George MacDonald Fraser

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 two thousand and one, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:31

My castaway this week is a writer. Thirty-five years ago, he had a brilliant idea. He would write a book about the famous bully in the classic Victorian novel Tom Brown's School Days. In the event, he wrote not just one, but eleven, each recounting the adventures of the notorious CAD as he fought and whored his way through the Opium Wars, Custer's Last Stand, and the Charge of the Light Brigade. Fiction, of course, but fiction set against historical reality by an author who learned about war with the Border Regiment and the Gordon Highlanders, and storytelling in a successful career in regional journalism. His aim, he says, is to entertain while being true to history, and the devil take the romantics and the political revisionists. He is the creator of the Flashman novels, George MacDonald Fraser. It was a brilliant idea, George, to take Flashman on after his expulsion from rugby in drunken disgrace. Did it come to you in a flash, as it were, or was it a long time in the hatching?

George MacDonald Fraser1:29

I suppose I I read um Tom Brown when I was about eleven or twelve, and even then he stuck in my mind. I thought that's the best character in the book.

Presenter1:38

Oh, that early

George MacDonald Fraser1:39

Yeah.

Presenter1:39

But did you think then one day I'll write him?

George MacDonald Fraser1:41

Alright.

George MacDonald Fraser1:42

No, I I just thought I'm sorry he's gone, because the book gets dull after that. Then when I wanted to write a Victorian novel

Speaker 21:47

Yeah.

George MacDonald Fraser1:50

This one just seemed to to me unnatural. I thought, what happened to Flashman when he left school?

George MacDonald Fraser1:57

Obviously the army. Obviously he went to the bed.

George MacDonald Fraser2:00

And

George MacDonald Fraser2:01

Because we know from Tom Brown when he was expelled, which is the late eighteen thirties, there's the Victorian error just starting up in front of him.

Presenter2:09

all those historical events to pop him into, just just waiting for him really.

George MacDonald Fraser2:11

Okay.

George MacDonald Fraser2:13

That marvellous century.

Presenter2:16

Obviously you spotted that he was box office, as it were. You spotted he was the star. Do you do you think of Thomas Hughes's book, do you think Hughes knew that?

George MacDonald Fraser2:24

Yes, I think he did, and I think that's why he got rid of him. Because he well, let's face it, he was writing a thoroughly model book in the middle of the na nineteenth century.

Presenter2:34

It was kind of treatise against bullying with public spirituality

George MacDonald Fraser2:36

That's right, and Tom Brown is all that is admirable and right.

Presenter2:39

Model.

George MacDonald Fraser2:40

And uh he introduced this this rotter, this cad, this

George MacDonald Fraser2:45

bully and toady and everything that's bad.

George MacDonald Fraser2:48

And I think

George MacDonald Fraser2:49

realized that he was taking over the story. I mean, he dismisses Flashman in a rather artificial way. He suddenly says, Oh, he got drunk and got expelled.

Presenter2:59

Do you think he really existed? Do you think Thomas Hughes knew him?

George MacDonald Fraser2:59

Do you think he

George MacDonald Fraser3:01

I'm told he did. Old rugby boys, who knew old rugby boys, have written to me and said, of course, that yes, there was the chap, but we don't mention his name.

Presenter3:14

Do you know his name?

George MacDonald Fraser3:14

I have a theory about him, but um it it's one I I I would never voice because it wouldn't be fair to the man uh I have in mind, you know, who was a, as far as I know, a perfectly respectable person, but I rather think he may have been the original Flashman.

Presenter3:30

But he wouldn't have had such an exciting time as your fictional Flashy.

George MacDonald Fraser3:34

No, nobody could.

Presenter3:36

Nobody could nobody could have been in all of those places.

George MacDonald Fraser3:36

Nobody

George MacDonald Fraser3:38

No.

Presenter3:39

Let's get you off to your desert island. Tell me about the first piece of music you'd like there.

George MacDonald Fraser3:44

When I was eighteen years old I was going to be the greatest bass baritone the world had ever heard, and I I took singing very seriously at that time. And of course if you were a bass baritone, there was only one, and that was Peter Dawson.

George MacDonald Fraser4:01

And the one I've chosen is the Cobblest Song from Chu Chin Chow.

Speaker 24:17

I sit and cobble and slipple and shoot From the rise of sun to the set of moon

Speaker 24:28

Cobble and cobble as best I may Cobble all night and cobble all day, And I sing as I cobble

Presenter4:56

Peter Dawson singing the Cobbler's Song from Chu Chin Chow. Surprising end note, that, isn't it?

George MacDonald Fraser5:01

Isn't it a a marvellous one? You can understand why I decided not to be the greatest baseball tone in the world.

Presenter5:08

I it isn't a total accident, it seems to me, that you spotted the potential in Flashman, because I think storytelling is in your blood, isn't it?

George MacDonald Fraser5:15

Everyone in the family told stories. My Macdonald grandmother from Glencoe told historical stories.

George MacDonald Fraser5:24

She used to tell me stories about Rob Roy and that sort of thing. The other grandmother, who came from the Hebrides, from Isla, and she told Viking stories. I mean, there were all these these cold, beautiful princesses and sea rovers and and what not and magic and

George MacDonald Fraser5:44

She was very good at that.

Presenter5:45

And you told stories too, as I understand it.

George MacDonald Fraser5:48

Yes, I'm told, I don't remember this, but when I was about three, apparently, I wouldn't have a bedtime story from my parents, I would tell them one.

George MacDonald Fraser5:56

and uh probably put them to sleep, but um

Presenter6:00

Your father was a doctor, your mother a nurse, brought up in Carlisle, but you're you're entirely Scottish actually.

George MacDonald Fraser6:01

A Letter and Nurse.

George MacDonald Fraser6:06

Completely.

Presenter6:07

And and and y obviously that's very much part of you. I I you're not, I suspect, a devolutionist, are you?

George MacDonald Fraser6:13

No.

Presenter6:14

Such a child of the Empire you must believe in a United Kingdom.

George MacDonald Fraser6:16

No, I I'm I was very anti-devolution. Okay, I suppose the reason for the United Kingdom is is has vanished with the empire in a way, and I can understand the

George MacDonald Fraser6:29

Scottish Parliament idea

George MacDonald Fraser6:32

But the thought of Scottish politicians.

George MacDonald Fraser6:35

Gassing, oh dear me, no.

Presenter6:39

So you as a boy, you avoid going into medicine following your parents. You're good at history and English at school. What do you read? You tell stories, but what what do you read?

George MacDonald Fraser6:50

Historical fiction for the most part.

George MacDonald Fraser6:53

Robert Graves I Claudius.

George MacDonald Fraser6:56

People like that, and when I was ten years old

George MacDonald Fraser7:00

I came on a book which just transfixed me, and that was Raffaele Sabatini's Captain Blood and I thought this is the thing, this is great.

Presenter7:06

Uh

Presenter7:11

But there would have been what Ballantyne, G A N T and all those sort of boys' own stuff.

George MacDonald Fraser7:13

All those sorts of things. All my father's boys' own stuff. Yes, all my father's school prizes.

Presenter7:19

And you you took to it naturally, did you? Or would it have been put your way because it was good for you and good strong Victorian values?

George MacDonald Fraser7:24

I just came across it. That was all the natural appeals.

Presenter7:27

Natural appeal.

George MacDonald Fraser7:29

That and the children's encyclopedia, which is the greatest educational thing in my life, I think.

Presenter7:36

Mechanical number two

George MacDonald Fraser7:37

Yes, as I said, I read Sabatini's Captain Blood, and lo and behold, the same year they made the movie, and I remember going to it and the curtains opening, and this noise coming out, and I was spellbound.

George MacDonald Fraser7:54

because this was Erich Wolfgang Korngold, of course whom I never heard of, and his Captain Blood Overture.

Presenter8:30

Corngold's title music for the film Captain Blood, taken from the original nineteen thirty five soundtrack. So you didn't go into medicine, George MacDonald Fraser, you went into the army instead, about nineteen forty three, I think.

George MacDonald Fraser8:41

And

Presenter8:43

You've also written about that, an acclaimed memoir about your time in Burma called Quartered Safe Out Here. It's funny.

Presenter8:50

It's also horrifying and it's also gloriously politically incorrect, a fact of which we're very proud, I think.

George MacDonald Fraser8:58

Well, I am politically incorrect inasmuch as I am a child of my time and I don't accept the values which have been imposed in the last twenty, thirty years.

Presenter9:11

So by that in terms of of of war, certainly you mean that your view was an the only good Jap was a dead one. Uh

George MacDonald Fraser9:18

Yeah.

Presenter9:19

And you describe your jolt of delight in killing your first one.

George MacDonald Fraser9:23

Yes, well, that was what I was there for. That's what I was trained for. And

George MacDonald Fraser9:28

This is the thing that is quite difficult, I realize, for the modern generation to understand.

George MacDonald Fraser9:35

They know the Japanese and they work with them and sometimes work for them.

George MacDonald Fraser9:40

Our job was killing them.

George MacDonald Fraser9:42

And it does colour the point of view very much.

George MacDonald Fraser9:47

And it's

George MacDonald Fraser9:48

It's difficult I won't say to get that that out of your head but it is difficult to make people realize that at that time the world was different and that was necessary.

Presenter9:59

But are you suggesting that people don't go to war to day with that same, I suppose, lack of compassion for the enemy?

George MacDonald Fraser10:06

Yes, quite. I mean, there had to be a lack of compassion. The war was won by ruthlessness, dirty tricks, and so on.

Presenter10:07

Yeah, it is one of those

Presenter10:17

And you approve of all of that. That that's that's right.

George MacDonald Fraser10:18

That's time.

Presenter10:19

But would you approve of it now, people going to war now with this kind of

George MacDonald Fraser10:24

Hmm.

Presenter10:25

But let's go back to you at war, because again, it seems to me, reading what you've written about it, that not only was you know, the only good Japa dead one or whatever, that you were entirely emotionless almost when your colleagues got killed. There seems to be no grief expressed.

George MacDonald Fraser10:42

Oh, that was that's that's something which is very different nowadays. You couldn't afford it.

George MacDonald Fraser10:49

I mean, there was no time, as I have said in the book, if the Battle Britain pilots had reacted in the way in which people react to death and destruction nowadays.

George MacDonald Fraser11:00

We'd have lost the war.

George MacDonald Fraser11:02

You can't afford.

George MacDonald Fraser11:04

to have anything but a stiff upper lip. You can't afford to waste time on regrets.

George MacDonald Fraser11:10

You've just got to get on with it.

Presenter11:11

And what do you feel people do today then in those situations?

George MacDonald Fraser11:15

Well, nowadays it seems to me that that uh people don't react quite as as

George MacDonald Fraser11:23

As courageously I mean, when I hear of firemen

George MacDonald Fraser11:26

who get compensation for doing their job.

George MacDonald Fraser11:30

When I hear of counselling of children when a school chum dies.

George MacDonald Fraser11:36

I remember some of the things that I've done.

Presenter11:36

You don't approve of that?

George MacDonald Fraser11:38

And it's extremely bad.

Presenter11:38

I think it's a

George MacDonald Fraser11:40

Because it just implants it in their minds. Now, I remember two occasions on which boys in my class died.

George MacDonald Fraser11:49

and the master told us about it and

George MacDonald Fraser11:53

We were sorry, and that was that. Then we got on with with life. Now, what do they do? Councillors are called in to tell the children what.

George MacDonald Fraser12:02

How to grieve?

George MacDonald Fraser12:04

This is not good for them.

Presenter12:06

I think you you put it very succinctly when you talked about

George MacDonald Fraser12:09

It is.

Presenter12:09

What you approved of and what you enjoyed was the cult of the hero, and this is what you might call the cult of the victim.

George MacDonald Fraser12:16

Yes, it is indeed, and the compensation culture which goes along with it.

Presenter12:22

Well, there are some contradictions there, it seems to me, but I want to come on to them, but let's pause for your third record.

Presenter12:28

Tell me about that one.

George MacDonald Fraser12:29

I served in the Border Regiment during the war. I'm a Cumbrian by birth, although a Scot.

George MacDonald Fraser12:35

This is a tune that I love. It's one of the the best regimental marches I know, John Peel.

Presenter13:33

The Royal Gloucestershire Hussars Rendition of John Peel.

Presenter13:37

Listening to the story of your life and attitudes so far then, George Macdonald Fraser, you'd believe that you would make an excellent soldier, brought up on this strong mix of history and so on and you know, the the the heroism and the Victorian values that you believe in. But the truth is your your army career was really rather checkered, wasn't it?

George MacDonald Fraser13:56

Extremely checkered. No, I I never thought I hoped I would be a a a reasonable soldier, but it was a a rather checkered career. I was reduced to the ranks three times, um, having been promoted dance corporal.

Presenter14:09

Why?

George MacDonald Fraser14:10

Uh the first time uh I lost a tea urn

George MacDonald Fraser14:14

On a night exercise, the second time I lost a man somewhere in the southern Lakeland, he turned up later, sleeping under a tree, and the third time I lost a guard room, inasmuch as I was guard commander at Doolali in India on New Year's Eve, nineteen forty three four, and uh the Royal Scots Fusiliers and the Cameronians stole the large bell tent which was the the guard room while I was asleep.

George MacDonald Fraser14:48

And uh

Presenter14:49

So you were busted down.

George MacDonald Fraser14:49

I was busted again. I got my strike back in Burma and managed to hold on to it.

Presenter14:55

You were turned down for a commission, first of all.

George MacDonald Fraser14:57

I'd been turned down for a commission and then I was approved for a commission after the war.

Presenter15:03

But finally you threw away the application papers for the Permanent Commission. You went off the whole kaboodle. Why?

George MacDonald Fraser15:10

I'm not a I I realized I wasn't a peacetime soldier.

George MacDonald Fraser15:14

I don't mean that I was I was sort of some bloodlusting gung-ho person, I wasn't, but I liked serving during the war.

George MacDonald Fraser15:23

Because you felt you were doing something. Yes, I think. There was a purpose to it then.

Presenter15:23

'Cause you felt you were doing something.

Presenter15:27

So you went into journalism instead on on the Carlisle Journal and from there you went to Canada and came back'cause it snowed too much. And then you went to the Cumberland News and eventually the Glasgow Herald. What what kind of journalist were you? Can you describe

George MacDonald Fraser15:42

Ah, well, I was a sports journalist, to start with Cover and Carlisle United, God help me.

George MacDonald Fraser15:47

And uh the great thing about that was that it was being managed by Bill Shankley, and I've been sort of dining out on that ever since whenever I meet anybody from Liverpool.

Presenter15:57

Hmm.

George MacDonald Fraser15:57

Very nice, man.

Presenter15:58

But you you went on from sport, presumably.

George MacDonald Fraser16:00

But I went on for sport do and did what uh weekly journalists do, everything parish councils, fates, police courts, the lot.

Presenter16:09

I think one of your colleagues was Alastair Burnett, wasn't it?

George MacDonald Fraser16:13

Then in Glasgow, Alistair was sub-editor alongside me. And.

Presenter16:19

A good lad, but daft, you've written. That's right. I don't know whether we're into libelist territory. I don't think so. Why was he daft?

George MacDonald Fraser16:21

That's right.

George MacDonald Fraser16:22

Uh

George MacDonald Fraser16:24

There well he I I had a bicycle and in order to to uh uh make sure it wasn't stone I used to take it up four floors in the lift to the sub editor's room and I remember Alistair riding it round the sub editor's room one night. God knows why.

Presenter16:41

But I think it was Graham Greene, wasn't it, who said that that

George MacDonald Fraser16:41

It is great.

Presenter16:44

Journalism was the best training for a writer, or something to that effect. Or sub-editing, probably.

George MacDonald Fraser16:46

That's right.

Presenter16:49

Sub edit sub editing on a quality newspaper, I think.

George MacDonald Fraser16:49

Somebody somebody

George MacDonald Fraser16:51

That's what he said.

Presenter16:53

And that's really what stood you in good stead ultimately, wasn't it? Because you I don't think you you revise any of your writing, you just sit down and kind of

George MacDonald Fraser16:57

I

George MacDonald Fraser17:02

Uh I revise it as I go along. I never do a a second draft, if you know what I mean.

Presenter17:07

You don't re-read.

Presenter17:09

Do you have you ever reread any of your books?

George MacDonald Fraser17:11

Yes. I have to have a look at the flash ones, because P G Woodhouse uh once said when he was in the middle of a book, I've written this before.

George MacDonald Fraser17:22

And the same thing applies. I've got to make sure that um I've got to check on his past.

Presenter17:29

Next record, number four.

George MacDonald Fraser17:31

This was um for my first years in journalism when

George MacDonald Fraser17:35

I met my wife, who was a fellow reporter, she was on another paper, and this really is the song that was popular during our courtship, Fats Waller singing my very good friend Milton.

Speaker 217:51

My very good friend.

Speaker 217:53

The Milkman Sang

Speaker 217:56

That I've been losing.

Speaker 217:58

Few months later.

Speaker 218:00

He doesn't like

Speaker 218:02

But I'll buy

George MacDonald Fraser18:02

Now

Speaker 218:05

He suggests that you should marry me.

Speaker 218:11

Ah, tenants.

Speaker 218:13

I'm not sure.

Presenter18:17

That is

Presenter18:18

Fat Swallah and my very good friend the Milkman. If you enjoyed journalism so much, George, why did you decide, as you've put it, to write your way out of it?

George MacDonald Fraser18:28

Because I was deputy editor of the Glasgow Herald and I was in my mid-forties.

George MacDonald Fraser18:35

And um

George MacDonald Fraser18:36

The idea of being deputy editor for the next 20 years didn't appeal to me. You didn't want to be.

Presenter18:40

You didn't want to be editor.

George MacDonald Fraser18:41

I have been acting editor.

George MacDonald Fraser18:44

and had gone about behaving like Hitler, I suspect, you know, because I I thought that editors were were very important people. I hadn't realized that newspapers were changing and and management was beginning to take over. Anyway, after three months they decided that I should be deputy editor again.

Presenter19:03

So you thought you better get out of it'cause it wasn't gonna go like you wanted it.

George MacDonald Fraser19:06

You wanted it? No.

Presenter19:08

Long ni you didn't give up the job because you couldn't afford to long nights of cold tea, cigarettes and writing, and up up came Flashman. Did he get snapped up quickly about public?

George MacDonald Fraser19:16

By no means. I I'd wrote it not terribly. I said to my wife apparently, I'm going to write us out of this.

George MacDonald Fraser19:24

So she tells me, and when uh I had written half of the book I sort of put it aside because I broke my arm and I couldn't type.

George MacDonald Fraser19:33

She asked if she could have a look at it, and when she read it, she quoted from.

George MacDonald Fraser19:39

The Treasure of Sierra Madre movie.

George MacDonald Fraser19:42

Boy, you don't know the riches you're standing on

Presenter19:45

She was a nice one.

George MacDonald Fraser19:46

So I finished it and uh

George MacDonald Fraser19:49

I wouldn't have done otherwise. It went round the world twice. I was ready to give up. But she insisted. She said, No, it's going to get taken.

George MacDonald Fraser19:57

So that that that was that.

Presenter19:59

Huge turning point.

George MacDonald Fraser20:00

And it's massive.

Presenter20:02

Yeah, yes.

George MacDonald Fraser20:02

Yes.

Presenter20:03

It purported to be a genuine memoir. It does purport to be you wrote an introduction that these were Flashman papers that had been found in an auction room, I think, in Ashby de la Souche. I think people should have spotted something. I know. But they didn't, did they? A lot of critics.

George MacDonald Fraser20:10

Yeah.

George MacDonald Fraser20:12

That's right.

George MacDonald Fraser20:14

People should as well.

George MacDonald Fraser20:15

Yeah.

Presenter20:18

Believed that these were the most, I think, important finds since.

George MacDonald Fraser20:20

Don't deeds.

George MacDonald Fraser20:23

Nobody I will say this, only two reviewers in Britain. took it's well they weren't sure obviously

Presenter20:32

Yeah.

Presenter20:33

But it was the Americans who fell.

George MacDonald Fraser20:33

But the Americans, one third of them. And the New York Times very wickedly rounded up all the reviews and this guy who had said this is the most important discovery since the Boswell Papers and and various others like that

George MacDonald Fraser20:48

And the New York Times blew the gaff on them, you know.

Presenter20:52

Were you amused or appalled?

George MacDonald Fraser20:54

Both. I mean, you can't help being amused. I mean, they they you shouldn't be. And I do sympathize because there are things that I have read purporting to be historical, and I'm not sure whether they are or not. I just don't know.

George MacDonald Fraser21:09

But um there are a lot of American universities who are not going to give me an honorary degree, let's face it.

Presenter21:16

It was of course also a a huge compliment really, because y you wrote in the first person in Victorian style. It was obviously convincing, sounded authentic.

Presenter21:25

The language and the phrases, lovely phrases like people ran like Billy be damned. Where did you get all these things from?

George MacDonald Fraser21:33

Ooh, from childhood, I suppose. I suppose I I heard a lot from fathers and uncles, who were, after all, Victorians.

George MacDonald Fraser21:41

But um I had I was well into what you might call Victorian um literature of a certain kind, and it's all in there, and a very good source is Storky and Co., by Kipling. It's surprisingly modern.

George MacDonald Fraser21:59

Although it was written, I think, in the 1880s, and I sort of used it as a yardstick. If it's in Stalking Co., it's usable.

Presenter22:06

A wonderful phrase that's that's far more appealing than the late twentieth century euphemism technicolour yawn, and that's flashing the hatch.

George MacDonald Fraser22:13

Flash in the hash, yes, that's that's that's um regency, yes.

Presenter22:15

Being sick.

Presenter22:18

Yeah.

George MacDonald Fraser22:18

The actually recency slang is is remarkably uh good that way. Flashing the hash is you say for things.

Presenter22:26

Yeah.

Presenter22:27

But there's another in all of this, George, obvious contradiction that is, that this man, who is, as we've said now, such a a child of the Empire, so proud of it, should choose such a a disreputable hero. I mean, a man who stands for everything that you naturally would despise.

George MacDonald Fraser22:44

He was he was there, you know, I mean, uh that that's the only thing, and it seemed a very good way of doing it.

Presenter22:50

But you're not embarrassed that you've m made your fortune out of a chap who just

George MacDonald Fraser22:55

Oh, not in these.

Presenter22:56

Hasn't got a stiff upper lip for one moment.

George MacDonald Fraser22:57

No, no.

Presenter22:59

Colon.

George MacDonald Fraser22:59

But everybody thinks he has. I mean

Presenter23:02

So that's all right then, isn't it?

George MacDonald Fraser23:03

He's one living contrick in a way. As I said, I don't approve of him. I don't like him.

Presenter23:10

You must have a soft spot for him in there somewhere.

George MacDonald Fraser23:12

I d oh, yes, I do have a sort of soft spot, but it's a a perverse soft spot. Talking about Captain Blood earlier.

George MacDonald Fraser23:20

I wanted Basil Rathbone to kill Edolf. You know, I I've always been on the side of the villain.

Presenter23:27

Record number five.

George MacDonald Fraser23:29

This was from childhood. I was a great Lodland Hardy fan, and still am.

George MacDonald Fraser23:36

They made a movie, which I think was their best, called Fra Diavolo. It was based on an opera by a French composer called Albert.

George MacDonald Fraser23:46

I went to it for Lodl and Hardy, and I came away enchanted with the music.

Presenter24:49

Part of the overture from Orber's Fra Diavilo, performed by the Monte Carlo Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Mark Sustrol. The other important uh string to your writing bow, George, is of course writing films, screenplays. It started with the Three Musketeers, I think, went on to the Four Musketeers. How how did that come about?

George MacDonald Fraser25:08

Dick Lester had been going to direct Flashman.

George MacDonald Fraser25:13

It never came off. But he liked the book and uh

George MacDonald Fraser25:17

When he was asked to do the Three Musketeers.

George MacDonald Fraser25:20

He got in touch with me and uh

George MacDonald Fraser25:23

Said would I like to do the screenplay? I said, Do you want straight Dumas? He said, I want um I want it written by the man who wrote Flash.

Presenter25:32

Oliver Reed was one, of course, wasn't he? And didn't he become Flashman? Wasn't there a Flashman film on the

George MacDonald Fraser25:33

Oh, he wasn't.

George MacDonald Fraser25:36

Um no, he didn't, although he he would have been a very good flashman. He was one of the musketeers, Atos, and then when Royal Flash, the second flashman book, was made, he was Bismarck.

George MacDonald Fraser25:49

He was very pleased at being Bespark. He enjoyed being bespark, I remember.

Presenter25:53

Why?

George MacDonald Fraser25:54

He was a forceful personality, and I think he enjoyed playing an extremely forceful personality.

Presenter26:02

I can't quite imagine you hanging out with the Hollywood set in all of this then. I mean, all of everything Charlton Heston, George C. Scott, all these p Raquel Welch was in it, wasn't she?

George MacDonald Fraser26:06

Yeah.

George MacDonald Fraser26:11

She was in the Musketeers or who wasn't in the Musketeers.

George MacDonald Fraser26:15

Fray Dunaway, Frank Finley, Richard Chamberlain, Michael York, Spike Milligan.

Presenter26:20

But you you so you didn't go and hang out with him?

George MacDonald Fraser26:21

So you didn't

George MacDonald Fraser26:22

Uh no. The farther you can stay away from the shooting of a film for which you have written the screenplay, the better, because if you go, they'll just make you work.

Presenter26:31

What about octopusy? Because, of course, we haven't mentioned this yet, but you wrote.

George MacDonald Fraser26:33

If it goes,

Presenter26:36

The Bond film. I think it was Roger Moore's last, wasn't it?

George MacDonald Fraser26:38

Uh second last.

Presenter26:40

Am I right in thinking you wanted to set octopacy in the Isle of Man?

George MacDonald Fraser26:44

I did at one time because it occurred to me we have the T T race, the the great motorcycle thing on the Isle of Man, and I wanted to see Bond in the sidecar race with a beautiful blonde as his passenger, and similarly the villain with uh a villainess and

George MacDonald Fraser27:07

They it it's the nearest thing to the Roman circus that still exists, the the Isle of Mantiti. It is madness. I mean, to do, what is it, thirty seven miles in about seventeen minutes over mountain, through town, all over the place, touching a hundred and ninety miles an hour. Forget it, you know.

Presenter27:27

But it wasn't glamorous enough for Cubby Broccoli.

George MacDonald Fraser27:29

No, it wasn't that.

George MacDonald Fraser27:31

Uh they would have to shoot at the TT.

George MacDonald Fraser27:34

Now had this had uh had this been taking place round about April or May, it would have been possible. They could just have taken their cameras to the island for the TT.

George MacDonald Fraser27:44

But this was November.

George MacDonald Fraser27:47

And they couldn't wait.

Presenter27:48

Record number six. What's that?

George MacDonald Fraser27:50

Uh reckon I was yes, now this is film music. Um it's, for my money, the best film music I've ever heard, and it's Eric Corngold again.

George MacDonald Fraser28:01

The um the Great Hungarian.

George MacDonald Fraser28:05

who wrote Captain Blood, and he was asked to do Robin Hood and he pleaded with Warner Brothers. He said, Please don't ask me, I know nothing about Robin Hood or anything like that. They insisted. He wrote it, he won the Academy Award for the music, and as one eminent British conductor said, he made the leaves of Sherwood greener.

Presenter28:55

Corngold's title music for The Adventures of Robin Hood from the original nineteen thirty-eight soundtrack. Um you're now, George MacDonald Fraser, in your mid-seventies and you live on the Isle of Man, which is why you know so much about the T T races. Uh do you live there for tax reasons or for others? Totally.

George MacDonald Fraser29:09

Originally, yes. But I can say with my hand on my heart now that if the British rate of tax was lowered below the Island Man's rate, I wouldn't come back.

Presenter29:23

I wonder why not. You quite like that.

George MacDonald Fraser29:25

Because the island's lovely. It's a it's a wonderful place to be.

George MacDonald Fraser29:29

I like the Manx, and we're very happy there.

Presenter29:31

But it's something to do perhaps with you as well liking to be

Presenter29:35

Slightly removed out of the mainstream'cause you don't quite like the way it's gone.

George MacDonald Fraser29:40

No, I think it's an atavistic thing. I love the West.

George MacDonald Fraser29:45

and the islands.

Presenter29:46

But you like being away.

George MacDonald Fraser29:47

Yes.

Presenter29:48

From the mainland as well, don't you? It's part of that, isn't it?

George MacDonald Fraser29:49

As well, don't you?

George MacDonald Fraser29:52

Yeah.

George MacDonald Fraser29:54

Oh, I I wouldn't like to live in Britain now. When I come back, I don't know. It doesn't look.

George MacDonald Fraser30:00

The way it did. It looks rather shabby. It looks rather run down.

Presenter30:01

It looks rather shabby.

George MacDonald Fraser30:05

I don't know, something has happened to the National Galactic which I don't quite like.

Presenter30:10

But you haven't stopped writing and there's there's still space in Flash Mazev, although we know he he dies, because we know this from the original papers discovered in Ashby de la Souche, that he died.

George MacDonald Fraser30:11

And there's

Presenter30:21

He dies and

George MacDonald Fraser30:21

He dies in

Presenter30:22

In 1915, doesn't he, age 93.

George MacDonald Fraser30:24

At the age of ninety three

Presenter30:25

But uh there's plenty of space left. You've you've had him you've certainly got to the turn of the century because he's rubbed shoulders with the Prince of Wales and um

Presenter30:33

Oh

George MacDonald Fraser30:33

Oh, and and Queen Victoria and Abraham Lincoln

Presenter30:37

And he's been at Rourke's Drift.

George MacDonald Fraser30:38

That's right.

Presenter30:39

But i there's a kind of there's still quite a fifteen year kind of

George MacDonald Fraser30:42

Oh, there's lots of space still to go. I mean, there's the whole Victorian era, those bits that I haven't touched.

Presenter30:50

Or are you fed up with him?

George MacDonald Fraser30:50

You fit up.

George MacDonald Fraser30:51

No. I well, I'm fed up with him as soon as I finished a book and I want to see the brute again. You know, that's that. But then it starts after a year or two and I I do another one.

Presenter31:02

Record number seven.

George MacDonald Fraser31:04

This is nostalgia back to the nineteen forties, when the housewife's choice was presented by a little Scottish band leader called George Elric.

Presenter31:47

In party mood, the theme from Housewives' Choice, of course, played by the West End Celebrity Orchestra. So, George, you've already escaped to an island, but this time you're off we're sending you off to a deserted one. Do you foresee any joy in it at all?

George MacDonald Fraser32:02

There's something attractive uh being shipwrecked, I suppose, and away from the world.

George MacDonald Fraser32:07

Bat

George MacDonald Fraser32:08

Did my wife be shipwrecked with me?

Presenter32:09

Mm

George MacDonald Fraser32:10

Oh dear.

George MacDonald Fraser32:11

And the grandchildren obviously can't not No, well, I don't foresee much fun.

Presenter32:16

What would you apart from the people, of course, but what would you hate to be without? What would you miss most from civilised life?

Presenter32:24

Not a lot.

George MacDonald Fraser32:26

Uh old movies, probably. Um

Presenter32:26

Uh oh.

George MacDonald Fraser32:30

Oh, who can say? You wouldn't know until you got there.

Presenter32:32

No one

George MacDonald Fraser32:34

Probably the news.

Presenter32:36

Still find it exciting.

George MacDonald Fraser32:37

Oh yeah.

Presenter32:39

I saw you quoted as saying about yourself, As for me, I'll go on loafing and writing The Light's On at Signpost. What does that mean?

George MacDonald Fraser32:49

On the Isle of Man they're on the T T Course.

George MacDonald Fraser32:53

There is a place near the finish called Signpost Corner.

George MacDonald Fraser32:57

And when a rider, having completed his six circuits, gets to Signpost Corner for the last time, just short of the finish, a light goes on on his uh scoreboard at the grandstand, and everybody knows he's nearly finished. So if you're nearly finished, the light's on at Signpost.

Presenter33:18

Last record.

George MacDonald Fraser33:20

I was in the Gordon Highlanders after the war. I loved the Gordons.

George MacDonald Fraser33:25

Winston Churchill said the finest regiment in the world.

George MacDonald Fraser33:29

And uh I was in the second battalion, the old ninety-second of foot.

George MacDonald Fraser33:34

And in D Company, and D Company marched to a tune that's very difficult to march to, the Black Death.

Presenter34:08

The regimental band and the massed pipes of the Scots Guards playing the Black Bear as they march away. You can only take one of those eight records, George. Which one would you take?

George MacDonald Fraser34:18

Corngirl's Robin Hood.

George MacDonald Fraser34:21

Ha ha ha ha ha.

Presenter34:21

What about your book? You've got the Bible, you've got the complete Shakespeare as you've got

George MacDonald Fraser34:25

The complete Oxford English Dictionary.

Presenter34:27

Uh-huh.

George MacDonald Fraser34:28

That means about twenty volumes, so I suppose it's a bit of a cheat.

George MacDonald Fraser34:32

But uh it's endless reading.

Presenter34:35

And what about your luxury?

George MacDonald Fraser34:36

A typewriter

George MacDonald Fraser34:38

and um an unlimited supply of paper.

George MacDonald Fraser34:42

And ribbons.

Presenter34:43

George MacDonald Fraser, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island is.

George MacDonald Fraser34:47

Thank you very much for having me.

Speaker 335:04

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