Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Desert Island Discs
Presented by Roy Plomley
A novelist best known for The Cazlett Chronicles, four novels about a family in the thirties and forties.
Eight records
The eight records for this collection haven’t been catalogued yet.
The keepsakes
The luxury
Not recorded.
In conversation
Presenter asks
Did you have ambitions [to be a dancer]?
No, my mother had them for me, but uh she said miserably after several goes at this that my back was too long and my legs were too long and I didn't look right, which was perfectly true, and thank God she didn't go on with it.
Presenter asks
Were you encouraged by your parents in your theatrical ambition?
I was neither encouraged nor discouraged. They were perfectly they said, You've got to finish your education such as it is, and then if you really want to do that, you can have a crack at it.
Presenter asks
How long did it take you to write [your first novel]?
Well, I began it when I was 20 and I think it was published when I was 25, so a good four years.
The recording
Timestamps play the recording from that turn
Elizabeth Jane Howard
This download is the only extract the BBC has of this edition of Desert Island Discs. The presenter was Roy Plumley.
Presenter
What part of the country do you come from?
Elizabeth Jane Howard
Well, I come half from London and half from Sussex.
Elizabeth Jane Howard
And I'm very fond of the North Country, which is where my mother comes from.
Presenter
Your mother was a dancer.
Elizabeth Jane Howard
Yes, my mother was with Diagilev.
Presenter
Did you have ambitions that way?
Elizabeth Jane Howard
No, my mother had them for me, but uh she said miserably after several goes at this that my back was too long and my legs were too long and I didn't look right, which was perfectly true, and thank God she didn't go on with it.
Presenter
When you were little, what did you want to be?
Elizabeth Jane Howard
I wanted to be an actress. I wanted to play Hamlet for the age of five, actually. That's what I was aiming at. I thought I ought to do it.
Presenter
Your education was rather unorthodox. You didn't go away to school.
Elizabeth Jane Howard
Now I went to a school for two terms. It was a deadly failure. It was one of those rather awful schools, smelling of cottage pie and gym shoes and things.
Presenter
Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth Jane Howard
And uh
Elizabeth Jane Howard
I got ill really, out from sheer self protection, and then I had my mother's governess, who was a most remarkable old lady. My mother said she'd seemed jolly old to her then.
Elizabeth Jane Howard
And she must have been tremendously aged at the time I hit her. But she was marvellous and let me read Shakespeare aloud every day and write things for her, which I enjoyed.
Presenter
Were you encouraged by your parents in your theatrical ambition?
Elizabeth Jane Howard
I was neither encouraged nor discouraged. They were perfectly they said, You've got to finish your education such as it is, and then if you really want to do that, you can have a crack at it.
Presenter
Yes, not going to school meant that there were no school plays to take part in, which was a shame.
Elizabeth Jane Howard
No, uh well, but the reading was very good, and I did go to the theatre. It was a very great treat to be allowed to go to the theatre, but I managed to.
Elizabeth Jane Howard
be allowed to see people like Gilgard doing Hamlet for the first time, doing Romeo and doing Mercutia notably, masters. Yeah.
Elizabeth Jane Howard
Did you go to drama school?
Presenter
Uh
Elizabeth Jane Howard
Yes, I did. I got a scholarship at the London Mask Theatre, which doesn't exist anymore.
Presenter
You were already writing plays at that time, I believe.
Elizabeth Jane Howard
Yes, I well I wrote my first play when I was fourteen. All the directions were in Shakespeare because I hadn't been to modern plays at all.
Presenter
What exiant is that?
Elizabeth Jane Howard
Yeah, that's an issue.
Presenter
What was your first job when you left the drama school?
Elizabeth Jane Howard
Um, Stratford, winter season, uh, doing Shaw and a marvellous play that Balliol Holloway, who was running the thing, called His Excellency's Governor, had played in with his wife.
Presenter
Uh
Elizabeth Jane Howard
In their early days, and I was the unfortunate young woman who was going to play the part his wife had played, so I don't think I was very popular in that way.
Presenter
Ha ha ha.
Presenter
And after the Stratford winter season?
Elizabeth Jane Howard
Well, then I did a bit of broadcasting of plays and some poetry readings, and then the war was hotting up so much that I felt I couldn't be in a very overcrowded profession. I ought to do something about a war, really.
Elizabeth Jane Howard
And my parents said you should join the Wrens and I went to them and they said, What do you do? and I said, I act and write plays and they dismissed the second thing as an occupation at all, and clearly looked very uncomfortable at the first. So I I had to move on.
Presenter
To work.
Elizabeth Jane Howard
Well, I went to learn typing, which was very enjoyable with a friend. We shared a flat and we had a lovely time. And when you'd learned to type? When I'd learned to type, I was just about to embark very gloomily indeed on shorthand. I think I'd rather learn Hungarian rather than shorthand. When I got married rather suddenly because my fiancé had leave. It was a chance.
Presenter
There's a chance. Yes. You married Peter Scott, the naturalist.
Elizabeth Jane Howard
I did, yes.
Presenter
Now you moved into B B C.
Elizabeth Jane Howard
Yes. Well when uh we tried sort of me living in hotels wherever he was and I was by then pregnant and it got so difficult that we in the end I took my grandparents' house in London.
Elizabeth Jane Howard
which was easier for him to get to, and then I wanted a job very badly.
Elizabeth Jane Howard
And a friend said, Well, we might go and see if they'd have you.
Elizabeth Jane Howard
for continuity balancing.
Elizabeth Jane Howard
And uh I went along and I they gave me a job.
Presenter
Yes. But on which service?
Elizabeth Jane Howard
It was at Oxford Street and I mostly did North American and some South African.
Presenter
Yes, in those basement studios, dead of night. Now a department store.
Elizabeth Jane Howard
See in that
Elizabeth Jane Howard
Dead of Night
Elizabeth Jane Howard
Yeah.
Presenter
And some acting as well?
Elizabeth Jane Howard
Uh well, occasionally I got some poetry to read, and sometimes I used to do poetry readings in churches with music in there as well, but that I was very bad at that, I may say.
Presenter
Uh
Elizabeth Jane Howard
Extraordinarily bad. Now I had a huge household in London that I had to look after as well.
Presenter
There's
Presenter
Now you told us you had written plays as a student. When did you start your adult career as a writer?
Elizabeth Jane Howard
Oh, I started that when I was about twenty, um and I had been married for a year and um I started what I thought was a short story and in fact it turned into what was my first novel.
Elizabeth Jane Howard
It was published a very long time later.
Presenter
How long did it take you to write?
Elizabeth Jane Howard
Well, I began it when I was 20 and I think it was published when I was 25, so a good four years.
Presenter
Was it accepted by the first publisher you sent it to?
Elizabeth Jane Howard
Well, it was actually. Um it was accepted by Jonathan Cape who uh
Elizabeth Jane Howard
were and are immensely efficient in that way. They make up their minds very fast. They accepted it within three weeks.
Presenter
Yes, and it won a prize.
Elizabeth Jane Howard
Yes, it won the John Dwelling Rees Memorial Prize, which is for writers under 30.
Presenter
Yes. It was set in the First World War.
Elizabeth Jane Howard
I did that really because I became aware of war through my father and the photograph on his dressing table of very faded, baggily dressed soldiers and I could see that one of them was him and I said, where are the others? He said they're all dead except me and I felt so sorry for him.
Elizabeth Jane Howard
and how awful it was that I I
Elizabeth Jane Howard
I went on reading about the First World War a very great deal, from the age of about eleven to sixteen.
Elizabeth Jane Howard
And I just wanted to set it then. I don't know why.
Presenter
Here's
Presenter
After such a very successful start with The Beautiful Visit, wasn't it a little daunting to try and top it with your second novel?
Elizabeth Jane Howard
Well, not really, because I I didn't feel uh once the Blue Four Visit was published, I didn't think it was a very good book myself. Uh I thought it had some good things in it, but it was much too l sort of
Elizabeth Jane Howard
splashed all over the place and repetitive and a lot of things bad and I very much wanted to try and do a novel which had a good bone structure which I had to stick to.
Presenter
Yes.
Elizabeth Jane Howard
And so I was looking forward to that really in a way.
Presenter
Now your next novel, The The Long View, had a very unusual construction. The story was told backwards.
Elizabeth Jane Howard
Yes, it was told not in flashbacks but steadily backwards. And there was a reason for that. It was sort of finding out everything was inverted, of course. All the build-ups therefore became inverted. You knew what had happened to the people, and later you knew why. And everybody tried to stop me doing that. And I just finally dug my toes in and did it.
Elizabeth Jane Howard
Hoping it would be all right and
Presenter
And afterwards you were able to say sox to you because it was a book society choice.
Elizabeth Jane Howard
Well, I never mentioned it to anyone.
Presenter
I know.
Elizabeth Jane Howard
I never reminded them of those letters.
Presenter
Were you at this time a a full-time writer or were you doing audio?
Elizabeth Jane Howard
Yeah, I was doing I was typing part-time, I was doing modeling for Vogue magazine.
Elizabeth Jane Howard
clothes and hats and things and I was doing any broadcasting that anybody would give me, which is jolly little really.
Presenter
And you had a daughter to bring up.
Elizabeth Jane Howard
I had a daughter. I I can't say I was a marvellous bring her up for my daughter, but she's turned out absolutely marvellous. I don't think it's due due to me though.
Elizabeth Jane Howard
Cool.
Presenter
And then the next novel, The Sea Change, and it was another six years before you published the one after that.
Elizabeth Jane Howard
PS
Elizabeth Jane Howard
Well
Elizabeth Jane Howard
I am very slow. It takes me at least a year. I have to write down on the back of an envelope, you know, what what I what the theme, what I'm writing about, and then I have to sort of test it for about six months, because if it isn't going to interest me at the end of six months, it's not going to interest anybody to read, I feel.
Presenter
Thank you.
Presenter
And then
Presenter
nineteen sixty nine something in disguise, and there's a new one just out.
Elizabeth Jane Howard
Yes, a few weeks ago. Um, it's called Odd Girl Out.
Elizabeth Jane Howard
And it has the most beautiful dracket, I think.
Presenter
Yes, a botticelli.
Elizabeth Jane Howard
Yes.
Presenter
Miss Hard, how autobiographical are your novels? How much of your own experience goes into each?
Elizabeth Jane Howard
Well, practically none, except the places I've been to. I mean, I don't write ever about people I know. I sometimes write about an animal I know.
Elizabeth Jane Howard
But mostly um I use places very carefully um and and I have to know them very well before I can use them.
Presenter
And
Presenter
You're married now to a successful writer, Kingsley Amis. Does that present special problems? And do you discuss each other's work in progress?
Elizabeth Jane Howard
Um yes, we do. We read to each other when we're both working on something every night, and we often read bits of journalism to each other that we've written.
Elizabeth Jane Howard
Uh this is very good, really. Uh it's on the whole better to be married to somebody who's interested in what you do, I mean from both our points of view than not.
Presenter
Yeah.
Presenter
While much of your work is inevitably about the problems of marriage,
Presenter
You've talked on television about your own first marriage and its failure, which strikes me as being a very helpful thing to do.
Elizabeth Jane Howard
Well, I'm glad you think so, because that was really the reason I did it. Um
Elizabeth Jane Howard
I thought that it might be cheering to other people whose marriages have crashed to know that it isn't necessarily the end of your life. I mean, it may be more or less awful to you, but I think very often at the time you feel
Elizabeth Jane Howard
That it absolutely is the end, and you may waste quite a lot of your life feeling that. And I rather hoped that this might.
Elizabeth Jane Howard
Make some people feel better about it.
Presenter
What's on your plate at the moment?
Elizabeth Jane Howard
Oh, I've been commissioned to write a three-act play for London stage, which is marvellous chance for me.
Elizabeth Jane Howard
And I felt that I was not in sympathy with the theatre for a very long time and therefore there was no point in my trying, but these people actually came and asked me to do it. Splendid.
Presenter
Were any of your earlier players produced?
Elizabeth Jane Howard
No, I never made any efforts about them at all, you know. I think I knew that they were
Elizabeth Jane Howard
Viag
Presenter
Ha ha ha ha.
Presenter asks
After such a very successful start with The Beautiful Visit, wasn't it a little daunting to try and top it with your second novel?
Well, not really, because I I didn't feel uh once the Blue Four Visit was published, I didn't think it was a very good book myself. Uh I thought it had some good things in it, but it was much too l sort of splashed all over the place and repetitive and a lot of things bad and I very much wanted to try and do a novel which had a good bone structure which I had to stick to.
Presenter asks
How autobiographical are your novels? How much of your own experience goes into each?
Well, practically none, except the places I've been to. I mean, I don't write ever about people I know. I sometimes write about an animal I know. But mostly um I use places very carefully um and and I have to know them very well before I can use them.
Presenter asks
You're married now to a successful writer, Kingsley Amis. Does that present special problems? And do you discuss each other's work in progress?
Um yes, we do. We read to each other when we're both working on something every night, and we often read bits of journalism to each other that we've written. Uh this is very good, really. Uh it's on the whole better to be married to somebody who's interested in what you do, I mean from both our points of view than not.
“No, my mother had them for me, but uh she said miserably after several goes at this that my back was too long and my legs were too long and I didn't look right, which was perfectly true, and thank God she didn't go on with it.”
“I got ill really, out from sheer self protection, and then I had my mother's governess, who was a most remarkable old lady.”
“I did that really because I became aware of war through my father and the photograph on his dressing table of very faded, baggily dressed soldiers and I could see that one of them was him and I said, where are the others? He said they're all dead except me and I felt so sorry for him.”
“It takes me at least a year. I have to write down on the back of an envelope, you know, what what I what the theme, what I'm writing about, and then I have to sort of test it for about six months, because if it isn't going to interest me at the end of six months, it's not going to interest anybody to read, I feel.”
“I thought that it might be cheering to other people whose marriages have crashed to know that it isn't necessarily the end of your life. I mean, it may be more or less awful to you, but I think very often at the time you feel that it absolutely is the end, and you may waste quite a lot of your life feeling that.”