth the galled rock o'erhang and jutty his confounded base swilled with the wild and wasteful ocean.

Presenter22:51

Laurence Olivier, delivering Henry V. s speech before the attack on Arfleur from the film he made for the Ministry of Information during World War two. Some very depressing statistics, David, are thrown up by your cons conservation work. There are now more tigers in captivity than there are in the wild. That's terrifying. How many?

David Shepherd23:10

About three thousand altogether in a wild. Yep. And they're all unless something happens dramatically very, very soon, they won't last out into the millennium.

Presenter23:11

Is that all of what's left?

David Shepherd23:18

That is my personal view.

Presenter23:18

Yeah.

Speaker 223:18

That is my personal view.

David Shepherd23:20

Yes, well, you see, conservation, I mean, is such a massive part of my life now, because I owe all my success, as I keep on saying, to wildlife. And it started very quickly in nineteen sixty when I saw two hundred and fifty five dead zebra lying on the ground around a water hole that had been poisoned.

David Shepherd23:34

And when you see a site like that, it's gob smacking. It really is.

Presenter23:37

But who had poisoned it in why?

David Shepherd23:38

I don't remember who'd done it. I don't even know what he was after, but he thought he'd pour the poison into the water and see what he can get. 255 meters. But I've seen worse things like that, much worse than that. I've seen an elephant walking around on three feet, having blown its foot off of treading on a landmine. And you see, when you enjoy such material success due to wildlife, I have to repay my debt to wildlife. And it's the motivation ever gets stronger as I learn more.

Presenter23:39

Remember

Presenter23:45

Let's see what sort of skin you see.

Speaker 223:54

Yeah.

David Shepherd24:03

And I'm not a biologist, I'm not an ecologist, I know nothing about wildlife, but I'm highly emotional when I see these things happening.

Speaker 224:03

Uh

Presenter24:03

Yeah.

Presenter24:10

There are only six hundred thousand elephants left in Africa.

David Shepherd24:13

That's right, from probably six million when I first went to Africa. Um because the greedy greedy people in the world are determined to make a quick buck out of ivory, rhino horn, and tiger bones.

Presenter24:22

But how can you stop it? You can say it's illegal to hunt for either.

David Shepherd24:26

It's a massive, massive problem. I mean, a lot of it is education. You see, people aren't aware of the fact until I tell them, perhaps, that a whole tiger skeleton is now worth $30,000. The trade in parts from rhino, rhino horn, elephant ivory, and particularly tiger parts is second only to the international trade in narcotics, which is 8 billion US dollars a year. After that, it's the trade in parts from tigers for the illicit Chinese merchant trade in China and Taiwan. And it is heartbreaking because my foundation, I mean very briefly, we work right in the front of this because we only concentrate on the major mammals that I paint, like the tiger and the rhino, the major mammals, all on the very brink of extinction.

David Shepherd25:03

And uh so the money we get from our wonderful supporters we spend immediately on supporting the people who are right in the forefront of the war against the poachers,'cause it's poaching that's doing this. But we have to support these guys. I've been out with them myself, and they get shot at by gangs with AK forty sevens.

David Shepherd25:17

So we support them and for example the

Presenter25:19

But the people you finance the

David Shepherd25:21

Are the guys who are actually trying to stop the poaching in Zambia?

Presenter25:23

In Zambia. But they are shot at. Yes, oh, yes. They risk their lives to protect the tiger.

David Shepherd25:25

They respect the

David Shepherd25:27

I it's not confirmed yet, but my Melanie, who runs my foundation, tells me that only recently she's heard that fifteen game rangers in Zambia have been killed by poachers in the last matter of months, or weeks probably, all in one go, I think. Fifteen of'em. Why should they do it?

David Shepherd25:40

And in Siberia, you see, we're trying to save the last Siberian tigers. They're down to about three hundred and fifty. And there are twenty brave Russians trying to save these animals in the remotest parts of eastern Siberia. One guy's had his wife murdered already, because they're in the way, you see, between the tigers.

Presenter25:54

So it's a true mafia.

David Shepherd25:55

It it's mafia, mafia, mafia level, it is, it's war. And because I'm so passionate about this, I kn I became a conservationist that moment when I saw those dead zebra.

Presenter26:04

Next piece of music.

David Shepherd26:06

Well, Glemiller

David Shepherd26:08

Uh one of our dearest friends was dear old Jimmy Stewart. What a man We adored him. Lovely, lovely man. We got to know him'cause uh we met Gloria Stewart. I was out at Cape Kennedy watching an Apollo launch and I knew that Gloria, his darling wife they're both dead now um uh was a director of San Diego Zoo. So she said, Would you like to meet Jimmy?

David Shepherd26:27

Well, I'm a Glenmiller nut and we became friends from that moment. So I and it reminds me of Steam Railways, of course, too. So I have Glenmiller playing Tuxedo Junction.

Presenter26:59

That was nineteen forty, and Glen Miller and his band playing Tuxedo Junction.

Presenter27:04

Tell me, David, why do you think that the art establishment is so sniffy about your work?

Presenter27:09

It's funny, isn't it? It's as if they looked down on you as as an animal lover who's learned to paint or something. They're frightfully dismissive of it.

David Shepherd27:16

I think it goes deeper than that. I paint for the public. I'm popular with the public, and that condemns me in the eyes of the art uh art establishment. I have nothing to do with the art establishment at all. I mean, it's too long to say, but I tri I got a picture in the Royal Academy, and that's a joke, in my opinion, the summer exhibition of the Royal Academy. So not um how you paint, it's just a question of whether an academician who's probably well past his sell-by date anyway, opens his eyes as my painting's going past with about twenty thousand others, and he says we'll have it in, and that's much more to the story than that too.

David Shepherd27:43

Oh, I'm controversial. But I all my friends are engine drivers and farm firemen and farmers and normal people.

Presenter27:48

Yes, but why would the artists I mean, some critics go out of their way, don't they, to write whole articles about your work and to say, you know, this is not odd. He has sanitized a wild animal so that we can hang it on our drawing room wall and there is no violence, there is no truth, and all that sort of stuff. Why do they bother to to say that, do you believe?

Speaker 227:58

Uh

David Shepherd28:01

Yeah.

David Shepherd28:08

Well, they're always I don't know, Sue, they're always trying to analyse my work. And I was on a rather arty programme, I have to say, on the BBC many years ago, and they were they said, why do people like David Chapper's paintings of elephants? They don't like them because they're great art. They like David's pictures of elephants because they love elephants. What does that mean? I mean, I'm every painting that leaves my studio is the best I can do with my heart and soul into it. Forget the money until I'm actually paid. I mean that, really. If I say that to the critics, they say, rubbish, laugh, laugh all the way back to the bank. That's not the point. Robin told me one day he said, If ever by some chance you hit on something which is successful, little knowing that I would do that on Painting Wildlife, which which just came by accident, don't ever fall to the temptation of churning out elephants with black skies and yellow glass, like the one in Boots. I could do that. I'd be a mega millionaire now, but I wouldn't be worth a sausage. And I want to go on striving for better quality of my paintings until I die of old age, people wanting my pictures and pouring my heart and soul into every picture I do.

Presenter29:04

It obviously annoys you that they are like they are about you.

David Shepherd29:07

It doesn't actually.

Presenter29:08

Isn't it?

David Shepherd29:08

No. No, no. I don't I don't stop to worry about it.

Presenter29:08

Does it hurt you?

David Shepherd29:12

I'm doing my best and selling my work and earning a good living. And doing my best being like that. And the public bug it, yes. And the public are arbiters of taste. Why shouldn't they be? It's this awful feeling that the public oh, how can the public judge good art? Absolute nonsense, Dr. Mark.

Presenter29:16

Doing bad best things like that.

Speaker 229:17

Uh Uh

Presenter29:25

Record number seven.

David Shepherd29:27

Well, I'm a f uh f um tremendously patriotic and love England. I wouldn't live anywhere else. And you know, when you've chose eight records it's so difficult because there are a hundred and eight I want to choose and I can't leave Elgar out because Sir Edward, what a patriot. Wonderful music. But I'm not, not not going to choose Nimrod because everybody does. I've chosen the most lovely piece from his Elgar's Light of Life.

Presenter30:46

The Meditation from Elgar's Light of Life, opus twenty nine, performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Sir Adrian Bolt.

Presenter30:53

You are, as you say, David, one of life's lucky people. You spend your life doing what you love. You've been married to the same woman for forty two years. You've got four daughters, even more grandchildren. They're all kind of blonde and healthy and beautiful

David Shepherd31:05

Beautiful and

Presenter31:07

I is it as delicate it sounds? Does anything ever go wrong for you?

David Shepherd31:10

I lead a very regular life. I I bore the pants off for my friends and at home because I stop exactly at one o'clock for lunch and if it isn't really I get crossed.

Presenter31:17

So you're quite you're quite aware of that. Oh god.

David Shepherd31:17

So I'm temperamental. Oh God. Yes, you asked my kids.

Presenter31:21

Yeah, you like it like you like it. It's got to be as you want it to be.

David Shepherd31:24

Yes, and if a painting goes badly, which they often do, I'm and Robin, you've seen again taught me, if you've got to fight a painting, if it's going badly, don't just chuck it in the attic, fight it until you win, because otherwise you're wasting time in paint. And when my kids were tiny at little schooling, Golluming, they used to come with their friends to lunch and they used to say to their friends, Daddy's in a foul mood, he won't say a word. Which may surprise you, because I do go through times when I don't say anything. Uh, because you withdraw into yourself. I think anybody creative, surely, and uh uh isn't this true, is bound to be like that to some degree and my wife takes all the knocks.

Presenter31:25

At the right time.

Presenter31:27

Yeah.

Presenter31:31

Yeah, see

Presenter31:52

Yeah.

David Shepherd31:52

That's why she's a blooming saint.

Presenter31:57

So, you alone on a desert island? I mean, this is an existence that will find you out, really, isn't it? It'll kill me.

David Shepherd32:02

It'll kill me.

David Shepherd32:03

I I I don't know what I do because I'm a sloppy old thing and I if I'm away from Avril my wife for more than a day I'm miserable'cause I love her so much and you know, people don't perhaps say that very often these days, but I am sloppy.

Presenter32:15

Last record.

David Shepherd32:16

Well, I think everything I've said on the programme fits the last piece of music,'cause I'm so emotional and I play certain bits of music in my studio when I can't actually paint. I sit da I stand up and r and conduct, no in the fear that somebody's going to catch me. Stupid, isn't it? No, it isn't. And Marla, I just claps in a heap when I hear this. The end of Marla's Eighth Symphony sums up everything, and all my feelings.

Presenter33:34

The end of Mahler's Symphony No. Eight, performed by the Tiffin Schoolboys Choir, with the London Philharmonic Choir and Orchestra, conducted by Klaus Tenstedt. Now, if you could only take one of those eight, which one would it be, David? Oh, what a

David Shepherd33:47

Task. I mean, I want all of them'cause they remind me of aspects of my life. Um, I I I oh, it's either Al Boli or'cause it reminds me of wife or Marlowe but I think I've got to have Marlowe.

Presenter33:56

Hmm.

David Shepherd33:57

Yeah.

Presenter33:57

What about your book?

David Shepherd33:59

Well, I'm a lousy reader. I'm a terrible reader. I only I'm terribly sort of restricted to what my reader is.

Presenter34:04

You don't mean you can't read, you mean you don't read.

David Shepherd34:07

World War II wildlife and steam trains, which is a bit limited, and I thought about this a lot and I think I'm going to have something which takes me back to my childhood. Can I have all the Beatrix Potters?

Presenter34:15

Of course. And what actually you're not supposed to have collections, but they're very slim volumes. Yes, we'll find them anywhere. And your luxury.

David Shepherd34:19

Very slim volumes.

David Shepherd34:22

And the

David Shepherd34:23

Well my luxury, um I believe you can get sort of hand wound up radios now. So hopefully the guys invented them can also invent a hand wound up um video recorder. So can I take it please? Well somebody'll invent it. Uh I want This is your life because I was lucky enough to go on the programme and that will remind me of all my family, my children, visually, with my wife as well and remind me of everything.

Presenter34:27

Hmm.

Presenter34:43

You want your VHS.

David Shepherd34:45

Yes, it reminds me of everything that count uh that is important to me.

Presenter34:48

David Shepherd, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert islanders.

David Shepherd34:51

It's been such fun.

Speaker 335:00

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