U A Fanthorpe

U A Fanthorpe0:00

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 four, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:31

My Costaway this week is a poet. She was nearly fifty before she produced her first book of poetry. Before that, she'd spent a a well-proportioned middle-class life, the daughter of a judge who became a head of department at Cheltenham Ladies' College. It wasn't until she turned her back on her teaching career that she started to write, and today she's one of Britain's most popular poets and was a serious candidate for poet laureate last time around.

Presenter0:54

Her work is very English, wry, humorous, but always compassionate, whether she's writing about the history of her homeland, this narrow island charged with echoes and whispers, or those who inhabit its present, the high rise people and the dispossessed, the tele idols, fat men in fast cars. She's always clear eyed and uncomplicated. As she says, it's absurd to make things so difficult they can't be understood. She is Ursula Ascombe Fanthorpe, better known as UA Fanthorpe. Have you always been UA UA?

Presenter1:29

Or was it a something that happened when you got published? When I got published, yes, I.

Presenter1:34

I suddenly d decided to re-baptise myself and Ursula had always been a burden to me rather, because people said, What? or how do you spell it? or occasionally, Oh, I know what that means, little bear, none of which I had much cared for. So it was a kind of liberation, was it? Yes, yes, a new life, a new me. And this, as I mentioned in the introduction, happened when you were round about fifty, approaching fifty anyway, after a career in the English department at Cheltenham Ladies, when you became a kind of middle-aged dropout, gave it all up and went to work in a hospital in Bristol, which is where you found inspiration to write your poetry. Now, why and how.

U A Fanthorpe1:56

Yeah.

U A Fanthorpe1:59

And

Presenter2:11

Well, in the first place, I was a person of such excruciating unimportance that um nobody really knew me, and I had to sit in what I thought of as my glass dug-out. I thought of myself like a soldier in the First World War, watching for people to have fits, or to be uneasy, or to be inconsonant. Whatever happened, I had to be ready for it. And this was a much more

Presenter2:35

Enlivening

Presenter2:36

Experience than anything I'd had before, because I wasn't part of the picture. I was merely a watcher. But why would that inspire poetry?

Presenter2:45

Because I felt so surprised myself at what the people were like, the patients, that I thought I didn't know there were peop were people like this. There must be a lot of others in the world who don't know, haven't had the kind of experience that I'm

Presenter2:58

fortunate enough to have now. It was fairly harrowing, but I also felt I was lucky to have it, and it seemed important to tell people about it. So you were and this is your phrase you were bearing witness, as it were. I was. I thought of my father a lot. My father had been dead quite a long time.

U A Fanthorpe3:10

I was

Presenter3:15

But, as you said, he was a judge, and he was always talking about the responsibility of the witness, and I felt here I really am a witness. Nobody else is here to look at quite the things that I'm looking at. And where and how did you write it, the poetry?

Presenter3:28

Well, there was a disused caravan in the grounds of the hospital. I had a forty minute lunch hour, and it was very good, because I hadn't time to

Presenter3:38

hang around and sharpen pencils and do the sort of things I generally do before I tackle something. I just had to get on with it because I knew forty minutes was all there was. And at the end of the day Rosie would be saying, What have you got for me?

Speaker 33:47

Yeah.

U A Fanthorpe3:48

Yeah.

Presenter3:51

My partner, Rosie. So one of the first poems you must have written was the list in which you talk, because you were the receptionist, as you say, in the glass booth, about drawing up the patient's list for the next day, flawlessly typed and spaced at the proper intervals, and a name, a time, a number, they advance on the future, you wrote. I wondered if you'd read us the second half of that poem, which describes

U A Fanthorpe3:51

This is your partner, Rosie. My partner, Rosie.

U A Fanthorpe3:59

Does he

Presenter4:14

Your feelings towards them at that moment is called the List. Yes, certainly. I should say it's the most immodest poem, because it implies that I'm a brilliant typist, and actually I was one finger on each hand woman. But uh it it needed that sort of point to be made.

Presenter4:30

And the I was creating the patients as they might have been, whole and well.

Presenter4:37

Tomorrow these names will turn nasty, senile, pregnant, late, handicapped, handcuffed, unhandy.

Presenter4:45

Muddled, moriband, mute.

Presenter4:48

Be stained by living.

Presenter4:50

But here

Presenter4:52

Orderly, equal, right.

Presenter4:55

On the edge of tomorrow they pause like gift bearers on a frieze with the proper offering.

Presenter5:02

A time

Presenter5:03

A number, a name.

Presenter5:06

I am the artist, the typist.

Presenter5:09

I did my best for them. There's a bit of swagger there.

Speaker 45:12

Yeah.

Presenter5:12

Uh

Speaker 45:12

Yeah.

Presenter5:12

UA Fanthorpe in the Burden Neurological Hospital, Bristol, finding her poetic voice. Let's pause then and have your first record. What's it to be? Oh.

Presenter5:21

Come away, fellow sailors, from the beginning of Act Three of Purcell's Dido and Aeneas. I love this, and what I like about Purcell is the

Presenter5:31

The sort of jauntiness, the gaiety, and the tremendous sadness the sailors are rejoiced to be leaving Carthage on their way to Rome but, on the other hand, it's just leading up to the most tragic piece of writing in English music, I suppose, Dido's Lament.

Speaker 45:46

Come away, fellow sailors, come away! Your anchors be wailing! Time and tide will admit no delay. Take a boozy short leave of your nymphs on the shore, and silence their mourning with vows of returning. But never intending to visit them more. Though never intending to visit them more. Oh, never, oh never intending to visit them more. Come away, fellow sailors, come a sailors, come away!

Speaker 46:21

Yeah.

Speaker 46:22

Time that miss no delay!

Speaker 46:39

December, the river, the river in ten is the easy bedpoint.

Presenter6:47

Come away, fellow sailors, from the beginning of Act three of Purcell's Dido and Aeneas, performed by the Scholars' Baroque Ensemble.

Presenter6:54

It has to be said, Ewell Phanthorpe, that you suggest in one or two of your poems about the hospital that some of the staff were as deranged as the patients. Consultants who behaved as if they were God, in my case, Doctor Snow and all his little fads, you say. Did they ever read this stuff and realise you were writing about them? Well, regrettably, I thought it better to show them what I'd been writing. I thought that the clinical director ought to know, because some of the more menial types on my own level did know what I was doing. So I gave him a copy.

Presenter7:27

and his wife, who was also uh worked at the hospital, told me I'd spoilt their Christmas.

Presenter7:32

And you had therefore had you disguised your background when you applied for that. You were a ni non-entity and you wanted to be viewed as a non-entity.

U A Fanthorpe7:40

That's right.

Presenter7:42

Daunting for people to find that I wanted a sort of nine-to-five job. So I downplayed myself like anything. And when I got the job at the hospital, I said I'd done a bit of teaching, leaving them to suppose it was sort of something very elementary indeed. So tell me about the bit of teaching, because it lasted, what, about 16 or 17 years at Cheltenham Ladies' College. Why?

U A Fanthorpe8:03

Shout out.

Speaker 48:03

Yeah.

Presenter8:06

Did you find it in the end less than fulfilling?

Presenter8:10

Well, I think all the time I was living on my nerves really, when I first got there, most of the teachers had been doing something marvellous in the war, you know, something very splendid in the Atz or with the Landgirls or

Presenter8:20

Land Army.

Presenter8:22

And then I began to get the hang of it, as you do with teaching, and gradually realise what you've got to do and what you haven't.

Presenter8:29

And all would have gone well, I think, if they hadn't made me head of department, and that went to my head.

Presenter8:34

And I started sort of wanting to innovate because having up from below, you always know how things could be better, and I thought I did.

Presenter8:42

That's all very right and proper, isn't it? Well, it is up to a point. But then I began to get delusions of grandeur and think that I I mattered. I didn't really. I mean, not in the scheme of things. In the scheme of things, the person who hasn't yet got the point at the back of the classroom is the one who really matters.

Presenter8:58

I felt also that it was a matter of listening and speaking, and that I was doing an awful lot of speaking, as I am now, and not much listening, and that listening was what I should be doing. After all, adolescence is difficult and they need help with it. But was there something else at work as well? You've indicated in some pieces that I've read about you that you were watching these classes of girls go out into the world to do the things that perhaps you might you were you were jealous of them. I was jealous of them. And it was the sixties, a very exciting time to be young.

U A Fanthorpe9:19

Yeah.

U A Fanthorpe9:24

You were jealous of

Presenter9:30

And I wasn't old enough to feel that I was past it. I felt I could still do something. I don't want to be stuck here for the rest of my life. And the future that I saw simply consisted of going on doing the same things, probably rather less well.

Presenter9:44

So you woke from your academic slumber, you said, um discovered

U A Fanthorpe9:46

Uh

Speaker 49:46

Uh

U A Fanthorpe9:46

Yeah.

Speaker 49:46

Yeah.

Presenter9:48

That you could write poetry, you got it published. Your second book became was called Book of the Year, I think, by the Financial Times, and you've been writing and publishing, what, for the twenty-five years ever since? Yes, yes, since 1974. It was a sort of midlife crisis that came good, really? It was, it was, except my poor mother died just before it all began to come good. She had been so disappointed because she had been.

U A Fanthorpe9:58

See?

U A Fanthorpe10:01

Sort of

Presenter10:12

The sort of person whose life is cut off by marriage. She had been doing great things at the Foreign Office, I think it was. Then, of course, she got married, had children, and she had to give it all up. So she put her ambitions on to me.

Presenter10:25

And when I abandoned Cheltenham, she couldn't make out what I was doing at all.

Presenter10:30

Tell me about your second record.

Presenter10:33

This goes back to the sixes and is uh every time I hear it I see the young Scylla Black, and uh probably the young me too. It's Scylla Black singing Anyone Who Had a Heart.

Speaker 410:48

Baby, in real arms and love me too.

Speaker 410:55

Couldn't be another heart that hurt me like you hurt me and be so

Presenter11:15

Scylla Black and anyone who had a heart. What about the girls you taught then, UA? Have they would they have known then that their Miss Fanthorpe had a kind of reb rebellious spirit underneath it all?

Presenter11:25

Well, I I I rather hope they did. Um since my job was to teach English and most English poets, writers, prose writers, whatever.

Presenter11:33

Most of the people involved in English in some way or other have been rebelling against something or other. I hope they got the feeling from me. But uh it's hard to tell. You haven't been in touch since I'm dropping out. I meet them quite often.

U A Fanthorpe11:43

Oh yes, I'm helping out.

Presenter11:46

At readings, they come up and say, You won't remember me, I'm Harriet. And I bet you do remember them. I do remember them, yes, but of course they don't look the same.

Presenter11:54

Let's go back to your beginnings in Bromley and Kent. Your father, as we've said, was a lawyer, barrister who became a judge.

U A Fanthorpe11:56

On the

Presenter12:00

And we've mentioned this bearing witness thing. He encouraged you and your brother to do that, didn't he? Yes, he did. We were both garrulous little creatures, I think. My brother's younger than me, but not much. And we both liked it to speak.

Presenter12:13

He would say, no, no, silence in court, now, my learned friend, and make a speech each in turn for the prosecution or the defence. So that we got a rather warped idea, really, that there was no such thing as perfect truth, but just barrister's truth, as it were, or legal truth. He was obviously a very relaxed man and loved you in your life. Again, from what you've written about him, you've written a charming poem about him helping you look for lugworms on the streets. That's right.

Speaker 312:35

No, no, no.

U A Fanthorpe12:36

Uh

Speaker 312:40

Tradition

Speaker 312:41

Yeah.

Presenter12:41

Let me quote a bit here. He hoiks you up, your dad, to the space around his head. You've got the knack, my princess, he says, you're lucky. There's a lot of love in that. Um and he was such a a fun person to be with. He'd take us to the dogs, or he'd take us to the races, or he'd take us on the river, which he adored. and take us to the sea and see the lugworms. And all the time my mother in the background worrying about the time that the bus was coming, or whatever it was, or complaining that you couldn't get decent lettuce sandwiches at Richmond, I remember herself.

Presenter13:14

Again, uh you've written a lot about her. There's one, a poem for Winifred Fanthorpe, born 1895, Fanfair.

Presenter13:22

All your life you lived in a minefield, and you were pleased in a quiet way when mines exploded. You never actually said I told you so, but we could tell you meant it. We all know that kind of

Presenter13:33

Woman, mother, really don't we always worried that the worst might happen again? It's out of love, really. Oh, it is. And of course it was the war as well. We had to be packed off because all the schools in Bromley closed down.

U A Fanthorpe13:34

And we don't know.

U A Fanthorpe13:35

Burrit.

U A Fanthorpe13:37

Yeah, it's rather

Presenter13:44

and uh she was never too sure whether she was going to see us again. My mother was always talking about the will and how we should go to my uncle and aunt if anything happened, and uh we mustn't worry about it, because this was you know

Presenter13:56

Just the way things were, and we must just be brave. It was really difficult at the age of ten. Well, I kept quiet. A lot of the war I spent in keeping quiet, because it seemed necessary.

U A Fanthorpe13:59

How did you react to that?

Presenter14:06

Um everybody else was saying careless talk costs lives and

Presenter14:11

Serious things like that, and it seemed to me that the best thing I could do was not let my parents know how unhappy I was. So I didn't.

Presenter14:20

Code number three.

Presenter14:21

Surely.

Presenter14:23

He hath borne our griefs from Handel's Messiah.

Presenter14:26

This was the first piece of

Presenter14:29

startling music that I came across. Just to do it with the humble little English word surely, which is saying nothing, surely, and a German handle to do it. I think it's marvellous. It startled me out of my wits then, and it still does.

Speaker 415:04

Show me.

Speaker 415:06

So many

Speaker 415:13

Yeah.

Speaker 415:15

Let's do it!

Speaker 415:18

Sorry.

Speaker 415:20

Yeah.

Presenter15:42

Surely he hath borne our griefs from Handel's Messiah, performed by the Chicago Symphony Chorus and Orchestra conducted by Sir George Schulte. So you were very quiet you at boarding school, and and also strangely kept unaware of what was going on. You didn't know about Dunkirk, I think. No, that was the most extraordinary thing.

U A Fanthorpe15:58

Yeah.

Presenter16:00

We had no idea that anything was happening until even song on Sunday when the

Presenter16:05

Parish priest used to come round and preach to us.

Presenter16:08

And he said, and let us give thanks for the miracle of Dunkirk. And we all looked at each other and didn't know what the miracle of Dunkirk was. And ever since then, I've had this curious sort of relationship with feeling that great things are going on somewhere else and I ought to have known about them and I didn't. Perhaps this accounts for my need to tell people things. But you're also locked in fiction, weren't you? A very bookish child. Yes. Books saw you through all this difficult period. That's right, yes. The longer the book, the better.

U A Fanthorpe16:34

That's

Presenter16:38

Things like Lorna Doone and the whole of Dickens and the whole of Scott. I love Scott, especially the sort of explanatory historical bits at the end.

Presenter16:46

Quo Vedis, that was a particular favourite, full of blood and thunder and bleeding Christians. This was reading under the desk, was it? More or less, yes. In the end you survived the war and you were fulfilling, as you've said, your mother's ambitions for you and you went up to Oxford, which she would have been delighted about. You were the first in your family to go to United States. I was the first, yes, yes. That was a reason for rejoicing, was it?

U A Fanthorpe17:04

You were the first in

U A Fanthorpe17:06

I was the first, yes, yes.

Presenter17:10

Oh yes, everybody was terribly pleased, especially as it had been rather hard to get in. I had to t to try two years running because um my school wasn't used to people going to universities. I had to more or less find my way round the regulations myself. This is uh St Anne's to read English. This was 1949. A glamorous time to be there, I would have thought, because you've got all these people coming back from the war.

U A Fanthorpe17:27

Dancy reading.

Presenter17:33

Well, it was intensely glamorous, but of course people like me who were came straight from school were very much less interesting to our tutors than people who'd been at Arnhem or Dunkirk or whatever, and the place was full of people, young men like that, and so the the ordinary school leaver was a bit of a come-down. And what about your you mentioned your tutors wasn't Tolkien? Tolkien was there, most certainly he w he was a lovely man.

U A Fanthorpe17:56

Don't

Presenter17:59

Most encouraging. Um he never said an unkind word that I can remember. I didn't have him as a tutor, only I went to his lectures. And one magical day

Presenter18:09

When he was talking about the pardoner's tale, he obviously ran out of things to say, and sort of rambled. And I think probably he was rambling the Lord of the Rings. I wish I had written it down. But it was lovely to feel that you were in the presence of somebody who could just sort of cut off like that. And Lord David Cecil was there. Oh, he was a dear. He was very kind. Yes, yes. I thought he spat at you.

U A Fanthorpe18:26

Oh, he was a

Presenter18:30

Well, it was always reckoned it to be safer not to sit in the front row.

Presenter18:35

Let's have another record, number four.

Presenter18:37

Oh, is my team ploughing? This is a marvellous combination of talents, I think. It the poem is by A. E. Hausmann.

Presenter18:44

and it's the voice of a m dead man talking to his mate who is still alive.

Presenter18:50

The music is by George Butterworth, who was killed in the First World War.

Presenter18:54

And the singer is Peter Pears, who does both the dead man and the live man, and Britton, of course, at the piano.

Speaker 419:04

Is my friend the heart?

Speaker 419:09

No, I am seen and gone.

U A Fanthorpe19:09

Oh, I am.

Speaker 419:16

And has he found to sleep in?

Speaker 419:23

The breakthrough

Speaker 419:34

Yes, lad, I lie easy, I lie as lads would choose, I cheer a dead man's sweet heart

Speaker 419:50

Never ask me.

Presenter19:59

Is My Team Plowing by A. E. Hausman, set to music by George Butterworth and sung by Peter Pearce with Benjamin Britton at the piano.

Presenter20:07

Then, uh UA Fanthorpe, a bit of a disaster. You had a nasty accident at Oxford. What happened?

Presenter20:13

Well, I was coming home from a bike ride done on the river, and at Folly Bridge, very suitably, some sort of lorry banged into the back wheel of my bike.

Presenter20:23

I was knocked over and the wheel went over my foot, and I was whisked off to the Radcliffe Infirmary and stayed there for the next three months. It was a curious experience because I didn't really feel ill. Basically, I was a perfectly well undergraduate, moored to a bed because I couldn't move one foot. So I got interested in the patients, and the patients were lovely people.

Presenter20:47

All sorts of friends whom I think of now with affection and wonder what happened to them. So there you were, again, as you're saying, you were 30 years later in the hospital, you were the observer. Yes. But at that point, I gather, it made you think you wanted to work in a hospital, you wanted to be in a nurse. Yes, I felt.

U A Fanthorpe21:01

Is it good?

Presenter21:03

strongly called to be part of it of a hospital life.

Presenter21:06

I loved the nurses and

Presenter21:08

The doctors were all right. It was the patience really that got me, I think.

Presenter21:12

I told my parents I think I'd like to work in a hospital when I come out of here, and they were horrified.

Presenter21:18

So um various dons came to see me and um

Presenter21:22

Those ideas were put to me and in the end I gave in and went back and got my degree.

Presenter21:28

And went into teaching because it didn't seem to be anything else that somebody with an English degree could do. So it wasn't a vocation teaching necessarily? Not at all. No, I had no desire to teach particularly. But again, y you would go into that because it seemed like a proper thing to or it seemed

U A Fanthorpe21:34

Top. Uh

Speaker 421:34

Uh

U A Fanthorpe21:34

No, sir.

U A Fanthorpe21:37

Is that

Presenter21:41

That there was nothing else to do. Again, it was part of being a woman in just coming up to the end of the first half of the twentieth century, as it were. There were just no obvious opportunities. Absolutely. When I look at the opportunities now for women, I think, gosh, how wonderful. I'm so glad it turned out better for other people.

U A Fanthorpe21:46

To the end of the film.

U A Fanthorpe21:51

Absolutely.

Speaker 421:52

It wasn't.

Presenter21:58

Because

Presenter21:59

There there was an awful lot of frustration.

Presenter22:02

feeling, I think, in teaching.

Speaker 422:03

Okay.

Presenter22:04

So in the end and we've heard how and why you came to turn away from the teaching job after the sixteen or seventeen years I mean the the headmistress and the rest of the staff must have thought you were mad. Yes. The the headmistress did her best to persuade me not to. In fact, it took me two years to extricate myself.

Presenter22:23

But you had a partner in this great crime, didn't you? Oh, yes, yes. Rosie Bailey, your partner in life. Was she also a teacher in the department? Yes, she was in the department, in my department, in fact. And um.

Presenter22:35

She, I think, was feeling as restive as I was. So I went first and um a year later she followed. So we both took a c course in school counselling at Swansea University. But a bit of an excuse, really. Oh, it was an excuse. Did you know you were on your way to doing something more creative to this real vocation, the poetry writing? Did Rosie sense that in you?

U A Fanthorpe22:48

Yeah.

U A Fanthorpe22:49

Did you know

U A Fanthorpe22:52

This field

U A Fanthorpe22:54

Really?

Speaker 422:54

Uh

U A Fanthorpe22:54

Yeah.

Presenter22:56

That I don't know. She's never told me so if she thought that. But uh

Presenter23:00

She hadn't been there so long.

Presenter23:02

Nor was she so contaminated, I think, by par as I was. Well, I I do think it was how deep it ran, my goodness. So you really were launching off into the unknown. You didn't really know where you were going, you just knew you had to go somewhere else. Absolutely.

U A Fanthorpe23:05

Well, I I do think it was a deep

U A Fanthorpe23:08

Yeah, yeah.

U A Fanthorpe23:12

Really no

Presenter23:16

Yes. It's very good for me.

Presenter23:18

Record number five.

Presenter23:20

Pickle number five is, curiously enough, I know where I'm going.

Presenter23:25

Sung by the incomparable Kathleen Ferrier, whom I'd have had for all eight records if I'd thought that I wouldn't be made too sad by it by the thought of such brilliant talent and such a short life.

Speaker 423:42

I know who's going with me.

Speaker 423:46

I go home.

Speaker 423:51

Dear those who I am

Speaker 424:00

I have stockings of seal.

Speaker 424:04

Shoes are fine and green and black.

Speaker 424:08

Burns tobacco me

Speaker 424:12

And a ring for everything.

Speaker 424:22

I must say his blight

Speaker 424:26

But I am saved by

Speaker 424:31

The Pharaoh's of the poor.

Presenter24:37

I Know Where I'm Going, sung by Kathleen Ferrier, accompanied by Phyllis Spur, and that was recorded in nineteen fifty one. Um I can't pass on from the subject of Rosie Bailey, UA, without asking you to read a poem that you've written about her, which I think anyone who understands the kind of

Presenter24:53

Interdependence of love, of enduring love, anyway, would appreciate it. You've called it ATLAS, and it becomes very obvious why.

Presenter25:02

There is a kind of love called maintenance which stores the W D forty and knows when to use it.

Presenter25:10

which checks the insurance.

Presenter25:12

And doesn't forget the milkman.

Presenter25:15

which remembers to plant bulbs.

Presenter25:17

which answers letters.

Presenter25:19

Which knows the way the money goes.

Presenter25:21

which deals with dentists and road fund tax and meeting trains and postcards to the lonely.

Presenter25:29

Which upholds the permanently rickety, elaborate structures of living.

Presenter25:35

which is Atlas.

Presenter25:38

And maintenance is the sensible side of love.

Presenter25:41

which knows what time and weather are doing to my brickwork.

Presenter25:45

insulates my faulty wiring.

Presenter25:48

Laughs at my dry rotten jokes

Presenter25:51

remembers my need for gloss and grouting.

Presenter25:55

Which keeps my suspect edifice upright in air.

Presenter25:59

as Atlas did the sky.

Presenter26:03

And as well as doing all of that, Doctor Bailey also performs your readings with you, doesn't she? Well, because quite a few of your poems require two voices. Yes, she's an absolutely essential part of it. The two voice thing I think probably came from

U A Fanthorpe26:07

Because

U A Fanthorpe26:10

Yeah.

Presenter26:15

My father and the um two barristers for the defence and the prosecution. But you're right, and I mentioned in the beginning about communication, and and you mentioned your father then. The poem is not an end in itself for you, is it? You've got to communicate it, just as he might have needed a jury, as it were.

U A Fanthorpe26:31

Yeah.

Presenter26:33

Yes, oh yes. Of course, I mean, a lot of it is so totally private uh that it's rather nice suddenly to find that there are people you can read it to who will perhaps understand what you're saying, and even nicer come up and say

Presenter26:45

Well yes, that happened to me or I know someone like that. It's a relief almost, is it that moment when suddenly you you read it and someone understands? Yes, I think it happens all the time really. And also uh when you add notes uh to explain your your classical or biblical references I notice that you you sort of preface them by saying look you don't have to read these. These are for people who like notes. It's almost as if you're allergic to a kind of academic approach in any way now. Well I suppose I possibly am that I love learning.

U A Fanthorpe27:00

Uh

Speaker 427:01

Uh

U A Fanthorpe27:01

Yeah.

Presenter27:12

I like history, I I like facts, I like finding out about things.

Presenter27:17

And didn't you once find a book of your own, poetry, in a in a in a second hand bookshop, annotated by the reader, not by the reader? By the student, yes. Some poor wretched student who was obviously about fifteen, written laboriously things like Here She Is Using Irony.

U A Fanthorpe27:25

Yeah.

Presenter27:34

So sorry for him or her. But we've all written that. I know. You probably made your girls write that, didn't you? Yes, I possibly did. I don't know what they wrote.

U A Fanthorpe27:35

Yeah.

U A Fanthorpe27:39

Major girls like that.

Presenter27:44

Record number six.

Presenter27:46

Oh, this is a marvellous song, I think. Schubert, the wonderful songwriter, the Earl King or the Goblin King, sung by Peter Dawson, and I love the accompaniment.

Speaker 427:56

My Lord be with me, thou shalt ride on my course, And if thou refusest, I'll take thee by force.

Speaker 428:07

Father, my father, my child close class.

Speaker 428:13

The old king has seized me with icy grass.

Speaker 428:21

Ah, the shadows.

Speaker 428:24

Face grew more wild, he held tore his bones on the

Speaker 428:30

What a moving time.

Speaker 428:36

That hurts with toil and dread

Speaker 428:43

But in his arms

Speaker 428:46

Lo his child.

Speaker 428:51

Light dead

Presenter28:57

Shoe bits The Earl King, sung by Peter Dawson, accompanied by Gerald Moore. You like a good story with a dramatic ending, hmm? Absolutely.

U A Fanthorpe29:04

Hmm.

Presenter29:06

You've been very prolific with your poetry in in the past twenty five years. You were given the Queen's Gold Medal for poetry last year, and previous medallists include Sassoon, Auden, Betchman, Larkin, and so on. Do do do the poems come easily and quickly? How long can one take?

Presenter29:22

Well, they can take a long time. Um the one you quoted from about my mother, Fanfair, that took four years. But where do they come from? Are you aware that they're working away there? Do they suddenly strike? Not terribly consciously. Sometimes I'm in the middle of something and I know that's a lovely place to be.

U A Fanthorpe29:32

Don't

Presenter29:38

To be in the middle. You've got the beginning. Uh you probably know where the ending is going to be and you're there you are toiling away in the middle and it's lovely. Are you sitting then sharpening your pencils at this or are you going about other practices? Going about doing walking a lot. We we used to have a dog and that was lovely. Just take her on the walk and the dog was busy and I was busy and occasionally I would swap and write something on my

U A Fanthorpe29:45

But are you sitting?

Presenter29:59

Hand as being the only useful piece of writing paper that I had.

Presenter30:05

One of the best times for thinking about what to write is actually early in the morning, and I've found other people know this too um that if you wake up at about five

Presenter30:15

Just stay in bed.

Presenter30:16

The thoughts from the night.

Presenter30:18

mixed with the thoughts of the coming day and some sometimes something will come there. So it's been working by itself, yes, yes. It's not a conscious process really. Unless, of course, I'm asked to do it and that that quite often happens, you know.

U A Fanthorpe30:26

Yes, yes, it's not

Presenter30:32

get a commission and um then I

Presenter30:36

Hope it will fit with something I actually want to write about, and usually I can make it.

Presenter30:41

Record number seven is from The Magic Flute, the duet between Pamina and Papagaino. I love this because the b opposite ends of the spectrum. Pamina.

Presenter30:52

is the daughter of the Queen of the Night. She is a very special lady indeed. And Papagheno is the Birdman, with his extraordinary baroque costume.

Presenter31:02

And uh here they are together, like Bottom and Titania. It's the same sort of combination of unlikeness that I like so much.

Speaker 431:11

Keep the Zoom, Ye all but grave.

Speaker 431:25

Sivt Umzrenstage, Sivirtim Krais.

Speaker 431:42

We hope sight might be come.

Speaker 431:50

Make Loisa.

Speaker 431:58

It in the first place.

Presenter32:05

A man who can feel love must have a good heart, from Mozart's magic flute sung by Jungard Seyfried and Erich Kunz with the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Herbert von Karrion. Well now, Yue, it's casting away time. Um are you any good on your own? Is there any hope for you on this desert island? I think I should just adapt myself to circumstances, which is what I've tried to do all my life. Um instead of sort of

Presenter32:30

the Robinson Crusoe thing of bringing a great deal of junk with you and um

Presenter32:34

Making making therefore making it work, but also in the process killing things. Um, I d I don't much care for. I'd rather see if there is fruit there and uh leaves so that I could write on them instead of paper and uh just adjust. I'd like to adjust. But you wouldn't be too good without the the the Bailey support system. No, I'd be absolutely ropey without without your atlas. Yes, without atlas. Atlas would do well on a desert island. And what about other people and voices? I mean, that's surely what inspires you. That's your muse. Oh, it is indeed. And that's why I would have liked to have a radio with me, because radio four

U A Fanthorpe32:52

No, I'd be right.

U A Fanthorpe33:04

Yeah.

Presenter33:08

It's what I live with when I'm not when I'm not writing.

Presenter33:14

Tell me about your last record.

Presenter33:15

I have a

Presenter33:17

Great hang-up about the beautiful f songs that come from Tyneside. Rosie introduced me to these, she's a Tynesider herself.

Presenter33:25

This is a f very famous Townside song, Keep Your Feet Still, Geordie Hinny, in which Geordie and Bob are sharing a bed, not um with any lubricious intent, but simply because there isn't another bed, I think, and um one is keeps knocking the other one with his sort of enthusiastic sleep.

Presenter33:45

And every time he's thinking of something really beautiful about his love.

Presenter33:50

It goes wrong again. It gets another thwack in the chest. And this is performed by Roly Veach, who's

Presenter33:55

Not long been on the air, and his bladen aces.

Speaker 334:02

Happy for the night, for we may not be see happy through the day.

Speaker 334:09

Give us that bit comfort, keep your feet still jawy lads, And divin drive me bunny dreams away.

Speaker 434:19

Uh

Speaker 334:26

I thought I said I am that neat, content.

Speaker 334:30

Keep your feet still, Geordie here.

Presenter34:32

Performed by Rolivitch. Now, UA, if you could only take one of those eight records, which one would you take?

Presenter34:39

I think I'd take the first one. Come away, fellow sailors.

Presenter34:44

Because it's so jolly.

Presenter34:47

You want to be jolly on your island? I would like to be jolly, and it's also very English, and I should miss England fearfully. I'm not very good at leaving England. That would comfort me to think that here were English voices singing English tunes.

Presenter35:01

And what about your book, as well as the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare? Well, this is I would really like a bird recognition recognition book about the bird life on the island. If you can contrive that, Sue, I realise it's asking you rather a lot of birds that you don't know on an island you don't know where it is. We'll find one. We'll find one. You can have it. And what about your luxury?

U A Fanthorpe35:20

So we can

Presenter35:23

Take a bath.

Presenter35:24

A real bath with soap.

Presenter35:27

and towels.

Presenter35:29

I would think the Romans were good on bars, and I'd like to be a a Roman in that respect.

Presenter35:33

U. A. Phanthorpe, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

U A Fanthorpe35:44

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