Michael Holroyd

Michael Holroyd0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty 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 seven, and the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:32

On our desert island this week is the biographer Michael Holroyd. Mr. Holroyd, was to be a writer your first ambition?

Presenter0:39

No, not at all really. If anything, I preferred music to writing. Uh it was that in the end, having tried a number of other things, I was good for nothing else but writing. At Eton you were on the science side. Yes. The theory was that in future, in order to get any income at all, one would have to be a scientist. Uh all the jobs in the uh Daily Telegraph and so on were for scientists and so um my father thought that I ought to be a scientist. And I agreed. Unfortunately I had no aptitude for science whatsoever.

Presenter1:05

In Who's Who, you say the second part of your education was at Maidenhead Public Library? Well, that's where I was in the holidays, really. And I didn't go on to a university because I had a place there only as a scientist, and that was by that stage no use at all. And I did what reading I did at all at that time, really at Maidenhead Public Library. You were brought up by your grandparents?

Presenter1:26

Partly, yes. Uh they lived uh with my aunt at Maidenhead and I was largely brought up by them. So there was a a double generation gap, really? Yes, there was. That's quite right.

Presenter1:37

Eton gives an idea of the silver spoon. This wasn't really so. It gave more the reality of bankruptcy, really. Um my father had been to Eton and he wanted me to go there. He he knew the place, it made uh sense in that way. So everybody put their hands in their pockets and uh double mortgage the house and did everything they could. And um that was how I got there, really. It gives rather a false impression, I'm afraid. What happened when you left?

Presenter2:03

Well, I gave up science. I'd had enough. It was quite obvious that I was no scientist. And I argued against going on to university so well that my father said that I must make some financial use of this tiresome gift of arguing.

Presenter2:18

And he suggested the law, and I agreed, and I became an article clerk in a firm of solicitors. Well, let's leave you there for the moment and turn to the matter in hand, this Desert Island. What's your first record? My first record is Dinner for One, Please, James. And I'd like that because it really reminds me of my grandparents and my aunt at Maidenhead. This is the sort of music they would put on in a crisis.

Speaker 22:42

Dear one, please, Jim.

Speaker 22:46

Madam will not be dining.

Speaker 32:47

Read that. I

Speaker 22:49

Yes, you may bring the wine in, Love play is such funny games.

Speaker 22:56

June of one.

Speaker 22:58

Please check

Speaker 23:00

Uh

Speaker 23:01

Close madam's room, we've parted Please don't look so downhearted Love plays such fun again

Presenter3:12

Dinner for One Please James, sung by Hutch.

Presenter3:16

Is there any basic plan to your list of ape record?

Presenter3:19

The early ones are autobiographical, really, reminding me of particular times and people. The l latter ones really because I like the music so much, because they're really part of me now, I feel. Do you have any musical skill yourself?

Presenter3:33

None whatsoever. I was taught the piano uh early on at school, but so very, very badly that it put me off. Do you play at all now? No, I don't. No.

Presenter3:42

What's your second record? My second record is the Ride of the Valkyries. Uh this is the sort of music I like very much at about uh fifteen, sixteen, and I could uh

Presenter3:52

I whipped myself up into a fine state conducting music like this.

Presenter4:57

The Ride of the Valkyries, Leopold Stockowski, and The London Symphony Orchestra.

Presenter5:02

So you were an article clerk in a solicitor's office. This meant that you, or or somebody, was paying the firm for you to be there. Yes, it was a very bizarre uh situation, really. I I I could see that I wasn't worth any money, that I did see, but uh it did seem very strange. It was a Dickensian office, really. Was it the whole thing was uh out of the century. You've showed no aptitude.

Presenter5:23

None at all. I had some interest in criminal law, but I was told that was a bad sign. What I should have been interested in was conveyancing. And I really couldn't... There was no human interest in it at all, and I was really no good at it. So you surrendered yourself to the army for two years of national service. Was the aptitude there? I was no man of action. I think those two years prove that conclusively. Well, I remember one of the captains saying, some of you will be lucky enough to see active service. And I remember the way I trembled when I heard it, but I didn't. I was quite adept at avoiding active service. At one point, you were put under arrest and put in the Tower of London, a comparatively rare distinction, I believe. I was in Tyrone for 24 hours. I'd missed a war. I was on leave, and the war hadn't been mentioned on any of the sort of arts pages or book reviews, and I hadn't realised I was involved. It was Egypt.

Speaker 36:10

Uh

Speaker 26:10

Uh

Michael Holroyd6:10

Yeah.

Presenter6:13

And I hadn't associated with myself anyway, but I went to a cinema and saw people I knew.

Speaker 36:13

Oh yeah.

Presenter6:18

waving at me blindly from the screen on uh embarking for Suez and I uh suddenly realized I ought to have been there. But despite your lack of aptitude and and interest, you finished as a captain.

Presenter6:30

Well, yes, that was uh very strange. I was an acting unpaid temporary captain uh at the war office in charge of redundancy.

Presenter6:40

So you made yourself redundant? Yes. And then what? And then I came out and uh I'd been saving up money really to buy time. And then I started to write. Uh that is when I started and I had bought myself about a year's free time. What did you write?

Presenter6:55

I wrote a book about an unknown writer called Hugh Kingsmill who, since the appearance of my book, has remained unknown. A biographer himself? Yes, he was. Was it taken by the first publisher to whom you sent it? It was taken by the seventeenth publisher to whom I sent it. I I the the parcel used to come back every month and I eventually used to have a uh a sense of exhilaration at seeing it again, a shock of recognition.

Presenter7:20

Well, good for number 17. Did you get a big advance? I got what Kingsmouth himself would have called, or did call once, more of a retreat than an advance.

Presenter7:30

I think we'll break here for your third record. What's that? My third record is Franz Berwal's Quartet in E-flat. This really.

Michael Holroyd7:32

Third record

Presenter7:39

represents my mother. My mother is Swedish and I'm therefore half Swedish. And this is the only Swedish composer I know whose music I respond to very much indeed.

Speaker 38:08

Uh

Presenter8:49

An excerpt from Franz Beervol's Quartet in E-flat by the Bentian Quartet.

Presenter8:55

So your biography of Hugh Kingsmill was published. What was the reaction?

Presenter9:00

Well, it was very kindly received, really, by reviewers of a first book, uh more kind than it should have been, and my publisher calculated we had sold thirty-nine copies, and we went out and had lunch at the Cafe Royal to celebrate. Who paid?

Presenter9:15

He did.

Presenter9:18

Very generous.

Presenter9:20

Well then you tackled a biography of another biographer, a better known name this time, Lytton Straggy. You wrote a draft in a year, but it wasn't as easy as that. I wrote a draft in a year which was really a a critical work and I discovered that uh that really wouldn't stand on its own and it needed to be partly a biography to be any good, to be what I

Presenter9:43

really wanted to do. Uh Straits's work was very personal and you c one couldn't give uh a good interpretation of it, an original one, without um some knowledge of his life and I didn't have any so I had to then change it into a biography.

Speaker 39:55

Hmm.

Presenter9:56

How long did you spend on the work altogether? Altogether, um, over six years.

Presenter10:01

And you went to the family to get the material? Yes, I went uh particularly to Lytton's rather James Strachey, uh who was very helpful in his own way. We struck up a a very good relationship, but it was um

Michael Holroyd10:03

Yeah.

Presenter10:13

A very strange one. Um we didn't see eye to eye, but we decided how to agree to differ.

Presenter10:20

How many letters and documents did you examine for that very long book? Well, I thought about something in the region of thirty thousand. Uh there was a vast amount of material.

Presenter10:31

You spent six years with the shade of this man, reading his letters and memoirs, talking to his friends. Did you find yourself being somehow obsessed with his life? Wasn't there a sense of identification and empathy? There is a sense of great involvement after such a time, but I think that is correct, so long as it doesn't turn into a sentimentality. The right attitude, I think, for any writer, and that's for a novelist or a biographer, is partly involvement.

Presenter11:00

And partly detachment. And if you can keep those two in suspension, that is the right balance, I think. Yes, I did. Yes. Not really very successfully, because although it was published abroad, it was not published here because of the risk of libel. Someone thought that perhaps he was represented in the book. And I couldn't really afford to, shall we say, win a libel case. The costs are so much, you know.

Presenter11:30

Now this wasn't the first time there had been threats of libel on on both the b biographies. If you are writing biographies about people who have died in the recent past...

Presenter11:41

There is a risk of libel always if you are trying to tell the truth.

Presenter11:45

Let's have your fourth record. What's that be? My fourth record.

Presenter11:49

record is the funeral march from Benjamin Britton's variations on a theme uh by Frank Bridge. This really represents English music, what I understand by English music and would remind me very much of England. Also a funeral march might not be inappropriate on the island.

Presenter12:56

The funeral march from Benjamin Britton's variations on a theme of Frank Bridge, the composer conducting the English Chamber Orchestra.

Presenter13:05

You wrote a book of amusing and perceptive and mainly autobiographical essays, Unreceived Opinions.

Presenter13:12

Which I found absolutely enchanting. Then you tackled another vast biography.

Presenter13:17

Oh, Augustus John, yes, that's um moved from

Michael Holroyd13:18

Yeah.

Presenter13:20

Bloomsbury into Bohemia. Augustus John left a huge family. Presumably all of them had to be consulted, and most of them wanted to get in on the actual. There is an acknowledgement. I was going to say acknowledgement page, but there is an acknowledgement pages of the people I saw while writing the book. And I d can't remember how many hundreds there are, but I saw a great number of people.

Michael Holroyd13:28

And there is a

Presenter13:38

Here and abroad. And that is part of the joy of it, of course. One meets all sorts of people really. The correspondence alone in a job like this must be daunting.

Speaker 313:39

Yeah.

Presenter13:48

Yes, that is daunting. And some of the research is very much like sort of routine inquiries. One has to go through certain hoops, and that is very tedious at times. But then, of course, there's the unexpected discovery which suddenly comes up and it justifies it.

Presenter14:03

Record number five. Number five is um Beethoven's Quartet, number sixteen in F. I feel that music like this on the island might reconcile me to my fate.

Presenter15:15

The beginning of the last movement of Beethoven's Quartet No. sixteen in F, Opus one three five, by the Budapest Quartet.

Presenter15:24

Your current project, Michael, seems the most daunting of all.

Presenter15:28

Bernard Shaw. Yes. It is a fearful challenge. I hardly knew what I was taking on. He lived, as you know, until his mid nineties, and it's been calculated, I think, that he wrote something in the region of twenty letters a day, on average. And it is a formidable amount, and they're scattered.

Presenter15:48

Really all over the world. Is this going to be a multi-volume job? Ideally not. Ideally, I would like to do a single volume, but there is so much that it might have to be more than that. And there's always a possibility of doing a a companion volume, rather as Martin Gilbert does in his Churchill biography, of unpublished material, but not pure biography. Really for scholars and libraries and so on. How far are you in?

Presenter16:16

Well, I've been at work approximately 18 months on this, and I have done

Presenter16:21

Quite a lot of research. Um most of the research abroad. I've concentrated on Ireland and America and a bit in Britain and now I'm continuing really in Britain. I approach the British Library shortly. How long is it going to take you all together?

Presenter16:37

It will probably take the best part of ten years to complete.

Presenter16:42

No relations this time, of course. Committees. Oh, trustees, no.

Michael Holroyd16:45

Trustees.

Presenter16:48

Have you given up the novel altogether?

Presenter16:51

I'd like to return and write novels. My original plan had been to sandwich novel writing with uh biography. They're two different disciplines, and I thought it would be quite good.

Presenter17:02

to move from one to the other, but I have lost the

Michael Holroyd17:03

Uh

Presenter17:05

discipline of writing fiction and um I would find it very difficult to do so now.

Presenter17:10

There's some people say my biographies read rather like fiction and my fiction read a little too close to life.

Speaker 217:13

But this

Presenter17:16

Um but I hope to go back. Yes, I would like to very much and I hope I will be able to.

Presenter17:20

You've done a great deal of fighting on on behalf of the author to get some kind of square deal for him in the form of a minuscule payment each time a book of his is borrowed from a a library. Public lending, right? Yes. Well a lot of authors have been fighting for this and I I suppose started really fighting at the beginning of 1968 and have continued.

Presenter17:42

To try with other writers to get MPs to see this. And it's a very disheartening fight in many ways. It is a very modest thing for which we're asking. It is a very just thing. We have spent a very great deal of time and indeed money on getting a system which will work, which will not put librarians out, which would not inconvenience the borrower, and which is as equitable and as fair and as practical as I think could be found.

Presenter18:14

And we haven't got it. Uh and it seems quite extraordinary to me. Yes, it has, over twenty five years now, I think. And I can see why people begin to get rather cynical about democracy and the mm party political system. Um I really can.

Presenter18:32

Yeah.

Presenter18:33

Right, record number six. Number six is Brokofiev's sonata for piano number eight. Um this would be my only piano music on the island, I think.

Presenter19:42

An excerpt from Prokofiev's Sonata for Piano No. 8, played by Sviatoslav Rishta. Now, what are your qualifications as a castaway mike? Could you look after yourself? Could you build some kind of shelter?

Presenter19:54

Um I couldn't look after myself and I couldn't build some kind of shelter. I think that's probably accurate.

Presenter20:02

Well, have you got any skills that might be useful? Can you cook? Can you fish? Um I never have fished. Um I can thaw, but I don't suppose there'll be any frozen food there.

Speaker 320:08

A have it.

Michael Holroyd20:08

Uh

Presenter20:13

I doubt it. I'm not very good at this sort of thing. I think I would fade away rather quickly. Would you try to escape as an alternative to fading away? Do you know anything about small craft or navigation? Uh no, I know nothing about that. I think I would prefer to fade away on land rather than at sea.

Presenter20:31

Oh well, record number seven. Uh number seven is Schubert's String Quintet in C major and the

Presenter20:39

The reason I'd like this is it's the music I never tire of at all, and so it would last me as long as I lasted on the island.

Presenter21:48

The closing passage of Schubert's String Quintet in C

Presenter21:53

an augmented Amadeus Quartet. Which brings us now to your last record.

Presenter21:57

My last record is Jack Emery reading from Samuel Beckett's Malone Dies. I think it would be extremely

Presenter22:05

Appropriate to take this, and also I like it so much because of its vitality and humour facing death.

Speaker 222:18

Yeah.

Presenter22:18

I shall soon be quite dead at last, in spite of all.

Presenter22:26

Perhaps next month.

Presenter22:29

Then it will be the month of April or of May.

Presenter22:35

for the year is still young.

Presenter22:38

A thousand little signs tell me so

Presenter22:42

Perhaps I am wrong.

Presenter22:45

Perhaps I shall survive Saint John the Baptist's day.

Presenter22:49

and even the fourteenth of July Festival of Freedom.

Presenter22:55

Indeed, I would not put it past me to pant on to the transfiguration not to speak of the assumption

Presenter23:06

But I do not think so.

Presenter23:09

Jack Emery, and some works of Samuel Beckett. If you could take only one disc of your age,

Presenter23:15

I think it would be the Beethoven. The Beethoven court yet.

Presenter23:18

and one luxury to take with you.

Presenter23:20

Would I be allowed a bed?

Presenter23:22

Yes, indeed. Um if it's a desert island, perhaps a water bed.

Presenter23:25

Well, it better be something that doesn't matter if it gets wet because if you're not going to manage a hut, water bed, yes, by all means. Right, right.

Presenter23:34

A very sensible solution. And one book apart from the Bible and Shakespeare which are already there and big encyclopedias which we don't allow? I think I'd like to take The High Hill of the Muses by Hugh Kingsmill, which is his personal anthology of English literature. Right. The High Hill of the Muses, selected by Hugh Kingsmill. And thank you, Michael Holroyd, for letting us hear your desert island discs. Thank you. Goodbye, everyone.

Michael Holroyd24:10

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