William Trevor

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

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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.

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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.

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Full details can be found on the Castaways page on the Desert Island Disc's website.

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The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen eighty.

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And the presenter was Roy Plumley.

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Maroon on our Desert Island this week is the writer William Trevor.

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How much does music mean to you? It hasn't meant a tremendous amount to me.

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In a very old-fashioned way, I know what I like. But music hasn't meant as much to me as, for instance, the visual arts or literature. Have you any skill yourself? Do you play an instrument? No, I did once, I think, take a piano lesson when I was a small boy. Only one? Yes, I think it was a very unmelodious occasion and ceased forthwith. Do you sing?

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Again, there was one scene lesson, and it wasn't a success.

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Not a great deal, no.

William Trevor1:33

Number

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No. Um I once read in a magazine that I

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did my writing while listening to Mozart and drinking claret late at night. This is quite untrue. I don't and I didn't. It sounds an ideal life. Well, it sounds very good, but in in fact, alas, it's it's um totally false. No Mozart, no claret.

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Not late at night, no. What's your first record? Schubert. String quintet in C, the beginning of the second movement. Why? Because I felt that the first record

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It should possibly be the one which I would like to hear very early in the morning.

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at dawn on my desert island, and this one seems to me to be absolutely perfect for that.

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The beginning of the second movement of the Schubert Quintet in C, The Amadairs Quartet with William Pleith.

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Now, William, you're from Ireland, from County Cork. Yes. And you belong to a minority in that area. You're a Protestant. Yes.

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You moved around a lot when you were a child.

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Yes, I was born in in a small town under the Galty Mountains called Mitchellstown, and we moved very soon to a little town called Yaw and then to Skibberine and so on. Why? Uh my father was in the Bank of Ireland and I think it was a question of simply being promoted. He was promoted from one town to the next and we we followed him around like middle class gypsies. Was your schooling disrupted as a result? Totally disrupted. I I went to thirteen I think thirteen schools and for long periods no school at all. As a boy, what did you like to read?

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I liked um reading thrillers. I read a great deal of Edgar Wallace. I read Agatha Christie.

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almost anything of that nature. I didn't read anything serious at all. Now, at eighteen you went to Trinity College, Dublin.

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What was your subject? History. With a view to what?

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Well, with a view really to nothing at all, I I I was at Trinity um without a great deal of interest in the subject, without a great deal of interest in the university. I had become a sculptor and I was much more interested in in that. That happened at Trinity, did it? Well, it happened before. It happened when I was at my last school. I I developed this interest in art, um I think under the influence of the art master who was himself a sculptor.

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Uh

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Um

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Yes. So that uh my presence in Trinity was a rather lackadaisical affair. Your interest in art wasn't carried forward in Trinity? Not really, because there was no art to pursue there. And when you were graduated? When I graduated I found it extremely difficult to get a job, which was the the thing I wanted to do because there weren't any jobs in those days in Ireland. It was the very early nineteen fifties. You were married quite soon after you graduated? Yes. I was married to someone who had been

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At Trinity with me. We married in 1952. So there were responsibilities.

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Well, not really, because, um, we didn't have any children then. We just had ourselves. But, of course, that was a considerable responsibility because we had to

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make enough money to live on, so I became a schoolteacher in the north of Ireland, first of all.

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And later I moved to England and became an art master. Art master, you you switched from history?

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Oh, I never really taught history. I I just taught anything that I was given. It it was the the the world of the prep school, in which one sort of taught everything.

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Including games.

William Trevor5:41

Yeah.

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Right, well, we've got you into teaching, so let's break for your second record.

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My second record is Purcell Sound the Trumpet, which

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I'm choosing because I think the first kind of music that

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I was aware of that the human voice. I was brought up on Henry Hall's afternoon dance music and

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stuff like that, um which I wouldn't want to bring to Desby Island.

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But I think there was a a sort of impinging from going to church.

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and as I can't sing myself, I would have to have somebody there to do it for me.

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And who is going to do it for you?

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Aphodella

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Uh

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Ah, but once I'm captured.

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Sound the trumpet, sound, sound, sound the trumpet team along, you make the distinct children, make the distinct children, you make a distinct short river.

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I'm the old moment must be a

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I'm not sure.

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Uh

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Yeah.

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Uh

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Yeah.

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Oh my

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Your following to praise your joy.

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For Joe's pupils, God's can ignore To send him praise, to send him back the glories of this day.

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Sound the trumpet from Purcell's Come Ye Sons of Art, an ode for the birthday of Queen Mary, sixteen ninety four.

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And Alfred Deller and Mark Deller were the countertoners. So you were an art master. Was that enjoyable? It was reasonably agreeable in retrospect. I think at the time I didn't terribly like it, because it's terribly difficult to teach something at which you're reasonably good. It's much easier to teach something like, for instance, in my case, mathematics, at which I was very bad.

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one can keep just a little bit ahead of one's pupils, but art was not a terribly enjoyable experience. What about your sculpting? Were you keeping it going? Yes, I was keeping it going. The the the whole idea was really to earn enough money to live.

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And to be a sculptor as it were on the side. Eventually you became a sculptor, a professional sculptor. Yes, I did, yes. I moved from the Midlands, where I'd come to in England, um, down to the the West Country. And I lived for some years as a church sculptor. Why a church sculptor? Was this a a love of the tradition or because there was a market? And what was your objective?

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I think both, in fact. I think a certain affection for the tradition. I was a sort of Jew the obscure.

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And also, there was a certain I hoped there was a certain market for it. As it turned out,

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The market wasn't as great as I'd hoped, but that was my thinking at the time. Where may one see some of your work now? Uh there is a church near Rugby which contains a lot of carvings which I did. Wood carvings? Wood carvings, yes. Did you do more of that than uh marble or? Yes, I did. I worked almost entirely in wood. And there are also some churches in the in the West Country which have got little bits and pieces, but not an awful lot.

William Trevor8:56

See ya.

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Had you started writing, or had you thought about writing?

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Well, I I had because you see I'd always thought about writing and I used to write in spasms and

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Then returned to sculpture as it were. But I didn't take writing at all seriously. You did, in fact, write a a first novel, a standard of behaviour. Yes, I did write a fragment of autobiography, which I prefer to think of it as. Everybody's first novel has to be a fragment of autobiography. Yes, indeed. Which I wrote at that particular period. I have now thankfully forgotten it.

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Every

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And then what?

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Well, then having spent some years in in the West Country,

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teaching and sculpting.

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I was forced to move to London because I wasn't making enough money and I.

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became

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An advertising copywriter,

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because it seemed to me that it was a a simple thing to write advertisements. So in nineteen sixty I moved from Somerset to London.

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And started writing adversements for paint and vests and airlines and steamship companies. You had several years of copywriting.

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Uh

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Yes, I did, yes. It it's very good training, surely, a very good discipline. Well, it is a marvellous discipline because you're doing something which you dislike intensely, in fact at least I disliked it intensely, but of course that's really rather good. There there's no indulgence, there's no

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allowing yourself to do this, that, and the other, you are

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Chained and harnessed, which is very good for not just writers, I think, but for any kind of artist. And certainly it had no, I don't feel it had any ill effects.

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At that time what were you writing for yourself? You were writing all day pieces of copy for for whatever it was.

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Well, I wasn't honestly writing all-day pieces of copy, I was quietly writing short stories.

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And that was the beginning really of my writing. That's when I began to write. I I found myself in an office with a typewriter, unable to to bring my sculpti materials in there because of course they wouldn't let me.

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So I began to write short stories, and I think what had happened was that um

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My sculpture had become abstract and ceased to interest me. I disliked it, in fact, and a lot of the

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The humanity, I suppose, began to go into the short stories. Was it while you were in advertising that you wrote your first well, your first serious novel, the first novel that you were pleased with? Yes, it was while I was in advertising. That was The Old Boys. That was The Old Boys, yes. Which seems a good point to break for your third record. Yes. My third record i is Bach, The Double Harps Accord, Concerto Number One in C minor.

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And I I choose that because

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I associate Bach very much with my wife and our marriage.

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But more than that, I think with our early days in Dublin. Yes, why is that? Well, b because she introduced me to Burke. I introduced her to tea without milk, and she in turn introduced me to Burke. It seems a fair swap.

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Because

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An unfair swap, I think.

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The beginning of the first Bach double harpsichord concerto in C minor.

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Raymond Lepard and Andrew Davis.

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Now, the old boys that made an impact. In fact, it won you a very considerable prize.

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Ye yes, it it I I was lucky enough to to win the Hawthorne Prize for the Earl Boys. And you rewrote it as a stage play?

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Yes, I did, yes, some many years later in fact. And it was rewritten again as a television play, and it had in fact originally been a short story, so you got a lot of mileage out of that. Yes, it was a short story, first of all. I wrote it as a short story. It didn't seem to me to work as a short story. So I abandoned it. And I think I realized then for the first time that one has to know as a novelist or a short story writer.

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A great deal about length. You have to know what length to write at, which I didn't when I first tried to write The Old Boys. When did you quit advertising and decide that you were a full-time writer? In the mid-sixties, Auntie. I'm not very sure the exact year, but sometime in the mid-sixties. You had already written your next novel, The Boarding House. Yes, indeed I had, yes. That also became a play. It became a radio play. So did The Old Boys, in fact. The Old Boys was a radio play and a television play, but I didn't adapt The Old Boys for either radio or television. I only adapted for the stage. Now you had by now further responsibilities, two sons? Yes, one son was born between the two editions of The Boarding House, between the first and the second printing, so that he doesn't appear in the dust jacket of the first one, he does in the second. Now, The Boarding House was set in London, Southwest 17. You were living in London at that time, South West London.

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Yeah.

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Yes, we lived in Putney. All the best people live in Putney. Yes, they do indeed. Um I miss it very much. I think in fact the the old boys were set in the same area. I I developed a great interest in SW seventeen and the river and

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or that kind of thing.

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And uh a lot of it went into the novels. Have all your novels been set in England? No. There's there is one called Mrs. Eckdorf in a Neal's Hotel, which is uh set in Dublin. Mm. And a lot of the short stories are set in Ireland.

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Why do you write under your two Christian names, William Trevor? Because when I changed from being a sculptor to being a a novelist and short story writer,

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I wanted to make some sort of distinction um because there would have been a little bit of confusion. Yes. And of course, writers hate confusion. You have done very well as a sculptor. You had won prizes. Well, I've done reasonably well as a sculptor, but it it was my

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Own decision that I was not, in fact, a sculptor, that I was a writer.

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And I I simply made it. So you are William Cox the sculptor? I was Trevor Cox. Trevor Cox the sculptor, yes. And William Trevor the writer.

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Record number four. Record number four is the piano concerto number twenty-four in C minor, Mozart, chosen simply because I love it.

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The beginning of the second movement of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. twenty four in C minor.

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Marie Pariah and the English Chamber Orchestra.

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Do you still live in London?

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No, we we live in Devon now.

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And have done for number of years.

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You have a great affection for Italy. You've talked of going to live there. Yes. My wife and I go to Italy a lot. I'm very fond of Italy.

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I think with England

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Italy

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becomes the third of my three countries. Ireland obviously is the first one, but I'm an Anglophile. I'm also very fond of Italy. Do you go back to Ireland a lot? Yes, a very great deal.

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How disciplined a writer are you, William? Do do you work regular hours?

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Yes, I'm very disciplined. I I work all morning.

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Um I get up early, but not nearly as early as I used to.

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and I work until lunch time.

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Every day.

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And then I don't work at all.

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How far ahead do you plan?

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Well, I I scarcely really plan at all. I get into a great muddle because I take on too many things. But I try to find

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great big chunks of time in which to write novels.

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It's necessary to find large areas of time to write novels in. When you feel you have a novel boiling up, you have to be firm and clear the decks and do nothing else.

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Well, yes, and you you have to do it more than once. You have to do it several times because the decks become cluttered after a couple of months. They are inclined to intervene. Well, they do intervene, they're bound to, because uh a novel takes a couple of years. Does it? Two or three years.

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Uh

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Yeah.

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Uh

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I've

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Yeah, yeah.

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It's really a question of occasionally saying to oneself, Well, I would just like to go away and spend three years on a novel, but I I really prefer to to remain at home and um

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Therefore I get s sometimes into a slight muddle about taking on too much work.

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And the short stories, of course, go on all the time. Well, the short stories go on all the time, but that's rather different, you see, because the short stories.

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They're a marvellous relief from a novel, and a novel is a marvellous relief from a short story, because a short story is written at a different pace. There's a different kind of intensity, I think.

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And

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So that it's absolutely delightful to sit down.

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and continue a novel which you haven't been working on for say two months. And equally it's delightful to stop and write a short story which you just simply want to write. Which can be to a certain extent dashed off, can it? Well no, it it it may be dashed off, it may be written quite quickly, but it's never as easy as that. I have to come back to them over and over again. They take a very long time.

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The dashing off is is really just a fantasy. That's the first draft. It it amounts to a first draft, yes. It's the first sort of lump that you create which waffles about in your mind.

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But

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And you play with it for a month or two, and then you realize it's got to be changed there, it is wrong, and you change it.

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Yeah.

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And then you get it right eventually, or you hope you get it right eventually.

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We've got to record number five.

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During my stay in this country, two

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Momentous events took place.

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One was the birth of Private Eye and the other was the birth of Monty Python.

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Two buttons.

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Celebrate both of them.

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At once.

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I would like to have a a a sketch called The Mouse Problem from Ontipython.

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This week the world around us looks at the growing social phenomenon of mice and men.

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What makes a man want to be a mouse?

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Well, uh it's not a question of wanting to be a mass.

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It just sort of atmosphere.

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All of a sudden you realize.

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That's what you want to be.

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And when did you first notice these juice tendencies?

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Well, I was about seventeen and uh some mates and me went to a party.

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And well we had quite a lot to drink and then some of the fellows there started handing cheese around

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Well just out of curiosity, I'd tried a bit.

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Well that was that.

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THE MOUSE PROBLEM BY MONTY PYTHON. Now your latest novel, Other People's Worlds, which is recently out, you write on on two levels, really. There's there's a lot of comedy on the surface, a lot of pain underneath.

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Yes, yes.

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I I think life is like that. And mostly about middle class people? No, not not not entirely. I think the classes really get

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fairly well shared out in my novels and short stories. There's there's a lot of working class characters. Now your output has been fairly small. Only seven novels, or eight including that first one, which you you don't list.

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But already you have become a literary figure. There are theses being written about you. How how do you feel about that?

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Well, it's impossible to answer. Do people come and see you and interview you? People do come and see me. People do come.

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Earnest Swedes and Americans do come and ask questions which sometimes seem somewhat irrelevant, but they're nice people and I don't mind. Um I certainly have no objection to having these.

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There it looks.

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I think so.

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No, I didn't, no.

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What have we to look forward to, what you're working on?

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Well, I'm working on a novel at the moment.

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and a couple of short stories which are buzzing about.

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And there is a television production of one of my novels called Elizabeth Alone, which has been at the moment rehearsed. That's going to be a trilogy, isn't it? Yes, that's that'll be a a trilogy which will I s I suppose be seen sometime during the winter.

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And also a film of a short story.

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A television film. A television film, yes.

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So that's quite nice, because it means you'll

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You go to rehearsals, you get out of the house and you you you change your your rather mundane life and have to come to London from Devon, which is quite pleasant. There's not too much of it.

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Yeah.

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There's an awful lot going on. Well, there always seems to be quite a bit going on, yes. I don't mind.

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Good. Record number six.

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Schubert again, impromptu number three.

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I've chosen really all these records because I like them, but there are devious associations in the

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A particular sensation here is that, um, my younger son,

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Used to play this.

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And I became

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Terribly fond of it, hearing it

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Endlessly he practised on the piano.

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So it would remind me of being at home.

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The opening of Schubert's Impromptu No. 3, played by Ingrid Hebler.

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Let's go straight ahead with number seven.

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Bronze

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Planet Quintet. Why? I think that, again, the association is very devious. I'm very fond of Brahms, but

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At one time my older son.

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when he was a little boy played the clarinet, and I think again that would be a reminder.

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of being at home, which will be very pleasant.

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Part of the second movement of the Brahms Clarinet Quintet, Boskowski with members of the Vienna Octet.

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Now, are you prepared to take an examination for your castaway's badge? How good would you be at looking after yourself?

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Well, I think I would be very good at looking after myself. You could build a shelter? Yes, I could do that with Well, that's woodwork, isn't it, really? Yes, I I I don't think I would.

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You can

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Yeah.

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be unhappy about that. I would be alarmed. I think if the

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island happened to be

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full of cats, of which I have a great fear because it could be.

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Have you ever seen it?

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But otherwise, um I think I'll be able to look after myself. Do you know about fishing?

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I don't know anything about fishing, but I I I imagine that one would acquire that.

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Within a few days. You can cultivate? Yes, I can, yes.

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Do you know anything about small craft?

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If you're going to ask me about getting away, I would not want to get away. As a child I spent

William Trevor27:35

Yeah, it was

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A great deal of time

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Almost drowning, and I would have no intention of setting foot off my island. Where was that?

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In County Cork,

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I nearly drowned three times, as a small boy.

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and I have a great fear of the sea.

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So I would stay put. Yes, we'll come and get you.

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Your last record.

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My last record

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Is birds avivarum.

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Which I have chosen because I think it would end the day. The first one.

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was one which I chose because it would begin the day.

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I I would like to think of this played late at night.

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William Bird's Ave Verum by the Choir of King's College, Cambridge. If you could take just one of your eight discs, which one would you choose?

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I take the Brahms, I think. The Brahms clarinet quintet, yes. And one luxury to take with you, nothing of any practical use.

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Well, this is very difficult.

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But after a great deal of thought,

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I wondered about taking a little box of vines, which I would plant and cultivate, and I would then tread the grapes.

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and I would make a great quantity of wine, which I would drink.

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And I would turn the island into a vineyard. To simplify things, you can't have a supply of wine. No, I'd prefer to do it my way, I think. Your own way.

William Trevor29:55

Your own way.

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Vintage, Trevor, 1981. Something like that, yes. And one book apart from the Bible and Shakespeare and big encyclopedias.

William Trevor29:59

So

William Trevor30:00

Yeah.

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Well, my favourite book is The Diary of a Nobody, but I know it by heart.

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So I think I'd like to take Butler's Lives of the Saints, because it is marvellously good value. All right, Butler's Lives of the Saints, and thank you, William Trevor, for letting us hear your Desert Island discs. Thank you for having me.

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Goodbye, everyone.

William Trevor30:37

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

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For more downloads, please visit the Radio4 website.