Arnold Wesker

Presenter0:00

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.

Presenter0:28

My castaway this week is the playwright Sir Arnold Wesker, one of the key figures in twentieth century drama. His output has spanned five decades and seen him pen forty two plays along with numerous books and essays. His first novel, Honey, was published last year.

Presenter0:43

The son of Jewish Communists, he burst onto the scene in the late fifties, and was quickly bracketed, along with other working class writers of the day, as one of the angry young men of British theatre. It's not a label he's comfortable with. Indeed, he prides himself in his stand alone reputation, and has been described as the unique outsider in British theatre. Arnold Wesker, what do you think that description means the unique outsider?

Arnold Wesker1:07

Well, I would like to think that it means that I'm different, that I haven't gone with the crowd, that I haven't risen to the temptation to shine as a so called working class writer. I've always worried about people who wear cloth caps to show where they come from, because where they come from doesn't really matter. You're not a good writer because you come from a working class background, and you're not a good writer because you've been through university. You're a good writer because you're a good writer, and it's the work that matters, not the labels that surround you.

Presenter1:41

Um, you famously say that you don't write from imagination, you write from experience. Why is that important to you?

Arnold Wesker1:47

It's not that it's important to me, it's a limitation.

Presenter1:49

I was going to ask you that, actually. Is it a limitation?

Arnold Wesker1:50

I actually

Arnold Wesker1:51

Well does that make life as a writer difficult? My powers of invention are not strong, so I can't create plots. I've got a wonderful children's story that I want to write uh that I started writing, but a third of the way through I found

Arnold Wesker2:14

I really don't have a sense of plot. I d I don't know what happens next. I don't know where to take it. So so I regret that, because I love storytelling.

Arnold Wesker2:23

But, as Bhasheva Singhe said, the Nobel Prize winner, short story writer, I can't invent anything more extraordinary than what happens around me, he said, and I kind of feel the same way. Would you consider yourself a

Presenter2:36

Chronicler, are you somebody who goes with the experience of your own life and the experience of mankind as it progresses?

Arnold Wesker2:43

Uh my own life, yes, I wouldn't like to say I'm anything as grand as uh as the experience of man. I never really write anything unless I feel it's more than itself. Look, I wrote a play called The Kitchen, and the actual space is based on a kitchen I worked in in Paris. Now I also worked as a bookseller's assistant and a carpenter and a plumber's mate, and but I didn't write about those'cause I couldn't find anything in the material that was more than itself.

Arnold Wesker3:12

So when I say I write about my own experiences, my own life, I still select, I still choose that from it which resonates at least I like to think resonates.

Presenter3:23

So much there to talk about. Tell us, though, first, what is your first record?

Arnold Wesker3:27

Well, I read a play called The Four Seasons once. It's a love story between two people. And it's been done in many languages around the world. But the best production ever was in Mexico. And there I met some wonderful theatre people and I made friends with others and was introduced to this music by the Mexican composer. It's called Huapango, Pablo Morqueos, Huapango.

Presenter4:53

Pablo Monkeo's Wapango. And you were saying during that, Arnold West, yeah, good music to get you up in the morning.

Arnold Wesker4:57

Yeah.

Arnold Wesker4:58

Yes, isn't it? I mean glorious to wake up to it. It really you really can thrust yourself out of bed with that.

Presenter5:04

Let's talk about the days of your youth, Anne. You were brought up in London's East End. What what sort of people were your parents?

Arnold Wesker5:09

Uh

Arnold Wesker5:10

Well, they were people I loved, but who I think they loved each other, but they didn't get on with each other. They were party mem Communist party members. My father was a tailor's machinist.

Arnold Wesker5:23

when he worked.

Arnold Wesker5:24

He didn't really like working. He was a workshire man, which was the cause of endless quarrelling between him and my mother.

Presenter5:31

It sounds far more exotic when we say it now that they were communists, both of your parents, but round about then, in that particular community, it wasn't that unusual.

Arnold Wesker5:39

No, not in the thirties, forties, and of course during the war when the Soviet Union was everybody's friend.

Arnold Wesker5:46

But afterwards, after the Khrushchev revelations and Prague, it was all downhill. The idealism splintered. And that's what you can suit with Bali is about, the disintegration of an ideology set against the background of the disintegration of a family.

Presenter6:03

At that time the Communist Party, of course, was one of the few political organizations that was strongly um battling on behalf of people who were suffering at the hands of anti Semitism. And how did that manifest itself day to day? I mean, you would have been living in London at the time of uh the Battle of Cable Street and all all those things.

Arnold Wesker6:19

I was, but I was young. I was four years old in in thirty six. Um so even though it's the first act of Chicken Soup with Barley, I recreated that period from the what I w the way people talked about it. I mean people talked about it all the time.

Presenter6:36

Were you actually taken along as a little boy, even though you don't remember it?

Arnold Wesker6:39

I might have been, but I I really don't remember it. I remember much more being taken to May Day demonstrations at Hyde Park and being carried shoulder high, watching those.

Arnold Wesker6:52

Uh but cable sheet no I I don't remember.

Presenter6:55

And this family life that you lived then, that we've seen uh written about so often in your plays, was a life that was uh full of food, full of discussion, full of sparky conversation. Was that really what it was like at home?

Arnold Wesker7:06

I'm afraid it was, yes. I mean, I used to nag to be l allowed to stay up late, and if they didn't allow me to stay up late, I would creep out of the bedroom, just to be with people, and they argued and um discussed and sang. My father had a good tenor voice, and people would ask him to sing. Sing Stenkerazinjo come on, give us a song.

Arnold Wesker7:27

There is of course a danger that as you grow older you romanticise your childhood. There were quarrels, and they were upsetting, but in a strange way there was so much love around that it overshadowed the distress.

Presenter7:43

And what about the size of where you live?

Arnold Wesker7:45

But I mean, did did you have your own separate bedroom? Where did you sleep?

Arnold Wesker7:49

in Fashion Street, but when we moved to Hackney,

Arnold Wesker7:53

Upper Clapton.

Arnold Wesker7:55

In an L C C flat there were four rooms, and I had a room to myself. By that time my sister was married. But I had a room to myself, my own desk, in which I ordered everything neatly, all my rejection slips and exercise books. So I did I had a room of my own.

Presenter8:15

You say rejection slips. I mean w rejections from what? From pieces of writing that you've submitted?

Arnold Wesker8:19

Oh yes, I'd submitted dreadful poetry and dreadful short stories all over the place, and they kept coming in.

Presenter8:25

How old were you when you were getting the rejection slips?

Arnold Wesker8:27

Uh thirteen, fourteen.

Arnold Wesker8:30

I wrote a story once called The Man Who Would Never Write Like Balzac.

Arnold Wesker8:34

which was based on my experiences of rejection.

Presenter8:38

Quite an ambition for a thirteen-year-old to have the imagination to pen something like that.

Arnold Wesker8:42

Yes, yes, yes. Well, I was reading Balzac early on.

Presenter8:46

We'll talk more about schooling and education and all of that in just a moment. What's your second record?

Arnold Wesker8:50

A country that's performed a lot of my plays is Japan, and there I met a Japanese composer, Shigi Saigusa, and I think he's an extraordinary composer. This is a piece from an an oratorio called Yamato Takaru.

Arnold Wesker9:04

Uh which I think is dynamic.

Speaker 39:33

So many

Speaker 39:42

Peace over.

Speaker 39:50

About me coming up Poor Natal Mama

Speaker 49:56

Link to the whole national bag

Presenter10:04

Part of the Oratorio Yamato Takura by Shigeki Segusa. It's been a long and distinguished career so far. You left school, though, wanting to be an actor, not wanting to be a writer.

Arnold Wesker10:15

Yes, I I did. I mean, I wanted to be a writer from the age of twelve, but um I

Arnold Wesker10:21

concluded that you can be a writer whatever you're doing. And I'd been introduced to an amateur drama group at an early age, and so I I was bitten, the bug. And you passed the auditions for Rada? Bit me twice. I twice passed the auditions for Rada and twice failed to get a grant from the L C C, the London County Council.

Arnold Wesker10:42

So I became a furniture maker's apprentice instead.

Presenter10:45

Have you ever wondered then, given that you got into Radha twice and couldn't go, did you ever wonder what might have been?

Arnold Wesker10:50

Well

Arnold Wesker10:52

No, I mean, uh if I did, I would think to myself

Arnold Wesker10:56

Well, Osborne was an actor.

Arnold Wesker10:58

Pinter was an actor.

Arnold Wesker11:00

But they went on to write plays. And Pinter still acts? Well, he has done.

Arnold Wesker11:06

So I might have been able to combine the two. When you write a character on the page, are you playing it in your head?

Arnold Wesker11:11

I'm not so much playing it as I'm speaking it.

Arnold Wesker11:15

Because there there are rhythms, so I n I need to know that they can be delivered by an actor.

Presenter11:21

What about schooling, then? Clearly you are a very knowledgeable and educated man, but you didn't

Presenter11:29

Really get educated in school.

Arnold Wesker11:31

Yeah, no. I mean, it's very nice of you to say that, but I I feel I'm uneducated, or certainly I lack.

Arnold Wesker11:37

Um, I got a terrible memory.

Presenter11:39

You lack formal education, but you're s

Arnold Wesker11:40

The

Presenter11:40

Self-educated.

Arnold Wesker11:41

Yes, but somehow I feel that's not enough. I really do feel I missed out not going to university.

Presenter11:48

Yeah.

Arnold Wesker11:48

What? Uh

Presenter11:48

Happened in sc

Arnold Wesker11:49

I just failed exams. I didn't even pass my English.

Arnold Wesker11:54

exams. When I write prose I keep my fingers crossed that I'm writing it as I remember having read it in good literature.

Presenter12:02

Has that given you a self-consciousness, personally, not as a writer?

Arnold Wesker12:06

Yes, believe me, it's a lack.

Presenter12:08

But here you are, Sir Arnold Wesker, speaking in this beautifully articulated voice and accent, with a grasp of language and a knowledge about literature, saying that you feel self conscious. That seems quite a contradiction.

Arnold Wesker12:21

Yeah.

Presenter12:21

What?

Arnold Wesker12:21

I really am talking about memory. I mean, I it's it's almost clinical with me. I forget the names of my characters, for example, in plays. I mean, I sometimes forget my opinions about something. You know, people say have you seen this movie? and I say yes, and what did you think of it?

Arnold Wesker12:37

Damn, I've forgotten. What's your next record? It's a piece of music that's very little known. Another play I wrote, called Lady Orthello, has in it an orgasm.

Arnold Wesker12:47

The man has been trying to get the girl, the woman, to listen to this piece of music. There's always reason not to, but finally he manages to get it on, and it coincides with this orgasm. I think the Magnificat by CPE Bach just coincides wonderfully with this orgasm.

Presenter14:05

The ending of C. P. E. Bach's Magnificat in D Major.

Presenter14:09

Your own love story, then, began in the dining room of a Norfolk hotel.

Presenter14:14

Tell me what happened.

Arnold Wesker14:16

Well

Arnold Wesker14:16

Having failed to get into drama school, um

Arnold Wesker14:19

I went to Norfolk.

Arnold Wesker14:21

Um there I was alone, and I saw this advert for Kitchen Porter at the Bell Hotel in Norwich, where uh I could live in as well, so I thought that's it.

Arnold Wesker14:31

I'm not a writer, I'm not an actor, I'm going to work in kitchens.

Arnold Wesker14:36

And uh one morning, as we were serving breakfast, this extraordinary young blonde

Arnold Wesker14:43

burst, literally burst, like the sun bursts through clouds, out of the dining room into the kitchen.

Arnold Wesker14:51

And uh that was it, and we became lovers. And then I thought it couldn't work, that it was crazy, it was a a mismatch.

Arnold Wesker14:59

And I went back to London and she followed me, and we took up being lovers again.

Presenter15:03

How old would you have been at this point?

Arnold Wesker15:05

Twenty?

Arnold Wesker15:06

Uh and we went to Paris.

Presenter15:08

You came back from Paris then, and you had a crucial encounter. It was with Lindsay Anderson. What happened?

Arnold Wesker15:14

Well, I managed to save up enough money to pay for a six month course at the London School of Film Technique. I thought I will be a film director. And people were invited to lecture at the school, and one of them was Lindsay Anderson. And I asked Lindsay whether he would read a story I had written.

Arnold Wesker15:33

'Cause I wanted to make it into a film, and he did, and he liked it, and he said Have you written anything else? And um uh finally I showed him Chicken Soup with Barley, and he wrote this extraordinary letter, saying

Arnold Wesker15:45

You really are a playwright, aren't you?

Arnold Wesker15:48

Can I have your permission to show this to the royal court?

Arnold Wesker15:51

And I said yes, of course. And that was the beginning. I named my first son after him.

Presenter15:58

Was the democratization of the arts world that you were at the beginning of tangible? Could you feel a sea change?

Arnold Wesker16:05

It was more an aspiration than

Arnold Wesker16:09

If that's not true.

Arnold Wesker16:11

Yes, there was a sea change. And and there was this extraordinary coming together of people who wrote about

Arnold Wesker16:17

experiences that were quite different from

Arnold Wesker16:20

players that had been written before, and they were.

Arnold Wesker16:24

from a milieu that could be described as the working class, and along with it came.

Arnold Wesker16:29

directors like Lindsay, who didn't direct my plays I mean, he didn't uh ever get an opportunity to but John Dexter, who came from a working class background, who directed my first five plays and there were the actors to play the parts.

Arnold Wesker16:44

But I don't think any of us wrote plays in order to fit into the climate. Everything that other writers wrote and I went on to write was because we wanted to write them.

Presenter16:55

What's your next record?

Arnold Wesker16:58

One of the reasons behind the choice of these records is to remind me of places where I've been for my plays. And Germany is a country that performed a lot of my plays in Scandinavia. And it was in Scandinavia that I've made lots of friends, one of whom introduced me to The Guralieder by Schoenberg, which I would love to have with me on a desert island.

Presenter18:18

Part of Schoenberg's Guralieder with the choir of Saint Hedwig's Cathedral and the Berlin Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Ricardo Schai.

Presenter18:26

Japan, you've mentioned, South America, Sweden, Germany these are all places where your plays have been performed virtually continuously. They like your work there. In Britain that's not always the case. Why do you think that is?

Arnold Wesker18:39

You must ask them.

Arnold Wesker18:40

Maybe there's a tone to my writing that isn't English. I mean, I feel very English. I feel fiercely English. I feel as fiercely English as I do Jewish.

Arnold Wesker18:50

But it's perhaps not in my writing.

Arnold Wesker18:53

Perhaps there is

Arnold Wesker18:55

uh an intellectual European continental tone which um

Arnold Wesker19:00

sits uncomfortably on the English scene.

Presenter19:04

Noel Carrot called the plays that were being written, your type of plays, the Dustbin School of Drama.

Arnold Wesker19:10

Well, he was mischievous, was Noel. I mean, we liked each other very much. But he was mischievous. He did anything for a headline.

Arnold Wesker19:19

Do you know the story of me and Nel Card? No, do tell us. Do we have time? Yes. Well, at that time I was.

Presenter19:21

Let's do it

Arnold Wesker19:25

trying to set up an arts organization to find a popular audience for the arts. And I was looking for money and I was looking for famous people and I rang

Arnold Wesker19:35

Noel Card up once.

Arnold Wesker19:37

in Switzerland, and said, Can I come and see you? And he said, Yes, of course you can, dear boy, of course you can And I said, W will you book a hotel for me? and I'll No, I will not book a hotel. You'll stay at my house, you'll stay at my house and I went.

Arnold Wesker19:49

And um he took me away to a room and he said, Right now, dear boy,

Arnold Wesker19:53

You must tell me all about yourself. Are you married? Do you have children? Are you gay? Do dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun And yes, yes yes no no no yes. And then he said, I would never dream of helping you with Centre Forty two. All those dreary people from the provinces.

Arnold Wesker20:10

And you shouldn't be wasting your time. You have bags of talent. You're like me. You've got bags of talent. Why are you wasting your time with it?

Arnold Wesker20:17

And then he wrote an article in which he s said something like

Arnold Wesker20:23

What an insult our plays were to all those people from the provinces who who came to be entertained and they were being offered what was it? He called it the Dusmin School of Drama.

Presenter20:33

Uh

Arnold Wesker20:36

So I didn't take him too seriously, and I did like him. He really was a very attractive personality, and I think he liked me too. Bit disappointed that I wasn't gay.

Presenter20:46

What's your

Arnold Wesker20:46

Play.

Presenter20:46

It's true.

Arnold Wesker20:48

Well what's not known about lots of things not known about me is uh that I have a passion for musicals and I had developed an ambition that I wanted a famous composer to compose music to uh any lyric that I wrote, but no one turned up until I met Ben Till and then one day I said to Ben, Why don't we do something for the European Song Contest? I mean, you know

Presenter21:11

New revision song.

Arnold Wesker21:11

Eurovision, yes. Because so many so many of the British entries are just silly. I wrote this song, Sean with a Sun. He composed the music, and we made a demo of it and sent it to the Powers That Be, and they, of course, turned it down. But it's.

Arnold Wesker21:29

Such a good song, and I'd like it on my desert island just to remind me that

Arnold Wesker21:34

I had a sort of talent.

Speaker 421:43

When I thought everything over and done

Speaker 421:48

Made the hurt here.

Presenter21:59

Shone with the Sun, sung by Katina Kengaris, written by Ben Till and with lyrics by my castaway Arnold Wesker. To remind you, you say on that desert island that you had a talent. Uh the rate of your success in those early years was remarkable. Between nineteen fifty seven and nineteen sixty two you staged no fewer than five hits at the Royal Court. I mean you were riding on the crest of that wave at that moment. Were you able to enjoy the success as it was happening?

Arnold Wesker22:26

Yes, I was, but

Arnold Wesker22:28

And you talk about those five hits, they weren't really.

Arnold Wesker22:31

And the only play out of all those five

Arnold Wesker22:34

That ran for any time was chips with everything that transferred to the vaudeville and ran for a year. But all the rest only ran for a few weeks. So even.

Presenter22:41

So even though they're critically highly regarded, in your mind they're only a hit if they stage for a long time and as a result make a bit of money.

Arnold Wesker22:47

And a lot of people see it, but they didn't.

Presenter22:50

You came from a background that uh was pretty strapped for cash. You became this well known playwright, the the hottest playwright, the playwright on everybody's lips, even though as you were saying your plays didn't always necessarily have long runs. Were you financially stable by that point?

Arnold Wesker23:04

I think we have lived most of our life on an overdraft.

Arnold Wesker23:10

But the plays weren't made into films like Look Back in Anger or The Entertainer.

Arnold Wesker23:14

So I never got any big film money.

Arnold Wesker23:17

I just had players performed around the world, and that's what kept me going, thank God for the foreigners, I used to say.

Presenter23:23

Along with this reputation for being a a passionate writer and of having a a strong and resonant ear for dialogue, you also gained a reputation as being somebody who was difficult to work with.

Arnold Wesker23:35

Unfounded, ill-founded. Where do you think it came from? I think I know exactly where it came from.

Arnold Wesker23:42

The Royal Shakespeare Company at one point commissioned a play that I was in the middle of writing called The Journalists. I mean it is a long story, but the the bottom line is that the actors refused to perform the play and the RSC dropped the play. They did, in my opinion, break their contract, and I sued them. The actors didn't want to perform the play. Why?

Arnold Wesker24:05

We will never really know. I have a s suspicion that it was because my play, The Journalists, had four intelligent Tory Cabinet Ministers in it.

Arnold Wesker24:16

Um the left tends to think the left in the arts tends to think that you should always make your enemy stupid, and the one thing a writer must not do is make it easy for himself.

Presenter24:28

What's your next record?

Arnold Wesker24:30

Well, this uh I choose for just sheer beauty. It's the um presentation of the rose from Richard Strauss's uh De Rose and Cavalier, and it has a sublime

Arnold Wesker24:43

Duet

Arnold Wesker24:45

And when I listen to it I'm just reminded of human genius.

Speaker 425:00

I'm not sure.

Speaker 425:03

Wonderful household

Speaker 425:10

Uh

Speaker 425:39

I feel the same thing.

Presenter25:47

The presentation of the rose from Richard Strauss's Deros and Cavalier, sung by Christa Ludwig and Teresa Stitch Randall, with the Philharmonia Orchestra, conducted by Herbert von Carrian. You said a moment ago, Arnold Wesker, that writers must make it as difficult as possible for themselves. Can you explain that a little bit more?

Arnold Wesker26:07

Yeah, I think everything has to be earned in art. I think ev everything has to be earned in life. But in art

Arnold Wesker26:13

I think of my mother in Jinsuit with Bahali. She

Arnold Wesker26:19

was very proud of me, but she was also a little upset that um I'd shown her quarrelling with my father, and I had to say to her mum,

Arnold Wesker26:28

Around the world where this play is performed.

Arnold Wesker26:31

The character of Sarah comes out as a heroine.

Arnold Wesker26:34

But heroines

Arnold Wesker26:36

Aren't perfect, their flaws have to be revealed.

Arnold Wesker26:39

So the heroicness of the character of Sarah has to be earned and the flaws have to be shown.

Arnold Wesker26:46

Um so that's the kind of thing I mean.

Arnold Wesker26:49

Is that clear?

Presenter26:50

That is very clear, very clear. You touched also a moment ago on the fact that things have not always gone smoothly for you as a writer. You had this disappointment at the RSC with the uh the actors refusing to perform the journalists. You then the most extraordinary thing happened when you were opening on Broadway. After the first night, the main actor in your play, Shylock, dropped dead.

Arnold Wesker27:13

Yes.

Arnold Wesker27:14

God, what a time that was.

Arnold Wesker27:17

Uh

Presenter27:17

This is zero most

Arnold Wesker27:18

Zira Mostel, who's famous for wonderful films, producers, and many other things, he played four thousand performances of Fiddler on the Roof.

Arnold Wesker27:27

And Ericol Kundas, the English side of the production, flew me to Chicago to see Zero in Fiddler.

Arnold Wesker27:36

And we ate afterwards, and he said, Well, well

Arnold Wesker27:39

Am I acceptable? C can I do it?

Arnold Wesker27:42

And I said, Zera, you're perfect for it, but it would be great if you could lose some weight.

Arnold Wesker27:47

And he did. He lost something like sixty pounds.

Arnold Wesker27:52

But it affected his heart, which I think he was already suffering from. I don't know th th th the correct medical term well.

Arnold Wesker27:59

You you die from an aneurysm or you're suffering from an aneurysm, but it was there, waiting to happen.

Arnold Wesker28:06

And he gave one performance out of town in Philadelphia, fell ill.

Arnold Wesker28:11

and died.

Arnold Wesker28:13

And we had to go on.

Arnold Wesker28:15

We suffered from hubris, actually. Dexter wanted to prove that he could make a play work without a star, and I wanted to prove that my play was the star.

Arnold Wesker28:25

Mistake.

Arnold Wesker28:27

You can't work on Broadway without a star. We used The Understudy, we turned down Danny Kaye, and the reviews were very good. I mean, in England they would have been superlative reviews. But the New York Times, which is the all-important review, had an unfortunate last sentence which said something like this is an extraordinary play, but not wholly successful.

Arnold Wesker28:50

Ah, you know, whatever is wholly successful.

Presenter28:53

The reception by the audience on the opening night to that play had been ecstatic. People felt they were at an event, people felt they were seeing a little bit of Broadway history. There was a buzz, and and afterwards you went for dinner.

Arnold Wesker28:58

People

Arnold Wesker29:06

I mean, when we walked into the restaurant with my children, um we were applauded. My children were so proud. We walked through the doors of Saadi, and everybody there applauded.

Arnold Wesker29:16

But once this review came out with this dreadful last line

Arnold Wesker29:20

The people were queuing to get out.

Arnold Wesker29:23

So it ran for ten days and came off.

Arnold Wesker29:26

And uh

Arnold Wesker29:28

We went into overdraft again.

Presenter29:30

What's your next record?

Arnold Wesker29:31

Well

Arnold Wesker29:32

One of the things I regret most in my life is that I can't dance. And

Arnold Wesker29:37

On this island

Arnold Wesker29:39

where no one will be able to watch me,

Arnold Wesker29:42

I need something to dance to.

Arnold Wesker29:45

So I thought.

Arnold Wesker29:47

Lionel Ritchie Dancing on the ceiling

Presenter30:18

Lionel Ritchie and Dancing on the Ceiling in order that you might dance crazily in private on your island, Arnold Wesker. Has commercial success then come your way, given that in days gone by it's been, as you say, the overdraft has been stretched to its limits?

Arnold Wesker30:32

No, but I'm hoping that my new play

Arnold Wesker30:34

will be my pension.

Arnold Wesker30:36

It's uh it's a two-hander, which had just been bought by a commercial.

Arnold Wesker30:40

producer. It's been bought by three producers actually. It was bought by Duncan Weldon to begin with, and he dropped it after a year, and then it was bought by Kevin Spacey. And I said, you know, are you sure you want this? Because it's only a two-hander and the old vic is much too large for a two-hander.

Presenter30:55

But you shouldn't be saying that if you want a commercial it. You should just be grateful he's bought it and say it's your problem now, mate. Uh well, um Uh

Arnold Wesker31:02

Yes, but I'm not always wise.

Presenter31:06

get involved, you get

Arnold Wesker31:07

Two involved.

Presenter31:07

Do you think?

Arnold Wesker31:07

Uh

Presenter31:07

Yeah.

Arnold Wesker31:08

But but why why shouldn't I be involved? I mean, I enjoy the whole process of um uh seeing a play put together. Uh I turned out to be right.

Presenter31:15

Yes, but if if you're self sabotaging it in that way, if you're saying to Kevin Spacey, who who just wants who wants to put on your two hander at the old Vic and and get lots of bums on seats, if you're saying, Are you sure you want to buy that? Are you sure you're doing the right thing? Then there's there's something there that's stopping it.

Arnold Wesker31:26

It's a nice thing.

Arnold Wesker31:27

Something that was stopped. No, what happened? You see, I was right. What happened? Well I mean, he talked about he said, We know we we can make the auditorium smaller, we can bring the stage out and I thought, well, okay, you know what you're doing and

Arnold Wesker31:39

And he sat on it for nearly two years. That meant the play was not earning royalties for two years.

Presenter31:46

You said earlier that you've been married for forty eight years, and at the same time you also said you live most of your life alone.

Presenter31:52

On your own. So how does that work?

Arnold Wesker31:54

Well, sometimes with difficulty, but sometimes with great relief.

Arnold Wesker31:58

Um Dusty has she's always wanted to live by the sea, so she bought a house resold the house in London, and uh with some of the money she bought a house by the sea in Hove.

Arnold Wesker32:10

and the ho this house in the country in the Black Mountains.

Arnold Wesker32:13

is a house that we bought in nineteen sixty eight.

Arnold Wesker32:17

And it has space, and I desperately need space. But I'm now getting too old for the winters.

Arnold Wesker32:23

And so I spend the winters in Hove.

Arnold Wesker32:25

with Dusty, so it's a really it's a good existence.

Presenter32:26

Really?

Arnold Wesker32:28

She doesn't have to suffer me the entire year.

Presenter32:32

What's your rate record?

Arnold Wesker32:34

The last record is um is is a surprise to me.

Arnold Wesker32:37

I have an assistant called Jan Morris, and she has brought up two sons on her own. One of them is now the youngest golf course manager in the world, I think, and the old the other one, Justin is his name, one day woke up and said

Arnold Wesker32:51

I want to play the guitar.

Arnold Wesker32:52

and one of the ways of encouraging him was to listen to him playing.

Arnold Wesker32:57

And he played this piece of music by Satriani.

Arnold Wesker33:01

And I thought I liked that and I said Justin

Arnold Wesker33:04

Would you play that for me at my funeral?

Arnold Wesker33:07

And he said, Yes, he would. And some months ago, when I was very ill, he rang up his mum and said, Should I be learning the piece now? And uh, as I'm obviously going to die on this desert island,

Arnold Wesker33:19

I thought it would be nice to be able to play this Satriani with my last breath.

Presenter33:57

Joe Satriani and Crime. Arnold, you said that you had been very ill in in recent months. Given that you were very ill, did you have uh time and inclination to to think about your own mortality and to think about what you've achieved over all these years? Are you satisfied?

Arnold Wesker34:12

Yeah.

Arnold Wesker34:14

No, because I keep feeling there's that elusive masterpiece around the corner.

Arnold Wesker34:21

There's more that has to come together.

Arnold Wesker34:24

to make me write something really

Arnold Wesker34:27

That I feel will be memorable and and last through all time. I think

Arnold Wesker34:32

One or two of the players might. I think Roots might, The Kitchen might, The Four Seasons might.

Arnold Wesker34:37

But that Balzacian novel

Arnold Wesker34:41

has still eluded me, I feel.

Presenter34:44

So on this island, then, of course, you have the complete works of Shakespeare, and the Bible. What other book would you like to

Arnold Wesker34:50

Proust.

Arnold Wesker34:51

Alexes tonperdieux.

Presenter34:53

And your luxury.

Arnold Wesker34:55

I can't live without writing.

Arnold Wesker34:57

So can I have supplies of

Arnold Wesker35:00

Pens and paper. I mean, is that can that be one thing? Pens and paper?

Presenter35:04

And yes, as much.

Arnold Wesker35:05

Uh Two one. Yeah. God

Presenter35:07

And if uh the waves were to crash onto the shore and threaten to wash away your disks, which is the one you'd run across the sands to save?

Arnold Wesker35:14

I think it would have to be uh the Gurleader of Schoenberg.

Presenter35:18

Sir Arnold Wesker, thank you very much for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Arnold Wesker35:21

It's been a great pleasure. Thank you.

Presenter35:30

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