Russell Braddon

Speaker 20:00

This is the

Speaker 10:01

B B C

Speaker 10:04

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. This is the only version we have of this edition and may be slightly different from what was actually broadcast. The recording didn't contain the guests' eight music choices, so we rebuilt the original show by using discs from the BBC Gramophone library. For Wrights' reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

Speaker 10:26

Full details can be found on the Castaways page on the Desert Island Discs website.

Speaker 10:31

The programme was originally broadcast in 1968 and the presenter was Roy Plumney.

Presenter0:38

mister Braddon, what was your plan in choosing your aid records?

Russell Braddon0:42

Uh my my plan was based on

Russell Braddon0:44

very specific needs which I knew I would have because I've endured this kind of thing before. When was it? As a prisoner of war of the Japanese, we we lived in a community that had nothing. Whatever you you did acquire, you had to make for yourself.

Russell Braddon0:58

and almost everything you wanted was missing.

Russell Braddon1:01

particularly in the way of people. So I kn I knew

Russell Braddon1:04

that I needed the sound of

Russell Braddon1:07

women's voices because this is something you miss particularly. You not only miss it, you forget it. You forget what it's like. And I knew this I needed the sound of children.

Russell Braddon1:15

I needed certain certain tunes that I couldn't remember properly, and they would drive me mad if I couldn't remember them, and so on.

Presenter1:21

What's the first one you have?

Russell Braddon1:22

The first one is I I've got is Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody number two and I've got this purely and simply because everyone at some time in his life should conduct a rip-roaring piece of music.

Russell Braddon1:34

The trouble is if you do, you're seen. And on Desert Island you won't be seen. And this is the Rip Roaringist, I want List Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2.

Russell Braddon2:40

Second choice is Holy City.

Russell Braddon2:42

A reason for it again, it goes back to my prisoner of war background. I I remember there was a Welshman who used to come out of his cell and stand in the middle of the cell block, all the sounds echoing round him, and he would belt out this holy city, Jerusalem, Jerusalem. And when he did, you could sing yourself at the top of your voice, and you couldn't hear any sound at all. All you could hear was him.

Russell Braddon3:03

And this is perfect when you've got a a voice with a range of three notes and they're all flat.

Russell Braddon3:07

And it made me feel better always. It made us all feel better. And I think on my island it would make me feel better still. So I can sing and I can conduct.

Speaker 23:19

Last night I lay asleep in, there came a dream so fair. I stood in old Jerusalem beside the temple girl. I heard the children singing, and ever as they sang, Methought the voice of angels from heaven in answer.

Presenter4:22

Whereabouts in Australia were you born? Sydney, civilized bit?

Presenter4:26

What were you going to be? What was your further ambition?

Russell Braddon4:29

All my life, ever since I could remember, I was going to be a barrister. I didn't know what it meant. Well, my family were all barristers or members of parliament.

Russell Braddon4:38

And so when people said to me, Russell, what are you going to be when you grow up? I would say a barrister.

Presenter4:42

Yes. What went wrong?

Russell Braddon4:45

The war in the first place I went to that to become a field marshal instead, but they didn't see what military talents I had. And anyway, I surrendered, so I never got higher than private.

Presenter4:54

Where was that?

Russell Braddon4:55

Malaya.

Presenter4:56

Yes, you didn't have much of a chance in Malaya, did you?

Presenter4:59

How long were you a prisoner of the Japanese?

Russell Braddon5:01

Nearly four years.

Russell Braddon5:02

So it seemed a long time.

Presenter5:04

Some of the time on the Burma Railroad.

Russell Braddon5:06

Yes, that's why it's such a bad railway line.

Presenter5:09

You wrote a book, The Naked Island, describing life in the camps, describing the senseless and unbelievable cruelty. After twenty five years, has your memory of those days softened?

Russell Braddon5:20

Not softened, it's exactly the same. I still remember it as as a time it it would horrify me to think that the same thing could happen again to another generation. It would more than horrify, I couldn't stand it.

Russell Braddon5:31

But on the other hand, uh I have softened to the extent that I know that everything the Japanese did to us, which at the time seemed bestial and criminal,

Russell Braddon5:39

They did honorably. This is a strange thing to realize. And in a way, it's a comfort.

Russell Braddon5:44

They really did kill us and allow us to die with the honorable conviction that this was our lot. And it is a comfort to know this.

Russell Braddon5:53

which perhaps the survivor of the German concentration camps doesn't have. He knows that he was a vict

Presenter5:59

Hmm.

Presenter6:00

You have indeed bang been back to Chang Yi camp since the war.

Russell Braddon6:04

Yes, I've been back four times, and each time I get back.

Russell Braddon6:07

I'm assailed with nostalgia.

Russell Braddon6:10

For a community that worked. It was a a highly civilized life that we made for ourselves. And also assailed with the conviction that I better get down and start working, otherwise I'll get a hiding.

Presenter6:15

Yeah.

Presenter6:20

You had some distinguished citizens among your fellow prisoners.

Russell Braddon6:24

Yes, it was a good breeding ground. You know, you start off from there and life can't really go wrong again. There was Ronald Searle and and he his work has never looked back. There was Sidney Pittington, who did marvellously. There was another private called Alec Downer who used to say when he got out he's going to go into politics and become Prime Minister, an Australian.

Speaker 16:34

Uh

Russell Braddon6:41

Complete fallacy, he didn't of course, he just became the present High Commissioner to London.

Presenter6:46

Yes. Now certainly Pittington a a very familiar name. B between you you evolved a mind reading act.

Russell Braddon6:51

Yeah.

Presenter6:52

In the camps? Yes.

Presenter6:54

What happened to you after the Japanese surrender?

Russell Braddon6:57

Well, Pittington wanted to come over here straight away and start doing professionally what we'd done to occupy occupy our mines in Changee.

Russell Braddon7:04

I didn't. I still wanted to be a barrister.

Presenter7:06

Hmm.

Russell Braddon7:07

He said, I didn't know what the law was, so I said no, and I went back to the university and started studying law, and hated it from the instant I took it up. I've never known a more disagreeable subject or a more terrible profession.

Russell Braddon7:19

But it took me three years to become ill enough to be able to drop it and Sit Piddington meantime had met this girl and married her and trained her to take my part in the show and unbeknownst to me had come over to this country to try and break into the B B C.

Presenter7:31

Yes.

Presenter7:32

Why did you come to the United Kingdom?

Russell Braddon7:34

Well, because I'd been in hospital for five months with every prisoner of war disease that there ever was, and when I came out they said, you know, I mustn't work for a year, my brain, otherwise I'd go insane.

Russell Braddon7:44

which seemed a lovely verdict to me. I

Russell Braddon7:47

Except that no one stopped work with me. I had nothing to do and so I thought, well, I must go home, as all Australians do, to England. To England. Here I came. You met Sidney?

Presenter7:56

Peddington again.

Russell Braddon7:57

Yes, he he was waiting for me when I got off the boat train. He I just felt a tap on the shoulder and I thought, Good God, I'm arrested already and it was Pittdington. He said that he had eight broadcasts to do for the BBC. I knew the show, would I write the scripts?

Russell Braddon8:11

Because the BBC insists on, you see, on these scripts being written and he and his wife couldn't even write letters.

Presenter8:17

You became not only scriptwriter for the Piddingtons, but also manager and part of the act.

Russell Braddon8:22

Yes, yes I did. Um

Russell Braddon8:24

It was a complicated business devising what should be done each week.

Presenter8:28

We go.

Russell Braddon8:28

We are

Presenter8:29

How long we would

Presenter8:30

Three years. They did some very mystifying stunts. Which one do you think was the most successful?

Russell Braddon8:38

I think really the t the time when

Russell Braddon8:41

Leslie w that was Mrs. Pittington was in the Tower of London and her husband was in the BBC's Piccadilly studio.

Russell Braddon8:49

And I maybe I remember it for malicious reasons because when we put the proposal up to the BBC they said impossible. It would take nine years to get the tower going through regulation channels. And so Pittington and I went down to Piccadilly Tube with a handful of pennies and rang up everyone we knew and in the end were speaking to a gentleman who said that he was the governor of the tower. Of course we could have it. So we went back that day and told the BBC.

Speaker 29:07

Yeah.

Russell Braddon9:11

And the Piddingtons did this broadcast and and Leslie told Sydney what was written up on the board in Piccadilly.

Presenter9:18

Mm-hmm. And Leslie was in a dungeon.

Russell Braddon9:20

And she was in a dungeon in the tower, and just at the moment when she she revealed the most stunning answer of all, a tug on the Thames hooted dismally.

Russell Braddon9:30

and was heard.

Russell Braddon9:31

And thousands of people wrote to the Peddington saying, that's how it's done, there's a tub on the temp.

Presenter9:36

Cool to see.

Russell Braddon9:36

That's the code.

Presenter9:36

Digest the code because it was.

Russell Braddon9:38

Good morning.

Presenter9:39

A tree.

Russell Braddon9:39

Very expensive.

Presenter9:40

You were writing scripts for the Pittingtons. Did you do any other writing at this time?

Russell Braddon9:44

Not not until some

Russell Braddon9:46

Publishers suggested that the Peddingtons should write their autobiography. Well, you know, people who can't write letters or scripts certainly can't write autobiographies. So they looked at me hopefully and I didn't know what writing a book meant. I said, certainly.

Russell Braddon9:58

And wrote? And I've been writing ever since?

Presenter10:00

Well then came The Naked Island. Yes.

Presenter10:03

And

Presenter10:04

You've done a number of biographies. You had a great success with a biography of your fellow Australian Jan Sutherland.

Russell Braddon10:11

Well, if I had a great success it was because she's a great woman and a very truthful one.

Presenter10:15

Did you know it was such a good story when you started writing that?

Russell Braddon10:17

No, I had no idea, but she did a marvellous interview with one of the newspapers and I thought a woman who can be as honest and as amusing and as candid and as

Russell Braddon10:26

unassuming as that about herself, really must be quite a person, and I went to see her.

Speaker 110:29

And I went.

Russell Braddon10:31

and asked her, Could I do it? And she said, Did you write The Naked Island? and I said yes and she said yes you can do it and I said you can't decide like that woman and she said yes I can my brother was a prisoner of war.

Presenter10:40

Yeah.

Presenter10:41

Who else, Lord Thompson?

Russell Braddon10:43

Yes, Roy Thompson's biography. Very honest man.

Presenter10:46

Yeah.

Presenter10:47

And as well as writing factual biographies, you've also written fiction, quite a lot of fiction, yes.

Presenter10:53

All your books have very varied backgrounds.

Russell Braddon10:55

Turn.

Russell Braddon10:56

Well, yours would too if if you had to do as much research as one does nowadays. You you're up to your neck for about a year in getting all the train tables right and uh

Russell Braddon11:06

distances, right? All these little things with an enormous amount of work

Presenter11:08

Yeah.

Russell Braddon11:10

If you've got to do an enormous amount of work, you might at least have the satisfaction each time of learning something different. How long did the Joan Sutherland book take you? Two years. Mind you, that was no effort. I heard about seven million pounds worth of marvellous music and first lights and everything else.

Presenter11:25

How do you set about writing a biography? Do you like to do your own background research before you talk to your subject?

Russell Braddon11:31

No, I l I like to talk to the subject and do the background research at the same time.

Russell Braddon11:36

Um you asked them how it happened that they did

Russell Braddon11:40

a desert island disc with you and they tell you and then I come to you and ask you how it happened and you tell me something quite different. It's not that you're both liars, although you may well be, but it's just that everybody remembers things differently and then you've got to find sort of points of cross reference and go from there.

Presenter11:55

Yeah.

Presenter11:56

Does the biography have any rights? Suppose um he claims that you've overemphasized one particular characteristic.

Russell Braddon12:03

From the point of view of integrity, you should have no rights at all. If you believe genuinely that that mister Plumley is a liar about someone who appeared on his programme, then you must say so when your biography has been written.

Russell Braddon12:15

But on the other hand, if you say to me that I have

Russell Braddon12:19

Oh, you convince me that I have misrepresented something, then I must change it.

Russell Braddon12:23

To give you an idea, Roy Thompson, when I wrote his biography, in which I said many harsh things about him, rang me up and said I'd like to see you about two of them.

Russell Braddon12:31

I went in prepared to fight him tooth and nail.

Russell Braddon12:35

And he said, Russ, you said that I was mean.

Presenter12:37

Oh, he was thinking of the North American use of the word means.

Russell Braddon12:38

He was thinking

Russell Braddon12:39

Yeah, so I'm not mean, I'm stingy.

Russell Braddon12:43

Didn't deny for a second that he didn't like giving away money, but he didn't want to be mean in in that North American sense. And he said, you said I was blind. There he is with glasses half an inch thick.

Presenter12:45

Okay.

Russell Braddon12:52

He said, I'm not blind, I'm myopic. These were the only two changes he wanted made.

Presenter12:56

Yeah.

Presenter12:57

What have you been working on recently?

Russell Braddon13:00

Three novels, one after the other. Mainly because I couldn't think of anyone to write a biography about that was wanted on both sides of the Atlantic.

Speaker 113:09

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