George MacDonald Fraser

Speaker 10:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive.

Speaker 10:05

For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in 1978 and the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:31

Our Castaway this week is a writer.

Presenter0:34

He's the author of the exceedingly popular Flashman books George MacDonald Fraser.

Presenter0:40

Is music important in your life?

Presenter0:42

Yes, I I think it's important. It has been since I was very small.

Presenter0:46

I was taught to play the violin when I was extremely young.

Presenter0:50

and um have done nothing with it ever since.

Presenter0:52

But I decided when I was in my early teens that I wanted to be a singer.

Presenter0:57

And um I got very serious about being a great bass baritone.

Presenter1:01

How do you feel about this desert island business? Does the idea fill you with dread or not?

Presenter1:07

No, not really, I don't think. I've often discovered if I'm in hospital for a period, or anything like that, or removed from the scene of events.

Presenter1:15

uh for a time it's it's rather pleasant.

Presenter1:18

After about three or four years I suspect that like

Presenter1:21

Alexander Selkirk, I'd be glad to come off. What would you be happiest to have got away from?

Presenter1:26

The News

Presenter1:28

newspapers and um

Presenter1:31

being told the news on BBC and and I T V and so on, that I generally find depressing.

Presenter1:38

I would like to hear the news itself, but I wouldn't like to be depressed by it. Right. What's your first record?

Presenter1:44

My first record, um, I said I wanted to be the greatest bass baritone of all time.

Presenter1:49

So it seemed appropriate to pick one by that very man. In fact, I could settle for eight records by this singer.

Presenter1:57

Possibly, but I have one, and that is Peter Dawson singing the smuggler song.

George MacDonald Fraser2:04

I've been twenty foldish, walking through the dark Randy for the parson, Paggy for the club, laces for the lady, letters for the spy, and watch the wall, my darling, while the gentlemen go by And watch the wall, my darling, while the church pulls.

Speaker 22:16

Uh

Speaker 22:20

I

George MacDonald Fraser2:25

Yeah.

Speaker 22:25

Yeah.

George MacDonald Fraser2:25

Yeah.

Presenter2:30

Peter Dawson singing The Smuggler's Song, with Kipling's words, of course George, whereabouts in Scotland were you born?

Presenter2:37

Um I wasn't, in fact. I was born in Cumberland, in Carlisle, of Scottish parents, like a great many Cumbrians. Your father was a physician. Did you have any medical leanings?

Presenter2:50

Personally, no. But uh it was it was thought that I should have medical leanings, and uh it was intended that I should be a doctor.

Presenter2:59

And as in the case of so many people.

Presenter3:01

What your parents intend doesn't come off.

Presenter3:04

Now, you were educated in Glasgow. The Frasers really belong much further up, don't they? Yes, to the uh Inverness area. My grandparents came from.

Presenter3:13

From that area. Apart from being a base barry term or a smuggler.

Presenter3:18

At school, what did you want to be?

Presenter3:20

I think I wanted to be a soldier.

Presenter3:22

Uh I'd no fixed ideas of of anything beyond I suppose the war. I was fourteen when it began.

Presenter3:29

And you knew you'd go into the army, and that was that. And indeed you did go into the army. You went out to the far east.

Presenter3:35

That's right with with the Border Regiment in in 14th Army in Burma. Was it eventful?

Presenter3:40

Yes, from time to time. It it it was eventful.

Presenter3:43

I can remember it as being very good fun. I d I look back on it with

Presenter3:48

Great nostalgia. I can remember it also being extremely terrifying and sometimes boring. It's on record that you were reduced to the ranks three times.

Presenter3:56

That is correct. I I lost um I lost a tea urn at Conneston.

Presenter4:02

When I was a Lance Corporal, and then I lost a man, roughly in the same area.

Presenter4:07

I I don't know what became of him, and then I lost a guard room.

Presenter4:11

In India. A guard room. Well, it was an enormous tent. And it was on New Year's Eve, and the Cameroonians and the Royal Scots Fusiliers were celebrating. I was the guard commander. I was asleep in my guard tent, which was a huge bell tent, and when I woke up, it wasn't there. Yes, I see. They stripped me for that as well. Despite the three strippings, you were afterwards commissioned. They decided that was the only thing left, I should think. And you were in the Gordon Highlanders, that's right. Where did you serve for the Gordons?

Speaker 14:40

Yeah.

Presenter4:42

Uh in North Africa, uh mostly in in Tripolitania and uh Egypt and in in Palestine. By now the war was more or less over, was it? Yes, this was forty six, forty seven. Yes.

Presenter4:54

And then what? Back to Scotland, back to England? Back to England and and civilian life and uh newspapers. Newspapers. Well, we'll talk about that in a minute. Let's have your second record. What should that be?

Presenter5:06

Harking back to the Border Regiment and Fourteenth Army.

Presenter5:11

Every Cumbrian has one song that always goes through his mind, John Peel.

Speaker 25:56

Uh

Presenter6:11

John Peel

Presenter6:13

A record by the Royal Military School of Music, Nella Hall. So, newspapers. You wanted to be a journalist. How did you start?

Presenter6:21

I started as a sports reporter on the Carlisle Journal.

Presenter6:25

covering the

Presenter6:26

matches of Carlyle United, who were not a terribly distinguished club in those days,

Presenter6:32

Uh one one thing um interesting about them and one happy recollection I have, they were managed by Bill Shankly.

Presenter6:39

Oh, the light of the great Bill Shankley of Liverpool. And

Presenter6:44

That was quite a delightful experience, knowing him.

Presenter6:46

And after that?

Presenter6:48

After that, my wife and I went to Canada. She had lived in Canada as a child. She was a journalist too, uh working for an opposition paper, and we got married.

Presenter6:59

and decided to try our luck in Canada.

Presenter7:01

where um I sold encyclopedias briefly and unsuccessfully, and then we went out to the prairies and got a job in a place called Regina, where we were both reporters.

Presenter7:13

And we did that for about a year.

Presenter7:15

and then decided that if we're going to settle anywhere it might as well be in Britain.

Presenter7:19

So back from Western Canada to where? Uh to Cumberland originally, where I I was a reporter, again doing flower shows, funerals, police courts, the whole lot. And then to Glasgow and the Glasgow Herald, where I was a sub-editor, foreign editor, features editor, and finally a leader writer, which is awfully good training for any kind of writing, I think, because uh you learn to write in a very short space.

Presenter7:46

And also you learn one of the the great tricks, certainly, of leader writing, and that is to throw away the first paragraph.

Presenter7:53

You can nearly always do it with any leader that was ever written.

Presenter7:56

That sounds very good advice to any potential leader writer. You finished up as deputy editor of the Glasgow Herald. That's right, yes.

Presenter8:05

Now, this was a a well-paid, responsible job, but you had a yen for hardcovers. How long had this been nagging at you? As long as I can remember. I think I was a storyteller, always. I used to tell my parents' stories when I was very small, in addition to the stories they told me. And I'd been writing as long as I could remember. Had you had any jots at writing novels, fiction, before? I did. I tried a novel in the 1950s, which a lot of publishers looked at and returned to me, quite rightly. But in the 1960s, towards the end of the 1960s, you had a wonderful idea. Well, you go ahead and...

Presenter8:45

Tell us what it was. Um well, Flashman was to me a character who had been neglected by Thomas Hughes, and he used him very briefly in Tom Brand's school days, and I always thought when I read that novel, there is the best character killed off

Presenter9:01

metaphorically speaking, quarter of the way through, what would have happened to him when he grew up? Yes, this bully, cad, liar, coward, drunkard, lecher, who was sacked from from rugby for for drunkenness, wasn't that? And Strayton was obviously going into the army.

Speaker 19:12

Uh

Speaker 29:12

From Graduate.

Speaker 19:13

Uh

Presenter9:16

And uh it it seemed to me. And uh I suddenly realized he was expelled in the late thirties and the Victorian era is just beginning. You have the whole of the Victorian era to go at.

Presenter9:29

So it was just that. You decided to write

Presenter9:32

About Flareshman, his later career. How long did the book take you to write? It it took in all told two months. I I wrote half of it.

Presenter9:41

Then we went on holiday and I fell down a waterfall, broke my arm.

Presenter9:45

And forgot about it. And then one day my wife said, That thing you were writing, can I have a look at it? I showed it to her.

Presenter9:52

She said finish it.

Presenter9:54

And uh in another thirty days it was done. Was it taken by the first publisher you sent it to? No, it it it went round the houses in the United States and in Britain. Uh there was an agent who wouldn't even handle it.

Presenter10:07

uh said there was no point. Then I remembered this this other agent who'd been very good with my unsuccessful novel, sent it to him, and at about the fourth or fifth shot, I think, he got it accepted. Yes, the first agent, the man who turned it down, must be a very unhappy man.

Presenter10:25

Well your first book was called simply Flashman. When did it appear? That was in nineteen sixty nine. You have always been a boys' book buff, haven't you? I mean we've been talking this afternoon. You you talked about the magnet and the gem and GA Henty novels.

Speaker 110:33

Louie

Speaker 210:34

Uh

Speaker 110:34

Wait a minute

Presenter10:39

Yes. I I think this is because I was brought up, as a great many of my generation were, on our father's school prizes. Uh my father was a bright boy at school and he won all sorts of prizes by R. M. Ballantyne and Henty. And uh they're marvellous adventure stories set mostly in the Victorian period and I think that is what started me off.

Presenter11:02

Another record, number three we've got to.

Presenter11:05

My wife and I in our courting days loved this record among many others. It's by Fat Swaller, my very good friend the Milk.

George MacDonald Fraser11:19

My very good friend.

George MacDonald Fraser11:21

The milkmaid.

George MacDonald Fraser11:23

Then I've been losing

George MacDonald Fraser11:26

Too much sleep.

George MacDonald Fraser11:28

It doesn't like

George MacDonald Fraser11:30

But I was like here.

George MacDonald Fraser11:33

He suggests that you should marry me.

Presenter11:41

The Great Fat Swallop. Now you had this splendid idea about writing the Flashman book. Then you had another one in the way the book was to be presented, as an excerpt from the Flashman Papers.

Presenter11:54

That that was really accidental. Whenever I read historical novels, I would always like to get historical background as well, and very few historical novelists put it in, you know. They'll introduce a historical character, but won't

Presenter12:08

actually give you the background on him, and I thought what we need in this is footnotes.

Presenter12:13

and I put the footnotes in just for fun as I went through.

Presenter12:16

Then when I was finished I thought, This looks awfully like somebody's memoirs.

Presenter12:20

and uh wrote an introduction saying it was somebody's memoirs.

Presenter12:24

And um

Presenter12:26

Alas some people took it seriously, not very many.

Presenter12:30

Gorgeous literary spoof. Um you said they were discovered in a teachest near Leicester, or where it's that?

Speaker 112:38

An egg

Presenter12:42

And um

Presenter12:44

The the upshot of this was that, although no reviewer in Britain took it seriously, a great many in America did.

Presenter12:51

And and one learned man,

Presenter12:53

Called it the greatest discovery since the Boswell Papers.

Speaker 212:57

Yeah.

Presenter12:57

I must say delighted me and at the same time appalled me. Now your period research is very accurate. You rarely work on that. I I try to make it very accurate, yes. I mean I I do slip up and and uh I've got a collection of about

Presenter13:11

Twenty letters at home of people who have found out.

Presenter13:14

That Flashman didn't go from Charing Cross, he went from London Bridge, you know, this sort of thing.

Presenter13:20

So, uh Flashman, the the the CAD of rugby school, became Brigadier General Harry Flashman VC. What did he get his VC for?

Presenter13:28

I'm not really quite clear. Um he got it, I think, officially for his behaviour at the Siege of Lucknow. But various other things were dragged in. And it it it's really rather like one of these Academy Awards for services to the film industry. I suppose he he got it for services to the British Army or something.

Speaker 113:44

Tomba

Presenter13:45

In the first volume we'd read about his adventures in India and Afghanistan. How many volumes so far? Uh six at the moment.

Presenter13:52

Royal Flash, the the second one, mainly set in Europe.

Presenter13:55

That's right, yes, in in a Rauritanian kingdom.

Presenter13:59

And Flash for Freedom. In that one he gets mixed up in the early Victorian slave trade, and there's a slaving ship with a rather unexpected name.

Presenter14:08

Oh, the Balliol College. Yes, I'd college. The Balliol College. I'd um

Speaker 114:09

Yeah. Should I

Presenter14:12

I got the idea that it would be a nice thing to have a slaving captain who was a disgraced Oxford Don and it seemed to me that it it would be a nice thing for him to call his ship.

Presenter14:22

Not after his own college, but after another college. Very logical. And Flashman at the Charge, which I haven't read, what was that, Balaklava?

Presenter14:30

That's Balaclaf and the Light Brigade. Did he actually charge? He led it, accidentally. He and Lord Cardigan. Uh it wasn't accidental as far as Cardigan was concerned, but as far as Flashman was, yes. I can believe that. And then Flashman in the Great Game, uh The Indian Mutiny.

Presenter14:47

And the latest one, Flashman's Lady. Does Tom Brown turn up in any of the stories? Uh Tom Brown uh turns up in the last one and invites Flashman to play cricket at Lourdes, which he does. Yes, Flashman, of course, must have cheated. He cheated with the the aid of a short-sighted umpire and and he uh got the first recorded hat-trick. Did he? Yes.

Presenter15:09

Fashman, a great womaniser. In one of the books he's jailed somewhere, and he thinks back on the four hundred and ninety eight women he has known.

Presenter15:19

Oh yes, they they um

Presenter15:21

Four hundred and ninety eight and and

Presenter15:24

I don't know why I fixed on that on that particular number. Yes, um, yeah.

Speaker 115:27

Some of the

Presenter15:29

Oh, Lola Montez and the the Mad Queen of Madagascar and the Rani of Jansi and and

Presenter15:35

Um a great many fictitious ones, but one or two authentically historical ones. If the Flashman Papers were written by the General as it says, I think in in your note to the first volume when he was about eighty, in about nineteen hundred and five, we've still only got to when he was about thirty, so there's about fifty years of his papers to go. I hope so, yes. Quite a lot of volumes. With with with any luck, yes. I have been once into the eighteen nineties in a short story when he was getting on in years. But uh most of that time is still still untouched, yes. Great.

Presenter16:10

Record number four. This record is the cannon song from the Threpney Opera. It's a song of army reminiscence sung by Mackie Messer and Tiger Brown of Scotland Yard. And this, I think, is the original recording from the nineteen thirty production.

George MacDonald Fraser16:37

John Badorun Turn Jim Badabai.

George MacDonald Fraser16:51

Funk up this country.

George MacDonald Fraser16:55

Et es ma raigneur, unt espe, in noillas, nes brownes rau de blasse.

George MacDonald Fraser17:04

Nice and out here beach safe, come

George MacDonald Fraser17:15

John is Kestor and Jimmy's coat. But George is for Mr. Padolben. Ah, for blue, he's demon of road. Pediatr me, but you're speed and gavalvin.

Presenter17:25

The Kononen song from the original stage production of

Presenter17:30

Courtweiles, Thrappanny Opera.

Presenter17:32

How disciplined a writer are you, George? Having been a journalist, you should have an advantage over the man who started in hard covers. Uh very undisciplined. I write at any hour of the day and night, um, usually in the middle of the night, and that is a hangover from newspapers. From coming home at midnight and have nothing to do but read the paper and and drink tea, and I decided I might as well write. You obviously write quite fast because a book of the length of Flashman, which is what, eighty thousand? Uh, eighty, ninety thousand, yes. In two months is pretty good. It was. I mean, it was just um three, four hours a night solid.

Presenter18:09

As well as the Flashman books, you've written a couple of volumes of short stories.

Presenter18:13

Yes, tho those are based on my my army days in the in the Gordon Highlanders just after the war.

Presenter18:19

And um

Presenter18:21

The characters that I knew, incidents that happened, of course, enlarged and and and developed and um.

Presenter18:29

Fiction lies to some extent.

Presenter18:31

And um those were very happy times indeed. Well, the stories are all of the the lighter side of it. Yes, oh yeah.

Presenter18:39

Record number five.

Presenter18:40

Um harking back to that time.

Presenter18:43

The pipes and drums of the Gordon Highlanders I I couldn't possibly endure on a desert island without this playing the cock of the north.

Presenter19:46

The Pipes and Drums of the Gordon Highlanders Cock of the North. Now we've been going through this list of your publications. You've edited a book about public schools.

Presenter19:55

I didn't actually edit it. I introduced it and contributed to it. But I think the fact that I had done Flashman induced the publishers to think that here was the man to introduce a book about public schools. So yes, I did that quite recently. And you've written a straight book of history, a full-length study of the sixteenth century Anglo-Scottish border raiders, the the steel bonnets.

Presenter20:19

That excited me as much as any work of history for for some years. It's it's a virtually unknown corner, isn't it? Pretty well. There are the border ballads and and various romantic histories have been written about it.

Presenter20:30

I wanted to try and find out the the the real stuff, you know, the the honest historical background, uh state papers and all that sort of thing. Really, it was a book I think I've been doing all my life, from my childhood in Carlisle, at the old Carlisle Grammar School and so on. And um I've always had a deep love of the border country and the and the border people. Yes, well that those were really bloody times indeed. Of course this is the thing, I mean no one ever associates the the

Speaker 120:55

They were extraordinary.

Presenter21:00

peaceful Cumberland and Roxburyshire and so on, with this this astonishing frontier, which was worse than the Khyber Pass in its way.

Presenter21:10

And you've done a number of films. You you did uh the Three Musketeers, the version that Dick Lester directed a few years ago. That's right, that that was the first one I did. Dick phoned me up and and asked me if I'd like to do it. And you gave them splendid value for money because they they they tore the film in half and and and put out the second half of it as the former second. That's right. It w it was rather a long film, four hours worth of it.

Speaker 121:29

What's that?

Presenter21:34

And you did a Flashman film. And a Flashman for the the second book, Royal Flash. And, um, after that, The Prince and the Pauper.

Presenter21:42

Record number six.

Presenter21:44

Record number six from The Three Musketeers, the the film version. It was done by Michel Legrand. I I saw the film for the first time with him. We sat in the front row in the Twickenham studios and uh it was very depressing for me because he had a terribly heavy cold.

Presenter22:01

And he he wasn't well at all and he sat groaning all the way through and I thought, My God, is it this bad? However, it obviously wasn't because he wrote one of what I think is one of the great film scores.

Presenter23:16

A theme from Michel Legrand's film score for The Three Musketeers How good would you be as a castaway with your jungle survival drill still in mind? I should think you'd be all right.

Presenter23:27

Uh I think I could manage, yes. I live on an island, far from a desert island, but um I'm used to being in sight and sound of the sea. Yes. And I think um given an axe or a knife I could I could get by. This is a little more primitive than the Isle of Man. Yes, it is indeed.

Presenter23:44

And you're not given an axe. You'll have to be a little more ingenious than that in building your hut. Would you try to escape?

Presenter23:51

No, I don't think so. I think I would settle down and and uh and see how it went,'cause there'd be plenty to do. Other record piece. On my desert island I would like to be reminded of the Isle of Man.

Presenter24:04

And uh this is a record which has a double virtue. I like the record for itself, it's good fun and so on. And also it has the lovely Manx accent, for which I'd be very homesick.

Presenter24:17

It's about a Manx wanderer who has returned home after wandering all over the world. In fact, he's wandered all over the Isle of Man.

Presenter24:24

and it's called Give me the bus fare to Laxi, which is a little village very close to my home.

George MacDonald Fraser24:30

I sailed in the Nikki around the South Cape and I fought for my life.

George MacDonald Fraser24:37

With an Arbury apron

George MacDonald Fraser24:39

I prospected for silver appulgum.

George MacDonald Fraser24:44

But rheumatics was all what I found.

George MacDonald Fraser24:49

So give me the boss fair to Laxi. And then I can be on what bound travel.

Presenter24:58

An Isle of Man song, Give Me the Bus Fare to Laxey, sung by Mike Williams with Laurie Kermode playing the mouth organ. What's your last record to be?

Presenter25:07

The last record is another um film record. It's music by Erich Wolfgang Korngold, and it comes from a film which I s still think is one of the perfect films, The Adventures of Robin Hood.

Presenter25:22

And I think if I were on the island I would want to remember England.

Presenter25:26

And Merry England, green fields, green woods

Presenter25:31

Hear the horns of Elfland blowing, that sort of thing. And

Presenter25:35

This, I think, is some of the finest English music written by an Austrian composer that I've ever heard. For a Hollywood film. For a Hollywood film, yes.

Presenter26:43

Part of Erich Wolfgang Korngold's music to the nineteen thirty eight Hollywood film The Adventures of Robin Hood, that was the one with Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland and Basil Rathburt.

Presenter26:54

Now if you could take just one disk of the eight, which would it be?

Presenter26:57

Uh the last one, I think.

Presenter26:59

For the reasons I have stated, I'd like to remember England. Robin Hood.

Presenter27:04

One luxury to take to the island with your

Presenter27:06

I can't have a five star hotel. Oh, no, no. No, no, no, no, I thought not. Um in that case, I think it would have to be a typewriter. In fact, I know it would have to be a typewriter. Work will continue. Yes, work will continue. With a a supply of of carbons and and

Speaker 127:08

No, no, no, no.

Presenter27:22

All that, all the necessary what are you going to write next? On my island. Yes. Uh on my island, I think I'd write a constitution for it, you know first and and rebel against it possibly.

Speaker 127:28

No.

Speaker 227:29

Yeah.

Presenter27:33

And one book to take with you apart from the Bible and Shakespeare which are already there and the big encyclopedias which we don't permit. Well, this isn't a big encyclopedia, but it it's not far off. Can I take the complete Oxford English Dictionary? Yes, of course. I have it all at home except in the last couple of volumes and um

Presenter27:51

It's uh a a great work with with derivations, all the rest of it. I mean, it's an encyclopedia in itself. And it'll be a nice literate constitution, you'll write. Yes, it should be. And thank you.

Speaker 127:54

Yeah.

Speaker 227:54

Uh

Presenter28:02

George MacDonald Fraser for letting us hear your desert island discs. Thank you very much for allowing me to be cast away. Goodbye, everyone.

Speaker 128:18

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