Henry Williamson

Henry Williamson0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a download from the Desert Island Discs archive.

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For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in 1969.

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This is a recording as it was being broadcast rather than the studio recording, and for that reason you may hear some interference and some degradation in the sound quality.

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As usual, the castaway is introduced by Roy Plumley.

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This week, ladies and gentlemen, our Castaway is a writer, the author of Tarker the Otter and many other books, Henry Williamson.

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Mr. Williamson, is music an interest of yours?

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A very great interest. It's part of my life. Have you any musical skill yourself? Uh, no, but when I was a boy I could play what was called a flageolette. And I could just imitate the cuckoo on it.

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Do you listen to records a lot? Quite a lot, yes.

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Did you have any plan in selecting this eight

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Discs that may have to last the rest of your life? Yes, I um emotionally, you see, I think one's real life is is the emotional life.

Henry Williamson1:01

Yeah.

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What one really feels and thinks and is. And these records mean a very great deal to me. What's the first one?

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Um it's a song written by Dilis.

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called um sonara or kinnara as somebody calls it

Speaker 41:27

His of a both led mouth.

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And found what do

Speaker 42:03

Yeah.

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John Shirley Quirk singing part of Delius' setting of Cinnera, which is what Mr. Shirley Quirk calls her.

Speaker 32:25

Senator

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What's your second record?

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Uh Vaughan Williams is uh

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Variation on a theme by Thomas Tallis. Thomas Tallis was, I think, either an Elizabethan or Jacobean organist.

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And this variation by Vaughan Williams is a masterpiece.

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And it was it made him famous, and by heaven.

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It it makes everybody who has any feeling for music sort of grand and glorious.

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Sir John Barbie Raleigh conducting part of the Vaughan Williams Fantasy Aeronaut by Thomas Tallis.

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Now, mister Williamson, I know you've lived for many years in North Devon. Were you born there?

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No, I was born in Kent, uh which which came past London. I spent a lot of my boyhood in Bedfordshire.

Speaker 34:14

Yeah.

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And when I was seventeen, just before the war, I went down to Devon, which is my mother's country for many centuries.

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Uh four bears.

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And I felt at home. Yes. Presumably your boyhood was sufficiently countrified for you to have become interested in natural history. Well, I could I could r ride on a bicycle about two miles from from London, near near Blackheath.

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And I was in fields where there were partridges and pheasants and cuckoos and trout in the ri in the River Ravensborn in those days. As a boy, what did you want to be?

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I wanted to be a farmer.

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In fact, what did you do when you left school?

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I worked for a time in London in an office in Mincing Vane, which I enjoyed very much, from 10 to 4.

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And I did not work you.

Henry Williamson5:01

I don't

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Oh no, sure.

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And uh in fact I really was nearly sacked several times because I would play pranks. Well I joined the territorials and very shortly afterwards the war came and we were mobilized. Yes, you fought in the infantry quite through the First World War. Well I was out in nineteen fourteen and just the end of the First Battle of Ypres.

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And uh yes, I I was in the infantry and uh I left uh the army in nineteen nineteen, September. You were one of the participants in the famous Christmas praternisation of of nineteen fourteen. Yes, that was a really marvellous time. We had to go out on Christmas Eve and

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put in posts into frozen ground about uh forty yards away from the enemy.

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And they didn't fire and we were soon talking and laughing and uh

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The next morning we uh went over and uh

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went right behind the lines, and somebody played a football match. And uh

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I was amazed because the the Germans thought that they were um

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On the right side, they were too polite to say we were on the wrong side, but it was simply uh uh we were both felt the same sort of thing. This was a a practical lesson in the futility of war that must be. Well, it more than that, it sort of it altered my whole conception, because the propaganda against German at that time was pretty fearsome and and

Henry Williamson6:02

Yeah.

Henry Williamson6:09

Well

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Most of it was invented. I mean atrocities and everything.

Speaker 36:18

Mm-hmm.

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And uh afterwards of course when I became a writer it taught me balance and to

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Look at everything, as it were, from from the inside. Did you become a writer immediately when you were demobilized?

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Um I know I r I wrote I wrote during the war. I was I was back it was my reserve regiment in nineteen eighteen. I had finished with the war in uh March nineteen eighteen.

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And I was so unhappy in a way that I withdrew after Miss Dinner every night and wrote in my hut.

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Um, and I locked the door and I felt very nervous in case anybody should come and see I was writing. And when you returned to England?

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I went into Fleet Street.

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And for a brief three months, put there by Alfred Pemberton, who was a very good friend to me, and he said, Williamson, you're going to be a writer.

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And uh I became a writer.

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How long did you live in London?

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Uh at that time

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Oh, I think about uh the best part of a year.

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I used to go every night when I could to the um

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the gallery at at Cotton Garden and listened to Thomas Beacham's uh marvellous uh

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you know, his uh operas and everything and I saw um Julian and uh

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Mignon, oh, everything. Yes. And then what what decided you to leave London? Well, I um thought I must go down to the country and write, and I found a cottage in North Devon for five pounds a year.

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with the two bedrooms in and the place downstairs. And I wrote

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For a newspaper, the the Daily Express, the editor sent me one and a half beginnings a week, which was about ten pounds in those days, to write a very small snippet.

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Let's break off here for your third record. What should we have?

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Um, La Mer by De Bussy. Why'd you choose that? Well, it's so beautiful in itself. One can see the waves and the sand and it's it's uh like a beautiful prose style to me. Uh I mean I I don't I'm not technically a musician, but I can see that it's

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What they call bang on.

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Ernest Ansome conducting the Swiss Romonde Orchestra in Dubus's La Mer.

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You rented this cottage in Devon for five pounds a year. Afterwards you built your own house, didn't you? Well, I wrote a book about an otter.

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and it won a prize of a hundred pounds.

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and I bought a two acre field on a hill with that.

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And later I built an oak hut, rather solid.

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And it still stands today and has an open hearth in it.

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And I go there and I write.

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It's a most lovely place. Well, the trees are now very high. I planted them about forty years ago. Wind belts. Those animal books of yours, Tarka the Otto, Brock the Badger, Salah the Salmon, these have really become classics. They're always in print, always lovely. Oh yes, yes. They are.

Henry Williamson9:53

Yeah.

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Did you early establish a literary discipline? Do you work regular hours on your writing?

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I try to and when I do, um I'm very happy.

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When I'm flowing, I just go on and on with tremendous exultation'cause I know it's coming. I I don't regard myself uh as as a person who's doing it. I'm not conceited. I I'm just a medium.

Henry Williamson10:11

Uh

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A medium for what? For any particular case,

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Spiritual clarity.

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The social instinct, if you like.

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As well as writing, you've also been a farmer. You've achieved that boyhood ambition. Well, after having some sort of fame, I found I was deteriorating.

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And I thought, I'm going to be a red-faced farmer and have no imagination at all and just joy life by hard work. Which I did.

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Now between the wars your your sympathies were non-conformist.

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Um there's a story that you and your friend T. E. Lawrence were planning an ex-serviceman's appeal to Hitler to

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As a last attempt to stop the Second World War. I feared that a war would.

Henry Williamson10:53

And as a lucky,

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come about and I thought of writing to T. Lawrence and saying, will you come?

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With me to Germany and meet Hitler.

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Because he admired Great Britain very much. Perhaps I wasn't wise enough to know that a man of that tremendous

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Artistic feeling should never be in charge of a nation because he was a perfectionist and once you begin to force perfection on other people you become the devil.

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Now this

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This plan didn't come to anything.

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It came to nothing, but it came to the death of Lawrence.

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Because I had a telegram the next day to come and see him wet or fine at his cottage and coming back from posting or from sending that telegram he was killed on his motorbike. Yes. Do you think that that appeal to Hitler could have changed the destiny of Europe? No, I don't think so now. I think that all the conditions of Europe were bad.

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And the conditions for us were bad.

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And and and w well, what I do feel most strongly is that no nation must damn another nation so much, they must sort of see their own faults and then come together. It's so tragic when you see well, I mean, even Hitler said once, it must be recognized

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that in a most deadly quarrel both sides can be right at the same time.

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Let's have your fourth record.

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Um, let me see now. That is Daphnis and Chloe by Ravel.

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Part of Ravel's second Daphne St Chloe suite conducted by Georges Preitre.

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You recently completed a major work which is in effect one long novel in 15 volumes.

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Yes, it's called A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight.

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The original title was A Chronicle of Wasted Time from one of Shakespeare's sonnets, but the publisher said if you call it A Chronicle of Wasted Time, you'll get too many critics taking advantage of that.

Speaker 313:39

Yeah.

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This is a work that you planned, I believe, for many years before you started it. Thirty years, before I could start. And how long did it take you to write? Uh from 1949 till this year.

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Nearly well twenty years. This must be the longest single work in the English language.

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Well, I think it pre yes, I think it probably is. It goes from eighteen ninety two to uh

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Nineteen forty seven.

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Have you been able to start up again on anything else? No, not yet, but I I I shall. I do want to write um children's books. Yeah. Because I have a great sense of fun with children. You have a large family of your own. Well, I my grandchildren, you know, I I just love them.

Henry Williamson14:17

You have a lot of

Henry Williamson14:18

Well I

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Another record, please.

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Um, I think I would like Hulse planets, and particularly the one called Mars.

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Because I heard that as a young man soon after the first war and I thought this man knows what it's

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Mars from Holst's Planet Suite conducted by Sir Adrian Bolt.

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Let's go straight on to your next record.

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Um Sir Davinsky's Nightingale.

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An excerpt from the opening of Stravinsky's The Nightingale, conducted by Andri Cuitas.

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Now as a farmer and a soldier I have no doubt you could fend for yourself and on this desert island.

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Oh yes, I think so. I could build myself some sort of shelter.

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I don't know how I'd get fire, but I'd try. Yes. And you could live off the land? Oh, yes.

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Could you accept the loneliness?

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I think it'd be pretty terrible at first.

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But I try and discipline myself by having a routine.

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Would you try to escape?

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Um

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Well, if I could escape sensibly.

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I wouldn't try and swim several thousand miles or anything like that.

Henry Williamson17:22

Mm-hmm.

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Do you fancy yourself as a as a lone sailor?

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Um well I haven't so far, but you never know when you desperately want to get somewhere else what when what you'd be.

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Let's stick to music. What's your seventh record?

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Um my seventh record is um

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Rachmaninoff's variation on a scene by Paganini. It's almost enchanting. It is enchanting.

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The composer is soloist in an excerpt from Rakhmaninoff's variations on the theme of Paganini.

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Now you're lucky.

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Um

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From Act Three of Tristan and Misolda by Wagner. Yes.

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Uh I love this. It inspires me greatly because the theme as I see it

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of Tristan and Zelda is the irresistible force striking the immovable object.

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Of

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Kristens Onga.

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He has, you know, of course

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Unwittingly drawn in a love potion and he's fallen in love with the Queen.

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But his honour is such

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That the love potion is not all-powerful, but he is destroyed by those two things. And I think that that is a glory of sacrifice.

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What is happening in the opera at this moment?

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Um

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Tristan has been wounded.

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He hasn't defended himself. He's dying of a wound.

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In a deserted castle on the coast of Brittany, he has a shepherd with him who's up on the rock.

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who's going to pipe a happy tune when the ship comes as he thinks we're bringing the queen.

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And meanwhile, until the ship appears, he will play a melancholy tune.

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An excerpt from Act III of Tristan and Isolda, conducted by George Schulte.

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Now if you could choose just one of the eight records you've played to us, which would it be?

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I think the last one, Tristan, is elder.

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And one luxury.

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Um

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I would like a core onglais.

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which is the um instrument that the shepherd plays.

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And I would climb on a rock on my desert island and play that tune until I saw

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Isolde coming to me in a ship. And one book, assuming that you already have the Bible and Shakespeare on the island.

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Uh Richard Jeffrey's Story of My Heart. Oh yes.

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Because that is such a beautiful book and it's so brave and lovely and beautiful. It's it's uh

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That's the soul of man.

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Alright.

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And thank you, Henry Williamson, for letting us hear your Desert Island Disc.

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Well, thank you for letting me come here.

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Meet you all and hear them too. Goodbye everyone.

Henry Williamson22:07

You've been listening to a download from the Desert Island Discs Archive.

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For more downloads, please visit the Radio4 website.