Richard Walker

Speaker 20:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and you're listening to Desert Island Discs.

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The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen seventy four.

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This is a recording of Desert Island Discs as it was being broadcast, rather than the studio recording.

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And for that reason you may hear some interference and some degradation in the sound quality.

Speaker 10:24

As usual, the castaway is introduced by Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:29

This week, our castaway is an angler. In fact, the best-known freshwater angler in the country, an authority on angling, Richard Walker.

Presenter0:38

Now Dick, one thinks of an angler as a contemplative, solitary figure.

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Does that mean to say that you'd be good castaway material, you could take the loneliness for an extended time? I'm sure I could. Are you a musical person?

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I'm not a a a competent performer on a musical instrument, but I love music and most of my family have been musical in both senses, so I enjoy music very much. I should greatly miss music if I couldn't take these records.

Presenter1:06

What purpose do you want these records to fulfil on your island? Do you want them to bring back the past, give you great performances?

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What?

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Firstly, for pure enjoyment of being able to sit down if one had time on a desert island,

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and listen to this kind of music.

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But there are other aspects of it too. Some of it would be nostalgia and some would be

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A link with a past that one would hope at some time to resume when one escaped. What's the first one you've chosen?

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It's um the Druids Chorus from Bellini's Norma.

Presenter1:43

I think it's very, very lovely, and it it's a solemn piece.

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It is the sort of thing one would want to sustain one's spirit because these were men who were fighting against an oppressor.

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In the opera.

Presenter1:57

And I I would like to hear that piece very much at times.

Speaker 12:35

Yeah.

Speaker 12:40

Yeah.

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From Bellini's Norma.

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The Cotton Garden Opera House Male Chorus, the soloist Niccolo Rossi Limeni.

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Now, what's your second disc?

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Well, this would be pure nostalgia, again linked with the hope of escape. I want to hear Sir Bernard Miles.

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doing his old Charlie bit.

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Especially the one about the old school mistress. I reckon that's a smashing bit of Buckinghamshire. Yeah, he and you come from about the same corner of England. Yes, indeed.

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But I had a tidy good education.

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I could read when I was eighteen.

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Only of course not to understand it.

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Not like that old Miss Piggott what used to play the organ. I hated the sights of her. I couldn't abide her.

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But she was very hot on the temperance. Ah, I mind she seed my barra stood outside the rousing crame one time.

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So I sees her on the Toosie and she starts off at me.

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She says, I see Joe Barra stood outside the rose and crane She says that's intemperance she says Look not upon the wine when it is red she says because at the last it biteth like a serpent and singeth like a adder Proverbs twenty five, thirty one and thirty two. But I said I was never inside the rose and crane I said I never come near and she says I see Joe Barra stood outside she says that's intemperance that's intemperance

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So I seed it wasn't no good argufyin.

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I touched me hat and I said good afternoon

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About three or four days afterwards I left my barracks stood outside her front door all night.

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Ah

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Aha.

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Bernard Miles over the gate. Richard, were you a a town boy or a country boy? Were you born right in the country?

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I wasn't born in the country. I was born in

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A market town which was the centre at that time of an agricultural industry surrounding it. It was a farming town, Hitchen in North Africa. Ah yes. When did you start fishing? How old were you?

Speaker 15:02

I

Presenter5:04

I was about four. Who started you?

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My paternal grandfather was a very keen angler. He was an Oxfordshire man who'd moved into Hertfordshire.

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He also was involved in the printing industry, which may have had some influence on my subsequent journalism. He used to take me fishing when I was very tiny.

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My other grandfather was not an angler, but he was a

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Not only a farmer, but a countryman who knew the name of every bird and every plant and every fish and every insect that he saw about his farm.

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He always made me learn these things.

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Yeah.

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A Sparrow Hawk flew over he would say, Now then, what's the name of that bird boy?

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And if I didn't know it, it would be drummed into me till I did.

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When you weren't fishing and bird watching, what were you doing? What did you want to be?

Presenter5:55

Oh, I want it to be something to do with growing things in the broadest sense.

Presenter6:02

If I'd been able to choose my career exactly, I would have been a farmer, but I should have wanted very much.

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To be a mechanised farmer, and I think farming can be mechanised without destroying its soul.

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As it is, I turn out to be the designer of horticultural machinery, mainly for mowing sports turf, which is not really very much different, and it's a career that I've been very happy in.

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You were in Cambridge. What did you read, the engineering. And during the war you were a bossist.

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I was involved in the design of night fighter radar mainly.

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When the war was over, back to horticultural machinery

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And fishing, of course, all the time.

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You write about fishing a great deal. You've written many books.

Presenter6:48

I enjoyed writing because you meet awfully nice people in fishing. There are fewer unpleasant people per thousand in angling than in any other sport or indeed field of human endeavour that I know, possibly because it stops people from being grizzly and unpleasant if they've got a thing to do that they enjoy. And you've written a column about fishing for how many years?

Presenter7:10

Oh, I started this column at the invitation of the people who began publishing Angling Times in July 1953 and I've done this column once a week without a break. I'm very proud of this. I don't mind boasting about this a bit, because it's taken a lot of doing. I've written this column now for nearly 21 years, every week without a break.

Presenter7:30

And it isn't writing the column that's the hard chore.

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It's answering the 70 or so letters I get from readers every week, and I do answer every single one of them.

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There are obviously a lot of anglers. Three million.

Presenter7:44

That's your estimate? No, that's uh a very accurate sampling by uh

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One of these people to tell you how many there are of it.

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Let's have record number three. What's that?

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The record number three is from an opera called Sadko by Rinsky Korsakov.

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I think most people know it as Song of India. And I love this Song of India because it's...

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Exotic and rich, and perhaps some people would say even treatly, but I like it anyway, and I want to take it to the desert island with me.

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Yes, I am.

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Uh

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I'm not sure.

Richard Walker8:47

Oh near here, guys.

Richard Walker8:50

Amen.

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My gold.

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Oh, I'm happy

Presenter9:09

People home

Richard Walker9:09

But

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Hindo song from Sadhko sung by Dushan Geogic.

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Nowadays one needs a license to fish, is that right?

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In most areas you need a license from what has now become the Regional Water Authority. Who gets the money?

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The Regional Water Authority, it's spend on the fisheries department. Yes.

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Now, broadly speaking, there are two kinds of freshwater fishing, coarse fishing and game fishing. Game fishing is what? Endlessly salmon and trout.

Presenter9:44

I don't care too much for this purely artificial division. I suppose one could say that

Presenter9:49

The what are known in this country as game fish, that is to say trout, sea trout and salmon, are the ones that are nicest to eat.

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And the fisheries are run on the basis that the fish are going to be killed and eaten if they're caught.

Presenter10:03

The coarse fishers, on the other hand.

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are run on the basis that an angler will put back alive the fish he catches.

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So that the cost of maintenance of a course fisheries is lower because it doesn't require the restocking that a trout water does or the expensive policing by bailiffs and so forth that a salmon or sea trout water needs. So all roach and base and calf and so forth are caught and then put back again. Indeed, yes.

Presenter10:32

Now, it's a very technical business nowadays, fishing. I've been looking through some fishing books. There are pages of different kinds of hooks, for example, all looking to me exactly the same.

Presenter10:43

I don't use a great variety of hooks. It becomes increasingly difficult to get good quality hooks. The hooks you buy now are far inferior to those you could buy a hundred years ago.

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No one would grizzle if hooks cost five p instead of one p.

Presenter10:59

But uh the the makers think they ought to cost one p and they can't make a very good hook for one p. And flies, there are hundreds of those illustrated in the books. Everyone apparently has his own idea on on what sort of fly attracts the gullible fish.

Presenter11:14

How many fishermen make their own flies?

Presenter11:17

Possibly five percent. It's growing though very fast.

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It's going fast because the tackle trade can no longer rely on home industry making flies at so much per gross.

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And this is not a thing you can mechanize.

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So many people are taking to tying their own flies to save the cost.

Presenter11:35

And in doing so finding that it's an absorbing hobby in its own right. It's a knack, it's like a lot of other things. It looks hard if you don't know how to do it, but once you've learned it, it seems so simple and you wonder why other people can't do it as easily as you can. My hands are not exactly tiny, but I manage to tie flies an eighth of an inch long. Let's have a look number four.

Presenter11:56

Um

Presenter11:57

I think it would be important on a desert island to have a satisfied mind, and I love the sentiment in the song of that name, which Joan Byers sings so well.

Presenter12:06

Not in the sense of being satisfied with one's lot, but satisfied with one's progress in one's endeavours to escape, so I'd like to play a satisfied mind from time to time.

Richard Walker12:16

Money can't buy them

Richard Walker12:21

Your youth when you're old

Richard Walker12:26

For a friend when you're lonely

Richard Walker12:31

Our love has grown cold.

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I'm the world's richest man.

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Is a proper app?

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Joan buys a satisfied mind.

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The course fishing season is a different time of the year from game fishing, isn't it?

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In Yorkshire it starts on June the first, everywhere else on June the sixteenth June.

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Game fishing starts at all sorts of different times in different places.

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It may start as early as February 1st in some areas and as late as May the first in others.

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You have to know.

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What the season is for the area or the water where you're fishing if you're going after trout or sea trout or salmon. Yes.

Presenter13:17

Now you've made rather a corner in carp. You've caught the biggest carp on record. That was quite a few years ago, wasn't it? That was in 1952. And how big was it? £44.

Presenter13:28

That sounds gigantic. It is. It's the biggest freshwater fish that's ever been caught in Britain. Really? Where did you catch it? I caught it at a lake about four miles west of Ross-on-Wye in Herefordshire. Did you know it was there?

Presenter13:41

Yes.

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This is rather amusing because

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We'd seen these fish there.

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There was more than one of that size.

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And I had written in the Aming Press at the time

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that I was convinced that they were carp of more than forty pounds.

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Now at that time the record was 31 and a quarter and that was reckoned to be about as big as they'd ever come.

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So that

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As the Anglo Press always has a very active and sometimes acrimonious correspondence column,

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A number of readers had written in.

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To say this is straining, and I quote one of them, straining our credulity beyond reason.

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And I was so happy when a sample of these letters was published.

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On the left-hand centre page of this journal with the account of my having caught a 44-pounder with a large photograph of it.

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On the opposite page.

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And what happened to this magnificent fish? Did you have it stuffed?

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It lived until uh

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Who?

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Last year, I think it died last year.

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Charles Craig singing

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From

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Puccini's Laboem

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Your tiny hand is frozen.

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Wake up.

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Yeah.

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Oh curve

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Be all

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Charles Craig.

Presenter16:04

Dick, we haven't talked about competition fishing when you get hundreds of people at regular ten-yard intervals along a riverbank.

Presenter16:12

What are the rewards? Are there big prizes on these occasions?

Presenter16:15

The real top men can earn several thousand pounds tax-free in a year from their prowess at match fishing.

Presenter16:24

And do? It's a special kind of skill, is it? Have you ever done any? Yes, indeed. I did one season match fishing because I wanted to know what it's all about. If you're going to write about fishing, you've got to go and do it. This is the one sport where the public won't tolerate an armchair writer. In every other sport, a man who's never kicked a football in his life can tell the England manager whom he should pick. Did you win any prizes? Oh yes, I well I won 13 out of 16 matches in which I fished.

Presenter16:51

Well, that does show that skill counts, doesn't it?

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I should add that these were not top flight fishing matches that I fished in. I should not have done so well if they'd been.

Presenter17:03

National level matches. They were fairly small club matches with up to about 100 people competing. Well that's pretty modest of you. Let's have some more music. What's number six?

Presenter17:12

Oh.

Presenter17:13

I would like Marlena Dietrich singing Sacht mervoude Blumenzint, Where Have All the Flowers Gone. I love it.

Richard Walker17:20

Darkmear, Body Blue and Zoom.

Richard Walker17:24

Boozing figure believers.

Richard Walker17:28

Dark men would be blooming.

Richard Walker17:31

What this gushing.

Richard Walker17:35

Thus we avoided.

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Meteor flucked on the eager swing.

Richard Walker17:43

Van Wilbert Manje Stee.

Richard Walker17:46

Man is money.

Presenter17:50

Marlena Dietrich.

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Now obviously you're not going to starve on this desert island. You'd be able to catch fish. What about contributing to your other creature comforts? Could you put up a hut? Oh yes, no problem.

Presenter18:01

Can you cultivate? Yes, indeed, I can.

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Could you make a small craft? Would you try to escape?

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I'd escaped.

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I promise you. Any idea how?

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Well, presumably I'd have to make a boat.

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Presuming that there were flints or some other very hard stone on the island, I can make a stone tool, a variety of stone tools.

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I'm not just saying I'd try to escape. I would escape.

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I've got too many things that I want to come back for ever to to uh

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Waver in that resolve.

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Right, let's have record number seven.

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I'm not a very religious man, but I like the holy city.

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And um

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Perhaps we could have Frederic Harvey singing it.

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Last night I lay asleeping, There came a dream so fair, I stood in old Jerusalem beside the temple of I heard the children singing, And ever as they sang.

Richard Walker19:04

Yeah.

Presenter19:07

Methought the voice of angels from a heaven in unsurprising.

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Me thought of the soul.

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I lost the land.

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Lift up your gates and

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Ring for Sarah.

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Frederick Harvey, now we come to your last record, what's that?

Presenter19:58

My last record is Nesson Dorma from Puccini Turin.

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I want it for very personal reasons which I shall not discuss in this programme.

Richard Walker20:10

Don't be like it

Presenter20:18

Oh man, oh

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Uh

Presenter20:54

Be a Lord.

Richard Walker20:55

Oh, Joy and Lord Seal and Siore.

Presenter21:03

Okay.

Presenter21:10

Nesundoma sung by Flaviano Labo.

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If you could take just one disk of your eight, which would it be? That one. That one.

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And one luxury to take to the island with you.

Presenter21:21

I would like

Presenter21:23

Benvenuto Cellini's Golden Salt Cellar. Where is it?

Presenter21:27

I don't know. I ought to, but I don't. We'll try and find it. I have never seen it. I've seen a great many pictures in monochrome and colour of it, and I think it's an expression of civilized craftsmanship that's never been surpassed by anyone.

Presenter21:42

And one book apart from the Bible and Shakespeare and big encyclopedias. I'd like Kipling's Puck of Pook's Hill, which is a a children's book and perhaps many people would think it trivial. It's got some nice poetry in it.

Presenter21:53

And it's all about England, the England that I know and love.

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And I would like to be able to dip into it from time to time, to be reminded of all that makes England. She is not any common earth, water or wood or air.

Presenter22:07

At Merlin's Isle of Gramry, where you and I will fare.

Presenter22:10

And I will fare there too. Never mind your desert island. I'll get off it.

Presenter22:14

Rudyard Kipling's Park of Books Hill, and thank you, Richard Walker, for letting us hear your Desert Island Discs. I've enjoyed it.

Presenter22:22

Goodbye, everyone.

Speaker 222:25

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Speaker 222:29

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