Sir Osbert Lancaster

Sir Osbert Lancaster0:00

Hello, I'm Kirstie 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 nine, and the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:31

Our castaway this week is the artist, writer, cartoonist and theatrical designer Sir Osbert Lancaster.

Presenter0:38

So Osborne, does music play an important part, as far as you're concerned?

Presenter0:44

Oh, yes, I think it does. Um, I am no exactant. I mean, I short time I played the flute in the school orchestra, but those are many, many years ago. So I can't be said to be an execantant anyway. Do you play records a lot?

Speaker 20:52

Together.

Presenter0:58

Yes, a great deal. Wh while you're drawing, while you're working? No, I very seldom do, because it uh I don't like th if there was somewhere else to change them all, I I would, but uh, the moment one has to get up is always the moment when one is one is uh most employed at the drawing board. Yes.

Presenter1:17

Well, you have eight records to choose. What's the first one you have there?

Presenter1:22

Oh, the first one is um Quefero Sensior Dicci, which which is uh very for glook, which I'm very uh fond of, it's a most beautiful song. And it is um sung here by Kathleen Ferrier, who last and last has has left us, but I always I particularly like contraltos and she really had the most lovely voice, I think.

Speaker 41:40

Uh

Speaker 41:56

With me on me.

Speaker 42:14

Oh my god.

Presenter2:37

Kathleen Ferrier singing K. Faro from Glux, Orpheus and Eurydge.

Presenter2:43

Now, you were born here in London, in Bayswater. You had the misfortune to lose your father in the First World War.

Sir Osbert Lancaster2:49

Level 2.

Presenter2:51

Now your mother was an artist? My mother's an artist, yes. But rather quite good in a way, I must say. Did she teach you the rudiments very early on? Oh, yes, she always encouraged me to to to draw like mad and and and uh so I've always gone on doing anything with Lord.

Sir Osbert Lancaster3:01

Odors

Presenter3:09

Now you were sent away to prep school at Worthing, then to a Charter House. Now, s strangely enough, Charter House has a tradition of of cartooning. Well it has. Uh there was was uh Max Bierbohm of course and before him there was Thackeray who everybody forgets really was used to I mean all the original illustrations of Anity Fair by Thackeray himself. Yes. And of course he was a regular contributor to Punch. I mean he was a beautiful artist in his way. Was the art instruction good there in your day? Excellent. First rate. One thing I really I really am grateful to Stratahouse for was that. He was a charming old boy, who was a very, very good watercolourist and was very firm. W watercolours was all. And there's no messing about with oil paints. He said quite far too much mess was made by all oil pens. And I think quite rightly th that uh if you could master watercolours which is in a way a far more difficult medium would then go on to oils in later life.

Speaker 23:57

Do I

Presenter4:10

Then, up to Oxford, what did you read?

Presenter4:14

Um, what did I read? I hardly read anything. No, I yes, no, it's rather awful. I'd read English literature, yes, like a fool. And the stupidest seal stupidest school I could have taken. And you took part in university theatricals?

Sir Osbert Lancaster4:17

Do I feel?

Sir Osbert Lancaster4:20

Yes, yes.

Presenter4:28

Yes, oh yes, other in in the Ods, those splendid days, Peter Fleming and um uh Val Dyle and uh who were the others, and and all that that got Peter Fleming was the President of the Outs. I I believe that John Betcherman was a member for a while until he was expelled.

Sir Osbert Lancaster4:40

Eventually.

Sir Osbert Lancaster4:41

I

Presenter4:45

He was expelled. Yes, there was. What was the indiscretion? Well, he was also editing The Charwal, which was the more disreputable of the two university papers, and he did a wonderful mock-up photograph of the Owls rehearsing, which the Olds didn't like at all. So he was forced to resign. However, that gave me my first stage chance because he vacated the role of the fool, which was taken over by John Fernall.

Presenter5:17

John Infernal was the second knight or something, so I stepped into the his shoes as second or third knight, I forget what it was. I had one line and a duel. Well, there's glory for you. That's it. And that was um well, that was a production directed by um Commissary.

Sir Osbert Lancaster5:33

Comes Joseph.

Presenter5:35

You worked on on the Charwol and the Isis as well. The ISIS as well. I started off very seriously on the ISIS, that Peter Fleming was editor, and then the Char Wall was much more disreputable, much more fun, and I moved to the Char Wolf. Yes, and as a result of all these splendid activities, I read that you only took a fourth after an extra year. After an extra year. Yes. Still, I would make a. It's a hard afterlife. If you don't take a first, it doesn't matter what the hell you take. Let's have another record. Ottena.

Sir Osbert Lancaster5:58

Josiah

Presenter6:10

Well, I thought we might have the court fire. Perhaps the Alabama song that's sung by um Lotta Lenya. I think she's absolute wonderful singer. Do you remember Lotta Lenya? Of course I do.

Speaker 46:21

Show us the way to the next whiskey bar.

Speaker 46:26

Don't pass by.

Speaker 46:29

No, don't ascribe.

Speaker 46:31

So we must find the next whiskey bar For if we don't find the next whiskey bar

Speaker 46:40

Then you remaster.

Speaker 46:42

I tell you we must die I tell you, I tell you, I tell you we must die.

Presenter6:50

Lotta Lenia singing the Alabama song from Mahagoni.

Presenter6:55

Now, down from Oxford, what did you do?

Presenter6:58

Um, what did I do? I went to the slade. There was a bit talk of you studying law. There was. As it remained, I'm happy to say talk. After I'd failed my bar exams, one bar exam three times, I persuaded people that perhaps the law was not for me. And then art at the slade. One way or another, your education was taking a long time, wasn't it?

Sir Osbert Lancaster7:06

Yeah.

Presenter7:23

Uh yes, I suppose I was twenty-one. No, I was yes, I was just twenty-one, I suppose, about the time I d went to the sled. And then you crop up on the staff of the Architectural Review. Yeah. Well, it's largely because the John Wetchman was sort of assistant editor at that time, and he was a very old friend of mine from Oxford. And it so happened that uh Percy Hastings, who owned the Architectural Review, was an old trump of my mother's, so that it was graft. I mean, it was however I remained there a very long time.

Presenter7:57

Uh your first book wa was an architectural lark, wasn't it? The story of a seaside resort. Yes, that's it. Which all really stemmed. I did it a series of drawings regularly for the Architectural Review when I was on the Architectural Review. And then they built up into a book and John Lurray, who was a dear friend of mine from from Oxford, said, oh, look, come on, we'll publish it. The story of a resort called Pelvis Bay. Yes, that is it. I mean, it's just typical English seaside resort. And then from the Architectural Review, you went to a a very different class of publication, a very excellent magazine, Night and Day.

Speaker 28:23

Bay.

Presenter8:38

Oh, yes. The great point about Night and Day was it was admittedly rather styled on the New Yorker. It had a coloured cover changed every every week. But it had rather extraordinary I mean, Peter Fleming did theatre notes, I think, and then Graham Greene was the editor of it, and Elizabeth Bowen reviewed the novels. And it had a rather s quite staggering cast at the time. Yes, indeed.

Presenter9:08

And you were art critic? Yes, I was art critic, yes. And last it was wrecked by two dribble actions and uh just missed the boat because uh had it survived another three months the war would have broken out um paper rationing was fixed so that it would have been in clover because it could have had it yeah that killed it.

Speaker 29:31

Yeah.

Sir Osbert Lancaster9:31

Yes.

Presenter9:33

The libel action was something to do with Graham Greene. Yes, but uh he had two, I think. It was what was it? Um

Presenter9:41

The woman's editor libeled some dressmaker, one thing. And then Graham Greene, who was it he libeled? He libeled Shirley Temple. He libeled Shirley Temple. The opposite, saying that Shirley Temple's public was, in fact, an entirely sex-made old clergyman. My sex right is the phrase. Much resentment was caused by this. Yes, 20th century Fox. Great shame. They're eternal shame. Let's have another record. What shall we have now?

Sir Osbert Lancaster9:56

My head's right.

Presenter10:10

What a but nice bit of Douglas being. That takes me back to my youth. What's he to sing?

Speaker 210:13

And

Sir Osbert Lancaster10:13

Yeah.

Presenter10:16

Oh, I think um spring, spring, which is is take off of drawing room sopranos. And uh wildly funny text, I think.

Speaker 410:28

Oh, that's I think too better.

Speaker 410:31

You know I haven't signed since my husband day. Oh very well, I've seen one of those little songs you love so much. It's pretty

Sir Osbert Lancaster10:34

Well, I think

Speaker 410:43

Come out and shout about, for swimming is in the air. And the dove could and bricklebill are fading everywhere.

Presenter10:56

Douglas Byng singing Spring.

Presenter10:59

So Osburg, in nineteen thirty nine you began working for the Daily Express, doing a daily cartoon, and forty years later you're still drawing the same series of cartoons for the same page.

Speaker 211:10

That's what I had.

Presenter11:14

I I did some sums. This works out at about ten thousand cartoons uh at five a week.

Presenter11:20

As I know, but I don't do five for the last uh um four a week for for four a week. And then after all, I mean, I've got to think about holidays, isn't it? Yes, of course. And I'm in a large chunk, two years of the war, and I was away for it.

Sir Osbert Lancaster11:25

Or

Speaker 411:25

Uh

Sir Osbert Lancaster11:25

Wait.

Sir Osbert Lancaster11:28

Yes, of course.

Presenter11:34

Well let's say nine thousand. It's still quite a lot.

Speaker 211:35

Yeah.

Presenter11:38

or mostly featuring that delightful woman, Maudie, Countess of Littlehampton.

Presenter11:43

uh and her family

Presenter11:45

her husband Willie, sister Ursula, and those two clerical gentlemen.

Presenter11:49

There was Canon Fontwater, and Father O. Bubblegum of RC, yes. You've published a a dozen or more collections of your cartoons. Also another two books about the Little Hamptons. Drain Fleet Revealed, I think, was the first. Yes, that was it, I think, with Drainfleet Revealed. And then I did another one about the Little Hampton Collection, too. Drainfleet was the market town to which the family moved in 1672, wasn't it? That was it, I think, if I remember rightly.

Sir Osbert Lancaster12:16

The drain

Sir Osbert Lancaster12:21

Bleb

Presenter12:24

And later you were given the privilege of cataloguing the family pictures. That was it, yes, that's the way it was. Yes, I've forgotten that. That's perfectly true. The Little Hampton Bequest.

Sir Osbert Lancaster12:31

The little

Sir Osbert Lancaster12:32

Quiz

Presenter12:34

Which of course will one day go to the nation

Presenter12:38

It has already been exhibited.

Presenter12:41

Yes, well it has. Well, I mean certainly. I mean it's interpreted by me as The Victoria and Albert, wasn't it? Yes, it was, yes, it was. The glorious spoof.

Sir Osbert Lancaster12:52

I'm not sure.

Presenter12:54

Rather suspect pictures by all sorts of artists. That was it. Millet, Hockney.

Sir Osbert Lancaster12:57

So yeah.

Presenter13:02

Oh, what only Hoctu is the only living one, I think.

Presenter13:07

Right. Uh we've got to record four. What? Verdi. This is the chorus of the Hebrew slaves from Lavuco. I think it's it's wonderfully moving and uh I always think that great story that at uh the Verdi's funeral and they the coffin came out and the whole of that vast square was packed.

Presenter13:29

with uh talents, I mean and they all spontaneously broke into this song.

Presenter14:37

Varpensiero from Verdi's Nabucco sung by the chorus of La Scala Milan.

Presenter14:44

Now those nine thousand, at a conservative estimate, Maudy Littlehampton cartoons, all topical. Now what's your discipline in drawing them? Obviously you can't stockpile them.

Presenter14:55

No. I think it's a good thing not to stop the way things that I've always tried to I I go into the office to do them. Do you? And I don't go into the office before four o'clock because it's got to be topical and on the next day's news and I wait till the early editions are out for the evening papers. Yes. And uh

Presenter15:19

Go ahead from there and hope I shall be through by different time. I mean, well, hope to be through by seven or half past. So on on an average you're in the office about about three hours and then you've got your idea.

Sir Osbert Lancaster15:30

Got your idea.

Presenter15:31

Occasionally

Presenter15:34

blissful things happen, like when uh wicks thinks of a joke in the bath in the morning and then the whole thing is the whole thing is but not very often. I mean it usually means going in and looking through all the papers and so on there. Uh you talked about the the gap in the sequence during the war. The Foreign Office sent you to Greece, which was a bit of a... Well, I was in the Foreign Office already, I was in the news department in London. Then I shot out to Greece just after the liberation. It was perfectly clear that things were going to go very wrong in Greece. And needless to say, we hadn't enough troops. There was nobody in the embassy or anything. Everything was hopelessly understaffed. So various people, including me, used rushed out. I was meant to do, I don't quite know. It was a bit noisy, wasn't it? A bit noisy. Oh, yeah. It was fascinating, I must say.

Sir Osbert Lancaster15:55

Yeah.

Presenter16:24

This time started your love affair. Yes, indeed, very, very much, yes.

Sir Osbert Lancaster16:27

Yeah, thanks.

Presenter16:30

Two books about Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean. Classical landscape with figures and sailing to Byzantium. Yes.

Presenter16:37

I love the Eastern Mediterranean, it's my favorite part of the world. And you've written one book in collaboration with your wife, Anne Scott James? Yes, indeed. Well, I d I didn't write write it in collaboration with her. I drew the pictures into her. Yes. It was just on gardens. I mean, uh her it was her book on garden.

Presenter16:54

It seems an appropriate place to interject that John Betchman once compared your literary style to Gibbon, which is rather nice. Did he? Yes. Haven't you come across that? No, I don't ask him. No, I don't he's always very kind, a very old friend. I'm glad to see loyal. That's what I like. Loyal.

Sir Osbert Lancaster17:10

Drawing.

Presenter17:13

Record number five. Now, number five is great figures of my youth. This is Nostalgia Corner now. It's the record of uh Noel Card and Gertrude Lawrence in private lives. And I think it is absolutely sums up that period. And I think it still remains frightfully funny. That orchestra seems to have a remarkably small repertoire.

Speaker 417:36

Strange how potent sheet music is.

Speaker 417:42

They are fine.

Speaker 417:46

Light behind you

Speaker 417:49

Who to the dream I am dreaming.

Speaker 417:55

As I draw near you, you smile a little.

Presenter18:02

Derrill Card and Gertrude Lawrence.

Presenter18:05

Another important facet in your varied career has been scenic design. This was an early enthusiasm. Yes, but I didn't get the chance to uh exercise my talents on this until um

Presenter18:19

Early fifties, I think, I think were the first sets I didn't since then a lot of operas and ballets. Which ones come first to mind?

Speaker 218:24

Yeah.

Presenter18:26

Well, I very much enjoyed working at Glenbourne. It was it was so growable and simple and everything everything under one roof, which is which is so wonderful. And I very, very much enjoyed working my first one. Of course, the the dear old friend of mine last night did John Cranco, who's the the choreographer, and I very much enjoyed working with him. And a lot, of course, at Cotton Garden. Yes, yes. I liked Cotton Garden very much. There were always splendid rows going on everywhere, but mercifully mercifully I kept uninvolved.

Sir Osbert Lancaster18:59

No.

Presenter19:03

Another designing job which really had theatrical overtones. You and John Piper designed the the vistas and terraces of the nineteen fifty one Festival of Britain. Some of them, yes, not all. That must have been fun. It was fun, except that the um

Speaker 219:06

Yeah.

Presenter19:20

endless troubles one of them there was the they ran out of cash and then more cash and then there was pocketing of various unconsidered trifles. It was an extraordinary experience. Then you see the we did the fountains and uh they went on the first day they I

Presenter19:39

It's very pretty and beautifully lit, and all the rest of it. But then the stall keepers selling souvenirs said if the wind was in the west, the spray got on their goods. And so, despite the fact that they had cost, I think, something like six thousand pounds a fountain, there were a thousand of them there, they were never turned on again. Oh, dear.

Presenter20:03

Record number six we've got to

Presenter20:05

Number six is uh Boulanque. In Mamolda Teresias, which is a it's only a comic opera and it's I think absolutely delightful. I mean it's all about sex change. But I mean when we say sex change, it's not taken so seriously. Poula is Boulanc and it is frightfully funny and I think the music is absolutely delightful.

Sir Osbert Lancaster20:20

Yeah.

Presenter20:26

You designed a production of this, didn't you? I did, yes. Johnny Crank produced it, and it was English Opera Group, I think.

Speaker 421:14

Pau tonque la cer quar sa.

Presenter21:29

An excerpt from Poulanc's Les Memel de Tyrésias

Presenter21:34

A recording by the Orchestra, Chorus and Company of the Opéra Comique in Paris, conducted by Andri Critence.

Presenter21:41

You've written two volumes of autobiography, one about your childhood and the second one which takes us up to the outbreak of war. Can we expect some more?

Presenter21:51

No, I don't I don't I've always started. I think then something goes wrong or somebody doesn't like something always. Well no nothing went wrong with these two volumes.

Sir Osbert Lancaster21:58

It's never

Sir Osbert Lancaster22:00

So

Presenter22:03

rather trickier period my life eaters that I knew at Oxford. Difficult not to be r too outspoken perhaps occasionally. I don't think that still it it's more difficult because the first part of one's life falls into natural sequences and come to a well pointed end. I mean what is me, it was all and but it's not so easy, I think, sort of I'm trying to uh

Sir Osbert Lancaster22:07

Skelly does

Presenter22:30

encapsulate in one's thoughts and emotions for the next thirty, forty years. What are you working on at the moment? Well, I'm I'm having an exhibition in um January at the Redfern in Gallery in London. And so at the moment I'm sort of desperately collecting old works in various places, retrospective. So th that at the moment is is my principal employment rather than uh dead express. That must be a rather a a curious

Presenter23:03

Nostalgic feelings or something.

Sir Osbert Lancaster23:04

Feelings or

Presenter23:09

uh hadn't seen for twenty, thirty years or something at some point. One is staggered really how good it was and one feels we're not so good now. I mean that is always a a a rather unpleasant aspect of the situation. I'm sure you're wrong.

Presenter23:26

Record number seven. Ah, this is uh Stravinsky, is it not? Yes. Apollo music, which uh

Presenter23:34

He wrote quite late early in his life, and it's some people find it rather arid, but uh I think it's a very moving work. I'm very fond of it.

Presenter23:44

We haven't seen it in London for quite a long time. I don't know why Covent Garden don't revive it.

Presenter24:47

The closing passage of Stravinsky's ballet music, Apollo Musa Guette, played by the Swiss Romonde Orchestra conducted by Ernest Anceme.

Presenter24:58

Have you a clear design in your mind for a desert island hut built with local resources? For a desert island hut? Yes. You're on this island now. Can you visualize exactly what you're going to build to live in?

Presenter25:11

Well well firstly uh that I am not so see rather very good with my fingers and that uh I by capabilities of building anything I w I shall be am I allowed labour? Is are there no.

Sir Osbert Lancaster25:25

Letter

Presenter25:26

I myself you cutting the

Sir Osbert Lancaster25:28

You are yourself.

Presenter25:30

For the bricks and all that. Well, I don't know where you're going to get your bricks from. I was thinking of something a little a little lighter.

Presenter25:38

Oh, I see yes, yes. Um bamboo, leaves, that sort of thing. Bamboo leaves. Don't think I'd be very good with bamboos and leaves, but uh I suppose I could build myself.

Sir Osbert Lancaster25:42

Sort of the M.

Presenter25:49

A little shelter, I'd hardly call it a hut, a shelter perhaps, would build. The question of style, I think, hardly arises. I mean, dictated by my ability to make the thing stand up. A situation where artistic concepts take a second place. I think they've got to take second place, I think. I would like to do it in a neoclassical style, but I don't think the materials would lend themselves to such subtleties. Gardening.

Speaker 425:53

Yeah.

Sir Osbert Lancaster26:11

Yeah.

Presenter26:20

You're you're quite good at gardening. Could you grow your own food?

Presenter26:24

Oh, no, no, no, no, no. And uh nor am I very good with guns, so that I shouldn't be able to shoot my own food. I could catch some fish, that I could Now, how about constructing a small craft? Designing it first, of course.

Presenter26:38

Heaven forbid I mean, I'd sink like a stone, I should think, if I had signed it.

Presenter26:44

You have no ambitions, no plans for escape. Absolutely none. Oh, I see that for purposes of escape. Yes.

Sir Osbert Lancaster26:46

Yeah.

Presenter26:52

Is this near a good practicable uh steamer route? I mean, would I be picked up very soon? I mean, or if I got to paddle myself to the mainland.

Sir Osbert Lancaster27:01

Come on.

Presenter27:03

No. I think I'd I'd stay put. I think it'd be very foolish. Launch out.

Presenter27:09

We got your last record. Yes, so we have, which is I mean, th this is must be the great Bach Chorale, Mine Fest of World Mistons are God, which of course is hymns ancient and modern as well, but but uh I think it is Bach at its his his finest. I I'm very fond of big male voice choirs. Well, that it isn't all male voice. And I think this is a splendid recording.

Speaker 427:39

Alright.

Speaker 427:42

Yeah.

Presenter28:30

Mach's cantata number eighty, Ein Thursteburg is Unse Gott.

Presenter28:35

the South German Madrical Choir and the consortium Musikung conducted by Wolfgang Gunnewein.

Presenter28:42

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

Presenter28:48

Oh, I think I'd fix the burg. I think so. And it it's got so much needed and it also the long is far away. Right. And you're allowed to have one luxury with you.

Presenter28:59

I should like a lot of sturgeon.

Presenter29:02

So that I would then have a constant supply of caviar the whole time. You mean lives, Turchin? Well, it'd have to be lives. They've got to give birth to the to the little black delicacies. Yes, or you can keep them in a pool. Or tanko

Presenter29:18

I've assumed there's a pool on the island. Yes, yes. I I think we're bending the rules a bit here. It should be something inanimate, but uh oh, inanimate. Oh, yes, but never mind. I mean, nobody's ever chosen fish before, and it seems a reasonable thing to have on a desert island. That's all right.

Sir Osbert Lancaster29:27

Yeah.

Sir Osbert Lancaster29:33

Okay.

Presenter29:36

And one book

Presenter29:38

Apart from the Bible and Shakespeare and we don't encourage big encyclopedias. Oh, no, no, no, of course not. No, I think um Gibbon. Gibbon. Klein and Fall.

Presenter29:48

Yeah.

Presenter29:50

Cannot honestly cross my heart and say I've ever read it from cover to cover. I mean, vol one and two I know very well, but the long passages have come quite fresh to me in the latter part of the work. Well, according to Betcherman, it's obviously influenced your style. Well, so he says. And being an artist, you shall have one picture.

Presenter30:11

Any one picture in the world that you can think of. This is a frightfully difficult one, because one has to think of a picture which is immensely satisfying and of which one would not grow tired.

Presenter30:26

I think, on the whole, I choose Vermeer's view of Delft. Where is it?

Presenter30:32

Amsterdam, I think. I or maybe The Hague. I'm I'm not absolutely certain. And thank you, Sir Osborne Lancaster, for letting us hear your Desert Island discs. Thank you. Very much indeed. Enjoyed it. Very much. Goodbye, everyone.

Sir Osbert Lancaster30:52

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