Morris West

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.

Presenter0:26

This week, our castaway is the novelist

Presenter0:29

Modis West.

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Morris, is music a major interest of yours?

Presenter0:34

Yes, it is. I'm uneducated in music in the sense that uh I've had no formal training. Uh I wanted to play the violin when I was uh a student of the Christian Brothers and the teacher was a horror.

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Uh he terrified us all.

Presenter0:49

And so I didn't learn the violin.

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Do you use music as background when you're working?

Presenter0:55

Every day I go into this study and I begin the day with either Mozart or Haydn.

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simply because they're nice orderly people, and as a creative person, I hope, I'm often confused. I've got a head full of characters that I can't make any sense out of.

Presenter1:11

And so this ninth, eighteenth century order where everything went by the rules, even music, is a help.

Presenter1:18

So that's playing when you sit down at your typewriter, or do you write longhand? I write longhand.

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And uh I can't write to vocal music. I have to write to orchestral music because

Presenter1:31

There is a person behind the voice. That that's evocative music for me. I see. That's the music of place, the music of.

Presenter1:39

of circumstance, and of course being a man who sings most beautifully in his bath, I like to have models to go by.

Presenter1:49

Oh, what are you going to start with?

Presenter1:51

I'd like to start with the Mozart Sinfonia Concertante. I won't give you the number. Yes. But it's Stern and and Zuckerman and Barenboim, and I like this.

Presenter2:59

Mozart Sinfonio Concertante in E flat major.

Presenter3:02

Kirkel three six four for violin, viola, and orchestra.

Presenter3:06

Isaac Stern, Pinchas Zuckerman, and the English Chamber Orchestra conducted by Daniel Baremboh.

Presenter3:13

That you were born in Australia, Maurice.

Presenter3:16

I was born in Australia. I noted that the other day in the English press I was to be born in Sydney, but it was Melbourne in an Anglo-Irish community. Well, of a large family? Family of six. I was the eldest. You mentioned just now the Christian Brothers. In fact, in your teens, you joined that order as a postulate. Tell me about the order and what it stood for. The order was founded in Dublin by a man called Edmund Ignatius Rice, who was a layman. It was to educate poor children.

Presenter3:50

It was founded on

Presenter3:52

A narrow theology.

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rigid discipline and great dedication. They were very good teachers, except they used the strap and they used

Presenter4:01

methods of of persuasion.

Presenter4:03

Both with pupils and with their postulants, which I presently find very repugnant. How did you come into contact with them?

Speaker 14:09

How do you go

Presenter4:11

Well, I was living in a place called St Kilda, which was a large Irish Catholic community. They were the resident educators.

Presenter4:20

and I was sent to the Christian Brothers.

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They followed a method of recruiting for their own orders. They sent around a brother postulator to preach to the young students the value of religious life, the vocation of a Christian teacher.

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And having a rather unhappy home life at that stage and being rather in my uncertain teens.

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I followed what I thought was the call and entered the order. You took a university degree while you were still in the order? Yes, we we followed the curriculum of studies of the order, which went on for two years up to secondary standard. Then we had a year's novitiate which was purely ascetic training and that was rather rigid.

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Very rigid, in fact.

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and the theology was the reverse of liberal.

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Then we had a year's scholasticate in which we were trainee teachers in effect, going for the equivalent of a of a state diploma. And then we were sent out to the teaching missions, living in the communities that were attached to the schools. Were you wearing a habit? Oh yes, I was wearing a long black sattan and a a Roman collar and a cincture and a

Presenter5:27

Rosary beads in my pocket and scapulas round my neck. Did you take your final vows? No, I took um eight years of annual vows.

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which were valid for a year and at the end of the year the order reviewed you and you reviewed the order and decided whether or no you would

Presenter5:43

Continue.

Presenter5:45

Well, so there you were. You had your your BA, you decided not to take your final vows, what haven't you?

Presenter5:51

I left the Order and the war was on, and for three months I taught, because perforce I had to eat. I hadn't learned enough uh

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asceticism to go without food for that long, so I had to teach in the Victorian Education Department.

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Then I joined the army and was taken on as an intelligence officer. Now I wasn't very intelligent.

Presenter6:14

So I wasn't a very good intelligence officer, so they made me a cipher officer.

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Right. Now I think at this point we'll break for another record and we'll talk about your Army career in a minute. What shall we have? What's your second record?

Presenter6:27

This has to do with loving, which I had to learn, of course, after I came out of the monastery. I learnt fairly fast, I think.

Presenter6:36

And this is Edith Piaf singing Les Amand de Paris.

Morris West6:41

Les among the Paris couches you marchans.

Morris West6:50

A paris l'és amonde, c'est me par façant. Les refinanc l'oradi, c'est pre pour ques bourgeois.

Speaker 16:57

Yeah.

Morris West7:03

Sape de Tat Parato, El Parato peramú.

Speaker 17:06

Yeah.

Presenter7:07

PF The Lovers of Paris.

Presenter7:10

In the Christian Brothers, presumably or life had been pretty sheltered. There must have been a great contrast in the Australian Army. They call it now culture shock.

Presenter7:19

Yes, there was a great culture shock. The language was different. The conduct of life, love, sex and the absence of evening and morning prayers was a little bit of a shock, I must confess.

Presenter7:36

The cipher work, you know, I I was no great uh genius like they had breaking the ultra code here.

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I did a certain amount of of uh cryptographic analysis.

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And for the rest I ran a number of cipher sections round the north of Australia, looking after normal traffic and also picking up uh enemy traffic from from the South Pacific and doing our best to break it.

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Had you already any ambition to write?

Presenter8:04

was the only ambition I did have. When did that start?

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It started while I was at school, among all the the frustrations of boyhood, and all the frustrations of my life as a

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as a fledgling monk.

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The one thing I knew I could do was write.

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I wrote poetry, I wrote textbooks for the teaching of languages, I wrote articles for in-house magazines, anything and everything.

Presenter8:31

Well, there you were up in Northern Australia, working at ciphers. Did you have any time there?

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I had an immense amount of time on my hands. What did you write, your first novel?

Presenter8:41

No, I wrote my first poem. My first

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Reasonably good poem.

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I'm regarded now as a novelist, but I did have at one stage some poetic spark, I think. Was it published? Yes, it was. And after that?

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After that, I um

Presenter8:58

Wrote a novel. I wrote a novel which was pseudonymous. It was called Moon in My Pocket. Like most first novels, was yours autobiographical? It was autobiographical. It told of my life in the monastery, and it reads now to me like a little like the Sorrows of Werte, though not as well written.

Presenter9:15

However, it caused a kind of success of scandal.

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It sold, would you believe, ten thousand copies in Australia.

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And then happened an event. Our former Prime Minister

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William Morris Hughes, who had been a colleague of Lloyd George at the at the Peace Conference, the First World War,

Presenter9:34

was supposed to be writing his autobiography, and my publishers recommended me to him as a candidate to help him to write it.

Presenter9:44

So he pulled me out of the army, and that's how I I left the military career. And your knowledge of political administration that you you got from mister Hughes must have come in very, very useful later with your later books.

Presenter9:57

Yes, he t he taught me one rule of politics, that you always hit below the belt.

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and that you always kept all your correspondence.

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Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

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Let's break your third record. What shall we have?

Speaker 110:09

Third rig.

Presenter10:11

The third record is from Camelot. It's from the original cast recording.

Presenter10:17

If ever I should leave you and had sung by

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Robert Goulet.

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This has a little bit of a history, if I can.

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Tell you about it.

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I went to see Camelot in New York on the night that Moss Hart, the late Moss Hart,

Presenter10:33

was going in after two heart attacks.

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carve out fifteen minutes out of an already running show that had cost a couple of million dollars.

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And

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I talked to him in In Sardis before he went in, and I was then a fledgling playwright.

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And he said

Presenter10:52

You've got to be if you want to be in theatre, you've got to be a surgeon.

Presenter10:57

You've always got a cut.

Presenter11:00

and the dedication of this man, who was one of the greats in New York.

Presenter11:05

remain with me for a long, long time.

Morris West11:08

If ever I would leave you

Morris West11:12

It wouldn't be summer.

Morris West11:17

Seeing you in summer, I never would go Your hair streaked with sunlight.

Morris West11:28

Your lips red as flame, your face with a luster.

Morris West11:35

That puts gold to shame.

Presenter11:38

Robert Goulet singing If Ever I Would Leave You from Camelot. How long did you stay in politics?

Presenter11:45

I stayed in politics for six months. My predecessor was Bill Fingleton, a cricketer. He lasted four.

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The verdict before I left politics was pronounced by my master.

Presenter11:58

who said, West, for a moderately intelligent young man, you've done some bloody silly things. You'd better pick up your cards and go.

Presenter12:06

And I did. Well, when you got to go, you got to go. What was your next job?

Morris West12:09

Yeah.

Speaker 112:09

Yeah.

Presenter12:11

My next job uh was as an employee of uh the Murdoch Press. I became an advertising copywriter at a radio station, three D B Melbourne. This was in the forties, the golden years of radio. The golden years of radio, and they were golden years.

Presenter12:27

There I learnt

Presenter12:29

Production, I learnt a little bit of everything, and then I set out on my own. There was a very big commercial radio set-up in Australia in those days. Yes, we had ninety-eight stations, would you believe? They were spread out all over the country, but that was our sole market except for New Zealand and such exotic places as Lorenzo Marx, Radio Luxembourg, etc., etc. I'm told you built up your organisation to a point where you were turning out 2,000 fifteen-minute recorded programmes a year. What sort of programmes were they?

Speaker 112:51

It's Saturday.

Presenter13:01

These were high dramas, soap operas, thrillers, even things that were then called the Luxe Radio Theatre, the General Motors Hour, all that sort of thing. Well, you were the wonder boy of radio. Did you write some of these things yourself? I wrote a lot of them myself. I can even remember doing 1984 for Vincent Price in a special performance in in Sydney. We did everything.

Presenter13:25

Jacks of all trades. And we used to produce uh a quarter hour programme in forty five minutes. And how much did it cost? It used to cost thirty pounds an episode. But we had to make the thirty pounds. That included the recording?

Speaker 113:37

So we had to make that

Presenter13:43

Uh the natural result was that I I had a breakdown and had to leave the business. How long were you out of action?

Presenter13:51

I was out of action in hospital, partially paralyzed, for about six weeks.

Presenter13:56

As serious as that.

Presenter13:58

And it was it was a psychosomatic state of total and and utter weariness. And after that I couldn't do anything, I couldn't concentrate. So I went and dug potatoes.

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And uh my marriage broke up uh and uh I went away to Sydney.

Presenter14:13

and settled in a little cottage overlooking the water.

Presenter14:17

and gradually I was able to work again.

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When did you begin your serious career as a novelist? When did you publish your first book, As Maurice West, apart from Nom de Plum? Well, in nineteen fifty four, while I was still writing radio and I had recovered from the breakdown,

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And

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My present wife and I had our first child.

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I got an income tax demand for the sale of my radio business.

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Hi.

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It's a long, complicated story, which I couldn't pay.

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So I looked around desperately for something to do and I said to myself in a romantic fashion, Maurice, write a book.

Presenter14:53

That will get you an amount of money.

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And I sat down,

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and I wrote an adventure story.

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which was called Gallows on the Sand.

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I sent it to an English agent.

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who, in the fashion of English agents in those days, said, This will take some time to place.

Presenter15:11

and lapsed into silence. I sent it to an American agent from whom we'd been buying rights. His name was Paul Reynolds.

Presenter15:18

and he sent me back the manuscript with a polite note, saying

Presenter15:22

No doubt you can write. This story is rather weak for the American market, but if you write anything else please send it to me.

Presenter15:30

So I sat down and in one month I wrote a novel called Kundu, which was a story of New Guinea and this rather magical, strange land full of tales which I'd heard from old French missionaries about men who changed themselves into cassowaries and the worship of the pig god and women who destroyed their children but suckled the pig, which was all true.

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Except the by location I never proved.

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And I wrote this magical story.

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Immediate money.

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I got three thousand dollars from New York.

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And I said to my wife,

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We're going away.

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This is it. This is the big deal.

Presenter16:14

And in those days we were able to get a passage to

Presenter16:18

Uh Naples?

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First class, on the Flotta Lauro, which was running immigrant ships.

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out full and back empty.

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They gave us first class, for the three of us, for two hundred and forty pounds. And that took it away. We were originally going to Genoa and then to London.

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But I full of the the flash of

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Use?

Presenter16:39

said damn.

Presenter16:41

No, let's stop off in Sorrento spring will be beginning.

Presenter16:45

Let us spend the spring there.

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This is where all the greats of the literary world come.

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So we stopped off in Sorrento.

Presenter16:55

At which point let's stop off for record number four. And record number four is uh it's not very familiar. It's called Santa Lucia Luntana, distant Santa Lucia, and it's the song of the immigrants who left Naples in their hundreds of thousands to go to America.

Presenter17:15

And it's sung by a man called Aurelio Fiero, who was the first Neapolitan singer I ever heard.

Speaker 317:23

Tantaluchir to dir sulon poke mara ma culuntana stay tiubellapar.

Morris West17:40

Helganda the Sarana Sunfer

Presenter17:52

Santa Lucia Luntano sung by Aurelio Fiero.

Presenter17:56

Now, there you were at Sorrento all ready to to write the great Australian novel. In fact, you didn't write a novel there.

Presenter18:04

No, I didn't. One day my wife came to me with

Presenter18:07

A travel book written by an American.

Presenter18:11

and in it he mentioned a Father Borelli,

Presenter18:15

who had gone out into the streets of Naples and lived as a scunizzo, which is the Neapolitan word for spinning top.

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the the lost children of Naples who spun around the city in search of a living.

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and I went down and met him,

Presenter18:32

with my wife, and then I went down and lived with him, and then went out on the streets with the boy he gave me.

Presenter18:38

To live the life of the streets with them. And you wrote a book, a documentary book. I wrote a documentary book which was called.

Speaker 118:43

Wrote a documentary book.

Presenter18:46

Children of the Sun

Presenter18:48

And that was the beginning of my

Presenter18:51

And then you moved on from Sorrento to London. You worked for the BBC for a while, didn't you? The BBC asked me to do a part of a panorama program on Children of the Sun. And you did quite a lot of... You were on the staff for a bit, were you not? I was a freelancer. Yes. They'd call me and I needed the money. God help me, did I need the money?

Speaker 119:08

Yes.

Presenter19:11

I know you wrote a couple of quick adventure stories under yet another name to get some money. When did you next write a Morris West novel?

Presenter19:20

I wrote, first of all, a story set in Sorrento called The Big Story.

Presenter19:26

This was a story based on a as many of my plots have been.

Presenter19:31

on an incident affecting a noble family there.

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My first half-success as a novel was a thing called the Second Victory.

Presenter19:39

which I wrote

Presenter19:41

in Austria during the time of the Hungarian Revolution.

Presenter19:45

With your youthful background, it's not surprising that we find sometimes a theological background in your books. And you wrote a very successful

Presenter19:53

One can only describe it as a theological thriller, the devil's advocate.

Presenter19:59

Yes.

Presenter20:00

After I'd written the second victory, I went to New York. That made me enough money to go and see my agent, whom I'd never met.

Presenter20:07

Again, the the the legendary Paul Reynolds.

Presenter20:12

And he said through his large moustache,

Presenter20:15

Ah, Morris, why don't you write?

Presenter20:19

A story about this character in your church called The Devil's Advocate. There has to be a story in it.

Presenter20:27

That's how the novel began. And you followed it in due course by an even more successful one, The Shoes of the Fisherman.

Presenter20:34

Yes, that was an odd one that was a very odd one.

Presenter20:38

I first of all finished the manuscript.

Presenter20:41

based on the idea that there was

Presenter20:43

as indeed there was, a Ukrainian archbishop,

Presenter20:47

in prison in Russia. He'd been there since the war. That was Archbishop Slipy.

Presenter20:51

Now the thesis of the book was, if

Presenter20:54

He comes out of prison.

Presenter20:56

They will make him a cardinal that's what they always do.

Presenter20:59

If he becomes a cardinal,

Presenter21:01

Then he's eligible to be Pope.

Presenter21:04

Suppose he is elected Pope, what will his view of the world be?

Presenter21:09

He's been a prisoner.

Presenter21:10

He's the man from the Iron Curtain, the mixing of two cultures.

Presenter21:15

So I'm up on the borders of China.

Presenter21:20

I get a cable from my wife, the book is preparing for publication.

Presenter21:24

saying Slippy is out of jail. Slippy has been made a cardinal.

Presenter21:30

Next strange thing it's February.

Presenter21:33

I'm in Sydney. I get a ring from Time magazine in New York saying John the Twenty Third is going to die. Will you write his obituary?

Presenter21:41

Yes, I will.

Presenter21:44

Two days later I'm having lunch at my house with a colleague, John Cleary, who's also a storyteller.

Presenter21:51

And John said, With your luck, old man, he's going to die on publication day. And he did.

Presenter21:58

But more.

Presenter22:00

The present Pope follows almost exactly even to his birthplace, which was in Lvov, the little Ukraine.

Presenter22:09

where a lot of Ukrainian is spoken.

Presenter22:11

This man's name is Carroll The first my man's name was Cyril.

Presenter22:16

And it follows almost exactly

Presenter22:20

The same lines of the story he even condemned the theologians.

Presenter22:25

In which year did you publish The Shoes of the Fisherman? nineteen sixty three.

Presenter22:29

Well, there's prescience that.

Presenter22:32

Record number five. Record number five is the Brook Concerto number one and this is a contemplative moment for me. It's the second movement.

Presenter23:36

An excerpt from the first Bruch violin concerto in G minor, Yehudi Manuin with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir Adrian Belt.

Presenter23:46

As Modest West, how many novels have you written?

Presenter23:49

21.

Presenter23:50

It's about one every two years. That's right. How's that two years made up? So long in research? It takes about eighteen months to research a novel from the first germination of the idea till the day that I'm ready to write. It only takes about six months to write. Have you sold any of your books for films?

Presenter24:07

I've sold four to films. Have you worked on them yourself?

Speaker 124:09

Film

Presenter24:11

I have worked on two myself, which The Devil's Advocate and Shoes of the Fisherman.

Presenter24:17

And uh since we're not on television, I can take my shirt off and show you the scars. Yes. Do you acknowledge the films as fair representations of your work? No.

Presenter24:29

And in saying that, I am not really blaming the makers.

Presenter24:35

It is very rare.

Presenter24:37

for anybody to be able to make a perfect film.

Presenter24:42

Simply because

Presenter24:44

It is

Presenter24:46

unless in the case of a totally independent director auteur.

Presenter24:50

It's impossible to control the movement of a film, so that the film can never be faithful to the the book.

Presenter25:01

Let's have another record.

Presenter25:03

Now this one

Presenter25:04

is from a lady that I like very much and admire very much, though I've never met her, but if she's listening to me now, I'd like her to know it.

Presenter25:13

It's Tell Me on Sunday by Marty Webb.

Presenter25:16

And it's dedicated to

Presenter25:18

All the lost loving.

Morris West25:19

No long faces, no long looks.

Morris West25:24

No deep conversation I know the way

Morris West25:30

We should spend that day.

Morris West25:34

Take me to a zoo that's got chimpanzees Tell me on a Sunday

Presenter25:50

Mati Webb

Presenter25:51

Tell me on a Sunday.

Presenter25:53

Maurice, do you ever worry that you might be passing on dangerous ideas? For example-

Presenter25:59

In your book called Proteus you describe a method by which the world could be held to ransom, the whole world, by terrorists.

Presenter26:05

Possibly a feasible idea. You're handing it over to somebody.

Presenter26:10

I discussed this at great length before I wrote it. I discussed it with the security authorities and also with public health people.

Presenter26:22

Who said this scenario is known to all terrorist groups.

Presenter26:28

In answer to your question,

Presenter26:30

I try not.

Presenter26:32

To pass on.

Presenter26:34

dangerous ideas. I try to comment

Presenter26:37

on the fact that these possibilities exist and are known. But as for saying, Oh, look, here's a new way to knock off Charlie,

Presenter26:47

Uh no. You watch very carefully international politics, world religions, social behaviour. You see the way the world goes.

Presenter26:56

On the evidence as you see it, are you optimistic or pessimistic?

Presenter27:01

I'm very, very, very scared. I truly am. The novel which I've just written expresses both the fears and and the hopes.

Presenter27:14

And it deals with the question of is there an end to things? Will the end be a violent end? And can it come in our time?

Presenter27:25

And is there a hope?

Presenter27:29

And perhaps I was a clown even to write it.

Presenter27:32

because it touches chords.

Presenter27:34

in people's minds.

Presenter27:36

That

Presenter27:37

disturb them, but somehow people want to be disturbed.

Presenter27:41

People want somebody to reach out and say,

Presenter27:44

Please talk to me.

Presenter27:45

I'm scared.

Presenter27:47

Please tell me you love me.

Presenter27:50

Please tell me somebody loves me.

Presenter27:52

One of the problems we're hearing about about uh

Presenter27:56

and disturbances in this place and that, and people beating each other up.

Presenter28:00

is because nobody says I care.

Presenter28:03

Well, the title of the book is The Clowns of God.

Presenter28:08

That's true.

Presenter28:10

Let's move on to another record. What have we got next?

Presenter28:12

Well, this one ends.

Presenter28:15

with the words Al Alba Vincero.

Presenter28:18

When the dawn comes, I shall conquer.

Presenter28:21

It's an operatic version.

Presenter28:23

of we shall overcome

Presenter28:26

And it's Pavarotti singing Nesundorna from Toronto.

Presenter29:24

Bafferotte singing Nesum Doma from Puccini's Turundot.

Presenter29:30

What sort of experience have you had of islands? Do you think you could manage on a desert island?

Presenter29:35

Could you look after yourself, build a shelter, scrounge for food? All that I could do. I w I was trained to do it during the war. Would you try to escape? I know that sailing is a hobby of yours.

Presenter29:47

I would try, yes. I would try to escape, yes, you can't do it.

Speaker 129:50

Yeah.

Presenter29:51

And your last record.

Presenter29:53

My last record is A Little Night Music and the number is Send in the Clouds.

Presenter30:00

And the lady who sings it in that strange, sexy voice of hers is an old favourite of mine, Lynnis John's.

Morris West30:08

Did Rich.

Morris West30:12

Are we a pair?

Morris West30:16

Me here at last on the ground, you in mid-air.

Morris West30:24

Send in the clouds.

Presenter30:33

Glynnis John singing Send in the Clowns. If you could take only one disc out of the eight, which would it be? I'd take the motor.

Presenter30:41

And one luxury to take with you?

Presenter30:45

One luxury would be pencil and paper. Well, several pencils and a lot of paper. And one book apart from the Bible and Shakespeare, which are already on the island.

Speaker 130:52

Yeah.

Presenter30:54

I would take the meditations of John Donne.

Presenter30:57

Right. And thank you, Maurice West, for letting us hear your Desert Island Disc. Thank you for having me on this desert island. Goodbye, everyone.

Speaker 131:12

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