Dame Harriet Walter

Presenter0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Discs from BBC Radio 4. For rights reasons the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.

Presenter0:10

For more information about the programme, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.

Presenter0:33

My castaway this week is the actress Dame Harriet Walter. From Hedda Gabbler to Cleopatra to Lady Macbeth, with plenty in between, she has been a stalwart of the stage for more than three decades, winning great acclaim for her work with the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre.

Presenter0:50

She turned down a place at Oxford because she knew she wanted to act, only to find that the drama schools didn't want her. She applied five times over before getting a place, and after that success was a slow burn rather than a quick burst of fireworks.

Presenter1:07

Lots of T V and film work has come her way too, but she says The roles that have fed me and used me best have been my stage roles. I don't think about making the clever career choices. I don't feel I'm a household name or a national treasure.

Presenter1:21

But I certainly feel really happy. It's come out better than I ever imagined. I want to start then, Harriet Walter, with some of the things that have come out better than you ever imagined. In the space of just a few months, you've turned sixty, um you've been made a dame and you got married for the first time. That's quite a list, hasn't it?

Dame Harriet Walter1:39

Things come in threes, so I think I've had my luck for for quite a while.

Presenter1:43

Quite a year.

Dame Harriet Walter1:44

Yeah, amazing. Not only, you know, having never changed my name.

Dame Harriet Walter1:49

For sixty years, suddenly being having a choice between being a dame or Mrs. Guy Paul.

Presenter1:55

Uh

Dame Harriet Walter1:55

Uh

Presenter1:55

So which is it?

Dame Harriet Walter1:55

I think I'll probably just stick with Harriet Walter, actually. I think.

Presenter1:59

Unless you're booking a restaurant table because I don't think they know.

Dame Harriet Walter2:01

Yeah, and then swing the dame around. Yes.

Presenter2:03

Yes, good idea. I read that, uh, as you say, this is your first marriage. First marriage for both of you, you and your husband. He's the American actor Guy Paul.

Presenter2:11

That you were going to write your own vows and that you said you were going to try to control your temper. Did you really write that in?

Speaker 32:15

Uh

Dame Harriet Walter2:15

Yeah.

Dame Harriet Walter2:17

I r well, actually I went back on that because somehow we we sort of both wrote stuff and then it felt a bit arrogant really to think that you could put these things better than everybody else

Dame Harriet Walter2:33

Who's ever taken marriage vows, you know? So we have had long sessions where we've we've privately

Presenter2:39

He said what we're gonna try and do, you know.

Dame Harriet Walter2:41

Perhaps.

Presenter2:42

And given that you're sixty, it's a time in most women's lives where all of the b the big decisions, whatever they've been, have have pretty much set things in the pattern of how their life is. Do you feel like you've sort of tossed it all up in the air and you're waiting to see how you're doing?

Dame Harriet Walter2:54

Yes, I mean I never did feel I was following a particular pattern. I was it's always people always say retrospectively, you know, you've managed your career well or whatever. Well, I didn't, you know, at the time I just took what was on offer. But I'm trying to make more space for those things that you haven't done that you're still fit and well enough to do, travelling. Um, you know, I want to fit those things in. It's quite a juggling act.

Presenter3:18

Yeah.

Dame Harriet Walter3:18

Uh

Presenter3:18

Let's hear some music, Harriet Walter. Tell us what we're going to hear first of all today. What have you chosen?

Dame Harriet Walter3:22

Well my first record is Beethoven's third symphony, The Heroica. And why have you chosen this? I just love Beethoven. He's deep, he's complicated, he's delicate, he's inspiring. And um I sometimes sort of played him on my headphones before going onstage to sort of root myself in in something bigger than the ordinary and he inspires me, so.

Dame Harriet Walter3:48

That's why I picked him.

Speaker 34:14

Yeah.

Presenter4:46

That was the opening of Beethoven's third symphony, The Heroica, with the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Leonard Bernstein. Of course we know and we will talk about your stage work, but on television we've seen your face uh a lot, Harriet Inspector Morse, little Dorrit. And for those of us who are almost addicted to Law and Order, UK, we know you as this very hard-boiled, sweetie D.I., Natalie Chandler. She's the SIO, the senior investigating officer of all the cases.

Speaker 15:08

But she's

Presenter5:12

It's the voice that's astonishing. When I sit here and listen to your voice today, where did her voice come from? How did you get there?

Dame Harriet Walter5:18

God knows, I just felt she couldn't sound like me.

Presenter5:21

Black

Dame Harriet Walter5:21

Which is a stupid prejudice really, where I thought someone who sounded like me wouldn't get things done and wouldn't have authority. And also I reckon she came up through the ranks. I dunno, I developed a slightly hard-boiled, almost tomboy voice. She's one of the lads, you know. Yeah, can you do it? Boys, my office, now.

Dame Harriet Walter5:44

And the

Presenter5:44

Go

Presenter5:46

Yes, she's she is. She's tough and she's quite she's quite frightening. Uh going into the Beethoven there, you you said the words deep, complicated, delicate and I almost felt as if you could have been describing yourself.

Dame Harriet Walter5:56

Oh, thank you very much.

Presenter5:57

Y y y you have a sort of delicacy to you which she doesn't possess. Is it is it quite good fun occupying somebody who seems

Dame Harriet Walter6:00

Is it

Presenter6:04

Quite full of certainty. Yeah.

Dame Harriet Walter6:06

Uh

Presenter6:06

Quite quite short. Josh

Dame Harriet Walter6:06

Very refreshing. It's very simplifying and it's not about us, it's about the case. And so it's very sort of procedural and

Dame Harriet Walter6:15

cut and dried and it's it's quite refreshing to do that.

Presenter6:20

Um you wrote a book about it's mainly about acting, and the title of it is Other People's Shoes. A number of years ago you wrote this book. What was the point at which you thought, Oh, I like I like wearing other people's shoes. This fits.

Dame Harriet Walter6:30

Oh, ages

Presenter6:31

I think

Dame Harriet Walter6:31

Uh Deep, deep, deep, dark, you know, nine years old. I think kids.

Dame Harriet Walter6:36

Can very quick you look at child actors, they've they seem to effortlessly

Dame Harriet Walter6:42

go into this strange human activity of pretending to be somebody else. We've been doing it for millennia, and I don't quite know where it comes from, but it's um

Dame Harriet Walter6:52

An essential aspect of being alive is sort of being able to empathize, and what would it be like if I was somebody else?

Presenter6:59

Yes. What about the the inbuilt um suspicion that maybe most of us civilians have about actors and actresses that they're really not quite grown up?

Dame Harriet Walter7:08

Well, maybe we're not. I don't mind not being grown up. I remember sort of my first weeks at drama school, and it just wasn't work. I mean, my dad and I used to sit on tubes and sort of pretend to be other people and put silly voices on and follow people in the street and all that, you know, and now I was being asked to do it

Speaker 17:23

Yeah.

Dame Harriet Walter7:28

For homework.

Dame Harriet Walter7:29

You know, would you follow someone in the street and pretend to be them to morrow? Would you put put on their walk and um imagine what it's like to be them? You know. Extraordinary things. I think being able to play and be silly is an essential part of

Dame Harriet Walter7:45

Let's have some more music then. What's next? Well, this is an extract from High Society. I just love both the voices of Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra, but it was it was something my parents brought home. They must have gone to see the musical in the fifties and brought the record home.

Dame Harriet Walter8:02

And it had something of the glamour of my parents, you know. They were very handsome couple. They didn't have masses of money or anything, but they got asked to lots of interesting social events because they were good fun to have around and they were decorative and gorgeous and they were sort of quite mysterious in a funny way. And they'd come and kiss you before they went out in the evening in black tie and silk dresses and stuff like that, you know, really looking gorgeous. And there's something about the sort of swellagant, elegant party of this song that makes me f feel all that romance of what was out there beyond my nursery.

Speaker 18:39

I have heard among this clan

Speaker 18:42

Who are called the forgotten man, Is that what they say? Well, did you ever?

Speaker 18:48

What a swell party this is And have you heard the story of a boy a girl unrequited love sounds like pure soap up I may cry tune in tomorrow What a swell

Presenter9:02

Yeah. What do they say?

Dame Harriet Walter9:04

Yeah.

Speaker 19:04

What?

Dame Harriet Walter9:04

What frails, what frogs, what broads?

Presenter9:08

That was Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra and Well Did You Ever from the soundtrack of High Society for your swelligant, elegant parents, Harriet Walter. Your father's family had started the Times newspaper?

Dame Harriet Walter9:15

Yeah.

Dame Harriet Walter9:21

Yes, my direct ancestor started the Times newspaper. Yes, quite quite a remarkable man from from pretty humble origins. By the time my grandfather came along, the Walter family had kind of had to

Presenter9:24

Alright, that was bad.

Dame Harriet Walter9:34

give up quite a lot of their share in it. But I did go to tea at um Printinghouse Square, very sort of old fashioned Victorian atmosphere. Terrifying grandfather. Very deaf. Used to have to shout.

Dame Harriet Walter9:47

to be heard. You know, when you're a kid and you're very shy and think you're saying rather stupid things anyway, to have to say them louder was kind of awful. Um and then my father was the sort of second son and he was not really considered as a sort of inheritor of the Times mantle. So he went off into the foreign office.

Dame Harriet Walter10:07

And then he went into the war. He was a soldier in the war.

Dame Harriet Walter10:10

Because he spoke Spanish after the Second World War when Spain was reopening relations with the rest of Europe.

Dame Harriet Walter10:18

He was asked to go into the Madrid Embassy and he took his new wife, my mother, and they had their first child, my sister.

Presenter10:25

And you were conceived in scrambling.

Dame Harriet Walter10:27

I was conceived in Spain, but they just moved to England by the time I was born. And what about your mother?

Presenter10:27

Uh

Presenter10:31

Yeah. What you say she she was uh handsome, part of a handsome couple?

Dame Harriet Walter10:33

Sir Hannah.

Dame Harriet Walter10:34

Of a handsome couple. Yes, she was I mean, both of them were l gorgeous, but both of them were very modest and very sort of diffident. And I think they both of them in a way their families had sort of made them feel not too wonderful. They weren't swanky and

Dame Harriet Walter10:51

overbearing and arrogant. They were very gentle people.

Presenter10:55

Is that partly generational, though? I mean, that that was a generation who were absolutely taught not to blow their own trumpets.

Dame Harriet Walter11:00

That's true as well, yes, absolutely.

Presenter11:01

Oh yes.

Dame Harriet Walter11:02

And um my sister and I both feel that legacy. You know, it's quite hard to for both of us to be pushy and assert ourselves, but I'm getting over it. I'm learning.

Dame Harriet Walter11:13

Yeah.

Presenter11:13

And you say it was Kensington that y the family home was in. I mean, I'm sort of imagining nannies with big prams in the park.

Dame Harriet Walter11:19

Yep, nannies with Prams in the Park and um polite little day schools and behaving well and wearing gloves and

Presenter11:21

Right.

Dame Harriet Walter11:26

And then sort of kicking them off and climbing trees and

Dame Harriet Walter11:29

Running r I mean, I just remember s sort of being let off the leash. I was rather a menace, I think. I used to let car hand brakes off and let them roll down the hill and things like that.

Dame Harriet Walter11:40

Ring doorbells and run away and all that rubbish.

Presenter11:42

Quite the tomboy way.

Dame Harriet Walter11:43

Mm, that was a bit.

Presenter11:44

Yes. Let's have some more music then, Harriet Walter. Tell me what's next.

Dame Harriet Walter11:47

So the next thing we've got is Ian Charlson, who's this exceptionally good actor who was in my year at Drama School at Lambda.

Dame Harriet Walter11:56

And he had the most fantastic voice. And he was an adorable man. He died aged 40 from AIDS. He was one of the first people I really knew closely who died of AIDS. And just before he went, he did a definitive Hamlet that got highly praised. So he had this wonderful ability, but he also had this wonderful voice. And at his memorial, they played it round the church, and it's him playing Ariel in the Tempest.

Presenter12:31

And the rays of his bronze are quarrelling.

Presenter12:45

Those are designed.

Presenter12:56

That was Iain Charlson and Fool Fathom Five. I'm imagining, Harriet Walsher, that the sort of family, the kind of background you came from, it was absolutely assumed that you would go to boarding school.

Dame Harriet Walter13:05

And you have

Presenter13:06

And you absolutely did go to the maze. How was it?

Dame Harriet Walter13:09

Look, I did two. The first one was horrible and the second one was great.

Dame Harriet Walter13:14

Um it was what everybody else was doing, so I didn't feel my parents were being especially cruel and sending me away. How old were you? I was just about to be twelve.

Presenter13:24

Right. And and you've said of it, of course I bellowed when I got there and I dreaded going back, but

Dame Harriet Walter13:25

Uh

Dame Harriet Walter13:29

Uh

Presenter13:29

It was all

Dame Harriet Walter13:30

Yeah.

Presenter13:30

Right.

Dame Harriet Walter13:30

It was great. I mean, what what happens is of course you cling to your mummy's skirts, but your peer group become as important as your family in developing who you are. You know, I very much refer back to my second boarding school, which was a place called Cranbourne Chase, which was in a beautiful Palladian house in beautiful sort of Salisbury Plain country.

Dame Harriet Walter13:53

And it was so amazing to be there after being in London, you know.

Presenter13:56

And and a little girl who had let off handbrakes and all the rest of it then, did did you fit in all right, or were you were you uh disciplined often and harshly?

Dame Harriet Walter14:02

Yeah.

Dame Harriet Walter14:04

No, I was never actually very naughty at school. I've always had that side that sort of wants to dare to do things. I'm quite daring, but I was also quite scared of authority. So I I kept my nose clean at school, and all my mates were kind of the naughty ones. And I was often, I don't know, the watch person. When they went out on a midnight rampage, I'd be the person sort of holding the fort and making sure, you know, their beds were filled with bolsters or whatever it was. I never actually did the thing, but I was kind of on their side and in their team.

Presenter14:37

Right. And your parents did divorce. Was it a sort of kind of protracted separation? How aware were you of all of that?

Dame Harriet Walter14:42

Well, I sensed something was wrong before I knew anything was wrong. And my mother says I sensed it before she knew it was wrong. Yes. But there was a summer holiday when I knew my mother was very much altered and it threw me

Dame Harriet Walter14:57

into quite a bad state of mind. Um I thought life was whirling into chaos, actually.

Dame Harriet Walter15:05

I sort of went to pieces, really. Because my mother and I were very bonded in a sort of, I don't know if it was unhealthy, but you know, there was a lot of outside people saying, you and your mother, you're like clones, you know. And so the way I saw it, when my father rejected her, he'd rejected me. She adored him always, I think, really. She remarried, but I think she always adored my father. And so it was quite sad. And I felt that sadness very strongly because I was so sort of tuned into her. Did you think you were to do with the sadness?

Speaker 115:24

Yeah.

Presenter15:35

Uh

Dame Harriet Walter15:35

I think what you do is you sort of reject the side of you that's a bit like her. I started it's complicated. You start thinking, Oh, mummy, don't do that because you're gonna make him annoyed, you know, and so you start rejecting her and rejecting the bit of you that's like her and

Dame Harriet Walter15:50

I don't know, it's all quite complicated. And, um, being sent away to boarding school is like sort of, Oh my god, I'm being sent away and that's all happening somewhere and I can't control it and I don't know what's going on and

Dame Harriet Walter16:03

Then I did feel like I was being pushed away and sort of s sent away to be out of the way.

Presenter16:08

So inside you had a sort of

Presenter16:11

Churning tumble-dryer of nerves and anxiety. Did you use that? Absolutely, I would say.

Dame Harriet Walter16:14

Absolutely, I would say that's quite a good description. And I can remember it very vividly. I can remember that feeling of chaos. I was diagnosed as having had a nervous breakdown. Were you? The good thing about it was I don't think I've ever been there again.

Presenter16:28

Really interesting that you said your mother subsequently said that she felt that you knew before she knew.

Dame Harriet Walter16:33

Yeah.

Dame Harriet Walter16:34

And I think she probably wa did know somewhere, but was sort of covering it up. But I was picking up vibes off her subconscious somewhere, so I was sort of picking up things that she didn't know she was feeling.

Presenter16:46

Uh

Dame Harriet Walter16:47

We'll take

Presenter16:47

We'll take a break for some music then, Harriet, to tell us. We're on disc number four now. What are we going to hear?

Dame Harriet Walter16:52

Well, Rudolf Nureev, I you know, I can't do anything autobiographical without mentioning Rudolph. Rudolf Nureev was the mentor of my life, really. I think around about the time he came over, my grandmother took me to Cotton Garden and I saw Fontaine and Nureev for several years. And I would go back to this boarding school I've been talking about, and then I'd sneak off to the music wing and play Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet, and I would act out every single part.

Dame Harriet Walter17:25

One minute I was Juliet on the balcony, next minute I was Rudolph, you know, and very roughly imitate the dances as I could remember them.

Presenter18:33

The Dance of the Nights from Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet, performed by the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Andrei Preven. And you said, Harriet Walter, that you've chosen that because of this very strong connection that you feel with Rudolf Nurev. You saw him dance many times with Margot Fontaine, and eventually, remarkably, you developed.

Presenter18:53

Uh a personal.

Presenter18:55

Yeah.

Dame Harriet Walter18:55

It would be strong strong to say I got to know him. I met him about three times when I was thirty five. I was completely tongue-tied. I was completely incapable of saying how important he had been to me.

Dame Harriet Walter19:10

I'd done a play by a Russian director, and we'd done Dostoevsky's The Possessed, and we played it in Paris at the Odeon, and there was a huge sort of Russian emigre population in Paris that came to see the play.

Dame Harriet Walter19:24

among whom was Rudolph Nereyev and um the company manager. She said, um well, you know, if you're interested, I run his show at the Coliseum every summer.

Speaker 119:30

Jesus.

Dame Harriet Walter19:35

And you I'm sure I could ask his permission for you to come and watch From the Wings.

Dame Harriet Walter19:42

And she did.

Dame Harriet Walter19:43

And I saw sort of through the sort of cardboard cut out scenery this figure on the stage practising. So I went, Oh, hi, you know. I just couldn't possibly say you've been my hero all my life, you know, because I think it was because of him that I became an actor, really. He expressed music with his body. He seemed to inhabit music with his body.

Dame Harriet Walter20:05

And I can't really explain that connection, but it it's a a direct link to how I feel as a performer.

Presenter20:12

And what about getting to know him even a little? Was it true, the sort of Never Meet Your Heroes, or did you find he was a little bit more?

Dame Harriet Walter20:15

Uh

Dame Harriet Walter20:17

It was well

Dame Harriet Walter20:18

Never meet your hair. I I will always regret that I just was such a gibbering idiot. But I do remember sitting in the wings and sort of thinking

Dame Harriet Walter20:25

God, you get to meet him in the end. You know, sort of talking to my 11-year-old self and saying, hang on in there. It was quite an extraordinary moment. A little bit more than it.

Presenter20:33

It's interesting you talk about your eleven year old uh self talking about that time when when your parents were separating and it was a time of great tumult in the family world. The idea that you were trying to calibrate the happiness of both parents at such a stage just seems

Presenter20:48

Well, I mean tr there's a a tragedy in that.

Dame Harriet Walter20:50

Well, in fact, you know, it's funny, but I did realize that I wasn't frightened of my father. I was frightened for my father. You know, I used to sort of not show my emotions and think it was because I thought he'd

Dame Harriet Walter21:03

despise me for them. Years later I discovered that I was not showing my emotions because I was protecting him.

Dame Harriet Walter21:10

from the fact that he'd hurt me.

Presenter21:12

Bye.

Dame Harriet Walter21:13

Years later, you know, rather pathetically, he sort of expressed a wish that he had been there more for me, you know, and and that he he had got to know me better, but I'd already sort of sealed that bit off.

Presenter21:24

From him. Didn't he say to you when he was talking to you about the breakup? I'm sure you'll deal with it like a chap.

Dame Harriet Walter21:29

Yes.

Dame Harriet Walter21:31

Yes, sort of patted me on the back and said, you know, you're not going to be sulky, are you?

Presenter21:35

Yes.

Dame Harriet Walter21:35

You know, so I sort of wasn't because that would make his life awkward.

Presenter21:40

Has it taken, I mean, through your work, I imagine you have so often explored so many of the places that most of us lock away and think, right, that's done and let's move on.

Dame Harriet Walter21:47

Done, and let's move on. You you have to access the woman's.

Presenter21:50

So

Dame Harriet Walter22:07

who grew up in Spain. She went back to Spain as an adult to have four children in very quick succession. So they were all brought up in Spain, they've lived there all their lives, they're totally bilingual. And my nephew, Jackson Scott, he learnt from Enco guitar from the authentic Andalusian hitanos.

Dame Harriet Walter22:27

And has now developed quite a following with his band Mano de Dios.

Speaker 122:41

I'm not sure if I can do it.

Speaker 122:43

Evita en el arcado, me con parmo complicadillizabiendo que borbera.

Speaker 122:48

Me conformo comicadi lizariendo que morverad.

Speaker 122:57

Sabiendo que bolvera, si si, sabiendo que bolvera

Presenter23:01

That was Jackson Scott, your nephew, and his band Mano de Dios and Volveras. Um it's uh performing has not just carried on to the generations that have followed um Harriet Walter, but your uncle is Christopher Lee, a very famous British actor.

Dame Harriet Walter23:14

The bed.

Dame Harriet Walter23:15

Yeah.

Presenter23:16

I mean, what did you see him a lot when you were growing up?

Dame Harriet Walter23:17

Yes, yes. I mean, he was a bit of a romantic figure, came and went, you know. Um uh he was my mother's brother, my mother's younger brother, very handsome, six foot four or five, and he wore quite sort of raffish clothes and he'd sort of appear in the middle of the night and kiss us good night and come in with his dracula walk or his or his um the mummy where he was wrapped in bandages, you know, the mummy that comes to them and he'd come and stand in the doorway in the middle of the night and make us shriek.

Presenter23:43

The legs are too band on the castle.

Dame Harriet Walter23:48

Uh

Presenter23:48

502

Dame Harriet Walter23:48

Yeah, good fun.

Presenter23:48

To look at it, yeah.

Presenter23:51

And did you get to go onto the set, Sepper?

Dame Harriet Walter23:53

Yes, yes, we used to go to the Hammer film shoots in Bray.

Presenter23:55

Okay.

Dame Harriet Walter23:57

and um walk through villages that were made of just facades and castles that were made of papier mache.

Presenter24:04

And the first time that you performed and felt that it really was something that you could you could make your life with was when?

Dame Harriet Walter24:12

I think um I was a very late developer actually. When the school play was on Offer Who Wants to Be In It, I'd slide under the desk and disappear, you know, I didn't want to be in it.

Dame Harriet Walter24:22

I think probably a sort of pride or arrogance I didn't want to be bad at the thing I really m m minded about. And then because I spoke French quite well, I started to do French plays, and my mother came and she said, you know, I saw then that was you had a spark, but the headmistress also thought I had a spark.

Presenter24:40

And so you were you were a bright girl, you had a facility with languages, and you were on you were offered, indeed, a place at Oxford.

Dame Harriet Walter24:46

Yeah. Yeah. Sort of it it sounds so crazy, but it wasn't my idea to go to Oxford anyway. It was my grandfather, believe it or not, this frightening old man. My father said your grandfather would like you to sit for

Dame Harriet Walter24:58

the Oxbridge entrance. But I just as it wasn't my idea in the first place, and as modern languages was my forte,

Dame Harriet Walter25:06

I thought, why why sit in Oxford and learn Spanish and Italian and French and German or whatever? Why not go to the countries? It suddenly seemed rather

Dame Harriet Walter25:15

um nonsensical and in that case it was definitely drama school I'd have preferred.

Presenter25:18

You started auditioning for drama schools and and I was right in the introduction what I am saying that you it was fifth time last

Dame Harriet Walter25:24

Five attempts and five refusals my first year.

Presenter25:27

Yeah.

Presenter25:28

Rice

Dame Harriet Walter25:28

And I'd written in in my diary my fifth rejection, but I know I'll make it in the end or something. You know, I I can't quite remember the wording, but it it was very surprising to me that I had felt so sure, because I had absolutely nothing to go on.

Dame Harriet Walter25:43

But I I just thought, No, you're going to keep going and it'll be all right.

Dame Harriet Walter25:47

And the following year I got into Lambda. So it was quite a slow burn, but I eventually got there.

Presenter25:53

Uh

Dame Harriet Walter25:53

But you're

Presenter25:53

Yeah.

Dame Harriet Walter25:53

Appearances

Presenter25:53

And how much did they see you act?

Dame Harriet Walter25:55

A lot, and they were very proud of it. Were they? Yeah, very, very supportive.

Presenter25:57

Yeah.

Dame Harriet Walter25:59

Even when I was in very left-wing theatre, they came along in in that mum mum mum in her fur coat, you know, me sort of shrinking with embarrassment. She said, That was frightfully good, darling

Presenter26:11

Let's have some more music, then, Harriet. What are we going to hear next?

Dame Harriet Walter26:13

That's what we

Dame Harriet Walter26:14

So what have we got? We've got ah, yes, Fred Astaire. In my forties I met Peter Blyth, who became my partner for eight years until he died, sadly, and he had trained as a ballroom dancer.

Dame Harriet Walter26:28

And he was very sort of dapper and light on his feet and elegant and um we started our love affair in quite sort of tricky circumstances. He was already married and somehow this piece of music sort of symbolized for us a sort of um we don't know what's happening, we don't know what's going to happen, but let's face the music and dance.

Presenter26:49

There may be trouble ahead.

Presenter26:55

But while there's moonlight and music and love and romance

Speaker 326:58

And love that.

Presenter27:03

Let's based on music and uh

Presenter27:09

Before the fiddlers have fled

Speaker 327:14

Yeah.

Presenter27:14

Before they are.

Speaker 327:15

Uh Just to pay the bill.

Presenter27:19

That was Fred Astaire and Let's Face the Music and Dance. And that music, as you said, Harriet Walter reminds you of your former partner, Peter Blythe. Viewers of Rumpole of the Bailey would have known him, of course, as Sam Ballard. You were in your mid-forties when you met. He was a good slice older than you. Was it?

Presenter27:35

Was it love at first sight?

Dame Harriet Walter27:36

Haha, hard to know. We were playing um Hedder Gobbler and Judge Brack.

Dame Harriet Walter27:42

And I think we just bonded on that play really, and I thought that was it, you know, when the play i is over that that's it. But, um, it sort of persisted.

Presenter27:54

And given that he was married, how did you deal with that? And especially as a child of divorce? Well, exactly.

Dame Harriet Walter27:58

Well, exactly. I remember my mother

Dame Harriet Walter28:01

She was very honourable, in that sort of old fashioned Celia Johnson sort of way.

Dame Harriet Walter28:05

She said, Never be the one who makes it happen, you know.

Dame Harriet Walter28:09

And, you know, I hold my hand up and say I didn't push it at all. It came from him. I don't know whether I sense he might have thought his days were numbered, but, you know, that there's a slight mysterious feeling where I think some people do know how long they're going to live. And I think he felt this is the last stretch of my life and

Dame Harriet Walter28:29

I want to go for it. How old was he then, when you met? He was sixty one. He died at sixty nine.

Presenter28:35

Uh

Dame Harriet Walter28:35

By that statement

Presenter28:35

Yeah.

Dame Harriet Walter28:38

Yes, I proposed to him in the leap year because we were living together by then.

Dame Harriet Walter28:42

And um

Dame Harriet Walter28:44

I think what happened was that he felt that he loved me a lot more than I loved him.

Dame Harriet Walter28:50

I think he felt that and I so it was my way of demonstrating.

Dame Harriet Walter28:53

You know, no, I'm not, you know, because he just thought I was younger and freer and could have anybody, you know. And I just thought I need to really affirm to him that.

Dame Harriet Walter29:03

He's the one for me as much as I'm the one for him, you know. We didn't act on it for you know, we it was just a sort of statement of intent.

Presenter29:10

He died of lung cancer, so was that a

Presenter29:13

Lung cancer, as soon as it's diagnosed, it can be a very, very swift as well as vicious. It's very swift. It was five months. Right. Yeah.

Dame Harriet Walter29:17

It was five

Presenter29:21

Did you up until then, given that you met him in your forties, and given that you know, when I look at your C V it's almost unbelievable the amount of work that you have done.

Dame Harriet Walter29:29

Yeah.

Presenter29:31

Had you really buried yourself in your work, do you think? Had your work been your life?

Dame Harriet Walter29:34

Yes, I think it's a bit of a vicious circle, isn't it? You f you follow the strand that pays you back, you know. And work had always paid me back, and love had been quite complicated. And so, um

Speaker 329:44

Right.

Dame Harriet Walter29:46

work filled the gap and then it's quite hard to extricate yourself from all that work and give enough time to your partner.

Presenter29:54

Yes, you you put it rather brilliantly in one interview that I read. You said work became a substitute for private life, and that's difficult to dismantle.

Dame Harriet Walter30:01

Yeah, exactly. Um, and and I'm going through that process again now because I've entered into my first marriage.

Presenter30:09

Yes, how's it going?

Dame Harriet Walter30:09

How's it going?

Dame Harriet Walter30:11

Well, we're not divorcing yet.

Presenter30:13

And on that note, we'll have some more music, then tell us what we're going to hear next.

Dame Harriet Walter30:15

That's what we

Dame Harriet Walter30:16

Okay, um this next one is just this has no particular connections, I just love it. And it's um a piece for two pianos. I don't even know when I came across it, but it sort of epitomizes what I love about Schubert and I think on my desert island it would calm me down no end.

Presenter31:36

That was Schubert's fantasy for piano for Four Hands, performed by Yevgeny Kirsin and James Levine. So, Harriet, you've been married now for a matter of a few weeks.

Presenter31:46

I'm wondering if y you know, your first marriage and his first marriage in his sixties, you've just turned sixty. Did your good friends sort of say to you, I was so worried, you know, that this would never happen for you that you you know, did people start to tell you the home truths, or were they quite cool and collected about it?

Dame Harriet Walter31:58

So were they quite cool and collected?

Dame Harriet Walter32:09

unfulfilled re relationships. I think they were thinking, Oh, God, I wish she'd find somebody good, you know. Not settle down and have children and all that, but just, um, you know, be happy, I think.

Dame Harriet Walter32:20

So they're very pleased for me. And I think you sort of get off the hook a bit. You know, they just think, Oh, well, of course she's an artist, you know. We don't expect her to do the normal things. And that gets me off the hook. I allow them to think that.

Speaker 332:28

Right.

Dame Harriet Walter32:34

Actually, you know, I was I was longing to find happiness in a partnership. Um and it seems like touch wood I have.

Presenter32:41

And so you have well, let's use that terrible phrase, settled down, but you have never had children. Is that is that a source of regret or are you?

Dame Harriet Walter32:45

That is that

Presenter32:47

Uh

Dame Harriet Walter32:47

I don't think it is really. I mean, I think if it was, I'd feel it much more strongly. I mean, I occasionally, just on the level, the actress who's curious about other people's shoes, you know, to have not done it and not been there.

Speaker 132:57

Then

Dame Harriet Walter33:01

is such a huge life experience that I have not had.

Dame Harriet Walter33:05

But, um

Dame Harriet Walter33:06

You know, I think if I'd really, really longed for children I'd know about it, and so I don't feel regret.

Presenter33:12

And what about your relationship with yourself as you get older? When you look in the mirror and you look at your own face and you look at it as you're a woman going into her sixties, what what's your relationship with yourself like?

Dame Harriet Walter33:22

Well, I think we all do. We look in the mirror and you go straight to the thing you recognise that's always been there. You know, oh, those are my eyes, that's my you know, that's my smile.

Dame Harriet Walter33:31

Um I'm still the same person I always was. But then you catch yourself unawares in a shop window and you go, Who's that old woman?

Dame Harriet Walter33:39

I feel that I am five, fifty five, twenty five, and sixty, all in one go. I can remember very vividly what it's like to be at different stages in my life. And so they all come along with me. They're all part of the package. They're all alive at the same time. But I still feel

Dame Harriet Walter33:56

terribly young inside, and I know that people in their nineties feel very young inside.

Presenter34:01

When you're on the island, then, Harriet, all on your own, uh quite a life to look back on, what do you think you might ponder on?

Dame Harriet Walter34:08

Well, I don't know. I don't think I would sort of go on dwelling into my past. I'd try and deal with the present. I'm very impractical, not good at sort of making fires, not good at cooking, um not good with funny insects. Um you're gonna have a tough time.

Presenter34:22

I'm a

Presenter34:25

Let's comfort ourselves with some music then. It's your final piece today. What's the eighth disc we're going to get?

Dame Harriet Walter34:28

Okay, this is Nina Simone and I can't imagine spending any length of time without hearing her voice.

Dame Harriet Walter34:35

It's just indescribable, her voice, and it just gets me on every level. And this is My Baby Just Cares for Me, which somehow I hope epitomizes um how Guy feels, I don't know and um just lifts the spirits.

Speaker 134:52

Miss Kayla is not a star.

Speaker 134:57

And even Lana turned it smiled

Speaker 135:02

Something he can't see.

Speaker 135:08

My baby don't care.

Speaker 135:11

Super dough.

Speaker 135:16

My baby's chaos

Speaker 135:19

For me

Presenter35:21

Nina Simone, and my baby just cares for me. So I'm going to give you the books now, Harriet. The Bible?

Presenter35:27

The Complete Works of Shakspeare and What Book Are You Going to Take?

Dame Harriet Walter35:31

Well, if it exists, the complete works of Isabella Bird, who was a Victorian explorer.

Dame Harriet Walter35:40

and an extraordinary I think I would just need to identify with someone

Dame Harriet Walter35:44

else who had been in a strange

Dame Harriet Walter35:48

Challenging situation.

Dame Harriet Walter35:51

and braved it out and toughed it out and um I just think her example would be rather inspirational and I haven't read them all so I could sort of travel with her to different places.

Presenter36:01

That's yours, and a luxury, too.

Dame Harriet Walter36:04

Well, I thought long and hard about this, and I think in the end, because I'm rather a gregarious person, I don't really like being alone.

Dame Harriet Walter36:10

And I'm not a very good spectator or listener. I always want to get up and join in.

Dame Harriet Walter36:15

And I taught myself the flute when I was about twenty and I've sort of played it on and off.

Dame Harriet Walter36:21

And I thought if I had my flute, I could sort of karaoke along with some of these records and feel I was part of Andre Previn's orchestra and, you know.

Presenter36:30

Uh

Dame Harriet Walter36:31

Have a good time.

Presenter36:31

Good idea, it's yours. And if you had to choose just one of the eight discs, which one would you choose? I knew you'd ask me an ad

Dame Harriet Walter36:39

And I hadn't made up my mind until a second ago, and I've just

Dame Harriet Walter36:43

Just heard Nina, and I think

Dame Harriet Walter36:45

I couldn't live without Nina Simone's voice, and I'd be

Presenter36:47

Dancing on the sand. It's you as Dame Harriet Otter. Thank you very much for letting us hear your desert island. This is.

Dame Harriet Walter36:53

Thank you.

Presenter36:54

Uh

Presenter37:31

You've been listening to a download from the BBC. You'll find more information on the Radio 4 website bbc.co.uk Slap

Speaker 340:28

Harriet Walter

Presenter40:29

has been a stalwart of the stage for three decades. She turned down a place at Oxford because she wanted to act.

Presenter40:37

My castaway Dame Harriet Walter on Desert Island Discs this Sunday morning at 11:15.

Presenter40:43

Tomorrow morning at eleven fifteen.

Presenter40:46

This morning at eleven fifteen.

Presenter40:49

My Castaway, Dame Harriet Walter, on Desert Island Discs this Friday morning at nine.

Presenter40:54

Tomorrow morning at nine.

Presenter40:56

This morning at nine.