Roger Graef

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.

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

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My castaway this week is the film maker and criminologist Roger Grafe.

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Pioneering in his chosen subjects and style, for the past fifty years he has shone a spotlight on hitherto hidden areas of our society, and greatly influenced the entire genre of modern day documentary making.

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Beyond that, his films on key institutions like the police have not just helped change attitudes, but policy too.

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A New Yorker and Harvard graduate, he first came to Britain to study Shakespeare. His London debut as a theatre director was a Tennessee Williams play.

Presenter1:08

But he soon realized that the drama and story lines of real life were where his heart and talents lay. He has since won a string of awards. He says What I want on my gravestone is Here lies Roger Grafe he made a difference and people are telling me that I have, but I don't think about it.

Presenter1:25

Because there's so much left to do. So, Roger Grafe, you still have so much to do, and yet you have done so much already. You you seem to me a very energetic character, sort of one of life's enthusiasts, if you will.

Roger Graef1:37

I am. I'm I'm an optimist and I believe in the power of change for the better. Um I find this world getting more and more complicated uh in so many situations that it's hard to keep one's optimism intact if you look closely at what's going on. You know, I have I suppose as a journalist and as a criminologist, I have what Gramsci described as optimism of the heart and uh pessimism of the head.

Presenter2:00

It is a brave person, I think, who says, Yes, I make films to make a difference. Where would you consider the biggest differences have been made in the many films you've made over the decades?

Roger Graef2:09

Well, I've been told by the Policy Studies Institute that my film about how the police handle rape was the most effective change of social policy ever with a documentary, which I'm very proud of, but that was a long time ago. I know the Youth Justice Board was influenced by the films we made looking for ways of dealing with young offenders without sending them to prison. And the best of all, Kirsty, is the Great Ormond Street series. The hospital called us in for a feedback session and we thought, oh God, who have we offended? And the director of communication said, no, no, no. They were very happy they liked the series. The most important feedback is from new parents who come with much more realistic expectations of what is possible with their very sick children. And I think that's more important than any of the BAFTAs.

Presenter2:56

We'll talk a little bit more about that extraordinary series a little later on, Roger Grave. For now, it's time to go to our first piece of music. Tell me what we're going to hear first off this morning.

Roger Graef3:05

Well, among the things that I've been trying to encourage is awareness of children's mental health. I was on the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Commission, and I've been a patron for a very long time of a wonderful school called the Mulberry Bush School, which deals with five to eleven-year-olds who are emotionally disturbed, and they take three years to teach them one.

Roger Graef3:26

That there are other people in the world. Two, that they have a choice about how they act themselves. And three, they can evaluate how they've acted without collapsing or being hit, and that they have some ability to master their own destiny. Now, the song is, I can see clearly now, and that is played by one of the boys, Robert, at the end of a Christmas recess, in which he's behaved very well, so he gets a boom box. And Peter, the social worker, says to him, Look, you've done really well, I'm very proud of you. But he can't hear it because the music is playing, and he says, Can't hear you, can't hear you, and we freeze. That's the last shot of the film, made wonderfully by Kim Longinato. I'm incredibly proud of that film. But that has helped many people understand the work of the school and the needs of these children.

Speaker 24:17

I can see clearly now the rain is gone

Presenter4:25

I can see all obstacles in my way.

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Yeah.

Speaker 44:33

Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind.

Speaker 44:38

It's gonna be bright, bright

Speaker 44:41

Bruh

Presenter4:41

Bright sunshiny day.

Presenter4:45

That was Johnny Nash, and I can see clearly now. So Roger Grafe, documentaries are by necessity editorialized versions of true events and at their most powerful they move people, they shock people, they engage people in subjects that are often very difficult. When you've actually been in the process of shooting, can you think of particular standout moments that have

Presenter5:08

Shocked you profoundly at the time you'd been shooting.

Roger Graef5:11

Well, in the rape film, which is probably the most shocking film that I've made, I was.

Roger Graef5:17

alarmed by the way the police were treating.

Roger Graef5:21

the girl who was uh had complained about being raped, but they didn't believe her. I was in the next room because we make a rule not to outnumber the people we're filming, and I was listening on cans and, you know, I could see what was going on. Um

Presenter5:35

And this was a woman who was ush it was shot from the point of view of the woman, and we see is it three officers who are sort of crowding in on her really, and she is complaining of being attacked by three men.

Roger Graef5:46

Cuts.

Presenter5:46

And they are very confrontational and

Roger Graef5:46

Band

Presenter5:49

in essence questioning the very veracity of her complaint.

Roger Graef5:52

Absolutely. And the reason that we shot it that way is she didn't want to be on camera. And this is one of those pieces of accidental good fortune where because we were shooting from behind her head, we're all her. The whole audience is her. And when they badger her, they do it down the barrel of the camera. And so those close-ups of peop the inspector asking, was she on the game, that kind of thing, is basically everybody in the audience felt it. And I think that's one of the reasons that film is so powerful, is you never see her. You are her.

Presenter6:23

This was an 11-part documentary series, and it was one episode of those 11 parts. It was shot as a fly-on-the-wall documentary. Thames Valley.

Roger Graef6:25

CDs.

Presenter6:31

Police were the subject. At the the end of the shooting, and indeed in that particular episode, what was the reaction of the police force themselves? Were they aware that they had transgressed decent boundaries?

Roger Graef6:42

Absolutely not. The only person who recognised it was the chief constable. And I'd seen police training young officers to do rape interviews, in which they said and it was a woman officer with another woman officer as the fugitive witness

Roger Graef6:56

Don't believe them because 60% of rape claims are false. Now, where do you get a number like that? So, if coppers go in disbelieving women, they're going to treat them in the way that they did. Very different days now, of course. This was shot when? 1981. One of the changes we did affect is that a lot of coppers use this film in training about how not to do it. But all too many officers still disbelieve the women who come in claiming they've been raped, and they don't understand that it may take weeks before they have the courage to come in, and then the forensic evidence is gone.

Presenter7:28

Let's have some more music, Roger Grave. Tell me about your second one this morning. What is it and why have you chosen it?

Roger Graef7:32

Well, this is just a family treat, really, which I hope will have everybody in the country getting up and dancing, because that's what happens to us. When my children come home for Christmas or Easter, when we get them together, we've immediately put on Nina Simone and we start dancing. And we all love dancing, so this is just a treat.

Speaker 47:49

My baby little cancer show

Speaker 47:53

Ma'am be wing

Speaker 27:56

Yeah.

Speaker 27:58

Bumpy windows cats

Speaker 28:05

Yeah.

Presenter8:05

My baby we don't care for

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Cars and races

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But we really don't care for

Presenter8:19

Definitely.

Speaker 48:20

Uh

Speaker 48:22

Miss K is not staha.

Speaker 48:26

And even Lana turned smile.

Speaker 48:32

Something he can't see

Presenter8:33

Uh Uh

Speaker 48:38

My baby don't care.

Presenter8:41

Uh

Speaker 48:41

Uh

Presenter8:41

Uh

Speaker 48:42

Yeah.

Speaker 48:46

My baby's care.

Speaker 48:49

Oh man.

Presenter8:51

That was Nina Simone, and My Baby Just Cares for Me and you really did manage a dance sitting down to that, Roger Grafe. You did very well. You were brought up then on the Upper East Side. You're the son of a a Park Avenue doctor and a mother who studied music in Vienna.

Roger Graef9:04

That's right.

Presenter9:04

All of that sounds entirely idyllic to me, was it?

Roger Graef9:08

No, because they didn't get on. And so we, I'm afraid, had rather a cantankerous household. Um it was very intense, but uh and there was lots of treats, but it wasn't an easy childhood. No.

Presenter9:10

Yeah.

Presenter9:21

Let's then split it into two. What would the treats have been when when life was nice, when family life was good, what would you be doing?

Roger Graef9:27

Well, my father, being a a very successful doctor, had a lot of actors as his patients, and we would go to the first night of South Pacific, My Fair Lady, even Oklahoma. And so, in a way, I was inculcated with the excitement of live theatre by my parents taking me there. However, my mother would drag me to opera and concerts in a way in which the atmosphere was very much like a museum, everybody whispering in their fur coats and so on. And so, in a way, that was the musical kind of war with my mother, that I really liked musicals, but I didn't like this kind of idea of music as too polite and kind of genteel.

Presenter10:09

What about the the domestic war that was going on? Was it unspoken? Was it glares across the network?

Roger Graef10:13

Oh God, no. It was very spoken. Was it really? I mean, it was pretty lively. My father was always late because he was a heroic doctor, saving people's lives, and there was nothing to complain about. My mother always wanted things to be just so, you know, with a p s not only a plate but an under plate, even for a sandwich. And the world revolved around her. And she had very good taste, don't get me wrong. The pictures were lovely, the m you know, the music was amazing, but very proper, and that I found oppressive.

Presenter10:15

Was it really

Presenter10:42

And it was proper then that you went to boarding school. Was that I mean, presumably that was a decision made for you by your parents?

Roger Graef10:48

Yeah.

Presenter10:48

Button.

Roger Graef10:49

Actually, that's the thing I must give them credit for. First, I went to a kind of serious boys' school. That was my choice. They said you may not be happy there, but we're going to let you choose at twelve or thirteen. So I went to the equivalent of St. Paul's or Westminster in New York. And then after three years of hell, I was going off to a very, you know, partially comfortable boys' school and went just to see a friend graduate from a co-ed school. And I thought, I know what the boys' school will be like, because I've been to one. It'll just be in the country. I don't know what it's like to be in a place where there are girls.

Speaker 211:04

After three years of

Roger Graef11:24

And people you don't know say hello to you, which is what happened to me, right? Just these kind of trivial things, but they suggested a different world. And I made the best decision of my life and I went to Putney School and I discovered girls and I discovered music, which is how the next piece comes.

Presenter11:39

Your third piece, then, tell me about this.

Roger Graef11:41

Well, I just literally, very recently, I was at this wonderful music festival run by the Brendel family, and Alfred Brendel was talking about Schubert's string quintet, and he said, It makes you glad to be alive, and that's what I feel now about music. And back to Putney, when I was still kind of learning to be different and relaxed and open up to new experiences, Rudolf Sirkin, then the great pianist, lived three miles away and played an annual concert. And my football playing friend said to me, Sirkin's coming tonight, I'll save you a seat. And I said, Don't bother, I don't like classical music. And he said, Don't be such a jerk. Just come and sit next to me. And about as far away as I am from you, which is about six feet, Serkin played Beethoven, and I suddenly got the point. I actually heard jazz with architecture.

Presenter13:37

The opening of the third movement of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, played by Alfred Brendel. So given your background, Roger Grief, it seems reasonable to assume that you might rightfully have gone on to be, I don't know, to take the chair at some august teaching hospital somewhere and be a professor or make a fortune on Wall Street or some you know, something along those lines. What did your parents want for you? Did they have expectations? It sounds like your mother would have.

Roger Graef13:57

It sounds like you're

Roger Graef13:58

Absolutely, yes. They did it wasn't too much a chair of teaching hospital, but they wanted me to do something really worthwhile, and they didn't think directing plays was. And when I was directing both at Harvard and then afterwards, my father said, You've got to go to Yale Drama School, because at least you have to get a degree in the theatre. And my mother said, When are you going to get a real job? You know, so th they didn't really get it, I'm afraid.

Speaker 214:04

Yeah.

Presenter14:22

Tell me a bit more about Harvard and that you were there in the mid-50s then, a a privileged environment still at that time. What are your strongest memories?

Roger Graef14:26

Still at that point.

Roger Graef14:29

Well, they're to do with the theatre, because I didn't study much, I'm afraid. I actually spent all my time directing plays. What were you there to study? English, formally speaking. And I had originally gone up there to become a civil rights lawyer or a judge, and I wanted to be a champion of law's causes, if you like. And as I was going up, my great uncle who taught law, I asked him what books on justice should I read to prepare for my course. And he said, Oh, no, Roger, we don't teach justice, we teach law. And the first lesson is they have nothing to do with each other. So I was rather disappointed by this and instead got into the Harvard Dramatic Club. And at the end of the first year of playing very bad parts, very badly, somebody said, Who wants to direct? We're going to do some experimental theatre next year. And I thought, what the hell, I'll try it. And I saw in the audience a quality of attention that meant maybe I could promote social justice through the theatre because they were listening and they were there, empathetically, they were there. So that's when I decided to become a director.

Presenter15:29

Just a moment ago, when you said you were originally considering being in law for campaigning for social justice, and you used the words lost causes. That's interesting.

Roger Graef15:38

Well, I mean the causes that other people didn't want.

Presenter15:41

Why?

Roger Graef15:41

Why?

Roger Graef15:43

Because they needed taking on.

Roger Graef15:46

And to be fair to both my parents, my mother worked for Hungarian refugees when they came over from in fifty six, and my father promoted uh black doctors and immigrant doctors, and so we we were the classic East Coast liberals, right? The privilege that we had of being comfortable meant we had to help other people

Presenter16:02

Let's have your next track then. We're on to your fourth disc, Roger Grave. Tell us about this.

Roger Graef16:07

Well, this was in a sense why I've ended up in Britain, because I went between my junior and senior year to Britain to study Titus Andronicus and the Tempest at Stratford-Avon. Titus was being done by Peterbrooke with Olivier. And the minute I landed in Southampton, I thought, I love it here. It was full of fog, and it wasn't very comfortable. But I just felt at home in Britain. And I went on to direct Titus Andronicus. And Peterbrooke said to me about Titus, he said, look, you have to treat this play as the work of a young playwright who needs help. Feel free to do what you like. So the help I gave.

Speaker 216:25

You know what?

Roger Graef16:45

Sounds ridiculous. Was that I cut the opening exchange in Titus, where people debate who's going to become emperor, and Titus.

Roger Graef16:53

arrives with coffins from the war and gives this wonderful funeral oration. And I played Mahler's fifth, the funeral march. The trumpet is under the arrival of the troops and the coffin and Titus. And then his speech starts when the strings start. So if people can imagine that, you'll see why it was so effective.

Presenter18:26

Part of the first movement of Mahler's Symphony No. Five played by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Bruno Walter.

Presenter18:33

Sir Roger Grafe, you were in, I think, your mid-twenties. By the time you were given a great opportunity, really, to direct at the Royal Court Theatre. It was a a light drama called A Period of Adjustment written by Tennessee Williams. When he wrote the play, he said of it that he felt that theatre could unlock and light up what he called the closets, attics and basements of human behaviour and experience. And I wondered on reading that well, obviously it wasn't quite enough for you. There was a point when drama couldn't really match the power of truth and telling truthful stories. Yeah.

Roger Graef19:02

Well, that's actually true. I mean, Tennessee Williams was kind enough to say when he saw my production that he didn't realize there was so much to the play, because it had been done as a farce on Broadway, and the film is also very exaggerated, by George Roy Hill directing both.

Presenter19:15

Were you aware that Tennessee Williams was obviously coming to watch?

Roger Graef19:18

Oh yeah, sure, yeah, of course, yeah.

Presenter19:18

Yeah, sure, yeah, of course. Is that intimidating?

Roger Graef19:20

Well, I hoped he liked it. And funnily enough, the story of how I got the part is the job is its own kind of drama. But I'd arrived off the boat to write a script here, nothing more than that. I just wanted to be here. And an actor friend of mine who was going up for it rang me up and he said, Look, you're not supposed to know why, but the producer, Peter Bridge, is coming to dinner with us because Peter Yates, the director, has just got his first movie and they're looking for someone who knows the play. And I told him, you know the play. So I said, okay. And halfway through the dinner, Peter Bridge said, do you know this play? I said, yes. Would you like to direct it? I said, yes. He said, well, Tennessee Williams has to approve you.

Roger Graef19:58

Does he know your work? And I said, Well, actually, I was an observer at the actors' studio for five years, and I knew Rip Torn slightly from all of that. And Rip Torn had brought him to a Miami production of mine, and Tennessee was dead drunk. I mean, falling down drunk. So I had no idea whether he remembered having seen my work or not. And there was a week in which I was just waiting, you know, with bated breath, while they tried to find him in Key West so he could approve me or not approve me. And he did approve me.

Presenter20:27

When you're telling these stories I mean, I know it's a long time ago, but you're talking about Rip Torn and the actors' studio and yes, Tennessee Williams came and I hoped he liked it. I mean you you throw that all off with a great lightness. I mean this was a young man of only twenty five, twenty six. Did you feel that at the time? Did you feel I'm where I belong among people who I'm perfectly comfortable with?

Roger Graef20:45

Well, I was just excited by it, to be honest. I didn't think about it that way. I wouldn't say that I felt it was where I belonged, but I felt good about being there.

Presenter20:53

The innate confidence, though, that you I'm sure you must have displayed to be able to sit in a room and hold your own with these people, did that I mean, did that just come from your background, from being from the sort of upper echelons of American society and going to Harvard and so on and so on?

Roger Graef21:05

Well, I'm sure that helped. But what Harvard has given me all through the decades of filmmaking with you know top diplomats, politicians, scientists, is the confidence to say, I don't know. Explain it to me. That's what Harvard gave me. I know how to ask the question without feeling small.

Presenter21:24

Let's go to your next piece of music. We're on your fifth. Why have you chosen this?

Roger Graef21:27

Well, it's an Italian love song sung by a wonderful Italian singer called Caterina Bueno. And I was asked by the BBC to go to Florence two years after the floods and do a tribute to the muddy angels and the rescued. And I went there and I found the city was in a disastrous state. And I came back and I said to Aubrey Singer, who was my boss at the BBC, I said, you know, it's a mess. I'm going to do a polemic against it. And to his great credit, Aubrey said, just get your facts right. So I made a film called Why Save Florence?

Roger Graef21:57

A friend in Florence said, If you want some music, this has just been written, I think you'll like it. But it also is part of a general love I have for cities and architecture. And I've made lots of films about cities Cardiff, Fez, Berlin, London, Newcastle. So this was a tribute to my love of Italy, too.

Speaker 222:17

Cade liva na de la folia.

Speaker 222:24

Le tui de leze nun cado nomai.

Speaker 222:31

Second Mare que creme.

Speaker 222:37

They should be revenge.

Speaker 222:39

Mafera Komai.

Presenter22:44

Cade lo Liva, sung and played there by Katerina Bueno. Recently, then you were executive producer, we were talking about it very briefly, of this claim series, Great Ormond Street, the daily comings and goings and all of the literal trauma and drama that is a result of that, of people dealing with these very sick children. Why do you think?

Presenter23:06

people should. Why do you think they do?

Presenter23:10

Expose the very depths of their experience to a camera crew that they don't even know.

Roger Graef23:17

Well, when I started my I've accessed films, the f so-called Fly on the Wall films, I came up with the first

Roger Graef23:23

Criteria that I would use forever. And that is, what would I want to do if they wanted to make a film about me? That's it. Don't ask people to do things you wouldn't do. So we agree what the film is.

Roger Graef23:34

They can at any point say that's confidential, please switch off, or you know, leave the room. And they have the right to see it and change anything that is inaccurate.

Roger Graef23:43

or professionally or personally confidential, and you can then decide if you want us to show it or not. And almost no families have pulled out at that point because they've been through a kind of trauma which, if shared, they feel other people will understand. And the parents, I think, are fabulous in that series. But it's mutual trust.

Presenter24:02

What do you do when somebody says to you, That's got to come out, mate, that is just not fair and it's not how I felt and you've misrepresented me? You have to change the whole thing.

Roger Graef24:11

Well, it depends. If they just don't like it, we don't do anything. Although we listen to them and try and make sure that whatever their objections are, are possible to adapt. We're not out to score points. And we do correct it. And I made a film inside a school. It was a school for three to five-year-olds kicked out of infant school, right? So they were very noisy, very disruptive. And the parents said, yes, that's what our kids are like. They're a nightmare.

Roger Graef24:34

But the school itself

Roger Graef24:38

Actually, we have a half hour every afternoon in which the kids are quiet, and we're very proud that they sit down for half an hour. You haven't caught that. And they were right. And in fact it makes a better film.

Presenter24:48

How generally across the board would you rate the health of documentary as a genre right now?

Roger Graef24:53

Well actually I think it's very good. I've been a juror on a lot of jurors BAFTA and the Royal Television Society for years now and I'm very impressed. I mean Syria Across the Lines as a dispatchers was where they filmed both sides of a Syrian village in the war told you more than all the kind of news coverage that had ever happened. So I think documentaries are really in good shape, but we have to keep protecting them.

Presenter25:16

Let's have your next piece of music, Roger Grafe. Your sixth piece is what?

Roger Graef25:20

It is from a documentary, indeed. And I had access to Feltham prison at the Young Offenders Institute, really the most controversial prison in Europe at that point. And I went to Channel 4 and said, I've got access to Feltham. And isn't that fantastic? And Peter Dale, the commissioner, said, Oh God, listening to kids moaning on about how awful their lives are, no.

Roger Graef25:42

And as I sat there, Peter said, How about Felton the musical? And I thought, why not? I just laughed. And then when I put it to the governor of the prison and also to the Home Office, they laughed and said, why not? So with the brilliant team of Brian Hill, the director, and Simon Armitage, the poet, together we made a musical called Felton Sings. And one of the kids, Cass, says about Simon's words, I don't want some white guy writing about my life. He said, we're geniuses too. So we let him do his song. And the truth is, he stole the movie.

Speaker 426:18

Yo, yo, yo, yo, yo, yo.

Speaker 426:23

Yo, this is me, yo. Listen, yo, as this cold globe revolves in the palm of the Lord's hands, many sitting in prisons that ruin lives like wars can. Nobody wants to be a poor man, so everybody's hustling. Single mothers carry babies in their bellies, they carry drugs, and the youths wanna escape the shattered society we stuck in. There's a lack of loving, too many hearts filled with hatred, trapped in the ghettos matrix, drugs, fugs and scarfaces. This has been the main reason behind crime throughout the ages. It's outrageous. Prison ain't nothing but giant cages. Throughout my life, drive situations becoming vagues. I've planned the rich f ⁇ ing.

Presenter26:52

From your film Feltham Sings, that was This Is Me, written and performed by Cass Galton, with music by Errol Francis. You are visiting Professor Roger Grafe of Criminology at the LSC. What difference do you think your experience and knowledge makes that it has been gleaned through experience on the ground?

Speaker 426:52

Uh

Roger Graef27:10

Footnotes. I don't do footnotes. I've written three books, one about the police, one about restorative justice, and one about young offenders, all in their own words. And restorative justice is my words. But I'm trying to get at the experiential nature of this stuff. Somebody in the book I wrote about young offenders went to Brixton and asked a kid what his childhood had been like, who was a possible candidate for this programme. And the boy said.

Roger Graef27:35

My childhood

Roger Graef27:37

Hmm.

Roger Graef27:39

My childhood wasn't.

Roger Graef27:41

Right? Now you just think you're a magistrate, you're a judge, and you're choosing to judge people about whom you have no experience, no emotional.

Roger Graef27:50

connection. And what all of my work and I've made something like fifty films about criminal justice in one form or another is an attempt to put people into the situation either of the young offenders or of probation officers or of police and prison officers.

Presenter28:05

You were married for the first time and and had two young kids and you divorced after twelve years and your second marriage now is is it twenty five years? Twenty eight years. Twenty eight years.

Roger Graef28:13

25 years.

Presenter28:16

Um, if you turned the camera on your own family life over all those years, what would be the standout scenes?

Roger Graef28:22

Well, the first

Roger Graef28:24

Marriage suffered terribly because of my work. There's no doubt about it. My wife was from Michigan, very, very smart therapist, a psychologist, but she really wanted to be home at six o'clock, and that was just not possible. And then

Roger Graef28:35

She was sadly killed in a car crash after the second marriage. And I am incredibly close to her sister and both of her sisters, who are now close to my second wife, and they were all one family, which I am very proud of. My second wife, Susan, is a writer, and she is even more adventurous than I am, and disappears for long periods of time into Dagestan and Chechnya. So in a sense, we both share the excitement of difficulty.

Speaker 228:50

I am

Roger Graef28:59

Right? And so, in that sense, we're that's one of the reasons we're so happy. And we work very hard at our marriage. And I think if you'd filmed those key scenes, they would be.

Roger Graef29:09

For example, uh the first weekend I t went off with Susan to Caen. We hung around in the hills above Caen, and went into a wedding which had just kind of surrounded us as we sat having a picnic. And there the eighty year old priest said to the couple, It's very nice to be in love. But that's not the reason to get married. The success of a marriage is communication. Don't go to bed on a quarrel. Now, having been brought up in a family that never stopped quarreling, to have that advice really early on has guided our marriage over twenty-eight years. We've been together thirty-one years, and it's we're still working at it, and I'm very pleased about it.

Presenter29:47

Let's have uh your next piece of music then. Uh your seventh.

Roger Graef29:50

Indeed, this is a perfect clue because it's music from the wedding, the second wedding, which my brother came over from Boston and sang. He's a wonderful baritone, and it's the pearlfishers duet. And I played the flute at his wedding, and so I was very touched that he came over and sang it beautifully with another friend. It's just a wonderful piece of music.

Presenter30:13

Uh

Speaker 230:13

Uh

Presenter30:14

Yeah.

Speaker 230:15

Uh Yeah.

Presenter30:18

El souvre mazang

Speaker 230:26

Yeah.

Presenter30:27

Be sure. Uh

Speaker 230:29

Uh Count the story time.

Speaker 230:35

Moraga

Speaker 230:40

Yeah.

Speaker 230:45

Here's the glass of us your heroes.

Presenter31:23

The Parl Fisher's duet by Bizet, sung by Robert Merrill and U. C. Bjolling, with music there played by the RCA Victor Symphony, conducted by Ronato Cellini. So tell me then, Roger Grafe, a little bit more about your family life. You said a moment ago that your first wife died in a car crash after you were divorced and and while your children were still young. That is a traumatic thing to occur in the middle of of any family. How did you find your way through it?

Roger Graef31:46

Yeah.

Roger Graef31:49

Well, it was incredibly difficult. I mean, it frankly, um, explaining to my children, especially my seven-year-old son Max, why and how this had happened was unbearable.

Roger Graef31:59

And it was a journey, all right. But my second wife was courageous enough to take them on immediately. We were trying to have children ourselves. She said, I've got children. These are those my children. And so love became the balm that healed all this pain. And Susan's relationship to Max is really was and is still astonishing. And he is now building radio stations all over the world in villages. He's doing wonderful work. And my daughter teaches at one of the best schools in New York, and she is an inspiring teacher. And I'm so proud of my children having come through all this difficulty and really carrying the torch, if you like, of family life in a way that didn't happen in my childhood at all.

Presenter32:41

Your work has won endless awards, and in two thousand four you were the first documentary maker, I think, to receive very prestigious BAFTA Fellowship Award for Lifetime Achievement. You're in your late seventies now. How much do you work and how much do you put your feet up?

Roger Graef32:58

Um, I'm afraid feet up only happens when I'm ill. Um no, I'm still working and I've never been bored. And you know, I'm still as excited every day by the things that stretch out in front of me. So I feel that's the great privilege of my life.

Presenter33:13

Along with all of those films that you've made, you've been on the Board of London Transports, the Institute for Contemporary Arts, you've chaired very important planning committees. The list of things that you have fitted in in this intense life of yours seems to be never ending. As you sit alone on this desert Alice, you're going to be bored to tears, aren't you?

Roger Graef33:31

Well, maybe it'll be the first time I've ever been bored, but I might, you know, try and start a theater company of one, you know. I would try and.

Presenter33:37

Yeah.

Roger Graef33:39

create something out of the adventure.

Presenter33:42

Tell me about your final piece of music, then, Roger Grave.

Roger Graef33:44

What is that?

Roger Graef33:45

Wonderful elements of my marriage is that my wife was nearly a professional flautist, and I play the flute pretty badly, but by playing duets with her I've improved to the point where she says, Ah, that's music now, you know. And every time we possibly can, we play duets together to create some kind of harmony. And this piece from the St. Matthew Passion has two flutes, and it also is our favorite piece of music. Every Easter we go, and what Bach does for us, it's a way of saying thank you.

Presenter34:37

The prime praise rule if one soul.

Presenter35:16

So Istmanieus Nangefangen, part of Bach's St. Matthew Passion, played by the English Baroque Soloists, conducted by John Eliot Gardner, and the soloists there were Barbara Boney and Michael Chance. Sir Roger, I'm going to give you the books then to take with you as I cast you away. You will know that you get the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare, and you get to take one other book. What will your book be?

Roger Graef35:36

It's lost and found in Russia by my wife Susan Richards.

Presenter35:40

And a luxury too, um, just to soften the blow of being all on your own. What would it be?

Roger Graef35:44

Well, um I've never really followed through with my early piano lessons, and I since I have all this time and I'm not going to be bored, I'd like a piano and the six books of Bartok's Microcosmos.

Presenter35:57

You may have that then. And finally, which of these eight tracks would you like to save?

Roger Graef36:01

Well, I think the St. Matthew Passion is probably the greatest piece of music ever written, so I'd have to have that. And the flutes would remind me of Susan, and the music would remind me of

Roger Graef36:11

Wyatt's Life is Worth Living.

Presenter36:13

Roger Graves, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Roger Graef36:17

You could

Presenter36:58

You've been listening to a download from the BBC. You'll find more information on the Radio 4 website: bbc.co.uk slash Radio4.

Roger Graef37:15

Uh