Peter Quennell

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

On our desert island this week is the writer and editor, Peter Quinnell. Mr. Quinnell, have you ever experienced extended loneliness?

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I've experienced extended loneliness in uh

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Large cities, but I've never experienced it on a desert island. What would you be happiest to have got away from?

Presenter0:49

The news, I think.

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and the kind of letters.

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that uh so frequently slip through my letter box in buff envelopes with cellophane.

Presenter1:02

Friends. Oh, those, I n I know the words you mean. Do does music play a big part in your life?

Presenter1:08

I'm afraid it doesn't play as large a part in my life as I should like it to, and I've no ear.

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Can't even whistle.

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On what terms have you chosen your eight record?

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I've chosen them simply because they're tunes that give me great pleasure, particularly great pleasure, and which I think would solace my lonely hours on this island. What's the first one you've chosen?

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The first one I've chosen is

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I think a particularly beautiful fragment of the opera called Um Orfeit by Gluc

Presenter1:42

who was a delightful man because

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He very often composed out of doors

Presenter1:49

having his piano, or harpsichord, or whatever it was, carried out in the field with a bottle of champagne.

Presenter2:54

The Dance of the Blessed Spirits

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James Galway as a soloist with the National Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Charles Gerhardt. Let's go straight into your next record. What's that?

Presenter3:05

That is from Mozart's Don Giovanni.

Presenter3:09

And it's Zelina's famous song to her young lover who has just been beaten up, brutally beaten up, by Don Giovanni's henchman, Leparillo.

Presenter3:21

and she's supplying all the consolation she knows how, and it seems to me a very effective and melodious consolation.

Peter Quennell3:38

Happy day.

Peter Quennell3:40

Simple.

Peter Quennell3:42

What's your name?

Speaker 13:51

Uh

Peter Quennell3:55

Single

Peter Quennell3:58

We must have

Presenter4:29

Mirella Freigne as Zelina in Mozart's Gian Giovanni.

Presenter4:34

mister Quinnell, you were born in Kent. Both your parents were artists and writers. That's true. I believe you announced very early in life that you were going to be a writer.

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About seven or eight I remember writing my first poem, of which, strangely enough, the theme was boredom.

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And my mother considered my choice of theme was um unexpected and a little inappropriate in a child of my age.

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You had a very strongly developed sense of the past. How did that?

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creep into your life.

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My parents wrote a successful series of

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Social Histories, called a history of everyday things in England and everyday life.

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in which they studied history from a non-political but from a social

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An artistic point of view. That's to say.

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They didn't deal with battles and treaties, but with the evolution of common objects like ploughs, carts, windmills, houses, castles.

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so on. Mhm. So we've entirely surrounded at uh at my home by relics of the past, by bits of pottery, by bits of medieval carving, and so on.

Presenter5:49

You were only fifteen, I think, when you contributed to an anthology called Public School Verse. I can't remember my exact age. I certainly contributed to the anthology, which was edited by Richard Hughes, the author of High Wind in Jamaica.

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And that was how I started it.

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A professional literary life.

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And at seventeen

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A volume consisting entirely of your own poems also your own illustrations. With my own illustrations, yes, which were pretty deplorable. Whose verse influenced you most? Among contemporary poets. Yes. I was influenced by the Citrals.

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who became friends of mine.

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And uh

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To some extent,

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to the poems and the poetic precepts of Robert Graves.

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You were a very precocious and and promising poet, but after only

Presenter6:44

Two early volumes. Y your poetic muse seemed to desert you. Why was that?

Presenter6:49

So far as I can see, it was because in my uh youth and adolescence

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Writing poetry was a kind of automatic writing.

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I wrote under the pressure of

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an exciting

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emotion which had to be expressed.

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in rhythmic words. Later I found that I was merely manufacturing poetry, writing poetry, trying to put together lines and images. And um as I hate manufactured verse, verse as opposed to poetry

Presenter7:25

I decided to give up.

Peter Quennell7:26

Mm-hmm.

Presenter7:28

Let's have your third record. What have you chosen next?

Presenter7:31

The third record is a piece of verse. I have always known a great deal more about poetry and literature generally than I knew about music.

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And this seems to me an especially fine Elizabethan sonnet.

Presenter7:46

It's an intensely personal poem, a wonderfully vivid evocation of personal feeling.

Speaker 37:53

Since there's no help, come, let us kiss and part.

Speaker 37:57

Nay, I have done you get no more of me.

Speaker 38:00

And I am glad, yea, glad with all my heart, That thus so cleanly I myself can free.

Speaker 38:06

Shake hands forever.

Speaker 38:08

Cancel all our vows.

Speaker 38:10

When we meet at any time again, Be it not seen in either of our brows that we one jot of former love retain.

Presenter8:19

Anthony Quayle reading the Michael Drayton sonnet, Since there's no help, come let us kiss and part.

Presenter8:25

Now, you were at Balliol College, Oxford. Were you reading English or history? I was reading English.

Presenter8:31

It was a very rich period, yours, for young writers, wasn't it? It was an extremely rich period, yes.

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we had at Oxford.

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Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, Anthony Pohl,

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and many others whose names have since become well known.

Presenter8:51

I believe you were rusticated for consorting with the notorious lady.

Presenter8:56

Well, that's true, yes. I wasn't sent down. I was rusticated, that's to say, I was dismissed for a single term.

Presenter9:03

but told that I could come back again under certain restrictions the beginning of the next term.

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This I declined to do, and went off to Italy, where I stayed with my friends the Citrals. You had quite a lot of travelling in succeeding years.

Presenter9:19

An extended trip to the Far East.

Presenter9:21

Yes, that was in nineteen thirty.

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I got a job in Japan and was able to make two visits to Pekin, which was very fortunate, as the Pekin I knew then has of course completely vanished today.

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You had a chair of English in a Japanese university for one who had no BA. That was pretty good.

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It was a it showed a a great deal of enterprise on the part of my uh

Presenter9:49

Niger did his implies I am afraid afterwards they may have regretted it.

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But um I was grateful to them at the time. There must have been problems in putting over Inglit to the Japanese at that time. Yes. So many of the objects described in a well known English poem are completely unfamiliar to the Japanese. I mean, if you read them Grey's elegy.

Presenter10:13

Then read the curfew tolls the knell of parting day. You then have to explain.

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What an English church tyre is like, And what an English church bell is like.

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Because the Buddhist bell, the bell in a Buddhist temple, is not struck by a central metal tongue, but hit on the side.

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the use of a heavy beam

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That's a detail, but generally it was very difficult to find a common ground on which we could meet.

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You had already published one book on on Berdelau and his associates. You went on to write several books on Byron, and they really served to establish you.

Presenter10:51

I think that is a yes, that that's true.

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You had a very varied writing career during the thirties, including a lot of advertising copy. Did you find that good discipline as a writer?

Presenter11:04

Looking back at it, I think it was extremely good discipline, because one had to choose an exact number of words.

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not only words, but sometimes letters and spaces to fit into a given block of copy.

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And uh

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To have to do that I think is good for a writer.

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Otherwise he may um

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allow himself to run away in all directions.

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Yes, you don't throw adjectives around lightly, you don't have to do that. Certainly don't know.

Speaker 111:33

You would certainly don't know.

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He waited at the Cornhill magazine for a while.

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Oh, and there's a wartime story about you being rusticated again.

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In this time you were set down not for

Speaker 111:45

Oh, I've a sent

Presenter11:47

I was sacked from the fire service. I was being conscripted as a part-time farmer. I was sacked from the fire service for smoking on a fire, which is one of the most dreadful offences that a fireman can commit, far more serious than looting a warehouse.

Presenter12:04

I think the time has come for another record. What shall we have? Uh shall we have Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue?

Peter Quennell12:07

Uh

Presenter12:10

It had a tremendous vogue in Oxford at that period.

Presenter12:14

And as a period piece, I think it's extremely

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characteristic and even nowadays still rather moving.

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Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, Paul Whiteman's Orchestra with The Composer at the Piano.

Presenter12:59

As a writer, your spiritual home, surely, is the the eighteenth century. You you've written books about Hogarth and Pope and Dr. Johnson.

Presenter13:08

I'm not sure it can be described as my spiritual home, but certainly it's a period in which I feel very much at home, and of which I am very fond.

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and to which I always enjoy returning.

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How do you work on a historical biography? Do you prepare a a big chronology or do you

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work on index cards or? I'm afraid I'm not

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as uh systematic.

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As that, I just make a quant a large quantity of notes, read a large number of books, marking points of interest in the margin.

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And um then jump in.

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Twenty-five years ago you started a monthly magazine of history for the general reader, history to day.

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Now that's had a a long and very successful run. It has indeed, and I've enjoyed my job as um joint editor.

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I have a very capable fellow editor who has done much of the hard work.

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And I think between us we've produced a paper

Presenter14:10

Which is quite unlike anything else being published in Europe or America today. And you've just published the first volume of your autobiography, The Marble Foot. To what does the title refer? It refers to a marble foot, a gigantic marble foot, which stands in the street of the Marble Foot in Rome.

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When I first visited Rome,

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I was still at school. This gigantic foot standing there on the pavement, surrounded by the debris of the present day, made a very deep impression on me. And in my book it symbolizes a memory that remains and that is worth preserving as distinct from the rubbish that fills the good the backrooms of one's memory.

Presenter15:01

How far does Volume One take us?

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Just the beginning of the Second World War. And how many more volumes will there be?

Presenter15:09

I'm writing w a second volume now, but after that I think it'll be time to close down. Just two volumes. Hm. Let's have record number five. What's that?

Presenter15:19

Vozhak's Slavonic dance in E minor. It was uh the theme tune of a particularly

Presenter15:27

agreeable week I once spent in New York.

Presenter15:30

And then I still enjoy it for itself. It has a sort of gaiety which uh carries one along.

Presenter16:37

Vochak's Slavonic Dance, number 10 in E minor, the Cleveland Orchestra conducted by George Zell.

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Let's have record number six straight away.

Presenter16:46

This is a passage from Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, and I think it shows Shakespeare, in a certain vein, not his dramatic, but his lyrical vein, really at the top of his form.

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Look how the floor of heaven is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold.

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There's not the smallest orb which thou beholdst, But in its motion like an angel sings

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Still quiring to the young eyed Cherubim,

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Such harmony is in immortal souls.

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But whilst this muddy vesture of decay doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.

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John Gilgood as Lorenzo in the last act of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice.

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Now, mister Quinnell, your suitability as a as a castaway. Have you any hobbies or experiences that would be useful? I have never been very good with my hands. I suppose I could construct myself a rudimentary shelter which would protect me from the rays of the midday sun.

Presenter17:52

But would be very little good during a tropical monsoon. So you would resign yourself to getting wet occasionally. Yes. Would you try to escape?

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I might think of escaping.

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but I doubt if I shall have the agumption to build a raft.

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Do you know anything about navigation or small boats? Nothing at all. Well, in that case I should

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I shall stay where I am. Record number seven. This is.

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One of Matthew Arnold's noblest poems.

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I have a great affection for Matthew Arnold, though I don't think he stands in the first rank of English poets.

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But in this poem he certainly reaches a splendid height.

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And it reflects the mood of doubt versus faith.

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but it has such a strong influence on nineteenth-century poetic and indeed prose literature.

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What's the poem called? Dover Beach. Let us be true to one another.

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for the world which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new,

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Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain.

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And we are here as on a darkling plain, Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Presenter19:23

John Neville reading Matthew Arnold's Dover Beach.

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Which brings us to your last record. What's that to be?

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This is uh I'll be known as a Dadgio for Springs and organ. I have a deep affection for that particular composer, late seventeenth, early eighteenth century composer.

Presenter20:40

Albinone's Adagio for strings and organ.

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Von Carrilljan conducting the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. If you could take just one disc out of your eight.

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I think I shall take the Albinone.

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And one luxury to take with you?

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Um I'm in favour of a case of champagne, which I could keep cool in the lagoon.

Presenter21:01

I know that one of the dangers of living in a tropical climate is that you feel extremely depressed when the sun sinks and the insects begin to croak. And it's then that I should hasten down to the lagoon and open a bottle. A single case is a very modest request. I think we can do better than that. As many cases as you could provide me with. Well. And one book apart from the Bible and Shakespeare and big encyclopedias.

Speaker 321:17

As many

Presenter21:27

I thought that I would choose uh Chateaubriand's Memoire du Tre Tempe, his autobiography, as being an extremely long book, but covers a remarkably wide range.

Presenter21:40

and is written in a peculiarly

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Fine and readable manner.

Presenter21:46

Right. Chateaubriand's Memoire du Troutines. And thank you, Peter Quinnell, for letting us hear your Desert Island discs. Thank you very much. Goodbye, Brian.

Speaker 121:55

Do I?

Speaker 122:06

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