Jacquetta Hawkes

Speaker 10:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young and this is a download from the Desert Island Discs archive. This edition may be slightly different from what was actually broadcast, but it's the only version we have. It comes from the British Library's radio collection. It was archived without the music, so although the Castaways choices are introduced, they're not part of this recording. Full details can be found on the Castaways page on the Desert Island Discs website.

Speaker 10:26

The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen eighty.

Speaker 10:30

And the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:32

This week, our castaway is the author and archaeologist, Jaqueta Hawkes.

Presenter0:37

It's a great pleasure to join you in this lovely country house just outside Stratford-upon-Avon. And the first question is, does music mean a great deal to you?

Jacquetta Hawkes0:47

I think it would be dishonest to say yes quite boldly, because there have been long times when I really have hardly listened to it at all.

Jacquetta Hawkes0:56

And yet music is really rather an embarrassing subject to me.

Jacquetta Hawkes1:00

because I have some faculty completely missing, so that I have no memory, I could never reproduce a tune, I don't understand the construction of great musical works at all, really. On the other hand, I discovered very early that I loved particularly classical music, and I really do enjoy listening to it.

Presenter1:18

You were never put to the piano as a child.

Jacquetta Hawkes1:21

I was, and it was rather painful to me.

Jacquetta Hawkes1:24

I remember chiefly being blamed for playing with dirty fingernails, because I would say plaintively, but I was helping in the garden.

Presenter1:28

Okay.

Presenter1:31

Of course you were. Did you play discs very much at half?

Jacquetta Hawkes1:35

At some periods we have, but lately not so much. But we do.

Presenter1:40

Now what's the first one you've chosen for the island?

Jacquetta Hawkes1:43

I thought, because I'm always particularly loved Mozart with Wood Wind, that we would start with the clarinet concerto in A major.

Jacquetta Hawkes1:53

It is a very lovely one, I think.

Presenter1:54

Who would you like a saloon?

Jacquetta Hawkes1:57

Well, I'd rather like to have Jervis de Pere with a clarinet because I was once with him on a orchestral holiday.

Jacquetta Hawkes2:05

And so I have a feeling about his playing.

Presenter2:07

Where was the orchestral holiday?

Jacquetta Hawkes2:09

It was in Daytona Beach in Florida. We went with the NSO. My husband was writing a book about the NSO.

Presenter2:17

Your husband, of course, mister JB Priestley.

Presenter2:22

Mozart's clarinet concerto in A major, Gervaise de Paia with the London Symphony Orchestra.

Presenter2:29

Now, you were born in Cambridge.

Jacquetta Hawkes2:31

Yes, I was.

Jacquetta Hawkes2:32

I was actually born in a corner of the garden of Emmanuel College. But before I could even stand up we moved out to the Grange Road, where so many Dons lived.

Presenter2:36

Yeah.

Jacquetta Hawkes2:42

And I I was there until I was married, really.

Jacquetta Hawkes2:46

But um

Jacquetta Hawkes2:47

It was a good place to be, the Grange Road, because I always had a passion for nature. At that time there was nothing beyond Grange Road except fields, and this is rather interesting. There was an ancient um university skating rink.

Jacquetta Hawkes3:02

which had been abandoned and was pleasantly overgrown, it had been fair size, and there was an island in the centre.

Jacquetta Hawkes3:09

By the time I was about eight or nine, a friend of mine and I established a house on this island.

Jacquetta Hawkes3:16

which we used to visit regularly. We had food hidden below the floor and so forth. We wove it very nicely.

Presenter3:22

Yeah.

Jacquetta Hawkes3:22

Yeah.

Presenter3:22

Hmm.

Jacquetta Hawkes3:23

And then uh one day we decided that the water was going over our Wellingtons when we were going out, so we took down what we thought was a perfectly insignificant little bank, and the whole lake disappeared.

Jacquetta Hawkes3:36

It ran down the Binbrook.

Presenter3:40

Now your father, Sir Frederick Hopkins, was a very distinguished scientist. What was his subject?

Jacquetta Hawkes3:45

Biochemistry. He he he really was one of the founders of biochemistry.

Jacquetta Hawkes3:50

and in particular he discovered vitamins.

Presenter3:53

Mm.

Jacquetta Hawkes3:54

Some people call it vitamins, but we used to say vitamins.

Presenter3:57

Was he engaged at the university?

Jacquetta Hawkes3:59

Yes, he started a biochemical department underneath some kind of chapel.

Jacquetta Hawkes4:04

But before long he got an endowment from Sir William Donne, and a very large, rather pompous

Jacquetta Hawkes4:09

Departmental Laboratory was opened.

Presenter4:12

So you were brought up in an academic atmosphere. Were you a large family?

Jacquetta Hawkes4:17

No, there were three of us, but I was so much the youngest that in some ways I was almost an only child, although I had a quite close relationship with my brother, who made me fairly tough in some ways.

Presenter4:28

You went to the Perth school. What were your best subjects at school?

Jacquetta Hawkes4:32

I'm sorry to say my best subject while young anyhow was geography, which was always rather the dud well. I did rather badly at school because I had my own projects, what would now be called projects, going off

Jacquetta Hawkes4:45

First, um, collecting brass rubbings and that kind of thing. And that rather interfered with my homework.

Jacquetta Hawkes4:52

But I I I then did quite well in in English and history.

Presenter4:56

He went up to the university to Newnham College. What did you read?

Jacquetta Hawkes5:00

I read a newly established subject.

Jacquetta Hawkes5:03

archaeology and anthropology, which was a queer hotchpot of things because one had to learn Anglo Saxon and North or Celtic. I learnt Anglo Saxon and North.

Speaker 15:08

Yeah.

Jacquetta Hawkes5:14

Some archaeology and then a good deal of, you know, primitive people anthropology.

Presenter5:19

Did you have, as a child, a strong sense of the past?

Jacquetta Hawkes5:22

I did. I really have never known why. It was extraordinarily strong.

Jacquetta Hawkes5:27

When I was a small child I used to have a cave under some kind of shrub where I drew bison and mammoth on the wall.

Presenter5:36

Okay.

Presenter5:38

I believe various antiquities had been dug up in in the garden of your house.

Jacquetta Hawkes5:42

That's perfectly true. I don't know how you knew. It was on the site of both a Roman road with burials beside it and a very large Anglo-Saxon cemetery. And I think that was definitely one of the things that roused my interest. I was fascinated that one could always tell the difference between the Anglo-Saxon and the Roman objects.

Presenter6:01

While you were in the university, was was there much practical work?

Jacquetta Hawkes6:05

No.

Jacquetta Hawkes6:06

Nowadays, of course, they have a great deal, but we rarely had none at all.

Jacquetta Hawkes6:10

I I was sent when I'd almost finished to a m excavation at Colchester, which was being directed by Christopher Hawkes, who subsequently became my husband. That's what happens in archaeology.

Presenter6:15

I should

Presenter6:20

Here.

Presenter6:22

Academically, of course, you did rather well.

Jacquetta Hawkes6:25

Yes, I did quite well in the first part, not so brilliantly, but I did in the end get a first, to my most genuine amazement.

Presenter6:33

Splendid. Well, let's break off at this point and have your second record. What's that to be?

Jacquetta Hawkes6:38

Well, I thought of the second one. I would like to hark back to childhood. When I was about ten, my parents got their first really quite good grammar phone.

Jacquetta Hawkes6:47

And we had a rather small collection of records.

Jacquetta Hawkes6:51

one of which was Einkeleinenachmusik, and I learnt my fondness for Mozart. But the other that I remember was Beethoven's Kreutze Sonata, so I thought I'd like to have that to be taken back to that time.

Presenter7:07

The end of the second movement of Beethoven's Kreutzer Sonata.

Presenter7:11

Itzak Perman and Vladimir Ashkenazi.

Presenter7:15

Now you won a traveling scholarship. Where did you travel to?

Jacquetta Hawkes7:20

I first travelled visiting French museums because I was working on the Neolithic period.

Jacquetta Hawkes7:27

French museums in those days were quite incredibly primitive, but it was fun all the same. Then I I went to Palestine, and that was really rather dramatic, because I was taking part in the excavation of those caves on Mount Carmel.

Jacquetta Hawkes7:41

where we found skeletons that showed a mixture of Neanderthal man and Homo sapiens.

Jacquetta Hawkes7:48

about which there's been endless dispute since. But it is a very, very important place and you can still visit it. The Israelis look after it quite well.

Presenter7:56

How does a young archaeologist plan things? Does he have to apply to join an expedition or does he wait to be asked or how is it done?

Jacquetta Hawkes8:06

I think it was decidedly different when I was young, when really excavations were relatively few.

Jacquetta Hawkes8:12

And you were likely either to know the director, or to be if you were at university, to be sent.

Jacquetta Hawkes8:18

Now, of course, there are so many that you see advertisements in the Times or other newspapers constantly, don't you? That they want assistance.

Speaker 18:24

They

Jacquetta Hawkes8:26

The other difference, of course, being that we used to employ labourers to do the heavy digging, whereas now students do it, which means that far more students go than before.

Presenter8:34

Which means that far

Presenter8:36

There are many categories of work, of course, on the site. All objects have to be photographed in situ and catalogued.

Jacquetta Hawkes8:44

Well, yes, there's a norm of amount you have to have first a kind of strategy as to where to dig.

Jacquetta Hawkes8:49

Then tactics is the what part of your hill fort, or whatever it may be.

Jacquetta Hawkes8:53

w would be most economical to try.

Jacquetta Hawkes8:57

And then of course there's a vast amount of drawing as well as the things you've mentioned. You cut a great section through a ditch with

Jacquetta Hawkes9:04

Perhaps a dozen different horizons, all historically significant, and those all have to be drawn and interpreted and the finds from them kept separately.

Presenter9:12

Do you remember any particular triumphant moment in unearthing something yourself?

Jacquetta Hawkes9:17

I suppose really it w it was one of these Neanderthaloid skeletons on Mount Carmel, because I was in charge, as it happens, very ignorant student, but I was in charge of that part of the deep.

Jacquetta Hawkes9:29

when one of them turned up and this sort of rough skull was suddenly brought before me by a charming Arab girl who had really identified it.

Jacquetta Hawkes9:37

So I was very proud about that.

Presenter9:38

And then later on of course you became archaeological correspondent on various papers. So you've reported on excavations in a good many countries.

Jacquetta Hawkes9:47

Yes, I have. It was a very nice arrangement with the observer that I could go out once a year to some chosen exploration.

Jacquetta Hawkes9:54

I think the most interesting there

Jacquetta Hawkes9:57

was going to Nimrod, near Mosul, you know, in northern Iraq, as it now is, where the city was being excavated by Max Maloun and his wife Agatha Christie.

Speaker 110:08

Yeah.

Jacquetta Hawkes10:08

And it was not only

Jacquetta Hawkes10:10

Very interesting to meet Agatha in a sort of leisurely way, but also she kept a very good table so that the usual hardships of archaeological camps were not felt at all.

Presenter10:22

What's your third record be?

Jacquetta Hawkes10:23

Trying to imagine myself on the island, I expect there would be many moments when I would laugh heartily when my hut was blown over by a hurricane and that kind of thing.

Presenter10:33

Can I put a music?

Jacquetta Hawkes10:33

For today's

Jacquetta Hawkes10:34

That would be very amusing.

Presenter10:35

It would be very amusing.

Jacquetta Hawkes10:36

But I did feel that there would be a need for some, you know, good, strong, rough humour coming from outside. I I believe I would continue to be amused by that, if I used it not too often. So I thought I would like to have something out of the best of sellers, and I've chosen Balham, Gateway to the South.

Presenter10:58

Balham Gateway to the South by Peter Sellard.

Presenter11:03

Now, Miss Hawkes, you've written twenty or more books. What was the first?

Jacquetta Hawkes11:07

The first was a very solid archaeological monograph, quite simply called The Archaeology of Jersey.

Jacquetta Hawkes11:14

It has some glimmers of writing, isn't it, even so?

Presenter11:18

In many of your archaeological books you go for an overall picture, a Prehistoric Britain, a guide to the prehistoric and Roman monuments in England and Wales.

Presenter11:27

The first great civilizations.

Presenter11:30

the monumental atlas of early man and so on.

Presenter11:33

Now they only form part of your work. A land is rather special.

Jacquetta Hawkes11:39

It is it for me particularly, and I'm still sometimes afraid that perhaps it's my best work bar the last, of course.

Jacquetta Hawkes11:46

But it it did make a great difference to me

Jacquetta Hawkes11:49

It received an absolutely rave review from Harold Nicholson in the Sunday Times, and that launched it off, and I was asked out to dinner by Harold and taken up by Rose Macaulay.

Jacquetta Hawkes12:03

and all that kind of thing that were the beginning of being a bit of a writer. So it was rather a landmark for me.

Presenter12:10

Will you describe the book?

Jacquetta Hawkes12:12

It's difficult to do so because the idea of it is to present the whole of British history, its culture, its art and its geology at the bottom, as much as possible in one piece, a kind of tremendous exercise in continuity. And I was lucky enough to know Henry Moore quite well, and he did two illustrations for it, which related to some particular themes.

Jacquetta Hawkes12:39

And I'm I'm proud of that because Henry hasn't at all often done illustrations for a book. So that's something I'm really proud of and they are beautiful I think.

Presenter12:48

In collaboration with your second husband, J.B. Priestley, you've written a couple of plays.

Jacquetta Hawkes12:53

Yes. We wrote a a so called platform play called Dragon's Mouth, in which the the i it's a s the spoken word, there's no visible action. And then we did a a play that called The White Countess.

Jacquetta Hawkes13:09

which when people read they think it's marvellous, but there was something wrong with it. It was a rarely a flop in the theatre.

Presenter13:16

You published one volume of verse.

Presenter13:18

Which of your books do you value most?

Jacquetta Hawkes13:20

I value a land and then one which I really would relate to it, although it's at the other end of my writing life probably, my recent one called A Quest of Love.

Presenter13:30

which we're going to talk about in a moment, but first let's have another record.

Jacquetta Hawkes13:35

I thought I would like to go back to my favourite Mozart in a more one of his more profound forms, so I chose the string quintet in G minor.

Jacquetta Hawkes13:47

which I think is a a profound work, as well as a delightful one.

Presenter13:54

The opening of the third movement of Mozart's quintet in G minor, the Amadeus Quartet plus Cessleronovitz.

Presenter14:02

Now, your new book, A Quest for Love, you call it a novel, but it's not like any other novel I've read. It covers getting on for a million years.

Jacquetta Hawkes14:11

Yes, I'm afraid it's another peculiar book. I seem to write books that fall between all the shelves.

Jacquetta Hawkes14:17

But it it is pure fiction for the greater part of it.

Presenter14:21

It's told in the first person.

Jacquetta Hawkes14:22

It's told in the first person, and I f frequently refer to it as an autobiography, because that person that goes through time isn't really meant to be an aspect of myself.

Jacquetta Hawkes14:33

And then at the end it merges into my actual twentieth century life.

Presenter14:37

How many historical periods did you select to treat in some detail?

Jacquetta Hawkes14:42

In the end I selected seven.

Jacquetta Hawkes14:46

I had intended to have a release on Soine, and it just didn't come, so that it shows that it there was something rather mysterious about these.

Jacquetta Hawkes14:53

I I I wrote it with an artificial framework, a literary artifice, of having memories coming back to me during one particular week while I was here by myself, in this house by myself, which was of course only an artifice. But after all, what are the sources of one's imaginary pictures? One doesn't know.

Presenter15:06

Uh

Presenter15:11

Doesn't it?

Presenter15:12

So really you you picture yourself by a sort of race memory as as as the universal woman.

Jacquetta Hawkes15:18

In a way, yes.

Jacquetta Hawkes15:20

And this led to the book being much more sexy than I really imagined it would be, because after all.

Presenter15:25

Yeah, we call it.

Jacquetta Hawkes15:26

The environment of woman through ages past really was man, and so inevitably I found that I was writing in every period mainly about the relationship of a man and a woman.

Presenter15:37

The last section in particular is is a very forthright potted autobiography.

Jacquetta Hawkes15:41

Yeah.

Jacquetta Hawkes15:43

I don't much like the word potted, but it's highly selective, I agree. Yes.

Presenter15:45

I agree. It's a very courageous piece of writing, I think. And the whole book does celebrate your sense of the past. And it also advocates a reasoned and very reasonable feminism.

Jacquetta Hawkes15:58

I think so, yes, because particularly at the time I started to write when the women's libbers were b being particularly strident, I really did feel very strongly against it. And I wanted to show h how this conditioning in the past and the extent to which the past really holds us all all the time really makes it quite impossible to try to make men and women as one.

Presenter16:21

And after A Quest for Love, what's the next book to be?

Jacquetta Hawkes16:24

I'm already wallowing, rather, in the middle of a

Jacquetta Hawkes16:27

Biography which I very much wanted to do, but which has taken much longer than I had expected a biography of the archaeologist Sir Mortimer Wheeler.

Presenter16:36

A friend and colleague.

Jacquetta Hawkes16:37

Yes. Well, he was certainly very much a friend. I I hardly ever worked with him, actually.

Jacquetta Hawkes16:43

But we liked one another. I think we were slightly similar in some ways. We got on very well.

Jacquetta Hawkes16:48

Although there were long intervals, I was always glad to meet him, and I think he was glad to meet me, and I was I liked him very much.

Presenter16:54

Record number five we've got tuna.

Jacquetta Hawkes16:58

I thought we'd have some part of Handel Water Music.

Jacquetta Hawkes17:02

I was very fond of it, and I have one particular association with it that I shall never forget. Jack and I were at one of those admirable bath music festivals, and they were going to play the water music on a barge on the river.

Jacquetta Hawkes17:17

All dressed in eighteenth century costume.

Jacquetta Hawkes17:19

And they did, and then the rain, of course, began, and they played away gallantly.

Jacquetta Hawkes17:24

But as it came towards the end the water was streaming through their white wigs and down the backs of their scarlet coats, and then the barge drifted away in a great cloud of rain. So that's my particular association with water music.

Presenter17:42

The air from Handel's Water Music Suite, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by George Weldon.

Presenter17:48

What are your other interests? You were on the board of the British Film Institute, so obviously you like films.

Jacquetta Hawkes17:55

Yes. I I got involved with that because when I became a civil servant, after a time I went to the Ministry of Education and I was put in charge of visual education.

Jacquetta Hawkes18:06

And we made that to be very largely films, though we did do sort of exhibitions and so forth.

Jacquetta Hawkes18:11

But we well nobody quite noticed what we were doing, and I managed to spend a great deal of money and make some excellent films, I think, before the Treasury really got round to it, or the local authorities who put an end to it in the end.

Presenter18:24

What sort of films?

Jacquetta Hawkes18:26

I was very anxious that they shouldn't be what I used to call tadpole films, ways of instructing children, you know, in elementary things, but on the contrary to to be really aesthetic and give a feeling for things like architecture and

Jacquetta Hawkes18:38

houses and

Jacquetta Hawkes18:40

We we we did a great range of that kind of subject.

Jacquetta Hawkes18:44

And I also had the opportunity to do one on prehistory called The Beginnings of History, which is still extant, I think.

Presenter18:50

Now, you were a civil servant, you said. That was during the war, was it not? And were you not in the War Cabinet office?

Jacquetta Hawkes18:57

Yes, that was how I began. It was really very comical. Some of us suddenly thought that everything was going to pot, you know, during the Blitz.

Jacquetta Hawkes19:05

and started going round and trying to have good ideas to help.

Jacquetta Hawkes19:10

to inspirit the people, and somehow this led to my being taken into the War Cabinet offices with a project for post war reconstruction. This was when it seemed awfully unlikely that Britain would survive at all.

Presenter19:23

Yeah.

Presenter19:24

Positive thinking.

Jacquetta Hawkes19:24

But

Jacquetta Hawkes19:25

It was an extraordinarily interesting way to begin, because as we were so such a small body, we worked only with the very top people.

Jacquetta Hawkes19:32

And there weren't enough of us to go round. So, for instance, I found myself on a high up economics committee.

Jacquetta Hawkes19:39

which was every kind of famous economist up to Maynard Keynes.

Jacquetta Hawkes19:43

After about I think nearly a year, the secretary said to me, And who exactly are you, Mrs Hawkes?

Presenter19:50

That's a fairly good idea.

Jacquetta Hawkes19:51

After that I had to withdraw.

Presenter19:54

You were also with UNESCO. That was afterwards.

Jacquetta Hawkes19:58

Yes, that was afterwards. When I was happily doing visual education, I was told that I must transfer and be the UK Secretary for UNESCO.

Jacquetta Hawkes20:07

And of course that that was exciting too.

Jacquetta Hawkes20:10

The first considerable thing I did with them was to go to the the first international overseas congress which was held in Mexico City.

Jacquetta Hawkes20:19

That actually is where I first met JB Priestle.

Presenter20:23

Do you and mister Priestley work together to the extent of showing each other your work in progress?

Jacquetta Hawkes20:29

Not in progress, no neither of us have ever done that, but always immediately at the end.

Presenter20:34

Tell me about your own writing discipline. Do you work regular hours or so many words a day? How do you set up your own?

Jacquetta Hawkes20:39

Not so many words. Now, I'm afraid that varies very much. But I have always worked regular hours since I became more or less professional writer. I work in the morning up to lunch time.

Jacquetta Hawkes20:51

They're knock off completely, sort of between lunch and tea.

Jacquetta Hawkes20:55

Walk or garden or whatever.

Jacquetta Hawkes20:57

And then work again after tea.

Jacquetta Hawkes21:00

But unfortunately

Jacquetta Hawkes21:02

Of late I find it more difficult to do really serious writing after tea, and I mainly do that in the morning.

Presenter21:07

Do you work straight on the typewriter?

Jacquetta Hawkes21:10

I do, yes. I used not to, but I found it better. But very untidily, unlike my husband, who hardly ever has to make a correction.

Presenter21:13

But

Presenter21:17

Really?

Presenter21:19

Record number six.

Jacquetta Hawkes21:22

Well, as we've spoken of Jack, of of my husband,

Jacquetta Hawkes21:27

I thought I would like to hear a thing I haven't heard for a very long time, and I'm sure it would cheer me immensely to hear his voice on this island.

Jacquetta Hawkes21:35

And he wrote it a very agreeable book. People always said how much he complained and so on. So he thought he would write a book called Delight about moments that that he m remembered with the greatest pleasure. And I like to think I had some share in some of them, so I would have an added reason for wanting to hear it on my island. So I I've chosen a particularly characteristic one called Smoking in the Bath.

Presenter22:03

JB Priestley reading one of his essays from Delight, Smoking in a Hot Bath. Let's go back to archaeology.

Presenter22:12

What is there still to look for? Are are are there still

Presenter22:16

Lost civilizations defined.

Jacquetta Hawkes22:18

It would be rash to say no, but I think it is becoming increasingly unlikely a whole new civilization in the way that

Jacquetta Hawkes22:26

the Sumerian and Babylonian and then the Cretan ones were.

Jacquetta Hawkes22:30

Because there really has been a a great deal of digging, but there's still an enormous amount of of fresh aspects of of civilizations to find and probably.

Presenter22:37

Right.

Jacquetta Hawkes22:39

A great deal more in the remote stone age.

Presenter22:41

A piece of your writing which I find very exciting was your introduction to Dawn of the Gods, describing the work of the Victorian visionary.

Presenter22:51

Archaeologists who went in search of Troy and Marcina.

Jacquetta Hawkes22:56

You mean particularly Schleeman? 'Cause that was a most extraordinary story.

Jacquetta Hawkes23:00

This man who was born a son of a very poor pastor, and apparently really did make up his mind that because his father had shown him a picture of Troy and flames,

Jacquetta Hawkes23:10

He was determined to find it, but first of all he had to make a fortune, which he did with surprising ease, as a lot of it his money was made in Russia, and then he went to America.

Jacquetta Hawkes23:21

And then, using Homer as a guide, and of course all the established scholars laughed at him for this,

Jacquetta Hawkes23:27

He really did quite soon find the real Troy.

Jacquetta Hawkes23:31

and although he misstated everything there, it it is true, and it has been very much studied since. And then he went to Mycenae and, using his classical authorities again, he immediately found these wonderful

Jacquetta Hawkes23:45

so called shaft graves where the Mycenaean kings and queens and princesses were buried with great splendour.

Jacquetta Hawkes23:52

So that he had a kind of quite uncanny gift.

Presenter23:55

And in those days of course a rich man could buy the whole site.

Jacquetta Hawkes23:59

Yes, usually, but there always were great difficulties with the authorities, especially in the old Ottoman Empire where so many of them were concerned. They had to get these passes which could be lawfully withheld and so forth. Freeman had a lot of trouble with that, as most of them did.

Presenter24:11

Yeah.

Presenter24:14

Without accusing Schliemann, there was, of course, a great deal of plundering of sites which nowadays be quite impossible every nation guards its own treasures.

Jacquetta Hawkes24:22

There's still a great deal of plundering going on, you know, particularly in Italy, where Etruscan tombs are plundered, and there's quite a lot in Egypt too, I'm told.

Presenter24:29

And told me that.

Jacquetta Hawkes24:30

Yeah.

Presenter24:31

Record number seven.

Jacquetta Hawkes24:34

I think that

Jacquetta Hawkes24:36

With my

Jacquetta Hawkes24:37

Fine classical music.

Jacquetta Hawkes24:39

And

Jacquetta Hawkes24:41

with my husband's voice and so on, and with the humour of Peter Sellers, I would still want something rather obstreperous and modern for when one was in that mood. I thought a good deal of different moods that one would fall into in this island.

Jacquetta Hawkes24:55

And so thinking of also my first pleasure in in New York, when one was so delighted by the atmosphere and the speed and everybody's enthusiasm and so on.

Jacquetta Hawkes25:06

And almost the first time I was there I w went to Guys and Dolls, which I think remains one of the best musicals was certainly the first American musical I'd ever heard.

Jacquetta Hawkes25:16

It was tremendously delightful to me. So, could we have

Jacquetta Hawkes25:22

And I I know I shall want it on the island. Let's have l that opening thing that the musical itself begins with, which is the Fugue for Tin Horns.

Presenter25:35

Fug for Tinhorns by the American cast of Guys and Dolls. Are working on digs in various countries and various climates? Have you sometimes had to live rough?

Jacquetta Hawkes25:46

Not very. The

Jacquetta Hawkes25:49

Digging Palestine was rough at one time because our tents were flooded out completely and we had to build them in baked brick, you know, or rather mud we had to build them in in mud brick.

Presenter26:00

I'm rather glad to hear that, because the hardships of a desert island won't be altogether new.

Jacquetta Hawkes26:00

I know

Jacquetta Hawkes26:06

By no means. And then of course I did have my island in infancy too.

Presenter26:10

Of course. What sort of shelter would you build?

Jacquetta Hawkes26:13

I think I would make a number of large mats of palm leaves and fix them on a frame. That would be quite easy, I think.

Presenter26:19

And food? What would you live on?

Jacquetta Hawkes26:22

I would make fish hooks out of shells.

Jacquetta Hawkes26:25

And I think I could do a little fishing in that way, because I believe in those waters fish are easily caught. Yet I'd like, of course, roots as well as fruit, but it would be risky, wouldn't it? I don't want to poison myself.

Presenter26:37

Now beware of berries.

Jacquetta Hawkes26:39

Beware, very test.

Presenter26:40

Would you try to get away? Would you try to construct a raft or something of the sort?

Jacquetta Hawkes26:44

I definitely wouldn't. I would enjoy being there, I think, for a time, but then I would start trying to send out smoke signals, because I would certainly be able to make fire. I know various primitive ways of making far.

Jacquetta Hawkes26:56

So after I felt I'd had enough, I'd try my luck with smoke signals. No, Mutt Raftsby, I'm terribly seasick.

Presenter27:04

Right. Let's have your last record.

Jacquetta Hawkes27:07

Be nice to end. I think a thing that I would probably play sometimes in the evening, and that is Elgar's cello concerto.

Jacquetta Hawkes27:19

It occurs rather beautifully in a play of my husband's called The Linden Tree.

Jacquetta Hawkes27:25

But my particular memory of it was when it was played especially for us.

Jacquetta Hawkes27:29

At a concert by Jacqueline Dupray.

Jacquetta Hawkes27:33

And I remember speaking to her afterwards and saying how I loved her bodily movements and she said, Oh, but that's what they all blame me for but she was so magnificent in her movements at that time.

Jacquetta Hawkes27:44

And also I I just adore th the sort of lovely grunting sound of cello at its lower register.

Presenter27:55

The opening of the El Garcello Concerto, Jacqueline Dupre, with the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Daniel Baramboim.

Presenter28:03

Now, if you could take only one disk out of your eight, which would it be?

Jacquetta Hawkes28:08

It's difficult of course, but I I think I would make it the Mozart Clarinet Concerto.

Presenter28:14

And you're allowed one luxury to take to the island any one object you like of no practical use.

Jacquetta Hawkes28:20

I want it to be a real luxury, and so I will make it wine.

Jacquetta Hawkes28:25

I would like as much as you can allow me of

Jacquetta Hawkes28:28

Burgundy and carrot.

Jacquetta Hawkes28:30

And of Hock and I think Alsatian for the white wines.

Presenter28:34

Right. Well, I I think you'll find us sufficiently generous to last reasonably for your stay on the island. And one book putting aside the Bible and Shakespeare and big encyclopedias.

Jacquetta Hawkes28:45

Well, here I'm going to take rather an odd policy.

Jacquetta Hawkes28:49

I find it a great thing to have something that you ought to do and you don't.

Jacquetta Hawkes28:54

And so I thought I would like to take

Jacquetta Hawkes28:56

as large an edition of Goethe in translation as you could find for me.

Jacquetta Hawkes29:02

Because I've always meant to read Goethe all my life. I never have read more than a very few things. I believe that would continue on the island, but it would add a great deal of zest to the fact that I was not reading Goethe. I'd be able to feel wicked and lazy.

Presenter29:14

able to feel wicked and lazy.

Presenter29:17

The works of Goethe just in case you feel the need. And thank you, Jeketta Hoox, for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Jacquetta Hawkes29:25

I have enjoyed it very much, and I am proud to have joined the fellowship.

Presenter29:28

Goodbye everyone.