Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Desert Island Discs
Presented by Roy Plomley
Novelist and scientist, best known for his ambitious sequence of novels.
Eight records
Violin Sonata No. 1 in D minor, Op. 75
just to reveal the little phrase, the Petite Fraze, which is so important in the love affair between Swan and Odette at the beginning of Proust's great novel.
Henry IV, Part 2 (Act III, Scene 2: The Orchard Scene)Favourite
this is a part of the orchard scene from Act Three, Scene Two of Henry IV, Part II, when Sir John Falstaff is meeting an old acquaintance, Mr Justice Shallow, and they known each other as very young men long, long ago, fifty odd years ago. ... And I think to any ageing man this means something. We've heard the chimes at midnight ourselves, and this brings back one's disreputable youth.
partly it's a classical demonstration of nostalgia. I've never been to the Hebrides, let me hasten to add, and I do know Canada fairly well, and I can't help feeling Canada is a nice place to feel nostalgia in about some rather bleak island. However, it is passionate and real nostalgia. But also, I confess that when the Hebrides, with singular unanimity or near unanimity, voted against the European community, I like to think of some Hebridean civil servant in Brussels now singing the Hebridean vote song.
First, it's very beautiful, as read by Lord Olivia. Secondly, it's not quite right. That is, when the psalms, like the rest of the authorised version, were translated. They were using, of course, a text which was mainly slightly anachronistic even by by the by sick the standards of sixteen eleven. ... I was brought up in the Church of England. I'm not a believer. And therefore I hanker after the liturgy and the words that I heard as a boy.
Were I Laid on Greenland's Coast (from The Beggar's Opera)
Elsie Morison and John Cameron
Beggars' Opera is a sort of rather simple thing that I can understand, but also I really wanted it for rather the same reason that I chose the Twenty Third Psalm. I think it's been prettified. I think the beggar's opera has been prettified rather too much.
Kutuzov's Aria (from War and Peace)
I saw this at the Belchoy. Many years ago, not too long after the war, and it was intensely moving, this great song which is really saying that we shall have to go back behind Moscow. This is what Kutuzov is telling his generals at a council. But in the long run, Russia will prevail.
Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125 'Choral'
is partly because the um Ninth Symphony is the national anthem of the European Community, of which I was and am a very strong supporter ... But also there's a private joke. Owing to my uh musical imbecility, lots of loving friends, male and women, won have tried to educate me. and they usually have tried to educate me by trying to teach me how to pick out the themes in the Ninth Symphony.
The keepsakes
The book
In the same spirit, I should choose something where I could do some work. I should choose a Russian grammar and try and learn the language properly.
The luxury
Lots of paper, writing books, and biros
I've thought about this, but I don't think there's any point in taking a work of art, however great. Business as usual. Business as usual.
In conversation
Presenter asks
Lord Snow, does music play an important part in your life?
I wish it did, but I have to become quite clean and say that it doesn't. I'm musically deficient. It's been a grief to me all my life.
Presenter asks
What did you read [at university]?
I read chemistry and physics. ... I always knew that I wanted to write books, but I thought the books I wanted to write meant that I had to nose my way among people and things before I could write them decently. So therefore I had to do something else to start with. Yes. And I had a tiny talent for science, very tiny, but enough to mean that I could probably become some sort of professional. And so I did it that way.
Presenter asks
How did you take to political life?
I didn't like it much, but I thought I'd been a backroom boy for a long while, and been saying things in private, and ought to stand up and say some things in public. And I told the Prime Minister I'd do it as a matter of duty for a year. I did it for nearly two, and I thought that was an honest bargain.
The recording
Timestamps play the recording from that turn
Speaker 1
Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Disc's Archive. For rights' reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen seventy five, and the presenter was Roy Plumley.
Presenter
On our desert island this week is the novelist and scientist C. P. Snow, Lord Snow.
Presenter
Lord Snow, does music play an important part in your life? I wish it did, but I have to become quite clean and say that it doesn't. I'm musically deficient. It's been a grief to me all my life.
Presenter
But I can't help it. It probably is a natural deficiency. Your father was a musician, wasn't he? He was a church organist, yes. So, how did you set about choosing your aid record? Well, I had to make a vow I wouldn't come on false pretences, as you know. And so I've chosen things which have meant something to me, not through musical reasons, but through free associations of various kinds, often literary. Yes. Where do we start? What's the first one? Well, this is an obvious example. I'm going to choose the sonata for violin and piano in D minor by Saint-Saints, just to reveal the little phrase, the Petite Fraze, which is so important in the love affair between Swan and Odette at the beginning of Proust's great novel.
C P Snow
Uh
Presenter
Yeah.
C P Snow
A la research tutorial.
Presenter
And of course the title of this part is Duco de Choiswin. And this little phrase, which I believe is not musically interesting, well that to me is neither here nor there, was called by them the national anthem of their love affair. That's the phrase they constantly use.
C P Snow
I love it.
Presenter
And whenever Swan heard it, then it brought back the whole of this emotion.
Presenter
The famous little phrase from the Seinsense Sonata for violin and piano in D minor. What's your second record?
Presenter
My second record, here I'm a bit nearer my home ground. This is a part of the orchard scene from Act Three, Scene Two of Henry IV, Part II, when Sir John Falstaff is meeting an old acquaintance, Mr Justice Shallow, and they known each other as very young men long, long ago, fifty odd years ago.
Speaker 1
Good
Presenter
And I think to any ageing man this means something.
Presenter
We've heard the chimes at midnight ourselves, and this brings back one's disreputable youth.
Speaker 3
There is two more calls and your number.
Presenter
Number, you must have but four here, sir, and so I pray you go in with me to dinner. Come, I will go drink with you, but I cannot tell you dinner.
Speaker 3
Uh
Presenter
I am glad to see you by my truth, Master Shallow.
Speaker 3
Oh, Sir John, do you remember since we lay all night in the windmill in Saint George's field? No more of that, good Master Shello No more of that It was a merry night.
Presenter
Hello?
Speaker 1
Uh
C P Snow
Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
C P Snow
Fuck it.
Speaker 3
And is Jane Nightwork alive? She lives, Master Shallow. She never could away with me. Never, never? She would always say she could not abide, Master Shallow. By the maps I could anger her to the heart.
Presenter
Then a bona rover does she hold her own well? Old, old, Master Shallow. Yea, she must be old. She cannot choose but be all certain she's old, and have robbin' night work, my old night work, before I came to Clemens' Inn.
Speaker 3
That's fifty-five years ago.
Speaker 3
Mm.
Presenter
A scene from Shakspeare's King Henry the Fourth, Part two
Presenter
From a production directed by Peter Wood.
Presenter
Lord Snow, you began your education in Leicester. Were you born there? Yes, yes. And you won scholarships to University College, Leicester, and Cambridge. What did you read?
Presenter
I read chemistry and physics. What had you in mind, industry or? No, I always knew that I wanted to write books, but I thought the books I wanted to write meant that I had to nose my way among people and things before I could write them decently. So therefore I had to do something else to start with. Yes. And I had a tiny talent for science, very tiny, but enough to mean that I could probably become some sort of professional. And so I did it that way. It was always novels that you wanted to write? Always novels. You stayed on in Cambridge for some postgraduate research? Yes, and I became a Darlene and did a certain amount of research. And at the age of 25, you wrote your first book. What was that? That was a detective story called Death Under Sale. That was to get my hand in. Remember, I'd been doing professional science for a while, and so I, well, it wasn't easy enough on the page to begin with. Yes. That was a useful discipline.
Speaker 1
Remember I
Presenter
Then I wrote a perfectly ordinary straight novel called The Search.
Presenter
Which is about the scientific life. And then I got on to my major work. Yes, this very ambitious sequence of novels, which I'd like to talk to you about later in more detail. Your writing was interrupted during the war years when you took on an administrative job. That's putting it mildly. I couldn't write a word for five years, which is quite a long stretch, remember, at the time when one should be somewhere near one's most proficient. Yes, what were you doing?
Speaker 3
What we would
Presenter
I was really organizing scientific personnel as someone. In fact, Sir Lawrence Bragg had the bright idea as I was supposed to know something about people and a little about science, I might deal with scientific people, which is surprisingly sensible. And I think it was certainly useful for me, and I think I could do a reasonable job. It was work that involved a great deal of travelling. Enormous amount. I must have seen every university in England three times a year for five years. Yes. And after that, after the war, you held various civil service posts, followed by a spell in government.
Presenter
I was Civil Service Commissioner. It rather followed on from what I'd been doing in the war. Yes. And then I had a spell in Government. That's what I thought. As Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Technology.
Speaker 3
Yeah, that's right.
Presenter
How did you take to political life?
Presenter
I didn't like it much, but I thought I'd been a backroom boy for a long while, and been saying things in private, and ought to stand up and say some things in public. And I told the Prime Minister I'd do it as a matter of duty for a year. I did it for nearly two, and I thought that was an honest bargain.
Speaker 1
Nah,
Presenter
And I'm sure it provided very good background material for your other self, for the writer.
Presenter
Well, we mustn't talk about that.
Presenter
And now, of course, you confine your activities to writing. Exactly.
Presenter
I think we've got to record number three. What's that to be? That is to be a thing which is called variously the Canadian boat song or the Hebridean boat song.
Presenter
And the reason I chose that was partly it's a classical
Presenter
Demonstration of nostalgia. I've never been to the Hebrides, let me hasten to add, and I do know Canada fairly well, and I can't help feeling Canada is a nice place to feel nostalgia in about some rather bleak island. However, it is passionate and real nostalgia. But also, I confess that when the Hebrides, with singular unanimity or near unanimity, voted against the European community, I like to think of some Hebridean civil servant in Brussels now singing the Hebridean vote song.
Presenter
From the lone shielding of the misty island
Presenter
Mountains divide us and the waste of seas.
Presenter
Yet still the blood is strong, the heart is highland.
Presenter
And we in dreams behold the Hebrides.
Presenter
The Voice of John Laurie. Now the long sequence of novels which you planned eleven books under the generic title Strangers and Brothers when did you conceive the idea and and what really inspired you? Very curious answer to that. I conceived the idea at
Speaker 1
You have a f
Presenter
Eight thirty in the evening on january first, nineteen thirty five. These things don't usually happen like that, but it did happen that way. How can you pinpoint it so exactly? Oh, I remember it quite exactly, and in fact there is documentary evidence, because I wrote to someone saying I'd think I know now what I'm going to do.
Presenter
It is, it was, a gigantic project, a literary project. One thinks of a few French writers, Balzac and Proust and Roman Rolland. Is there anyone who's
Presenter
written anything comparable in English before?
Presenter
Not, I think, before I started, no.
Presenter
There are one or two uh the things of the same nature since, but certainly not before I started. Which years do the novels encompass? 1914 is the actual uh first scene, and they go on till about nineteen sixty five or six, that sort of time. Are they all in the first person? All in the first person. What do they have in the way of uh of a common quality or intention?
Presenter
The common quality was intended to be um
Presenter
Saying what the narrator who in this case speaks for me about what he knows, what he's found out about people, what he's discovered about people, and as a secondary theme, about people in society, about the bits of society that he happens to know, which is very roughly uh professional England, but it's a fairly wide stratum of professional England. Yes.
Presenter
You've had the satisfaction of uh
Presenter
having coined a phrase which has passed into the language.
Presenter
I suppose that's true. You mean Corridors of Power? The Corridors of Power. Yes. Well, that's pure accident. I wrote it quite casually and forgot I had forgotten about it. It isn't even a chapter title. But Rainer Hepenstall, giving a rather long review in the Times literary supplement, headed his review Corridors of Power, and then I, to my astonishment, it caught on almost all over the l literate world, so to speak. It's it happens to translate very easily into almost any language. Russians use exactly the same phrase for the Sephora the book called by that title and so on. And now I find Corridors of Power cropping up. If I had a small royalty on that, I should be quite well on. Yes.
Speaker 1
The cottage also
Speaker 1
But
Presenter
Record number four.
Presenter
Reckon number four is the twenty-third psalm. And I've chosen this for two reasons. First, it's very beautiful, as read by Lord Olivia. Secondly, it's not quite right. That is, when the psalms, like the rest of the authorised version, were translated.
Speaker 1
Mm.
Presenter
They were using, of course, a text which was mainly
Presenter
slightly anachronistic even by by the by sick the standards of sixteen eleven.
Presenter
Really based on 1550-ish translations or earlier.
Presenter
Marvellous English, but though they were quite good at their at their scholarship, the our knowledge of Hebrew, even of Greek, has increased very considerably since that time, and so the actual literal record isn't exact in the light of our contemporary knowledge. Now in the one that we shall hear
Presenter
Uh that doesn't matter very much,'cause it's it's just it's a it's a s it's a song.
Presenter
It isn't quite right. For instance, the valley of the shadow of death should certainly be the valley dark as death. The valley of the shadow of death is something we've all had running through our heads as part of the collective unconscious for hundreds of years, but it isn't quite right.
Presenter
I was brought up in the Church of England. I'm not a believer.
Presenter
And therefore I hanker after the liturgy and the words that I heard as a boy. And I think this is true of many people. If I were a believer, I think I should feel differently. Not on this, because here the song is so beautiful you can take it. But where it really bears on real religious truth, and where the translation is clearly wrong, then I think it's non-believers who hanker most passionately after the past verbal beauties, and believers who are more interested in the truth. Here we have the reassurance of the old familiar version. That's right, yes.
C P Snow
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
C P Snow
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures.
C P Snow
He leadeth me beside the still water.
C P Snow
It astalth my soul.
C P Snow
He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.
C P Snow
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.
C P Snow
for thou art with me.
C P Snow
Thy rod and thy staff.
C P Snow
They comfort me.
C P Snow
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies.
C P Snow
Thou anointest my head with oil.
C P Snow
My cup runneth over
C P Snow
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.
C P Snow
And I will dwell in the house of the Lord.
C P Snow
Uh
Presenter
Uh
C P Snow
Order.
Presenter
Uh
C P Snow
Yeah.
Presenter
Laurence Olivier.
Presenter
You're married to another distinguished novelist, Pamela Hansford Johnston. Yes. Do you discuss your work with each other? Oh, yes. She can do many things I can't, and I can do some things she can't. And so whether the interchange has been useful to us both. Are you a disciplined writer? Do you work regular hours or a certain number of words of each day? All professional writers have to be disciplined, certainly if they write long novels. You've got to sit on your bottom to write a novel, as someone once said.
Speaker 1
But
Presenter
And so you have to write for several hours a day. Do you plan a novel in great detail before you start?
Presenter
I like to have the whole conception in my mind, and usually I I have it uh planned in detail, but not absolutely always. That has varied a bit. But uh the real answer to your question is yes, I do, I do plan carefully. Do you write in longhand? Yes.
Presenter
Horrible longhand, which involves great difficulty in getting typed.
Presenter
Four or five of your novels have been dramatized by Ronald Miller. The case in question is running at the Theatre Royal Haymarket at the moment. Now I know you and your wife have adapted a Bulgarian novel for the theatre. Why haven't you adapted your own novels?
Presenter
Two answers, I think. One is that if you've thought over any
Presenter
literary thing in one form, it's very hard to transform it into another. Secondly, I think I really haven't got the neck or the skill or the art, whatever it is that makes a play work on the stage. It's not easy, as you know. Uh it's uh it's something that I think I'd have liked to have done at one time, but uh I got too set in my ways.
Presenter
Well, record number five. What's that? Record number five is um what I laid on Greenland shores.
Presenter
in The Beggars' Opera. Beggars' Opera is a sort of rather simple thing that I can understand, but also I really wanted it for rather the same reason that I chose the Twenty Third Psalm.
Presenter
I think it's been
Presenter
Prettified. I think the beggar's opera has been prettified rather too much. In fact, a good deal too much. This is, I think, now general opinion confirms that. I'm sure, almost sure, that when the original audiences saw it, it must have seemed much harsher. Probably not as harsh as Brecht's Threatening Opera, which of course was drawn from it, but a good deal nearer Brecht than it is to the thing we see. I'm aware of this pretty song is an example in point. Were I laid on Greenland's coast, and in my arms embraced my last, former meet eternal blast, who summoned up his night wouldn't.
Speaker 1
Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1
Oh, soon I sold on Indian soil. Soon as the burning day was closed, I put more muscle to each oil and all my I'm not missing all
Speaker 3
I would love you more than every night what kiss I play.
Speaker 3
Leave with me on the fall.
Presenter
Uh
Speaker 3
Uh
Presenter
Over the hills and far away, burning the demons for steady.
Speaker 3
Everyone
Speaker 3
I meet my fatal time as the best people
Speaker 1
Love you, oh lovely every night for the kiss.
Presenter
A duet from The Beggars' Opera sung by Elsie Morrison and John Cameron. What next?
Presenter
Oh, the next one is Kutuzov's great song from War and Peace. From the Procoffee of War and Peace. From the Procoffee of War and Peace.
Presenter
I saw this at the Belchoy.
Presenter
Many years ago, not too long after the war, and it was intensely moving, this great song which is really saying that we shall have to go back behind Moscow. This is what Kutuzov is telling his generals at a council. But in the long run, Russia will prevail. The strength of our people, their courage, the whole Russian people, that is the words are in the song, says just that.
Presenter
And almost everyone in that audience was feeling that they'd had the same experience, and there weren't many dry eyes in the house.
Speaker 1
Just away the deep spark Christ figure amen.
Speaker 3
Uh
Presenter
And
Presenter
We are drawing
Speaker 3
Ah
Speaker 3
Nerd Marbos Kervashe Nervas Morchet Ra
Speaker 1
I'd bought it.
Speaker 3
The Lord is the only one who is the only one who is the only one who is a man.
Speaker 1
Uh
C P Snow
Yeah.
Speaker 3
One sir.
Presenter
An audio from Prokofiev's War and Peace, sung by Alexei Krifkenya.
Presenter
Can you think of any way in which your scientific training would help you as a castaway?
Presenter
I don't I really don't think so. I'm not I'm not very good at looking after myself. I think I should be a most incompetent castaway. Oh dear. What are you going to live on?
Presenter
Ah.
Presenter
Have I got to catch my own food? Yes, indeed.
Presenter
Yeah.
Presenter
I suppose I could learn some primitive form of fishing if I had uh if I had remotest uh practical equipment. Yes. Um cultivation I think I should find very difficult. No, I think uh I wouldn't give much for my life as a What about navigation? Would you try to escape?
Speaker 1
What a button!
Presenter
No, I think I didn't depend where I went or where I was cast away, but I think not. I think you're wise. Let's have record number seven.
Speaker 1
Oh yeah.
Presenter
Record number seven as The Farmer and the Carmen Should Be Friends from Oklahoma.
C P Snow
Uh
Presenter
The Farmer and the Cowman should be friends, Oh, the Farmer and the Cowman should be friends. One man likes to push a plow, the other likes to chase a cow, but that's no reason why they can't be friends.
C P Snow
Yeah.
Presenter
Territory folks should stick together, territory folks should all be pals. Cowboys dance with the farmers' daughters, farmers dance with the ranchers' cows. Territory folks should stick together towns.
Speaker 3
Uh
Presenter
Yeah. Uh
Speaker 3
I was getting to farmers, dollars, farmers then
Presenter
The Farmer and McCowman from the soundtrack of the film of Oklahoma.
Presenter
And now we come to your last record. What's that?
Presenter
My last record is the coral.
Presenter
movement in uh Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.
Presenter
And then
Presenter
is partly because the um Ninth Symphony is the national anthem of the European Community, of which I was and am a very strong supporter, and I've started with one national anthem, the national anthem of of uh Swan's love for our debt, and I thought I'd finish with another national anthem of a slightly larger kind.
Presenter
But also there's a private joke.
Presenter
Owing to my uh musical imbecility, lots of loving friends, male and women, won have tried to educate me.
Speaker 1
Uh
Speaker 1
Let's move.
Presenter
and they usually have tried to educate me by trying to teach me how to pick out the themes in the Ninth Symphony. I remember a sarcastic female voice. Are you still trying to learn the themes of the ninth? And that that and that has trickled out over the years.
Presenter
Part of the last movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, conducted by Herbert von Callian. If you would take just one disc of your aid, which would it be?
Presenter
Ah, that would certainly be the orchard scene from Henry the Fourth, Part two. It seems to me one of the simplest and most beautiful bits of a work of art that I know. I'm sure Shakespeare did it almost without thought. That's the kind of thing which a great writer does without the slightest trouble, and it just is immortal.
Presenter
and one luxury to take to the island with him.
Presenter
Well, if you call it a luxury
Presenter
I should like lots and lots of paper, lots and lots of writing books, and a fair supply of biros. I've thought about this, but I don't think there's any point in taking a work of art, however great. Business as usual. Business as usual. And one book apart from the Bible, Shakespeare, and big encyclopedias. In the same spirit, I should choose something where I could do some work. I should choose a Russian grammar and try and learn the language properly. Right. And thank you, Lord Snow, C.P. Snow, for letting us hear your Desert Island discs. Thank you very much. Goodbye, everyone.
Speaker 1
You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists Archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.
Presenter asks
When did you conceive the idea [for Strangers and Brothers] and what really inspired you?
Very curious answer to that. I conceived the idea at ... Eight thirty in the evening on january first, nineteen thirty five. These things don't usually happen like that, but it did happen that way.
Presenter asks
Can you think of any way in which your scientific training would help you as a castaway?
I don't I really don't think so. I'm not I'm not very good at looking after myself. I think I should be a most incompetent castaway.
“I always knew that I wanted to write books, but I thought the books I wanted to write meant that I had to nose my way among people and things before I could write them decently.”
“I was brought up in the Church of England. I'm not a believer. And therefore I hanker after the liturgy and the words that I heard as a boy. And I think this is true of many people. If I were a believer, I think I should feel differently. Not on this, because here the song is so beautiful you can take it. But where it really bears on real religious truth, and where the translation is clearly wrong, then I think it's non-believers who hanker most passionately after the past verbal beauties, and believers who are more interested in the truth.”
“All professional writers have to be disciplined, certainly if they write long novels. You've got to sit on your bottom to write a novel, as someone once said.”