Ian McEwan

Speaker 40:00

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 40:08

The programme was originally broadcast in the year two thousand, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:29

My Castaway this week is a writer. Two years ago he won the Booker Prize for his novel Amsterdam. It was nearly thirty years ago that he began the journey to such success as the first student of the creative writing course set up by Malcolm Bradbury and Angus Wilson at the University of East Anglia.

Presenter0:46

In a string of acclaimed novels, The Cement Garden, The Child in Time, and Black Dogs among them, he's demonstrated a wonderful gift for telling imaginative and elegantly written stories. I love the solitude, the sheer pleasure of writing, he said, the secrecy, the secret excitement. He is Ian MacEwan

Presenter1:05

Writing is a solitary business, Ian. Is it still exciting? Does it go on being exciting?

Ian McEwan1:10

Well, there are good days and bad days, obviously, but yes, in fact I'd have to say that it's it gets better.

Ian McEwan1:16

I think when I started I used to sweat for so long over one sentence that I sometimes rather denied myself the pleasure.

Ian McEwan1:23

Uh but yes I do find when things go well, when things are unwinding.

Presenter1:27

Um

Ian McEwan1:28

and you're giving yourself surprises day by day that it isn't extraordinary.

Presenter1:32

But surely less secret these days. Once you win the booker, you know, your your life is kind of up for grabs, isn't it?

Ian McEwan1:37

Well, I've got very good at saying no.

Ian McEwan1:40

Like most writers I kept.

Ian McEwan1:42

I'm quite canny at protecting my solitude.

Presenter1:44

But you are less secret. You read, I think, a whole chunk of your work in progress at Tay On Wai, the literary festival, last year.

Ian McEwan1:51

Yes, this is overweening confidence. Actually, I've always done that. It it's a way of trying something out just to be a little bit more.

Presenter1:56

But it seemed to me in the past you've been frightened that if you talked about what you were writing too much, you know, it would all disappear, fly away.

Ian McEwan2:03

I think I even at Hay on Why when I was after I'd read that piece, I wasn't going to talk too much ever about what I was intending to do, because I still wasn't entirely sure. But once something is down, at least in a first or even a third draft, then you can try it out, just see how it sounds.

Presenter2:18

But I've seen you quoted as saying that at any one time there are kind of ten or fifteen ideas floating around and you simply have to decide whether you want to spend the next twelve or fifteen months working with this, living with this idea.

Ian McEwan2:29

No, it's a bit like getting married. Except, you know, it's only two or three years, it's not so bad. You've got to hunker down and s decide whether this has the right kind of urgency, and and it's it's not really a rational decision.

Presenter2:42

But is it all out there? I know Martin Amis has said almost as if he's a medium, that there are the books waiting for him to write down. I mean, is it like that for you, or are you hearing individual voices? Wh how do you get it?

Ian McEwan2:53

Patience and luck and turning up at your desk every morning.

Ian McEwan2:59

Even when nothing is going on. You've got to turn up. If you're not there, nothing will happen.

Presenter3:03

Amos, of course, came from an extraordinarily literary household. You didn't at all. There is nothing in your background that is literary, is there?

Ian McEwan3:12

No, quite the opposite, um which also had a useful force for me. My parents both left school around about the age of fourteen. They came from fairly uh poor families, couldn't afford to have uh children um not at work after the age of fourteen. But it did give them a a great respect for education. And although there weren't books in the house, we did have weekly journeys to the

Ian McEwan3:35

to the local library. So there'll always be six books in the house, two each.

Presenter3:39

Tell me about your first record.

Ian McEwan3:40

Well, as a castaway I'm sure the first thing I'd miss would be city life, and so um I'd uh keep the memories alive with something that lives between Swing and Bebop but of Lester Young.

Speaker 44:01

Bada da da da da da da.

Speaker 44:04

And uh,

Speaker 44:09

Yeah.

Speaker 44:40

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 44:41

Don't be dumb, all I love, and be dumb, all I love.

Presenter4:54

Lester Young, playing Lester Leaps In, and that was recorded in Los Angeles in nineteen forty six. You were brought up, Ian McEwan, you said, in an atmosphere in which I quote, you didn't speak up and you didn't speak your mind. Why not?

Ian McEwan5:09

Well, I I rather think children growing up in the fifties didn't. Um children and adults lived in separate nations, separate worlds. Um sometimes I'm

Ian McEwan5:18

Engaged in conversations with my children, especially when they were younger, and uh I'm very aware that this kind of thing didn't go on.

Ian McEwan5:26

In my family or in the families of my friends.

Presenter5:31

But your father was a f was a company sergeant major. I mean, were you were you frightened of him or intimidated by him?

Ian McEwan5:31

Father was earfty.

Ian McEwan5:35

I was rather frightened of him, yet he was the most he was a very kindly, very loving father. But

Ian McEwan5:42

The soldiers that he trained really feared him, so I think I had a reasonable excuse at the age of two or three to go scuttling behind the sofa when he appeared at week ends.

Presenter5:53

So he only appeared at weekend city.

Ian McEwan5:55

This is my memory, and I think it's actually the case that uh during the week I had my mother all to myself and then Friday evening

Ian McEwan6:03

He would arrive, very loud voice. He'd always be banging his hands together as if that would entertain me.

Ian McEwan6:08

and the house would fill with cigarette smoke.

Ian McEwan6:11

and my trieste with my mother would temporarily come to a halt, and I'm reputed to have said

Ian McEwan6:17

Mummy, send that man away.

Ian McEwan6:20

And actually uh she did. She sent him off every Monday morning and I had her all to myself again.

Presenter6:24

And that smell of cigarette smoke still evokes all that, doesn't it?

Ian McEwan6:29

What it meant was that later on at boarding school all the most interesting people went behind the bushes to smoke. And I used to go with them because that's where the best conversations were to be had. But I couldn't bear to smoke cigarettes. Somehow

Ian McEwan6:44

The uh the withdrawal of love, perhaps, and tobacco were intimately connected, and uh so it did me some service.

Presenter6:51

You were sent to lots of different schools because you were an army family, Aldershot, Singapore, Tripoli. There's a scene in your novel, The Child in Time, in which the main character is a boy in an aeroplane wiping away tears as he waves to his parents, but he's kind of crying, not waving, and they mistake that thing. Is that you?

Ian McEwan7:10

A rare autobiographical moment in in in a novel of mine, but this was me being put on a DC three in Libya in nineteen fifty nine uh to go off to boarding school in Suffolk. And uh

Ian McEwan7:26

It was a a very terrible moment, really.

Ian McEwan7:30

And the beginning of a rather low time in my life, I think, um, swapping this

Ian McEwan7:36

Extraordinary sunlit time in in North Africa.

Ian McEwan7:41

For the rigours of boarding schools. And although the school I went to was actually.

Ian McEwan7:47

quite pleasant by the standards of most public schools. Uh and this was a state boarding school. Uh still it was, you know, thirty boys to a room, no privacy.

Presenter7:55

Very important too that it was a state boarding school, I I think

Ian McEwan7:58

Very much so. The boys were all uh kids mostly from central London, L C C area, mostly from what were then called broken homes.

Ian McEwan8:06

They are very bright.

Ian McEwan8:08

They were grammar school kids who would not otherwise have got this chance.

Ian McEwan8:12

and quite baffled by their surroundings.

Speaker 48:14

Uh

Ian McEwan8:15

I was homesick, although I don't think I cried much, but I just sort of shrank into myself.

Ian McEwan8:20

And uh my main impression of that first term at boarding school.

Ian McEwan8:26

was that uh two or three times a week in music lessons we would all be required to sing what I thought were school songs.

Ian McEwan8:33

And um

Ian McEwan8:35

This really is my memory for my second choice of record. We sang all the way through Mozart's Magic Flute because everyone was involved in putting it on at the end of term. I had no idea it was Mozart. I just thought these were school songs.

Ian McEwan8:50

So this piece of music you have to imagine thirty

Ian McEwan8:52

Rather terrified eleven year olds far from home.

Ian McEwan8:56

Belting it out as if it was a hymn by Wesley.

Speaker 19:10

Of Jacob

Speaker 19:18

Yeah.

Speaker 19:22

Ernst Ward.

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Here and take time for the nature.

Speaker 19:32

Oh take time for a grief.

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Need it the side as well.

Speaker 49:45

I am

Speaker 49:47

It's a good time.

Presenter9:59

Pilar, Lorengar, and Hermann pray as Pamina and Papageno singing All Men Who Can Feel Love from Mozart's Magic Flute with the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Sir George Schulte. What words did you sing to it then, Ian as boys?

Ian McEwan10:11

We sang Man and Wife and Wife and Man Together make a godly span and

Ian McEwan10:19

In my early twenties I went to hear the magic flute um

Ian McEwan10:22

I think at Covent Garden, and as soon as I heard the two fat chords that announced the overture,

Ian McEwan10:29

I just burst into tears.

Presenter10:31

You were apparently cripplingly shy at this school. You you were very silent and very mediocre in class.

Ian McEwan10:38

I was a survivor. It was quite a rough school.

Ian McEwan10:42

Um and the boys were pretty tough, but no one ever touched me.

Ian McEwan10:47

No one laid a finger on me.

Ian McEwan10:48

'Cause I was

Ian McEwan10:50

Too quiet.

Ian McEwan10:51

They're frightened to bully you. Yes, and I hardly adopted this as a tactic, but.

Presenter10:52

I'm frightened to bully you.

Ian McEwan10:56

Somehow my silence and my pallor I was very, very pale.

Ian McEwan11:00

Um

Ian McEwan11:01

It seemed to keep people away. I think they felt that um bad luck might follow.

Presenter11:07

So what happened? When did the caterpillar become a butterfly?

Ian McEwan11:11

That's a very nice way to put it.

Ian McEwan11:13

about the age of sixteen, although I don't think I resembled much butterfly at that point.

Ian McEwan11:18

uh what with acne and so on. But um I'm one of those writers who has an English master in his past and uh

Ian McEwan11:27

Neil Clayton was my English teacher and uh

Ian McEwan11:31

He somehow informed me that I might be clever.

Ian McEwan11:34

And round about that same time that huge hormone rush.

Ian McEwan11:37

kindled in me an awareness of the beauty of the countryside I was in. This was the Suffolk-Essex border on the estuary of the River Orwell.

Ian McEwan11:46

I loved poetry and music. All they all came rushing in.

Ian McEwan11:50

No girls around, so fantastically sublimated. Long walks in the countryside, long

Ian McEwan11:56

Discussions about um

Ian McEwan11:59

The poetry mostly of the early Romantics, Wordsworth and Keats, and then music.

Presenter12:05

And what was your ambition? What did you think you wanted to be?

Ian McEwan12:08

Well, part of the business of falling in love with English literature.

Ian McEwan12:12

and falling under the spell of my English teacher, who himself was something of a leversite.

Ian McEwan12:18

was to feel that there was a a priesthood waiting for me, and that the only worth while thing to do in life was to become a don or teacher of literature somewhere.

Ian McEwan12:28

This rubbed rather awkwardly against my passion for rock and roll. I didn't know how to.

Ian McEwan12:35

Fit them together.

Presenter12:37

Tell me about record number three.

Ian McEwan12:39

Well, these boys at Wolverstone Hall were very, very savvy about music, and long before.

Ian McEwan12:47

The Beatles and the Rolling Stones were making their cover versions of American blues and R and B songs. They were playing this kind of music, Chicago blues. So this is what would echo round the fourth form common room.

Speaker 413:02

Sweet home Chicago

Speaker 413:07

Let's take a walk down.

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Haven't lost.

Speaker 413:11

I got something that I wanna you to do. Groundhead, baby.

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Baby, don't you wanna go?

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Magic the same old way, yeah.

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Sweet home, Chicago!

Speaker 413:29

All that

Presenter13:31

Freddie King and Sweet Home, Chicago. You didn't get into Cambridge, which is what you'd really wanted to do in. You you read English at Sussex instead, decided you wanted to be a writer, and applied to the University of East Anglia to this

Presenter13:44

Creative writing course, which was brand new. You were the first student. In fact, you were the only student, weren't you?

Ian McEwan13:49

The course had closed down because no one had applied, and it wasn't even a course really, it was

Ian McEwan13:55

Largely an MA in literature and literary theory and comparative literature.

Presenter13:59

But you did write for Malcolm Bradwin, Angus Wilson and hand them bits of

Ian McEwan14:00

Dear

Ian McEwan14:03

It was the luckiest move of my life.

Ian McEwan14:06

I was rather at a loss at the end of my uh undergraduate years at Sussex.

Ian McEwan14:12

And I found what I wanted to do and what I wanted to be. And uh it was

Ian McEwan14:19

Exciting to move to a city I didn't know, to take a room not quite a garret, but still, you know, a little room, white walls.

Ian McEwan14:26

and give over a whole year to writing short stories.

Presenter14:30

So a great sense of freedom, really, because you've been on very prescribed lines before on this, haven't you?

Ian McEwan14:34

Yes, absolutely.

Ian McEwan14:36

Fortunately this course required you to do a lot of reading in contemporary American writing. So this was my first brush with writers like Updyke, Philip Roth, Mailer, Bellow.

Ian McEwan14:50

I was very struck by the freedom.

Ian McEwan14:53

of American writing.

Presenter14:54

Because before that you'd been doing the the English canon, had you done?

Ian McEwan14:57

Yes, but English contemporary writing seemed um to me then um rather contained and and rather overstuffed with class awareness and um the niceties of of of social mobility.

Presenter15:12

So what was this this was Iris Murdoch, Kingsley Amis.

Ian McEwan15:16

Yes, I mean they had

Ian McEwan15:17

Obviously, all kinds of other strengths, but to me then I wanted brighter colours.

Presenter15:23

But they're also writing about a world that you wouldn't have known about.

Ian McEwan15:25

Absolutely.

Presenter15:26

So that kind of social documentary, the niceties, the the furniture, the the vases, the

Ian McEwan15:27

To the night

Ian McEwan15:30

I didn't know the names of anything, and I'd never been anywhere, and I didn't know a thing about life. So, uh obviously you have to sort of invent yourself in a in a savage way.

Presenter15:41

You're quite right. You say, you know, you therefore invented something savage for yourself, because it was particularly savage, wasn't it? Those short stories it got you an early reputation for the macabre, for the the teenage boy who rapes his sister, the the person who keeps a pickle penis on his desk. Where did all that come from?

Ian McEwan16:01

I think i I'd been this rather quiet, bottled-up person and uh

Ian McEwan16:06

It it it's odd to use a word like g joyous, but um w when I

Ian McEwan16:13

set about writing these stories.

Ian McEwan16:16

I had no awareness of a reader apart from either Angus Wilson or Malcolm Bradbury, and they never put any constraints upon me at all. No one ever said to me in that year, What shocking stories? or How macabre or how weird or where is this all coming from? They said, When can we have the next one? It was all they said, or like this, didn't like that.

Presenter16:32

What did they say to you?

Ian McEwan16:38

I thought writing as I saw it sort of late in the century, nineteen seventy, um all the battles over what could and could not be said in contemporary literature had been fought and and won.

Ian McEwan16:50

by Joyce by the Lady Chatterley trial.

Ian McEwan16:55

The naked lunch.

Ian McEwan16:56

it it was possible to say anything and write anything and go anywhere in your mind. And I went into some very strange places, but I thought I was free to imagine, and I imagined darkly, perhaps because uh I didn't see enough of it around me in in the kind of writing that was being published in in Britain at that time, and yet I did see it in in burrows.

Presenter17:20

Tell me about your next record.

Ian McEwan17:23

In the early seventies I lived with Elaine Streeter, who was a marvellous pianist, and once she took me upstairs to the practice rooms in the Wigmore Hall, and she played to me the aria from the Goldberg variations, and from that time on I've always adored this music.

Presenter18:43

Gustav Leonhardt playing the aria from Bach's Goldberg variations.

Presenter18:47

Um the first of those short stories were published in nineteen seventy five, and indeed they did earn you this souprique Ian Macabre. But it wasn't the end of dark subject matter, was it? Because then when you were, I think, nearly thirty, you published The Cement Garden, your first novel. That, too, was pretty shocking about some children who bury their mother in a cellar and live a sordid and unsupervised life.

Presenter19:11

That began as a story about your own family, didn't it?

Ian McEwan19:15

Yes, I suppose, um

Ian McEwan19:17

As a sort of only child, because my brother and sister were older than me and left home, I'd always wanted to live a kind of sordid and unsupervised life. I mean, what child wouldn't? I was asked by Ian Hamilton, who was editing the uh new review at the time, if I would write a piece about my family. It was an occasional series they were running.

Ian McEwan19:37

And I I started, but I I'm just not a journalist at heart and I can't really write the facts. And I met him in the Pillars of Hercules a few weeks later and said, I'm having such difficulty with this uh piece, I c I don't know really what to write about my parents and he said, Well, just make it up.

Ian McEwan19:53

And so I devised this completely other family.

Ian McEwan19:57

And it did have the thing that I did miss as a child, which was brothers and sisters. And these children are thrown together. They know that if

Ian McEwan20:06

They announce to the outside world that their mother is dead, that they'll be taken into care. So, simply and quite logically, I thought, to avoid that, they put the body in the in the cellar and cover it with cement. And then, of course, all sorts of things go wrong.

Presenter20:23

Death is something that is it does recur. I mean, subsequent novels have been less dark, but nevertheless, death is quite often there, it seems to me. I mean, it's it's Amsterdam opens with the funeral and and and the the theme of euthanasia, of course. Uh Enduring Love opens with the accidental death in the balloon and in the innocent, of course, the man goes to Berlin and ends up murdering somebody and dismembering a body. Do does death preoccupy you in life?

Ian McEwan20:49

Well, oddly enough, only periodically. I mean, um

Ian McEwan20:54

I suppose um

Ian McEwan20:57

I remember thinking about death a lot as a child, when I was seven, eight, nine.

Presenter21:01

Fearing it or

Ian McEwan21:01

Fearing it, wondering at it, how people could stop. And I thought a great deal about.

Ian McEwan21:07

The afterlife and whether it existed.

Ian McEwan21:10

Um even then I thought it was pretty improbable. And I remember in my late teens having another big episode.

Ian McEwan21:17

And again, round about the time of turning thirty.

Presenter21:21

And now

Ian McEwan21:21

At the moment it seems to have receded.

Ian McEwan21:24

But, um, you know, I'm sure that um

Ian McEwan21:28

It'll be back.

Presenter21:30

Pickle number 5.

Ian McEwan21:31

Well this next record uh combines what I think is.

Ian McEwan21:35

Something unique in my musical experience and taste, and that is.

Ian McEwan21:40

Sweetness and profundity.

Ian McEwan21:43

in equal measure.

Presenter22:44

Vladimir Ashkenazi, Pinkas Zuckerman, and Lynn Harrell playing part of the Andante con motto from Schubert's trio in E flat major for piano, violin, and cello.

Presenter22:54

And then, Ian McEwen, if we're talking about themes in your novels, there are relationships at at the heart of most of them. You write about them very explicitly, not not necessarily s sexually explicit, but they're very, very close, they're very warm, they're very tender.

Ian McEwan23:10

Yes, the sexual always has to uh uh spill out if it's going to have any depth into not only the emotional, but into

Presenter23:15

But

Ian McEwan23:18

things like curiosity and and and intellectual delight.

Ian McEwan23:22

Um

Ian McEwan23:23

So yes, I mean that that that's central. I suppose also because I feel it's difficult um

Ian McEwan23:29

It it also comes under threat in my novels, I suppose, too, that I want to engage the reader with a with the sense of the precariousness of love.

Presenter23:40

Yes, not always taking it for granted.

Ian McEwan23:41

My father uh had a long illness. He was

Ian McEwan23:46

I had emphysema and

Ian McEwan23:49

Uh he was a big man.

Ian McEwan23:51

always you know strong as an ox, never had a day off work in fifty years in the army. He was proud of telling people. So he was a very cantankerous invalid, and watching my mother, who's very small and frail, takes a size six coat.

Ian McEwan24:07

Look after him.

Ian McEwan24:09

It really was a a lesson in love.

Ian McEwan24:12

Both my parents were.

Ian McEwan24:15

gifted lovers, I would say. I mean very they they loved me um and um

Ian McEwan24:22

I suppose part of growing older and finding your individuality is to distance yourself from your parents, find what you don't like about them or what oppresses you.

Ian McEwan24:35

But as more time passes, and especially if you become a parent yourself.

Ian McEwan24:41

You start to see it all again in different terms.

Ian McEwan24:44

And I think

Ian McEwan24:47

The best thing you can do for a child, forget the education or the motorized scooter.

Ian McEwan24:54

Is to give them a gift of love. And it's not only.

Ian McEwan25:00

being able to love, but to accept love too.

Presenter25:03

So although you've you know, you denied earlier on, I suppose, that there was much of you in your nozzle, there are all sorts of bits and pieces of you mirrored all over the place in your work, aren't there?

Ian McEwan25:13

Someone said, I think it might have been King's Lamis, that you can't write two hundred words of prose in a novel without giving something of yourself away, and I suppose that is true.

Ian McEwan25:25

I've always been a little defensive because I want to say to people, Well, I didn't throw girls into canals, I didn't rape my sister, but yes, there are bits of me in my books.

Presenter25:35

But Amsterdam, it has to be said, the Booker Prize winner of last year, does strike one as being quite different from the novels that went before, not least because in that one you don't have the kind of lower middle class, which is something that you've often said that you you were born of, protagonist any more. It's all much it's much more sophisticated. You know, they're they're politicians, they're opinion formers, they're musicians, they're expensive bottles of wine and smart London houses. It this is you now, is it?

Ian McEwan26:06

I wonder if if this I've ended up writing

Ian McEwan26:09

Just the novel that my 22-year-old self wanted to throw out the window.

Presenter26:14

For some slide

Ian McEwan26:16

But no, actually, even even when I was twenty-two, I was reading the novels of Evelyn War, especially the early novels, Vile Bodies.

Ian McEwan26:24

And I've always wanted to.

Ian McEwan26:26

Do something in that vein. Um the English comic novel has a a long and honourable tradition.

Presenter26:33

Click with number six.

Ian McEwan26:36

One of the uh

Ian McEwan26:39

recurrent pleasures of my life is t um to be

Ian McEwan26:43

In the United States, on the open road, driving.

Ian McEwan26:47

I drove across in the late seventies on my own in one of those cars that you deliver, and I've done it at various points since. And the last time I did it.

Ian McEwan26:55

I did it with my wife Annalina, and we went looking for Cajun music. We drove all over Louisiana, finding remote dance houses and roadhouses.

Speaker 127:01

No.

Ian McEwan27:05

And uh

Ian McEwan27:07

This is uh D. L. Menard playing the uh The Black Door.

Presenter27:42

DL Menard playing The Black Door. Um you haven't strangely had a lot of luck translating your stories onto the big screen, have you, Ian? What's gone wrong? Fell out with Berta Lucci, everybody makes it too sugary

Ian McEwan27:54

To sugar.

Ian McEwan27:55

Oh, I dunno. I I think I've just had the standard novelist's experience of of Hollywood. My first experience was with Richard Eyre making the Ploughman's Lunch, and it was so s sweetly uncomplicated.

Ian McEwan28:07

And I thought, well, what a life I could write novels and then

Ian McEwan28:11

In between each novel I could do this.

Presenter28:13

Because it's so much easier.

Ian McEwan28:15

Well, it was such fun. I mean, to be away on, um, location.

Ian McEwan28:19

Surrounded by fabulously competent people, you know all taking fierce pride in their ability to do something very quickly.

Ian McEwan28:27

And that

Ian McEwan28:28

Camaraderie, too, of location shooting, and the panic of the ticking clock and things going wrong, but you know, somehow being solved. All that was marvellous for someone who spends his time locked up with ghosts in an empty room.

Presenter28:43

But somehow it's all turned sour since then.

Ian McEwan28:46

I'd say sour, but I've just got weary. You're going into a sulk, is the truth. I am sulking. I I wrote two scripts which I think were quite good actually.

Presenter28:49

You're going into a sulk is the joke.

Presenter28:54

Good.

Ian McEwan28:55

In the early 90s and I thought, well, if if they're not made, I'm not going to write another one.

Ian McEwan29:02

In fact, I'll sit on my hands until they are.

Ian McEwan29:05

Uh I know that there's a life to be made, um, writing screenplays that never get done, but

Ian McEwan29:13

That's not for me.

Presenter29:13

But you do make it sound as if it's a lot easier than writing a novel to write a screenplay. In fact, I think you said a screenplay is not a form in itself.

Ian McEwan29:21

No, it's a set of instructions. It's a bit like uh a recipe.

Ian McEwan29:25

And you can delude yourself. You can say long shot, two characters appear over the hill, the air is warped by the rising heat.

Ian McEwan29:34

Well, you know, it's never going to get there on the screen because too many people intervene. Not only the director, but the D P, the actors. They say, I don't want to come over the hill and the D P says, I don't want a long shot. And the special effects say, We haven't got a heat walk machine. I think the lesson I I should learn from this is

Ian McEwan29:53

Okay.

Ian McEwan29:54

If you're going to make a movie, you should make it with a low budget, low budgets enforce good behaviour.

Presenter30:01

What's the next novel about?

Ian McEwan30:04

Ah well, it's always very difficult to talk about that. But I think my next novel is about atonement.

Ian McEwan30:09

It's about a deed committed in the past.

Ian McEwan30:12

and how it can be put right.

Presenter30:14

And is it coming easily and well and fast?

Ian McEwan30:18

For me at the moment a good day is two or three hundred words.

Presenter30:21

And do you then rewrite that? Do you hone it? Do you go back over it? Or do you just write it once all the way through?

Ian McEwan30:28

I go back all the time, every day, every week, and then they I get to the stage w when I won't look at it again, because you need the surprise, you need the distance of time.

Ian McEwan30:41

To look back and see it through another set of eyes.

Presenter30:46

And who finally says who is there anyone whom you give this manuscript to then and say, before I go any further, tell me what you think of this?

Ian McEwan30:55

I do have a uh a l l coterie of friends in Oxford uh and I give them the uh finished draft in TypeScript and they are friends

Ian McEwan31:06

who are permitted to be as brutal as they like.

Speaker 431:10

Boom.

Ian McEwan31:10

That's very useful because I think there's a danger for writers as they get older and as their reputations solidify that publishers won't tell them.

Ian McEwan31:20

If they have any serious qualms.

Ian McEwan31:22

I think you do need sceptical friends to give you the benefit of a truthful opinion.

Presenter31:29

You need very trustworthy friends as well, really, of course.

Ian McEwan31:32

Absolutely.

Ian McEwan31:34

The first time I tried this, years ago, a friend of mine said, Listen, I think this novel is absolutely terrible. I think you should put it in a drawer and forget about it. And I didn't speak to him for eighteen months. I hadn't learnt the rules of the game. If you give someone your novel in TypeScript, you've got to allow them to say that. Now I k now I could take it.

Presenter31:52

Bet you couldn't. Tell me about record number seven.

Ian McEwan31:56

Van Morrison has been a real source of delight to me over the last ten years.

Ian McEwan32:02

He really comes to me through my very close hiking friend, companion, neuroscientist, Ray Dolan.

Ian McEwan32:09

One of the great things about Van Morrison is he he does give a lot of local concerts. He'll play in a tent, he'll do Chipping Norton, he'll do Chipping Camden and or Ross on Y. And every now and then he comes through Oxford.

Speaker 432:33

Don't change the baby, I need your help.

Speaker 432:41

You're a friend of mine now. Real, real gone.

Speaker 432:47

Burn it!

Presenter32:52

Van Morrison and Real Real Gone. How do you imagine your desert island to be, Ian?

Ian McEwan32:58

Well, I hope it'll be big enough for me to be able to go on some serious hikes because um walking has been one of my favourite pastimes over the years. And although I do other kinds of sport like um squash and uh skiing and so on, I I think as long as I can just put one foot in front of the other in my seventies and eighties and get out on the fells, uh I'll be very, very happy. So um I'd like a desert island with a decent mountain range, preferably a ridge walk.

Presenter33:30

And obviously you miss people, um but other than them

Presenter33:34

What do you feel you would miss most about the life that you inhabit? Is there anything?

Ian McEwan33:40

Well, I I do like towns and cities and I certainly would would miss, you know, those things, restaurants.

Ian McEwan33:50

Buses, taxis.

Ian McEwan33:53

Busyness

Ian McEwan33:54

Um I think uh too much solitude, too much natural beauty could drive you completely crazy.

Presenter34:01

Last record.

Ian McEwan34:02

A couple of years ago

Ian McEwan34:04

Uh I went wi with Annalina to see um

Ian McEwan34:07

Donizetti's The Elixir of Love at the ENO and it was such an extraordinary and witty transplantation of um an a nineteenth century opera to a Communist state somewhere in Southern Europe.

Ian McEwan34:24

And this is an ara from it, Une Fotiba Lachrima.

Ian McEwan34:28

Both beautiful but rather self-mocking.

Speaker 434:32

Not K.

Speaker 434:42

Shut up!

Speaker 434:44

Fossy World Moon.

Speaker 434:48

Yeah.

Speaker 434:50

Your Lord Hill

Speaker 434:55

Dom Kia

Speaker 435:06

People more rain.

Presenter35:32

Joerste Wienberg singing Una Fortiva Lacrima from Donizetti's L'Elizia damour with the orchestra and chorus of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino under Gabriella Ferro.

Presenter35:43

If you could only take one of those eight records, Ian, which one would you take?

Ian McEwan35:47

I think I'd take the Goldberg variations.

Presenter35:50

What about your book as well as the Bible and Shakespeare?

Ian McEwan35:53

I would take Joyce's Ulysses.

Ian McEwan35:56

I think what I'd miss on a desert island would be ordinary life, and I can think of no other book in which daily life, ordinary life and and poetry meet in in such a sort of effortless fusion. So

Ian McEwan36:11

Um

Ian McEwan36:12

Turning the pages of that, it doesn't have to be read sequentially.

Ian McEwan36:16

I think that would keep me company.

Presenter36:18

And your luxury.

Ian McEwan36:20

Well, I think uh if you grant me two or three mountains, then I would like a pair of uh Italian hand stitched leather hiking boots to get me up on to those ridge walks.

Presenter36:31

Ian McEwan, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Ian McEwan36:34

Thank you.

Speaker 436:42

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