Anna Raeburn

Speaker 10:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a download from the Desert Island Discs archive. This edition may be slightly different from what was actually broadcast, but it is the only version we have. It comes from the British Library's radio collection.

Speaker 10:15

The recording didn't contain the guests' eight music choices, so we've rebuilt the original show by using discs from the B B C Gramophone library. For Wright's reasons we've had to shorten the music.

Speaker 10:26

Full details can be found on the Castaways page on the Desert Island Discs website.

Speaker 10:31

The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen seventy eight.

Speaker 10:34

And the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:53

Our castaway this week is a journalist. She runs the Problems page in a big circulation women's magazine and runs a Problems Phone In for a radio station. It's Anna Rayburn.

Presenter1:04

Anna, how big a part does music play in your life?

Anna Raeburn1:07

Oh, very big. Not in the serious sense that I can quote you chapter and verse on a whole range of classical composers or anything, but because I was brought up with people who sing and I sing.

Anna Raeburn1:19

and I find that if it's not around I miss it.

Presenter1:22

Do you play an instrument?

Anna Raeburn1:24

No, I attempted to play the ukulele, but I was asked to desist.

Anna Raeburn1:28

And I haven't done things since then.

Presenter1:28

I haven't got

Presenter1:29

There clearly happened to me with the ukulele.

Presenter1:33

Did you have a plan in choosing your eight records?

Anna Raeburn1:36

No. Actually what happened was that I was stuck at the house that I'm trying to buy, waiting for a tradesman to come and do an estimate of some description, and he was late, and I was getting more and more nervous and more and more depressed. I thought, now, on the back of an envelope, eight records for a desert island. This is as near to a desert island as I shall ever be.

Presenter1:54

And the

Presenter1:57

B. Right, what's the first title on the back of the envelope?

Anna Raeburn2:02

Albanone, the organ music of Albanoni, which I think is enormously evocative, very sad, very beautiful music.

Presenter3:06

The opening of Albinone's adagio in G minor for strings and organ.

Presenter3:10

Arrangement by Remo Giazzotto.

Presenter3:14

and it was played by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Herbert von Carrier.

Presenter3:18

Anna, you're from Yorkshire, aren't you?

Anna Raeburn3:20

Yeah.

Presenter3:21

And both your parents were teachers.

Anna Raeburn3:23

Yes?

Presenter3:23

Yes. Were you an only child?

Anna Raeburn3:25

No, I have a sister who's thirteen years older than me.

Presenter3:28

What did you want to be?

Anna Raeburn3:29

An actress.

Anna Raeburn3:31

passionately from the age of eight.

Presenter3:32

Yes. What went wrong with that?

Anna Raeburn3:35

Well, I either wasn't tough enough or I wasn't talented enough, but I know that I wasn't organized enough. I now look back at it, and my toes turn pale blue with sheer funk when I think of how innocent and disorganised I was.

Presenter3:46

Yes. You couldn't get a grant to do it. No.

Anna Raeburn3:50

Well, I had a very practical mother who insisted that I had a shorthand and typing course if I was going to entertain thoughts of going into the theatre. Um my teachers wanted me to go to university. I didn't. I came from a very academically orientated school.

Anna Raeburn4:02

and I think four of us out of a class of forty eight didn't go to university or into some kind of further education. And I came to London on my seventeenth birthday thinking that Sir Laurence Olivier was going to trip over my feet and say ah but it didn't happen, you see.

Presenter4:15

But it didn't happen, you see. So what were you doing?

Anna Raeburn4:18

I became a secretary. I mean, I did various acting bits and auditions and publicity girl and model things in between times, but I didn't actually get very far.

Presenter4:27

You did in fact play a season in Rip.

Anna Raeburn4:29

Mm-hmm. Uh

Presenter4:29

I played

Anna Raeburn4:29

I played a Scots girl, God help me, in a dreadful play called Lease on her Petticoat.

Presenter4:35

Where was it?

Anna Raeburn4:36

Adieu.

Presenter4:37

Theatre Royal. Yep. A lovely theatre. A lovely theatre.

Anna Raeburn4:38

Yeah.

Anna Raeburn4:39

A lovely situation.

Presenter4:42

And you couldn't go on with it.

Anna Raeburn4:44

No, I think I was very undisciplined, and I didn't know where to begin, and everybody kept telling me that I was terribly talented, but and I think the main thing was that I didn't have the sticking power, I didn't stay at it.

Presenter4:53

So you decided to go abroad for a bit.

Anna Raeburn4:56

Well, I came back to London after the season in York, and there was what was known as a clerical black spot, and uh I couldn't get secretarial work, and I wound up working as an archerette.

Anna Raeburn5:05

At the Academy Cinema.

Speaker 15:05

But you can

Anna Raeburn5:07

And I saw Godards Viva Savie fifty six times, which is quite an awful lot of times to see a Godard movie, I have to tell you.

Speaker 15:12

Uh

Anna Raeburn5:13

And I worked in a sweet shop by day, so I worked from none until five thirty at one and six until half past eleven or something and another. And I then went home and said to my family that I wanted to go to America, and I went off to New Jersey.

Presenter5:24

Yes. What happened there?

Anna Raeburn5:25

I worked as a housemaid I mean it was called a mother's help, but it was a housemaid to a doctor's family for three months.

Anna Raeburn5:32

Um until I discovered that the terms of the contract that I had signed were outlawed under United States Federal law of nineteen forty four under the heading of bond service.

Anna Raeburn5:42

At which point I reimbursed my employers, who were quite certainly the most unpleasant Americans I've ever met, and I've known some very nice ones since, thank Heaven.

Anna Raeburn5:52

and went into New York City with my treasured green card because I'd got myself an immigrant visa and became a secretary in America instead.

Presenter5:57

How long did you stay in the States?

Anna Raeburn5:59

Nearly two years, three months.

Presenter6:02

What brought you back?

Anna Raeburn6:04

I had a minor illness which was mistreated and became a major illness, and I got very thin and very frail, and I had a very sweet doctor who insisted that I gave up and came home, so I did.

Presenter6:12

Well at that point let's have record number two. What shall it be?

Anna Raeburn6:17

It's Paul Robeson's Ballad for Americans. I was raised on three male voices, Paul Robeson, Josh White, and Sharley Appin, and this has particular significance for me, because my father used to sing, and my father thought that Paul Robeson was, I think, the next best thing to God, without disrespect to either of them.

Speaker 46:33

I have always believed it, and I believe it now, and you know who I am.

Presenter7:02

Ballad for Americans Paul Robson.

Presenter7:05

Back in London, Anna, starting all over again.

Anna Raeburn7:08

Mm-hmm.

Presenter7:08

Where did you start?

Anna Raeburn7:10

I worked for an investment consultant whom I'm happy to tell you went broke. And then I worked for a doctor for two and a half years and for management consultants and PR people and marketing firms and things like that.

Presenter7:20

Exactly. And then you went on the editorial staff of the rather curious monthly magazine, which consists of what one supposes to be the sexual fantasies of the readers. How did that come about?

Anna Raeburn7:32

Because I worked before that on a research project into secondary school education for the non-academic child, and at the end of it I felt I had accomplished miracles and they would actually take me and train me and make me something, being by now the ripe old age of twenty-seven. Instead of which they asked me to come back next year as mister So and so's secretary and I said no and quit and went home to read the Times. In the Times personal column I found an advertisement which read quote

Speaker 47:52

Yep.

Anna Raeburn7:56

Wanted attractive articulate native English speaking women aged eighteen to thirty, sociological, psychological, or medical background for appearances American radio and television, and a telephone number.

Anna Raeburn8:10

And that was For'em, and that's how I got there.

Presenter8:12

Did you have to go to America?

Anna Raeburn8:14

Yes, I went with two other people to launch the American edition of the magazine and then I was offered a job on the British magazine and I worked with them for nearly three years.

Presenter8:20

Yes, counselling. Now, what counselling was there to be done? Um, dear ex wife Edmonton, I'm happy to hear about your fantasies about

Anna Raeburn8:27

But

Anna Raeburn8:32

The magazine was, at that time, fifty per cent editorial material and fifty per cent readers' letters. That did not account for the fact that it received a vast number of letters from readers who did not have particular interest in ladies in leather or doing it on the chandelier with carrots in your ears or anything else so esoteric.

Anna Raeburn8:51

And those letters were, when I came, unanswered, and so I began to answer them, and they were the stuff of every agony column. They were the same problems that I get at Woman Now and that I had at Spare Ribbon the interim, with certain different bias. But that's how the counselling thing began.

Presenter9:04

Now this um other magazine you were writing for, writing articles, the Feminist magazine, are you a very particularly

Presenter9:13

active feminist.

Anna Raeburn9:15

I believe in the rights of women and I believe that that women do not have an equal

Anna Raeburn9:19

say under law, or indeed equal acceptance in quite superficial ways in society. But I went to Spare Rib because they offered me an opportunity to write, which I was longing for.

Anna Raeburn9:31

And I had the great privilege of of seeing all my mistakes in print, which may be a very heart-rending way to learn, but you certainly do learn something that way.

Presenter9:40

Well, now on to the scene comes Miss Evelyn Holme, who for thirty seven years had run the problems page of the weekly paper Woman, and Miss Holme decided to retire. Are you going from there?

Anna Raeburn9:51

I was told that she was going to retire.

Anna Raeburn9:54

And it was suggested that I applied for the job, I may say by a friend, and I fell about with laughter, and said I wasn't respectable enough or old enough, and they wouldn't consider me. Then I saw a television programme which pointed out that not only was she retiring, but there were some considerable changes afoot in the magazine, and so, since postage was a reasonable price in those days, I wrote a very straight letter of application, sent my two best columns from Spare Rib, and waited.

Anna Raeburn10:15

There was a long and terrible silence.

Anna Raeburn10:18

after which I did what I now think is one of the bravest things I've ever done. I rang, and said

Anna Raeburn10:22

I'm sure you're going to tell me no, but please, am I in the running? And there was a kind of one of those embarrassed silences where you hear pages frantically being turned over, and a voice said

Anna Raeburn10:31

Would have been shortlisted.

Anna Raeburn10:33

And I was overcome, and uh, after another long and ghastly pause, I was sent seven typical letters to answer.

Anna Raeburn10:42

and I was asked to write a short piece on a related subject. I wrote eight hundred words on dependence. I did not know until two and a half years later that I was the only candidate so tested.

Anna Raeburn10:53

Uh they were worried, you see, that I couldn't write. I mean, I had been working for a sex magazine and we all know that those people don't write.

Anna Raeburn11:00

Um and I was then dragged in for interview, and I was interviewed, and at the end of that I was told, Well, we must stop talking about the short list,'cause there's only one person on it, and I thought that meant one person in me, which was actually as far as my dreams had dared carry me.

Anna Raeburn11:15

So I said that, and there was a little silence, and my then editor said, No, no, dear, you're the shortlist.

Anna Raeburn11:20

And I blushed scarlet and burst into tears.

Presenter11:23

Well done.

Presenter11:24

What's the readership of woman?

Anna Raeburn11:27

The readership is ten times the sales, but the estimated sales in this country and all over the world are between six and six and a half million copies a month.

Presenter11:36

That's a lot, isn't it?

Presenter11:38

Another record.

Anna Raeburn11:40

This is music which I came upon I'm happy to tell you through a film.

Anna Raeburn11:45

I saw a very beautiful cartoon film of the composer Eric Sati, and I liked the music so much that I went looking for it, and I found a setting of it, and this is one of his short pieces, originally written for the piano, and now reset for a small chamber orchestra.

Presenter13:02

One of the piano pieces of Eriksati arranged a small orchestra, the first of the three gymnoper d.

Presenter13:09

Now in taking over the problems page, what changes in emphasis did you decide to make?

Anna Raeburn13:15

Well, first of all, Evelyn Holm was a pen name and Anna Rayburn isn't.

Anna Raeburn13:20

Secondly, I wanted to make it much more direct, and I wanted to deal with what people gave me to deal with. I didn't want to retire behind the My dear you've made your bed and you must lie on it and God will give you your reward in heaven line. I actually wanted to say, Look, this is what I think, for what it's worth. You must do what you must do. There are these avenues of help open to you. And I do think that the problem page is an extraordinary vehicle for diffusing information two ways. First of all

Anna Raeburn13:45

As far as I know, people in specialist organizations very often lose sight of what Joan Public and Joe Public actually want for themselves or for their children.

Anna Raeburn13:55

And secondly,

Anna Raeburn13:56

Joe and Joan Public don't know very often what facilities are available to them.

Anna Raeburn14:01

Because they can't be advertised for medical or ethical reasons, and so it was a very good way of actually swapping information over.

Presenter14:06

Were you given a fairly free hand when you took over?

Anna Raeburn14:08

Yes, I am happy to tell you that I PC has done me proud as far as that is concerned.

Presenter14:12

They checked.

Anna Raeburn14:12

They checked me over and over again, but they did actually let me write a lot of things.

Presenter14:16

How many letters do you get a week?

Anna Raeburn14:18

Oh, too many. But not nearly as many as people would have you believe. I suppose.

Anna Raeburn14:23

Uh again, it's easier for me to talk in months and weeks. In an average month, it's anywhere between six hundred and a thousand, and there are seasonal variations in that.

Presenter14:29

How many of those are answered on the paper?

Anna Raeburn14:31

ten a week.

Presenter14:33

Forty out of the

Anna Raeburn14:34

Hmm.

Presenter14:35

Mountain Do all the others get a reply.

Anna Raeburn14:38

The IPC ruling is that letters are divided three ways. Anonymous letters are the stuff of the agony column. You then get a whole lot of letters which don't have stamped-addressed envelopes but which do have names and addresses, to which we reply willy-nilly, one way or another, and you get the stamped-addressed envelope mail, which is all that the magazine actually takes upon itself to answer.

Presenter14:58

Now in the main it's what? Loneliness, ignorance, fear.

Presenter15:03

Emotional upset

Anna Raeburn15:06

The underpinning of all agony columns, whether spoken or written, is anxiety.

Anna Raeburn15:12

And the baseline in written terms is very much to do with relationship.

Anna Raeburn15:15

It's relationship to yourself, it's relationship to your boss, your husband, your child, your mother-in-law, your best friend, whoever it is.

Anna Raeburn15:24

There must be, although they would be very difficult to lay down, criteria for the sort of people who write to magazines.

Anna Raeburn15:31

Because it would never occur to me, and it obviously wouldn't occur to an awful lot of other people either. But by the same token, a great many letters say, I have never thought that I would find myself doing this. I have never suspected that I would be one of these people.

Speaker 115:40

I have no

Anna Raeburn15:43

So I feel that it must be.

Anna Raeburn15:46

A loneliness which perhaps you haven't anticipated, an anxiety that you thought you could take care of and you can't.

Presenter15:51

Is it a great deal of moaning without meaning?

Anna Raeburn15:54

Yes, there are. I mean, I have made myself terribly unpopular by saying before that I do divide people roughly into two major groups. Those are the people who really do want to do something. Whether they take my advice or somebody else's, it doesn't matter. What matters is that they really want to change their lives. The second group are those that I call privately the whiners. And they really write to let off steam, or they ring to let off steam. They have no intention of listening to anything that you say. If you wrested their problem from their nerveless fingers, they'd miss it like mad and want another one immediately.

Presenter16:23

Another record.

Anna Raeburn16:25

I think one of the most beautiful modern love songs I know, written by two women, called Heart Like a Wheel, sung by Linda Ronstadt.

Speaker 416:33

But I can't understand.

Speaker 416:37

Oh please God for my hand.

Speaker 416:42

Why it happened happen to me?

Presenter16:58

Linda Ronstadt Heart Like a Wheel

Presenter17:01

Now, on Capitol Radio every week you run your phone in problems programme.

Anna Raeburn17:05

Mm-hmm.

Presenter17:06

How do the problems differ from those that come to you at Women or Dente?

Anna Raeburn17:10

They differ in two things. First of all, because woman, although it has a large number of male readers, doesn't have a great many male correspondents, although it has more than it had when I first came, I think.

Anna Raeburn17:22

Uh but at Capital you have a fifty fifty breakdown. You may have a night when there are a preponderance of female or male callers, but basically it works out as a show which is used by both men and women in equal proportions. The second thing is that

Anna Raeburn17:36

The media are very different to write.

Anna Raeburn17:39

is a finite thing.

Anna Raeburn17:41

To talk, you have constant exchange and re-evaluation, and you pick up messages from each other, and it's a much more

Anna Raeburn17:49

Shifting.

Anna Raeburn17:51

thing. It also means that the problems I think are of a wider range, because people feel that they can talk about things which are much more amorphous and difficult, which they wouldn't attempt to write about. It's a tall order to write about something like

Anna Raeburn18:08

Your feelings about your stepmother.

Presenter18:11

Do you get feedback afterwards? Do readers or or listeners write to you afterwards and say that your advice was right or or wrong?

Anna Raeburn18:17

If it was wrong they obviously totally discount it. If it was right they sometimes write and they sometimes ring, which can be very moving.

Presenter18:24

Any individual case histories that come immediately to mind.

Anna Raeburn18:27

Yes, um two that I love. One was the the man who wrote a very, very long letter.

Anna Raeburn18:33

and I wrote an equally long letter back, and there was a silence of about six weeks, and then he wrote another very long letter, and I wrote another very long letter back, and then there was about a three-week gap.

Anna Raeburn18:41

And the telephone rang and I have two lines, one which comes directly through to me, and I picked it up.

Anna Raeburn18:48

And he said, Could I speak to Anna Rayburn? and I said, Speaking and he said, You're quite sure and I said, Well, yes, I am. And he said, You've saved my marriage.

Speaker 418:58

Mm-hmm.

Anna Raeburn18:59

To which, you know, what do you say? You curtsey and say, Well, I'm terribly glad, and thank you, and who are you? and Oh, you won't remember, you won't you won't remember and I said, But I will. Who is it? and I did, of course, and then we had another long chat, and that was lovely.

Anna Raeburn19:10

Um the sequel to that story is even more moving. I have met him and he doesn't know that I know who he is.

Anna Raeburn19:15

Um the other one is the lovely lady, lovely cockney lady in her late forties who was having a terrible time with a gentleman several years her junior, and I finally

Anna Raeburn19:23

Got her to the stage when I

Anna Raeburn19:25

made her believe that she didn't have to be a doormat.

Anna Raeburn19:28

And she pulled herself together and went off and did several things that she wanted to do, with the money that she'd been going to spend on the house. And then she rang me up and said, I'm going to tell you something. I'd never have done this six months ago, but I'm going to go and have a facelift. Now you're not allowed to laugh.

Anna Raeburn19:41

And I said, I've no intention of laughing. I think that's wonderful. Why are you going to do that?'Cause it'll make me feel better, she said. Great, wonderful.

Presenter19:41

And I said I've no intention of laughing.

Presenter19:47

Splendid. Very rewarding. Another disc.

Anna Raeburn19:51

This is some of the most beautiful religious music I know. It's part of the Easter Mass from the Russian Orthodox Church.

Speaker 419:58

This is near Christmas Pause here I'm getting by gold, I can get sir

Speaker 420:12

Give us a peaceful door.

Speaker 420:18

Distinctly

Speaker 420:29

But this may boy hold on.

Speaker 420:42

Give us love and peace for Lord.

Speaker 420:49

These two sets of the miller slowly.

Presenter20:59

Part of the Easter Mass by the choir of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Presenter21:04

Your job has many fascinations, obviously, Annette. Do you see yourself sticking it for thirty seven years?

Anna Raeburn21:10

No, I could never do that. I mean, I have nothing but respect for people who do, but I don't think I could.

Presenter21:15

Where do you go from here? Is journalism enough? What about hard covers?

Anna Raeburn21:16

Yeah.

Anna Raeburn21:19

Yes, I mean, I want to write more than I want to do anything else at the moment, although I love broadcasting, and this is not simply because we're on radio, but I s I like radio very, very much indeed. Television is a challenge, but it is also

Anna Raeburn21:31

the most superficial of the existing media as far as I'm concerned and therefore very fraught with difficulty. Um but I don't know. I'm going to wait and see. I planned and planned and planned until I was twenty five or twenty six years old. This was going to happen and that was going to happen. None of it has been what I expected.

Presenter21:45

Have you kept open your theatre interested?

Anna Raeburn21:47

No, I can barely sit in the theatre nowadays. I mean, I go to the theatre very rarely and very carefully chosen. I'm a complete film freak.

Presenter21:54

Mm-hmm.

Anna Raeburn21:54

I have celluloid coming out of my ears.

Presenter21:58

Back to music, number six.

Anna Raeburn22:00

This is the voice which God is going to grant me if He fulfils my dreams for just one day in my life. This is Aretha Franklin singing Amazing Grace in the church of which her father is pastor, in Southern California.

Speaker 422:13

Choose a

Presenter22:40

Aretha Franklin, amazing grace. Now, Anna, obviously you're a self-reliant person. Would you also be with all the problems on a desert island? Could you look after yourself?

Anna Raeburn22:49

Oh, I do hope so. I mean, there's not much option, is there? If there's nobody else to do it for me, I'll find a way of doing it myself.

Presenter22:55

You're not just going to burst into tears and throw up your hands. You'd really get cracking. You would build some sort of shelter.

Anna Raeburn22:59

Yeah.

Anna Raeburn23:00

I'd do both. I mean, I'd certainly burst into tears and I would have bouts of tears, but that wouldn't stop me from building a shelter and catching fish and

Presenter23:07

Catching fish, have you done any fishing?

Anna Raeburn23:10

No, but I'm inventive.

Presenter23:11

Would you try to escape?

Anna Raeburn23:14

Probably, if I was desperate enough, yes.

Presenter23:16

By whatever means.

Anna Raeburn23:18

Well, I certainly wouldn't set off swimming into the blue horizon to avoid that. No, but I would actually yes, I think I would want to get off. I would want to come back.

Presenter23:21

They'll avoid that.

Presenter23:26

Musically, where have we got now?

Anna Raeburn23:28

We've got me going out to buy a record by a band called Weather Report, and a tune on that album turns out to be Birdland, which I liked very much, and it was vaguely familiar, but I couldn't think how. And then to my intense embarrassment I realized that I've only been played off the air with it every Wednesday for the last three years.

Presenter24:17

Birdland by Weather Report. Now what's your last record?

Anna Raeburn24:21

Song called Life in the Fast Lane by the Eagles who are a Southern California group.

Presenter24:26

What has this group got especially for you?

Anna Raeburn24:29

Wit.

Anna Raeburn24:30

and the world is awful short of it. But I was sent the album. I didn't go out and buy it. I was playing around with it and I heard the lyric of this and I just began to laugh, because it is a perfect description of me and a very special man in my life.

Anna Raeburn24:44

And it made me therefore identify totally. And also, it's the summation of Southern California. It's very decadent and very.

Anna Raeburn24:53

Laid back, I think, is the correct term, and it makes me laugh.

Speaker 424:58

Lines on the mirror

Speaker 425:00

Lines on her face, she pretended not to notice, she was caught up in the race.

Speaker 425:06

Out of the English

Speaker 425:08

Until it was late, he was too tired to make it She was too tired to fight her father I'm in the fast lane Surely make you lose your mind I'm in the fast lane

Presenter25:24

Life and the Fast Lane by The Eagles. If you could take only one disc of the eight, which would it be?

Anna Raeburn25:30

I think I'll take Aretha Franklin.

Presenter25:31

Right, Aretha Franklin. And one luxury to take to the island. Nothing of any practical use.

Anna Raeburn25:38

T.

Presenter25:38

T.

Anna Raeburn25:39

Couldn't live without tea.

Presenter25:40

What flavour, what sort?

Anna Raeburn25:42

It's a blend, actually, but it's probably predominantly Indian.

Presenter25:47

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

Anna Raeburn25:55

I had great difficulty over this, because I can't conceive of a world which is narrowed to one book. But having thought, I would take Daughter of the Earth by an American writer called Agnes

Anna Raeburn26:05

Which is

Anna Raeburn26:07

A novel which is in fact an autobiography.

Presenter26:09

Daughter of the Earth by Agnes Smedley. And thank you, Anna Rayburn, for letting us hear your Desert Island Discs.

Anna Raeburn26:16

Thank you. I hope I can get off this island.

Presenter26:18

Goodbye, everyone.

Speaker 126:28

You've been listening to a download from the Desert Islandists archive.

Speaker 126:32

For more downloads, please visit the Radio 4 website.