Miss Read

Speaker 20:00

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

Our castaway this week is the novelist Miss Reed.

Presenter0:35

Miss Reed, have you ever imagined yourself as a Robinson Crusoe?

Miss Read0:40

No, I haven't, until I was invited to come on your programme, and then I rather like the idea of being a castaway.

Miss Read0:47

Does music mean a lot to you?

Miss Read0:50

Not, I think, as much as words do, but I do listen to music quite a bit.

Presenter0:54

Do you play an instrument?

Miss Read0:56

No, I ought to, but I I I learnt to play the piano, but I can't play it.

Presenter1:00

It didn't take.

Miss Read1:01

We didn't take

Presenter1:02

What's your first record?

Miss Read1:03

To the piano concerto in A major by Mozart, K four eight eight

Presenter1:08

Why do you choose that?

Miss Read1:09

I like it because

Miss Read1:11

It it reminds me of how a piano should be played. This is I think Dennis Matthews at his very best.

Miss Read1:16

And I had to practise so much and could never play at all that this is a comforting thing to think that it can be played this way.

Presenter2:22

Part of the first movement on Bozart's piano concerto in A major, K four eight eight, Dennis Matthews as the soloist.

Presenter2:30

What part of the country do you come from?

Miss Read2:32

I live in Berkshire.

Presenter2:33

Yes. Do you come from Berkshire?

Miss Read2:36

No, I was born in London.

Miss Read2:38

I moved into the country when I was about seven.

Presenter2:41

One of a large family?

Miss Read2:42

No, unfortunately. One of three girls. I was the one in the middle. What was your very first ambition? I wasn't terribly ambitious at all, really. I was lazy.

Miss Read2:52

But I suppose later on when I got about sixteen or seventeen I decided it would be very nice to write and to go to Fleet Street. Did anything happen about that? My father was quite horrified at the thought of any daughter of his being mixed up with such a racketing crowd as the Fleet Street crowd, and he persuaded me that it'd be far better to go in for teaching, which was a much more respectable um sort of work.

Presenter3:16

What was your first post as a teacher?

Miss Read3:19

Well, my first post as a teacher was in Middlesex, but I had already done a little country school teaching um in Cambridgeshire when I was on school practice mainly.

Miss Read3:28

Middlesex, of course, was a very busy place. It was a new school and a large school at that.

Miss Read3:36

I think it's been built for five hundred and when I got there there were eight hundred and fifty children.

Presenter3:40

Where?

Miss Read3:41

At hate.

Presenter3:42

Hey, where'd they make grammophone rig? Good.

Miss Read3:44

That's right, a number of the children had mothers who worked up for the Gram.

Miss Read3:48

Up the gram, no

Presenter3:49

That's what they call it.

Miss Read3:49

Yes.

Presenter3:49

That's my life group.

Presenter3:51

How long did you stay there?

Miss Read3:53

I was there for about some five or six years, and then I went to teach in Ealing, which of course adjoined it, and I was very happy there.

Miss Read4:02

And then the walking.

Miss Read4:04

And I got married.

Miss Read4:06

and moved to Whitney in Oxfordshire.

Miss Read4:10

My husband was stationed nearby.

Presenter4:12

And did you had you given up teaching altogether?

Miss Read4:14

Yes, I had then. Yes.

Miss Read4:16

Yeah.

Presenter4:16

Let's have your second record. What's that to be?

Miss Read4:19

For the second record

Miss Read4:21

is one of Michael Flanders and Donald Swann's records, and the item here is about the branch lines and the slow train a very nostalgic, lovely little record, I think, which reminds me of Whitney, because sometimes I took my small daughter to Whitney station, where we sat and

Miss Read4:41

uh imbibed the peace of it all, and a train came about once an hour, it seemed. So I'm particularly fond of this record.

Miss Read4:49

Uh

Presenter4:49

Travel awar from Littleton Badsy to Openshore.

Presenter4:57

At long Saturn I stand well clear of the law.

Speaker 15:01

Go

Presenter5:02

Yeah.

Presenter5:04

No whitewashed pebbles, no up and no down, From Formy Four Crosses to Dunsole Town.

Presenter5:13

I won't be going a day.

Presenter5:17

On the slope.

Presenter5:20

Michael Flanders and Donald Swann.

Presenter5:23

Slow train

Presenter5:24

Your husband was a teacher.

Miss Read5:27

Yes, he taught at Newbury Grammar School, as it was then.

Miss Read5:30

Uh and he was there.

Miss Read5:32

After the war

Miss Read5:34

until about a year ago when he retired, and his subject was history.

Presenter5:38

Mm-hmm. Now, this Fleet Street idea was still at the back of your mind, wasn't it?

Miss Read5:44

Yes, I think it was. I wouldn't have um said so when I'd been asked at the time.

Miss Read5:50

It wasn't positively in the foreground of my mind, but there was always this vague feeling that one day I would get down to some writing when I had time.

Presenter5:58

So, did you have time?

Miss Read6:00

Yes, I had more time when my daughter started school and she was about four or five, and that's really when I started in earnest, and started on the light essay.

Presenter6:10

Where did you send them?

Miss Read6:11

Well, I aimed at Punch, which I could see was flying high.

Miss Read6:16

And it certainly was flying high because I had oh

Miss Read6:20

Dozens and dozens of rejections before anything was accepted, but after that I worked for two or three years for them.

Miss Read6:27

and learnt a great deal was taught a great deal by punch.

Miss Read6:30

The experience was quite um good for me.

Presenter6:33

What other publications did you work for?

Miss Read6:35

Other magazines such as Country Life and The Lady

Miss Read6:39

And you also writing for the B B C? Yes, mainly schools broadcasts. I enjoyed doing that. I think having been a teacher it helped.

Presenter6:48

When did you decide to tackle your first book?

Miss Read6:51

I was very lucky in that Sir Robert Lusty noticed a country school article that I had in The Observer.

Miss Read6:58

and he asked me if I'd like to try my hand at a village school book.

Miss Read7:04

and I went to see him, and he asked me if uh

Miss Read7:07

I would tackle it.

Presenter7:09

Now, was it his idea that you should call yourself Miss Reed with with no no Christian name?

Miss Read7:14

Yes, it was, but not until the whole book was finished.

Miss Read7:18

It was written in the first person, and he thought it was a very good idea to present it as an autobiography.

Miss Read7:24

And I think he got something there, really.

Presenter7:27

Did you find writing your first book after these articles a great tussle? There's a great difference between fifteen hundred words and sixty thousand.

Miss Read7:37

I found it terrifically hard. It was the

Miss Read7:39

It was the real headache of that book, and how to how to tackle it I didn't know.

Miss Read7:45

And in the end I did the obvious thing. I broke it down a school year into three terms.

Miss Read7:52

and each term I broke down.

Miss Read7:55

into eight chapters.

Miss Read7:57

and so I managed to find that I could get the right length then by making this little banister for myself.

Presenter8:06

Well, there you are, your first book, Village School. Let's have record number three.

Miss Read8:10

The Trumpet Voluntary.

Miss Read8:11

Um by Jeremiah Clark.

Miss Read8:14

When I was still teaching, the war was on, and I remember coming home

Miss Read8:19

to lunch one day.

Miss Read8:20

These were happy days before school dinners. One could go home and have a proper lunch.

Miss Read8:26

cooked by my excellent landlady.

Miss Read8:30

and on the one o'clock news it said that France had fallen.

Miss Read8:34

and this I felt was quite shattering, and I remember putting on this record

Miss Read8:39

And I found it great comfort.

Presenter9:36

Jeremiah Clarke's Trumpet Voluntary, a performance conducted in the Free Trade Hall, Manchester, by Sir Hamilton Harty.

Presenter9:43

Now, your first book, Village School, partly autobiographical. Now, since then, there's been one book every year.

Miss Read9:50

Yes, sometimes too.

Presenter9:52

And how many years has that been?

Miss Read9:54

Heavens, the first one came out in'fifty five, so it must be

Miss Read9:58

Twenty two, mustn't it?

Presenter10:00

And they're all in print, I believe.

Miss Read10:02

Yes, except one of the children's books, I think, is out of print.

Presenter10:06

Now they're all set apart from the children's books they're all set in in two villages and a small town. Yes. That you've invented?

Miss Read10:13

Yeah.

Miss Read10:15

Well, one village is entirely imaginary. That's the village of Fairacre that I started with, the village school one.

Miss Read10:21

And that

Miss Read10:23

is so imaginary that I have to have a sketch map propped up to make quite sure that I don't get the pub on the wrong side of the road and that type of thing.

Miss Read10:32

The other village is called Thrush Green, and that's based on a real place, which is at the northern end of Whitney's, where I told you I lived during the war.

Miss Read10:42

But it's as I remember it thirty years ago, of course, now.

Miss Read10:46

And that was wood cream. And the sp

Presenter10:48

Tomorrow. Yeah.

Miss Read10:48

Town Caxley. Well, Caxley began as any market town in the south of England.

Miss Read10:55

until I wrote a book called The Market Square, when I definitely pinpointed that as Newbury Market Square.

Miss Read11:01

In fact, the artist came up to sketch Newbury Marketplace.

Miss Read11:07

Only in the Edwardian past I haven't got anything going very far back, and that

Miss Read11:13

really is because I've always been fascinated by the tales that my aunts and uncles told me as children of the times just before I could remember.

Presenter11:23

Now, the critics have used phrases like innocent charm.

Presenter11:29

artless and gentle, and so on, about your books, in which there are no murders, no rape, no violence, hardly any sex, right against current literary trends.

Presenter11:40

Advisedly.

Miss Read11:41

Yes, partly purposefully.

Miss Read11:45

I think people are fed up with uh this enormous amount of um violence and sex and rape and so on. I think that probably there are heaps of people who'd far rather pick up a book like mine.

Miss Read11:58

and have an escape from the tough world that one reads so much about. In any case, I don't think that on the whole people are interested in power and hitting other people over the head.

Miss Read12:12

and leaping into bed with all manner of other people. I think on the whole people are concerned with

Miss Read12:18

The families?

Miss Read12:20

and their financial worries and their health.

Presenter12:23

Your books have big sales in the United States.

Miss Read12:26

Yes, I'm thankful to say they do, and I have lots of very kind letters from America. I think many Americans look back

Miss Read12:36

to uh England as their as their route.

Miss Read12:39

Place.

Miss Read12:40

And of course they have

Miss Read12:42

a great interest in village life, particularly the slightly idealised village life which I write about.

Presenter12:48

Which other countries do the books go to?

Miss Read12:51

They've appeared in Germany, I think in Holland, and in Japan, which I find surprising.

Presenter12:55

Didn't find some problems.

Presenter12:58

Well, you'll never know about the Japanese, do you? Let's have record number four.

Miss Read13:03

This is Rhapsody No. three in C major by Don Gnani.

Miss Read13:07

and I choose it because I think it is the most wonderful tune. I first heard it when I was at Cambridge.

Miss Read13:13

played by one of my fellow students, and I find it very haunting and beautiful.

Presenter14:06

Rhapsody number three in C major from Four Rhapsodies by Doch Nanyi, played by Joseph Cooper.

Presenter14:14

Now you live in a cottage right in the country.

Miss Read14:17

Yes, very lucky. We live in West Berkshire, almost in Wiltshire.

Presenter14:22

Tell me about your writing discipline. Do you write regular hours every morning? How do you set about it?

Miss Read14:27

I wish I could say I did write every morning, but I I can't settle to things like that really.

Miss Read14:34

There are too many other things to do. But um I make

Miss Read14:38

a certain amount of discipline for myself by telling the publisher when the book will arrive.

Miss Read14:43

And that gives me a certain amount of flexibility from day to day, but does mean that I've got to meet a deadline.

Presenter14:50

What are your other occupations? You're a magistrate?

Miss Read14:54

Yes, I'm a magistrate, which takes some time.

Presenter14:57

How much time?

Miss Read14:58

I should think a day a week, roughly.

Presenter15:00

Do your experiences on the bench provide material sometimes for the books?

Miss Read15:06

Funnily enough, I don't think they do.

Miss Read15:08

Except that I have used a court scene, I think, about twice in various novels.

Miss Read15:15

But the actual things that happen in court and the cases that are brought before you

Miss Read15:20

I haven't ever used

Presenter15:22

And what are your other occupations?

Miss Read15:25

I do a certain amount of gardening and cooking and all the things that a housewife does.

Miss Read15:30

and I'm a school manager at our local school, which I enjoy.

Presenter15:34

Record number five.

Miss Read15:35

While record number five is called The Haunted Ballroom,

Miss Read15:39

Um by Geoffrey Toy.

Miss Read15:41

I think this is a wonderful tune. I heard it first as a young girl, and

Miss Read15:46

It's literally haunted me. I think it is the most marvellous thing, and I think they made a belly of it. I think I saw it. But

Miss Read15:53

The bellet doesn't mean so much to me as the music does.

Presenter16:59

The Haunted Ballroom by Geoffrey Toy, played by The Orquestre Monde.

Presenter17:05

Now record number six.

Miss Read17:07

Well, record number six is by Kathleen Ferrier. I couldn't have a collection of records, I don't think, without at least one of Kathleen Ferrier, this marvellous voice.

Miss Read17:17

And uh this I think is one of her very best records.

Miss Read17:21

This piece of glue.

Miss Read17:23

Fascinates me, particularly at the end when you've got

Miss Read17:27

I don't know whether you call it an interval, I'm not up in these musical terms, but there's a very odd and surprising

Miss Read17:33

interval towards the end, which really gives one cold shudders and is uh absolutely delightful.

Presenter18:36

Kathleen Ferrier singing What Is Life? from Glux, Orpheus, and Yuridici.

Presenter18:42

Would you be fairly capable on this island at looking after yourself? Could you build a hut?

Miss Read18:47

I don't think I'd make a very good job of it. I should prefer to find a cave and make do with that and

Miss Read18:54

furnish it, you know, and that type of thing.

Presenter18:55

What will?

Miss Read18:57

A few banana leaves for mats and what not.

Presenter18:59

Yeah.

Presenter19:00

And what are you going to eat?

Miss Read19:02

I think mainly turtles' eggs, I should think, as I'm not very good at killing anything and berries and fruit.

Presenter19:06

Uh

Miss Read19:09

Would you try to escape? Not very actively. I might light a fire so that the smoke went up and a passing steamer might drift in and collect me.

Miss Read19:18

or fly a flag, you know, a petticoat or something.

Miss Read19:21

But I don't think I should make a raft or a boat, because I know jolly well it would sing.

Presenter19:26

Well, in that case, you better not. Record number seven.

Miss Read19:31

Record number seven is one I've loved for a long time, and it's called Thank you, mister Bark. It's a nice, cheerful, gay tune that I'm sure would cheer me up on the island.

Presenter20:40

Thank you, mister Bach.

Presenter20:42

Composed by Van Phillips and played by the B B C Dance Orchestra conducted by Henry Hall. And that brings us to your last record.

Miss Read20:50

But my last record is from the importance of being earnest.

Miss Read20:55

which I think is a superb play and is the one thing I wish I could have written.

Miss Read21:02

I think it's quite perfect. And this is a record of uh the handbag scene where Edith Evans is talking to uh John Gilbert, who's John Worthing, of course, in the play.

Miss Read21:12

and how well they do it. She's Lady Bracknell.

Presenter21:15

Are your parents living?

Presenter21:18

I have lost both my parents.

Presenter21:21

To lose one parent, mister Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune.

Presenter21:27

To lose both looks like carelessness.

Presenter21:31

Who was your father?

Presenter21:33

He was evidently a man of some wealth.

Presenter21:36

Was he born in what the radical papers call the purple of commerce? Or did he rise from the ranks of the

Speaker 221:44

The aristocracy.

Presenter21:46

I'm afraid I really don't know. The fact is, Lady Bracknell, I said I had lost my parents. It would be nearer the truth to say that my parents seem to have lost me.

Presenter21:56

I don't actually know who I am by birth. I was uh

Presenter22:01

Well, I was found.

Presenter22:04

Sir John Gielgood and Dame Edith Evans in Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest. If you could take one disc out of the eight, which would it be?

Miss Read22:14

I should take the last one because it's voices.

Miss Read22:17

and I think one might get rather lonely and like to hear the sound of a human voice rather than music.

Presenter22:24

One luxury to take with you.

Miss Read22:26

I'll choose to take a large number of exercise books and a large number of ballpoint pens.

Miss Read22:33

and then I could get on with a new novel.

Presenter22:35

You always write in exercise books, do you?

Miss Read22:37

Yes.

Presenter22:39

And one book to take with you apart from the Bible and Shakespeare, and we don't allow big encyclopedias.

Miss Read22:45

Well, that's easy. I think I should take the Diary of a Country Parson by James Woodford.

Miss Read22:51

He was an eighteenth century parson who spent most of his time in Norfolk.

Miss Read22:55

And I can always go back to Parson Woodford's diary if I'm short of reading material. I've really rather loved James Woodford for the last forty years, and I think probably he'd last me up my time.

Presenter23:06

Diary of a Country Parson by James Woodford. And thank you, Miss Reed, for letting us hear your Desert Island Discs.

Miss Read23:14

Well, thank you for letting me come.

Presenter23:15

Goodbye everyone.

Speaker 223:25

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