Frederic Raphael

Speaker 10:00

Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen eighty one, and the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:27

This week, our castaway is the writer, Frederic Raphael.

Presenter0:31

Is music important in your life?

Frederic Raphael0:33

No, I think the answer is that it really isn't. I'm consoled by the fact that Nabokov always said that music was a completely closed book to him, and few other books, of course, were.

Frederic Raphael0:44

However, I do rather regret that it isn't. I mean, I like to listen to music and I could wish that I actually understood better what I was listening to, but I fear it's uh too late to learn that particular language. So the answer is, alas, I enjoy it, but with a kind of uh entirely um illiterate Have you ever tried to play an instrument? Well, I think I was in my prep school orchestra with I think they gave me the triangle.

Presenter1:00

Have you ever tried

Frederic Raphael1:06

I think I played the wrong side. Very irresponsible. And I think I was soon dismissed for over-enthusiasm.

Frederic Raphael1:13

Do you play records a lot? Yes, I do. I used to play almost anything, often indeed the radio, when I was working, but I I can't imagine how I ever managed to do that. And I can only assume that I either didn't listen or that what I was doing wasn't worth writing, because now I find writing is rather too difficult to have that going on. So I don't play when I'm working, but I do very much enjoy playing music at other times, particularly sort of rather rough things like Italian opera, which I haven't actually chosen, but I like listening to it in extenso. I'm told that's a very vulgar taste, but I like it. So do I. And what's your first record? My first record is the Beethoven Violin Concerto played by Milstein. I know Milstein rates very highly, but I've chosen him for a rather literary reason. That is that there's a character in a book of mine called Lindman, whose name is Milstein, who doesn't play the violin, and certainly not as well as this gentleman. But there it is.

Presenter3:02

An excerpt from the Beethoven Violin Concerto, Nathan Milstein with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra conducted by William Steinberg.

Presenter3:11

Now, you were born in the United States, Freddie. How old were you when you came here?

Presenter3:16

Um, I was seven, I think. Um it was in nineteen thirty eight, anyway.

Frederic Raphael3:19

Yeah.

Presenter3:19

Did you quickly change to an English

Frederic Raphael3:22

English accent or rather defiantly. Yes. Well, I mean, uh the fact is if you go to English prep schools or if you went to English prep schools, I think you learn to conform rather quick

Presenter3:23

Printed down quickly.

Presenter3:32

Quickly. Well, after prep school you went to Charterhouse. What were your ambitions as a schoolboy?

Presenter3:38

To get away from the school. Was it your idea to go to university or was it your p

Frederic Raphael3:45

Ah. Um, university, yes. I mean, my my ambition's to be less uh flippant about it. I mean, I I thought of being a writer partly, I think, as a response to this, though doubtless my mother will produce things which I wrote uh when I was very much younger than uh than the time when I was at school, so it may be that writing was one's destiny or one's choice, I'm not sure about that.

Presenter3:45

Mm.

Frederic Raphael4:04

As far as university is concerned, I think that in those days, if you were clever, you went to university. I don't think it went much further than that. My father actually went to Oxford, and I always supported Oxfords and the Boat Race and various other important events of that order, and it was by pure chance, in fact, that I ended up going to Cambridge. But on the whole, public school boys tended to go to Oxford or Cambridge, and I tended, I'm afraid, to do the same as everyone else if I possibly could. Between Charterhouse and Cambridge, you did a job at New York Express. I did, yes. I was very fortunate, and I got a job rather sort of undercover at the Sunday Express, undercover because of the NUJ and so on, and I was actually sort of supposed to be helping to carry my boss's bag. And it was a marvellous thing, because having been in this curiously cloistered, if rather unpleasantly barred cloister of an English public school, I then went and worked with the industrial correspondent of the Sunday Express, a very nice and marvellously tolerant man, as I now realise, called Alan Brockbank.

Presenter4:29

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 14:37

Yeah.

Frederic Raphael4:59

And became obviously involved with things like strikes and Labour Party politics and all the rest of it, so that I was introduced into a a level of English society which in those days people who had been either as fortunate or as unfortunate as I had been rarely got to. So it was very instructive. Did it strengthen your ambition to be a writer, having worked with journalists?

Frederic Raphael5:22

I think I saw quickly how it was done. I did actually write things on the Sunday Express, and I remember a friend of mine who'd been a sub on the Express asked me to do a trial piece, do you see? And I went to this friend of mine and I said, This is the piece I've done. And it read like Thucydides' strain through a portion of Cicero, and it was extremely turgid, and I thought a wonderful piece of prose. And he said, Well, I shouldn't show them this. So he very quickly subbed it and turned it into Express Ease for me. And I realized then, very quickly, how

Frederic Raphael5:56

The public had a right to have the thing presented to them in a fashion which was at least understandable. And although I haven't always stuck entirely to that, it was a good lesson.

Frederic Raphael6:06

Let's have your second record. What's that?

Frederic Raphael6:08

The next record is Edith Piaff singing Milor, and I have chosen that because in early 1960s my wife and I lived in Paris for a while and we walked past the Olympia music hall where Piaf was giving her last concert and I was so disgusted by the fact that the prisoners used to go in order to see her die on stage, which was frankly what they sort of hoped for, that we didn't go. Now I realize that perhaps one ought to have gone.

Speaker 46:28

Yeah.

Frederic Raphael6:32

And I'm rather sorry, because she was certainly a very, very great performer.

Speaker 46:36

Halle vernet, milor, mous aven d'amous, lesse vous pair, milore, vernais d'ons, je sois galaire romo, chantremos, le chantre milor, quilon vois de chant sore gal des moi milor.

Speaker 16:52

Yeah.

Presenter6:53

I'm not sure if I can do it.

Speaker 16:55

Gotta bang.

Presenter6:57

Edit Piaf Milor.

Presenter7:00

Sir Freddie to Cambridge, Saint John's

Frederic Raphael7:03

What did you read?

Frederic Raphael7:04

I read classics first um because again I was uh rather easily led I think and um classics is what I got my scholarship on in general one didn't change one's course. I read classics for two years. That's to say I didn't really do very much reading because I found it very like school and I was easily distracted into things like um coming in. I played a lot of bridge my first year, which was a rather first couple of years I played a lot of bridge, big mistake.

Speaker 17:13

Uh

Speaker 17:25

Yeah.

Speaker 47:25

Uh

Speaker 17:25

Yeah.

Frederic Raphael7:28

And then I got involved in various kinds of theatricals and also in just living along. Anyway, uh halfway through my second year I did become passionately involved in in philosophy, which was called Moral Sciences at Cambridge, rather elegant title which has since lapsed, unfortunately. And that was the great period of English linguistic philosophy, where we thought we belonged to a very special club and were going to unscramble everybody's metaphysical knots and uh straighten out their

Speaker 17:40

We drop it.

Frederic Raphael7:54

general mental garb. Uh and I found that very attractive and became very excited with it and uh in fact continued I stayed at Cambridge for a fourth year instead of doing any of the usual three because I changed my course and did philosophy in the last couple of years.

Frederic Raphael8:07

Tell me about the theatrical activities.

Frederic Raphael8:09

Well, my theatrical activities were were fairly limited, really, because I my father had been to Oxford soon after the First War when uh uh things were extremely rigid in terms of protocol between first year and second year and third year, and his advice to me was extremely decorous, and he said that I must on no account um push myself forward in an aggressive fashion, but must wait until people discovered my merits. Well, a a as you may guess, of course, the number of people who were eager to discover one's merits were greatly outnumbered by those who were eager to rush on ahead of one's. I found that my modesty was not really very effective, and nobody ever came to seek me out at all.

Speaker 18:34

Great tab.

Frederic Raphael8:43

And then I started to write one or two things around the graduate publications, and I wrote a play, and then somebody came along and said that he wanted to write with me, as he put it, and they wanted to do musical comedies and so on. And I then joined the Footlights, which was a and is a famous Cambridge club, full of extraordinarily sophisticated juvenility. And I got involved mainly with that. I did try to become an actor, but I was very timid, really, and didn't like to go to the ADC, which was the great Cambridge theatrical club, because I was afraid I would fail. I don't much like going to auditions and failing. Now, you won a travel scholarship. Where did you travel?

Frederic Raphael9:22

Yes, that was very fortunate actually. My college were were extraordinarily generous to me, and not always because I was extremely well behaved, but they were very generous. And they had this travel scholarship sort of tucked away, which supposedly was available to anyone who applied for it, but they took great care that nobody should apply for it, as far as I can tell, unless they sort of tipped the wink that it would be all right. So I was very fortunate.

Speaker 19:39

That's what I was like.

Frederic Raphael9:45

I was given quite a lot of money, and it was an enormous help to me.

Frederic Raphael9:48

And I traveled first of all to France, down to the Riviera, where I sort of thought that all the the really kind of sophisticated stories w w would uh be discovered. The obvious place to travel. The obvious place to travel, particularly in in October and November. Then I went on to Spain, which I'd never been to before.

Presenter9:58

To travel his place in check.

Frederic Raphael10:03

to Barcelona, Madrid, Toledo and then down into Andalusia, which I adored, and then I went to Morocco during the the the the time when the Moroccans were um fighting the French and I was again very naive and and didn't sort of notice that there was this war going on and wandered round all these places during curfew it was

Speaker 410:17

Yeah.

Frederic Raphael10:18

extraordinary naive performance. And and then I went from there to Italy, which I'd never been to before either. And from there I went back to Paris and uh met the very patient girl who was waiting for me and and whom I married shortly afterwards and to whom I'm still married, I'm very glad to say. And we then lived in Paris again, thanks to my college, while I wrote my first book. So by the time the money ran out and we had to run back to England, I had at least got a book to give a publisher, which luckily

Presenter10:33

Good.

Frederic Raphael10:45

He accepted. What was that first novel about? Well, that was a book called Obligato, which, to my shame, I've been rather ashamed of. It was a really quite charming book about sort of Shobys at a very naive level and about a trumpeter who lives in the suburbs. Not autobiographical, do you author? My trumpet playing is rather rudimentary. No, it wasn't in the least bit autobiographical. It it was really rather larky. It was rather typical, I think, of the generation which perhaps was never the same again after Suez. It was written, I think, in 1954, five, and published in early in 1956. And we were really rather innocent. We hadn't been in the war.

Frederic Raphael11:21

And everything had supposedly gone back to the way that our parents had wanted it to be. Yeah. And therefore this book was a a quite sort of charming entertainment. I thought it was naughty. I realised now it was just rather innocent and delightful.

Presenter11:34

Let's have your third record. What's that?

Frederic Raphael11:36

The third record is a a sort of is is a is a joke, at least I mean it's it's the kind of record which which amuses me. I don't know whether it's intended to be amusing, but it is, and it's the um Haydn piano trio in F.

Presenter12:33

Part of the second movement of the Haydn Trio in F, H fifteen, number two, played by the Bozard Trio. So your first book, Obligato, did it?

Frederic Raphael12:43

Do what

Presenter12:43

Well

Frederic Raphael12:43

Yeah.

Frederic Raphael12:43

Well, it was reviewed in the Sunday Times. I thought that was doing quite well, actually. I mean, I'm still rather astonished to be reviewed, and I certainly was then.

Frederic Raphael12:51

It did well enough, yes. I mean, it was quite a nice little book, and it was quite well reviewed, and I was away, and I then wrote another book, which I thought was very much better.

Frederic Raphael13:00

A very august house, publishing house, to take me on, and and I was promised that they were immensely loyal to their authors, so I look forward to this long and harmonious career with them. And I wrote a second book, which I thought was um a great improvement, but it was uh a post sewer's book, and although it wasn't political in any very revolutionary sense, it was a much more realistic and downbeat book. And uh, my publisher

Frederic Raphael13:23

I only wrote one copy of it, typed one copy, and my publisher begged me for it, or at least he said he was begging me for it, and eventually I I gave it to him and said, For God's sake, don't lose it, because if you do, you know, I'm really done for it. Oh, no, no, no, don't

Speaker 113:29

Before it

Frederic Raphael13:37

And then one day the phone rang and uh my wife, my unfortunate wife, answered. Unfortunately, the sensor she knew she was going to have to pass on the message, and he said, Oh, look here, I'm terribly sorry, but nothing else frightful's happened.

Frederic Raphael13:50

I said um

Frederic Raphael13:51

The book ha has been stolen. Oh no. So, um I said, Well, you know.

Frederic Raphael13:58

What do you mean the book's been stolen?

Frederic Raphael14:00

So he said, Well, I don't think it's anything to do with the merits of the book, it's just that it was in a very nice briefcase and and and and and somebody's come into my office in the middle of the day and and and and and and and and I I'm sorry to say that

Frederic Raphael14:11

Gone.

Frederic Raphael14:13

So, um

Frederic Raphael14:15

I uh then of course came home actually I'm ashamed to tell you from playing Bridge which was one of my afternoon vices in those days and the news was broken to me and uh I sort of um wept and we I remember we got in the car we'd just bought a car the first car we ever had and the only thing I could think of was to go driving. I thought if I sort of drove somewhere it was like sort of running amok, but in a fairly controlled way. So off we went in this car and by the time we sort of got to about Bath or somewhere I'd begun to sort of calm down and eventually it was clear that all I could do was to rewrite the book. Had you kept your notes? I did have a few notes but very few and I rewrote the whole book. They said well look I'll tell you what you what we'll do. We'll give you fifty pounds which will sort of sort of you know um tied you over and and and and and and and do the book again and and then if we when we um like it um you know. So I wrote the whole book again and I delivered it.

Frederic Raphael15:08

And they said, Well, sorry, but we d we don't actually want want to publish this book. Uh, it's not that we don't like the book, you see, um but you must understand that that that you're you're never gonna make any friends if you write this sort of stuff So I said but I don't really think that writing books is about making friends. I understood that the idea was to write books in which one expressed something, said something, and perhaps um

Speaker 415:14

Yeah.

Speaker 115:14

Uh

Frederic Raphael15:30

Made some kind of change to the world or the way people saw it. He said, But that's not the author that we've taken on.

Frederic Raphael15:36

So they didn't take me on anymore, so I was set loose with my manuscript. Terribly sad story, fairly sad. Fairly sad.

Presenter15:41

Bitter

Presenter15:42

Yeah.

Presenter15:44

You did sell it eventually. Pu it puts me at my ease.

Frederic Raphael15:46

Get pushed.

Frederic Raphael15:47

Oh yes. Oh yes I did indeed.

Presenter15:48

Because

Presenter15:49

You continued to write uh a novel a year. From your early ones, which pleased you most? Which one would you like to survive?

Frederic Raphael15:57

Well, you see, I think I there's I wrote a book called The Limits of Love, which I sometimes think perhaps I used material from my sort of youth a bit early. And I sometimes think the book is rather naive. But funnily enough, the people of my older children's age, that's the people in their twenties who who've read it friends of theirs, seem to be very much affected by it and so on. So I assume that there's some kind of truth in it. I don't mean that that's an absolute proof of its eternal qualities. You've only done one non-fiction book, a biography of Somerset Maume. Did you know Maugham? I met Maugham actually the first time I went down to the south of France on that trip that I was telling you about when I got this very lucky grant from my college.

Speaker 416:34

Right.

Frederic Raphael16:37

And I wrote to him from Jean Le Pin saying could I come up and see him? And he was extremely nice to me, which is one of the reasons why I've always been slightly sort of um disappointed at the extraordinary malice which has been directed against him. Uh not entirely, of course, without warrant, but I find him absolutely charming. I mean the idea that he attempted to seduce every young person who crossed his threshold or whatever, or kicked them out if he wasn't able to do so. Either I was very unattractive or he was on a particularly good day or something, because I had no such problems with him. He was very, very nice. I stayed there for many hours. He showed me all his pictures. He was extremely courteous and delightful. I did play bridge with him several times after that in London. But I've got of course I didn't I didn't know him.

Speaker 117:12

Yeah.

Presenter17:12

Yeah. Uh

Frederic Raphael17:15

Name well at once.

Frederic Raphael17:17

Record number four we've got to.

Frederic Raphael17:19

Um well I I I couldn't do without a bit of Vivaldi, I don't think, though I I was totally put down when I saw a very very sort of sophisticated French critic talking about Vivaldi and saying that he was only good for wall paper. But I dare say that even on a desire one might find some kind of wall to paper. So I'll paper it with the uh concerto for lute and strings with uh Julian Breen playing the lute.

Speaker 117:28

Is there any

Presenter18:34

An excerpt from Vivaldi's concerto in D for lute and strings, Julian Bream with his consort.

Presenter18:40

Now, feature films.

Presenter18:42

Back in the happy days when such things were made in this country. The first one you worked on was nothing but the best, I think. That wasn't your original story, was it?

Frederic Raphael18:51

No, it would be quite false to say that it was. It was the original story was by a man called Stanley Ellian, rather a clever American writer, and it was actually set in America, and it concerns um a lower class person who seeks to ape the upper class ways the better to milk them of their um

Frederic Raphael19:08

of their money and their prestige. A theme actually which suited England very much better than America, we thought, but um one which obviously gave an opportunity for a great deal of decoration and um elasticity.

Presenter19:18

Day of treatment.

Presenter19:20

And then Darling, which John Schlesinger directed, and which got you an Academy Award. Now that wasn't original.

Frederic Raphael19:25

Now that

Frederic Raphael19:26

True story

Frederic Raphael19:27

Yes, it was an original story. Again, um it started in a kind of film conferency way with uh with John and Joe Yanny, who was the uh the producer, saying that they wanted to they'd done two films about sort of life in the north.

Frederic Raphael19:39

kind of loving and

Frederic Raphael19:41

Bill

Frederic Raphael19:42

And they wanted to do some sort of set in London with sophisticated people. So it was rather a cooked up story, I thought, to start with, but uh eventually it sort of seemed to take on a bit of life, and it was it was a very arduous um business, sort of getting it eventually together, and uh also trying to get it made.

Presenter19:58

You adapted Hardy's far from the Matting crowd for Schlesinger as well. And then there were two for the Road and several others. As a writer you were working with a director and a producer, to a considerable extent a a team job. Did you find this fulfilling or frustrating?

Frederic Raphael20:11

No, it's really awful.

Frederic Raphael20:13

No, I loathe working with other people really, except when the script is done. That's to say I love working with actors and I love going over scripts with people and often changing them. I mean I'm not in the least bit concerned merely to retain my own authority as the writer. But I don't like working with other people. I don't like I'm always looking at my watch, see when I can get away. And I don't actually do it any more. It was quite entertaining for a while. I mean, John and Joe were both extremely entertaining people. It it wasn't dull, even though sometimes it was maddening. But it was immensely time consuming, because to have an idea as a writer, if you pass it, it's passed. But not only to have an idea, to have to explain it to somebody else, let and also to have to explain why her name is going to be Martha and not Georgina, and then to have a conference about whether it wouldn't better be Emma. I mean

Frederic Raphael20:55

You find that kind of thing drives you absolutely mad. Right. Record number five.

Presenter20:59

Uh

Frederic Raphael21:01

Well, I I I said rather grand in Monte Vede Vespers, a pretty, pretty long uh

Frederic Raphael21:05

choice, but I thought it would be good for my soul, and it would remind me that even on a desert island, at least I wasn't in Charterhouse Chapel.

Speaker 421:12

Kimaduta.

Speaker 421:20

Yeah.

Presenter22:09

The opening section of the Monteverde Vespers.

Presenter22:12

A recording conducted by John Elliott Gardner.

Presenter22:16

Now you had written a television play here or there, but a television job turned up about five years ago which had a tremendous success, Freddie. Will you tell us about that? How did it start?

Frederic Raphael22:27

You must mean the glittering prizes. I must mean the glittering prizes and elimination of a very few others.

Presenter22:29

Yeah.

Frederic Raphael22:32

How did that turn up? Mainly because during the period of the seventies in particular, I wrote a number of feature films because you mentioned that I won an Oscar, which is very much a matter of luck rather than of merit, but anyway, it passes for merit in California. As a result, I did write a lot of films. In other words, I continued to eat and travel and send my children to school and so on. But I didn't get much job satisfaction, as they say, from doing these films. And I became increasingly depressed, in fact, by this. And I thought, what sort of films would I have made in England? What sort of subject would I have treated had I been free to do what I wanted to do, or at least something like that? And then it occurred to me that a format might be to do a series of plays about my generation, God help us. Largely fictitious, in fact, although obviously like all fiction, one likes people to believe that it's really happening. And the BBC were good enough to commission these plays, and I did them, and they were also good enough to produce them, which is by no means the same thing as we all know.

Speaker 123:18

Is it like of

Speaker 123:29

Thing is

Frederic Raphael23:31

And rather to my surprise, they did turn out indeed to be successful. I'm not surprised in view of the merit of the other people involved, that is to say, of the directors and the actors, because I was immensely excited. Tom Conte was absolutely excellent.

Presenter23:46

Freddie, you're a productive writer and you've tackled some pretty large-scale projects, but you're also a book reviewer. Why do you bother?

Frederic Raphael23:54

I think there are various reasons. One of them is that I think that it's important that there should be some kind of um person who is not merely a professional critic, but also knows what it's like to be actually a creator and can recognize elements in a book which perhaps a

Frederic Raphael24:10

a pure critic uh doesn't see. Also, it's great fun to send in a piece um on a Tuesday and it's in the paper on Sunday or the Sunday after that, or at least one hopes the Sunday after that. Uh instant print is the attraction of journalism rather than the printing press, which takes nine months and then it's been delayed for another three and so on.

Frederic Raphael24:29

The other fun of it is that you have to read round a book as well as read the book. So it makes it insist that one inform oneself, and that's pretty good.

Speaker 124:33

Yeah.

Frederic Raphael24:36

Let's get back to music.

Frederic Raphael24:39

Well, it would be absurd to go without any Bach at all. In fact, it's quite tempting to go only with Bach, but um in this case I've I've chosen the violin and oboe concerto indeed mine.

Presenter25:33

Bach's concerto in D minor for violin and oboe, Itzak Pellman and Neil Black.

Presenter25:39

Now, your writing discipline. How do you set about your craft? Do you have regular hours of work?

Frederic Raphael25:45

Yeah.

Presenter25:45

Uh

Frederic Raphael25:46

Yes, absolutely. Um I don't mean by that that I work every day, including Christmas Day, because I don't. I work now because my our our youngest child goes to school, um, at he has to hit the bus, I think, at about a quarter to eight. So we have breakfast about eight, and and I generally start work about eight thirty in the morning, and I work, um, fairly steadily through the morning, except for coffee and uh

Speaker 126:03

And we're

Frederic Raphael26:06

No, they're only for coffee, I think, do I stop, and then and then we have lunch.

Frederic Raphael26:10

And then I generally go back to work later in the afternoon, but usually correcting or whatever. And of course, there's an awful lot of reading to do.

Presenter26:16

Yes.

Frederic Raphael26:16

So living a fairly quiet and secluded life is is pretty important to me.

Presenter26:20

Yes, your quiet and secluded life. You've lived in a number of countries. I am not accusing you of being a tax exile. I know you're not, but you have moved around Europe quite a bit.

Frederic Raphael26:30

Yes. I suppose that's partly because my wife and I first went to France when we first met, and it was a wonderful time. And I sort of always associated France with being happy. And therefore, leaving England, I'm sorry to say, has always given me an immense lift. I never get on any kind of conveyance to get out of England without feeling that freedom has begun. And I never come back, whatever the virtues of living here, without a certain feeling of resuming prison garb. And you're living at the moment in the Dodo. And you have lived in Spain, have you not? We lived in Spain, yes, and we lived in Italy for a while, and in Greece.

Presenter27:10

Is this a little confusing? Uh

Frederic Raphael27:15

Yes, they do actually. Well, the first two came fairly close together, Paul and Sarah, and they went to school in England in a fairly kind of orthodox way, if you can count the Bedells as an orthodox school, which I don't think you quite could. But our youngest child, Stephen, has started school in the French system. So he is sort of really a bit of a frog, you know. Let's go have record number seven. Well, the the seventh record is a Greek record. I'm rather devoted to Buzuki, and a friend of mine, a very highbrow and distinguished person who came to stay with us, said, If you put any of that stuff on, I shall leave. However, if he comes to the desert island, I won't play it. But otherwise, I think it'd be quite a good idea. And it's a piece by Theodorakis called Valkastoyallo, which means, I think, there's a boat on the beach or in the harbour, something which I hope eventually I shall be able to join in the chorus of.

Speaker 428:10

Pindi Pindi Tikka Tika Tikka Hani Pendaskalda

Speaker 428:23

My check is

Speaker 428:25

Marcaso Yaldo.

Speaker 428:27

Barcasto in yellow.

Speaker 428:28

Last Trump is famous.

Presenter28:32

An optimistic Buzuki number by Theodore Rakis The Boat on the Beach

Presenter28:37

Have you ever imagined yourself as a Robinson Crusoe?

Frederic Raphael28:40

Uh

Presenter28:40

Yeah.

Frederic Raphael28:41

I think I did in a sort of pre adolescent stage. I I think that after that, um, if not a Man Friday, at least a Girl Friday, would have been something which I would very much have wanted, and I and I still would quite quite like to have, I think. Uh total solitude is fairly daunting to me, but I have imagined it. Have you any ideas on escape?

Frederic Raphael28:59

Well, not much more than Odysseus had, I think, when he was helped by Calypso to escape from the island. I think he had a.

Presenter29:05

But he had a complete outfit of all sorts of things given him.

Frederic Raphael29:08

You lash together logs, I believe, and away you go. But he didn't end very well, of course. You need Athene's help, I think, to get anywhere. He had to get away from all that singing. Well, Nausicaa, you know, I mean, uh, Calypso rather, who was the uh the the the nymph whose island he was on. I mean, I really was quite a tempting person to say with. I think it says a great deal for Odysseus and for marriage that he actually still was quite determined to get back to Penelope. I'd like to think that my uh appetites would be the same.

Presenter29:35

Good. Your last record.

Frederic Raphael29:37

My last record is um it's sort of mainly for the eyebrows, really. It's Paul Tortellier playing the Dvorak cello concerto.

Presenter30:44

The Forschach cello concerto in B minor, Paul Tortellier with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Andrei Preven.

Presenter30:53

If you could only take one of the eight records you've played, which would it be?

Frederic Raphael30:58

What a rotten question. I didn't know you were going to ask that. Um

Frederic Raphael31:02

I suppose rather in the line of the person, you know, who took on the form of the.

Frederic Raphael31:07

the last person who'd sat on him. I I I suppose it would really have to be the last record, because Tortelier somehow is a companion as well as a player, and I think that might come in rather useful.

Frederic Raphael31:16

And one luxury to take with you. Any one object? Well, I I thought about that. I mean, I I it would be nice to be very worldly and sort of say that one would like a case of of Chateau Torbet, nineteen forty five, but I think really, if I were honest, it would have to be canvas and paints. Do you already?

Speaker 131:20

You deny it?

Frederic Raphael31:33

Well, w do you want to start? I did used to paint. Unfortunately, my daughter really is a painter, and and that really has virtually put an embargo on any future brush marks. But perhaps um I might be able to surprise her.

Presenter31:45

Good. And one book, apart from the Bible and Shakespeare.

Frederic Raphael31:50

Well, I think that would rather depend on how long I was going to be there. I think that if it was sort of fairly short term that I was going to serve, whatever the correct Desert Island terminology is, then I think I would choose the bilingual edition of the poems of George Seferis, because I would then be able to improve my Greek at the same time as reading a great writer. And also one might even compose verses eventually in it. That would be sort of good for one's morals. However, if it were even longer than that, then I think I would choose a history of chess, because I'm not a chess player, but it seems to me that chess is an interesting game, and given a number of years on a desert island, it would be, again, both a companion and a source of education. Well, now, according to

Presenter32:31

Whether you're a a pessimist or an optimist, you have to choose one of those, which

Frederic Raphael32:36

Yeah.

Presenter32:36

Uh

Frederic Raphael32:36

I think I'll have to

Presenter32:37

Yeah.

Frederic Raphael32:37

Take

Presenter32:37

The chess The chess book. Right. And thank you, Frederic Raphael, for letting us hear your Desert Island discs. Thank you very much. Goodbye, everyone.

Speaker 132:53

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