Frederic Raphael

Speaker 20:00

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 six, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:28

Mike Castaway this week is a writer. Cosmopolitan, sharp tongued, and intellectually self-confident, his image can sometimes appear forbidding. He is, in fact, a man with strong family bonds who's lived and written happily in Greece, in France, and with rather mixed feelings, in England for the past fifty years. A Cambridge scholar, his first great success was the screenplay for Darling, the nineteen sixty five film starring Julie Christie and Dirk Bogard, for which he won an Oscar. Other well known films followed, but the work which identified him best was perhaps the BBC series The Glittering Prizes, the story of a group of Cambridge graduates growing up in post-war Britain. He's always denied it was autobiographical, even though it deals in places with anti-Semitism, something he experienced growing up in England. I have a love-hate relationship with this country, he says. I don't know a writer who would bother to be a writer who wouldn't have a love-hate relationship with almost anything he wrote about. He is Frederic Raphael. Do you have a love-hate relationship with writing itself, Frederick, or does it flow freely?

Frederic Raphael1:32

No, I confess that I really don't. Um sometimes people invite one to lament about the lonely and often humiliated life of writers, all of which is quite true. But I confess the loneliness is what attracts me. It's a qualified loneliness because I like to be alone in the house, in particular with my wife, and luckily I've spent the last fifty years being pretty well that. Why she chose to do it is not for me to question.

Presenter1:58

But whether you like it or not, for people of my generation, you know, the the glittering prizes um on television, mid-seventies, um, you know, it it did define the generation.

Frederic Raphael2:07

It was a bit determined, I'm afraid, and I'm of course quite pleased as well as.

Presenter2:10

Well, of course. And and we did all think that you were Adam Morris, you know, the character played by uh Tom Grammy.

Frederic Raphael2:16

Well, that's a trick which writers quite often play. I mean, and the fun of it is, of course, that the bits that seem truest are made up.

Presenter2:24

But I've never been really sure. What what was the glittering prize for you? Was it the going up to Cambridge and being of that generation who who went on, as you described really, in glittering prizes, to inhabit the media, you know, to sort of run the media in all its various forms? Or was it the degree that you got? Or was it the

Frederic Raphael2:42

Well, the word glitter is, of course, I mean, somewhat ambiguous. It doesn't suggest that it is a bad prize. They're prizes of real value. It's just that they gleam attractively. They don't gleam particularly attractively for me. I mean, I'm certainly human enough to manage to be a little bit resentful when I fail to receive them. But I've always thought of writing as a lonely activity in which what you did was you presented your grumbles, resentments, angers in as palatable a form as you could arrange so that the enemy swallowed them thinking they were sweeties. That's the game as played. And that's what's known as style, I thought, in England.

Presenter3:23

Record number one. Tell me about that.

Frederic Raphael3:25

Record number one is Bessie Smith singing empty bed blues. This comes from Cambridge really. I heard these records on Old Seventy Eights, of course, in a place called Jordan's Yard, which was a kind of loosh hangout for bohemian, wannabe bohemians of the time. And the owner there loved having lovers in his house, which suited me and my girlfriend extremely well because we were able to use his kitchen floor to good advantage. Not that it was very clean. More comfortable, more comfortable. Well, well, it didn't matter. And this stack of records sat there, and Bessie Smith stands for those very happy times.

Speaker 23:47

Neal

Presenter3:57

Comfortable then.

Speaker 44:10

Awful lake in head I woke up this morning with a off a lake in head

Speaker 44:29

My new man had left me just a room in an empty bed.

Presenter4:36

SE Smith and Empty Bed Blues. Of course, a glittering prize for you, one of them, must have been the scholarship you got to go there in the first place, because I think you said let me quote you once you have been made a major scholar in Cambridge, no other award means so much.

Frederic Raphael4:45

Yeah.

Frederic Raphael4:51

Yes.

Frederic Raphael4:53

I I mean the thing about that was that um you went up and you sat with six hundred other candidates in a cold examination hall and you and you wrote you know Latin verses and proses and Greek verses and proses and I showed off like a mad thing which is quite contrary to my nature but there it was.

Presenter5:08

Do you remember the moment of hearing that you'd got the scholarship?

Frederic Raphael5:12

Um in those days they really had telegraph boys who arrived and were your sort of cheeky Dickie Attenborough at sixteen looking for the people. And the bell rang and there was this lad and he handed me this little yellow envelope. And it had to be good news because they wouldn't get a telegram with bad news on that topic. And I opened it and I I was ashamed, not particularly ashamed, silly, I still got this telegram yellowing even more yellowly. And I thought, that's really it. Yeah.

Presenter5:37

Uh

Frederic Raphael5:37

Yeah.

Presenter5:37

Yeah.

Frederic Raphael5:37

That's it. Although as a matter of fact I've always wanted to go to Oxford.

Presenter5:41

Well, quite. And that's the point, isn't it? It was doubly important to you because your headmaster at Charterhouse had refused to put you in for Oxford.

Frederic Raphael5:41

Right.

Frederic Raphael5:47

He he had refused to allow me to be a candidate for a closed scholarship to Oxford because I had been insolent to a visiting clergyman, and written him a letter in which I made

Frederic Raphael6:02

rather childish but perhaps not very wicked remarks about the fact that he had made a palpably anti Semitic remark, which had got a good laugh in the chapel. And I was then told that I had to write and apologise, and I said, rather tearfully, even at the age of nearly eighteen, you know

Frederic Raphael6:19

I won't.

Presenter6:20

And this is an incident in in literary

Frederic Raphael6:22

I use using this reprises, yes.

Presenter6:24

Yes, almost exactly.

Frederic Raphael6:26

Yes, I mean it was too good to lose.

Presenter6:28

But was this extraordinary, this anti-Semitic moment in your school life, or was there more

Frederic Raphael6:33

Was there more of it? No, no, no. It wasn't extraordinary at all. I came to England at at the age of seven from from the US, um and when we we landed in England my father said, Well, you can grow up being an English gentleman and not an American Jew.

Frederic Raphael6:50

I mean, he wasn't ashamed of being Jewish, but he was very conscious of the social exclusion, which was much greater in the US in those days, of course, than uh

Speaker 26:57

Yeah.

Frederic Raphael6:58

Certainly than in England for a certain kind of middle-class confident Jew, of which my father was an example, and his family and my appalling great aunts and their magnificent mansion flats were all instances.

Presenter7:10

So so from the age of seven you were trying to be something that you are?

Frederic Raphael7:13

I was sort of I was afraid of being what I was, and the language of of English schools, of course, included, you know, Jewing people, don't be Jewy, um uh trying to jew me out of it and all the rest of it. None of these things are said with any great malice.

Presenter7:27

But for a boy alone at school in receipt of all the

Frederic Raphael7:29

It was nerve-making, let's say.

Presenter7:32

But you wrote home, didn't you? You wrote to your friends.

Frederic Raphael7:34

A particular bad time at Charterhouse because I was rather foolish and have never ceased to be foolish in this regard. That was that I I used to say the first clever, funny thing that came into my head and usually it was disparaging of somebody who would remember it, of course. The trouble is that you don't remember what you say about people, but they have very good memories for it.

Presenter7:56

So this is the tart tongue at work.

Frederic Raphael7:58

That's hard, Tom. Um, you know, you thought you were entertaining the people and you're actually teaching them behavior.

Presenter8:04

Well, I suppose that's the point. In the end, was there antipathy towards you because of your Jewishness or because they actually didn't like you?

Frederic Raphael8:08

There were two licenses. One, they rather resented the fact that I was a clever, a sort of manifestly clever boy who paraded his cleverness somewhat. But also, I have to say, of course, this did coincide with events in Palestine, the terrorist war, as I certainly thought of it by the CERN gang and those against the British presence. So there were lots of headlines which excited a sort of proper anti-Semitism on the part of other boys. And I always used to read the newspapers with great apprehension. So it was a sort of pathetic period in my life in that sense.

Presenter8:46

They call number two. Tell me about that.

Frederic Raphael8:49

It's Mari Pariah. I'm afraid that it's more Mari Pariah than anything else,'cause I think it it's just just so wonderful to live to. It's the Gavotte from Bach's English Suite, uh, number six.

Presenter9:59

The first gavot from Bach's English Piano Suite, No. Six, played by Murray Pariah. A surprising fact about your father, who, as you say, worked for Schell in America when you were born, he he was apparently the World Amateur Tango Champion. I mean, it was this man was two different people, was he?

Frederic Raphael10:15

Yes, oh, it wasn't apparent. I mean, he really was. We had the rose bills to prove it. Yeah, my father was a sort of split personality, and when he was a young man, he was a sort of fully-fledged lounge lizard. And a friend of ours called Guy Ramsey, who was a rather flamboyant Fleet Street journalist, said of my father, who was his close friend, the thing about Cedric is that he looks like a gentleman when he goes to work, he looks like a dagger when he does the tango. And of course, that was actually high praise, as you can well imagine.

Presenter10:48

And you you are an only child.

Frederic Raphael10:50

Yes.

Presenter10:51

Much loved, much looked after.

Frederic Raphael10:53

Uh

Frederic Raphael10:55

Yes, of course the answer is yes. Also with a great deal expected of me in terms of scholarships, wiping noses and having haircuts and all those things.

Presenter11:04

Uh

Presenter11:05

You're a spoiled boy. Well, that's the title you gave him.

Frederic Raphael11:08

I use it, I mean, but I don't want ag anyone to agree too quickly. Um I don't think I was spoiled by modern standards in the sense that it wasn't a question of being um covered with gifts because of course in the war there was no money.

Presenter11:20

But but your your let me just ask you about your mother for a second, because she sent you away to school back in this country, didn't she? She sent you away to school.

Frederic Raphael11:26

Very reluctantly. I mean, my mother was, you know, an American lady and a very young American lady because I was born when she was twenty. And she's still alive and still real smart. I mean, she will always get a joke. I mean, she's a you know, she's a bright, clever woman. And I think that it was in no way her wish. But you have to understand that I went to my prep school in England, in the country, in September of 1939, when, as you may remember, other events were taking place.

Presenter11:53

But you cried and you cried.

Frederic Raphael11:55

I cried, yes, because it was totally unexpected, and suddenly I was told that I was going away.

Frederic Raphael12:01

I I yes, I was very I was I was frightened and homesick, but um I got over that. Um

Frederic Raphael12:08

But in order to survive in prep school, you do have to acquire a sort of

Frederic Raphael12:13

tough skin, and also, of course, you know, loving one's mother was not very well regarded.

Frederic Raphael12:19

So there was a sense in which one was obliged to die towards home.

Frederic Raphael12:23

by the prevailing ethos.

Frederic Raphael12:25

Um I I can't quite explain it. There there's a cold side which one doesn't want to acknowledge, and the the coldness is to do simply with arranging not to be vulnerable.

Presenter12:37

Protocol number three.

Frederic Raphael12:38

Record number three is the full sentimental side of things which God knows is never far from me, and that's Ella Fitzgerald singing these foolish things.

Speaker 412:47

A cigarette

Speaker 412:50

That bears ellipstick traces

Speaker 412:57

And their line tickets to romantic places

Frederic Raphael13:01

Uh

Speaker 413:05

And still my heart as waits wishful.

Presenter13:12

Where is this?

Presenter13:15

Wonderful stuff, Ella Fitzgerald and these foolish things. Let's cut to the uh early sixties now, Frederic Raphael, post-Cambridge. You were married with two children at that point and establishing yourself as a writer, and you wrote the screenplay for Darling, starring Julie Christie. I mean, it was the film really that made her so iconic, wasn't it? You know, the mini skirts and rushing. Oh, yes, I think.

Frederic Raphael13:34

Oh yes, I think so.

Presenter13:36

But again, we refer back to the Glittering Prizes. There's a scene in that where the you character Adam Morris comes up with this idea for the film, and the director and the producer just hijack it as their own. And then surprise, surprise, guess who wins the Oscar? Yes, is that how it happened?

Frederic Raphael13:51

Isn't that how

Frederic Raphael13:53

Precisely how it happened.

Frederic Raphael13:55

I mean, they did go out to California for the Oscars, and when they did the interview before they went, they did indeed talk about the fact that they had done this film, and I was never even mentioned, even though I'd spent

Frederic Raphael14:06

I mean, very, very long time preparing it and writing it and having conferences and rewriting it.

Presenter14:13

And did they ring you up in the middle of the night from the Oscars opening?

Frederic Raphael14:15

No, they asked me. They rang me at seven in the morning. Well, it wasn't they who rang me, in fact. That was a fabrication. As a matter of fact,

Presenter14:18

Yeah.

Frederic Raphael14:22

It was Leslie Bricus, and then Joan Collins came on the line, and Tony Newley, and Evie, Leslie Bricus's wife, and I thought, Oh, that's nice but I did actually say, and I don't think with any irony, is that what you woken me up for?

Presenter14:39

Did you?

Frederic Raphael14:39

Yeah, that's it.

Presenter14:40

But you don't I mean you don't care much. You don't have much respect do you for the kind of the film director auteur. You you don't

Frederic Raphael14:47

I have one of the

Presenter14:48

Or you think writers aren't respected enough, is that it?

Frederic Raphael14:51

I I think that writing movies is a servile act, and we all would like to think it isn't. And of course it isn't to begin with because they haven't got anything until they've got something from you. So I I always um have compared it to um a relay race where you are first off and you go belting around the track and arrive absolutely exhausted and they then take the baton and go cheerily off and it when the

Presenter15:17

To collect the laurels.

Frederic Raphael15:18

When they get the gold medal at the end, they've entirely forgotten there was a first leg to the relay at all.

Presenter15:22

But what about Kubrick? I mean, you did Eyes Wide Shut much more recently with Stanley Kubrick. Um called you in to work, but he called in lots of writers. I mean, the nature of working with Kubrick is that you had to have your work subsumed by him.

Frederic Raphael15:28

Yeah.

Frederic Raphael15:37

Well, I mean, I I I sort of likened him to Bluebeard. I mean, each bride was vaguely aware there had been earlier brides, but you didn't actually meet them or discover where they were um interred. So

Frederic Raphael15:50

One always thinks he won't do anything like that to me.

Speaker 415:54

Uh

Frederic Raphael15:54

Uh

Speaker 415:54

Yeah.

Frederic Raphael15:54

And of course, he always does. But if one never touches anything in life which is

Frederic Raphael16:01

either polluted or even poisonous to one. You know, one doesn't actually have much experience. So I wasn't going to miss working with Kubrick, but I did kind of know what was coming in that regard.

Presenter16:11

And what did you think of the final product, which turned out to be his last film, Eyes White Channel?

Frederic Raphael16:15

Well, what I thought was that it wasn't final. I mean, to grab quickly at what you've just said, that's to say that the fact that that Stanley died in I think it was the March of a year when the film didn't come out until July makes it absolutely certain that every single second between

Frederic Raphael16:33

what actually turned out to be the day of his death and the opening of the movie. Had he been alive, he would have been tinkering, reshooting. He did have an infinite capacity for taking pains, and he wasn't alive to take them. So the film was not

Frederic Raphael16:49

Correct. Equally, I think it's fair to say that that he was not at the height of his powers when he was making it, and Stanley was dying.

Frederic Raphael16:57

Well, you know, you've only got to feel vaguely unwell, you know, to know that you can't actually be on top of your game, and he was dying.

Frederic Raphael17:05

Um so, you know, the film showed signs of age.

Presenter17:10

Record number four.

Frederic Raphael17:13

Record number four is from a happy experience of my own. It's the the theme music from the film that I did um for Stanley Donovan called Tooth of the Road with Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney.

Presenter17:50

That was part of uh Henry Mancini's theme music for your film Frederick Raphael Two for the Road um with Albert Finney and Audrey Hipburn, which was nominated for an Oscar, but it didn't win it on that account.

Frederic Raphael18:00

The script was. I'm a very naive person as a as a writer. What I love are the books arriving from the printers. You know, there's my book printed. That's what I love to see.

Presenter18:12

Much more satisfying.

Frederic Raphael18:13

Oh yes, and this is my piece and they're performing it. What do you know? Professional actors are doing my stuff.

Presenter18:16

What do you

Presenter18:19

Now, in all this time, you'd been married, almost a childhood sweetheart, wasn't she, Sylvia Betty? You call her Beetle.

Speaker 218:26

Yeah.

Frederic Raphael18:26

Uh

Presenter18:27

You've met her before you went up um to Cambridge. Now, again, glittering prizes. Adam Morris marries out. He marries a non-Jewish girl. You didn't.

Frederic Raphael18:33

Not sure.

Frederic Raphael18:36

No, I mean

Presenter18:36

However, she was not entirely accepted by Yoma.

Presenter18:40

So again there's the

Frederic Raphael18:41

I'm not sure that wives ever are. The only sons of Jewish mothers, you know, are. I think my mother has always formerly thought that Beetle was wonderful, and certainly told other people so, and knows that she has made me happy. But I don't think that Beetle was the sort of girl who was ever going to be an ideal daughter in law.

Frederic Raphael19:00

I mean, she's my wife.

Frederic Raphael19:03

Um and that's the deal.

Presenter19:04

And has been for fifty black years.

Frederic Raphael19:05

Yes, I mean she's perfectly polite. My father liked her a lot.

Presenter19:07

But what about your relationship with your father? Because there was a different kind of estrangement there, wasn't there? He had a dark secret, didn't he? Which made you feel that he had let you down.

Frederic Raphael19:16

That he has

Frederic Raphael19:18

He had a dark secret which was not very dark.

Frederic Raphael19:22

I mean he is a man.

Frederic Raphael19:23

And of course he had lovers, and one of them who had promised him that she could not get pregnant did not manage to keep that promise, if promise it was, and did. And she was not Jewish. She was obviously a very extraordinary woman because she was a broker on the Baltic Exchange in the twenties, which can't have been many women who were brokers on the Baltic Exchange. So she was not some sad little shop girl that he had made pregnant. Now, it's not a very terrible secret, but he elected to conceal it from me, not from my wife, by the way, not from my mother, by the way. Nice Freudian era. She knew perfectly well, but I didn't. That was sort of classic. He thought I would think less of him. Of course, I would have thought much more of him.

Frederic Raphael20:06

Such is the perverse nature of adolescence. But he did strike very elaborate moral attitudes, which of course I realized later were more to do with his dread that I would inherit his ugly tendencies towards

Presenter20:18

What's

Frederic Raphael20:19

Eroticism.

Presenter20:20

But your mother told you.

Frederic Raphael20:22

My mother told me because she was annoyed about something with me. It sort of came out by mistake.

Frederic Raphael20:28

But in retrospect, it seemed fraudulent.

Presenter20:32

Mm-hmm.

Frederic Raphael20:32

But it's

Frederic Raphael20:35

Record number five Well, this is a real bit of sentiment for me for reasons which may come out later. It's a a a a Buzuki song called Varka Stojalo, There's a Boat in the Harbour. Shamefully vulgar, and I love it.

Presenter21:20

Manos Tractikos and there's a boat in the harbour, memories of a a tiny Greek island, Eos, where you bought a a little shack and led a rather bohemian existence, I think, when your children were small, no electricity, no running water, no roads, and turned out to be, according to your daughter Sarah, who wrote an article about all of this, the most wonderful father who really knew how to play with children and invented extraordinary games.

Presenter21:47

You did give them everything you hadn't had, really, didn't you?

Frederic Raphael21:52

Um I I I tried to. I have to say Beetle is a terrific mother and and we were on this island and we had no amenities whatever and I mean you know, she did the nappies and all of our stuff which we had in those days. I mean she did all the hard stuff uh and it's easy enough to play games among the rocks and tell people stories about Greek myths.

Presenter22:09

Well, yes, but when you had a script conference in London, Sarah wrote, you all piled into the car and the whole family, right?

Frederic Raphael22:13

That was a sort of prophylactic decision about Shobis. I mean, it's no great secret in the sixties that marriages were not particularly sealed by being in the movies. And I also wanted to do the movies very much, make no mistake. I mean, I love the the vulgar glamour and the money, which we badly needed. But Beatle did not like being left behind in in in places and and whenever I had to come to London, we'd just all pile in the car and come back.

Presenter22:41

So there's this wonderful, loving parent and husband and so on, and at the same time, there's this person who

Presenter22:48

in print has become known as a as a controversialist, you know, willing to have a go at people picking arguments, criticizing people in print. That's the other side of you, isn't it?

Frederic Raphael22:58

I am

Frederic Raphael23:00

I think that if you are articulate and can see that there is a serious flaw, or even a disgraceful flaw, in something that somebody has said, if one has the enough fame to command the space, so to speak, um it is one's duty to speak out. Yes, I do think that. But I certainly don't do it out of any glee and I and my I quake with with with apprehension and and and I I dread people hating me for it. I it's certainly not done with any uh spirit of oh boy, here's a fight.

Presenter23:29

Another piece of music.

Frederic Raphael23:32

Well, this is one of the earliest records that that we ever owned, and I confess that I love it, not only because it's the Vorjac cello concerto, but also because Paul Tortilla is playing it, and I can see his eyebrows at work as I listen.

Presenter24:38

The opening of Vorjak's cello concerto played by Paul Tortellier with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Andre Previn.

Presenter24:45

Paul Tortellier, whom your daughter Sarah never painted, he he declined. She she went on though after that to make a name for herself as a portraitist and a and a painter of landscapes, very talented, and and then she died suddenly a few years ago, aged forty, from septicemia.

Presenter25:01

Does it get any easier to bear?

Frederic Raphael25:03

No.

Frederic Raphael25:04

Um it has to be born.

Frederic Raphael25:06

Because people, as you realize, particularly when something like this happens, you realize that even people you've known for many years have had.

Frederic Raphael25:14

have lost children and and it has to be digested. Um

Presenter25:20

But you've made a point because you have written about it a little in in in memory of her and you've made the point that there isn't a word, is there, for a parent who loses a child, as there is a a a widow, someone who loses a husband, or an orphan if you lose a parent.

Frederic Raphael25:30

No.

Frederic Raphael25:34

I mean, uh the example has been set to me by by Beetle. Um if if she had not been

Frederic Raphael25:41

Um

Frederic Raphael25:43

as determined as she was. Uh and of course our sons have been um you know everything you could possibly hope for in terms of

Frederic Raphael25:52

of of support and and in particular our our younger son Stephen has actually looked after Sarah's children for five years um and done it always with great love and with never never a word uh of um of resentment as as his thirties were sort of um

Speaker 226:02

love, and with never, never a word

Frederic Raphael26:10

Not eaten up, but certainly taken up.

Frederic Raphael26:13

I could work, I could support them.

Frederic Raphael26:16

But but

Frederic Raphael26:18

I I we c we couldn't have we hadn't got the energy or the will to do what st what Stephen has done.

Presenter26:23

You've um you've always

Presenter26:25

Railed against God again, as you had Adam Morris doing in glittering prizes, you know, a God who could allow the Holocaust. I presume you're.

Presenter26:35

Daughter's death has only served the strength of the majority of the men.

Frederic Raphael26:37

I think it makes it's it it it it's not fair, of course, and not right and not account not good accountancy, but of course.

Frederic Raphael26:46

What happened in Europe didn't happen to me, it happened in Europe, and I know what happened.

Frederic Raphael26:51

what happened when Sarah died happened to us, and uh I'm afraid that it's just very different. Uh that is the way human beings are. So I I think one was introduced to a form of pain which was uh entirely unique.

Frederic Raphael27:04

And I hope remains unique. God knows I hope.

Frederic Raphael27:08

Um

Frederic Raphael27:09

But it cannot be dwelt on, and the brain, I discovered,

Frederic Raphael27:14

is much more callous.

Frederic Raphael27:16

than the heart, so to say. That is to say, my brain said to me when I sort of sat down again and said, you know, I don't know how I can ever write again, Yes, you do. You take up the pen and you start writing like now.

Frederic Raphael27:30

And I did, and of course it is as it has been all my life, and I don't deny it. You know, it is a bolt hole, being a writer.

Speaker 227:33

I am.

Frederic Raphael27:37

But I do work almost too much because it is it is the one way out.

Presenter27:43

Number seven.

Frederic Raphael27:45

Ah, the next thing, Alex Lucky Number here.

Frederic Raphael27:48

Well, this is this is another irresistible one to me, and that is um Edith Piaf singing Milur.

Speaker 227:49

There

Presenter28:23

Edith Pieff and Milo. Listening to you, Frederic Raphael, and and reading about what you've written about yourself in this early memoir, one's struck by something I think one struck

Presenter28:36

in so many cases talking to people like this, why do the things that happen to us in our formative years, which are really quite short in comparison with the rest of the time we've lived, why do they go on mattering to us so much? You know, those few short years at university or the scholarship you've got or

Frederic Raphael28:52

It is it is very curious that. I think that the past is sort of

Frederic Raphael28:58

Well, it's very well furnished. Those are formative years, and what they form is the sort of ballast of your character. And to some extent, the attitudes you have when you're young are either maintained through life or they have to be overthrown, but they always remain the sort of thing that you've either going to embrace or going to gird against and and and lose.

Presenter29:20

And what about what about your Jewishness, the thing you've called the one unalterable thing about you, because other things, as you say, during the course of your life you were required early on to to change or affect or adopt, but the Jewishness runs through it all? Does that matter to you as much as it used to? Is it of any consequence these days?

Frederic Raphael29:37

Consequently

Frederic Raphael29:39

It'd be absurd to say it doesn't matter,'cause why does he bang on about the whole thing? And uh it would be entirely false to say that it matters. But I mean, if it hadn't been for Hitler,

Frederic Raphael29:50

And none of us would even think about being Jewish anymore than Scots go around forever, you know, thinking about being Scots. Oh my god, oh yes, of course they do, don't they? Or at least very often.

Speaker 229:55

What's up, Michael? Yes, sir.

Frederic Raphael29:59

Um but it's not something that they have to wear as a badge of um

Frederic Raphael30:04

Of pride because it was a badge of shame and all of that stuff.

Frederic Raphael30:09

You have to play the cards you get, you know.

Frederic Raphael30:12

You're a woman, and I'm a man, and on we go, and I'm a Jew, and you're not, and aren't you lucky? Oh, shouldn't have said that But all of these categories of being which we supposedly believe in

Frederic Raphael30:23

Why do we believe in them?

Frederic Raphael30:25

I mean, we believe you shouldn't work on Sunday if we believe that, or Saturday, if that's the one we believe. But why not Wednesday morning?

Frederic Raphael30:33

What about if we got it wrong and actually God meant Wednesday morning and they say, Oh, you're being flippant.

Frederic Raphael30:39

And so it all goes. Um it it's i it it is a comedy.

Frederic Raphael30:43

It's a comedy with blood and and and often much blood.

Presenter30:47

I think you've just written another column. That's how it is.

Frederic Raphael30:49

That's how it is. You turn the tap on, I run.

Presenter30:53

Echo number eight.

Frederic Raphael30:55

Record number eight.

Frederic Raphael30:57

Well, this is a sort of counterpoint to the Bach. It's part of Max Brooks' violin concerto, number one, a piece of real kind of Schmoltzy pseudo-culture, the really cultured thing, and I think it's lovely.

Presenter32:02

Opening of the second movement, the Adagio of Brux, Violin Concerto No. One, performed by James Inez with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Charles Dutroy.

Presenter32:12

Um, if you could only take one of those eight records, which one would it be?

Frederic Raphael32:18

It's a really it's a really good question, and I have an awful feeling that the

Frederic Raphael32:25

The vulgarist answer is the true one. I think it would be the Wuzuki Varacostoyello, because if you feel low on a desert island, if you could sort of play the kind of sympathetic magic

Speaker 232:26

And she is the

Frederic Raphael32:37

Movie record which says there's a boat in the harbor and maybe one day there'd be one.

Presenter32:41

Yeah.

Presenter32:42

And your book?

Frederic Raphael32:43

Well, what I actually think I ought to take, if this is a long-haul stay, I'll take the Oxford Latin Dictionary.

Frederic Raphael32:51

And I could then

Frederic Raphael32:53

reconstitute or at least perhaps actually improve my Latin, when one could then write a sort of Latin Odyssey about life on this island. Is that f fancy enough?

Presenter33:05

That's wonderfully fancy. What about a luxury? Got a fancy one of those.

Frederic Raphael33:08

The luxury is much simpler. The luxury would be to have my Mont Blanc pen, an inexhaustible supply of the only ink that seems to flow through the veins of that particular instrument, and a stack of spiral squared note books from the Libere Joseph Gibert in the Boonmiche.

Presenter33:27

Frederic Raphael, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island is.

Frederic Raphael33:30

Thank you.

Speaker 233:38

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