Melvyn Bragg

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.

Presenter0:30

Our castaway this week is the novelist and broadcaster Melvyn Bragg. Melvyn, we know you as the solitary novelist and the agreeably extrovert television presenter. Which is the real you? Are you a gregarious man?

Presenter0:42

Yes, I think one of the things about writing is that you're on your own for such a long time, and although you might have some talent as a writer, it's rarely accompanied by a talent for solitude. I have very little talent for solitude. I have to force myself to be on my own. And so getting out and working with other people, especially in somewhere as a agreeable and interesting in television, is a relief as much as an alternative for source of work and income. So you're going to hate this island. Could you think of any one thing that you'd be happy to have got away from?

Presenter1:13

Um I can think of various persons I'd be happy to have got away from.

Speaker 11:17

Two

Presenter1:18

Uh

Presenter1:19

And I'm always promising myself a good long time to sit down for a good long think, but I would run my handkerchief up a flagpole as well and hope that it was sighted.

Presenter1:28

Does music mean a lot to you? Yes, it does. You play records a lot.

Presenter1:32

Not a great deal, but quite a lot. How did you set about choosing just aid?

Presenter1:36

Well, I decided to think of uh music that had meant a lot to me at different stages in my life. I also wanted to have singing. I wanted to hear a lot of voices, otherwise I'd go mad on this island. So I chose choirs and soloists so that I could listen and join in, which I'd also like to do.

Speaker 11:46

Otherwise,

Presenter1:53

What do you start with? I start with uh non-vocal with Tchaikovsky from a violin concerto. Tchaikovsky's a favourite composer of mine of course. But this particular recording I'm fond of because it's conducted by Barbara Rolli. I had the fun of making a film with him years ago. It was enormous fun. And Heifitz plays it. It was recorded in nineteen thirty seven. And uh the violin concerto.

Melvyn Bragg2:15

Da da da da da.

Presenter3:14

One thing that Barbaroli always said about his orchestra that you could tell it because of it masculine string. Oh, lovely work, the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto. And it was the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Barbaroli with Jasha Heifitz as soloist. What's your second disc? My second disc is a pop record, because one of the things that happens throughout one's life, it seems to me, is that various holidays and meetings and friendships are marked by pop records. I think it would be silly to leave them out. They've played a big part in my life. And this record by George Harrison, My Sweet Lord.

Presenter3:46

means a great deal brings back a particular bouquet of memories.

Melvyn Bragg3:50

De love but it takes so long

Melvyn Bragg3:55

Hallelujah.

Melvyn Bragg4:06

Oh wow.

Melvyn Bragg4:09

I really wanna know you. I really wanna know

Presenter4:18

George Harrison, my sweet lord.

Presenter4:21

Now Melvyn, you were born in Wigton in Cumberland. The only previous literary son of Wigton was a man called Graves who wrote Duque and John Peel.

Presenter4:29

Can you think of anyone else? John Woodcock Graves. Well, there have been a few. There was a man called Brown in the eighteenth century who wrote a play for David Garrick. He was a clergyman who later did away with himself, unfortunately. There's a local historian called Willy Carrick, who wrote a history of Wicton.

Speaker 14:37

Exactly.

Presenter4:44

Um, that's about it. Now you went to Wigton Grammar School. Were you a bookish lad?

Presenter4:50

Well, there was always the two sides. I loved reading, and I was addicted to reading anything from sauce bottles to the Old Testament.

Presenter4:56

And uh I also like to get out and knock around with a gang of friends the whole time as well. So there's always been the two things going on simultaneously and trying to cram in the one while being addicted to the other. What did you want to be as a boy?

Presenter5:10

Well I I'd like to have been a singer.

Presenter5:12

Anything from an opera singer to a pop singer. I just like to sing very much and I'd like to be in a singer. You still do it?

Presenter5:18

Uh, alone or with my daughter, far away from other people, yes. You were in the church choir? Yes, I was, yes. From about seven. And I was in a choir until I was about twenty, one way or another, different choirs. But you didn't carry on with the singing? No. I I suppose that wasn't serious. And I I more than vaguely wanted to be a priest at one stage. And then I didn't quite know what I wanted to be. I expected to become a teacher. And then at Oxford I fell into writing, as they say, and thought this is the life for me for no particular reason because I'd shown no evidence of being any good at it. What were you reading at Oxford? I read history.

Presenter5:51

What did you do when you came down? Worked for the BBC, got a traineeship. It was a very fortunate accident because coming here meant that I worked with a lot of extremely bright people, which was marvellous. It also meant that the sort of work I did, especially when I got into television and worked on monitor, was a continuation of my education in exactly the direction I wanted it. I mean, I wanted to learn more about the arts in big inverted commas and huge capital letters, and I was being paid a reasonable salary while making films about artists and so on and learning more about it. Let's have record number three.

Presenter6:23

And that'll be Kathleen Ferrier, again prompted by the need to listen to voices on this island, and she has a particularly and stunningly beautiful voice, and especially when she sings this uh song by Frank Bridges, Go Not Happy Day.

Melvyn Bragg6:40

I'm not sure.

Melvyn Bragg6:42

Yeah.

Melvyn Bragg6:43

Was that blush the news overflowing ships overflowing seas over season bread?

Melvyn Bragg6:57

As the happy news flushes through the waves, flush from waist to hear.

Melvyn Bragg7:11

The waste is best flush and cool.

Melvyn Bragg7:16

Cause it is the way.

Melvyn Bragg7:19

Yeah.

Melvyn Bragg7:23

Uh

Presenter7:35

Go Not Happy Day sung by Kathleen Ferrier.

Presenter7:38

So you were in television, scripting, producing, directing. What were the highlights? Well, there were so many. It was a wonderful time to be there, really. I was working with Ken Russell and I wrote The Debusive film for him, for example. And working with Hugh Weldon was a A demanding and extremely enjoyable experience. He was hard work, a major work.

Presenter7:58

But making a film about Barbara Ollie, for example, you would have paid to have done it, really, at the age of twenty three or twenty four, to go to Manchester and to make a film with that great orchestra, that marvellous man, making a film about various poets and painters. Everything that you did, you see, was uh was like a treat.

Presenter8:15

Had you at this time written your first novel?

Presenter8:17

No, officially I'd written my first novel, nothing that I would send off to a publisher. Thank goodness I wrote I wrote about six novels, all of which were unfinished. I eventually f wrote a novel three times and thought it was that was the best I could possibly do with that book and sent it off.

Speaker 18:23

I read about

Presenter8:33

That was while you were at the corporation. Yes.

Presenter8:35

How long were you with the BBC? In the first instance I was there for about six years, six or seven years. Now you quit to freelance. What inspired you to do that? Well, I was finding it very difficult to run the two things together because I worked quite hard at writing the novels three or four hours a day before or after work. And the further you went on as a T V producer the more demanding the job got because the more scope there was and you wanted to do two or three programmes as well as uh besides just one programme that sort of thing. So uh I quit for six months to devote myself to writing a novel.

Presenter9:07

And really never came back under the production society. You began doing very well as a freelance. There were two or three profitable film scripts that turned up. Yes, the Isidora and uh Music Lovers. They weren't all that profitable, but they certainly kept me going at that time. Yes, and uh Jesus Christ Superstar. Yes, that came up later. That was fine.

Presenter9:26

Now tell me about your novels. The early ones were about Wigton.

Presenter9:30

They were mainly set in and around a place that I came to call Thurston. Uh some of them were on the West Cumberland coast. The reason I landed there was um

Presenter9:39

It surprised me because the novels that I hadn't published weren't set anywhere near Cumberland, but I discovered that when I started to set the novels in Cumberland,

Presenter9:48

A lot of the things um

Presenter9:50

That worried me.

Presenter9:52

Certainly didn't worry me. I could I wanted to talk about landscape. Well, I knew the landscape well. I wanted to uh sort of to feel that I was in a particular place and very solidly placed and I could do that not uh not without a struggle, but I could do it without strain. I wanted to feel I had a whole society to pick from and I could do that because I felt there was a whole society there. So it settled a lot of problems. It gave me a real place to put the books and it was enormous relief that I began to set them incumbent. And then you began to write about a man from that society in the different society of London. So you were writing really within your own experience.

Presenter10:25

On the whole, yes, I was writing within my own experience. I think very few writers don't.

Presenter10:29

Now your film scripts more or less dried up. Now to a man

Presenter10:32

With a family it's difficult to live on writing one serious novel a year.

Presenter10:38

Yes, I I made a decision to um rather the same decision as leaving the BBC to push off out of film scripts.

Presenter10:45

because they were taking an enormous amount of time, and frankly, although I was fortunate enough to work with good people like Ken and uh Ken Russell and Carol Rice,

Presenter10:54

It wasn't a happy situation writing a film script, because the director quite uh correctly has to take it over and do what he wants with it. And I found that I was always being bruised and wounded and uh thrown by all this and

Presenter11:07

That's the name of the game, and you had to put up with it. But uh after a while I thought, Well, I can't put up with it. There we are, I just don't want to go on doing this. I'd rather see if I can make it without these um without having to do these film scripts. Yes. Which you did until what, nineteen seventy three? About nineteen seventy two or seventy three. Which was a great sort of watershed year.

Speaker 111:18

Yes.

Speaker 111:22

Two person.

Presenter11:26

So let's break here for record number four. Well I'd like to have something from Bartok. I know he isn't uh by any means a contemporary composer, but uh he's modernistic and I like the part he played in that movement and I uh like his use of folk song and so I'd like something from the uh music for strings, percussion and celesta.

Presenter12:49

An excerpt from Bartock's Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celeste, the Philharmonia Hungarica conducted by Antaldo Ratti.

Presenter12:57

Now, nineteen seventy three, there wasn't a lot going on for you, Melvin. You were writing your novels in a solitary sort of manner, but all of a sudden things began to happen.

Presenter13:08

Well, the television cropped up again. That was uh largely due to Bill Morton, who was running a programme which became uh

Presenter13:18

Entitled Second House, and he was looking around for somebody to present it. It was a quite a tricky job to do because that was a producer's programme. It was a programme where the people who made it were very, very much in charge of it, and it didn't depend on interviewing at that stage, and it didn't depend on somebody sitting in front of a camera and, as it were, running it. It depended on somebody who understood production problems and helping out the producers and very much being helped by them. Yes, and then you moved on to read all about it as well. Yeah, that was something I wanted to do for a long time. I really wanted to get a book programme on BBC One.

Presenter13:51

I don't know why I felt so sort of propagandist about it, but this was your idea. Yes, it was. And the shape of it and the everything about it. I produce it as well as present it. And I also wanted it to be on BBC One.

Speaker 113:54

This was your idea.

Presenter14:02

Because I think books are part of the currency of our lives. Millions of people read, millions of people borrow books, and it seemed to me that it wasn't represented. And thank thank goodness I came up with an idea which appealed to and was very, very heavily backed by the people in charge. And so we got it on. Now, you've got this reputation of the glamour boy of T V culture. To what extent does it affect your writing? Do you still have time? Can you get away from it all to write? Well, at the start I could. At the start and it still persists that I would write in the mornings and people were very helpful and work in the afternoons. It was almost as strict as that. I wrote from nine to about one and then came in, and that lasted for a long time. In this last nine months, what was Read All About It and Second House by an accident running simultaneously and the musical going on and one thing and another. That frankly broke down. But I'll resurrect it after this summer. The musical Mardi Grow, which is running in London now quite successfully.

Speaker 114:54

Yeah.

Presenter14:59

Um do you get away to Wigdon much? Yes, about uh three months a year. You like to keep your roots going? Yes, I like the place. I suppose um I see it as somewhere where I can go and uh

Presenter15:11

root around. Yes. Uh but I also got a lot of friends there now and it's a nice place to uh

Presenter15:17

Turn off in. I couldn't live in London all the time. You've been doing some very extensive rooting around in Wigton. You've just published a non-fiction book called Speak for England, a collection of interviews by you with some of the inhabitants of Wigton.

Presenter15:30

A very long book, a very discursive book.

Presenter15:33

I was a little at a loss to find out what you were after. What what was your message?

Presenter15:38

Well, what I wanted to to do in that book, and I think it's been done by the people who took part in it, the book is 90% other people, was to.

Presenter15:47

show the history of this century through the lives of people who'd been through the great events of this century. And so, for example, when you're

Presenter15:57

Reading a chapter called The First World War. That's the account of four soldiers who went through the First World War. It isn't uh parceled up by historical accounts, and it isn't um

Presenter16:08

pinned together by analysis of their motives and one thing and another. They say what they did, and it seems to me that's a substantial record of real life in that war, which is worth having. It's a record of life as lived by people in this country this century in the wars and the depressions and the

Presenter16:24

later affluence and in their education and their religion, um a surprising account of richness and unexpectedness and uh

Presenter16:32

An optimistic account, I think. It's it's an obvious labour of love. You you love your hometown.

Presenter16:38

Well, not blindly. I don't think so. I mean, the book isn't isn't full of uh sentimental portraits. There's some quite hard things said, it seems to me, by the people themselves about life and about their own experiences. Uh I've I've always wanted to write this sort of book, or rather put this sort of book together, since I read History at Oxford, where I kept feeling that what was missing

Presenter17:01

Was the lives of normal people or extraordinary people, but the lives of people who played their part. Let's have record number five.

Presenter17:10

Which takes us uh across to America. Big Bill Brunzi, who's uh one of my favorite singers. He sings country blues and I like the uh beginnings of black music and a lot of black music since. And this song is um black, brown and white.

Speaker 317:28

This little song that I'm singing about

Speaker 317:32

People you know is true.

Speaker 317:36

Every black and gotta work for a living

Speaker 317:40

This is what they will say to you. This is if you swipe.

Speaker 317:45

He's alright. If he was brown, stick around. But as you black...

Speaker 317:53

Mm-mm, brother.

Speaker 317:56

Get back, get back.

Presenter17:58

Big Bill Brunzi, black, brown, and white. Let's go straight on to your next disc. What's that?

Presenter18:04

Well, I'd like something from Beethoven, who represents for me such uh power and freedom and uh originality.

Presenter18:11

Uh piano sonata, because I used to play the piano myself and used to even try to struggle through this sonata. It's les adieux, number twenty-six.

Presenter19:19

An excerpt from the Beethoven Sonata No. twenty six in E-flat, played by Daniel Barramboy.

Presenter19:26

Right now, Melvin Bragg and the outdoor life, what's been your experience of camping out or anything useful like that?

Presenter19:33

Um not extensive, but fairly solid. I was in the scouts and did my bit. You could manage, you could build a shelter. I wouldn't be too bad at that, really, if I had to. Forage for food.

Speaker 119:37

Yeah.

Presenter19:44

Forage for food. Well, it depends what there was to catch. I'm not very quick on my feet, but uh

Presenter19:50

I would forage. I mean, I assume that desperation is the name of the game.

Presenter19:56

Have you done any fishing?

Presenter19:57

No, not much really. But I imagine it's going to be one of the blessings about being on this island is that it's certainly got to be lovely sunshine, clear, shallow blue seas, with fat, lazy fish never seen a human being waiting to be stabbed by one of those uh forks that Man Friday uses in Robinson Crusoe. You've described it to a team. Would you try to escape?

Speaker 120:08

Uh

Presenter20:16

Um not at first. I think at first I tried to stick it out for a little while and see how I enjoyed it, with all these records to listen to and uh all these books and all the things I wanted to sit down and think about. Let's have record number seven.

Presenter20:29

Well, this time I'd like to hear more voices, because uh thinking about this island I think that I would like to keep hearing voices. Uh

Presenter20:37

and a Psalm twenty three sung by the choristers of King's College.

Presenter20:43

at Cambridge.

Melvyn Bragg20:55

You shall face me in a great water.

Melvyn Bragg21:01

We for this time

Melvyn Bragg21:09

He shall convert my soul.

Melvyn Bragg21:14

Bring me forth in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.

Melvyn Bragg21:30

I will stay in the

Speaker 121:32

And all we

Melvyn Bragg21:35

The thou art with me, thy Lord and thyself.

Presenter21:44

The twenty third Psalm sung by the choir of King's College, Cambridge. What's your last disc? My last disc would have to be something from Mozart.

Presenter21:52

Who is the uh

Presenter21:54

Perfect composer really I think.

Presenter21:56

And I thought about this a lot, there's so much of Mats out that I like.

Presenter22:00

But in the end stuck to the idea that I would like to hear people singing, so I'd like something from the magic flute, and that marvellous duet between Papageno and Papagena, sung by Dietrich Fischer Diskow and Lisa Otto.

Melvyn Bragg22:22

Ha, hop, hop.

Speaker 122:53

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 122:56

Yeah.

Speaker 123:00

Who shall be the

Presenter23:08

The duet from the last act of the magic flute, Dietrich Fischer Diskow and Lisa Otto. If you could take just one disc of your eight, which would it be? It would have to be the magic flute.

Presenter23:18

And one luxury to take to the island with you. Crate of champagne, either to celebrate the fact that I wanted to stay there, or for when I got off. Yes, we'll give you two crates.

Presenter23:28

And one book apart from the Bible, Shakespeare, and big encyclopedias. I'd take a novel, I'd take Anna Karenina, Tolstoy.

Presenter23:35

Right, a handsomely bound edition, and thank you, Melvin Bragg, for letting us hear your Desert Island Disc. Thank you. Goodbye, everyone.

Speaker 123:51

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.