Dorothy Edwards

Speaker 10:00

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 a children's writer. She's the author of the Naughty Little Sister books, Dorothy Edwards.

Presenter0:40

Dorothy, how worried are you at the prospect of loneliness on this island?

Dorothy Edwards0:45

Oh, I should hate it.

Dorothy Edwards0:47

I I just could I sh I should hate it, but I'd have to put up with it, wouldn't I?

Presenter0:51

Have you any musical talent yourself?

Dorothy Edwards0:53

No, not really, no, no. I think the only thing I can play is a grammar phone, because I love music.

Presenter0:59

On what terms did you choose your Eight Records?

Dorothy Edwards1:02

Oh

Presenter1:03

Nostalgia, great performances, what had you in mind?

Dorothy Edwards1:06

Nostalgia, I think, and and the things that are under n under the surface for me are the things I'm listening to.

Presenter1:13

What's the first one you've chosen?

Dorothy Edwards1:15

The first one I've chosen is Smetino, the Moldar.

Presenter1:18

What does that remind you of? Where does that take you?

Dorothy Edwards1:21

Well, it's a river. I've always loved rivers, and of course I was born near the River Thames.

Dorothy Edwards1:27

And all my childhood was

Dorothy Edwards1:30

A matter of going backwards and forwards to places where the Thames always was. It was as if we were surrounded by it.

Dorothy Edwards1:37

And I knew it in all its moods. I used to go along.

Dorothy Edwards1:42

in the evening and watch the lights on the water or and I I can remember standing on the suspension bridge seeing the snow falling into the dark water and melting.

Dorothy Edwards1:54

And I remember once going with my grandfather when the river was a terrific flood and we had to row down the high street.

Dorothy Edwards2:02

And he took me on to the bridge and we saw bodies of sheep and we felt the bridge shaking from the impact of tree trunks. And that was very exciting. And it's all there, I think, in the Moldar.

Presenter3:10

Smeltener's Moldau, the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Raphael Kubelik.

Presenter3:15

Auto second record.

Dorothy Edwards3:17

Oh, well my second record is the Saint Louis Blues.

Dorothy Edwards3:21

with Duke Ellington and Bing Crosby.

Presenter3:23

What does that take you back to?

Dorothy Edwards3:25

Well, that takes me back really to my adolescence when

Dorothy Edwards3:30

We were just

Dorothy Edwards3:31

Becoming aware.

Dorothy Edwards3:33

Of this rather decadent music, at least our family thought it was decadent. They were all brass band addicts at that period.

Dorothy Edwards3:42

And uh when everyone was going to Nella Hall we'd all be sitting round quite defiantly doing this thing.

Dorothy Edwards3:48

And of course Bing, I had to bring Bing in, because, well, at that time he was our great.

Dorothy Edwards3:54

Ah great a revelation.

Dorothy Edwards3:56

And uh I chose this record because it's all there, all the things we like, but I feel somehow it's laughing at itself too, and it it's laughing at what I was then.

Dorothy Edwards4:07

And if I'm feeling tomorrow

Presenter4:07

And if I'm

Dorothy Edwards4:10

And he went like a

Presenter4:16

Should I be feeling tomorrow?

Presenter4:20

And he wear like I feel some day.

Presenter4:26

I'm going to pack my trunk

Presenter4:30

And make my Getty Wave. I'll make my Getty Way.

Presenter4:36

Bing Crosby was the Duke Ellington band.

Presenter4:39

A Dorothy were born, you say, by the river Thames.

Presenter4:42

Which part of the River Thames whereabouts?

Dorothy Edwards4:44

Teddington.

Presenter4:45

Oh, I know it well. Were you educated now, Tenningstone?

Presenter4:49

What sort of job did you do when you left school?

Dorothy Edwards4:52

Well, I did a succession of jobs really, mostly secretarial jobs, going from one to the other until I was earning a reasonable salary.

Presenter5:00

Which was the most entertaining?

Dorothy Edwards5:02

Well, I was with a cinema company. That was great fun sometimes.

Presenter5:06

And which branch?

Dorothy Edwards5:06

I was in the catering.

Presenter5:08

Oh, that's where cinemas make their money, isn't it?

Dorothy Edwards5:09

Yeah.

Presenter5:11

Had you started writing in your spare time?

Dorothy Edwards5:13

Oh, I'd always written. I I wrote my very first story when I was four. My grandfather taught me to read when I was very young indeed.

Dorothy Edwards5:22

And I would never have believed it, only after my grandmother died we found an envelope with my name on it, and a little note to say that I'd written it when I was four. It's a very misspelt little story, but it's very exciting. It's quite a horrifying story, really.

Presenter5:39

When were you first published?

Dorothy Edwards5:42

Oh, dear, that's going back some years. I was first published, I think, when I was about nineteen. That was just poetry and things like that. And then, um,

Dorothy Edwards5:51

By the time I was in well into my twenties I had published a great deal of material.

Presenter5:56

Yes, you used to write for Punch, I believe.

Dorothy Edwards5:58

I I wrote some verse for Punch and I wrote for newspapers, I wrote short stories, I wrote articles, I wrote verse, I wrote for some of the literary magazines, in fact anything that I thought I could sell something to. I even sent something once to a a publication I found on a bookstore called Men Only. I knew nothing about it, but I I thought it was something rather healthy and I remember sending him in an article about rabbits and the chap wrote me such a nice letter.

Presenter6:32

Now, mainly you've specialized in writing for young children. When did that start?

Dorothy Edwards6:37

Well that started um I didn't intend to specialise, it started in in nineteen fifty when Listen With Mother first went on the air.

Dorothy Edwards6:46

merely because the then editor came on to the air several times and asked parents to write in and criticise or comment on the material they were supplying.

Dorothy Edwards6:56

And, um I

Dorothy Edwards6:59

Thought, well, it's very good, but they're reading the stories, they're not telling them.

Dorothy Edwards7:04

And so I I just sort of got in touch with them and sent something along that I'd told my own children.

Dorothy Edwards7:10

Fortunately, the words were absolutely as the children wanted them because they they knew every word by heart, so it worked at once.

Presenter7:17

It's amazing how children won't have any alterations made with their favourite stories.

Dorothy Edwards7:20

They won't and and given the the opportunity they'll have the same story over and over again, because that was how the very first story that I ever sent to B B C ever got written or ever told, because we went out

Dorothy Edwards7:36

My husband hired a car for our holidays. We hadn't a car of our own.

Dorothy Edwards7:40

And the chap who who hired it to us insisted on driving us himself. He wouldn't trust anyone with his car.

Dorothy Edwards7:48

And it rained the whole time during the holiday. My eldest child, my daughter, was very bored and miserable because it was raining, and she just said, Tell me a story.

Dorothy Edwards7:58

And as my sister was with us, I I sort of said, well, a long time ago when mummy was a little girl and auntie was a little girl, and I told the story called Going Fishing.

Dorothy Edwards8:08

Which is about something that happened in Teddington.

Dorothy Edwards8:11

All day long she had that story.

Presenter8:13

Over and over again.

Dorothy Edwards8:14

And the very next day when we got in the car she demanded it, and the poor man who was driving, his ears went red at last, and he just said, Missus, for God's sake, you know. That's how it was.

Presenter8:23

And that's the one that eventually you wrote down and sent to Listenwood Mother.

Dorothy Edwards8:25

That was a matter of time.

Presenter8:30

Record number three, watch that.

Dorothy Edwards8:32

Now this is the Mendelssohn The Midsummer Night's Dream.

Presenter8:37

Why do you choose it?

Dorothy Edwards8:37

Well, I chose it because I love the Victorians.

Dorothy Edwards8:42

And I always think of Mendelssohn as part of the Victorian scene.

Dorothy Edwards8:46

But most especially I I chose it because it reminds me of a production for the Festival of Britain that my husband did.

Dorothy Edwards8:55

in the grounds of Reigot Priory.

Dorothy Edwards8:58

And it it really was a very beautiful experience, very moving experience, because we found that every night the mist came off the lake. At the very last scene when Puck comes on with his broom, the mist rose as though we'd ordered it. This it's all in this for me.

Presenter10:14

The scherzo from the Mendelssohn Midsummer Night Stream music, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Hans Fonck.

Presenter10:21

Now, you started writing for Listen with Mother. This became a way of life, really. You became a B B C producer, didn't you?

Presenter10:29

Look after that program.

Presenter10:31

Now you had this splendid character, naughty little sister. How many of those stories have you written?

Dorothy Edwards10:37

Oh, it's very difficult. I mean, there I should think there must be about fifty in print. But there are an awful they're an awful lot of these stories because they always start in some school or library when I'm telling stories to children. They drag these things out of me and I invent on the spot and I enlarge on them each time I go to a group of children and eventually if they work they go into a book.

Presenter10:54

I lie.

Presenter11:00

A lot that haven't been written down yet.

Dorothy Edwards11:02

Oh yes.

Presenter11:03

How many books are there?

Dorothy Edwards11:04

There are five.

Presenter11:06

And you've written for um Play School too for television.

Dorothy Edwards11:10

Yeah.

Presenter11:10

Yes. And Jack and Ori, too.

Dorothy Edwards11:12

Well, I've I've written a story, my first story for Jackanori, and it's coming out in their new publication, Jackanori Jubilee.

Presenter11:22

The correspondence you get from children must be very rewarding.

Dorothy Edwards11:26

Oh, yes, it's it's simply fantastic.

Dorothy Edwards11:29

Lovely letters and drawings and poems, and some of the children are very funny. I had um a letter from a little boy who was very bitterly angry with my sister, because in one of the stories she bit Father Christmas.

Dorothy Edwards11:43

And he'd a little boy in Canada, and he just couldn't take it. He wanted her address. He felt he'd have to come over to England at some time.

Speaker 111:43

Uh

Dorothy Edwards11:51

Duffer up or something, yes.

Presenter11:53

Yes.

Presenter11:54

One way of getting in well with Father Christmas.

Presenter11:59

Record number four.

Dorothy Edwards12:00

Here, I think we ought to have

Dorothy Edwards12:03

Naughty little sister herself with K Web.

Dorothy Edwards12:07

because Kay has had a great love for my little sister ever since she came out.

Dorothy Edwards12:12

And I just think she does it so beautifully.

Speaker 212:15

Yeah.

Dorothy Edwards12:15

My little sister was saying Wah, wah.

Speaker 212:20

I was surprised to think that such a very new child could make so much noise, and I ran straight indoors, and straight up stairs, and straight into my mother's bedroom.

Speaker 212:31

and there was my good kind mother sitting up in bed, smiling and smiling.

Speaker 212:37

and there, in a cot that used to be my old cot,

Speaker 212:40

was my new cross little sister, crying and crying.

Presenter12:46

The opening of the very first My Naughty Little Sister story, read by Kay Webb. And Naughty Little Sister celebrated her Jubilee, I believe, in nineteen seventy seven, in Jubilee year.

Dorothy Edwards12:56

Yeah.

Dorothy Edwards12:57

Yes. It it was the Jubilee of the book, of the first Naughty Little Sister book, because really she had two jubilees. She had one two years before, which was her jubilee on with Listen With Mother. I mean, they still do the Naughty Little Sisters.

Dorothy Edwards13:11

But the the twenty-five years in print was seventy-seven.

Presenter13:17

There are other characters you've got that you've written about for young children.

Dorothy Edwards13:20

Oh yes. I've written about two little boys called Joe and Timothy, who live in r in a very poor tenement.

Dorothy Edwards13:27

And of course masses of other stories, stories for r you know, for the children to play with.

Presenter13:33

You have children of your own. Will you have mentioned you, you have

Dorothy Edwards13:34

Would you have mentioned your USB?

Presenter13:39

All providing copia, no doubt.

Dorothy Edwards13:41

Oh, yes, I mean every one of them.

Dorothy Edwards13:44

My most successful latest stories are ones that I made up with and for them.

Presenter13:49

You would do quite a lot of lecturing about the country.

Dorothy Edwards13:52

Oh yes, quite a quite a bit.

Presenter13:53

To whom? To what sort of groups?

Dorothy Edwards13:54

Well, I'll do training colleges and and the conferences and you name it and, you know, and if it's anything to do with children's books or communicating with young children or radio work or something like that, you know.

Presenter14:08

And of course you talk to young children.

Dorothy Edwards14:11

Oh, yes. I I go into the schools and libraries and I tell them stories and um

Dorothy Edwards14:16

Just talk to them, you know, and they tell me things. They tell me things about their parents. Their parents will be horrified by that.

Presenter14:19

Tell me

Presenter14:21

Pink b

Dorothy Edwards14:22

Uh

Presenter14:22

How do you get the attention of a class of young children to start with? You walk into the classroom, or the hall, or whatever, and there is the usual chaos going on.

Dorothy Edwards14:31

Well, I usually, if I can like to be there before they come, then I can start talking to to them as they come in, you see, otherwise, if they've been very brainwashed, they're absolutely terrified and they don't respond.

Dorothy Edwards14:42

But if if I have very naughty ones, or if I have very lively ones, I have one or two little methods that I apply.

Presenter14:49

Such as

Dorothy Edwards14:50

Well, um, one of the things I do is is to say, Well, you obviously you like the stories about my naughty little sister, which means that you must all be very good, are you? And they will say yes, yes, miss, you see.

Dorothy Edwards15:01

And you say, Aren't you ever naughty? and they will say, No, Miss.

Dorothy Edwards15:05

And uh sometimes I'll say, Well, isn't there anybody who's naughty? and then they'll all start looking round then they always point to somebody and they say, Look, Miss in this I mean, look at my arm, Miss, look what he's done to it here, he's you know, and and they give a whole list of the awful things he's done, you see.

Presenter15:14

And now you say

Dorothy Edwards15:23

And I usually say, Well, if you're that bad, you can come up and help me keep an eye on the others.

Dorothy Edwards15:28

So, of course, that's been very good. They come up and they're very pleased to have been so distinguished, and that'll be very, very good.

Dorothy Edwards15:36

But I did meet my Waterloo with one of these boys because um

Dorothy Edwards15:40

I got him up, you see, and he evidently been an absolute villain and he was swelling with self-importance. And uh I said, Now you just keep an eye on them, just glare at them, you see. And I started talking to the children, and all of a sudden he's here, Just a minute, miss, he said, There's two boys down that ain't listening, you know, and then I got it. Yeah, there's a girl down that's combing her hair.

Dorothy Edwards16:02

And then he really took it over. He took it over and he started. He said, Here, you down there behave yourself as Missa put her gang on you.

Dorothy Edwards16:08

And it was really loud and lovely, but

Presenter16:09

Can you

Presenter16:10

Very useful allies. And of course afterwards they come up and

Dorothy Edwards16:11

Useful analog.

Presenter16:14

I'll talk to you about

Dorothy Edwards16:14

Oh, they come up and they're really lovely, some of them. I mean, they they are so sweet. I had a dear little Asian child who gave me gave me a bracelet, insisted on my taking it, and I couldn't say no, couldn't understand what she was saying. And then quite recently, a lovely little girl came up after I'd I'd been talking to a large group of children, and she was so overcome she didn't know what to do. She wanted to give me something, and all she had was a penny.

Presenter16:39

Yeah.

Dorothy Edwards16:40

Crack.

Presenter16:40

Oh, what a nice

Dorothy Edwards16:40

Oh, what a nice private. Very nice. They're so lovely.

Presenter16:44

Back to music. What's number five?

Dorothy Edwards16:47

Now number five, I thought Beethoven's fourth piano concerto.

Presenter16:51

Why do you choose that?

Dorothy Edwards16:52

I lead a very busy life. I'm very involved with children and with my family. I love my family. There are times when.

Dorothy Edwards17:00

I like to just listen to music, and I love Beethoven, and I think I love this one more than any other. It's a very subjective feeling, but I I find it's relaxing and it's everything that you need in a busy life.

Presenter18:11

The opening of Beethoven's fourth piano concerto, the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Hans Knappert Busch and the pianist Clifford Curzon. Now you talked about your husband's production of Midsummer Night's Dream.

Presenter18:25

You and he ran a drama school for a while.

Dorothy Edwards18:27

Well, we my husband had a company of players because he was doing drama research and he was particularly interested in in the audiences and how they reacted. And it seemed pretty obvious that somebody somehow would have to draw together a very mixed crowd of professionals and non-professionals and teach them something about the acting and about um the special demands of these various period plays.

Dorothy Edwards18:55

And the only obvious person uh non-paid

Dorothy Edwards18:59

Dog's body was myself, and so I took it on, and we we both of us became very involved in it.

Presenter19:05

And you ran an antique shop together for a while, I believe? Yes, we did. What did you specialize in? What did you like handling?

Dorothy Edwards19:08

We could

Dorothy Edwards19:11

anything we could get. We hadn't a very large we hadn't a very large capital and um I I enjoyed it. My husband knew a lot about it. I knew very little and so I used to go to the libraries and read things up and then to the museums and I became quite knowledgeable and I I think I well, I I just liked

Dorothy Edwards19:30

Almost anything I was very, very interested in or was very reluctant to sell it. Record number six.

Dorothy Edwards19:36

Well, record number six, I thought Manichester Plata.

Dorothy Edwards19:41

Because I love gypsy music.

Dorothy Edwards19:44

Um somebody tell me, Dorothy, that you have gypsy blood yourself. Is that Well, it's reputed, you see. The family say so, and um, my mother and her brothers and sisters all had long black hair and flashing brown eyes and

Presenter19:48

What?

Dorothy Edwards19:56

You know, it's a family legend. I think it's probably true. I know my ha my family have taken every advantage of it because whenever I've got a bit

Dorothy Edwards20:05

up in the air, she handed me the pegs, clothes pegs, and said, Well, you know, out you go and so on and the wind on the heath, brother, you know, all those sort of things.

Presenter20:14

You know, all this sort of thing.

Presenter20:16

Olezia Manitas to Plaza.

Dorothy Edwards21:11

Uh

Presenter21:19

Manitas to Plata playing Fandangos. Now your qualifications as a castaway, were you ever a girl guide?

Presenter21:26

Go

Dorothy Edwards21:26

Uh Yeah.

Presenter21:26

Yes.

Dorothy Edwards21:27

Yes, but a very bad one. I hastened to say that it was only a girl guy for a very short period.

Presenter21:33

Can you make a garden shed or anything like that?

Dorothy Edwards21:35

I helped my husband to make the greenhouse, so I think that's not bad, is it?

Presenter21:38

Well, that's good. Are you good with small boats, being a riverside dweller?

Dorothy Edwards21:44

I once rode in a ladies' eight and my family have never forgotten really, you know.

Presenter21:47

Did you?

Presenter21:49

Which club was it that you wrote it?

Dorothy Edwards21:50

Oh, it's just a small local club, you know.

Presenter21:53

Oh, there's no doubt about it. You'd be off that island quite soon, with all those skilled.

Dorothy Edwards21:55

Oh no, no, no, no, no, I wouldn't.

Presenter21:58

Record number seven.

Dorothy Edwards22:00

It's Cypelius, the swan of Tornela. I first heard this when I was quite young, and I was really shattered because the first time in music I heard something that was part of the magic that I'd found in some of the early fairy stories.

Presenter23:08

The opening of the Suana Tuonela by Sibelius, Sir John Barbie Raleigh conducting the Halley Orchestra.

Presenter23:14

And now we come to

Presenter23:16

Your last record. What have you saved up?

Dorothy Edwards23:18

I would like to be greedy, but obviously I can't. I mean, if I could have my way, I'd have the whole of Handel's Messiah.

Dorothy Edwards23:25

But um I just have to have the Alleluia Chorus.

Presenter24:31

The Hallelujah Chorus from Messiah

Presenter24:34

The London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus conducted by Sir Adrian Belt.

Presenter24:38

Suppose you could choose just one disk out of that eight.

Dorothy Edwards24:41

Oh, it would have to be the Alleluia chorus.

Presenter24:44

And one luxury to take to the island with you one thing of no practical use, not going to help you to exist.

Dorothy Edwards24:50

Oh, a typewriter

Dorothy Edwards24:52

with masses of paper.

Presenter24:54

You're going to write some more books.

Dorothy Edwards24:56

Yeah.

Presenter24:56

More adventures of Naughty Little Sister.

Dorothy Edwards24:58

Oh, no, no, no. I'd write all the all the other things I I'm putting aside until I can find time to write them.

Presenter25:05

We'd better give you a good sturdy table to put that typewriter on to.

Dorothy Edwards25:08

Ride her on to

Presenter25:09

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

Dorothy Edwards25:17

Oh, well, no, I wouldn't want them anyway. No, I'd like the Oxford Book of English Verse, the old one,'cause I know my way round it, the one that was edited by Sir Arthur Quillicooch.

Presenter25:28

And thank you, Dorothy Edwards, for letting us hear your Desert Island Discs.

Dorothy Edwards25:32

Thank you, Roy. It's been really lovely with you.

Presenter25:35

Goodbye, everyone.

Speaker 125:55

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