Henry Cecil

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B B C Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts.

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Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast. For rights reasons, the music is shorter than on the original broadcast. The presenter is Roy Plomley. I hope you enjoy listening.

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On our desert island this week is the novelist and playwright Henry Cecil.

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mister Cecil, how well could you endure loneliness?

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Well, I like my own company, I must admit.

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But I think I would probably have too much of it on a desert island.

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What would you be happiest to have got away from? Noise.

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The noise of traffic, the noise of too many people talking. Is music an interest of yours? A very great interest. Did you have any plan of campaign in choosing your eight records? Yes, I I thought carefully about

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How I should live if live I could.

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On a desert island.

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and how I should best be able to entertain myself.

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And I've had to leave out a fantastic number of things I would dearly have liked. You will find there's no bronze, no symbolius.

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Those says are frank. Oh, there's so much that I would have liked to have. What's the first one you've chosen?

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I've chosen one of the late Beethoven quartets, the top 130.

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And if you would be kind enough, I would like to hear the fifth movement of it, the Cavatina, because I think this particular movement of this particular quartet is one of the loveliest things in all music. It's the only one that affects me emotionally. It would remind me of my wife. It might even make me feel that she was with me.

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The opening of the fifth movement of the Beethoven Quartet in B flat opens a hundred and thirty, played by the Amadeus string quartet.

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What's your second record?

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Under Milk Wood.

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Because I feel

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I want to have somebody talking there.

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I'm very fond indeed.

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Of the English language, and in particular, the way Dylan Thomas wrote it.

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To begin

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At the beginning.

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It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible black, the cobbled streets silent and the hunched, quarters and rabbits' wood limping invisible down to the slow black.

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Slow.

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Black

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Pro black fishing boat bobbing sea.

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The houses are blind as moles, though moles see fine to night in the snouting velvet dingles, or blind as Captain Cat there in the muffled middle by the pump and the town clock, the shops in mourning, the welfare hall in widows' weeds, and all the people of the lulled and dumbfound town.

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Are sleeping now.

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Hush

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The babies are sleeping, the farmers, the fishers, the tradesmen and pensioners, cobbler, schoolteacher, postman and publican, the undertaker and the fancy woman, drunkard, dressmaker, preacher, policeman, the webfoot, cocker women, and the tidy wives.

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Richard Burton as the first voice in Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood.

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Now it's a more or less open secret that Henry Cecil is a pen name.

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Yes.

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In fact, you are His Honor Henry Cecil Leon, a former county court judge. That's right.

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Which explains the fact that nearly all your books and plays concern the law, uh generally in its more light-hearted or sensational aspects. Yes, that's quite true. Let's go back to the beginning, Mr Cecil. Are you a Londoner?

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Yes, really. I was born in Norwood Green Rectory, which used to be in the country in Middlesex, but it's really part of Southall now, which is also part of London. Yes. But I've lived in London most of my life. Which was your first interest, writing or the law?

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when I started to write at the age of five and I couldn't know much about law.

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So, writing has always been an interest with me. Yes. Why the law?

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A a legal family? Not a legal family, no, it's quite simple.

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I lived at a time when it was comparatively easy to choose a job or a profession.

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And my eldest brother,

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was killed in the war in nineteen sixteen.

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And he was going to the bar, and my parents said to me,

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Well, would you like to go instead? and I said yes.

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I was very pleased that I did. I had no idea what it entailed. We have not none of my forebears, as far as I know, were in the law. Yes. And you read Law at Cambridge?

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You had joined one of the Inns of Court, and in due course you were called to the bar. How does a young barrister set himself up? He has to be a junior counsel's pupil for a while, doesn't he? He has to be a pupil nowadays for at least six months. And during that time, I'm glad to say, he's not allowed to practice as he was allowed when I started at the bar. But it's very easy for a young man now going to the bar.

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At the present moment, the bar is on a better wicket than it has ever been in the history of the legal profession in this country.

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You've written some very amusing books about the adventures of struggling young barristers. Was that?

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The way things were in your day? Did they reflect your own experiences? They reflect my own experiences with every now and then a two percent exaggeration, a lot more than that.

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Do you remember your very first brief? I do indeed. It was before His Honour Judge Crawford, who was a very difficult judge.

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In the Ilford County Court.

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And

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I remember hearing my voice resounding in the rafters of that court. Yes. It must be a a very daunting experience to address yourself to a judge for the first time. You're in the position of a young actor who has to make up his own mind.

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Well it's worse, because normally

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The audience don't shout at the young actor, whereas the judge, if he doesn't shout, at any rate he can make him feel extremely small.

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Well, we have you launched in your profession, so let's break here for your third record. What's that to be?

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Now that's to be pleased the Shostakovich piano quintet.

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In G minor, I should want to have something into which I could get my teeth.

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The third movement, the schierto, from the Shostakovich Piano Quintette, opus fifty seven.

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Played by the Kigiano Quintet.

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How many practising barristers are there in the country?

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Well, it's going up the whole time and the figure that I give you may be wrong tomorrow, but now it's about 2,900. There is a great deal of wastage. A number of barristers drop out very early. Not today. There used to be when I started. But today, a young man or woman going to the bar, provided he can get into chambers, can be almost certain of making a substantial income once he or she has done their first six months. Provided they go to the common law bar.

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Yeah.

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What was your own specialty?

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The most interesting, but in some ways the most difficult, because you specialize really in nothing. It's a very general bar where you do almost everything. You go into every court, you go into the criminal courts, you go to the chancery court, you go to the company's court, you may do every kind of litigation, and naturally you can't know it all, and you have to look it up.

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And from being a junior barrister, does one have to take silk and become a QC as an intermediate step to becoming a judge? No. Most High Court judges have taken this step, though not all.

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Some never do. The junior consul to the treasury is normally made a high court judge. He never becomes a Q C.

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Some county court judges have become Q C's, but I should say on the whole

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That the majority do not. But today there are so many counter court judges being appointed that I wouldn't like to be dogmatic about that. What proportion of the

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2,900 barristers become judges.

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Well, when I was first made a judge in nineteen forty nine,

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There I suppose there are about a hundred of us altogether, High Court and County Court judges, and I suppose another twenty or so magistrates. So there are a hundred and thirty. There are now three hundred and fifty.

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There

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Circuit judges, as they're called, and high court judges, very many more. Well, there's the proportion. You could say 10%. Yes.

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When did you start to write?

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When I was five. Yes, you'll tell me that when you do start to write seriously. Well, I have only been able to write.

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What did you do?

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Yeah.

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What you may call commercially, so that anybody would publish me after I'd got something to write about. Namely, after I'd had. Half a lifetime in the law. Well, barristers, which is very handy for a Roger.

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What was your first book?

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My first book was a book called Full Circle.

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which was really a collection of short stories which I told to the troop

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as we sailed for the Middle East during the war.

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And I may end

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That it took seventeen publishers before I could find one to publish it. You sent it to sixteen publishers before one accepted it. And it is sir. Bravo. I owe most of this to

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The work of an agent, a literary agent called Juliet O'Hay.

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Who told me after she knew that this book had been rejected by twelve.

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Publishers

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Oh yes, I think I can sell this for you.

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And I'd like you to alter two of the stories, if you've got any others. And I did that. And after four near misses, she sold it to the seventeenth.

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Let's have your fourth record. What's that?

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Well now we've got to have a change, but I'm going to choose

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JULIAN SLADED'S SALAD DAYS It sends the audience away from the theatre dancing. I've seen them do it. I've seen it four times, and would gladly see it again.

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What's happening? I can't sit still, I stand, I walk against my will What's happening? What can this be? My feet have got control of me I can't control my legs and feet They misbehave on every beat I'm not so sure that I improve Is this the seemly way to move? I've lost command, I'm swept away The feeling's on, but rather gay The nearest feet took me by surprise I hadn't time to realise What's ma

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Can I

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Look at me, I'm Dancing sung by Eleanor Drew and John Warner.

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Now, Mr. Cecil, you'd become a published author for the first time. Did your first book do well?

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Oh no, no, I looked for it on all the bookstores.

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And I wasn't there. What was your first breakthrough, your first bestseller? A brothers in law, to which I am greatly indebted, to Richard Gordon, for his doctor in the house. I followed very lamely after him. But after going to

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look at the bookstalls to find my books and not finding them, but finding vast piles of doctor in the house and very occasionally one of mine nestling behind.

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I suddenly said to myself, why shouldn't I try to do for the law what Richard Gordon has done for the medical profession? And so I tried. Let me make it plain I'm miles behind Richard Gordon, but forever grateful to him for giving me the idea. Well, that's a very gracious acknowledgment.

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Brothers-in-Law became a very successful film, and a play, and a radio series, and a television series. In fact, it's still running at this moment on radio, isn't it? Yes, it is.

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You've written a whole series of of humorous novels with a legal background.

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Yes.

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And you've written, of course, on more serious legal matters. Have you written advocating legal reform? I have indeed. What in particular?

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A good number of things.

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At the present moment

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I think the first thing I would like to see done

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is for the trial of street accident cases, road accident cases.

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to be abolished and for national insurance to replace them. It is quite ridiculous, in my view, that whether a man should get damages for the loss of a leg

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which he lost, say, six months a day.

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at least probably a year or two before the actions heard.

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that this should depend

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Upon weather

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He was knocked unconscious and can remember nothing of the accident, whether there were any witnesses, whether if they were, they rarely saw anything, whether they're any good at repeating what they saw, whether they remember what they saw, whether there are any expert witnesses to give evidence about the damage and whether they're any good at it, whether a policeman came up and took particulars, whether he was any good at it, whether the solicitors were any good at preparing the case, whether counsel was any good at presenting it, and whether the judge was any good at trying it. It's perfectly ridiculous that.

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Whether a man should get damages for a loss like that should depend upon all these imponderables.

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Yeah.

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And I hope that in this country and I feel reasonably confident it will happen

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Hmm.

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These actions should cease to take up the time of judges, for example.

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On one occasion a judge

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couldn't make up his mind whether the plaintiff's car was over the white line or the defendant's car was over the white line. And being an honest judge, he didn't toss up a coin or say, well, I'll say one thing or the other. They can't tell whether I mean it or not. He said, I don't know, and therefore I shall decide on the basis that I don't know. The plaintiff has to prove his case and he hasn't proved it.

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The Court of Appeal said it is the duty of a judge to know he has got to make up his mind, and they sent the case back for a new trial. Well, with great respect to that Court of Appeal, it's a good many years ago, before the war, I think.

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Certainly, many years ago, with great respect that Court of Appeal. They may have been right, but if so, the law is nonsense.

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A judge should not be compelled to say something if he doesn't honestly feel it.

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Now all this should be abolished. We all use the roads. Even if you're a permanent invalid, food and service is brought to your house.

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And therefore, we should take responsibility for the thousands of deaths and the hundreds of thousands of injuries that take place. If that were done,

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There would be no necessity to appoint the large number of judges that are now being appointed.

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And the present judges would be able to get through all the work, much of which is in arrears, particularly in the criminal sphere, by not having these absurd cases to have.

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Yeah.

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You also have strong views on prison reform. Oh, indeed, yes, and I'm glad to see that the present government.

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Venerate, I think.

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are going to get rid of Section thirty eight of the Prison Act nineteen fifty two, which means that they will be able to sell old out of date prisons and keep the money for the purpose of building decent prisons.

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I think, if you'll allow me to say so, I think

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The dangerous men

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should be imprisoned if necessary for ever.

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until at least it's certified that it's reasonably safe to let them out, as takes place in the case of Broadmoor patients.

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But if you're going to shut up people for the rest of their lives, it must be done in decent circumstances, not like the circumstances of most of our present prisons. And with this money which the government can get when they change Section thirty eight,

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The Prison Act 1952, they will be able to build decent prisons where there will be plenty of rewarding employment, plenty of recreation and entertainment, and certainly, if possible, conjugal visits. There, these men could live in comparative dignity, treated like human beings, as they are at the moment in Grinden prison, which is an experimental prison, but where, I must say, the

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atmosphere is very different from the other prisons and this is another

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Matter of legal reform upon which you can see, but I'm extremely keen.

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And rightly.

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What are your present projects, Mr Cezanne?

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What are you writing? Well, I'm writing some television plays at the moment, but as far as the stage is concerned, which I'm very interested, I've got a play.

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Which was successfully tried out at the Yvonne Arno Theatre Guildford.

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And

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Two or three managements are interested in doing that in London, and I hope that this will happen. So do we. Let's have record number five. I've chosen Bach's Art of Fugue, and I'd be grateful if you would begin at the beginning when we get the tune.

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The opening of J. S. Bach's The Art of Fugue, played by members of the Philomusica of London, directed by George Malcolm. Let's go straight on to your next record, which is number six.

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This is the Beethoven violin and piano sonata, number eight in G.

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The second movement of Beethoven's violin and piano sonata number eight in G, David Oistrach and Lev Oberil.

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What are your hobbies? was the settlement.

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or listening to music, looking at pictures.

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And reading and playing croquet.

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Nothing there very useful for a castaway.

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None at all, unless I could create a croquet lawn on the sand.

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Would you be able to look after yourself pretty well? I I know you went through the western desert in the last war, so you know a fair amount about rough living and survival.

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Now I suppose I'm about the worst man about the house that you've had on this programme. I'm very bad indeed.

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But I hoped that I should learn.

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and the necessities s to survive.

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Would make me learn to build something to sit under and to get some food and so forth. I hope that this would happen. Would you try to escape?

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Only in one way.

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which I'll tell you later. I should certainly not try to escape by boat.

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Right, let's leave it at that and go on to record number seven. Watch that to be.

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Now we come to Mozart. I'd like to have had much more Mozart.

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But it will also come to Elizabeth Schumann, one of the loveliest singers.

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Might ever heard.

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And I would like you to play.

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The Vegan Lead

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Over my precious

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Don't shake your own favourite.

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After all, he's about

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Oh, think I'm being tempered.

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The Lord is devoted.

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Game on the

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Lucato Peter.

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Oh baby, I'm ready.

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Open my fingers long.

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Mozart Speak and Lead sung by Elizabeth Schumann.

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Now we come to your last record. What's that to be?

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And it's the same record.

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It was chosen not long ago by John Bakewell.

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Bach double violin concerto.

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a second movement, though I think I've chosen a different rendering.

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From that which she chose

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The second movement of the Bach double violin concerto with David and Igor Ostrach as soloists.

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If you could take just one of your eight records, which would it be? I'd take the first, the Beethoven Quartet.

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And one luxury to take to the island with you.

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I suppose I wouldn't be allowed to take my wife with me. I'm afraid the luxury must be inanimate. This is a long standing rule. I was going to ask if I couldn't take my wife if I could take Jim Bakeman. I'm afraid the same rule applies, and I believe she's bespoke.

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So true again.

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Do I get

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Then I'm afraid I will take a bottle of aspirin, because aspirin, although a very old drug, is one of the best drugs.

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for pain and so on.

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And, of course, if necessary, it would be my means of escape.

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Oh yes, MacArthur's thought. And one book, apart from the Bible and Shakespeare, which are already waiting there.

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Fowler's English usage, because you could never read that through. It's a marvellous book. You would learn a lot from it. It's extremely amusing. You could never stop pouring into it. Right.

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And thank you, Henry Cecil, for letting us hear your Desert Island discs. Thank you very much indeed. Goodbye, everyone.