Alan Sillitoe

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 nine.

Presenter0:27

My Castaway this week is the writer Alan Sillitoe.

Presenter0:31

Fifty years ago his debut novel, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, unflinchingly captured the truth and brutality of post war working class life from the inside.

Presenter0:41

Brought up in abject poverty, the fear and chaos he brought to the page reflected much of his own early experience. In the years since, it seems he has rarely put his pen down, and has published more than two dozen novels, as well as plays, children's stories, and poetry collections.

Presenter0:57

He says, There must have been a point in my life when I decided I had to choose between living and writing, and I chose writing.

Presenter1:06

I wonder what you mean by that, Alan Sillito. Do you feel that you've

Presenter1:10

in a way, given up another life because you've chosen to write.

Alan Sillitoe1:14

Well, I'd read so many life stories of writers who had cracked up after the first novel or died young.

Alan Sillitoe1:23

And I thought to myself, Well, I don't want to do that. I'm in in it for life. Of course, when I say that, it doesn't mean that you you can't

Alan Sillitoe1:32

Live. Of course you can live. You have to live. You know, because all sorts of things happen to you. But generally speaking, what you should do is watch out that you don't get overwhelmed by life. I knew I had a lot more in me to uh fuel that work, so that was all right.

Presenter1:47

Can you describe to me the sense of fulfilment that writing brings you? What do you feel when you write?

Alan Sillitoe1:53

Well, you know, it's very difficult to say because when I I remember one on one occasion in the 60s I went to Russia and a Soviet journalist said to me, why and for whom do you write? And I said, I write because I want to live or because I don't want to die. And he couldn't understand. But that was exactly what I felt. I didn't want to say, oh yes, I write because I want to give dignity to the so-called proletariat and all that nonsense. I just wrote because I had to write, you see.

Presenter2:20

And is it a way of seeing off the end, as long as you are writing, you are still here and you do exist?

Alan Sillitoe2:26

Well, I think that uh as long as I go on writing I shall be all right. I I don't I obviously um I'll go on writing until my head turns into a cabbage which I hope will never happen.

Presenter2:36

Um you were erroneously bracketed along with well, they were called and none of them really like it, the angry young men, at the time that your novel came out. You were not one of those angry young men, because you were living a very different life. Where where were you, actually, when that first novel was published?

Alan Sillitoe2:50

I was in England at the thing when I was writing it.

Alan Sillitoe2:53

I was in M Mjorca and uh

Alan Sillitoe2:56

I sat under an orange tree one day and began writing something called The Adventures of Arthur Seaton, and later, when it evolved into a novel, um

Alan Sillitoe3:04

It became Saturday night and Sunday morning. So I I didn't know about the so-called angry young men. That that that was a a year or two before.

Presenter3:12

Much more to ask you, but let's begin now by hearing about your first track. What why have you chosen this, and what is it?

Alan Sillitoe3:18

Bobby Darin singing Mac the Knife, one is a bit of a tribute to Brecht and uh I sort of

Alan Sillitoe3:25

talk to it the moment I heard it, you know, Polly Peachman, all the eighteenth century shenanigans, Hogarthian, je uh Fielding's novels and so on. It all seemed to blend in to me with that music and that attitude of Bobby Darin when he was um singing it.

Alan Sillitoe3:40

So

Speaker 33:40

The shop

Alan Sillitoe3:41

Yeah.

Speaker 33:41

Bait.

Speaker 33:43

Has such teeth, dear?

Speaker 33:46

Annie shows them.

Speaker 33:49

Pearly white.

Speaker 33:51

Just a jackknife.

Speaker 33:54

Has old Maggie Heath Babe.

Speaker 33:57

And it keeps it.

Speaker 34:00

Out of sight

Presenter4:02

Bobby Darren and Mac the Knife. I've chosen, you say, Alan Silito, because it evokes that sort of Hogarthian quality of the the grubby, teeming street life. Speaking of which, I'm going to ask you about those those early years, the Nottingham years. Nineteen twenty eight, you were born. You were the second of five children.

Presenter4:19

And home was a one-up, one down, pretty pretty cramped, pretty basic.

Alan Sillitoe4:24

Yes. I mean the thing is, the children don't actually suffer. It's the parents who uh really are in trouble. The kids, as long as they get, say, a couple of meals a day, they they just uh grow up and it's not too bad.

Alan Sillitoe4:37

On the other hand, we knew that we were very, very poor indeed, at times like Christmas and so on, when the presents were few and far between.

Alan Sillitoe4:44

We

Alan Sillitoe4:45

got one free meal a day, no, two actually, from the education authorities, so the parents didn't have to provide more than one meal in the evening, so it was it wasn't too bad.

Presenter4:56

Uh paint a Christmas picture for me, then what was Christmas like?

Alan Sillitoe4:59

Well, it was all right. I mean, sometimes we got the Stalvation Army parcel or one of our more affluent relatives, although they were never really affluent, but still they they c they could give us a shilling or two. So we we had an orange, we had a sixpenny packet of toys, or a chocolate box of some some sort.

Presenter5:16

You described your parents in your autobiography as the would be providers of food, clothes, and shelter. You were aware only looking back that they fell short, or or at the time did you I mean, you did go hungry.

Alan Sillitoe5:28

Hungry on days, didn't you? On certain days, not often, but they were providers to the best of their ability. Uh my father didn't drink. He smoked and had cigarettes when he could.

Alan Sillitoe5:37

So it was touch and go sometimes whether we had to miss a meal. But it, you know, as I say again, looking back on it, when you think of all the

Alan Sillitoe5:45

Poor children starved to death in Warsaw and all these places. We were in clover.

Presenter5:50

I see. I see exactly what you're saying. Were you close to your parents?

Alan Sillitoe5:54

Well, physically we had to be, but and that was all right. Not terribly close. You know, my my father couldn't read all right, so there was a kind of discrepancy between ourselves. He was very idiosyncratic and unpredictable.

Presenter6:08

And he had a temper.

Alan Sillitoe6:09

Yes, he did. I mean, I think much of it was simply because he didn't have enough money to buy cigarettes. I mean, during the war, when he got a job and he could get some cigarettes at any rate, he was much more sweet tempered.

Presenter6:20

What sort of character was your mother?

Alan Sillitoe6:23

Well, I can only call her long suffering. I mean, she was a blacksmith's daughter who should I thought she should never have married him, but then again, you couldn't tell her that. I mean, the attitude in those days was you make your bed and you rely on it, and of course that's what she had to do.

Alan Sillitoe6:37

But there was nothing much to be done except to endure and make the best of uh how things were.

Presenter6:42

You have a very diverse list of of of music today. Was there music in the house? Was it a musical family?

Alan Sillitoe6:49

No. Now and again my father would buy a radio, uh then he'd ha default on the payments and they'd have to take it back. But uh what I did here was terrific, impressed me no end, as the saying goes.

Presenter7:01

You have said that by the time you were five you were determined that you would escape. I mean, what plans were you drawing up in your five year old head for yourself?

Alan Sillitoe7:10

Reading a great deal took me over.

Alan Sillitoe7:13

You had access to all these exotic places and you you sort of said to yourself, One day that's where I'm going. So it was more an obsession, I think, to get out by any means possible.

Presenter7:26

Tell me about your second piece of music.

Alan Sillitoe7:29

Paul Robeson, you know, one heard his uh

Alan Sillitoe7:32

his voice via records in other houses booming out on to the street.

Alan Sillitoe7:37

And Old Man River always very much impressed me because it was about someone

Alan Sillitoe7:42

who was deprived, felt themselves a slave, and yet at the same time

Alan Sillitoe7:47

Optimism glowed through the whole thing.

Alan Sillitoe7:52

Man River, that old man ribbed, he must know something, but don't say no.

Alan Sillitoe8:04

Uh

Presenter8:04

Just me.

Presenter8:19

Paul Robeson and Old Man River. You did, Alan Sillito, have a sort of refuge of sorts in in your grandparents' house. Why was it so important?

Alan Sillitoe8:31

I think my grandmother spoiled me, really. It was important for for several reasons. First of all,

Alan Sillitoe8:36

By being one mile and a half out of the city, it was in completely pure countryside. It was wonderful. Now the thing is, they'd had eight children.

Alan Sillitoe8:45

And during the lives of these eight children, they came home with Sunday school prizes. And my grandfather, although he couldn't read or write, always insisted that they go to school and indeed to Sunday school.

Alan Sillitoe8:56

And in their parlour was a big case of books, and I took out one or two. I think there was an abridged version of Mugby Dick, and one or two others.

Alan Sillitoe9:06

My grandmother was very impressed by the fact that I just sat down in front of the fire and gobbled up these books. So she thought, well, maybe um if he's so interested in books he should take the scholarship examination, what they call the eleven plus I suppose.

Alan Sillitoe9:21

So I thought it was a good idea because I already knew that having read novels by Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas in English, I thought, well, if I could read them in French, what a good thing that would be.

Presenter9:32

Isn't it the case though that you failed your eleven plus?

Alan Sillitoe9:34

Well, yes, I took it, failed it.

Alan Sillitoe9:38

Took it again and failed it. So I think, you know, I I am quite unique, you know, among all the English writers. But I don't want to claim anything special for that. I was just too too dim perhaps.

Presenter9:47

It's confusing, though, because you are somebody who is incredibly well read and very, very well self educated. Why was it at that time that you think you couldn't engage with what it was that mainstream education needed from you?

Alan Sillitoe10:01

I didn't even know what it needed actually.

Alan Sillitoe10:04

I had this idea of going to a grammar school w was very important to me, but I couldn't do it.

Alan Sillitoe10:10

I knew I was reading in order to escape. It was a very good uh way of uh cutting off from the world.

Alan Sillitoe10:17

So it was really an escape, primarily and essentially it was an escape.

Presenter10:22

Let's take a break for our next piece of music. Tell me what it is.

Alan Sillitoe10:26

I think when I in my teens

Alan Sillitoe10:29

Towards the end of the war,

Alan Sillitoe10:31

I went to see King Henry the Fifth and

Alan Sillitoe10:36

listened to all her speeches,

Alan Sillitoe10:40

and at first it seemed like a foreign language. Then when I came to the battle scene with a tremendous flight of arrows, the poor man's weapon killing the flower of modern chivalry,

Alan Sillitoe10:53

seemed to me wonderful. So I went to see it as often as I could.

Alan Sillitoe10:58

And as I

Alan Sillitoe11:00

saw it so many times, the language begin to make sense.

Alan Sillitoe11:05

And that was my first introduction to Shakespeare.

Presenter12:02

The Battle of Agincourt from Sir William Walton's score for Henry the Fifth. So, Alan Sillito, you left school at fourteen and you went to work in the factories, wh which does of course sound

Presenter12:13

Well, it doesn't sound much fun. It sounds a bit dreary. But you sort of made your own fun. I mean, you were a bit of a one for the ladies, were you not?

Alan Sillitoe12:19

Well, um

Alan Sillitoe12:21

Yes, I mean who who isn't at at any age, you know, what man isn't?

Alan Sillitoe12:26

Of course, you know, d during the war, ninety percent of the work was done by women and and the other ten percent by young kids from fourteen to eighteen before call-up, with a sprinkling of tool setters. It was amazing what they turned out.

Presenter12:38

Were you aware, as you worked away day to day clocking in and clocking off with all of these people, that you were different from all of these people?

Alan Sillitoe12:46

I have a s suspicion, you know, that

Alan Sillitoe12:49

Every single person in England, at any rate, thinks they are different from anyone else.

Alan Sillitoe12:54

And I was no exception. But perhaps it there was a little bit more intensity in mine than theirs. I don't know.

Alan Sillitoe13:00

Thank God England is like that. All people know they're different, and that's terrific.

Presenter13:04

And so you think even though all these people around you were going through the motions in some way they were disconnected with it too, they just saw it as something they had to do.

Alan Sillitoe13:11

In some way they were. I have to believe that. You see the drudgery of the day to day, if it was pure drudgery, meant that you you became two people. You were the you were the drudge and you were the person with the empty mind who could produce pictures from your mind. I mean when I worked at the lathe eight and a half hours a day, it was so automatic at times that I could do it without thinking. And but the other part of me which thought

Alan Sillitoe13:38

was the one which saved me, which kept me going.

Presenter13:43

I want to learn more about this very determined young man that you were. You taught yourself how to navigate. You were obsessed by by maps. Now, I don't I mean, I don't want to draw a sort of tortuous analogy here.

Alan Sillitoe13:53

Two.

Presenter13:55

But I am wondering what the search for a another world, another life meant for you. You know, it was quite a literal search really in one sense.

Alan Sillitoe14:04

Ever since I knew what a map was I'd been fascinated by them, and I still am.

Alan Sillitoe14:08

Imaginary maps, maps of the places perhaps I wanted to go to, Dreamland, Wonderland, and so on and so forth.

Speaker 214:14

Uh

Presenter14:14

So

Alan Sillitoe14:15

I think it was something to do with wanting to know the the place you were on the earth, and that gave you a feeling of some kind of self-importance.

Alan Sillitoe14:24

It was very important to me, very important.

Presenter14:26

And you were too young to fight in the Second World War, but you did join up. You ended up in the Fleet Air Arm, which was a signific a small but significant achievement.

Alan Sillitoe14:34

Well, be being in the air training corps, I passed everything I could possibly pass, and then I heard that you could get into the

Alan Sillitoe14:41

Fleet Air Arm at 17 instead of having to wait for the RAF at 18. So I enlisted, went to Karouve to the Air Crew Selection Board and

Alan Sillitoe14:50

Past I sail through.

Alan Sillitoe14:52

and through my first service pay of two shillings a day.

Presenter14:56

And you you ended up serving in Malaya. What w what was that like?

Alan Sillitoe15:00

Oh, that was wonderful. I liked it. You were out in the extremities of empire.

Alan Sillitoe15:05

And I'd always had the feeling that um maybe that's what I would do one day. I would get a job as a

Alan Sillitoe15:11

while this telegraphist in some outpost and uh that would be my adventure story of course.

Presenter15:18

Tell me about your next piece of music, then.

Alan Sillitoe15:20

When I was seventeen I got a job as an air traffic control assistant.

Alan Sillitoe15:25

Up in the control tower guiding planes in and out. I was able to take that job because of the three years in the Air Training Corps.

Alan Sillitoe15:34

And every morning I got a bust to the

Alan Sillitoe15:37

uh control tower

Alan Sillitoe15:39

and especially on a fine spring morning,

Alan Sillitoe15:43

I just felt as if somehow my life was about to take off. I was going somewhere.

Alan Sillitoe15:49

And I heard this lovely music, uh, Seventeen Come Sunday. I was seventeen. And it filled my brain with the thought that I really was going somewhere and I didn't know where, but it didn't matter.

Presenter17:00

The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra playing Seventeen Come Sunday by Vaughan Williams, conducted by Vernon Handley. So you returned from Malaya then, Alan, and you were diagnosed with T B and at that time

Presenter17:14

I mean, twenty, twenty five thousand people a year would die from T B. It must have been a terrifying moment.

Alan Sillitoe17:20

Well, it was a shock total shock.

Alan Sillitoe17:23

I actually thought that they'd mixed up my X-rays, and I couldn't believe it because I didn't feel ill at all. I don't know why it was, but anyway, it was true enough. They got me.

Presenter17:32

And and you spent, what, about, a year in hospital?

Alan Sillitoe17:34

Uh some s a little less, but yes, something like that. And I you know, lying on your back.

Presenter17:39

I mean, strangely, it did mean a new sort of beginning for you. You read and read and read. How many books did you actually read, you know, while you're in hospital?

Alan Sillitoe17:47

Oh, one or two hundred, I suppose. It was very difficult to tell.

Presenter17:51

And did you start right?

Alan Sillitoe17:52

Writing then too. I started writing then, yes. Reminiscent things about m Malaya poetry, short sketches, fictional sketches.

Alan Sillitoe18:01

Think like that.

Presenter18:03

Was it a surprise to you that you were writing?

Alan Sillitoe18:05

Wait.

Presenter18:05

Had you always known it was going to come?

Alan Sillitoe18:09

It wasn't a surprise, for some reason.

Alan Sillitoe18:12

How can I express it? Wh why I began to write these little things and also of course to read a lot.

Alan Sillitoe18:18

was that I wanted to cushion the shock again.

Alan Sillitoe18:22

Escape. I can only bring back the same word.

Alan Sillitoe18:25

When I was demobilized from the IAF um I got a pension. Now to be pensioned off at twenty-one was quite something. Um I met my wife, the poet Ruth Fainwright, and we went to live in France and then Spain.

Presenter18:37

Now, I don't want you to just skip through that, how you met Ruth, because I want you to tell me exactly how and when you met. It was in a bookshop, was it?

Alan Sillitoe18:45

Ruth and I met in a bookshop in Nottingham. I think at the time I'd written my first novel, in fact.

Alan Sillitoe18:52

Fell in love. And she was just nineteen. She was nineteen, that's right. But crucially she was actually married. Oh yes, but then we, shall I say, skipped off. Let's let's leave it at that.

Presenter19:04

Just about leaved it. You skipped off to Mallorca, you went to Spain and.

Alan Sillitoe19:07

Mm.

Presenter19:09

What was life like? You had this small pension, and that enabled you essentially to to write, did it?

Alan Sillitoe19:14

Well, yes, the pension was four pounds seventeen and six and we were able to get a fully furnished five-room flat for a pound a week.

Alan Sillitoe19:21

Wine was sixpence a litre, and tobacco twopence an ounce, and uh

Presenter19:24

Not a bad line.

Alan Sillitoe19:25

No, it was all right. You know, it it was fabulous, really. But we were working all the time. We were conscious of being poet and writer. It wasn't kind of wasted hedonistic time. No. We were still working.

Presenter19:35

No.

Presenter19:37

And you knew by that time that that you were a writer, regardless of whether you were published or read by other people. You felt that that was who you were.

Alan Sillitoe19:45

There was nothing else I could do.

Alan Sillitoe19:47

and it was all or nothing, and that again was something good.

Presenter19:52

Tell me about your next piece of music then.

Alan Sillitoe19:55

Well, I've chosen Edith Piaf singing Le Sariat. I believe that those people who go in for excess profiteering at the expense of the poor

Alan Sillitoe20:05

These people should go to the lantern. They deserve to be strung up under the lamppost. And she is perfectly wonderful.

Alan Sillitoe20:13

In when she leads the starving Parisian women to the palace of Versailles and she climbs up onto the gates.

Alan Sillitoe20:21

And she sings this most rousing song, you know, to the gallows for the aristocrats, because they're causing all the misery.

Alan Sillitoe20:28

To me that's a wonderful song.

Speaker 220:50

La pour la sans détête, et quiz enzo tien des cadin.

Presenter20:58

Edith P.F. singing Le Saigra from the film Royal Affairs in Versailles. Legend has it, Alan Sillito, that you were encouraged by the poet Robert Graves. You asked him for advice. Is that true?

Alan Sillitoe21:11

Yes, it is. In nineteen fifty three I wrote to Robert, sent him two or three poems.

Alan Sillitoe21:17

and then he invited me over to tea, and I cycled over to Dare, ten kilometres away.

Alan Sillitoe21:24

He judged the poems, told me what he thought, uh not too encouraging, but he never discouraged anyone. I'd enjoyed his verse, I'd enjoyed his novels, of course.

Alan Sillitoe21:36

And I had just had faith in him somehow.

Presenter21:36

And

Presenter21:39

And clearly faith in yourself, though, if you felt comfortable to show him your work. Funnily enough.

Alan Sillitoe21:43

I never needed faith in myself. I know that's uh a bit silly to say, but

Alan Sillitoe21:48

I didn't. I I knew that some day, however long it took,

Alan Sillitoe21:52

I was going to be able to make my living as a writer. That's all I wanted to do really, write a novel, make enough for a year, and then write another, plog on, keep writing, and so on.

Presenter22:04

Um and boy, did it happen for you then. You were around about thirty when uh Saturday Night and Sunday Morning was published.

Presenter22:12

Did it matter to you that it was a huge success, or did it matter more that it simply had been published and you were properly a writer?

Alan Sillitoe22:20

I've been sending novels out. I wrote about six or seven novels before that was published. I've been sending them out for a decade nearly.

Alan Sillitoe22:27

And they were being rejected. Then Saturday night and Sunday morning came along and I knew

Alan Sillitoe22:33

There was something there. I knew that that ought to be published more than any of the others.

Alan Sillitoe22:39

And then when it was published

Alan Sillitoe22:41

I had a certain amount of iron in the soul regarding publishers and what they knew. You know, because one's always heard of novels like Ulysses and A la Racher d'Atempadieu being turned down. So, you know,

Alan Sillitoe22:55

I didn't know I had faith in publishers. They'd been turning down my stuff all through the fifties.

Presenter22:59

The reaction to it from the reviewers was astonishing. You know, the people saying that this this is a man who writes in a way that DH Lawrence never could about the authentic working class experience, that you brought absolute truth to it in a way that hadn't been done before.

Alan Sillitoe23:14

I think it was that um

Alan Sillitoe23:16

Not having much faith in publishers, I also didn't have much faith in reviewers.

Alan Sillitoe23:20

Uh especially if they were if they were over over simplistic, uh talking about working class and DH Lawrence. I mean, you know, well one likes to be praised, of course, one isn't a fool or an idiot, but still, I didn't have any belief in in reviewers.

Presenter23:34

As many people will know, Saturday night and Sunday morning opens in the White Horse Pub in Nottingham. I mean the White Horse Pub I don't know if it still exists, but it did exist. Was it a place you knew well?

Alan Sillitoe23:43

Oh, yeah, I I knew it very well because it was there on V E night, Victory in Europe night, my parents, myself, and my girlfriend.

Alan Sillitoe23:52

We went there and the pub was packed to bursting. You know, this uh wonderful fifty year old woman got up on a table and did the can can with the Rabuni and Jack Bloomers on. It was wonderful. We all had a great time and my father lost his false teeth on the way back. Oh, I mean it was such a such a night. But um

Presenter24:09

Can I just rewind on that? How did he manage to lose his full steep on the map?

Alan Sillitoe24:10

I didn't even

Alan Sillitoe24:12

I think it was sick really. I don't know.

Presenter24:13

I don't want to pick up this because

Alan Sillitoe24:16

I gave him eight pounds which I'd saved up and he bought some more without waiting, so that was alright.

Presenter24:21

Tell me about your next piece of music, then.

Alan Sillitoe24:23

Well, the film Saturday Night and Sunday Morning was a a wonderful film because Carol Rice made it.

Alan Sillitoe24:29

I wrote the script, but Carol gave me a great deal of help, because I thought I'd never written one before.

Alan Sillitoe24:35

And Johnny Dankworth wrote the music, and I think that.

Alan Sillitoe24:40

Listening and seeing the opening of Saturday night and Sunday morning when all the workers are streaming out of the factory to Johnny Dankwood's music and Carol's direction,

Alan Sillitoe24:51

You know, it was such a wonderful

Alan Sillitoe24:53

uplifting atmosphere because we were all young.

Alan Sillitoe24:56

And we all had this terrific enthusiasm, and maybe that's why it's still remembered.

Presenter25:10

Uh

Speaker 325:10

Uh

Presenter25:10

Uh Let's slip away somewhere quiet Let's slip away and live on a diet of love and kisses all day

Alan Sillitoe25:18

They don't love it.

Speaker 325:23

Step away

Presenter25:30

Let Slip Away by John Dankworth, who wrote the music for the film Saturday Night Sunday Morning, that version of the song sung of course by Cleo Lane.

Presenter25:39

You said there, Alan Sillito, that the director Carol Rice and you worked very, very closely together. It is the case that that was his first feature film.

Alan Sillitoe25:47

Yes, it was. He'd made various documentaries, uh We Are the Lambeth Boys and what not, but that was his first feature film.

Presenter25:53

That brought you even greater recognition. I mean, the the the movie was nominated for five BAFTAs. And di was there any point at which you felt swept up in the glamour of it all?

Alan Sillitoe26:03

No. I was I was s swept up in the dislike of it all. My idea was to be essentially uh a modest writer, like a fish in water, getting on with my work, not having anyone bothered by the fact

Alan Sillitoe26:16

uh that my m books were selling wonderfully in paperback.

Presenter26:19

What did your family make of it? The success, I mean?

Alan Sillitoe26:22

Well, I think my my father died the following year, but I think my mother could read and she'd read him some. Um and my brothers and sisters, they all loved it really. They liked it because

Alan Sillitoe26:32

When the movie was made, I think all my family were in it in some small bit pot or another. And uh they all got a pound a day. Literally in it.

Presenter26:38

Literally in it.

Alan Sillitoe26:39

Literally in it, you can see my sister pushing her eldest child down the street.

Alan Sillitoe26:44

You know, it's it's wonderful the way they all made a bob or two. I didn't didn't didn't mind that at all.

Presenter26:49

Was your dad proud of you?

Alan Sillitoe26:50

Uh

Alan Sillitoe26:52

Yes, he was. Yeah. He died before the film was made, but he was, yes. He was a buried lad, and I know he was.

Presenter26:58

Was he able to tell you that or you knew that from the middle of the morning?

Alan Sillitoe26:59

No, I knew it.

Alan Sillitoe27:01

I went to see him and I said, look, Dad, I've got a novel published.

Alan Sillitoe27:05

He was absolutely astounded.

Alan Sillitoe27:07

not having been able to read and write himself, so he took it in his hands and turned it this way and that way, Bloody Hellan, and said

Alan Sillitoe27:13

You've written a book, he said, You'll never have to work again, which I thought was wonderful. That's what it was.

Presenter27:18

Your next work, then, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, that was another great success, again went on to become a highly acclaimed film.

Presenter27:27

Did any of it weigh heavily on you, the success, the attention, the expectation?

Alan Sillitoe27:33

Well, it is true, of course, that um after the kind of sort of success of Saturday night and Sunday morning, um the publisher wanted me to do Tuesday night and Wednesday morning and Wednesday night and Thursday morning, but I knew that that that was just one statement that I had so much else to do and I I was determined not to um

Alan Sillitoe27:51

depend on that success.

Alan Sillitoe27:55

I'm very grateful to Saturday night and Sunday morning and the loneliness of the long distance runner because all through my life they have brought me in every year a few thousand pounds and helped to bolster the income.

Alan Sillitoe28:06

Those two

Alan Sillitoe28:08

Works have given me the possibility basically of carrying on and writing exactly what I want to write at that particular time.

Alan Sillitoe28:16

If I pick one up now and again, I think, yeah, I couldn't really much improve on this.

Presenter28:20

Is it true that Hollywood tried to seduce you with filthy cash, and you turned them down?

Alan Sillitoe28:25

Well, yeah, not I don't know, they tried very hard, but anyway the suggestion was in the air that I should go to Hollywood and they'd give me fifty thousand pounds.

Alan Sillitoe28:33

Wha when would that have happened?

Presenter28:34

I'll

Presenter28:36

They it sounds like they were trying quite hard if they offered you fifty thousand pounds for a screen.

Alan Sillitoe28:39

And then I simply didn't want any consideration. I didn't I didn't why?

Presenter28:45

Why? Why? I know for some writers that would be the dream come true. Somebody pays you a huge amount of money to write.

Alan Sillitoe28:48

Wait.

Alan Sillitoe28:50

Luckily

Alan Sillitoe28:52

I was earning enough to live on.

Alan Sillitoe28:54

And that to me was enough.

Alan Sillitoe28:57

That's all I can say.

Alan Sillitoe28:59

I just didn't want it. Tell me about your next b Piece of music there.

Alan Sillitoe29:02

We go back, I think, to Majorca. Okay, so we were there for quite a few winters. But the winters in Majorca weren't very good, as as Chopin's experience showed when he went there with Georges Sand in in the early nineteenth century.

Alan Sillitoe29:16

And they do say that he wrote the raindrop prelude there.

Alan Sillitoe29:20

Which I think is very likely because during the winter it rains a great deal, contrary to what people think.

Presenter30:26

Artur Rubinstein playing Chopin's prelude in D-flat Raindrop

Presenter30:31

So, Alan Silito, you're not at all it strikes me a nostalgic person. You are somebody who is living for the day and what the next day might bring to you. You're not somebody who looks back.

Alan Sillitoe30:42

I think the past is always with us actually, but

Alan Sillitoe30:46

I do uh obviously I do at the same time prefer to not look back, but you know, you can't you can

Presenter30:51

But what I mean is you don't look back and think those were the days.

Alan Sillitoe30:54

Oh no, no, no, no, they weren't.

Presenter30:54

No, no, no.

Alan Sillitoe30:55

They weren't the date. Uh

Presenter30:57

Yeah.

Alan Sillitoe30:57

Uh

Presenter30:57

Oh, God, no. And so you you are a grandfather, you are a doting grandfather?

Alan Sillitoe31:03

Um fairly, yes. I think every grandfather who goes to see his grandchildren should, every time he sees them, give them a bob or two. So they always look forward to me coming to see them. Fair enough.

Presenter31:13

Um, were you daunted at the thought of becoming a father? You didn't have the most perfect role model.

Presenter31:19

In in your own father. Did you feel up to the job?

Alan Sillitoe31:22

Well, I I I thought that any anyone who'd had the father I'd had would be a better father.

Alan Sillitoe31:27

Simply because

Alan Sillitoe31:28

You know, he as I say, he was miserable, really, terrible.

Alan Sillitoe31:31

It was easy, in a way, bringing up children, as long as you had some money.

Presenter31:36

Will you be lonely on the desert island that you're going to now?

Alan Sillitoe31:39

I don't think so, actually. Um I have the past, the present, and possibly a future to look forward to.

Alan Sillitoe31:46

I think I could exist on my own fairly okay.

Presenter31:49

It it would be an adventure though, yes, another one of those adventures.

Alan Sillitoe31:52

Yes, it's pure Coral Island RM Ballantyne, something I loved when I was a child.

Presenter31:59

Tell me about your final piece of music, then.

Alan Sillitoe32:01

Well, uh Where Air You Walk from Handeled Semele. And this one I'd think I'd like uh Where Air You Walk just as a kind of what tribute to my uh wife, Ruth Fainlight.

Presenter32:19

Where you are.

Presenter32:22

Cool gales shall thunder play

Presenter32:29

Mm-hmm.

Presenter32:30

Why you sing?

Alan Sillitoe32:34

Shall come out in to

Speaker 232:42

May you switch a cloud in tune.

Speaker 233:03

Lucille's Challenge Logan

Presenter33:09

Bryn Tervil, singing Where'er You Walk from Handel's Semele, dedicated to your wife of many years, the poet Ruth Fainlight. And so I will give you Alan Sillito the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare. You have to choose one other book. What will it be?

Alan Sillitoe33:24

This is a very difficult question. The one book I might choose would be The Air Publication One Two Three Four, which was the R A F Manual of Navigation put out for air crew during the war and which I studied then.

Alan Sillitoe33:40

It would keep my brain active and sharp.

Alan Sillitoe33:43

It would it would keep me going for years, so I would be all right.

Presenter33:46

It's yours, and a luxury too.

Alan Sillitoe33:49

The luxury would be

Alan Sillitoe33:51

A communications receiver powered by the sun.

Alan Sillitoe33:55

and I would sling an arrow up the nearest palm tree, and I could listen then.

Alan Sillitoe34:00

as my rescuers got closer and closer.

Presenter34:04

So it wouldn't allow you to make contact with them.

Alan Sillitoe34:06

No, I w I wouldn't want to make contact. That might that might make it too easy.

Presenter34:08

I've got my

Presenter34:10

Yes, I'm going to say I think that just about falls within the rules.

Alan Sillitoe34:10

Thump it

Alan Sillitoe34:13

Yeah.

Presenter34:13

Just about falls within the rules.

Alan Sillitoe34:14

Aha, yes.

Presenter34:16

And if you had to choose just one record from the eight, which one record would you choose?

Alan Sillitoe34:21

Haha.

Alan Sillitoe34:22

I think he just paf.

Presenter34:25

Alan Silito, thank you very much for letting us hear your debt at Island discs.

Alan Sillitoe34:28

Thank you very much. Thank you.

Presenter34:37

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