Geoffrey Household

Geoffrey Household0:00

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

Geoffrey Household0:05

For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in 1980, and the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:30

This week, Our Castaway is a writer of adventure stories who's had an adventurous life himself, Jeffrey Household.

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How much does music mean to you, mister Household?

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It means a lot to me without

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Knowing anything at all about it. You have no skill, you don't play an instrument.

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I remember

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When I was a little boy I learnt to play the piano. I even learnt to compose. Really? But well, only the silly little things, you know, like hymn tunes and so forth.

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But then my life seemed to go on for a very long time without music.

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Did you have any kind of plan or theme in choosing your eight records?

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Yes, I did. A kind of theme, partly of things I'd like to remember, and partly of things.

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That would amuse me and keep me going.

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Where do we start? What's your first record?

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My first record is Schubert's Unfinished Symphony, and I'll tell you why I said I was taught and taught very well music at my preparatory school.

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And this brilliant master, Howell, who was killed in the First War.

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Got up a symphony orchestra in Swanwich.

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It was the first time I had ever heard a symphony, not unnaturally at the age of thirteen.

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And he played this, and has stayed in my mind ever since, as he himself has, and that is why I have chosen it.

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The opening of Schubert's Eighth Symphony, The Unfinished, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra conducted by Carlo Maria Giulini.

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Now

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Who's who? says Educated Clifton College. That's Bristol. You're a West Countryman, are you? Yes, I was born and bred in Gloucestershire.

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The son of a barrister, you went up to Oxford. Any legal interests yourself? No, al although my father did read uh bar, he actually became Director of Education for Gloucestershire.

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What did you read in Oxford? English literature. In which you took a first? Yes. What were your other interests there? Drama, politics, sport? I am afraid none whatever. I've never had much interest in sport.

Presenter3:45

Oh, politics I've gone my own way, which never seems to be anybody else's. And um other interests, I think one could say the chief interest beyond doing a little work was punting on the river with girls. Admirable. Couldn't be better. What did you want to be?

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I had no idea. What did you become and what happened when you came down?

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Well, what happened was that I was offered a job.

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With the Bank of Romania my natural I suppose if I had followed at any other time the natural run of a career, it might have been something like the consular service. How did you become offered a job by the

Presenter4:31

I was offered the job by the director of the Ottoman Bank because I was a very great friend of his son and had shot his partridges, and that was about all.

Geoffrey Household4:31

We love the job.

Presenter4:40

So where did you ha you went off to Romania? I went off, yes, straight away to Bucharest, to the bank. Travelling on the Orient Express? Indeed. And people always get the Orient Express wrong. They think of the present one.

Geoffrey Household4:47

Yeah.

Presenter4:52

Which goes bumbling through Yugoslavia. It didn't in those days. It went north of the Alps through Munich, the Great Train. Well, that, of course, was in the twenties. Did you speak any Romanian? Very little then. We used French. Were you working hard? Were you interested in banking, in what you were doing? No, I don't think I was.

Geoffrey Household5:10

Mm.

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I did my best. They put me in the correspondence department, and I used to write letters to London and other places. I didn't enjoy the bank very much, but I had a most marvellous time.

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The exchange.

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had fallen very severely as against the gold pounds it was then.

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And the result was I could have the best lunch in uh Europe for the equivalent.

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Of half a crown not that that means anything very much, but it would be about town.

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Well, let's say having a

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The best meal that Paris could produce for a pound a day, or something of that kind.

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And that, of course, was

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Real head.

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An outrageous luxury for a young bank clerk, and I loved it. You were living like a prince? I was living like a prince. How long did you stay in Enfukerest? I stayed there four and a half years. And the next move? And the next move was to Spain, with elders and fifes of banana people. To sell bananas, I presume. That is right, by the shipload. That's a lot of bananas. It is.

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As I understand it, bananas come to us green and and then they have to be

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Ripened? They do. And in those days it's still the same in the greengrocer. He never sells you a ripe banana.

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So fifce in those days when they had the monopoly.

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They used to either ripen themselves in their own rooms or very carefully supervise the wholesaler to see that he put them on the market ripe, which he hated doing. But if he didn't do it, he didn't get any more bananas. I suppose there's a certain professional risk. If a banana is too ripe, you know, yes, you've got to sell it quickly. And since those days, Spain has meant a great deal to you. It has.

Geoffrey Household7:01

Oh yeah

Speaker 47:01

Uh

Geoffrey Household7:01

That's

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I loved the north of Spain.

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And uh I loved mixing with all classes in that trade, and I rarely began to find myself.

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I used to be down the docks in the steelworks. I used to go up and down the coast in boats.

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and my friends were all grocers, or something of that kind.

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I hardly spoke to Englishmen the whole time.

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And I became finally quite a reasonable person. Let's have record number two.

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What shall we have?

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We will have uh a lovely piece of guitar music by Segovia.

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which is transcribed for the guitar from a parole suite of Mussorg scale.

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It's not particularly Spanish, but it does give the beauty of the instrument which I remember so well.

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Segovia playing The Old Castle, transcribed from Mosorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition.

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Now, you were in the banana business. What was the next move?

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The next move was I had begun to write a little.

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And I suddenly got the idea into my head.

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The movies had just become talkies, and I thought, well, I've had a short story or two accepted.

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I will go, I think, to Hollywood. I'd save some money, and see what happens.

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Well, what did happen, of course, was absolutely nothing.

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So I went to New York, and there the depression hit me. Had you any financial resources at the end of the day? Absolutely none by that time, and I couldn't find any manual labor either.

Geoffrey Household9:42

Absolutely.

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Several people were very kind.

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And eventually I managed to get myself a job on a children's encyclopedia, and very well paid at that, so I could begin to enjoy New York.

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You had done quite a lot of writing as a youngster had to. You had written a lot of poetry as a boy.

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Oh, I wrote a certain amount of poetry at sixteen and seventeen. None of it was any use. But this idea of writing had been hovering in your mind all the time. I suppose so, though, very far back.

Geoffrey Household10:15

I s

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I really only got to it when I was in Spain.

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There was so much roundabout that was the thing.

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What about the writing for the encyclopedia? Was that just hack work, or was it interesting? Hackwork. You just were handed out a lot of subjects, all beginning with A, and you wrote one hundred or two hundred words on them. And I was rather good at it, because I write very simple English. All you had to do was to start off with the first sentence which would catch the child's imagination, and there you were.

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So I began to enjoy New York. And then what?

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Well, I was thinking that now we might go into some of the typical New York music of the day light that

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They're very pleasant memories.

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So how about trying that marvellous fellow Cole Porter?

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With what is this thing called love?

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Cole Porter's What is This Thing Called Love by Jerry Gray and his orchestra.

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A memory of your time in New York.

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You obviously couldn't sit there writing articles for the children's encyclopedia for the rest of your life. You moved on.

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Oh, well, eventually I move back to London, but before we get there that I've still got another one for you, which, if I want a laugh, will accompany me o on my desert island, I think, which is typical of the time, and typical of the extraordinary innocence of Americans in the nineteen thirties.

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And this is a delightful thing sung by Ethel Walters called Organ Grinder.

Speaker 412:34

Argon grinder.

Geoffrey Household12:35

Argen Grinder

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Arg and Greyland

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Organ Rand.

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Play that melody

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Take your organ grinder and grind some more for me.

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Another memory of New York, Ethel Waters singing Organ Grinder Blues.

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So then what? Back to Europe?

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Back to Europe, which I longed to do.

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And I had a certain amount of writing then. I was doing

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A lot of historical plays for Columbia Broadcasting. That gave me money enough to go back.

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And um

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Then looking around in London, I got myself the sort of job I wanted.

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Which was as a foreign sales representative. Selling what?

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Selling printing ink.

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By now, of course, you had several languages under your belt. You were very useful as an international salesman. Oh, yes. I had French and Spanish and some conversational German and, of course, Romanian. Now, you said you went to sell printers' ink. Where? All over South America and all over Europe and the Middle East.

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And the reason why I went out was the Jewish boycott of German exports. Now there were printers all over Europe awful lot of them were Jews.

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So I was offering them English printing ink, whereas they'd been used to German, but they were very glad to have it.

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You were travelling pretty well all the time, were you? Yes, I was travelling pretty well all the time. The journey I remember that I loved the most was travelling up the Pacific coast of South America.

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Chile and Peru.

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Ecuador

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I loved those countries.

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I'm sorry Chile is in such trouble to day, one way or another, but at one time I thought I'd chuck everything and go and be at Chileño. I loved it so much. So three years selling printers in? Yes.

Geoffrey Household14:47

The S

Presenter14:49

And out of that I think I can give you a tune that stays very much in my mind. I heard it certainly the first time in Hungary or Transylvania.

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and my wife, who is Hungarian.

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Also

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We enjoyed it together a great many times.

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And that is a Hungarian gypsy melody called Archasek. What does that mean? Something about blue eyes.

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Andor Koryschi and his Budapest Gypsy Orchestra playing something about blue eyes in Hungarian.

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So when are we going to get to

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Your books

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Well, the books came when I left the printing ink job.

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First of all, I started by selling a short story in America, and there were demands for more, finance of a novel, one thing or another, the writer's dream.

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So I got down to it.

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Then came the war.

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And from nineteen thirty nine to forty five I was in the Middle East steadily.

Geoffrey Household16:24

Hello?

Presenter16:25

I know that you had written a book which has become of its type a classic rogue mail.

Presenter16:31

Story of a man, an unnamed man, who decides to rid the world of an unnamed dictator, and most people had an idea it might have been Hitler.

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Yes, it was Hitler, but I didn't want to say so straight out, because it would only have made things worse. Very exciting book, but by the time it was published and having its great success, you were out of the country. I was. I had left for Bucharest before war was declared. Your war started. On the military mission,

Speaker 316:59

So

Geoffrey Household16:59

Yeah.

Presenter17:02

A secret mission which I don't believe is secret any longer. You know about it.

Geoffrey Household17:05

Who knows about

Presenter17:06

What was it for?

Presenter17:08

It was uh to d deprive the Germans of the Romanian oil wells. Ah. Oh, blow'em up, destroy'em, as was done in the first war, very successfully. Yes. But we were working, of course, together with the French. And the fall of France just wrecked the whole plan in various ways. We couldn't do it. You had made your plans. You'd got the explosives. You'd got everything necessary. Oh, yes. Where did you get the explosives from?

Geoffrey Household17:30

So we've got everything necessary.

Presenter17:35

Oh, well, it came out, you know, from England in various ways. I see. Yes.

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And then, of course, you had to get rid of them. Yes, we did.

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We uh piled em all into cars and took them through Bucharest, rather terrified that we might be stopped by the Iron Guard at any moment, and we threw the whole lot in the lake.

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If the Romanians happen to want any explosives a day, they can look for them there.

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And then you left.

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Romania, where to go?

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Down to Cairo to get myself a job, rather like peacetime.

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And um I was already, you see, trained intelligence officer and a captain. And so I went into security, and stayed in security for the rest of the war. You had a a rather nasty time in Greece, I believe.

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Yes, I was in the retreat.

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It was, I suppose, my only experience of really active service.

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Being uh

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bombed and so forth all the way down bombed all the way to Alexandria.

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But um

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Yeah.

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Kind of thing I expected. Yes. You you were on a ship that was was bombed in the harbour. That must have been a very unclear. Oh, that one. Yes, that was a very close thing indeed.

Geoffrey Household18:49

Oh, that b

Presenter18:53

The first German attack on the Piraeus.

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when by accident they managed to hit a ship carrying munitions.

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We were on the docks, I don't know why, myself and my section, on the general principle that we ought to be anywhere where something is going on.

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And he just left it when the ship blew up.

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And the whole bows went right over our heads and landed in a public park. New bandstand they'd got all of a sudden.

Geoffrey Household19:21

This is indeed.

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But you got out of Greece all right.

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And then what?

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Well, then, as I say, it was uh Middle East and security.

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Yeah.

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All the countries, you could say, around there. Now, though you've spent all this time in intelligence, you've never written spy stories as such.

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No, I don't think I ever have.

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I've always tried to get my suspense somewhere else.

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But after six years, now you could come back to England.

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Start your writing again, and in fact read the press cuttings of rogue mail which have been hanging about all these years that you haven't really had a chance to look at.

Geoffrey Household20:04

Yeah.

Presenter20:08

You settle down to write again. Was it easier to take up your typewriter?

Presenter20:14

No, it wasn't. I quickly got into it, but it was very difficult to get back again, because of course I was completely forgotten. I'd had two good novels out before the war,

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Lots of short stories in England and America.

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And again, if it hadn't been for the generosity of the Americans in keeping me going and encouraging me, I should have found it very hard.

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Nearly all your books have a common theme.

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An individual, a rather ordinary man, trapped in a dangerous environment. Yes, I think that puts it pretty well. Which, of course, was the story of Rogue Mail. What was your your next success?

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The next success.

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Who they were all about.

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Eve, New North. I never had anything like a bestseller that I have had.

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But they began, each one, to earn about twenty per cent more than the last one. Here's some familiar titles Watcher and the Shadows, that was it. Well, Watcher and the Shadows did sell for a movie, I must say, yes, and uh a serial. So perhaps I was wrong.

Geoffrey Household21:10

Well

Presenter21:17

You have sold several of your books as films.

Presenter21:20

Yes, but they haven't been made.

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Wasn't a rough shoot made? Oh, a rough shoot was made. That was terrible. I've tried to forget that one. And Rogue Mail, of course, was on television recently. It was on television. Yes, it was made way back in 1941 or two under the title Manhunt. And then the BBC made what I thought was a splendid one last year. Peter O'Toole, wasn't it? Yes.

Geoffrey Household21:32

It was on the

Presenter21:44

Did you have any hand on the script? No, none whatever.

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But I had great fun watching em on location, and a marvellous lunch.

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and a good deal of fun with it, but I never had anything to do with it.

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Let's have another record. What next?

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Well now, I told you at the beginning uh that

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I had no musical education.

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But when I married a Hungarian

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who, like all Hungarians, is passionately fond of music.

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I began gradually to get educated.

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and to listen to lots and lots of music.

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So

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I'll give you the sort of thing which I would not, I think, have appreciated earlier, though it's simple enough.

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Something that we both of us love, Ravel, the pavan for a dead infanta.

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Ravelle's Pavan for a Dead Infante, the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Pierre Monteu.

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You've written some children's books, haven't you?

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Yes, four of'em.

Presenter23:51

Usually when I'm broke and uh have to get some money quickly I can always sell a journal board. And they're fairly short, actually. Oh, yes, they're short and easy.

Presenter24:02

And you've written a volume of autobiography a fascinating volume that that ought to be brought out again.

Presenter24:07

Like quite a good idea.

Presenter24:09

One criticism, mister Household, which is occasionally made about your books, is that they are very masculine. Now that's fine. But in the main, women play very minor parts in the stories. Well, I don't think that's fair. For example, in my

Presenter24:24

Big South American novel.

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Which is that? Thing to love.

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The whole thing and all the disasters are engineered by women being quite unconsciously women all the way through. Well, that's not really a leading part, is it a motivating part of it? Well, Allura. Allura is a love story, and part of it is written by a woman.

Geoffrey Household24:39

Well also motivating.

Presenter24:46

And my uh

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Last book.

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The last two weeks of Georges Rivac

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The heroine is just as important as the hero, if not more so. I grant I would perhaps like in a pure adventure story.

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To um reduce the role of a woman. But that's old fashioned to-day when you've got women policemen and uh

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I gather women handling machine guns in the next war and so forth. It is rather ridiculous, but still I started that way.

Presenter25:24

But there always is a woman, and she always is important. Even in rogue mail, though she doesn't come on the stage, you must admit that she's extremely important. Oh, there she is in the background. Now, your new book, your brand new one, The Sending, we have the theme of the lone man being hounded, pursued.

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But in this case, by psychic forces. This is a new twist.

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It is a new twist.

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He is pursued by what is known as witchcraft.

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which is really what remains of the old pagan religions, because for a long time this country was half pagan and half Christian.

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And

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He has a familiar spirit. He doesn't know it's one, but he finds out that it is.

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Exactly this as described.

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It isn't a book which has a great deal of the occult in it.

Presenter26:20

But it does have the terror. Tell me about your writing discipline. Do you write regular hours? Do you start exactly at half past nine in the morning, or what do you do? Oh, well, it used to be half past nine. Now in my old age, it gets to be about eleven.

Presenter26:36

And then we go through till one, and then in full blast we start again and five and go through till seven. Is that every day? Seven. Every day if I'm really moving, yes.

Geoffrey Household26:44

So

Speaker 426:45

Yeah.

Geoffrey Household26:45

Not

Presenter26:47

To what extent do you plan a novel? You know how it's going to end?

Presenter26:52

You know how it's going to end? Normally I know how it's going to end, and I leave the middle to look after itself.

Geoffrey Household26:53

Normally I know.

Presenter26:58

So it surprises you as well as everybody else? Yes, indeed it does some days.

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Let's have your next record. Number seven we got to.

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Well now I think we've but to consider oh my life the um desert island.

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What would I like?

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To have, to make me dream, to fill up the days, to make me a human being and part of the world. Well, I have obviously chosen for that Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.

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The familiar opening of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony in C minor.

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Carijan conducting the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.

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How

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Would you

Presenter28:26

Manage as a castaway.

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Are you good with your hands? You have the clothes you stand up in, the contents of your pockets.

Presenter28:33

Any ideas as to how you're going to manage?

Presenter28:36

Well, I take it.

Geoffrey Household28:36

Uh

Presenter28:38

There would be shellfish. I take it there would be coconuts. We might.

Presenter28:44

Married's well, I haven't got any nails or anything, but perhaps I'd go out on a

Presenter28:48

on a plank with a bent pin, trying to catch a fish. I am very fond of fish.

Presenter28:53

You had a lot of experience of fishing? No. No. That's when I should begin to learn. You're a shooting man, but not a fishing man.

Geoffrey Household28:59

View.

Presenter29:00

So you could put up some kind of shelter, do you think?

Presenter29:03

Oh, I think that would be necessary. If that's in the monsoons or anything of that kind, we should

Presenter29:08

Have to dig a hole and put some leaves over it. Are you good in small craft?

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Can you sail? Yes. Navigate a bit by the start.

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I never tried navigating by the stars, but if there wasn't anything else to navigate by, I suppose one could have a shot. At any rate, I know where the North is.

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That's something.

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Record number eight.

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I want to be called back on my desert island.

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To the beauty of nature and religion and everything there is.

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So I have chosen I am very fond of the chanting of the Greek Orthodox Church.

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And I have chosen a Christmas hymn in those magnificent bass voices of the monks.

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It's simply called Christ is Born.

Speaker 329:58

Christos yenote oxa sate, Christos.

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For such a real

Speaker 330:26

Voice of the year from sweet

Speaker 330:37

One in such a state.

Presenter30:51

A Greek Christmas hymn.

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We've heard your eight records. If you could only take one out of that eight, which would it be?

Presenter30:59

The Beethoven Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.

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And you're allowed to take one luxury with you anything for pleasure, nothing for use.

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Well, I should hope very much.

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but a coaster came by on the horizon.

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and its entire deck cargo of good claret was blown overboard and came ashore. Well, there's no need to worry that, skipper. We'll uh we'll arrange that it's there when you arrive.

Geoffrey Household31:25

Reverend said it was there

Presenter31:28

And one book, apart from the Bible and Shakespeare, and we don't like big encyclopedias, not even the one that you read.

Presenter31:36

Well, I'm going to cheat a bit there because I'm going to give you two books that I had bound up into one.

Presenter31:44

And they went with me right through the war, so I reckon I can stand them again on a desert island.

Presenter31:50

And those are lyrics from the Elizabethan songbooks and lyrics from the Elizabethan dramatists. They're very old. They were published by Sedgwick and Jackson in 1913 in a pocket edition, and that's why you could do that. Yes. And I think they'll do very well. Right, and in your case, we'll bind them together again. And thank you, Geoffrey Household, for letting us hear your Desert Island discs. Well, thank you. It's been most enjoyable, and I hope the audience hasn't found it.

Speaker 432:06

But

Presenter32:21

Oh, too unmusical, let us say. Goodbye, everyone.

Geoffrey Household32:32

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