Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Desert Island Discs
Presented by Roy Plomley
Biographer and literary critic, known for biographies of Cowper, Melbourne, and Beerbohm; Oxford English professor.
Eight records
The Stricken Deer
No disc is actually described in the transcript beyond the book title mentioned as his first book. No music discs are present.
The keepsakes
The book
Lord David Cecil
I was going to choose The Journal of John Wesley, which is one of the great books of the world, not specially well known. And it's a book I love. But on the whole, given the circumstances, I think I'd rather have a book that I could take out of a library. So I'll choose a book which I know I shall never get tired of reading. I think it's the greatest prose work in English literature, the Bible in the Authorised Version. So my book would be the Bible.
The luxury
Not recorded.
In conversation
Presenter asks
At Oxford you read modern history and took a first. Had you then any ambition to read [write]?
Oh, yes, indeed, I had. My ambitions to write began very much earlier. In fact, I can't remember when they [didn't].
Presenter asks
You were a don at Oxford, at Wadham. Was teaching a vocational thing? Had you any particular ideas in teaching you wanted to put into practice?
Not when I started. Uh I wanted to be a writer, but my father very properly said I ought to have a regular profession and I looked around and I thought if I could manage to get it I would like to be a darn [don], especially of literature. And then when I began it I found I enjoyed teaching very much and I have evolved ideas since. uh which I believe in, though they're not as specially individual. Uh but it wasn't a vocation in that sense that I always felt called to do it.
Presenter asks
You are a grandson of Lord Salisbury, the Victorian Prime Minister. Did his figure still, when you were a child, have a great influence over the family? Did you ever know him?
The recording
Timestamps play the recording from that turn
Presenter
This download is the only extract the BBC has of this edition of Desert Island Discs. The presenter was Roy Plumley.
Presenter
Lord David, at Oxford you read modern history and took a first. Had you then any ambition to read?
Lord David Cecil
Right.
Lord David Cecil
Oh, yes, indeed, I had. My ambitions to write began very much earlier. In fact, I can't remember when they
Lord David Cecil
What was your first book?
Lord David Cecil
My first book was after I'd been a don at Oxford for some years. It was a book, A Life of Cooper, the poet, called The Stricken Deer, and that came out, I think, in nineteen twenty eight. Yes.
Presenter
Now, you were a dollar at Oxford, uh uh at Wadham. Was teaching a a vocational thing? Had you any particular ideas in teaching you wanted to put into practice?
Lord David Cecil
Not when I started. Uh I wanted to be a writer, but my father very properly said I ought to have a regular profession and I looked around and I thought if I could manage to get it I would like to be a darn, especially of literature. And then when I began it I found I enjoyed teaching very much and I have evolved ideas since. uh which I believe in, though they're not as specially individual. Uh but it wasn't a vocation in that sense that I always felt called to do it.
Presenter
From Wadham you became a fellow and tutor at New College, and since nineteen forty eight you've held the Goldsmith Chair of English Literature. Because of your university duties your literary output has been rather small, one book every three or four years, I suppose.
Lord David Cecil
Yes. Uh there was one period which it was not so small where I left Wadham after my first book, After The Stricken Deer, and settled away from Oxford as a r freelance writer. I got married and went to live in the country and then I suppose even then it wasn't very quick, but I did write two books, The Early Victorian Novelists, and the first half of my book on Melbourne, the first volume, within a f a fairly short number of years.
Presenter
You are a grandson of Lord Salisbury, the the Victorian Prime Minister. Did his figure still, when you were a child, have a great influence over the family? Did you ever know him?
Lord David Cecil
No, no, I was a year old when he died. I wish I had known him. Yes, it did have an influence. He'd been this very big personality. And he'd had uh the five or six children who'd all been very fond of him and I think had been influenced by him, though they didn't all quite agree with him. But it is true to say, I think, that his particular attitude to life, a mixture of realism and religion, and salted with a good deal of irony and humour, did pervade the atmosphere in which I grew up.
Presenter
Have you ever had any political ambitions or so?
Lord David Cecil
None.
Lord David Cecil
I knew nothing but politicians all the time I was at charge. I was very fond of them all, and I never wanted to follow them.
Presenter
Now, your biographies, Cooper, Melbourne, Max Birbaum, others, how do you set about a biography like this?
Lord David Cecil
Uh
Lord David Cecil
Well, I always think that biography is the portrait painting of literature.
Lord David Cecil
and as in a portrait you go and look at the person.
Lord David Cecil
So, uh well I literally do that, I look at pictures of them. But of course it's more important to look at their mind and the best thing of all is something they've said themselves.
Presenter
Do you do field work?
Lord David Cecil
Oh, a lot of field work one has to. I read their letters, any diaries, anything anybody who knew them had written about them. And then of course you must have the context, the background. I read a great deal about the period they lived in and to g get the kind of world and atmosphere in which they lived, I go and look at the places they they lived in. You are a stylist, you write elegantly, which is rare these days. Well, I try to be a a stylist. I feel if you're a literary critic, which is what I aspire to be, one has to.
Lord David Cecil
Because Freddy
Lord David Cecil
to lay down the law about writing.
Lord David Cecil
and then write very badly yourself.
Lord David Cecil
It's like teaching somebody to ride a horse and then falling off.
Lord David Cecil
Have you ever wanted to write fiction?
Lord David Cecil
Yes, I once began to write a novel, and the first two or three pages weren't too bad at least I don't think so, because it was all description, then I had to make the people talk. I couldn't do it a bit. I know you read a great
Presenter
a great deal, and like to browse in the literary byways and read neglected classics. Who do you think are the most neglected writers?
Lord David Cecil
Well, I must make a distinction here. There are the writers who were once enormously admired and are now, I think, unjustly neglected, and the ones who I think have never achieved a sufficient reputation.
Presenter
Can we have an example of each, then?
Lord David Cecil
Yeah.
Lord David Cecil
Oh, I think of the first I would choose Sir Walter Scott, who was of course the most popular novelist alive in his day, but now he's very neglected. But I think at his best, and he isn't always at his best, he is one of the greatest novelists that ever lived. You can read Scott without skipping.
Lord David Cecil
Yeah.
Presenter
Right.
Lord David Cecil
Skim.
Lord David Cecil
Uh but I do admit that quite a lot of Scots isn't all that good, though I feel as they're in charm in everything by now. But the four or five great Scots I think uh yes, I will read them word for word and in the other category.
Lord David Cecil
Well, the writer I would put there is uh I have a prejudice because I wrote about him is Max Birpo. Of course, um i it's not true that he's not red, he is red, but he's always talked of as a very small master, and he did work on a small scale, but I think he's
Presenter
Yeah.
Lord David Cecil
It's exquisite, and, as it were, solid.
Lord David Cecil
and uh I think will last very much longer than many writers who've made a great noise.
Presenter
Now let's have one.
Presenter
Really overrated writer in your opinion.
Lord David Cecil
Well, I know I'm putting my uhself into a very controversial position now, but I would say to H. Lawrence. I think he was a genius, and certain things he does splendidly. But otherwise he's a great noisy gasbag to me.
Presenter
Since your teens you've lived in the closed world of a university. Do you feel that you've retreated, that you that you've uh missed a lot, that that that you really never left school?
Lord David Cecil
No, I don't think one thing I don't know universities at all like school. I agree with Gail and Mac Webham, who said one goes to school to have the nonsense knocked out of one and one goes to the university to have it gently put back.
Lord David Cecil
I think this is very true. And I I no, I think the university suits me. I don't think a world of active conflict I'd have been any good at. I agree with the person who said that life's like a game of cards. You're dealt a hand and you must play the hand that you're dealt. And mine was one, I think, which um d did demand a certain uh um cloistered quiet, uh plus a certain amount of social life for it. And I was very lucky that I have been able to live the life which I think suits me the best.
Presenter
And you'll have the privilege of mixing with young people all the time.
Lord David Cecil
Well, yes, I like that very much. And when I retire, which I do next year, that's the only thing I think I shall regret. I do like seeing young people about and uh hearing them talk.
No, no, I was a year old when he died. I wish I had known him. Yes, it did have an influence. He'd been this very big personality. And he'd had uh the five or six children who'd all been very fond of him and I think had been influenced by him, though they didn't all quite agree with him. But it is true to say, I think, that his particular attitude to life, a mixture of realism and religion, and salted with a good deal of irony and humour, did pervade the atmosphere in which I grew up.
Presenter asks
Have you ever had any political ambitions or so?
None. I knew nothing but politicians all the time I was at charge. I was very fond of them all, and I never wanted to follow them.
Presenter asks
Your biographies, Cooper, Melbourne, Max Birbaum, others, how do you set about a biography like this?
Well, I always think that biography is the portrait painting of literature. … So, uh well I literally do that, I look at pictures of them. But of course it's more important to look at their mind and the best thing of all is something they've said themselves.
Presenter asks
Do you do field work?
Oh, a lot of field work one has to. I read their letters, any diaries, anything anybody who knew them had written about them. And then of course you must have the context, the background. I read a great deal about the period they lived in and to g get the kind of world and atmosphere in which they lived, I go and look at the places they they lived in.
“My first book was after I'd been a don at Oxford for some years. It was a book, A Life of Cooper, the poet, called The Stricken Deer, and that came out, I think, in nineteen twenty eight.”
“his particular attitude to life, a mixture of realism and religion, and salted with a good deal of irony and humour, did pervade the atmosphere in which I grew up.”
“I always think that biography is the portrait painting of literature.”
“I think [D.H. Lawrence] was a genius, and certain things he does splendidly. But otherwise he's a great noisy gasbag to me.”
“I agree with [the person who said] that life's like a game of cards. You're dealt a hand and you must play the hand that you're dealt. And mine was one, I think, which um d did demand a certain uh um cloistered quiet, uh plus a certain amount of social life for it.”