Elspeth Huxley

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 one.

Speaker 10:30

And the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:32

This week our cast away is the writer and traveller Elspeth Huxley.

Presenter0:37

As a traveller, misses Uckley, have you known extended loneliness?

Elspeth Huxley0:42

I'm afraid not. Not enough. Especially in more recent days, because travel is very far from being a lonely affair, unless I suppose you go to the middle of the

Elspeth Huxley0:50

Arabian deserts or something. But even then I'm sure you'd find a party of

Elspeth Huxley0:54

Shakes doing something. But mostly travel now seems to be terrible crowds doing it. How much does music mean in your life?

Presenter1:00

Yeah.

Elspeth Huxley1:00

Well, not as much as I wish it did, because um I think music, probably like other arts, is something that you really need to be exposed to when you're young. And having been brought up in uh East Africa, which in those days was you might describe it as a cultural desert, I should think, uh I never really heard any music. I think we did have a cracked old gramophone which played rather popular records or something. I don't think I really ever heard any proper music until I was about eighteen. So that I've never really caught up from that.

Presenter1:28

What's the first disc you've chosen?

Elspeth Huxley1:30

The first disc is quite a light hearted one. I think one will need a little um cheering up sometimes on this island. I was very devoted to Cole Porter when I first did come back to Europe and uh caught up with it a bit. So I've chosen one of the Cole Porter recorders, so um anything goes.

Presenter1:46

Sung by?

Elspeth Huxley1:46

Himself.

Presenter1:50

Cole Porter's Anything Goes, the title tune from the show and the film, sung by the composer. Now you were born Elspeth Grant. Whereabouts?

Elspeth Huxley1:59

In England. I I didn't go to, um

Elspeth Huxley2:01

It was now Kenya, it was then East Africa protected till I was about five years old.

Presenter2:06

And you spent a lot of your early life in East Africa. How did that come about?

Elspeth Huxley2:09

Well, my parents went out there as uh settlers in nineteen twelve, I think, nineteen thirteen to um start um well, they were hoping to grow coffee. They did, in fact, grow coffee. As a sort of pioneers, as you were, in those days before the First World War. So it was all quite

Elspeth Huxley2:25

An adventure.

Presenter2:26

Did your father know anything about growing coffee?

Elspeth Huxley2:28

Nothing about growing coffee. He did know something about Africa. He'd been in South Africa in the Boer War and he'd been uh, I think, looking for gold mines and things of that nature in in places like Mozambique and Rhodesia. So he was used to Africa. Coffee uh he didn't, but I then I think nobody else did. It was a a new crop and very few people had grown it, so it uh

Speaker 12:40

So

Elspeth Huxley2:46

There were plenty of little booklets and leaflets published by the experts that told you what to do, and otherwise you had to just find out by the hard way.

Presenter2:54

You were an Emmy Talk?

Elspeth Huxley2:56

I was an early child, yes.

Presenter2:57

Mm-hmm.

Presenter2:58

So off you went. Those were the early days of uh British settlement.

Elspeth Huxley3:02

Yes, not the very beginning of uh I think the very earliest settlers of all were about nineteen hundred and one or two, but uh this was nineteen thirteen. There were not very many then. It it was just beginning to be known about at that time. Where was the land that your father was? It was now, of course, it's a sort of industrial suburb of Nairobi with lots of factories and things. It's a place called Thika.

Presenter3:17

It was now

Elspeth Huxley3:23

which in those days were were no settlements, no roads, and really no people.

Presenter3:27

What about Labour?

Elspeth Huxley3:29

Well, we we were very close to the Kikuyu country, which is north of there, and um

Elspeth Huxley3:36

The labour had to be rather uh persuaded and tempted to come because they wa they hadn't done any work.

Elspeth Huxley3:42

for Europeans any more than we knew about Africa. But after a bit they uh they came in a very uh tentative way.

Presenter3:50

Yes. Did your father know the language?

Elspeth Huxley3:52

Well, he picked it up very quickly. It's it's a kind of lingua franca, which is Swahili, but uh it was a up country form of Swahili, which is very easy to pick up. So he he got along all right.

Presenter4:03

Hmm.

Elspeth Huxley4:03

Yeah.

Presenter4:04

Now, there's a story that you went off en families in an ox cart up country.

Elspeth Huxley4:07

That's right. Well, you had to. There weren't any roads. It's not much good having a car if you haven't got a road for it to go on. So everybody went about, I think, in those days. When you got a bit more sophisticated y you went about in a mule buggy. Or of course you went about on horseback.

Elspeth Huxley4:20

So we did we yes, we took off in a little ox cart from Nairobi, and it was only about thirty five miles, but of course that took about two days.

Presenter4:28

Where did you live? Was there a house?

Elspeth Huxley4:30

No tents to start with.

Presenter4:31

Hmm.

Elspeth Huxley4:32

And uh then they they built a house which uh I think it t took a fif two or three days, in fact, to build. They they're very good at building houses. They're made of mud and they get cut down poles from the bush and lace them together with uh uh twine from the bush also, and then plaster them with mud and put bundles of grass. And you can run up a house of of sorts in in two or three days in that way.

Presenter4:54

So you lived in a grouse hut for quite a while.

Elspeth Huxley4:55

For living the grass hat for for oh yes. Well really all until the war came and first war and then we had to there was an interval we had to leave.

Presenter5:03

Now what about your education?

Elspeth Huxley5:05

Well, it was rather non-existent. That was really the trouble, as I was saying, about the music. Um, because uh

Elspeth Huxley5:11

There were no I mean, there was a school in Nairobi, but I didn't go to it until the very end. I just went for a year. Well, my mother used to teach me when she had time, and my father

Speaker 15:15

Will my ma

Elspeth Huxley5:18

came in with a little instruction when he had time, and one or two neighbours came in because um one young man I think came was supposed to teach me Latin, but the only thing he really knew about was rugby football, so I learnt a great deal about that, which I've forgotten, but very little of anything else.

Presenter5:33

There's a story that you were sent to a boarding school in Suffolk and you hated it so much that you got yourself expelled.

Elspeth Huxley5:37

I was in the war'cause we had to come back in the war for t three or four years because my father was in France.

Elspeth Huxley5:44

And my mother was doing war jobs. Well, I didn't like it, no. I mean, I don't think w anybody would after the relative freedom, I suppose. Yes, so I did get myself sacked and got back as I intended. It wasn't ev difficult to get sacked in those days.

Speaker 35:58

Well done. I won't ask you what you did. I'll be right back.

Elspeth Huxley6:01

Mostly mostly gambling on horse races, I think.

Speaker 36:03

Oh.

Elspeth Huxley6:03

I really I haven't taken much interest since, but I did have a you know, uh quite a little book going in one time or another, and uh I think made a little money on the Derby or something at one time. But this wasn't thought well well of in a a girls' boarding school in those days. I suppose now it wouldn't matter, but

Elspeth Huxley6:20

Anything else?

Presenter6:20

The school book maker, yes.

Elspeth Huxley6:21

Yeah, school with my hands.

Presenter6:22

School with my hands.

Presenter6:24

Let's have your second record.

Elspeth Huxley6:26

The second record is rather in my mind connected with my going to America soon after I came back to England. It's uh the New World Symphony, Bojack.

Presenter6:38

Part of the Lago from Vorczak's New World Symphony, the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Raphael Kublick.

Presenter6:46

So you went off to the New World. You had already been to Reading University.

Elspeth Huxley6:51

Yes, that's right. I went back when I was eighteen to read agriculture because it was the intention that I should go back and

Elspeth Huxley6:57

Follow in my parents' footsteps and become a farmer.

Presenter7:00

Yeah.

Elspeth Huxley7:01

Which um for various reasons didn't work out. But after I took the agricultural thing, then I particularly wanted to. In those days, it's uh difficult to imagine it now. America was the most glittering of places for the young. It had all the answers to everything. There were no problems. I mean it was expanding, it was self-confident, it was full of pep and go. So I very much wanted to go to America. But of course we were always absolutely broke. There seemed to be no question about that at all. I was going back. However, I had an uncle, a half-uncle, who was um his fortunes went up and down a good deal, very often down, but occasionally, I think not unconnected with horses, went up. And so he wrote and said that he'd like to give me a horse. Well, as I was a student at Reading University,

Speaker 17:34

And her show he wrote

Elspeth Huxley7:38

It wasn't really a very good idea to have a horse. It would have been rather an encumbrance rather than anything else. So I said, could he commute the horse?

Elspeth Huxley7:45

for a passage to America. And he said yes, he'd do that. In fact, I think he provided two hundred pounds, which was ample in those days to get you there and back and keep you there for a bit. So that enabled me to apply in various ways and get taken as a student at Cornell for a year, Cornell University in New York State.

Presenter8:00

Typical.

Presenter8:02

Reading agriculture still.

Elspeth Huxley8:03

Yes. Well, yes, but i it was a fairly miscellaneous course.

Presenter8:06

Yes.

Elspeth Huxley8:06

Yeah. Just learning about America mostly I think.

Presenter8:09

And did you go and use your new knowledge in Kenya?

Elspeth Huxley8:12

Well, I uh not really know, because then I came back and uh

Elspeth Huxley8:17

I had a job in London for a short time and then the um the Great Depression came down upon us, which was, uh, you know, nineteen thirty, twenty nine, thirty, thirty one. And uh, everything became completely unprofitable in farming. You couldn't make a living at all and the the whole country was

Presenter8:23

Mm-hmm.

Elspeth Huxley8:31

really in a very poor way. And there was really no point in going back to uh where there was no possibility of doing anything. So I got a job in London and stayed on there till after I got married, then after that, of course, my life changed.

Presenter8:44

Right. Well, let's have your third record.

Elspeth Huxley8:46

At this time it it was a sort of jazz age and one was very hooked on that. And so one of the of course the great jazz classics is uh

Elspeth Huxley8:54

Repstein Blue by Gershwin

Presenter8:56

And would you like to play it?

Elspeth Huxley8:57

Gershwin himself.

Presenter8:58

Gershwin himself with Paul Whiteman in his

Elspeth Huxley8:59

With Paul and Paul Whiteman's orchestra, that's right.

Presenter9:06

An excerpt from Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue with the composer at the piano and Paul Whiteman in his orchestra. Now, this job you took in London, that was with the Empire Marketing Board.

Elspeth Huxley9:16

Yes, well that's a body that's long since defunct, but it was a quasi government body which was founded to try and make more empire we then had of course an empire produce sold in this country. So it was quite an interesting job. I was doing really basically journalism. It's financed a lot of scientific research and I used to write this up and

Presenter9:29

Please.

Presenter9:32

So Stephen Talents ran it.

Elspeth Huxley9:34

Yes, that's right. He was a great man in his day. Yes.

Presenter9:36

Afterwards one of the B B C controllers.

Elspeth Huxley9:38

That's right, of course he was. I'd forgotten that, yes.

Presenter9:41

Did you know anything about the way the press works?

Elspeth Huxley9:43

Not really, no. I I I mean I learnt from them because there was a very good man in charge who was an impressed department man called Patrick Brown who afterwards became deputy editor of the Times and he'd been on The Guardian, I think, and

Elspeth Huxley9:53

I learnt uh what I really knew about journalism in those days.

Presenter9:57

Mm-hmm.

Elspeth Huxley9:57

Which was very interesting.

Presenter9:59

The man who interviewed you for the job made quite an impression.

Elspeth Huxley10:02

Well, it was one of them, yes, eventually we, uh, married, and that's Jervis Huxley.

Presenter10:07

Where did he slot into the hug?

Elspeth Huxley10:08

Into the Huxley clan. Oh, he slots in, yes, he was a first cousin of Julian and Aldous, who were brothers.

Presenter10:08

Into the touchdown

Elspeth Huxley10:14

And he was a cousin and a contemporary of Aldous Huxley, who was a great friend of his.

Elspeth Huxley10:19

So he was one of the clan, but not so he he didn't do writing and that sort of thing. He was doing publicity and advertising actually. He was quite an expert on that, and public relations, I suppose it's called now.

Presenter10:29

You became misses Huxley. Did that mean you had to leave the Empire Marketing Board?

Elspeth Huxley10:33

Yes,'cause they had what was called a marriage bar in those days. And if you got married you had to leave, not quite like it is now. But in fact it didn't matter because they abolished the Empire Marketing Board. We we had the same sort of thing as is happening now, only very, very much more so. And uh whole departments were axed. And in fact, in l present context it's rather extraordinary, we all uh civil servants all took a cut in their pay of ten percent.

Speaker 110:46

Man.

Elspeth Huxley10:55

which is not what would happen now.

Presenter10:56

No, indeed. You and your husband afterwards did a lot of travelling to g

Elspeth Huxley11:00

Yes, well then he was very lucky because a lot of people of course were out of work and just at that time uh the government of Salon

Elspeth Huxley11:06

was uh starting up a scheme to try and make tea more popular in the world because at this time you see they were literally throwing chests of tea into the sea and it was a time when they were burning coffee on the Brazilian railways and that sort of thing. It was overproduction as they called it. So that they found the money and then started and afterwards it was joined by India. And he had a fascinating job which was to go really all round the world, setting up offices in different places and putting on propaganda for people to drink more tea. Not any special kind of tea, just tea.

Presenter11:35

Yeah.

Elspeth Huxley11:35

Yes. Which was lovely. I went with him. I n I nearly always went with him, yes. I managed to.'Cause of course in those days the travel was all by sea, which was lovely.

Presenter11:35

Which is lovely.

Presenter11:44

Of course.

Elspeth Huxley11:44

There was I there were, of course, flights and things, but I don't think that time

Presenter11:45

Yeah.

Elspeth Huxley11:49

flying uh across the Atlantic could uh come in. And we went round the world once in sort of small boats and uh stopping in places like the East Indies and Ceylon of course, India, Australia, various African countries, America, Canada.

Presenter12:04

Well, that sounds the ideal job.

Elspeth Huxley12:05

It was very pleasant, yes, it was. Yes. We lived in suitcases really for about five years, I think, didn't have a home at all.

Presenter12:12

We've got to record number four. What's that?

Elspeth Huxley12:14

The record number four is quite a change. By that time I think my husband was very much more interested and knowledgeable about music than I was, and so I really learnt from him. We were both very fond of Grieg at that time, unless I should like to have the piano concerto in A minor with Clifford Curzon as the soloist.

Presenter12:33

The opening of the Krieg Piano Concerto in A minor.

Presenter12:36

with the same loist, Sir Clifford Curzon.

Presenter12:39

When did you start writing?

Elspeth Huxley12:42

Well, when I was very young, and if you call it writing, uh journalism, I started off by sending in things to the local paper which was called the East African Standard, which is still going strong.

Elspeth Huxley12:51

And at that time we all used to ride about on ponies, and there was a little club nearby where we used to meet at weekends.

Elspeth Huxley12:57

And then they started playing a rather comic form of polo, which wouldn't be recognized by, let us say, uh, Saranceston or Cowdery Park. But, you know, sometimes you had a mule and sometimes you had a pony. The first polo match my mother ever played in, she told me they had

Presenter13:08

Perlamet.

Elspeth Huxley13:11

Four polo sticks and four brassies.

Presenter13:15

And four mules.

Elspeth Huxley13:16

And

Elspeth Huxley13:16

Four mules and four phones, yes. Perhaps it got a little bit more high class by that. So then I sent in some the reports of some of them. Yeah, they used to have little tournaments. So I was taken on as polo correspondent at the East African Standard, which was a very proud title. I was under the name Bamboo. I had a pen name for Bamboo.

Presenter13:27

The teacher's very proud.

Presenter13:29

I found the name Bamb.

Presenter13:32

Did anybody know who was the best?

Elspeth Huxley13:33

Well, I kept it very secret. And then it was rather fun hearing people sort of speculating on who Bamboo was. And I had great fun saying that Grant played a very poor game at number one, which is my father. And then subsequently the editor, who was a Meankel Rudolph Maher,

Presenter13:43

True.

Elspeth Huxley13:46

Met my father in the street in Nairobi and congratulated him on his articles, and of course this was the first my father had heard of it. And the editor was very horrified, I think, when he heard that it wasn't my father, it was a a fifteen year old girl who was sending him these stirring articles.

Presenter13:57

Sending a piece.

Presenter14:01

Right. Now, after you ceased your career as our polo correspondent, when did you start writing longer pieces?

Elspeth Huxley14:08

Well, no, not until after I got married then and left the um Empire Marketing Board. And then there was a a well known figure in East Africa in those days called Delamere, Lord Delamere, who was a sort of pioneer and politician and everything.

Elspeth Huxley14:20

Who died about that time, and I was very fortunately for me taken on to write his biography, which was the first serious book I wrote. How did that come about?

Presenter14:27

How did that come about? Because you had no writing background.

Elspeth Huxley14:29

I had no background. Well, I think his widow just took a chance, you know. I think she thought somebody who knew Kenya has a background and had some experience in writing, if not books. Maybe she couldn't get anybody else. Of course, I hadn't.

Elspeth Huxley14:40

Thought about

Presenter14:40

Then I may wait.

Elspeth Huxley14:41

Type may well have been the answer.

Presenter14:42

It was a rather weighty work.

Elspeth Huxley14:44

Well, it needed quite a bit of research. But it was too volume. Two volumes, yes. But there was it was very interesting to do, and of course in those days

Elspeth Huxley14:51

You could get hold of the material, but a lot of it's disappeared since, I think.

Presenter14:54

You have to go back to East Africa.

Elspeth Huxley14:55

I went back to East Africa twice, I think, for that, and of course other research I could do here in London.

Presenter15:01

So from now on you are a writer.

Elspeth Huxley15:03

Yes, I was on and off. I mean, I was also we did this travelling. Then when we travelled on boats, I I never played bridge. People used to play bridge a lot on boats, and it was rather boring, so I took to writing crime stories instead, so I wrote two or three crime stories on the boats, which was quite a a way of passing the time very enjoyable.

Presenter15:21

Well, then the the second war came along, it was something to do with the women's land army.

Elspeth Huxley15:25

Not really. That was a very short period. No, I worked in the BBC with most of the time.

Presenter15:29

Brittany.

Elspeth Huxley15:30

In in Broadcasting House. In Broadcasting House. As what? Well, it was in the news talks department. They had little talks after the news, which was sort of different aspects of the war effort, but not directly, of course, the fighting and so on. And uh there was quite a small section and I used to do these which is very interesting. I went all over the country doing these and saw some very interesting things.

Presenter15:30

Yeah.

Presenter15:31

Tap.

Presenter15:44

Yeah.

Presenter15:48

Who in particular used to do the talks for you?

Elspeth Huxley15:51

It was a section that they had to put on two or three every day, and so we edited quite a lot of them with correspondence from the various fronts and sometimes we did them ourselves. I think there were only three people in the section. And then after that I was also then taken on as a still working for the BBC, as liaison officer with the Colonial Office, which in those days of course all travel was stopped.

Elspeth Huxley16:12

But occasionally somebody from one of the colonies, as they then were, arrived and then I if they had an interesting story to tell I was had to get hold of them and get them to tell it, with the idea, I think, of general morale and so on, that splendid colonies all helping us out.

Presenter16:27

Good.

Elspeth Huxley16:27

Yeah.

Presenter16:29

Record number five.

Elspeth Huxley16:30

Record number five is a light one. This is after the war then, I think. We were very fond of a a song called La Mer, and this is sung by Charles Trinny.

Presenter16:42

Charles Ranet singing his own song, La Mer.

Presenter16:46

Now, misses Huckley, among your many books thirty or forty, I believe now have been three volumes of what shall we say, autobiographical novels.

Elspeth Huxley16:55

Mm-hmm. That's right. Yes, they are novels, not straight autobiographies.

Presenter16:58

The first two about your childhood in Africa.

Elspeth Huxley17:00

Thank you.

Presenter17:01

And the third one about Reading and Cornell.

Elspeth Huxley17:01

Yeah.

Presenter17:04

Well let's talk about the first one, The Flame Trees of Thika, because that's recently been a very successful television series.

Elspeth Huxley17:04

Let's talk about

Elspeth Huxley17:11

It just I think it just ended uh a week or so ago.

Presenter17:14

Seven hours of it. Did you have a hand in the adaptation?

Elspeth Huxley17:17

No. No, you not in the adaptation. They bought the rights of the book some years ago, actually, about two or three years ago, and so I had no hand after that, except that the producer, John Hawksworth, who who's a very nice man, sent me the scripts to look at and, if necessary, criticise on more or less minor points, but I didn't try to teach him how to write scripts. Uh but after that, no, of course it's a different thing a book and a film and it's a big operation, isn't it, a film? I did go out to Kenya for a week uh well, fortnight altogether, but a week to see the filming going on, which was very interesting, never having seen a film being made before.

Presenter17:49

Did you have any kind of hand in the casting? I mean, did you help to choose the little girl who played the part based on your own life?

Elspeth Huxley17:52

I mean did you have

Elspeth Huxley17:54

No, no, no.

Elspeth Huxley17:55

Yes, she's very, very good and she no, I had no no part in that.

Presenter17:59

Were you happy with the series?

Elspeth Huxley18:01

Yes, I was, really. I think they made a marvellous job of it. I think w one can always uh find fault with with things, you know, in certain ways. But I think it on the whole it was marvellous, and the photography was superb, and I think the little girls were super.

Presenter18:12

No.

Elspeth Huxley18:12

I'm sure we should.

Presenter18:13

And of course the scenery gorgeous.

Elspeth Huxley18:14

The scenery gorgeous, and the animals splendid.

Presenter18:16

Are they going to tackle as a sequel the second volume, The Mottled Lizard?

Elspeth Huxley18:20

Well, I don't know that. They have got rights of it if they want to, but um I think why did um discuss it once with the producer who said the trouble was that he would want to have Holly Ed playing it and by that time of course in the book she would have been much older than Holly is now. So they might have to wait three or four years. By which time a lot of things may have happened.

Presenter18:35

Yeah.

Presenter18:37

By which time I

Presenter18:39

Yes. What about volume three? Is is that good film material?

Elspeth Huxley18:42

I shouldn't think so. No, I wouldn't think so. No, I think the appeal of the uh flame trees was the background, the African background.

Presenter18:48

And for the major

Speaker 118:49

Uh

Elspeth Huxley18:49

And the period really too. I think that um there's a lot of interest now, isn't there, in pre war

Elspeth Huxley18:55

manners and customs and

Elspeth Huxley18:57

All now long ago.

Presenter19:00

We got to record number six.

Elspeth Huxley19:01

Well, record number six is one we were very fond of in those days. Holst Planets. Um London Philharmonica Orchestra conducted by Sir Adrian Bolt. And this is the uh Jupiter, Ringer of Jollity. I thought a little jollity might be needed on the island.

Presenter19:19

An excerpt from Holst's The Planets, Sir Adrian Bolt conducting the London Philharmonic Orchestra, and it was part of Jupiter.

Presenter19:28

Now you wrote that long biography of Lord Delamere as as your first book. You've gone back in recent years to writing biography.

Elspeth Huxley19:36

Yes, uh I have written uh a number well, three or four, I suppose. Yes.

Presenter19:40

A Scott of the Antarctic.

Elspeth Huxley19:41

Got Florence Nightingale. They're quite short ones, those and Livingston. But I didn't want to go on forever writing about Africa. I mean, you you get typecast like an actor, I think. And one wanted to get away from

Elspeth Huxley19:53

Especially as I haven't, you see, lived in Africa for many years now.

Presenter19:56

Well, you have written a number of travel books about other parts of the country.

Elspeth Huxley19:59

Yes, um, when we were yes, we're travelling. I've done well w West Africa, East Africa, Australia, I think, the main ones.

Presenter20:07

Another book of yours which I think could be classed among your travel books was A Biography of Your Mother, who was a very remarkable woman.

Elspeth Huxley20:15

Yes, she was, and of course, she had an interesting life because she was born in 1886. She had a very sort of vice versa, call it a sheltered life, really, in England. And then,

Presenter20:23

She was a member of the Gravener family.

Elspeth Huxley20:24

That's right, yes, that's it. And then exchanged um that for a ox wagon and had her and she had a great sense of humour. And then of course after I married I didn't li live there and so she wrote a lot of letters and she was very, very good letter writer. And it I think charts the sort of progress and the ups and downs of life at a grassroots level in in Kenya up until the time she left in nineteen sixty five. So it's a combination of the two. And she had, as I say, a great sense of humour. Then she left at the age of eighty.

Elspeth Huxley20:51

and started a new life in Portugal, where she not having learnt Portuguese or anything, she learnt the language and started bought a little quinter, which is sort of small holding and started to graft orange trees and grow strawberries for hotels and uh she was always having new ideas of as to what to do and she was really just working on a new idea to almost to the time she died, or that time she'd taken up puppetry, she was very keen on that.

Presenter21:14

And she lived to a ripe old age.

Elspeth Huxley21:15

Ninety two, yes, yes, ninety two. And so she saw a lot.

Presenter21:19

She sounds a really standard old lady.

Elspeth Huxley21:19

Yeah, she was. That was called Nellie, which is her name. Nellie, Letters from Africa.

Elspeth Huxley21:24

And um I think it's it's it's interesting to the historian and I think it gives a a picture of a in her own words of a remarkable character.

Presenter21:33

What's on the stocks at the mend?

Elspeth Huxley21:35

Well, nothing very much at the moment. I have just completed quite a short bit about the

Elspeth Huxley21:40

The Serengeti and Lake Manyara National Parks in Tanzania, which is coming out with uh some photographs of a very good photographer called Hugo Van Lawig.

Presenter21:48

And apart from the thrillers which you've mentioned, you wrote a number of other novels.

Elspeth Huxley21:53

Yes, I did. The first one I wrote was, um, about a Kikuyu tribe.

Elspeth Huxley21:59

uh the Kiku tribe in Kenya about a a family of and it tried to show the impact of the coming of the Europeans to Africa. It was very i interesting to do because I got hold of a lot of old men who were grown men before they ever saw or heard of a white man and they told me splendid stories about all the the battles that they had long ago. First of all they were very shy and didn't want to speak and so on, but and everybody said you'll never get anything out of them. But after a bit the old men discovered that there was somebody who wanted to listen to them. And it was rather like going to the cavalry club and saying, you know, tell me about the Battle of Endeman or something They they could hardly be stopped once they got going. And that was interesting because now all that information's died, uh it was never recorded, the old women and men have died.

Elspeth Huxley22:39

And I think the younger generation don't know the stories themselves, so I enjoyed doing that. I lived for about three or four months in a sort of camp really in the Kiguyu country.

Elspeth Huxley22:50

And um just took down all the their statements and made a novel out of it.

Presenter22:54

What's that novel called?

Elspeth Huxley22:55

Dread Strangers

Presenter22:56

Now despite all this industry, in Who's Who you give your recreation as resting.

Elspeth Huxley23:01

Well, it's very nice to have a rest down again. It doesn't often seem to happen, but well, it's very difficult to think of a recreation, you know. I mean, I you can't put in photography or something,'cause I've given it up. And, uh

Elspeth Huxley23:13

I wouldn't call gardening a recreation. I should call it more a torment most of the time.

Presenter23:17

Certainly not risk.

Elspeth Huxley23:18

battle against various insects and things, not recreation.

Elspeth Huxley23:21

So resting would be a very nice one, I think, if one could indulge in it more often.

Presenter23:26

Your seventh record.

Elspeth Huxley23:28

My seventh record is a bit to remind me of the remote things you've just been mentioning, the Flame Trees, and uh this series which have been on television and a very attractive, I think, theme song was been written for it. So on my desert island I shall be able to it'll take me back. Although it's not African music, it it has a good deal of the feeling of African. It is the theme song from the Flame Trees of Tika.

Presenter23:51

The theme music to the series The Flame Trees of Thika.

Presenter23:55

You're one of our rare castaways, misses Arckley, to have actually lived in a grass hut.

Presenter24:01

So it makes us think you'd be rather good as a castaway. Could you build a grass hut?

Elspeth Huxley24:01

So

Elspeth Huxley24:06

I could have a shot at it, I think. It caused a lot depends on what was on the island. I dare say it would fall down. And of course they are very liable to wash away when you get a lot of rain if they're made of of mud.

Presenter24:10

It's not a bad island, as islands go.

Elspeth Huxley24:18

But of course you do need only the materials that are likely to be there, so I'd have a go at it.

Presenter24:23

What are you going to eat?

Elspeth Huxley24:25

Well, this is indeed a point you haven't really told us what's on the island.

Presenter24:27

Well

Elspeth Huxley24:28

Bam.

Presenter24:29

You would know as soon as you got there. I mean, you have a diploma in agriculture at Reading and presumably another one at Cornell.

Elspeth Huxley24:35

I'm not sure they're awful help on a desert island, really, you know. But still, I think there are certain skittles which one might cast one's mind back to remembering seeing people do it as a child, even if one didn't do it oneself. One thing you see, for instance, drinking vessels and eating vessels were made of gourds, and they're nearly always gourds about, and and that's quite a good thing. You split them open and you have to then take the insides out. The ones that are used for carrying water are rather tricky'cause it has to come out through a narrow neck. One might be able to do that. One might be able to make clay pots, because one used to see that being done. As regards the food, of course, coconuts, I feel. They'd be coconuts probably, wouldn't they?

Presenter25:06

Yes, indeed.

Elspeth Huxley25:07

And whether I should at my age, because this is how the comes into it, be able to climb a cocoanut tree, I'm not sure, but on the other hand, if you wait long enough, they'll fall on your head.

Presenter25:15

What about fishing? Ever done in it?

Elspeth Huxley25:16

No, I'm not really a fisherman. No, I'm not. But I suppose driven to necessity. And I think that very often tropical fish are quite torpid comparatively, and then they can pick up things on the beach. There are always sort of crabs and so on that you can't.

Elspeth Huxley25:29

Would you try to escape? Certainly not, under no circumstances, because I can't bear the sea being on it. I don't mind me looking at it. And it always makes me sick. And I couldn't possibly build a boat. So I should just stay where I was until somebody came along, if they did.

Presenter25:42

Right. I think that's very wise. And we've got to your last record.

Elspeth Huxley25:46

When we one is on one's island, one obviously.

Elspeth Huxley25:49

really wants some good music and some classic music and so on. So I thought that Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony would be a very nice thing to have. This is Shepherd's Hymn After the Storm.

Presenter26:05

The Shepherd's hymn from Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony, Otto Klempere conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra.

Presenter26:12

If you could take only one disc out of the H you play to us, which would it be?

Elspeth Huxley26:16

But that's very difficult, but I think that on the whole I should like to have the Grieg piano concerto, which I think is a lovely piece of music.

Presenter26:23

and you are allowed to take one luxury to the island.

Elspeth Huxley26:26

My luxury would be a dax hund.

Elspeth Huxley26:29

Not

Elspeth Huxley26:31

Must be an inanimate. It can't be a live duck.

Presenter26:34

He can't be alive, Daxon. No, I'm sorry.

Elspeth Huxley26:37

Well, that's pity. Could I um take a camera and the things that go with it? I mean, films.

Presenter26:42

Yes, of course, and you better take developing skills.

Elspeth Huxley26:44

Well, exactly. I mean, there's quite an an apparatus to go with it.

Presenter26:47

Mm-hmm.

Elspeth Huxley26:48

A t developing tank.

Elspeth Huxley26:50

And a simple arrangement, of course it'd have to be black and white, not colour, a simple arrangement for printing.

Presenter26:55

Well, that's easy enough.

Elspeth Huxley26:56

I think one could make a very fascinating record of the island.

Presenter26:58

Indeed, you can come back with two or three Desert Island books already.

Elspeth Huxley27:02

Already.

Presenter27:04

and one book apart from the Bible and Shakespeare, which are already provided.

Elspeth Huxley27:08

Well, I thought after Art of the Bible and Shakespeare one would want a little something light to to read of an evening, and uh I should like to take I don't know if I could take the collected works of PG Woodhouse. If it's too much, I could take a selection, because there are several volumes of about four. I should like to take one that includes the Empress of Landing's.

Presenter27:24

I should like

Elspeth Huxley27:25

I should like to read about her.

Presenter27:27

Your four favourite Peachy Woodhouses

Presenter27:30

Bound together.

Elspeth Huxley27:30

That's right.

Presenter27:31

And thank you, Ellspith Huxley, for letting us hear your Desert Island Discs.

Elspeth Huxley27:35

Well, thank you for being so uh kind to me and not uh slapping me down as you threatened to at one moment.

Presenter27:40

Did I really? I do apologise. Goodbye, everyone.

Elspeth Huxley27:41

Did I really? Yeah.

Elspeth Huxley27:44

Britain.