Claire Rayner

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

This week, our Castaway is the author and journalist, Claire Rayner.

Presenter0:36

Claire, with what degree of dread do you view a spell on a desert island?

Claire Rayner0:41

Total dread. If I'm really going to be on my own.

Claire Rayner0:44

I'm a talker, you see. I I do like people and I love to be talked back to. In fact, my friends say that my epitaph ought to be shut up and listened. And there I'll have to, won't I?

Presenter0:52

How much would eight discs help?

Claire Rayner0:55

Oh, quite a bit. Quite a bit. Uh, I listen to music a lot.

Presenter0:58

Uh

Claire Rayner0:58

It's important to me.

Presenter0:58

Have you any musical skills yourself?

Claire Rayner1:00

Skill? Oh, none whatever. My family, if I start to sing, groan. Because I can't hit the notes right.

Presenter1:05

Did you find it very difficult to choose just eight records?

Claire Rayner1:07

Oh, enormously. My my initial list was was somewhat over sixty something and and that was the ones I absolutely had to have.

Presenter1:14

Yeah.

Claire Rayner1:15

It got worse from then on.

Presenter1:16

was the first one of John.

Claire Rayner1:17

Well the very first one, um, is to remind me of when I I was young, when I was small. This is something that used to come out of people's windows when I went for a walk, and that was always being played in other people's houses. Mendelssohn's Spring Song, and if I could have it played for choice rather badly

Claire Rayner1:30

That would be rather nice.

Presenter2:30

Mendelssohn's Spring Song I'm sorry we couldn't find one played rather badly, that was played rather well by Daniel Barramboy.

Claire Rayner2:36

Wasn't it, Jess?

Presenter2:37

Uh

Presenter2:38

What part of the country do you come from?

Claire Rayner2:39

Oh, I'm a Cockney. I'm a Londoner. Born in the square mile. I'm very proud of it. Educated in London? Well, to an extent. I was very much a wartime child, and that meant school was very interrupted and erratic.

Claire Rayner2:50

There was a time when I was at the City of London School for Girls, but being war time it was in Yorkshire and then I was bombed out and it's all very, very confused when I remember it all.

Presenter2:59

He went off to Canada quite early.

Claire Rayner3:00

Ah, that was immediately after the war. My my parents went to so many people did at that time, to to Canada in about nineteen forty six.

Presenter3:00

Uh

Presenter3:07

Yeah.

Claire Rayner3:07

Yeah.

Presenter3:07

Mm-hmm.

Claire Rayner3:07

And I went and tried it, didn't like it, came home.

Presenter3:10

What did you want to be?

Claire Rayner3:12

Oh, then oh, no question I was going to be the greatest actress the world had ever known.

Presenter3:14

You were in fact an actress for a while.

Claire Rayner3:17

Well, if you can call it that. It was pretty awful. Summer stock of the worst kind and

Presenter3:21

Where?

Claire Rayner3:22

Well, it was New England. I mean it all sounds very dramatic, remembering summer score. I suppose it was. But it'll give you an idea how bad they were. I I was cast in parts like Gertrude and Hamlet and the nurse in Romeo and Juliet. I was all of seventeen.

Presenter3:24

That's the right place to sell as well.

Claire Rayner3:34

Um

Presenter3:35

Well that's something to have played those posts. Well it was certainly.

Claire Rayner3:35

The level.

Claire Rayner3:37

Well it was but my qualification was very basic. I had an English accent and that was why they let me do it.

Presenter3:41

So you came back to England?

Claire Rayner3:44

Oh, indeed, yes. That that was just before the the Festival of Britain, nineteen fifty, I came home and it was lovely.

Presenter3:50

And had you given up your acting ambitions?

Claire Rayner3:52

Yes, I had to. I was I was much too large and much too noisy and it was quite obvious I I just didn't have the talent I

Claire Rayner3:57

Needed work.

Presenter3:58

What was your second ambition?

Claire Rayner4:00

Well, what I was looking for, quite honestly, was a career that would be exciting and dramatic and and and yet free and secure, a whole lot of complicated things, and I found it in nursing.

Claire Rayner4:09

Which a lot of people think of as sheer drive, but isn't. It's a super career for lots of ways for women.

Presenter4:14

Where did you study?

Claire Rayner4:15

Royal Northern Hospital in northern London. Did you want to specialise?

Claire Rayner4:19

Not specially, particularly. I did get involved with theatre work a good deal, but the patients couldn't talk back, so that wasn't as interesting as it might have been.

Presenter4:27

Now you rose to be a sister in the pediatric ward. Uh that's small children's ward, isn't it?

Claire Rayner4:30

Ordinar.

Presenter4:31

In the Whittington Hospital, London, I suspect that's in Highgate, isn't it?

Claire Rayner4:35

It is, yes. It was a

Claire Rayner4:36

Conglomeration of a hospital really. It was three old hospitals that had been boiled up into one huge one.

Claire Rayner4:41

Why did you give up nursing? Well, I was a bit too pregnant to go on. It was looking a bit peculiar in a tight-waisted uniform. Um I left about six weeks before my daughter was born. Uh she arrived rather early.

Speaker 14:45

Tight-waisted unit box.

Claire Rayner4:52

And there I was after twelve years, very happy, very busy, hectic years, stuck at home with a baby.

Speaker 14:52

Yeah.

Claire Rayner4:57

Is that when you started writing?

Speaker 14:57

Is that when you started writing?

Claire Rayner4:59

Well, it wasn't actually when I started, but it was when I really got going. I'd done a little earlier than this.

Speaker 15:03

Yeah.

Presenter5:03

Why

Claire Rayner5:03

Well in my I think it was my second year of training my sister Tudor had sent for me and said nurse the British Medical Association are having uh an essay competition you will enter it and in those days nurses did things like saying yes sister and did it so I did and I got a second prize and they sent me ten guineas now ten guineas when what I was actually getting in cash every month was six pounds was quite a sum of money and it did trigger something might have been the cash register bit of me I don't know

Presenter5:29

Yeah.

Claire Rayner5:30

But it made me think of writing once. I I was at home with a baby, yes.

Presenter5:33

Right. At this point, let's break off your second record. What's that to be?

Claire Rayner5:36

Well this may sound a bit odd, but one of the things I'm very interested in, always enjoyed enormously, is musicor, Victoria Musicor. And I wonder if you can find for me, it might be quite difficult, a recording of a very old song called With Me Little Wigger Wagger in My Hand. I don't mind who sings it, it's the song, not the singer in this case.

Presenter5:51

I've got no where'd you get your stick from. Huh, where did I get it from? My uncle left it to me. I call it my little wigger wagger. Never leave me. Huh, tell you all about it. Let it go, Professor.

Presenter6:08

Not long ago on the winter night, I dropped the candle and the house caught light. Firemen came as the stairs gave way. I was in the attic where the hoes began to play. With my little wigger wagger in my hand, a vintage recording sung by Arthur Elwood. Now, the beginnings of your writing career, mostly practical books for women, home nursing and baby care and so on.

Claire Rayner6:34

Well, yes, I wrote about what I knew.

Presenter6:36

Mm-hmm.

Claire Rayner6:36

And heaven knows I knew about that.

Presenter6:38

And then under another name you wrote some hospital novels.

Claire Rayner6:41

Oh dear yes, I was very embarrassed about this. I had an agent by this time who persuaded me to try my hand at these romantic novels, eighty percent hospital, twenty per cent romantic story. And and I was very shy about doing them, and that's why I insisted on a pseudonym. I said it was quite funny because I I said to the publisher, Please could I use another name? and he said, Well, yes, by all means and

Claire Rayner7:00

What would you like to call yourself? and said, Well, how about Berenice Chetwynd? because Berenice is my second name, and Chetwyd was my single name and he said, Oh, dear me, no, no, no, much too flowery, you couldn't possibly be called that So humbly I chose my sister's first name and a family surname, and it was some time before he found out, but we've remained friends for all that.

Presenter7:16

The name you did use was in fact Sheila Brandon. Sheila Brandon.

Claire Rayner7:17

Sheller brand.

Presenter7:19

It it's a very popular genre for for for women's fiction, the h the hospital romantic novel. Why do they have a particular appeal to women, this sort of novel?

Presenter7:28

Well I

Claire Rayner7:28

I wouldn't say it was only women, quite honestly. Lots of men do read them. Uh I can think of a lot of authors who who have a a good following of men. But it it's a lot of things. The appeal of the hospital novel. It's it's a closed society. It's life and death drama, ab absolutely. You can't have anything much more life and death than that. People on operating tables and so on.

Claire Rayner7:47

There's a a return to the womb in a sense. There's a childlike situation when you're a patient, and that's comforting. And of course there are strong sexual overtones as well. I mean, let's not pretend otherwise. All children play doctors and nurses, don't they, when they're small, and we all know why they're playing it. All that boiled up together, I think, adds up to a fairly seductive whole.

Presenter8:04

And, of course, once again, something you know about. Obviously a lot of material from your own experience went into Miss Brandon's novel.

Claire Rayner8:10

Well, they were so easy, yes. It was just bits of things that had actually happened in terms of medicine and total, total imagination in terms of love story, I promise.

Presenter8:16

How many did she write?

Claire Rayner8:18

Oh gosh, I can't remember. I think seven, six? Isn't it awful not to be able to remember for sure? As I say, I was really shy about them then.

Presenter8:21

Mm-hmm.

Presenter8:25

And in the meantime Claire Rayner was still writing books like A Hundred and One Facts An Expectant Mother Should Know and

Claire Rayner8:30

I'm very pregnant at the time actually for that one.

Presenter8:33

Yes. And then you decided to write a couple of serious novels on on serious subjects.

Claire Rayner8:38

Not quite. By this time I'd learnt some of the craft of putting fiction together from Sheila Brandon.

Claire Rayner8:44

And I thought it was time I had to go. And I did try one on genetic engineering called The Medalist, and another Time to Heal about cancer research. Looking back on them, the mistake I made was writing

Claire Rayner8:55

in the novel form and putting ideas too much to the fore.

Claire Rayner8:59

Novels are by definition about people, and I cared more about the ideas I was exploring in those books than perhaps I should have done.

Presenter9:05

How did they do?

Claire Rayner9:06

Reasonably well, but not commercially so. That is, they were were respectably reviewed in respectable journals and they they were published abroad, which is always gratifying. But they didn't exactly um set the till ringing and let's not pretend they did. The tax man did not rub his hands with glee when they came out.

Presenter9:17

A net.

Presenter9:20

And they

Presenter9:22

Let's have another record.

Claire Rayner9:23

Well, the next one I'd I'd like to have is is a reflection of my my fascination for cities. I love city life. I've been pounding pavements all my life.

Claire Rayner9:31

And Stephen Sondheim wrote a marvellous musical called Company with a lot of songs in it that that I liked im immensely. And the one I'd like to have is about living in a city. I know it's New York, but never mind. It's called Another Hundred People Just Got Off of the Train and if I could have the track from the

Claire Rayner9:46

Cast recording. That would be lovely.

Presenter9:48

The New Yorker

Claire Rayner9:49

New York Cast recording, yes please.

Presenter9:49

Are we

Speaker 19:51

Another hundred people just got off of the train and came up through the ground while Another hundred people just got off of the bus and are looking around at Another hundred people who got off of the plane And are looking at us who got off of the train and are playing the bus maybe yesterday

Speaker 110:07

It's a city of strangers. Some come to work, some to play. A city of strangers, some come to stare, some to stay.

Presenter10:16

Another hundred people sung by Pamela Myers from the New York cast of Stephen Sondheim's Company.

Presenter10:23

Now, the till wasn't ringing after your two serious novels.

Presenter10:28

You determined that you were going to write some bestsellers, and you set down to to mix the ingredients.

Claire Rayner10:33

Yes, it does sound uh very mercenary, doesn't it? It wasn't only to make the till ring, but if you write a book you're really communicating, you do want to know that people out there are going to read it. And the only way you know that people are reading your book is is by the nu the amount number of copies that sell. So, yes, I sat down and made a list of what I thought would would really make a book popular.

Claire Rayner10:53

I thought people liked to feel at the end of a of reading a story that they learned something painlessly.

Claire Rayner10:58

So well researched history, I thought, would would

Claire Rayner11:00

Fit that bill.

Claire Rayner11:02

They like to feel, I think, at a time of great change, as we're going through now, that there will be a tomorrow.

Claire Rayner11:07

And the best way to be sure that there'll be a tomorrow is to know about yesterday, so that's history again. And the nicest way to tell a historical story is through a family.

Claire Rayner11:14

All this together boiled down, as I say, to a story about two children pulled out of the slums of Seven Dials in eighteen hundred.

Claire Rayner11:22

one of whom becomes a a a grave robber, then an apothecary, then a surgeon, and founds a hospital.

Claire Rayner11:27

The other becomes an actress. They have a star-crossed love affair, if you like, in the first book. And from then on,

Claire Rayner11:32

The the two families they found cross and recross down the century.

Presenter11:36

Yes, this is to be a Romance fleuve in in a number of volumes.

Claire Rayner11:39

Well, I'm aiming at twelve if I and the readers survive that long.

Presenter11:43

And how far have you got?

Claire Rayner11:44

Well, I just finished writing the sixth and the seventh is already titled and planned.

Presenter11:48

Yes, and you've succeeded in i in your ambition because The Performers, which is the generic title for the whole work, is doing exceedingly well.

Claire Rayner11:55

Happily, yes. And not only in England. It's lovely to get copies in extraordinary languages. I mean, Icelandic looks odd.

Claire Rayner12:03

But it is nice to see to see them selling abroad and doing well.

Presenter12:05

Yeah.

Claire Rayner12:06

And they've all got London place names and it's rather interesting to notice that even with foreign translations they keep the original titles.

Presenter12:12

The first one is what Gaussian is.

Claire Rayner12:13

Gower Street and then came the Haymarket and then uh I've got a remember now, Paddington Green, Soho Square, Bedford Row just out, Longacre I've just finished writing and it's Charing Cross that's on the horizon coming up.

Presenter12:24

And it's go coming up how far towards the present?

Claire Rayner12:26

Charing Cross will bring us to the 1880s when when when I write that one, I just sort of got through the sixties. Eventually I'm hoping to be able to get as far as, shall we say, 1945.

Presenter12:30

Just

Presenter12:35

I hope.

Presenter12:37

And we don't know what that's going to be called.

Claire Rayner12:38

Oh, please, no, no, no, not yet.

Presenter12:42

Right, record number four.

Claire Rayner12:43

Oh this is just just for the sheer joy of listening to it. Symphony Espagniol by Lalo. Played please by Henrik Schering.

Claire Rayner13:01

Uh

Presenter13:44

An excerpt from Lalo's Samphonie Espagnol, Henrik sharing with the Chicago Symphony.

Presenter13:50

You write very quickly, don't you, Claire?

Claire Rayner13:53

Yes, probably a little bit too quickly, but what I'm aiming for is not great literature. I mean, quite honestly, I wouldn't know literature if it bit me in the leg. What I'm aiming to do is to tell a story that will keep people reading, that makes them a bit breathless. And I think that writing it fairly fast helps people to to read it at the same sort of rate. I do tidy up a bit afterwards, but I do work fast.

Presenter14:10

How do you write dictate straight on the typewriter?

Claire Rayner14:13

Not fiction. Fiction comes out of the end of my fingers onto a typewriter, an electric one, which does type some very odd words sometimes. Um non-fiction I can dictate in fact. I dictate an enormous number of the letters that I answer for for my problem page. Uh but I use both, you know, I'm I'm reasonably flexible.

Presenter14:30

Regular art?

Claire Rayner14:31

Oh, absolutely. I'm at my desk at about quarter to eight in the morning. One of the joys of living over the shop, isn't it?

Presenter14:35

Yeah.

Claire Rayner14:35

You don't have to get on a bus and have a long journey.

Presenter14:36

On the bus and have a long t

Claire Rayner14:38

Uh and work flat out.

Presenter14:40

You mentioned your your problem page. You you get through a lot of journalistic work uh uh under various other names. I I've I've got some here, Anne Linton, Ruth Martin, Isabel Sachs. I declare which I love

Claire Rayner14:51

Yes, well that was Ida Clare, poor lady. Yes, she was inflicted upon me by an editor and I'm still friends with her. Surprising, isn't it? Yes.

Presenter14:53

It's inflicted.

Presenter14:58

Yeah.

Claire Rayner14:59

Well, yes, the the problem page of the sign, I I deal with about forty thousand letters a year, give or take six or seven.

Presenter15:04

Are you really? You deal with all as it happened.

Claire Rayner15:05

Deal with all as it happened. Oh yes, yes. Every one of them. I read every letter that comes in and sign every answer that comes out.

Presenter15:11

Yes. And you also write for Woman's Own?

Claire Rayner15:14

Yes, I do the medical column for Woman's Own. Uh that that one was where I was Ruth Martin. When I first joined Woman's Own, it was still traditional, as it were, to have a house name.

Claire Rayner15:23

for some correspondence and I was there with Martin, but I now use my own name.

Presenter15:26

You must have a staff to help with all this.

Claire Rayner15:28

Well yes, yes, I do have four splendid secretaries, friends as well, and a a research helper.

Claire Rayner15:34

And w we are a bit of a cottage industry, I must admit.

Presenter15:36

And you've now have three children. How to fit all this in is really something. Because you do radio and television as well.

Claire Rayner15:39

The fetal

Claire Rayner15:43

Mm, yes, isn't it awful? I've I've got this awful problem with most freelance workers. I don't say no to anything.

Presenter15:48

Record number five.

Claire Rayner15:50

Well, this is um because on the island I couldn't bear not to hear the human voice, uh especially the voice of a man I've been in love with for at least thirty years. Laurence Olivier, please.

Presenter16:00

Oh, that is too solid flesh.

Presenter16:03

Wood melt.

Presenter16:06

Thaw and resolve itself into a dew.

Presenter16:10

Or that the Everlasting had not fixed his cannon against self-slaughter.

Presenter16:17

Oh god.

Presenter16:20

God.

Presenter16:23

How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world.

Presenter16:30

Sir Laurence Olivier, a speech from the soundtrack of his film of Hamlet.

Presenter16:36

Now, your husband works at home as well, doesn't he? So what does he do?

Claire Rayner16:39

He does.

Claire Rayner16:40

He's a painter.

Claire Rayner16:42

Also writes as Ed Noir, but also helps me. He's marvellous and very supportive and does quite a lot of the research on the theatrical side of the novels.

Presenter16:46

And

Presenter16:50

He was an actor to start with.

Claire Rayner16:51

Indeed, yes, I saw him on the stage of the old Vic two years before I ever met him, which I think's a very romantic thing.

Presenter16:56

Mhm. And w do your children show any signs of um

Presenter16:59

following in your autistic footsteps?

Claire Rayner17:01

Let me think. My daughter is is very interested in politics but wants to go to art school so she's following very much in her father's footsteps. My middle son, he's going to be a biologist, so he's going off on his own tangent. And our youngest is going to follow, I suppose, his father, you could say, because uh he he's going to be a a cross between what he's going to say is he's going to be Fred Kelly or Gina Stair when he grows up.

Presenter17:21

Or something in the middle. He's the only boy.

Claire Rayner17:22

He's the only boy at the local tap dancing school.

Presenter17:25

Now you you're a very successful lady with with a great earning capacity. You you issued a statement a little while ago, or you announced in an interview, however, if you like to put it, you're not going to leave any money to your children.

Presenter17:36

Which was an interesting idea.

Claire Rayner17:38

Well, it it's not as mean as it sounds. But w when Gower Street first made a really big sale in the States and made a lot of money first of the performers, there was a certain amount of publicity about the fact that that all these dollars were coming in.

Presenter17:45

This was the first part of the performance.

Claire Rayner17:51

And the children were coming home from school and saying, Golly, we're rich So we said to them very firmly that no, we were not rich and that certainly they mustn't think they were going to grow up to be uh rich people's children. I felt this very strongly because it seems to me that the best things always are the ones you work for your yourself and that the best legacy any of us can give our children is not money, but but

Claire Rayner18:10

a solid grounding idea, education and and being cared for and and fun and enjoyment and all these things, so that when the time comes for them to go out on their own, they can go out on their own, but be on their own. I just don't feel that that having a lot of money is good for anybody.

Claire Rayner18:23

Um, and that's what I made. I wasn't just being mean and grabby, I promise.

Presenter18:26

Mad Shotum.

Presenter18:28

Your next record.

Claire Rayner18:29

Well, every love affair and I has a special song, hasn't it? And I've been married to the same man for twenty years, and this song's very special to us.

Claire Rayner18:36

Could I have Elephants Gerald singing? It was just one of those things.

Speaker 118:39

Romeo, why not face the fact, my dear? It was just

Speaker 218:46

Yeah

Speaker 218:46

Uh

Speaker 118:47

One of those things.

Speaker 118:52

Just one of those crazy flings One of those bells that

Claire Rayner19:00

Now and then

Speaker 219:02

Rain just one of those things.

Presenter19:09

Ella Fitzgerald.

Presenter19:11

Now, Claire, as a nurse, I I I presume you're a practical person. You should be able to

Presenter19:17

Organize yourself on a desert island. Arrange somewhere to live as a first essential.

Claire Rayner19:22

Well, I'm not absolutely sure. Things that I put up do tend to fall down again.

Claire Rayner19:27

I dare say that I'll manage to dig a hole in the sand and rig something up, temporarily for a while.

Presenter19:31

Well, that's basic. You can do better than that later. What about food?

Claire Rayner19:34

Ah, well, I do like migravius, I must be honest. I've often said I'm I'm an amateur cook and a professional eater. If there's any food lying around, I'll find it. I'm not worried about that particularly.

Presenter19:42

I'm not lying.

Presenter19:44

Would you try to escape?

Claire Rayner19:45

Oh, constantly. Absolutely. I'll be so lonely.

Presenter19:48

Number seven we got to.

Claire Rayner19:50

Number seven is is going back a bit again to the the sounds of of my childhood.

Claire Rayner19:54

It's jazz. Lovely music. Django Reinhart and Stephan Grappelli, please, with the quintet of the Hot Club of France, playing Honeysuckle Rose.

Presenter21:02

The quintet of the Hot Club of France. And now your last record.

Claire Rayner21:06

My last one is the guitar. You may have noticed I do like string instruments. And I thought that if if I have a good guitar record, maybe I'd find bits of of wood and gut lying around on the beach. I could make a guitar and teach myself. You'd see. So could I have John Williams playing Rodriguez's concerto for guitar and orchestra?

Presenter22:24

John Williams a soloist in the opening of the second movement of the Rodrigo guitar concerto.

Presenter22:31

If you could take just one disk out of the eight, which would it be?

Claire Rayner22:34

Difficult choice, but I think the Lalo, it's got lots of different patterns and colours to it that I'd enjoy.

Presenter22:38

The Spanish Symphony.

Claire Rayner22:39

Mm-hmm.

Presenter22:40

Uh

Claire Rayner22:40

Yeah.

Presenter22:40

And

Claire Rayner22:40

And one luxury to take with you? Well, my family told me immediately what my luxury had to be, and they're absolutely right. Please, could I have a very large bath with with oyster-shaped soap dishes and an eternal supply of hot water and and bath sorts and expensive soap and soft white towels, because, you know, after a long hot bath like that I can cope with almost anything.

Presenter22:58

Right.

Presenter22:59

And one book apart from the Bible and Shakespeare and big encyclopedias.

Claire Rayner23:03

Well, I did wonder about every boy's guide to boat building, but I had a feeling you wouldn't let me have that.

Presenter23:06

Yes, we would. You would?

Claire Rayner23:07

You would? Yes. Ah, because my other thought, you see, was Gray's Anatomy, because it's a nice thick book, and I do love anatomy, and it's got some smashing words in it that I could I could play around with.

Presenter23:16

It's got some wonderful pictures too.

Claire Rayner23:18

Well, they are charming aren't there, but maybe the boat building guide would be more useful.

Presenter23:23

Every boy's book of bu building does it exist?

Claire Rayner23:26

I don't think it does actually.

Presenter23:27

Just me being hopeful.

Claire Rayner23:28

Just me being hopeful.

Presenter23:29

We'll try and find something of the sort for you. And thank you, Claire Rayner, for letting us hear your Desert Island Disc.

Claire Rayner23:35

Thank you.

Presenter23:35

Yeah.

Presenter23:36

Goodbye everyone.

Speaker 223:44

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