Leslie Thomas

Leslie Thomas0:00

This download is the only extract the BBC has of this edition of Desert Island Discs. The presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:09

Problem is.

Leslie Thomas0:09

Yeah.

Presenter0:10

I'm from occupied Wales. Newport Mon. You know, which is one of the most Welsh towns in in this country and is geographically in England. The only advantage was when I was a small boy we used to have a a half holiday for St George's Day and for St David's Day. They couldn't make up their mind where we were, in fact. Well that figures two holidays are better than one. Indeed. You're from a seafaring family, I believe. Oh yes, my grandfather was one of the old Cape Horners. In fact, he refused to go to the reunions of the Cape Horners because they swore too much. He was a very religious man, and in fact I saw a photograph of him recently and I was surprised at the family resemblance. The whole family went to sea for generations and did all sorts of adventurous things. My father and my elder brother they fought on opposite sides in the Spanish Civil War. I might say they were gun running. It was nothing political about it. It was just money, which has always been another Thomas

Leslie Thomas1:05

Yeah, and she

Presenter1:07

Thing.

Presenter1:08

You you lost your father at sea? Yes, yes, he was drowned in nineteen forty three. So that meant that you spent some years at doctor Bernardo's home? Yes, my younger brother and I went off to uh Bernardo's and uh we spent uh several years there.

Presenter1:22

It's a very strange, and I described it in a book I wrote as a strange and wonderful misadventure, which in fact it was. It was a very rich sort of thing. When I was in Bernardo's, I determined that I would be a writer, and we were at the home at Kingston, and the old man who was the superintendent was called the gaffer. And one day he sat there in front of all 150 boys. And this was a bit like Dickens. I stood up and marched through the boys, and I went up to the gaffer, I was about 14, I suppose, and I said.

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Sir, I want to be a writer.

Presenter1:57

And he was a bit deaf and he said, A waiter in a very good restaurant, son. So I then not only had the problem of being a writer, but not being a waiter, which was considerably more difficult.

Leslie Thomas2:07

When she was like,

Presenter2:09

Yes.

Presenter2:10

Did Bonados make it possible for you to start as a writer? Well in those days it was difficult. I mean uh these days it's much different in Bonados. But they gave me my first typewriter and uh they helped me get a job on a local newspaper. So really they did launch me, yes. Good for them. Where was that job? Oh at Woodford in Essex. I was on the Woodford Times over there doing the funerals and the flower shows and all that sort of thing.

Leslie Thomas2:35

Living on your own?

Presenter2:35

I was living in a hostel at the time. In fact, I didn't I afterward went in the army, so I didn't really have a home until I I came out of the army. Yes. In the army you served in Malaya? Yes, yes. Well I don't know about served, I was in Malaya, I don't think I was much good to them actually. And when you would have mobilised? Um oh, in about 1951 I think I landed up at Hounslow with two suitcases and stood on the edge of the curb and had nowhere to go, literally nowhere to go. I mean all the other fellas disappeared to Manchester and Liverpool and London and off they went to start their lives again. And I stood there and I thought well where the hell am I going to go now? And in fact I went back to Bernardo's. I went back and I stayed there for about two months until I found a job and everything. But it was rather strange at twenty-one to be born again as it were. I hope this doesn't sound too much like a sob story because it was a great feeling of freedom in fact. I could do exactly as I wanted to do.

Presenter3:31

Serverlo's lit

Leslie Thomas3:31

Twenty-one and

Presenter3:33

Yeah.

Leslie Thomas3:33

The world before you back at Bernardo's to think things out. What was the th

Presenter3:38

First job that turned up? Oh, I had uh a job on a local newspaper again. Um

Presenter3:43

in Wilsdon in northwest London, which is a very good news area, really. I mean very crowded industrial.

Leslie Thomas3:46

News

Presenter3:50

all the things that you wanted. And eventually I got to Fleet Street. Yes. Which was of course the great goal of everybody. Or I went on a news agency

Leslie Thomas3:54

Which was a

Presenter3:59

uh for a while. Um we used to work night shifts there and um there weren't very many of us and in fact uh I used to put a mattress on the desk and go to sleep late at night because there wasn't much doing. And the editor, who was a lovely man, um was once in London with some friends and he never came to London at night.

Leslie Thomas4:12

Yeah.

Presenter4:19

and he brought them in to see how a great news agency worked at night.

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And he came in, and there was I, fast asleep, with the office cat on my chest.

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I said, Oh, there's a big story doing upstairs, sir. They're going mad. They've sent me down for arrest. Well, upstairs was only the roof, but it made it.

Leslie Thomas4:37

Yeah.

Presenter4:41

And after that

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Oh, I joined the London Evening News. I was there for about twelve years and uh I travelled all over the place. I I did about seventy six countries in quite a short time. I began to sort of wake up and

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With that awful question, not who am I, but where am I? I did pretty well everything. Um I was quite glad to finish it in the end because you grow out of that, you know, you get very tired. You had a yen for hardcovers. I was always determined I wanted to write a book and one day I sat down, I might say with the um the encouragement of um the lady who was editor at the time of Woman's Hour, um and I I sat down and wrote a book called This Time Next Week, which was about my Bernardo days.

Leslie Thomas5:25

Yeah.

Presenter5:25

And then I went on to novels from there.

Leslie Thomas5:27

Was it successful this time next week?

Presenter5:29

Oh my goodness, the reviews I wish I had reviews like that every time.

Presenter5:33

Oh, it was all over the place. Um it's not sold nearly as many as The Virgin Soldiers, for instance, or any of my novels, but it's been serialized umpteen times. There's many a BBC producer been in tears behind that glass panel as it's been read over the radio, believe me.

Leslie Thomas5:48

Don't believe me.

Presenter5:50

And writing your

Leslie Thomas5:50

Second book

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Popular

Leslie Thomas5:52

A first success must be rather tricky.

Presenter5:55

Well the Virgin Soldiers wasn't bad. I wrote it in my spare time. I was still working on the evening news and uh I used to sit down at nine o'clock every evening and write till twelve. Something I might say I couldn't do now. This of course was your army experience. Yes indeed. And it it flowed very easily. Oh Virgin Soldiers of course was a snash. It was sold as a film. In fact that book has sold oh over two million now. I just recently got the Japanese translation. At least I think it's a Japanese translation. For a million copies in paperback I had a a gold

Leslie Thomas6:08

Yeah.

Leslie Thomas6:21

Please translate.

Presenter6:27

statuette like an Oscar and that sort of thing, which very few people have got. I think that only a half a dozen people have been awarded it and I think the others are dead. Don't feel as well myself.

Leslie Thomas6:37

Then go to the We're proud to have you with us, Legislature.

Leslie Thomas6:41

How long did you stay with journalism after you'd written your

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First two successful books. Oh, was that it? Yes, it was. I.

Leslie Thomas6:46

Yeah.

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decided that the, um, you know, I I wanted to write books and I quit. How many have there been altogether now?

Leslie Thomas6:53

Yeah.

Presenter6:56

Oh, there've been eleven altogether. I I wrote two in my very early days under other names.

Leslie Thomas6:57

Lev.

Presenter7:01

which shall be nameless. And um I've written nine under my own name. I I write uh I write one a year. Seven of those have been novels and they've been two non-fiction.

Leslie Thomas7:11

Have they been all comedies, the novels?

Presenter7:13

Well, if you can call them comedies, uh they've all been funny, I suppose, in their way, but I always try to do a little more than write a funny book.

Presenter7:22

Uh someone said to me, Well, I've just read one of your books, in fact the latest one, Arthur McCann and All His Women he said, There's someone in there screaming to get out.

Leslie Thomas7:27

Yeah.

Presenter7:30

And I think that was quite true. That was what I I'd aimed for. Of course when you write a book uh a lot goes into it that you don't intend. Things happen to a book that you you have very little control over and it's then that you really write. I don't think you can write mechanically, you can't plan it. And it's when the book writes itself and things that are inside you go into that book and it's then that you have something that calls out to other people. Yes. And you write regular hours straight on the typewriter? That's right. Uh uh my theory is that I get up at uh I start writing at ten every day and finish at one. I go straight on at the typewriter, yes.

Leslie Thomas8:09

Who do you write for, Leslie? While you're writing, do you imagine an old lady, a young man? I mean, who is reading your book?

Presenter8:16

So right.

Leslie Thomas8:17

Yeah.

Presenter8:17

Do you know it's terrible, but I write for myself in the end.

Presenter8:20

I think you've got to, you know, I write because I want to write that way. If it never sold a copy, then it's there. But I'm amazed at the cross-section of people who write to me. Only yesterday I was talking to a very, very famous psychiatrist and he's written a, you know, one of these marvellously learned books about some facet of psychiatry. And to my amazement, on the first page, there were three quotations. There was one from Shakespeare, there was one from Oscar Wilde, and there were thirteen lines from one of my books. I couldn't imagine how they got there, but I was very flattered. So he'd read it.

Leslie Thomas8:56

Oh, they've got

Presenter9:00

I get letters from almost every sort of person you can imagine. One lady wrote to me and said you've helped to cure my iron deficiency, so that's something. I wonder, I might be on the National Health, you know.

Leslie Thomas9:09

I wonder, I might be on the