P D James

P D James0:00

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 two, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:23

My Castaway this week is a writer. She published her first novel, Cover Her Face, in 1962, and in the ensuing 40 years has produced a steady stream of crime novels that have put her in the front rank of her craft. But that's not all she's done. For a large part of her writing career, she was a senior civil servant, and since retiring from that, has been active in the Lords, a governor of the BBC, a member of the Arts Council, and chairman of the Booker Prize judges. Her considerable achievements are very much her own. Her childhood, she says, was a period of almost constant anxiety. She left school at sixteen. She lost her husband to mental illness. My most valuable trait, she says, is tenacity. But what's got me where I am now is courage. She is Phyllis, better known as P. D. James. How much courage did it take, Phyllis, in the first place to start writing? Because you didn't exactly have a deal of time on your hands, did you? No, I didn't, Sue. I was a late starter for all sorts of reasons, being 19 when the war broke out and having to support my two daughters and husband when Connor was ill. And it does take a great deal of tenacity and determination, I think, to begin that first novel. Because otherwise you go on thinking one day I'll write it and you never get round to it. You don't. In fact, you realise that sooner or later you're going to say to your grandchildren, Of course what I really wanted to be was a writer. And had I had to speak those words, then my life would have been a failure in one very important respect. So you got up at six o'clock in the morning before you went to work, before you earned the daily bread which you had to do. Yes, I did. I did a great deal of plotting and planning on a journey to work. At that time we were living with my parents-in-law.

P D James1:38

You don't.

P D James1:51

Well the

Presenter2:02

who provided a very happy and stable background for the children. And of course it did mean when I got home at night so I didn't have to prepare meals. Mother-in-law had got it all ready. So life was not all that tough. But it was very difficult to find the time. But why crime? You've said before now that you chose it as a good apprenticeship. What for? You obviously didn't intend to carry on writing crime. You were going somewhere else. I began with crime because I did enjoy reading detective stories. I was very influenced by the women writers, Dorothy Alsayers, Nio Mars, Josephine Tay. I thought I could do it, and if so, you know, it's a popular form, it would stand a very good chance of being accepted. And I didn't want to write about the war or my husband's illness. I wanted to get away from too personal a note. Although I think actually all fiction is largely autobiographical, and much autobiography, of course, is fiction. But not crime novels, obviously. They can keep you well away from the world. Exactly. They do keep you I think that was part of the attraction. As was, of course, the structure. I love the structure. The order, the sense of order. Exactly. The creation of a total plot on charts first before you begin. Yes, in great, great detail before I begin. It's all worked out. And yet I never get exactly the book I thought I was going to write because it's only when I begin writing.

P D James2:52

But

P D James2:54

Keep you well aware.

Speaker 42:58

As

P D James3:00

The order, the sense of order. Exactly.

P D James3:06

Oh yes.

P D James3:09

Mm-hmm.

Presenter3:16

that the characters really reveal themselves fully to me. But, nevertheless, beyond that, you obviously have, Phyllis, a taste for death. There is no doubt about it. One of your titles. I mean, you know, one thinks immediately of the one, a taste for death, which opens with these two bodies, I think one a minister of the crown, one a tramp.

Speaker 33:29

Because

P D James3:34

Yeah.

Speaker 33:34

Top.

P D James3:34

Back.

Presenter3:35

Dead in a church vestry. The word blood occurs I don't know how many times, but many, many times in those few paragraphs. There's a kind of relish on your part. Well, you see, Sue, there's a reason for this, because the moment in a detective novel when the body is discovered is one of very great drama. It's often one of tremendous horror to the person making the discovery, and you want to convey that horror to the reader. Now, the bodies in the vestry, and they were indeed horribly murdered, were found by Miss Wharton, a gentle spinster who'd been to the church to do a little dusting and flower arranging. And that is what she saw.

Speaker 34:06

Yeah.

Presenter4:12

Blood. And it it just sort of it was blood, blood, blood. But in the body which is found by Adam Dalgleesh in another novel, Devices and Desires, it's much, much less terrifying because he's a professional policeman. One imagines you get your inspiration for example, in another novel, I think, The Black Tower, someone dies a terrible death from being pushed off a cliff, strapped in a wheelchair, unable to do anything. I imagine you standing on that beach looking up at a cliff and thinking, I wonder what nasty murder could occur off the top of there.

Presenter4:44

Well, I I suppose, yes. Perhaps there is that slightly morbid indeed there is a sceptical streak in fascination. I I think I am f fascinated by death. I would have been as a child, by the fact of death, by its inevitability. But I don't think that writing detective stories is, as it were, pandering to one's interest or fascination with death. I think they bring order out of disorder. It's a it's a very reassuring and comforting form for a writer. Which is why we all love them so much, I suppose. Yes, especially I think in times of anxiety.

P D James4:50

A sinister streak.

Presenter5:16

Interesting. More to come. Let's pause for your first record. What is it? This is Barthes St. Matthew Passion. Wonderful, magnificent music. I've got the solo voice. There are the great triumphant choruses, which are wonderful. And there are the orchestral passages. So I have a whole marvellous religious concert in one work.

Presenter6:36

The end of the Bach St Matthew Passion, In Tears of Grief, Dear Lord, we leave thee, sung by the Monteverde Choir and the London Oratory Junior School with the Baroque Soloists conducted by John Elliott Gardner. And memories for you, Phyllis James, I think, of listening to that with your father in your childhood in Ludlow. He was an income tax official, I think, and you moved around a bit, didn't you? Yes, he was a kind of middle-grade income tax official, so we were not a rich family by any standards. We hadn't many books at home, but he was very musical. He loved music, so he had a grammar phone. It was one of the old-fashioned ones. Yes, well, by the time we moved to Cambridge, when I was eleven, he had the kind of grammar phone where there are several records on top of each other, and as one is played, the other falls down. He was very proud of this. That was the state of the art in those days. But it does sound early on in Ludlow as if it was a kind of almost a Victorian childhood, because there's talk of sort of liberty bodices and drafty schoolrooms. Absolutely. A Victorian child would have felt very at home in our house. Certainly the house we had at Linnyview, overlooking the river and the meadows, because there was no electricity, it was lit by gas. Of course there are no television there, we had no car, there was no telephone, and there was a sort of Saturday bath and the great change of clothes for Sunday. Yes. And and the dose of syrup of igs.

Speaker 37:09

Wind up to the next one.

Presenter7:54

Yes, indeed, I'm afraid there was a dose of Serapafae that seemed to be

Presenter7:59

Apparently your mother thought you were a cynical little thing. Why was that? Yes, indeed she did. I don't think I was a particularly pleasant child, Sue, I must say. Looking back. In what way weren't you pleasant? I think I was. Slightly outspoken.

P D James8:07

It would be

Presenter8:11

being in a way introspective. Always wanting to be reading books when I ought to be helping in the house and doing other things. And detached is the other word that's crossed.

Speaker 38:20

I think pretty

Speaker 38:21

Yeah.

Presenter8:22

In the sense of seeing yourself always from the outside, observing. Oh, absolutely. From very, very early childhood, I would sort of get up in the morning and really tell a story about life, saying to herself, she got up, she moved to the window, she began brushing her hair, as if there was another Phyllis James outside myself, observing everything I did. Strange, isn't it? Or do you think a lot of writers do that? I think other writers may have done it. I certainly did it, and I can remember doing it from very early childhood. And what was the source of this constant anxiety that you've mentioned? I think children in those days were brought up a great deal more strictly than they are today. I suspect a lot of children suffered quite a high degree of anxiety. My father was pretty stern. In old age, I grew very much to respect him for his courage and his wit and his intelligence. But in childhood, I thought he was very fierce. My mother was very warm and very affectionate, but I don't think their relationship was always happy. And children, of course, do sense this. And in the end, your mother was ill, so that you, as the eldest of three, I think, had to take on domestic responsibility, had to grow up. Yes, when I was about fourteen, yes, my mother was mentally ill for a time and went into a local psychiatric hospital. And for, I suppose, was it eighteen months, maybe two years, certainly, I looked after the home with my father. And did you go to visit her in what I did in asylum? Yes, I was the only child who went to visit her. My father would take me when he went on Saturdays. He was very good in the house. He was a very capable man. So we managed between us. But it must have been quite distressing to visit your mother in such a place.

P D James9:41

Yeah. With the iFob

Speaker 39:44

Yes, I did an assignment.

Speaker 39:47

Might foul.

P D James9:47

Yeah.

Presenter9:58

It was distressing. The old fashioned mental hospital was an extremely distressing place.

Presenter10:04

Tell me about record number two.

Presenter10:05

Number two is King's College Choir. I love this choir because when we moved to Cambridge when I was eleven, I would go very often in the week to hear Evensong after school, and certainly on Sundays. And all my life I've loved it. And every single Christmas we listen to King's College Choir singing the carols. My father never missed that. And they're singing music that I particularly love, which is the Agnes Day from Foray's Requiem.

Presenter11:32

King's College Choir singing the Annus Dei Femforees Requiem with the new Philharmonial Orchestra conducted by Sir David Wilcox and members of Cambridge Phyllis James where you lived from the age of eleven. You learned to read at an early age and you started to write a family magazine. What was in it? This was for your little story. Probably very foolish little stories, but little stories. And I believe I even attempted to illustrate it. Yes, this was the family magazine.

P D James11:48

This was the old little stories.

Presenter11:59

And then on to Cambridge Girls' High School. Yes. Did you excel there in creative writing?

Presenter12:05

Well, I won the short story prize, Sue, for what that was worth, and English and history my two best subjects. And the English mistress's name was very important. That was Miss Maisie Dalgrees. Is that where you took it from Sir Adam Dalgrey? Indeed I did. And what was so extraordinary was that I met her many, many years later, and she told me her father had been called Adam. That was a rather strange coincidence, wasn't it?

P D James12:17

Is that where you took it from, Sir Adam Dunkin's? Indeed I did.

Presenter12:28

Fascinating, isn't it? I wonder if he'd gone in subliminally at some point. It's very well. How I would have known, though, I'm not absolutely sure. He's well, he began as Chief Inspector, he's now a commander, Darling. He's now commander, yes. He's very elegant, really rather suave, quite taciturn. He is the sort of policeman, I think someone said this, haven't they? Who if you had to be interviewed by a policeman, you'd like to be interviewed by. He seems kind of sensible and wise. I think he's both sensible and wise, but I think he's also very dangerous. And I think if I were guilty, I wouldn't like to be interviewed by him at all. If you were the culprit, certainly he'd catch you up. But I wonder all these qualities we talk about, they are the sorts of qualities you admire, aren't they? They're very perceptible of you, sir. Yes, indeed they are. Well, I think if you create a character you hope will go through a series of books, it's terribly important to start with someone who isn't too bizarre and eccentric, like Poirot, otherwise you're lumbered with him. Someone who can develop, and someone you personally like. Because if the writer gets bored.

P D James12:29

Isn't it out?

P D James12:31

If they

P D James12:37

Yes.

P D James12:58

Yeah.

P D James13:00

Uh

Speaker 313:00

Yeah.

P D James13:01

Uh

Presenter13:26

With her character, the readers are certainly going to be very bored. But there's a ruthless streak there as well, isn't there? He has that splinter of ice in his heart, yes, indeed. And you've been quite ruthless with him because you killed off his wife in charge of the children. Why doesn't he need all those information? I want to cope with his love life, you see. So I was ruthless in killing off his wife and his newborn child. But in the last book, Death in Holy Orders, he falls in love. So, you know, I think that's a good idea. He's had a twinkle. He's had a twinkle in his eye before, though. I seem to remember the end of the first one, cover her face. He quite likes the daughter of well, we won't say who did it. Oh, yes. But he quite likes Deborah, I think. Oh, I don't think he's lived a celibate life at all. Thank goodness for that. Not in the slightest. I think he has had a number of probably rather civilised affairs. There's been no real committal at all. And you're writing your eighteenth book now. Not all of them about him, but this one is about him. Is he about to commit himself in some way? Well, um

Speaker 313:34

And you've been quite

P D James13:37

Yes, I think it's a good idea.

P D James13:51

I think it's a good idea.

P D James13:59

We will say

P D James14:01

Oh yes.

P D James14:06

Thank goodness for that.

P D James14:15

Uh

P D James14:18

Using the balance.

P D James14:21

Well done.

Presenter14:22

After season

Presenter14:24

I think he is. I haven't quite got to that part of the novel yet. Oh, well do let him. But I think as one of you has said, it's time I made a good man happy. So perhaps I shall.

P D James14:25

Yeah.

P D James14:28

Oh well do let him but I think

Speaker 314:33

I think

Presenter14:35

Record number three. I thought I'd like a record of some dance music, because this will bring back memories of my youth in the war in Cambridge. I used to go on Saturday with my friends to the McGrath Ballroom. Ballroom it was not, actually. It was a sort of dance hall. But there we danced, mostly of course, with airmen from the drones. You would dance with people, say goodbye to them, and they might be there next Saturday, or they might not. Wasn't there a particular airmen you had a soft spot for?

Speaker 314:35

Three.

Presenter15:02

Yes, there was one. He was from Czechoslovakia. He was extraordinarily handsome. And um he didn't turn up on Saturday, and I didn't know what had happened to him until I went to Czechoslovakia just before the fall of the wall.

Presenter15:16

And I was told by my publisher that after the war citizens of their country who had fought for the Allies had a very bad time, and he had published a book about the airmen who had fought in the war. And there indeed was my airman with the little cross and the date afterwards. So the reason why he hadn't turned up was, of course, that he'd been shot down.

Presenter15:36

Anyway, they they were in some way still happy days, because they were days of youth, and so here is, in fact, some of the music to which we dance.

Presenter16:44

The String of Pearls, played by the Universal International Orchestra conducted by Joseph Gershinen. And memories for you, Phyllis James, of the war years. You were married in the early years of the war. I think you were just twenty one, and so was your husband, Connor Bantry White. Connor Bantry White, yeah. Trainee Doctor, he was. Trainee Commuter Doctor.

P D James16:57

And so was your husband.

Presenter17:03

What was it you fell for? What was he like? He was Anglo-Irish. He was fair.

Presenter17:08

I thought he was rather good looking, but he wasn't egregiously handsome.

Presenter17:13

I think it was his humour and the charm.

Presenter17:16

Really, that that's were the main attractions. And was uh I mean, it was wartime, yes, but as we know there's something very romantic about wartime, or there can be. W w did you have fun in those early war years? I know you moved to London and he was a firefighter. You know, looking back on the war years, for those of us who are lucky enough to survive, they were often times of excitement and almost of joy. When we were living together in London, certainly we were being bombed. We had marvellous, marvellous times together, and there was great companionship, a great sense of the unity, a sense of the excitement of being in London. Connor and some other medical students used to earn a little money by firewatching in a bank near the BBC, very close to where we are. Every single uh building had to be firewatched through the night so that these uh these bombs could be put out. But you could employ people and medical students to do this. And there we were at the top of it, and we join them at the end of the day and have marvellous parties where

P D James18:10

So

Presenter18:15

And you had two little girls? Yes, of course. I had two two daughters during the course of the war. And then he went away, he joined the Royal Army Medical Center. He went to the Royal Army Medical Corps, yes.

P D James18:17

Yeah, yeah.

P D James18:20

I love

P D James18:22

On the went to the right.

Presenter18:27

He came back. It wasn't his illness was not due to the war in any way. At least he received no compensation and no no pension, but he did come back mentally ill. How was he di and was it a stranger who came back? Yes, it took me a little time to realize that it was a stranger coming back. I didn't at first realize that. And in the end he was committed again to a a psychiatric hospital, was he? Uh he was in and out of psychiatric hospitals, yes, for most of the rest of our married life, yes. And he died at the age of forty four. In uh I mean, that must have been reminiscent of of going to see your mother in such a place, isn't it? It was a great deal more serious than my mother's illness. But indeed, yes, it was reminiscent. Indeed it was. It was a shock.

Speaker 319:01

It'll be more serious.

P D James19:02

Yeah.

Presenter19:08

But do you think it was inevitable? Do you think today, had there been the drugs that that we now have, i i it it need not have happened?

Presenter19:17

It's very difficult to say, isn't it, with all these illnesses. I think that the drugs and modern treatment really would have helped him considerably. But whether he would have been cured, I don't know. Echo number four.

Presenter19:29

Record four is another um memory of the war. My best friend at school, you know, in those days you always had a best friend you did absolutely everything with, and she trained as a nurse and she nursed in France. And when we were together, before she went overseas, the radio always seemed to be playing the same song, and it's Chateaundre. It reminds me of those days of the fall of France, the early days of the war, and being with Joan.

Speaker 419:53

Judge of the rain.

Speaker 420:04

Just on the rate.

Speaker 420:08

Alright.

Speaker 420:13

Got all the rule.

Speaker 420:16

Hey, Carnoiseau.

Presenter20:19

Uh

Speaker 420:22

Yes?

Presenter20:24

Jet andre, sung by Jean Sablon. It's rather a plaintive little song, isn't it? It is, very plaintive. Very nice though. You worked as a a a full-time administrator in in the NHS from uh nineteen forty nine onwards. I think at one time, I think you were in charge of five psychiatric hospitals.

Speaker 420:28

Uh

P D James20:29

Very

Speaker 320:30

Yeah.

P D James20:30

Yeah.

P D James20:30

Very nice.

Presenter20:41

In London. And later on you went on to work at the Home Office, and then you can see that. Yes, I took an examination for a senior grazer in the civil service.

P D James20:45

Uh

Speaker 320:45

Yeah, yeah.

Presenter20:49

And was successful and chose the Home Office. You were quite ambitious during all of this time, weren't you? Yes, I I I think possibly I am ambitious in in one sense, that if I'm working I like to be successful. I I couldn't bear to be working and people feel, you know, that they didn't really want me in their department or their section. I wasn't a lot of youth. I I always wanted to get promotion if promotion was there to be had and and also of course I I needed the money because of the family.

Speaker 320:50

And chose the helmet.

Speaker 321:15

Hmm.

Presenter21:16

It's part of that sense of order, though, isn't it? That desire for order, which again you seem to have very strongly both in your books and in your life. I suppose it is, Sue, when you come to think about it. Yes, it is. If I'm going to do something, I'm going to do it well. Yes. Yes, I think that's right. But the writing began, as we've said, during this time, I think it was in in the nineteen fifties you started writing. And was it a kind of therapy? Was it a kind of escape? Because life must have been pretty hard going and a bit lonely.

P D James21:25

We only

P D James21:29

But the ro

P D James21:35

Yeah.

Presenter21:43

I don't think it was therapy or escape, but I do think it was a psychological necessity. I felt I was born as a writer, I wasn't writing, and I needed to have that first novel written and published. To that extent, yes, it might perhaps have been therapy, but it was an enduring psychological need. And so you got the manuscript, your first manuscript for Cover Her Face. It was taken up by an agent, it was passed on to a publisher, Faber, and they accepted it. I mean, unknown, really, isn't it? Usually at this point, we discuss rejection slips because it was absolutely wonderful, yes. It was accepted by the first publisher my agent sent it to. And I realised at that moment that people do actually dance for joy.

P D James22:12

I mean, unknown really, isn't it?

Speaker 322:14

This is Uh

P D James22:14

Yeah.

Speaker 322:14

Yes.

P D James22:14

Uh

P D James22:17

Yeah.

Speaker 322:17

It was helpful.

Presenter22:27

Because I did a little jig uh up and down the hall. It really was one of the great moments of my life.

Presenter22:34

Record number five. I love the sound of trumpets. They're so joyous, almost triumphant, and they lift my heart always. So I thought on my eyelid I must have some trumpet music. And this is Vivaldi, and it's a concerto for two trumpets in C major.

Presenter23:43

Part of Vivaldi's concerto for two trumpets in C major, played by Philip Jones and John Wilbraham with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, conducted by Neville Mariner. Adam Dowdleish, P. D. James, has been televised. I think it was the actor Roy Marsden who gave him flesh on ITV. And now I read that Martin Shaw is going to lead him in a BBC dramatisation. Does that mean he's going to be a bit more macho than he's been in the past? I don't think he'll be too macho, because that would be a fundamental change in the character. And I'm sure Martin wouldn't wish to do that, and nor the producer or the director. But do you get approval? Do you get approval? I get some approval. The BBC have been very good. They did seem very anxious that the character should be as I'd written the character fundamentally and not changed into someone quite different. And I'm sure he won't be changed into someone quite different. Because you've had problems in that respect, I think, with your other character, Cordelia Gray, or privatized. Oh, a very sad story, that was, dear, really. Quite dreadful, really. I was rather foolish in allowing the film company to write their own stories and carry on with the character. We should say it's an unsuitable job for a woman. They did an unsuitable job for a woman very, very well, but the others were disastrous.

Speaker 324:19

It's an okay.

P D James24:20

Uh

Speaker 324:27

Back

P D James24:38

Privatized.

P D James24:49

This is an instrument.

P D James24:52

They

Presenter24:58

The actress became pregnant and so they carried on with Cordelia as an unmarried mother. And not only was she an unmarried mother, which one might have been able to cope with, but she was a totally ineffective detective. So I really lost my character now because it's not my Cordelia anymore. But could you stop that? I mean, did you try to stop it? I didn't know anything about it until I was in the hairdresser and read about it in the magazine Under the Dryer. You know how it is. Well, perhaps you don't mind. I suspect you do, so. Under the dryer, we read all sorts of magazines we might not actually buy and learn all sorts of things we wouldn't otherwise know. So you learned the actress was pregnant. But they were going to carry on with Cordelia Gray.

P D James25:16

I disinherited.

P D James25:30

So you learned the actress was pregnant.

Presenter25:35

So what is the moral? Is the moral never hand over the rights to your character, or be careful who you hand them over to? Well, I would never hand over the rights to Dalgrish. I think I felt I might not write about Cordelia again, that I was getting older and there weren't that number of years remaining, and I would probably concentrate on Adam Dalgrish and on Kate Miskin, the woman detective who works with him. But on the whole, I think one shouldn't pass over a character not a fi not a major character. But they're also I mean, they're your children, aren't you? I'm sure you do feel quite proprietorial about them. Oh, you do, very.

Presenter26:08

Very.

Presenter26:10

Record number six.

Presenter26:11

Well, um, I'm thinking of myself on on the island, you see, and how I'm going to survive and whether I'm going to be happy. And I thought I'd like to have um the importance of being earnest, because I know this place so well that I can practically, you know, join in all the parts. And if I wanted an evening at the theatre, I'd put this on and decide this evening I'm going to be Lady Brecknell, or this evening you're going to be one of the young women. And I'd be able, you know, to speak the dialogue with them and feel that indeed I was having an evening at the theatre. An old gentleman of a very kindly and charitable disposition.

Presenter26:45

Found me.

Speaker 426:46

and gave me the name of Worthing because he happened to have a first-class ticket for Worthing in his pocket at the time.

Speaker 426:52

Worthing is a place in Sussex. It is a seaside resort.

Presenter26:55

Where did the charitable gentleman who had a first-class ticket for this seaside resort find you?

Presenter27:04

In a handbag. A handbag?

Speaker 427:06

Handburn

Presenter27:09

Yes, Lady Bracknell, I was in a handbag.

Presenter27:12

A somewhat large black leather handbag with handles to it.

Presenter27:17

An ordinary handbag, in fact.

P D James27:19

In what locality did this Mr. James or Thomas Cardew come across this ordinary? And bad.

Presenter27:28

In the cloakroom at Victoria Station. It was given to him in mistake for his own. The cloakroom at Victoria Station? Yes, the Brighton line. The line is immaterial.

Presenter27:41

Edith Evans is Lady Bracknell interviewing Sir John Gilgood as John Worthing in Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest. You've stuck with the crime genre, Phyllis, and it served you incredibly well. You suggested that your motive for not writing what you might call a straight novel is that you would have to because writers inevitably do use autobiographical material. And yet, as we've heard, you've had such an interesting, less than ordinary life. Why wouldn't you want to use it?

Presenter28:09

I don't think I would want to write any book which humiliated someone I had once loved and who was no longer here to defend himself or herself. I don't think I would want to write great details about what I thought of my own parents' marriage. For one thing, one can never tell. One can't tell, really. We are all, I think, made by our past as well as by our genes. We probably all do the best we can. Some people do better than others. One has to have compassion and has to have pity. And I feel it would be arrogant, really, to reveal secrets which people would hate to have revealed were they still with us. But when you are long gone, or maybe short gone, as it were, does it fill you with horror the idea that people, the vultures, will descend on your papers in an attempt to write your biography? I shan't be here to worry about it soon, but yes, I don't like to think that that will be so. And in fact, that's why I wrote my fragment of autobiography and the diary of a young man. But they'll want to know more. There are many more questions perhaps left unanswered than answered. Yes, well, both my children would be very loath, I think, to cooperate with any biographer. Have you told them they shouldn't? Have you? I don't need to tell them they shouldn't. They would hate to do it. And I think they feel, like me, that although the fragment of autobiography is only a fragment with the books, I think people know enough about me as much as I would want them to know, as much as they need to know, really. But people always want to know more. I mean, are the papers there, or have you burnt them? No, there are no papers. I'm a very, very bad letter writer, an appallingly bad letter writer. I don't know why I am, but I just am.

Speaker 329:16

But they'll want to know more.

P D James29:18

There are many

Speaker 329:22

Yes, well both of them.

Speaker 329:26

Yeah.

Speaker 329:27

A few of them.

Speaker 329:48

Yes, they do.

Presenter29:59

Next piece of music, number seven.

Presenter30:00

Well, my elder daughter Claire has a very lovely alto voice and she sings in the Hatfield Philharmonic Chorus. So I would very much like to hear the Hatfield Philharmonic Chorus singing. And this of course will remind me of the times when I've been to various concert halls to listen to Clare.

Presenter31:15

The Hatfield Philharmonic Chorus, conducted by Michael Kibblewhite, singing part of Mozart's Ave Verum Corpus. Um now, P D James, can I ask you well, I can ask you about death on a desert if I can't talk to you about death on a desert island, who can I talk to about it? Um do you contemplate death, your own death, at all?

P D James31:30

Um

Presenter31:36

Yes, I I do think about my own death, because at eighty two um I have to accept that it can't be all that far distant. I don't think I fear it, but I I'm like most people, and particularly the old, I think. We would like to die quickly and painlessly, and above all we don't want to be a trouble and a nuisance to our families and to other people, and we don't want to lose our independence. So that most of us, I think, are probably more afraid of of dying slowly, painfully, and not ourselves becoming different people, than we are of the actual fact of death. But do you still look at yourself in that detached manner you described as you did when you were a child? Do you now look at yourself and think, well, there she is now. She's done very well. She's, you know, become a member of the establishment. She's a distinguished writer. She's a high achiever.

Presenter32:23

I've been immensely privileged, very, very blessed in my life, and I'm grateful. I think my religious belief is largely based on a sense of gratitude for what I've had. And life is still immensely sweet. It always has been. Even at the worst times in my life, I don't think I've ever felt that I wanted to die, that I wanted to end it. I've always felt that it was good really to be alive, and it was a privilege to be alive. And this is really rather conveyed, I think, in my last record. It is from Gilbert and Sullivan. It's the condemned Fairfax singing, Is Life a Boon? I love it because of its optimism. And for me, of course, life has been a boon, not a thorn.

Speaker 433:01

Is life a boon? If so, it must befall That death, whene'er he call, Must call too soon. No false for his he gave, yet one would pray.

P D James33:17

Yet one would pray.

Speaker 433:20

If I love a moon, what kind of planes have I?

P D James33:24

What kind of play

Speaker 433:27

Perishing to lie, O perish in Joe.

P D James33:27

Ha rishi

P D James33:29

Uh

P D James33:31

Ah

Speaker 433:35

I might have had it to die, but turns into

P D James33:38

I turn it to the

Speaker 433:44

I might have had it to die perchance.

P D James33:45

Might have

Presenter34:01

Kurt Streit as the condemned Colonel Fairfax singing Is Life a Boon from Gilbert and Sullivan's Yeoman of the Guard with the Academy and Chorus of St. Martin in the Fields conducted by Sir Neville Mariner. Now if you could only take one of those eight records for this, which which one would you take? I think it has to be about St. Matthew Passion. I would never, never tire of hinging of this wonderful music. It has everything, hasn't it, really? And your book. You've got the Bible, as you know, and you've got the complete works of Shakespeare. Would it count if I asked for the complete Oxford Dictionary? It's against the rules, really. It's a reference book, I think. Oh, I I can't I mustn't have a reference book. Well, then I think I'd better tackle again some of the great Russian novelists. I'd better take War and Peace.

Speaker 334:32

Oh we're

Speaker 334:33

Oh, I

P D James34:34

Uh

Presenter34:43

And what about your luxury? Well, for luxury I would like an almost unlimited amount of paper and a large number of pencils. I would be able to sharpen the pencils no good giving pens or virus which would dry up. And that would keep me, I think, very happy.

Presenter34:56

Phyllis James, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs. Thank you for inviting me, sir.

P D James35:08

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