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Desert Island Discs
Presented by Roy Plomley
A British aristocrat and granddaughter of the Duke of Rutland, known for staying at Beaver Castle as a child.
Eight records
The eight records for this collection haven’t been catalogued yet.
The keepsakes
No book or luxury recorded for this episode.
In conversation
No questions or quotes have been extracted for this episode.
The recording
Timestamps play the recording from that turn
Speaker 1
This is the BBC.
Speaker 1
This download is the only extract the B B C has of this edition of Desert Island Discs. The recording doesn't mention the guests' music choices, but full details can be found on the Castaways page on the Desert Island Discs website. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen sixty nine, and the presenter was Roy
Speaker 2
Lady Diana, as a child you used to stay with your grandfather, the Duke of Rutland, at Beaver Castle. You must have experienced there a kind of life that just doesn't go on any more.
Lady Diana Cooper
The
Lady Diana Cooper
The tragedy, uh mustn't talk French, the um uh life.
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Lady Diana Cooper
Yes. Could not be more diff vast staff of um
Lady Diana Cooper
The hell.
Lady Diana Cooper
upholsterers and carpenters and
Lady Diana Cooper
the foresters and uh
Lady Diana Cooper
Even sawmill. I don't know, every single
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Lady Diana Cooper
thing that made up a whole community, you know. And enough
Speaker 1
Even that
Lady Diana Cooper
Enough staff to make a choir in the chapel.
Lady Diana Cooper
Terrible choir, but still it was a choir.
Lady Diana Cooper
of um housemates and
Lady Diana Cooper
Footman and
Lady Diana Cooper
And then um
Speaker 2
There were night watchmen on the estate, too, were there not?
Lady Diana Cooper
They were the yes, they were the night watchmen. I don't know whether they exist at all to day.
Lady Diana Cooper
But we had great comfort at night.
Lady Diana Cooper
Hearing the gravel
Lady Diana Cooper
Crunch.
Lady Diana Cooper
under the night watchman's foot,
Lady Diana Cooper
and he'd call out
Lady Diana Cooper
Past twelve o'clock.
Lady Diana Cooper
All's well.
Lady Diana Cooper
And that gave us comfort.
Lady Diana Cooper
But what didn't give us comfort was if we went trolling along the passages after dark,
Lady Diana Cooper
And it was completely dark.
Lady Diana Cooper
We used to go up to bed with uh candles and extinguishers.
Lady Diana Cooper
And so when once we'd all gone to bed, if you went out in the passage and met the night watchman indoors, that was terrifying.
Lady Diana Cooper
Because he had padded feet.
Lady Diana Cooper
and um sort of bullseye lantern.
Lady Diana Cooper
And you'd get an osteophreyte there.
Lady Diana Cooper
But uh the the outs the outside watchman's very calm.
Speaker 2
There was no indoor illumination apart from oil.
Lady Diana Cooper
And
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Lady Diana Cooper
and an oil man and two candlemen.
Lady Diana Cooper
Bathrooms, hot water.
Speaker 2
The
Lady Diana Cooper
Not a suspicion. There was uh what we now call Lewes.
Lady Diana Cooper
But no bathroom of any kind. My mother did all that when when I was fifteen already. I mean, up to my age of fifteen, there was nothing.
Speaker 1
No.
Lady Diana Cooper
Because my grandfather lived to be very old.
Lady Diana Cooper
and he never put in anything.
Speaker 2
Your education included a a first rate grounding in all the arts. Your your mother was a very talented artist, wasn't she?
Lady Diana Cooper
She was very talented both in drawing and in sculpture.
Lady Diana Cooper
And in music?
Lady Diana Cooper
And uh
Lady Diana Cooper
She had very great taste.
Lady Diana Cooper
And a lot of things were common.
Lady Diana Cooper
Even tomatoes were rather common.
Lady Diana Cooper
Um I still use the word common, meaning something quite different from what people mean today.
Lady Diana Cooper
Oh, kinda that's coming.
Lady Diana Cooper
You can't hold somebody's hand, that's common.
Lady Diana Cooper
Um
Lady Diana Cooper
And uh then she taught us
Lady Diana Cooper
Well, all day long she played the piano.
Lady Diana Cooper
Not all that well.
Lady Diana Cooper
but plodding away at a score
Lady Diana Cooper
and generally Wagner.
Speaker 2
You studied at the Slade School yourself?
Lady Diana Cooper
Well, I studied this slate school really more for fun and for a very short time and I lived in Gower Street at those days and it was next door to Gower Street and we had tonks.
Lady Diana Cooper
as the master and we had a man who I learned to love, who was called Ambrose McEvoy.
Lady Diana Cooper
Who is hardly known now?
Speaker 1
That's
Lady Diana Cooper
and he was on the staff of teaching us.
Lady Diana Cooper
But um
Lady Diana Cooper
I was never very good. No, I was never good.
Speaker 2
But
Speaker 2
As a family you mixed with many people in the theatre.
Lady Diana Cooper
Very much so.
Lady Diana Cooper
Because we were brought up almost
Lady Diana Cooper
almost totally with the tree family.
Lady Diana Cooper
The children were roughly the same age.
Lady Diana Cooper
And we had run of the theater.
Lady Diana Cooper
and could go whenever we liked and this was encouraged.
Lady Diana Cooper
From the age of five, I suppose, I went to Julius Caesar.
Lady Diana Cooper
and used to go on the stage, always, with the crowd.
Speaker 2
Mm-hmm. This must have been exciting.
Lady Diana Cooper
Oh, wonderful, yes. Yes, Susa, we'll lend you our years. Yes, we'll lend you our ears.
Speaker 2
And rhubarb rhubarb.
Lady Diana Cooper
They're not reverting, they're following the man.
Speaker 1
Uh
Lady Diana Cooper
Oh, Paul Caesar.
Lady Diana Cooper
Oh, poor Caesar Oh, look at his wounds
Lady Diana Cooper
It was like that. And then we used to um
Lady Diana Cooper
Always be in Miss Sir Herbert Tree's dressing room.
Lady Diana Cooper
on his most nervous moments, I suppose, playing with his rings and
Lady Diana Cooper
Saying, can we see your beard put on Mr. Dadd I used to call him Mr. Daddy,'cause the children called him Daddy, and you couldn't say anything but Mr. before everybody.
Speaker 1
Uh
Lady Diana Cooper
Hello, mister Derry.
Lady Diana Cooper
Can I see you put your beard on?
Lady Diana Cooper
And he was so patient and so good with this
Speaker 2
After you came out, you had a reputation for being one of the wild ones, one of the first of the bright young things.
Lady Diana Cooper
Yes, it's very difficult to believe why, but I suppose I did.
Lady Diana Cooper
I suppose I did, and I don't quite know why, but I always had publicity.
Speaker 2
There's a very pleasant story of you at a London function at which the guest of honour was the Crown Prince of Germany, a function at which medals were to be worn.
Speaker 2
and I believe you wore yours.
Lady Diana Cooper
I wore my um bath club medals, that's all I had.
Lady Diana Cooper
but I bought another to make them look freshier.
Lady Diana Cooper
which was a old Saint Esprit.
Lady Diana Cooper
And nobody said don't. I can't think why my mother said you can't wear your bath club medals. Everybody else was showing their gongs, you know, and here was I with my bath club, half a mile, quarter mile, whole mile.
Lady Diana Cooper
And very naturally the crowd little Willie
Lady Diana Cooper
as he came to be known.
Lady Diana Cooper
And
Lady Diana Cooper
Naturally they always do royalty. They've seen medals, you know, they
Lady Diana Cooper
Great thing to look at.
Lady Diana Cooper
So he looked at these metals and was enormously surprised.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Lady Diana Cooper
Which uh were the result that I had a long talk with him'cause he was so amused by these medals.
Lady Diana Cooper
wouldn't have am I don't think it would have amused a civilian, as it were, but you know, somebody who's a soldier and who's a
Lady Diana Cooper
King.
Lady Diana Cooper
I was always fascinated by m
Speaker 2
Bitters.
Lady Diana Cooper
So therefore I got her off with him.
Speaker 2
In the first war you were a nurse.
Lady Diana Cooper
In the first war I went to guys.
Lady Diana Cooper
Guy's hospital very much against anybody's will.
Lady Diana Cooper
Terrible to do that was.
Lady Diana Cooper
Because I was determined to go.
Lady Diana Cooper
And then the ladies used to be brought to me to tell me that I'd be raped.
Lady Diana Cooper
Because um, all soldiers coming back for the war just
Lady Diana Cooper
could handle the nurses as they liked.
Lady Diana Cooper
Total law, totally untrue. Anyway, I was in the civilian branch.
Lady Diana Cooper
With cancer, not with war wounds.
Lady Diana Cooper
And I was happy at Guy's, but it was very, very hard.
Speaker 2
I'm sure it was.
Speaker 2
And after the war you married a young man in the Foreign Office who was later to be a statesman and historian, Mr Darf Cooper, who became Lord Norridge.
Lady Diana Cooper
Yeah.
Lady Diana Cooper
And there was a trouble, too.
Lady Diana Cooper
Because they didn't like him very much.
Lady Diana Cooper
and they'd expected better of me.
Lady Diana Cooper
But they soon realized
Lady Diana Cooper
sweetly realized that they were wrong and then
Lady Diana Cooper
My husband became what they liked very much, but it was a member of parliament and they hadn't had a member of parliament in the
Lady Diana Cooper
family for a long time.
Lady Diana Cooper
And then as he graduated to being a minister, then he we had the king's rooms and we had everything.
Lady Diana Cooper
of the best we will
Lady Diana Cooper
The favoured ones then.
Speaker 2
Now, you were beautiful and popular and talented and a leading figure in London society. This gave you the
Speaker 2
status, the popular status that today is accorded only to an international film star, didn't it?
Lady Diana Cooper
It's very nice of you to say so. I wouldn't put it quite as high as that.
Lady Diana Cooper
But I had enough uh publicity.
Lady Diana Cooper
and one duck can't quite tell what gives one publicity.
Lady Diana Cooper
But I had it, and I disliked it rather.
Lady Diana Cooper
But I didn't dislike it when it gave me the miracle.
Speaker 2
Yes. Well, before that you did in fact become a film star, didn't you?
Lady Diana Cooper
Oh yes, but I've forgotten it. It was so bad. It was a silent film. Yes. And it was done by a very nice man who'd been turned out of Hollywood Hollywood as Too Bad.
Lady Diana Cooper
To go on.
Lady Diana Cooper
And uh I did two films, but I don't really like to remember them very much.
Speaker 2
Was it as a result of these two films that you got the invitation to play The Madonna in The Miracle?
Lady Diana Cooper
Yeah.
Lady Diana Cooper
I think that Reinhardt
Lady Diana Cooper
When it was suggested that I should play The Miracle, I asked to see the film.
Lady Diana Cooper
I see.
Lady Diana Cooper
And he said
Lady Diana Cooper
escape or something, but I don't think he was interested in the films.
Speaker 2
As a child, had you seen the original London London production of the piece?
Lady Diana Cooper
Yeah.
Lady Diana Cooper
I had. I'd seen it at Olympia.
Speaker 2
Had it made a big effect on you?
Lady Diana Cooper
Ah, yes, and it's also had the effect, you see, that when I was offered it I felt I can do that.
Lady Diana Cooper
Because I shan't have to say anything. And it was such a wonderful
Speaker 1
Uh
Lady Diana Cooper
break. Yes. I feel anybody can get away with it if if they don't have to
Lady Diana Cooper
Have elocution.
Speaker 2
Yes, it it was a big musical spectacle.
Lady Diana Cooper
Well in in in Olympia it was circus, it was horses.
Speaker 2
Mm-hmm.
Lady Diana Cooper
And it was enormous, you could imagine.
Lady Diana Cooper
But even in America it was very large.
Lady Diana Cooper
And in a huge theater which was built like a cathedral.
Speaker 1
And
Lady Diana Cooper
with um stained glass windows all the way around.
Lady Diana Cooper
and the pillars themselves were made the whole way round so that the audience could go on to the
Lady Diana Cooper
Johnson.
Lady Diana Cooper
and walk around after the show was over. Yes. So that it was total on pews, you see, like that.
Lady Diana Cooper
But it was so big
Lady Diana Cooper
that if you when you played the nun, you had to have
Lady Diana Cooper
Hello.
Lady Diana Cooper
Dressing rooms the other end to change into.
Lady Diana Cooper
And when we did it in Dartmoon, we had motor cars like Olympia to take us
Lady Diana Cooper
Inside.
Speaker 2
take you from the stage to your dressing room.
Lady Diana Cooper
Well, wh wherever the dressing room was.
Speaker 2
How many seasons did you do the miracle?
Lady Diana Cooper
Well, I did it about four in America, I think.
Lady Diana Cooper
And then uh we went to Buddha paste and prayed
Lady Diana Cooper
And Vienna.
Lady Diana Cooper
and dark moon
Lady Diana Cooper
And then later, much later in England and the problem.
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Lady Diana Cooper
Thank you.
Speaker 2
At the Lyceum.
Speaker 2
As the Madonna, you had to stay motionless on.
Lady Diana Cooper
Yes, I had to stay motionless for a really long time. About an hour.
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Speaker 2
But
Lady Diana Cooper
Uh
Speaker 2
Uh
Lady Diana Cooper
Yes, but on the other hand, you see you can
Lady Diana Cooper
You can do it if you're being looked at.
Lady Diana Cooper
But I could never do it.
Lady Diana Cooper
In Rahas
Lady Diana Cooper
But the mere fact is everybody waiting for you to move.
Lady Diana Cooper
Keeps you pretty stationary.
Speaker 2
A great strain, nevertheless.
Lady Diana Cooper
Get used to it.
Speaker 2
Lynn Harding, who was in the in the London production, once told me of your courage in c still keeping perfectly.
Speaker 2
Still while an insect rolled on your face.
Lady Diana Cooper
Well, I don't think the insect uh strolled over my face. The insect was inside my crown.
Lady Diana Cooper
And that was hurting more than I can tell you.
Lady Diana Cooper
And uh I had to invent things. My husband was in America.
Lady Diana Cooper
um making his first lecture there and I had to go on saying
Lady Diana Cooper
If I can bear this, it'll be a good lecture.
Lady Diana Cooper
That otherwise it was
Lady Diana Cooper
Awful there,'cause you know not to not to move and
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Lady Diana Cooper
Something's irritating you to that extent, and another night I fainted.
Lady Diana Cooper
And that was very bad too, because I knew that when I fell, if I did fall.
Lady Diana Cooper
I'd fall on electric spiked candles which would rob me of my sight.
Lady Diana Cooper
And so I went on praying to God, of course, and to
Lady Diana Cooper
biting the inside of my lip and hoping something would happen.
Lady Diana Cooper
And there's no curtain, so that if any disaster of that kind happens,
Lady Diana Cooper
Nothing to be done except put the lights out.
Lady Diana Cooper
and it was prohibition at the time.
Lady Diana Cooper
However, they got me out. They put the lights out and they
Lady Diana Cooper
carried me off the stage and poured brandy down my throat and then put me up again.
Lady Diana Cooper
And I've got a
Lady Diana Cooper
Brandy was wonderful and did the trick.
Speaker 2
Did the audience realize that they accepted as the majority of the people who were in the middle of the middle?
Lady Diana Cooper
Yeah.
Lady Diana Cooper
Oh yeah, I can figure it out.
Speaker 2
All those hundreds of performances of the miracle
Speaker 2
Constituted your entire career on the stage, didn't you? Did you not want to become a professional actress after that? Well.
Lady Diana Cooper
Yeah.
Speaker 2
Uh Hello?
Lady Diana Cooper
I always thought I wasn't equipped at all because although it was
Lady Diana Cooper
I had the wonderful advantage of Reinhardt as a teacher.
Lady Diana Cooper
I knew that I hadn't produced my voice in any way and
Lady Diana Cooper
No, I don't think I did, besides which there was too much going on now with my married life and with tough
Lady Diana Cooper
becoming a
Lady Diana Cooper
States um politician and uh
Lady Diana Cooper
Then a minute
Speaker 2
Yes, you spent it.
Lady Diana Cooper
It all went on. I spent my time at that really.
Speaker 2
You travelled with him a lot.
Lady Diana Cooper
Yeah, travelled with him a lot and you know, there are a lot of things that go with it with the constituency work and all that.
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Speaker 2
He was first lord of the admiralty in the thirties.
Lady Diana Cooper
Well, he was first, um
Lady Diana Cooper
War Office.
Lady Diana Cooper
And after War Office he was First Lord.
Speaker 2
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2
and resigned at the time of Munich.
Lady Diana Cooper
and resigned at the time of Munich to his
Lady Diana Cooper
Everlasting honour.
Speaker 2
What happened when the second war broke out?
Lady Diana Cooper
Well, when the Second War broke out, uh he had anyway, having resigned, he had um
Lady Diana Cooper
And uh
Lady Diana Cooper
just about the time of the war.
Lady Diana Cooper
And then he didn't know what to do, and he went to see Mr. Chamberlain. Mr. Chamberlain.
Lady Diana Cooper
who never really liked him, I don't think.
Lady Diana Cooper
Thought he ought to be a soldier, but poor Duff had still got putties and a same brown belt. No, it didn't work.
Lady Diana Cooper
And so he thought, But I'll go and I'll talk to America about
Lady Diana Cooper
The war. Mr. Chamberlain said, No, don't talk about the war. Don't
Lady Diana Cooper
No, no, that would never never do.
Lady Diana Cooper
And then Duff thought, Well, he can't go on talking about English literature or something, so he did talk about the ball.
Speaker 2
And we had a very successful
Lady Diana Cooper
And we had a very successful and a magnificent tour right across America.
Lady Diana Cooper
with very successful lectures on the war.
Lady Diana Cooper
Mm. Same people who want to stay out always are drawn in.
Speaker 2
And you went to the Far East.
Speaker 2
Shortly after that.
Lady Diana Cooper
Um yes.
Lady Diana Cooper
S so uh yes, we went on to make a report on the Far East.
Lady Diana Cooper
which took us to live in Singapore and then to go long outings to India and Burma and to Australia and New Zealand.
Lady Diana Cooper
And that I enjoyed very, very much. It was enormously interesting. And then we left ten days before Singapore fell.
Speaker 2
He went right round the world on that occasion.
Lady Diana Cooper
Yeah.
Speaker 2
And when you return to England?
Lady Diana Cooper
Er, when I returned to England, well then there was a small holding life.
Lady Diana Cooper
With the
Lady Diana Cooper
which I enjoyed enormously too, which was uh three acres and a cow.
Lady Diana Cooper
and um many more animals than one was allowed.
Speaker 2
Yes, who did all the work yourself?
Lady Diana Cooper
Yes.
Lady Diana Cooper
Couldn't ever leave because of the cow.
Lady Diana Cooper
Can't I believe a cow?
Speaker 2
Of course.
Speaker 2
Uh your husband was Minister of Information.
Lady Diana Cooper
Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2
And then after the war?
Lady Diana Cooper
Yeah.
Lady Diana Cooper
Forgotten? Oh, well then after the war of course was Algiers.
Lady Diana Cooper
We went to Al Jazeers.
Speaker 1
Mm.
Lady Diana Cooper
In Fort Four.
Lady Diana Cooper
And there we stayed about eight or nine months till the war was over. And the idea was that he should be ambassador in Paris after the war,'cause by that time doom was over.
Lady Diana Cooper
And we knew the world.
Lady Diana Cooper
Must end.
Speaker 2
Yes.
Lady Diana Cooper
And I loved Algiers.
Lady Diana Cooper
One f
Speaker 2
And then you he became first post-war ambassador to France. Yes.
Speaker 2
What had happened to the embassy during the occupation?
Lady Diana Cooper
The embassy had been entirely chock-a-block full of every conceivable thing. I mean, not only the British Empire furniture, but the British Empire
Lady Diana Cooper
Sports and hockey sticks and sponges. I I you can't imagine the stuff that there wasn't in that Emerson. It took three m
Lady Diana Cooper
Two months to get it out.
Lady Diana Cooper
And then at last we got in.
Lady Diana Cooper
And then I liked it very much. I hadn't been very happy before,'cause I hated leaving Algiers, funnily enough. Although the war was over,
Lady Diana Cooper
But um
Lady Diana Cooper
Then we got into the embassy and we were enormously helped by wonderful
Lady Diana Cooper
Little Oat Boiem Crowd of
Lady Diana Cooper
People like
Lady Diana Cooper
Louis de Ville Moran, Jean Cocteau, and
Lady Diana Cooper
All that
Lady Diana Cooper
A little world of uh art and music.
Lady Diana Cooper
Who made it?
Lady Diana Cooper
Very successful.
Speaker 2
After your husband's time as ambassador in Paris, you stayed on to live in France.
Lady Diana Cooper
Yes, we had we took a lovely house in the park of Chanty.
Lady Diana Cooper
with cascades and fountains which appeared to belong to the house. They didn't really, they belonged to the great chateau.
Lady Diana Cooper
But we
Lady Diana Cooper
We live like uh
Lady Diana Cooper
Oh, old kings of France in this park
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Lady Diana Cooper
And that was a very happy time. Very, very happy time.
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Speaker 2
And then you wrote three memorable volumes of reminiscences.
Lady Diana Cooper
Well, that was after my husband died I wrote the memoirs.
Lady Diana Cooper
And uh they turned out I didn't know I didn't hadn't the slightest idea how to write, I'd never written.
Lady Diana Cooper
And just by the grace of God I they came off.
Lady Diana Cooper
and I was heartily ashamed of them at the time, and now I've got very fond of them.
Speaker 2
You live in London now?
Lady Diana Cooper
Now I live in London, in a place called Little Venice.
Speaker 2
Yes.
Lady Diana Cooper
where I'm always pleased that I live there because I have wonderful neighbours.
Lady Diana Cooper
And my son lives there, and my niece lives there.
Lady Diana Cooper
And I've got a b uh the neighbors are perfect and it's very pretty.
Speaker 2
Do you think London has changed very much for the worse?
Lady Diana Cooper
Yes.
Lady Diana Cooper
Enormously, don't you?
Lady Diana Cooper
Enormously.
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Lady Diana Cooper
I think it's terrible that they didn't put all those huge buildings on the other side of the river.
Lady Diana Cooper
and make made a new New York, which would have been very fine.
Lady Diana Cooper
Instead of making all our pretty houses into pathetic pygmies.
Lady Diana Cooper
And uh oh, yes, I think it's changed cruelly to look at.
Speaker 2
Having been a swinging teenager yourself, do you think they're overdoing it to day?
Lady Diana Cooper
It's too difficult a question.
Lady Diana Cooper
I don't think I know,'cause i as you tell me, I was swinging then and I didn't know it.
Speaker 2
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
Lady Diana Cooper
I don't suppose they know it either.
Lady Diana Cooper
No, I don't think they are. I think they're all right.
Speaker 1
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.