Shirley Hughes

Speaker 10:00

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

Presenter0:30

My castaway this week is a storyteller. Her first book, Lucy and Tom's Day, was published more than forty years ago. Since then, in a series of beautifully drawn and enchantingly told stories, she's become one of the most popular writers and illustrators of our time. Her subject for the most part is the everyday life of the small child, and her pictures, full of life and movement, are of crumpled, lived in, honest people. Alongside Lucy and Tom, Alfie and Annie Rose and The Tales of Trotter Street, among many others, have sold millions of copies all over the world. I want to give children the feeling that there's a place for them in the world, she says, and the world is a marvellous place. She is Shirley Hughes.

Presenter1:11

That's the point, really, it seems to me, Shirley, about what you write, that there there's a kind of fundamental quality of reassurance about it, isn't there?

Shirley Hughes1:19

Yes. They're a very young audience and they're not really ready for the wilder shores of fiction, you know, witches and wizards and things. I'm offering them a very real world that they can inhabit. They know it's a fictional world.

Shirley Hughes1:32

But, you know, there's a high drama in getting your boots on the right feet or. Uh

Presenter1:36

Or indeed there's there's a crisis if you've got to start school tomorrow or mother has a new baby or whatever. It's it's helping them through those moments.

Shirley Hughes1:44

There's moments of

Shirley Hughes1:46

Pictures

Shirley Hughes1:48

Really?

Presenter1:49

Yeah.

Shirley Hughes1:49

Looking at it very intently, much more intently than adults look at pictures.

Presenter1:53

'Cause as I was saying, the the the the characters are are very lived in, they're very real. They're very much mum and dad. They're not mummy and daddy, are they? I think you you sort of began at that point where we were leaving behind

Shirley Hughes2:03

Yeah, I mean

Speaker 12:03

But

Presenter2:05

Enid Blyton, the famous five ballet shoes, girls who went to Pony Club. It's it's not that at all, is it?

Shirley Hughes2:10

That at all.

Shirley Hughes2:11

Yes, there was this great sea change when it when it all opened up and we we were addressing children of all races and I mean it was a wonderful time. It really did give one a chance to expand.

Presenter2:23

This was the sixties, wasn't it? Yes, sometimes about then. So you were very much in the right place at the right moment, weren't you? Uh well, it didn't feel like it, but uh

Presenter2:32

But it turned out to be Peter Case. Just tell me before we hear your first piece of music. You know, you're still working very hard today in in your seventies. Draw me a picture of where you work today. Do you have music? Are you in a studio?

Presenter2:45

I

Shirley Hughes2:45

Well, yes, my work overlooks a a a skyline of West London. It's a great place to work. There's a communal garden outside where

Shirley Hughes2:53

Uh when the children come out to play, as mine once did, I get a lot of good ideas from just watching them.

Shirley Hughes3:01

And I get going with paints. It's very tactile, you only are squee squeezing out your paints into the palette if your brush is ready.

Shirley Hughes3:09

And that really gets me going.

Presenter3:11

And is there music playing while you're while you're drawing, while you're writing?

Shirley Hughes3:14

Yes, not when you're writing, that would be unthinkable. But yes, when I'm doing reach the sort of finishing stage, I can play not serious music, I I play jazz quite a lot.

Presenter3:24

Not jazz for your first one. Tell me about this one the first one for your desert island.

Shirley Hughes3:28

Yeah.

Presenter3:29

Well, I

Shirley Hughes3:29

I didn't have a very good musical education, practicing scales in an unheated room, you know, this sort of thing.

Shirley Hughes3:35

But I have widened my horizons, I think, through my children, who are all interested in music. I have a a a son, Tom, and uh he used to play this as a boy, so I would like this. It's it's a very vibrant, life affirming piece of music.

Shirley Hughes3:52

Mozart's concerto with fluten orchestra, number one.

Presenter4:52

Part of the first movement of Mozart's concerto for flute and orchestra number one played by Sarah Brooke with the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Tomash Vacheri.

Presenter5:00

You um began Shirley Hughes with Lucy and Tom, as I said, but I I I actually think I'm it's a very personal view that that Alfie and Annie Rose really capture the heart. Alfie is what, about three or four years old, little toddler.

Shirley Hughes5:11

Yes, he's just getting to grips with the complexities of life and he's got this little sister who's just coming out of babyhood really.

Presenter5:15

Turn is

Presenter5:19

Hmm. Just still in her high chair, still sort of thawing milk out of her beef.

Presenter5:24

How did Alfie begin? Did he begin as a character or a picture or well

Shirley Hughes5:28

Well, it begins a a picture in your head to begin with. The words and the picture happen together. You know, they're they're unthinkable one without the other. And they float about for quite a long time. This very strong image in your head, like an iceberg.

Shirley Hughes5:42

But very soon along the way I make a rough, I draw this character, and that's when they really

Presenter5:49

Come to life for me.

Shirley Hughes5:51

Ha

Presenter5:51

Because there is so much life in those drawings. As I say, there's a lot of immediacy, isn't it? If you see him sort of rushing along the road on the way home and he's a little bit of a drink.

Shirley Hughes5:58

That's just what he was doing, right? It was exactly the first moment.

Shirley Hughes6:03

when he was d you know, he was dashing ahead of his mother.

Shirley Hughes6:07

I knew he was pink in the face with determination to get into the action.

Presenter6:11

Alfie gets in first and of course that is exactly what happens. He goes into the house and he's he's on the inside, mother's left on the outside with the shopping and neither can get in nor out.

Shirley Hughes6:12

Yeah.

Shirley Hughes6:21

Yes, it's it's been done a few times, that drama, in in real life.

Presenter6:24

Yes, but indeed it has. But also it dictated, and because you are also the designer, the illustrator, you are your you're your impresario, aren't you? Yes. That in the end you did something very clever with with that inside, outside.

Shirley Hughes6:30

The list

Speaker 16:32

Uh

Speaker 46:32

And

Speaker 16:32

Uh

Shirley Hughes6:34

Yeah.

Shirley Hughes6:38

Inside, outside.

Presenter6:39

Thanks.

Shirley Hughes6:39

But that I

Shirley Hughes6:41

I think of it like a f a film, really, because I'm addressing an audience who don't read yet.

Shirley Hughes6:46

Maybe.

Shirley Hughes6:47

So I had this thing, he was stuck inside. It was an inside-outside drama. I thought, well, how am I going to make this obvious to the non-reader? And I discovered that I could make the gutter, the sewing down the middle of the book that you're always trying to pretend isn't there, part of the story. And all I had to do was draw a line on the right-hand page down where you could see that the catch was just a little bit too high. And your reader, they're so visually sharp, these little children. They knew that he was on the right-hand side inside the house, and the frantic buildup on the doorstep tried to get him out.

Shirley Hughes7:22

It's very filmic, very gestural. And you pick all that up by, I read, lurking in sand pits, as well as looking out.

Presenter7:29

You'll work from Windows.

Shirley Hughes7:30

I do like his own pictures. I got the sketchbook habit early.

Shirley Hughes7:34

And you get a an eye for a telling gesture, the way people, children especially, group themselves when they're huddled together, you know, in a game or absorbed in a conversation, and then all rush off. And at that moment I'm drawing very fast with a felt pen, almost at the speed of seeing.

Shirley Hughes7:53

What you're doing is building up, when you draw, is build up a sort of memory bank in your head.

Shirley Hughes7:59

So that you can go home and sit down in front of your drawing board and make it all up. Are you collecting faces as well? Like postage stamps.

Shirley Hughes8:07

It's any I look at them and it's rather dangerous sometimes on an escalator.

Shirley Hughes8:12

as well as exhausting.

Shirley Hughes8:14

Tell me about your second record.

Shirley Hughes8:17

Well, my second record b goes back to a time when I had

Shirley Hughes8:21

Portable wind-up gramophone.

Shirley Hughes8:24

And I had about half a dozen old seventy eight records. And one of them was one that when when um early days when I knew John we used to put this on and dance about to.

Shirley Hughes8:35

It's Fat Swallow singing My Very Good Friend the Milkman.

Speaker 48:39

My very good friend.

Speaker 48:41

The Milkman Saint

Speaker 48:44

Then I have been losing.

Speaker 48:46

Too much link.

Speaker 48:48

He doesn't like

Speaker 48:50

But I'll watch it.

Speaker 18:50

Now

Speaker 48:53

He suggests that you should marry me.

Speaker 48:59

Ah, tenants.

Speaker 49:01

Uh

Presenter9:05

That is

Presenter9:06

Make it.

Speaker 49:07

Yeah.

Presenter9:08

It was recorded in nineteen thirty five, Fatz Waller and my very good friend The Milkman. Where do you get your story telling abilities from, Shirley? Were you much read to as a child?

Shirley Hughes9:17

No, not much. Um my mother was a widow and in those days, you know, if they didn't widows didn't work unless they had to. It was like really very quiet. This was West Kirby. In West Kirby, on the Wirral, near Liverpool.

Presenter9:27

This was it.

Shirley Hughes9:31

And what how old were you when your father died? Oh, I was only four.

Shirley Hughes9:35

But when we were we were an all-female family, um

Shirley Hughes9:40

There was so much time that really we made up these very complicated games and characters who go on for days, always bursting out from behind the sitting room curtains, hoping for applause.

Shirley Hughes9:53

And what did you read? I read the classics. We had some very good illustrated books. We had comics, too. They were very exciting.

Shirley Hughes10:01

This was the days before the sort of anarchic gangs on of the Dandy and the Beano. There were very nice little comics like Tiger Tim and Chick's Own. We also had illustrated classics. We had all the those beautiful ones with the tipped in colour plates, you know, Arthur Rackham

Presenter10:17

On Rackham, Edmund Dulac.

Presenter10:19

But a very, very different childhood, of course, and this was late twenties all through the thirties, from the kind of children you're writing for today, who are bombarded with the visual image, aren't they? They are.

Shirley Hughes10:31

Uh

Presenter10:32

Yeah.

Shirley Hughes10:32

You know, this is why I think it's very important for them to have imagery that they make their own slow personal exploration of, you know, because.

Speaker 110:40

Yeah.

Shirley Hughes10:41

As you say, they're very visually overstimulated now. We went. We did see a lot of narrative paintings because of course we lived near the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool. We used to go and look at When Did You Last See Your Father and Millet's Pronounce. That's right, absolutely. That was

Presenter10:56

That's right.

Presenter10:58

Yeah.

Presenter10:59

Yeah.

Shirley Hughes10:59

But that was your television in a way.

Presenter10:59

But that was your television in a way.

Shirley Hughes11:02

Yes, we had the radio.

Presenter11:04

I wonder if that's why a lot of your pictures today are very, very detailed. Again, one that comes to mind is your picture of the school fate, where you have I should think every child who attends the school is in that picture, certainly every teacher, and there's every stall from a guess the way to the cake to a tombola to second hand clothes. You could stare at that picture f for a very long time, and I wonder if that's, you know, w what you want the child to do, of course. In other words, slow down and look, don't keep flicking on to the next thing like an electronic game.

Shirley Hughes11:34

Yes, because I think we will go into this century, you know, punch drunk if we if we're not careful, so quick on the uptake that we miss half the point.

Shirley Hughes11:44

It's certainly what I did. I sort of peered into things, and I I do yes, I I do you're right, I do love detail.

Shirley Hughes11:51

I think it's a mistake to think that children, when they're even when they're very little, necessarily want big primary colour things with a with a thick back line. They're quite capable of looking at detail.

Shirley Hughes12:03

And I just like putting it in, really.

Shirley Hughes12:05

Tell me about your third record.

Shirley Hughes12:08

When I was living in West Kirby, I was a a teenager I suppose then and one day a rather a chap who fancied himself an intellectual put this record on and said this is it.

Shirley Hughes12:21

And um

Shirley Hughes12:23

This extraordinary voice came out, and it was Billy Holliday.

Shirley Hughes12:28

lovingly coaxed and nudged along by Lester Young on his tenor saxophobes.

Shirley Hughes12:34

And I felt somewhere far away a sort of adult world was beckoning.

Speaker 412:39

I'm like an oven that's crying for heat. He treats me awful each time that we meet. It's just unlawful how that boy can cheat.

Speaker 112:50

Just

Speaker 412:55

But I must have that man.

Speaker 412:59

He's hot as Hades, a lady's not safe in his arms when she's kissed.

Presenter13:07

Billy Holiday singing, Lester Young on tennis sax and Benny Goodman on clarinet and I Must Have That Man recorded in 1937. Of course the men who came to Liverpool in your youth, Shirley Hughes, um this was wartime they were the GIs. They must have seemed, after this rather quiet, slightly austere upbringing you've described as really very glamorous.

Shirley Hughes13:27

Yes, they were like people from another planet. Um we we were in a so-called safe area, but I went to school with my gas mask and we saw the sky red with the burning docks and raked with searchlights and back akfire and so on. But of course wartime when it's not frightening is terribly boring and you can't go anywhere.

Shirley Hughes13:52

The seaside is full of barbed wire and gun emplacements, so when the GI s arrived this was extraordinary. They were flush with chocolate and nylons wearing funny hats. They did definitely electrify the area.

Presenter14:06

But nevertheless, you ultimately felt, as you were indicating when you were introducing Billie Holiday, this this need to escape. If you had what was the alternative? Was it the sort of

Presenter14:16

tennis clubs and Betchermannesque stuff, otherwise.

Shirley Hughes14:18

Uh yes, it was rather. I got out of school as quick as I could.

Shirley Hughes14:23

and went to Liverpool Art School to do costume design. It was quite a good choice, but I think it was regarded as art school as something you did to fill in time before you met a nice young man with good prospects, you know, and got engaged and

Shirley Hughes14:37

I went down the tennis club and somehow or other it didn't sort of c come about, and I couldn't convince myself it was to do with my weak backhand. So I applied to go to the Ruskin School of Art at Oxford, and got accepted. Liberated staff, this. Yes, it was.

Shirley Hughes14:55

Quite brave. I was very naïve. I had no idea. I mean, I had vague ideas about sort of pants and.

Shirley Hughes15:02

drifting moth like over manicured college lawns, wearing a chiffon dress, and I arrived in the middle of a most appalling winter.

Shirley Hughes15:11

And I was wearing my sister's madeover dresses, so uh it was a bit of a shock.

Shirley Hughes15:17

Next piece of music.

Shirley Hughes15:18

To me Mozart's Marriage of Figaro is the opera, because it's so accessible, and yet there's this enormous underlying sophistication and complexity.

Shirley Hughes15:31

So I would like the aria in Act Four that Susannah's beautiful seductive song. I've never worked out quite what happened in that garden, but it's it's a marvellous aria.

Presenter16:33

Lucia Pop as Susanna, singing the Aria De Vieni non tada, then come my heart's delight, from Act Four of Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro, with the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Sir George Schulte. So you decided then, Shirley Hughes, to become an illustrator. That was the first career you set out on. How long before you got a good commission? Oh, um.

Presenter16:54

Yeah. My f

Shirley Hughes16:54

First offer was a pony book, and that was a bit of a flop because I'm not because we're working for a a very erred-out audience, so you know, little girls who know all about ponies. I said, No, that's no good. But the children in your pictures have a bit of life to them, so we'll give you another try. And they gave me a a camping story to do, and that's how I set off. So it was always children's books, was it? Well, it had to be, really. I would love to have worked for the Radio Times. It was the absolute height of my ambition at the time with all those wonderful artists, Eric Fraser.

Shirley Hughes17:27

But I didn't get any work. And there was a lot of work going there in children's books. And gradually I got more interested in the actual literature because some of it we were in a bit of a time warp, you know, back to the thirties, you know, with a we were addressing a sort of white middle class child, you know, with a grandmother conveniently situated in a rambling manor house, this sort of thing. But but then it did start to open up.

Presenter17:52

You did the the the pictures of uh for My Naught Little Sister, didn't you? The Dorothy Edwards.

Shirley Hughes17:54

Dorothy Edwards. She was a great writer. Her that's still in print.

Shirley Hughes17:59

The great Nills Strepfield, who was the doyenne, you know, of those ballets.

Presenter18:02

Those ballet shoes. Yes. But how did you make the leap then into doing your own thing, as it were, doing the being the total impresario?

Shirley Hughes18:09

Uh

Presenter18:10

No not f it didn't

Shirley Hughes18:10

occurred to me for quite a long time. And by this time, of course, I was

Shirley Hughes18:15

I'd married and I'd go

Shirley Hughes18:17

Children to look after.

Shirley Hughes18:19

These small, defined jobs were about all I could cope with, and then suddenly somebody suggested I should do a book.

Shirley Hughes18:26

And I did a very low key little book with Lucy and Tom, just doing what I was doing, going through the day, you know, getting your shoes on and going to the shop

Shirley Hughes18:37

It had a sort of modest success. And when was the big breakthrough? What happened? What was the story? Uh well, I think the big breakthrough was a book called Dogger, and that story fell literally not out of a a a blue sky, but out of the back of a cupboard. He was a he was a I don't use real children in my stories, but he is a real toy and he'd been living quietly.

Shirley Hughes18:57

in the back of this cupboard and he fell out.

Shirley Hughes18:59

And I he just gave me this idea for

Shirley Hughes19:03

The story of a much loved object which goes missing at bedtime, and all hell breaks loose, tried to find it. And it took off? It did, yes. I thought up to that time I'd been told, Oh, well, you're all very well, Shirley, but you're much too English to be accepted abroad.

Shirley Hughes19:23

And this seems to me to be the most quintessentially essentially English book I've ever done. You know, it's got a jumble sale, as you say, and a sports people doing egg and spoon races and things. But that was the one that broke through. Record number five.

Shirley Hughes19:39

Well, uh the sixties was happening all around me. I mean, I didn't swing much in the sixties. I my own exciting afternoon was to go out with the Pram and buy some buns for tea and come back again. But uh

Shirley Hughes19:52

It was all happening around and it was a very adolescent time really when people were encouraged to sort of dress up, you know, and let everything hang out and um I do admire songwriters who can write songs which absolutely the epitome of their own time and whenever you hear that song it takes you right back exactly to that time.

Shirley Hughes20:18

but which have a longevity, which which, you know, last.

Shirley Hughes20:24

When I first heard Bob Dylan, one of my sons was playing it, I thought he was an old man who'd been on the road for years, you know, and it turned out he was just a boy.

Shirley Hughes20:35

So I think I have to have a a Bob Dylan record just to remind me of the exasperation and exhilaration of bringing up teenage children.

Speaker 420:45

Hands can't feel to grip, my toes too numb to step, wait only for my boot heels to be wandering.

Speaker 420:55

I'm ready to go anywhere, I'm ready for two fade into my own parade, Cast your dance and spill my way, I promise to go wander in.

Speaker 421:10

Hey Mr. Time!

Presenter21:13

Bob Dylan, of course, and mister Tambourine Man. What you've always done, Shirley, uh is kept in touch with children, not just your own. I gather you spent your seventieth birthday in a tent in at the Edinburgh Book Festival, with children crawling all over you.

Speaker 121:25

Children

Presenter21:27

How do you do it? Uh three and four year olds are notorious for n not being controllable. How do you do it?

Shirley Hughes21:30

Uh

Shirley Hughes21:33

How did it?

Presenter21:34

Well

Shirley Hughes21:34

You don't know anything about them. They come into the school or library or a a festival somewhere they're all just sitting there and for you've no idea what whether they speak another language at home, what style of care they have, whether they can read yet.

Shirley Hughes21:48

But there's always the stock character, you know, the one that never stops talking. There's the little boy who steadfastly refuses to remove his coat, you know, and prefers to sweat it out no matter how hot the room, rather than risk exposure to art and literature. It's very prudent, it can change your life.

Shirley Hughes22:06

There's often a little girl who sits with her back turned firmly to you, you know, but who comes up at the end and in a very low voice offers a few observations which show that he not only has she taken in the entire plot and all the stories through the corner of her eye,

Shirley Hughes22:22

But she's somehow using this narrative to reinforce her own experience of life.

Shirley Hughes22:29

In other words, the power of story telling does come across

Presenter22:32

Thank you very much. But also I think we all remember the illustrations, certainly, perhaps more than the words of our childhood, you know, whether it's those sort of

Presenter22:40

the barks of trees that turn in in into grotesque faces, or or maybe even the wolf under grandma's hat, you know, s suddenly looking really rather frightening.

Shirley Hughes22:49

Yes I

Presenter22:51

That's true. They're all

Shirley Hughes22:52

Not two poles always in children's literature, I suppose. The one is the

Shirley Hughes23:00

need to go off, to run off, in which all children need to do in their imagination, you know, to be a wayfarer, a gypsy, go off and

Shirley Hughes23:09

And then the other

Shirley Hughes23:10

important thing which is to pull back to home, to the warmth and security, the hot dinner waiting, to having a little place of your own all kittied out as you would like it, and nobody can come in unless they're invited.

Shirley Hughes23:23

I suppose I'm a bit towards the latter.

Shirley Hughes23:28

But of course, I do notice that I'm not unaware, it's very tough out there. I've been to schools and libraries.

Shirley Hughes23:34

where life is very difficult for both adults and children.

Shirley Hughes23:38

And I think they're the ones who actually need the most reassuring stories and like them best.

Shirley Hughes23:45

Record number six.

Shirley Hughes23:48

I have a daughter who's an artist, an illustrator.

Shirley Hughes23:52

And um I know she knows about that moment when you're going good and you've got just the right kind of brush and the washes are flowing sweetly.

Shirley Hughes24:02

And it's nice to have somebody in your own family who knows that feeling too. Uh when she was a girl living at home, she used to play the piano, and I used to be in the kitchen listening to her practice. And you know when you listen to someone wrestling with a piece and then suddenly you think, Yes, you've got it.

Shirley Hughes24:23

And so I would like this very elegant piano piece, which is Bram's Rhapsody number two for piano.

Presenter25:31

The opening of Branz Rhapsody No. Two in G minor for piano, played by Michael Rudy. Um I came across something you said, uh Shirley Hughes, which is perhaps slightly defensive, I don't know. You said I may come across as a cosy old dear who's been around for a long time, but I've innovated a lot on the page and I intend to go on doing so. It's punchy stuff. You have branched out, haven't you, in in recent years?

Shirley Hughes25:54

Yes, I think I'm a slow developer, maybe. I do think that books, picture books, can go on long after you've learnt to read. And uh I think it's a great shame when you hear people in shops saying you can't have that because it's got pictures in. I think pictures are a a great vehicle forward for children because they are very visual now.

Shirley Hughes26:16

You know, things like um folk tales and

Shirley Hughes26:20

poetry, they can sort of project on into other kinds

Presenter26:25

Yeah. Literature

Shirley Hughes26:25

A through picture book.

Presenter26:26

Through pick

Presenter26:27

But you've moved forward into enchantment, certainly. I mean you've you've written the story of the the little girl in the Italian garden who falls in love with a statue. Um where does all that come from? Is that because you're travelling and thinking up ideas or are you sticking to your Nottinghill drawing?

Shirley Hughes26:33

Four.

Speaker 126:34

Uh

Shirley Hughes26:39

I do stick to my drawing board, but I do go out quite a lot and we go we've we've been on wonderful sketching holidays, John and I, where we sit around with our drawing books.

Shirley Hughes26:52

And that's sort of a way of limbering up, really, because you're very free in your sketch book.

Shirley Hughes26:57

And then you come home and somehow it it all shapes itself into a story.

Presenter27:03

So is this you moving on because you want to, or because you're now telling stories to grandchildren who I mean, are they inspiring you? You've got a lot of those, I know. Yes, I have. I've got seven to date.

Shirley Hughes27:10

Yeah

Presenter27:13

But are you the wonderful storytelling grandmother we'd all aspire to be?

Shirley Hughes27:17

No, no, I well, I I try it out on them. They I think they regard it as just part of life, really, or what grandma does.

Presenter27:18

I will I

Shirley Hughes27:25

They happen in my head, really.

Shirley Hughes27:27

Usually triggered off by a very strong, one very strong image very often.

Shirley Hughes27:33

Like there's one story, Stories by Firelight, was a a grandfather and a little boy making a bonfire and it was the Christmas tree on the bonfire having its last moment of glory lit up with sparks and and you know, grandpa's life being somewhat reflected in that.

Shirley Hughes27:50

So it's just this one moment of looking at something very often.

Shirley Hughes27:55

Record number seven.

Shirley Hughes27:58

Well, when you get to the sort of stage I am with children and grandchildren and daughters-in-law, very nice daughters-in-law, son-in-law, lovely having them around. We've had wonderful times abroad and we've had a great great holidays. But I think I really now want to stick at home and live a life of high adventure and excitement at the drawing board.

Shirley Hughes28:22

But in a way, you're sort of sending out

Shirley Hughes28:26

Birds, aren't you, Carrier Pidgey? They're all sort of flying off. You know your children, your grandchildren.

Shirley Hughes28:32

And all you can do is just see them go, but you are pinning messages on.

Shirley Hughes28:37

And so, um

Shirley Hughes28:39

I would like this Beetle song, which reminds me of Liverpool.

Shirley Hughes28:44

And it's Paul McCartney singing The Long and Winding Road.

Speaker 428:48

The long and winding road

Speaker 428:53

Heavens to your door.

Speaker 429:03

Will never disappear.

Speaker 429:10

I've seen that road before

Presenter29:17

The Beatles and the Long and Winding Road. So let's pretend, Shirley, that you've taken the long and winding road, and you've left the family behind, you've fetched up on this desert island.

Presenter29:26

Pretty arid existence or are you used to being alone in many ways? Uh well I work alone all the time.

Shirley Hughes29:32

I'm but I I'd be terribly homesick. Oh, I miss the family. I miss John so much. I'd be hopeless.

Shirley Hughes29:39

Would you

Presenter29:39

Would you? You you might end up, you know, meeting a kind of as someone has in in in one of your stories, a seal or something, getting together with a merman or yes, or some lone fisherman might come and get me off.

Shirley Hughes29:48

Getting together with a Merman or

Shirley Hughes29:50

Yeah, it's also

Presenter29:54

Or perhaps it would be rather like your your childhood, you know, you could just sort of mooch around and dream and amuse yourself.

Shirley Hughes30:00

Yes.

Shirley Hughes30:01

I would do that, I think.

Shirley Hughes30:04

If it was warm it it'd be better than if it was cold. At least I hope it's going to be warm.

Shirley Hughes30:08

Last record

Shirley Hughes30:10

Well

Shirley Hughes30:11

I think my best times of have been with John, pottering about with our sketch books in some nice sunny place, preferably with a glass of wine on hand, and he's always drawing the buildings, and he can explain the buildings to me, and I can

Shirley Hughes30:28

out all the people, you know, the old

Shirley Hughes30:30

Men and women having an evening stroll, and children running around, and young men swaggering about. So my last piece would remind me of that, but also

Shirley Hughes30:43

Because I work alone, I've always felt that the the the one thing you miss is this working with a group, you know, when you've really got it together.

Shirley Hughes30:53

So I would like a great choral piece, so that I can fantasise that I'm in there, you know, with a wonderful soprano voice and all that breath singing a a great choral work.

Speaker 431:18

Going into solvent sound to us!

Speaker 431:22

Going out to sing the song toys

Speaker 431:26

No sorrow's coming home.

Speaker 431:34

So comes out his hands.

Presenter31:57

Coniam to solus sanctus from Vivaldi's Gloria, sung by the choir of King's College, Cambridge, conducted by Sir David Wilcox. Now, if you could only take one of your eight records, Shirley, which one would you take, and why?

Presenter32:10

I think I'd have to

Shirley Hughes32:10

Take them.

Shirley Hughes32:12

Because of this feeling of it would cheer me up to feel I'm in with all these other people in my own head anyway, because I'd be missing the family so much. What about a book? You've got

Presenter32:24

Uh

Shirley Hughes32:24

The Bible, and you've got the complete works of Shakespeare? I thought of Dickens, I love Dickens, but then I thought not fiction. I'd choose a a non-fiction book.

Shirley Hughes32:33

Which I can dip in and out of endlessly, and that would be Simon Shalma's.

Shirley Hughes32:38

Study of Holland in the Golden Age. It's called An Embarrassment of Riches. That would keep me going for quite a long time. And your luxury.

Presenter32:45

Three.

Shirley Hughes32:47

Well, I assume that my drawing things and pencils and things would be an essential of life, not a luxury. I'll have them on me.

Shirley Hughes32:55

My luxury I think I'd like a painting, and I would like uh Titian's Bacchus and Ariadne from the National Gallery. It's a painting of a woman who's just been abandoned on an island. You can see the little ship sailing away.

Shirley Hughes33:10

And the god Bacchus has just arrived with the nymphs and satires, and it's that heartbeat of a moment when he's leaping out of his carriage to claim her.

Presenter33:21

Shirley Hughes, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs. Thank you, it was great.

Speaker 133:34

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.

Speaker 133:37

For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio forward