Gavin Lyall

Speaker 10:00

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 six, and the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:29

On our Desert Island this week is the writer of thrillers, Gavin Lyle.

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Gavin, have you ever daydreamed about being a Robinson Crusoe?

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I don't think so as as such. Um

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I wouldn't do too badly. I don't mind my own company. I like to sneak off into corners. The idea of spending the rest of one's life in the open air doesn't appeal, though, at all. What would you be happiest who got away from?

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Uh apart from my children.

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I think publishers. They're always ringing you up and asking if you've finished a book.

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Is music important in your life?

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Perhaps not as much as it used to be. Uh the the musical period of my life was my teens, and I I dare say it is

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True of so many others.

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Not coming of a musical family at all, suddenly at the age of fourteen uh jazz hit me straight between the eyes, and overnight I was turned into an addict. Have you any musical skill yourself?

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No, I proved that the hard way. Um

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We formed a small group, or started to form a small group, and uh having totally no ability uh

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I was the bloke who had to play the drums. We had one first-class musician who played the piano.

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And I used to draw cartoons in those days, and I illustrated, uh did some big stuff a shop window of a second-hand music store and

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Every time I'd redecorate his shop I got given a second hand musical instrument. I tried the clarinet. After six months I quit that and passed it on to this fearless chap, who promptly took it up and later led the Oxford Jazz Club band on it.

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Then I got a trumpet.

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Six months later I gave that up and gave it to our other pianist, and he uh he became a uh uh a bandleader in the army on that.

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And uh every time I had to go back to the drums.

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What was your plan in choosing these eight records?

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Certainly some nostalgia and and within that framework um

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Some of the best jazz that I remember or that I appreciate. What's the first one?

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Well, that's one that uh

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But I really think I think

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was the absolute cornerstone of of the jazz we couldn't call it revival, but

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birth, as it were, in the late nineteen forties Bunk Johnson.

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They got these old boys out of the New Or New Orleans dock sides and so on, and bought em a new set of teeth and set down to record

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This piece that uh that was the great turn on for all of us, when the saints come marching in.

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Bank Johnson, when the same score marching in. What's your second disc?

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Well, this is uh

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A Josh White song.

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And uh in those days, the late nineteen forties, one of the

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The the big jazz centers uh was, oddly enough, the Birmingham Town Hall.

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where we'd got quite a jazz revival going.

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You couldn't get the American bands through some sort of union trouble in those days, but you did get the individual singers, and I remember vividly one night when I was converted to the blues by Josh himself.

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And uh

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He he was

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the m most impressive figure. Actually, that night he was obviously in pain. He went into hospital the next day for some sort of operation on a leg and

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Uh

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I just I just remember that evening so vividly. And

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One of the songs I think he sang then, certainly has always been one of my favorites, is uh the Old Negro Work Song, a guy who's working on railroad.

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biting himself against the new steam hammer.

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John Henry.

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John Henry said to a shaker, well now shaker, why don't you sing? Cause I'm throwing nine pounds from my hip zone down. Just listen to the cold steel rain. Boy, just listen to the cold steel rain. John Henry said to a shaker, well now shaker, why don't you pray? Cause if my hammer missed that little piece of steel, tomorrow be a bit.

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Well tomorrow

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Josh White singing John Henry.

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What was your ambition as as a schoolboy?

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Looking back on it, it seemed to be to stay at school as long as possible, because I didn't leave until I was about nineteen.

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dragged away by my hair by the Air Force. But uh

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But

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First I think I wanted to be a cartoonist. Indeed I I I made a bit of money uh doing that, illustrating um

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Some of the old jazz magazines uh

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And always in between, it's you know, the feeling that I uh that I wanted to write as well. Indeed, I did write, of course, but uh I wasn't selling anything in those days. Well, you said you were dragged away by the REF. You did your national service, and in fact, you became a fighter pilot. Yes. There were very few national servicemen, surely, to get to pilot jets during the two years. Well, I was lucky in one sense. It was the time of the Korean War. Everybody was expanding like mad. They were ordering new aeroplanes. They were allowing national servicemen to become air crew. I think they were convinced that most of us would sign on, but.

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Uh I had a place at Cambridge waiting for me, so

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I I didn't. He went to Cambridge to read what? Uh English literature, insofar as it exists.

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There was quite a lot of it about. Yes, but I don't think you ought to read it under degree conditions. You spend most of your time on the university newspaper, I gather.

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Uh that's right. I spent the first year sitting in a pub with two equally dissident ex-servicemen uh and then I started cartooning for a university newspaper and from that started writing for them, started editing for them, phot photographed for them. The whole works, uh completely threw myself into journalism and got my degree on Sundays. And when you came down?

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Well, because of that experience, uh I was offered a job on the old picture post. Um

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Most of the best journalists had gone by then, I may say, and most of the s the other staff were were young and inexperienced, uh including uh

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The young lady who handed over the letters column as soon as I got there, because she was no longer the office junior, that was Catherine Whitehorn, who I eventually married.

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Well, let's have your third record.

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Well this is

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Actually, it dates from the from the end of my Air Force career when I was gradually unwinding, as it were, down a

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Very comfortable South Coast station.

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and popping up to London for a weekend as a young officer, seeing a few shows. And generally

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Enjoying life. Uh this was one of the first shows I saw, which must have opened just a few months before, in nineteen fifty three.

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Guys and dolls, and from it the oldest established perma floating.

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In New York

Gavin Lyall8:17

It's good old reliable Nathan, Nathan, Nathan, Nathan, Detroit.

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If you're looking for action, you furnish a spot for you.

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Even when the heat is out, it's never too hot. Not for good old, reliable Nathan. For it's always just a short walk.

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To the oldest, established, permanent, glory cracking.

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That excellent number from Guys and Dolls.

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Uh Picture Post died under you quite soon, didn't it? Well, just about a year. Practically to the day. And then you moved to the Sunday Graphic. That wasn't in too healthy a state.

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It wasn't, and my presence didn't make it any any better, I'd say.

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I I'd been offered a job.

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When picture post folded, I eventually took it up in the autumn.

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And uh by then I was engaged to to Catherine and um

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I thought it would look more respectable, particularly to my father in law, if I happened to be in work.

Gavin Lyall9:19

Yeah.

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But she wasn't worried in the least.

Gavin Lyall9:19

Shoo!

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Uh so I took I took that job and um

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Got got myself married and three months afterwards by mutual agreement with the editor I got fired. Mm. And you moved on where?

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Well, one has to do it sooner or later. I joined the B B C. Yes, as what? I was well, after about two weeks' training I found myself out on the road directing

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These short sound films, interview films, uh for the Little Tonight programme with Alan Wicker, Derek Hart and so on.

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How long did that last? Well, it lasted nearly nine months before I fell out with the the producer of the programme, Donald Bavastock, as was.

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And uh suddenly found myself um

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having to drink alone in the club and

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parked away in some small back room with a typewriter.

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And nothing to do at all.

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So I started pecking away on the typewriter.

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The C of O

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I had yet learned how to write thrillers.

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And you were busy writing your first book at that time? In between trying to resign, yes, I was getting stuck into that. But you did move on to the Sunday Times? Yes, eventually I don't know whether I did get fired or did resign. But uh suddenly I did find myself in the outside world again and uh

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Then got offered a job in the Sunday Times just as general reporter.

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And you al were also air correspondent for a time. Later on, yes, I a couple, three years later.

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And what was the title of that first book?

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the wrong side of the sky, which

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Actually stems, I think, from a

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A remark my mother-in-law made to Catherine's brother when he went off to fly in the war, to be careful not to fly on the wrong side of the sky.

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And so it's thanks to her that I got that title. And it was a best-selling book. So at this point, let's break off for record number four.

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Which is an early attempt by Catherine to convert me to classical music.

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Uh this is when we were wandering round Europe together after picture post had folded and

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in the marvellous setting of some palace in in Florence, an open air concert one night.

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And this one really is going back, sentimental uh memories, the slow movement from the New World Symphony.

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Part of the slow movement of Vorschak's The New World Symphony, the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Rafael Kubelik.

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Now, on the strength of that first book, you shook the dust of Fleet Street from your feet.

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Not quite as boldly as that at all. Er

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The book got published. I found it was making me a bit more money than my my salary was, and the second book wasn't getting written because I was travelling the world and you don't write

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books in Nepalese hotel bedrooms. You aren't being sent there to do that either. And so I decided, Okay, well, I'm young enough, I can try.

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See if I can make a living writing books, put the books first and freelance as a journalist second. And that's what I did. You were in the bestseller list with your second book, again, The The Most Dangerous Game. How many thrillers have there been so far? Um only seven, I'm afraid.

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Seven in what? Fifteen years? Something like that, yes. Uh plus um a book on aerial warfare that you did. Uh edited a book on R on the RAF, yes. So you haven't really been working flat out. I mean you haven't been churning them out, have you? Uh eight in in fifteen years? No, I I wouldn't pretend to be the most energetic man uh uh in the writing business at all.

Gavin Lyall13:31

Uh

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Yeah.

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Uh

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I think business is

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There's been a bit of work on on film scripts and that sort of nonsense, but uh now aircraft and aeronautics play a a big part in your thrillers. Um you really are uh obsessed with that sort of thing still. You make models in your spare time and that sort of thing.

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Uh yes, the excuse now is of course I've got a couple of young boys, so uh I don't have to uh

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To find a reason for myself doing it exactly.

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Each one of your books has a different and exotic location the Caribbean, the Middle East, Greece, Italy. You go over the ground first. Each book is geographically right.

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Well, first, why be a thriller writer and not travel, for heaven's sake? It's kind of daft. Um but I find that having a

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The background right, having taken a lot of notes, a lot of pictures, maybe even recordings.

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Uh it it gives me a feeling of confidence that the that the romantic invention that I'm going to pile on this is still going to have a firm base. And when I get stuck I d uh often find the easiest way to break out.

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is to do more research. To what extent you have the plot worked out in detail before you start?

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It varies very much from book to book. In Midnight Plus One I had the the story.

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Pretty well all the incidents worked out and

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We deliberately drove the route across Europe that the mechanic does take.

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filling in the detail. The last book, Judah's Country, which is set down in Israel, Beirut, Cyprus.

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came out of a trip I did down to that end of the world for journalistic purposes. I had no intention of writing a book at all.

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But uh

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Something about the old city of Jerusalem sparked me and I thought I must have some scenes here and it started from there. You always write in the first person.

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Mm-hmm. Uh maybe it's the sort of Chandler Hammett background that started it, but now

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I find that

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It's easier for me, at any rate, to write more vividly. You can be very subjective, and you can be you can indeed be be unfair, without it seeming presumptuous. You can say that I arrived at this crummy little town in the Midlands, whereas if an author said

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He arrived at this crum little town in in the Midlands, it would sound a bit odd.

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What's your writing discipline? A certain number of hours each day, certain number of words?

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Um

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Well, a mixture of both. Uh

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Sit down at a desk, brew a pot of coffee, read the papers. Sooner or later I get so bored I start working. Right, we've got to record number five.

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It's about as far as I actually got with appreciating classical music, despite Catherine's influence. I think at this point both our interests meet in the in the number Bacherst Tan.

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Alec Templeton's Bach Goes to Tan by Benny Goodman in his orchestra. Let's move on to record number six.

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Sticking with Benny Goodman.

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And going back to the sort of noises we tried to make in those last years at school. Never came quite up to the standards of Goodman, Cruper, and Teddy Wilson, but at least we used to play quite as fast as they do on Tiger Rag.

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The Benny Goodman Trio

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Gavin, with your usual careful documentation you will have will have assessed the desert island situation. What do you think would be your prospects of survival?

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Not terribly good. We went through a fair bit of survival training in the Air Force, but all I can remember from that is that one doesn't mess about with native women, and I presume I'm not allowed those on the island. There are none. And the other thing I can remember is one shouldn't eat a polar bear's liver. Now that's interesting. I wonder why not. I think it's it contains some sort of poison or other, but they never taught they never taught me how to get at the polar bear's liver in the first place. But I suppose uh there probably wouldn't be polar bears on the island either.

Speaker 119:04

That's

Gavin Lyall19:04

Uh

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No, I think uh I don't think I do as well as all that. If you can make aircraft models you should be able to make a hut of some sort.

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Yes, I think I think I w I wouldn't manage too badly on the on the handyman side. Yeah. Would you try to escape?

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Yes, of course I I imagine I would sooner or later. Uh

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With my usual dilatoriness, I'd I'd tend to put it off. I'm lucky, I think that's what I that's what I'd be relying on. Splendid.

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Next record.

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Well, this again takes us back.

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to the school days when actually I used to like the big bands more than it was respectable to do in those days. It was unl unless you had the ideal jazz lineup of seven piece band, uh it wasn't supposed to be sincere music.

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The only big bands you were allowed really to like, of course, were were were was Duke Ellington.

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And this isn't the full band, this is the Johnny Hodges subdivision of it, and

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To my mind, the only man that can make an alto sax really worth listening to on the old classic Things Ain't What They Us to Be.

Gavin Lyall20:17

Uh

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Johnny Hodges and his orchestra things ain't what they used to be. And I'd love to read this small quote by mister Hodges from the sleeve Things weren't then, and they ain't now, I guess they never are.

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Now let's get to Last Request.

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Well, this one is

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One of my favourites, from the simple Dixieland era.

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Bob Crosby's Bob Cats.

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What I particularly enjoy about it is the is the drummer, Ray Baduk. Always one of my great heroes, and uh

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Now my elder son is.

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acquired his first pair of drumsticks at the age of eleven. I'd like him to uh to see how they should be used on March of the Bobcats.

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Bob Crosby's Bobcat. If you could take just one disc out of the H you've played us, which would it be?

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Um

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I think it'd probably be that last one. It's the one I could live with longest, I think. Mhm. The March of the Bobcat.

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And one luxury to take to the island with you.

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A pack of cards, I think. I'm not a great card player, but when you lay out a game of patience, the first thing that happens is somebody comes up behind you and says, Oi, you've missed out putting the black seven on the red eight. And so that solves the problem of loneliness as well, you see.

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I hope you're right. And one book apart from the Bible, Shakespeare, big encyclopedias.

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Well, let's be honest, I'd have to take the book that I read about once a year anyway, and that's James Jones' From Here to Eternity. It's a book I just can't stay away from, so it would have to be that. From Here to Eternity by James Jones. And thank you, Gavin Lyle, for letting us hear your Desert Island discs. Well, thank you for giving me a chance to go down memory lane, as it were. Goodbye, everyone.

Speaker 124:03

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists Archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk/radio four.