James Clavell

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.

James Clavell0:33

This week our castaway is the novelist and filmmaker James Clavel. Your name isn't James, is it? What

Presenter0:39

No, it's a nickname. My sister when I was born there was a song in Australia where I was born. My father was in the British Navy and uh he was one of the officers handing over British naval warships uh to become the Royal Australian Navy. And there was a song in those days, Jiminy Jiminy Quick. I can't remember it, but she called me Jiminy, so Jiminy became Jimmy. My real name is Charles Edmund Dumerick.

Presenter1:02

But they call me James. How much does music mean in your life?

Presenter1:07

Well, I'm sort of turned deaf, I think. In other words, if you give me three notes, I really can't tell which one goes up and which one goes down. But as a writer, I get sent by music.

Presenter1:17

For instance, the first of the things that I chose was Man from the Mansha. And the reason for that is I wrote Taipan in Vancouver, and we had this wonderful house on the sound. And when I was writing Taipan, we had only a very few records. And one of the records was Man from the Mansha. And we kept on playing it. And I have an association with this for Vancouver. And every time I hear Man from the Mansure, I can remember this wonderful house and this wonderful time we had in Vancouver.

James Clavell1:50

The Impossible Dream sung by Keith Mischel.

James Clavell1:54

Now, you said you were born in Australia, James. You didn't stay there very long.

Presenter1:58

No, I was nine months old when I came home. My father, as I said, was one of the

Presenter2:03

aide-de-caps to the Prince of Wales when they were forming this Royal Australian Navy and I was christened in the ship's Bell of HMS Melbourne. My godfather was Admiral Dumerick, and I think I was the first child to be born in effect in the Royal Australian Navy.

Presenter2:18

And I'm told my father tells the tale that at my christening, which was sort of kind of symbolic in a way. I don't know whether it was f through me, you know, or whatever. But it was kind of symbolic because Dame Nellie Melbourne sang at my christening, and um she is supposed to have christened me as well.

Presenter2:37

Then you came back to the United Kingdom?

Presenter2:39

Yes, I was brought up here. I went to uh Portsmouth Grammar School most of my life, um my father being in the Navy and his father and his father, and historically my family had been connected with the Royal Navy ever since there was one. And I think, so the legend goes, we had privateers out of Dorset. At least I spread that rumour even if it isn't true.

James Clavell2:59

The war broke out, of course, while you were still at school.

Presenter3:01

Yes. And you didn't go into the Navy? No, unfortunately I wanted to go into the Air Force, but in those days the restrictions for pilots was very strong. And though I'm a a pilot now and I have I had my own plane and my wife and I we fly we have instrument ratings and multi-engine ratings and so off and all so on. Also we fly helicopters. In those days the the eye exam was very you had to have twenty twenty vision. Well I got twenty twenty vision without glasses except that one eye is short-sighted, one is long and in those days pilots it was very necessary to have individually individual eyes as twenty twenty. So I couldn't get into the

Speaker 13:24

Uh

Presenter3:43

Air Air Force and I was kind of shattered. And then my father said, Well, you know, you can go into the Navy, but unfortunately the the eye restrictions are the same in the executive branch, but you could go into the paymaster branch.

Presenter3:55

And he looked at me, and I looked at him, and I thought, good God, I mean, a Clovelle in the Paymaster branch, I mean, it's just not on. So I chose the Royal Artillery. Where did you serve?

Speaker 13:56

Do you have

Speaker 14:01

I mean there's

Presenter4:06

Well, I was in 18th Division. I was actually in part of the Battle of Britain time. I was with the Royal Artillery in various small regiments. And then I was part of the 18th Division, which was the first of the British Armoured Divisions. And we went overseas in the tail end of 1941. While we were on the high seas, Pearl Harbour happened. And then naturally, a snafu, they call it, you know, the situation normal all messed up. And our equipment went to the Middle East that we were trained for, because at that time, the Germans were coming down the Caucasus again for Iran, always Iran, always the trouble spot, you know, the crossroads of the world. And we went to Singapore and we arrived there with no equipment, no nothing, and we were in that debacle, which was, as you've read a million times, crazy. And from that, we went from Malaya and fled down Malaya backwards.

Presenter5:04

We were sent to Palembang in Sumatra, got sunk en route and then uh we were involved in the Palembang campaign and got thrown out of there by the Japanese and from there we went to Java and we were chosen as part of the rear guard action.

Presenter5:19

In a way we were fortunate. We thought at the time it was a very poor show to be chosen as rearguard. All the other foes were getting on the the boats, but um the Japanese had a battle fleet just over the horizon and the last of the convoys went out and was just obliterated. So in a way we were lucky. It's karma, you know, as I was writing about in Shogun, always karma, always back to karma.

Presenter5:41

Karma meaning um that which is preordained.

Presenter5:45

I mean, if you're stupid enough to be standing up while the bullets are flying around and you'll get sh you get shot, that's not karma, that's stupidity. But if you happen to build yourself a neat deep hole and a bomb lands right on your head, that's karma.

James Clavell6:00

So you were sent back to Singapore, to Changi jail?

Presenter6:04

Well, um I spent about uh I spent a few months on the run in the southern part of Java.

Presenter6:13

The war ended there in March of 1942, but it was kind of loose. The Japanese didn't clean up their lines of communications because they were heading down to Australia trying to grab that in a fast run. And they got stopped in New Guinea. And then they started cleaning up their lines. We the ones of us were outside got picked up and pushed into camps. And then I spent a year in Java and I was sent as part of a Working party. Um we were going up, we believe, to Amboyna in the Celebes, and then for some reason or other they offloaded a hundred of us or so in Singapore and um we stayed there and the little ship, tiny little ship, went off into the wild bloom and was never heard of again. Again karma. Those guys uh got clobbered. Yes. And um we we stayed at Chang'ee and so I was in Chang'ee for a couple of years. How many men were there in that hell hole?

James Clavell7:02

Yeah.

Presenter7:11

Well, it's uh

Presenter7:14

In a way it wasn't it was not a hell hole, and in a way it was kind of extraordinary. Of course, from a point of view of these these number of years since it was 42 to 45, you know, the my POW days. I mean that's a long, long time ago and it's almost a different lifetime.

Presenter7:31

I believe that about one hundred and fifty thousand troops were captured in'forty two, of which around ten thousand survived.

James Clavell7:39

That was What, one in fifteen?

Presenter7:40

Yes.

James Clavell7:42

Well, we'll return to Chang Yi presently. When we start talking about your books, let's have a record. What's your second one?

Presenter7:48

Well, my second record is it's it's a it's a naval hymn actually and um it's the one that I remember very very very clearly. My father when he came back on leave he used to take us to um Portsmouth, uh to the Portsmouth Naval Hosp uh Naval Church on the Ladies Mile and we used to sing this rousing hymn.

James Clavell8:16

Eternal Father Strong to Save recorded in St John's Methodist Church, St Austell, Cornwall.

James Clavell8:23

So

James Clavell8:24

We get to September 1945, the Japanese get out of Singapore. What happened to you?

Presenter8:31

Well, through various adventures I got back to England. Um

Presenter8:35

I can't remember exactly how I got out of Singapore. That's that story is somewhat vague in my head. The next thing I can remember is going into Colombo Harbor on this uh ship filled with uh ex POW's. And all of the ships in the harbour started

Presenter8:50

Blowing their sirens, you know, welcoming the heroes from Singapore. And I sure as hell didn't feel like a

Presenter8:58

hero because I'd lost my war and I I must tell you from an officer family as I was that's a very boring tedious situation and an unhappy one. So I really didn't feel like a hero and I went down to the gangway where people were coming on because there were an enormous number of people trying to search for relatives and and friends and so on. And they used to look at us in a very peculiar way. I know how animals feel in a zoo, because they would look at you and then look away because we all had a look to us and it was something in the eyes and there was a strangeness about us.

Presenter9:33

But I went down to the gangway and there were some wrens coming on the boat and uh I said, Oh, I I believe my sister's out here.

Presenter9:41

And just before we'd left, we'd got a whole

Presenter9:44

series of letters from home. And you must appreciate, for three and a half years we'd never I'd never had a letter. And uh and then I'd got a letter from my mother saying that my younger sister was in the Wrens and she thought she was out in Colombo. So I said to the first group that I could talk to, I said, I believe my sister's out here. And she said, you're not Jimmy Clavelle, are you?

Presenter10:08

I said, Yes, my karma, again, acting, you know. She said, Well, Joan's up country, but she said she we've got to keep looking for you, and we found now she said, Get your gear, and you're coming ashore with us. So I said, I don't want my gear I mean, the hell with it

Presenter10:24

And so immediately I fled from this ship, and the next thing I remember was my sister, and I turned a corner.

Presenter10:30

and she was dressed in navel white.

Presenter10:33

and I I was about fifty yards away from her, and I knew my father was dead. I was rather close to him. And so I remember walking up to the thing and I said, Hello English scene crazy English scene. I said hello, Joan.

Presenter10:48

She said, Hello, how are you?

Presenter10:51

I said,'He's dead, isn't he'? and she said,'Yes.

Presenter10:55

I said, Oh.

Presenter10:56

And then she said, You're coming up country with me.

Presenter11:00

So I said fine.

Presenter11:02

And then I remember we were on a train. But, you know, it's one of those classic, crazy cliché sort of things. It really happened.

Presenter11:10

And when you put those sort of things in books or tell people about them, they say, Oh, yes, he's a dramatist, he's making it up But uh people act like that. English people act in a certain way, Americans in another, Japanese in another. Did you have formal rehabilitation? Oh, no, not at all.

Presenter11:26

When I got back, we got back to Greenwich, a place in the northern part of Scotland. The ship came in and a naval officer came aboard and he said, I've been told to give this by His Majesty. And every POW that came back, the King, George VI, His Majesty then, had written a sort of proclamation. It was a form proclamation and signed, which said, We understand, of course, that you had terrible sufferings and we were welcoming you home a conquering hero and all of this stuff. And merely to show you what the state that I was in at that time and this was a naval officer and I was brought up in a naval family and he was a lieutenant commander or commander and he had given me this formally from His Majesty and I took this and I tore it up and threw it at him.

Presenter12:15

And

Presenter12:16

Bless him, whoever he was, and I've never I've hardly remembered this story, but since we're chatting, he said, Well, that's all right, let's go and have a drink. What are you drinking these days? So he went down to the wardroom, and I remember I was quivering with rage. My mental attitude was that number one, I was not a hero, number two, it was insulting, and number three, I didn't want to have any part of it. And it took me and all of the people an enormous amount of adjustment. Probably the only thing that really adjusted me as a person was the writing of King Rat, which I did in 1960. I'd never told anybody stories of the Chang'e days.

Presenter12:55

And suddenly in nineteen sixty I'd started talking about

Presenter12:59

what it was like and things that happened. And then there was the writer's strike in nineteen sixty. I couldn't work and I was lying around the house. My wife said, What are you doing? So I said, I'm going to lying around the house. There's there's a strike on.

Presenter13:14

So she said, Oh no, why don't you write King Rat as a book?

Presenter13:17

So I said, Don't be ridiculous. I mean, that's ridiculous. So she said, Well, go in the room and she slammed the door and locked the door.

Presenter13:23

And she said, when you've written five pages, you can come out.

Presenter13:27

So I said, Come on for God's sake You know, she said no, go write a book And so I thought started and I don't really remember um how it happened, but eight weeks later I seemed to come out of that uh room the same day with eight hundred and fifty pages of manuscript which eventually became King Rat. And perhaps the writing of King Rat put me into balance, because now I am in balance. As long as I refer back

Presenter13:53

Intellectually, it's changy.

James Clavell13:55

I'm safe.

Presenter13:56

That unlearn

James Clavell13:57

So did the

Presenter13:57

Well, absolutely. And uh particularly as I'd bottled it up and particularly as you can imagine how stupid and crazy, you know, because if you live at the edge of death, you appreciate life. It's the only way you can really appreciate life, at the edge of death.

James Clavell14:14

Time we had another record. What should we have?

Presenter14:15

What do we have? This was given to me by my son-in-law, who is a Virginian, and it's called The Floating World.

Presenter14:23

And it does things for me. It's sort of it's kind of cookie and way out and lovely.

James Clavell14:32

Part of the disc Floating World by the group Jade Warrior.

James Clavell14:37

Well, let's go back. We left you at Greenwich.

James Clavell14:41

And uh then we picked you up writing King Rat fifteen years later. What did you do? You you went to Birmingham University for a while.

Presenter14:47

Well, I tried that, but after you've been to war, it's impossible to go sit down and listen to people saying that you've got to do this and you've got to do that. So I tried that, and of course I never made it. Um one thing I remember very clearly, a man came to lecture us and he was from Underwood typewriters.

Presenter15:07

He said, Everybody's a salesman. He said, In in your life you'll have to be a salesman and don't be ashamed of it, because everybody has to be it.

Presenter15:17

And there is a key to it.

Presenter15:19

Key to being a successful salesman. Only sell the best, whatever you do.

Presenter15:27

At that time I had a girlfriend who was a starlet and she took me down to one of the studios and I saw a director.

Presenter15:35

The director and he

Presenter15:38

Sat in this very ostentatious chair called director and his name on it, and he went like this and whistled, you know, and the great leading man came over and he cursed him roundly and sent him off. And the guy was chastened and he whistled again and beckoned the beautiful girl, and she came over. So I thought, and then the assistant director shouted, Silence, quiet, with a few naturally a few expletives. And then this fellow very wearily got up and everything started. He said, action. Then when he said,

Presenter16:13

Everything stopped. I thought, This is for me, it's wonderful.

James Clavell16:16

Uh

James Clavell16:17

Ha ha

James Clavell16:18

to be a film director, but it isn't as easy as that. No, no, of course not. So so what happened? Well, how did you learn your job?

Presenter16:24

Well, at that time there was a man called Maurice Ostra who ran Gainsborough Pictures, and I asked him, How do you become a film director? He said, Become a producer.

James Clavell16:27

Okay.

Presenter16:33

I said, uh why? He said, Well, nobody's going to give you a job, so you have to become the producer to appoint yourself.

James Clavell16:40

Mm-hmm.

Presenter16:41

So I said, how do you become a producer? He said, well, you've got to have money or a property. So I said, what's a property? And he said, a script. But he said, before you become a producer, become a distributor. I said, what's that? He said, that's the person who sells films. Because only in the selling of films can you understand production. Distribution is the key to production. So I became a distributor for three years. Successfully? No, I hated it. I hated it because at that time we were not selling the best. We were selling second class reissues. And it was very hard. And in those days, people seemed to enjoy the fact that a film contract for these very poor quality films should have beer stains on it. So a large proportion of the work had to be done in pubs with the exhibitors who loved to go drinking. And as a distributor, you had to buy the drinks. And I didn't like it. What was the first

Presenter17:32

The script you read.

Presenter17:34

The first script that I wrote that was actually made was The Fly, the famous science fiction picture you probably know. Vincent Price. That's right. That's the one with the little fly caught in the web. Help! Help!

Speaker 117:37

Okay.

James Clavell17:38

Uh

Speaker 117:38

Yeah.

Presenter17:46

Well that's a very successful film actually. Yeah it was it was giant. It was to have been a B picture and I wrote it for a man called Kurt Newman and it was going to m be made for the B section of Fox and then Buddy Adler at that time was the studio head and he took it out of the B unit and put it into the A unit. He spent the colossal sum of $404,000 of which 20% was studio overhead put it in CinemaScope and it was the first film of that type that was ever made in colour.

James Clavell18:17

Of course it was Hollywood, you you'd gotta the other side by now.

Presenter18:18

Yes.

James Clavell18:21

Well, a good time, having had your first success, to break off for another record. What next?

Presenter18:25

This one's The Beatles because you can't have a musical programme and as I said I'm turned deaf without the Beatles and this is just a hard day's night which began it all.

Presenter18:36

Uh

James Clavell18:36

The Beatles, A Hard Day's Night. Now you did mention some of your early films very briefly. Watusi, that was a version of King Solomon's Minds, wasn't it?

Presenter18:45

Yes, it was. I was terribly proud of that because I met this crazy fellow, a Zymbalist, in Hollywood, and he said I understand that there are lots of outtakes of King Solomon's Minds, which was the film of Deborah Carr and Stuart Granger.

Presenter19:01

Could you write something to fit film stock? I said, Of course, because nobody told me that I couldn't do it, which is again a a second point that I learned at Chang'ee.

Presenter19:11

Providing you know what you want to do, you can do it. The problem is, uh particularly in England, I find, that people say you can't do it, meaning that it's impossible to do it, and you can then prove that you can do it. And then they say, Well, I'm terribly sorry, old boy, but you can't do it, meaning it's forbidden.

Presenter19:27

And nobody told me that I couldn't do it, so I said, sure.

Presenter19:30

I must tell you that when I went to the States, and America is a wonderful place, because it gives you an opportunity. Somebody somewhere down the line will give you the opportunity. I said that I was a screenwriter because to become the producer you have to have the property. The property I discovered is a screenplay. And so they'd say, Well, what have you done? I said, My God, I've done then I would mumble fifty things or twenty things that sounded reasonably successful and a parody on the most latest success. And there they would say, Oh, really? And particularly if you speak with an English accent, it does give you an advantage.

Presenter20:03

my business, if you like, or my writing opportunities or film opportunities, have all been given to me by Americans, one hundred percent. And they they will do it. And you can go there with nothing as we did, my wife and I, and we we we have gained a few dollars. We starve on a higher level each year.

James Clavell20:21

And you were able to use those off cuts of King Solomon's

Presenter20:24

Yes, absolutely. We conned our way into Metro to see the stuff. We saw it and we submitted the plan to it and that became Watusi. They spent three hundred thousand dollars on it, and it was a great success. They even did a parody on that. I think it was called Drums of Africa using outtakes from Watusi.

James Clavell20:44

This is self-perpetuating, isn't it?

Presenter20:45

Yes, it.

James Clavell20:46

Yes.

Presenter20:46

To there.

James Clavell20:46

Yeah.

James Clavell20:47

And then there was five gates to hell and walk like a dragon and

James Clavell20:51

Which of these films was the first that you produced, directed, and wrote yourself?

Presenter20:51

What?

Presenter20:56

That was Five Gates to Hell. The way that happened was I wrote a screenplay that turned out to be, without being immodest, great, because it just had something, a little piece of magic that sometimes you can get without doing it all the time. And I wrote it for a man called Lippert and I said to him, Look, I will sell you this for minimum.

Presenter21:18

If you'll will let me be the producer for a dollar. He said done.

Presenter21:22

Because he was kingpin of the B unit at Fox and I'd done the fly, I'd done Watusi, and this was the next one, and he thought he was on a good bet. Also, too, the producer really, under him, had very little control. So the producer's function was to recommend the director. So everyone that he suggested, I assassinated. Everyone that I suggested was either too expensive or unavailable. And we kept coming down to the wire until such time I said, Look, Bob, okay, you let me direct it for minimum.

Presenter21:55

He said, Okay, you can direct it for Minneapolis providing you take this particular editor. And I knew this particular editor wanted desperately to be a director, and he desperately was trying to assassinate me, but I knew that, so because of my Chang'e rules relating back to Chang'e, I understood the game. And if you understand the game, that's fine. It was a fourteen-day picture.

Presenter22:15

And I managed to uh get a great cameraman, a man called Levitt, Sam Levitt, who helped me do it, and so I was writer, producer, director.

Presenter22:24

And that started it all.

James Clavell22:25

Well, you've written a lot of films, you've made a lot of films, several war films, Great Escape, Six Three Three Squadron.

James Clavell22:34

And then you set up a filmy

Presenter22:35

Well, yes, I made three films in England. Well, the first one was as writer, producer, director, I made Sir With Love with Sidney Poitiers, which was a very low-budget film, as you will remember. And that really sort of launched me as a filmmaker because that was an enormous success. After that, I did a thing in Ireland called Where's Jack? which I was the director on. Tommy Steele, wasn't it? Yes, it was, and Stanley Baker, the great Sir Stanley Baker. And then I made a film in Austria and England called The Last Valley with Michael Caine and Oma Sharif.

James Clavell22:43

Yeah.

Speaker 122:57

Yeah, I was

Presenter23:11

And that was in'sixty nine. And that's really the last film I've made. I haven't done anything since then except Shogun, The Twelve Hours and also the movie. I was talking about the producer on that.

James Clavell23:19

We'll talk about that later on.

Presenter23:23

Let's have another record. Okay, this is from Camelot and it's If Ever I Would Leave

James Clavell23:31

Yeah.

Presenter23:31

Yeah.

James Clavell23:31

Yeah.

James Clavell23:33

If Ever I Would Leave You from Camelot, sung by Robert Goulet.

James Clavell23:38

Now we've been talking about all the films you made. You had broken into that time and you'd written King Rat about your experiences in Chang'ee, or based on your experiences in Chang'ee, and that had done very well.

James Clavell23:52

But it was a long time before he wrote another book.

Presenter23:53

Uh

James Clavell23:53

Uh

Presenter23:54

Well, I was working. You see, all writers have two jobs, and the film industry gave me the money to give me the time to write the the works.

James Clavell24:03

Took time off to write.

Presenter24:04

Well, I wrote Taipam.

Presenter24:06

Taipan was set in 1841, the book, and it's the beginning of the story of Hong Kong. Originally that was going to be a book rather like Hawaii, Michina's Hawaii, spread over many generations. And I went to Hong Kong with my drop dead money, which I got from the sale of King Rat. Why drop dead money? Drop dead money? Well, it's the money that you get once a year that gives you the right to say, No, I don't have to take that job. I'm not going to take that job.

James Clavell24:18

Yeah.

James Clavell24:25

Why

Presenter24:37

Drop dead. In other words, it gives you that privilege. Independence. Yes. It's not a lot of money, in a way. I sold King Rat for $157,000. The agent took 10%. And I spread, which you can do according to tax law in America, I spread the money forward so that I got $25,000 a year for five years. The film money. That was it. You know, I sold it for money, but I sold it for five years of time. It gave me enough so that I went then with my family to Hong Kong. And we we lived on a very low level in Hong Kong, but it was enough so that I could spend a year there to research what became Taipei and was actually the genesis of um Noble House.

Presenter25:19

Did you go back to films ever, or have you stayed?

Presenter25:22

I haven't since Last Valley because um after Last Valley I wrote Shogun and that took three years, less four days to write.

James Clavell25:31

Yes. Now this really was a a blockbuster in size. Did you set out to write a long book, or was it the subject? Shogun is not a long book. Yeah.

James Clavell25:41

Yeah.

Presenter25:41

It's a big book.

Presenter25:42

But it wasn't designed to be a big book. I mean, I start from the beginning on page one and I have no pattern. Uh with with Shogun I wanted to write the story of an Englishman who in sixteen hundred goes to Japan and becomes a samurai. That was the story.

Presenter25:58

No, you don't start to do anything big. And actually, as I say, it's not a long book, because my point is, is it boring?

Presenter26:07

And the answer is absolutely not. Does it have something that makes you continue to turn the page? And people tell me who pick up Shogun, they're daunted by the size to begin with. I'll never get through this. They say, my God, look at the strength of this. And I say, okay, please, all I ask you to do as a storyteller, and I'm only a storyteller, please give me a quarter of an hour of your undivided attention. If I have not caught you in a quarter of an hour, then I've failed.

James Clavell26:33

Well, the answer, of course, is in the sales. How many copies of Shogun have been sold?

Presenter26:38

Well, in America before the Shogun that came on television, the Twelve Hour thing, which was a unormous success.

James Clavell26:45

You've made yourself

Presenter26:45

When I was executive producer, there was a producer and a writer, a fine one, Eric Bercovichi and Jerry London and my beautiful Marikos Yoko Shimada. But you were the boss. Yes. As it was an undoubted phenomenon in America, I I accept all the credit. Of course no, it's a team effort.

Speaker 127:03

But

Presenter27:04

We we closed down every major restaurant in America.

Presenter27:08

On the Thursday and the Friday of the Shogun Week they used to bring in television sets.

Presenter27:13

And it was extraordinary. 130 million people are supposed to have seen that thing at the last night.

James Clavell27:18

And now answer my question, how many copies have been selling?

Presenter27:21

Before that there was about three and a half million in the States and about one million overseas, I suppose. And then in America, since Shogun about another four million, so about seven million books probably. Yes. Seven, eight. That's that's domestic in America. And it's doing jolly well overseas. How many languages is it in? I think it's in them all. I know it's in Turkish.

Presenter27:49

And I know that it's in uh Hebrew and uh Indonesian and Malayam, which comes from a part of India, and I think, of course, all I'm I all of the other languages.

James Clavell28:01

I think it's time we had some more music.

James Clavell28:04

What?

Presenter28:04

Next. Uh Well, talking about foreign places, I've chosen a piece out of Evita which I rather like and it's Don't Cry for Me Argentina and I rather like it because it has such a lovely melody and um it reminds me of nice times. I saw Evita the first time in London and um it was a very happy time for me.

James Clavell28:27

Don't Cry for Me, Argentina, from Avita, sung by Julie Covington.

James Clavell28:32

One are those who

James Clavell28:34

worried a little at the sheer length, sheer size of of Shogun.

James Clavell28:38

are likely to be a bit stunned by your new one, which is called Noble House.

Presenter28:43

Well, again, I say I'm I'm just a storyteller, and after all, what I'm doing is I'm I'm saying once upon a time. In Noble House, you're back in Hong Kong. Yes.

Presenter28:56

Well, Noble House is the first of the interlocking books of the what I'm calling the Asian saga, which so far consists of Shogun 1600, Taipan 1841, King Rat, 1945, now Noble House 1963. And it takes threads out of all of the novels. It takes two of the major characters out of King Rat, Peter Marlowe, and Gray, and brings them up to date to 63. Then it sort of brings Taipan up to date to 63, and then takes a descendant of Maruka Toda out of Shogun and a descendant of my wonderful Yabu, Kasigi Yabu, and brings them up to date to 63. And so it's all stories about Asia. And I've been back to Hong Kong off and on, ever since 1963, when actually I was there with my family. And it relates stories about Hong Kong. I hope it'll do for Hong Kong what Shogun in effect did for Japan. It perhaps gave people a glimmering of understanding towards the Japanese. So this deals purely with Chinese people. Taipan was a barbarian story. It was about us English, you know, us barbarians, not about civilized people, as the Chinese call themselves. Where's your base? Where do you go to write? Well, I don't have one really. I must I'm I learned in Chang'e you present a moving target. I think writers should be citoyens du monde sort of citizens of the world really. I have to sit in one place when I'm writing a book. But between that, as I said, I mean I I I did um Taipan in Canada, Shogun here and everywhere else in Europe.

Presenter30:31

Noble house had it in Los Angeles.

Presenter30:34

And King Rat I didn't notice.

James Clavell30:35

So you haven't accumulated furniture and

James Clavell30:38

Household

Presenter30:39

Well my wife accumulates houses like your wife accumulates pots and pans perhaps. I don't know, on the on the contrary, at one stage we had, I don't know, seven places of Pierre d'Artère spread around the earth. But but my wife and I we're we're getting to the stage where we can't stand this because as you know, if you own a house, there's always a sewer that's going wrong or the looes get stopped up or or a bar

James Clavell30:39

To my wife?

Speaker 130:49

Spread around the earth.

Speaker 130:51

But

Speaker 130:59

Black

Presenter31:00

Brick goes through a window, or a tree falls on the roof, or something. So that we're trying to divest ourselves of these things.

James Clavell31:09

Well, it's a it's a splendid w rather unusual way to live. Let's have your next record. This is Mr. Pericomo.

James Clavell31:17

Yeah.

Presenter31:17

Singing Green Sleeves, why do you choose that?

Presenter31:20

Well, because green sleeves is something that we were brought up on as kids and I mean, green sleeves has been played for hundreds of years now, isn't it? And it's English and England.

James Clavell31:31

Pericomo singing green sleeves. Now, James, you know the tropics, and you've survived worse ordeals than isolation on a desert island. I have no doubt that you could look after yourself extremely well.

Presenter31:43

Yeah.

James Clavell31:43

But

Presenter31:43

Lacked the

James Clavell31:44

I think so. Would you try to escape? Knowing the risks involved, would you set off into the

James Clavell31:49

Ocean, can you navigate? No, but uh if it was necessary I'll get there. You are a sailor, you are now. But a sailor, you were

Presenter31:56

I can sail a boat. One admiral wrote to me after he'd read Taipan and he said he enjoyed it very much and he complimented me on my seamanship of sailing clipper ships, which of course I never sailed. But he said, for the love of God, don't spit to windward. And somewhere and I can't find it in Taipan, somebody, Dirk Struan or whomever, spits to windward and I feel I've lost total face.

James Clavell31:57

I can handle what?

Speaker 132:12

Is this our work?

Presenter32:21

Let's have your last record. Well, my last choice is one enchanted evening.

James Clavell32:27

Some Enchanted Evening, sung by Frank Sinatra and Rosemary Clooney. James, if you could take only one disc out of the eight you've played, which would it be?

Speaker 132:34

Uh

Presenter32:35

Yeah.

James Clavell32:37

I think it would be the impossible dream.

Presenter32:39

The philosophy of that means a lot, doesn't it? Yes, it does, actually, because it is quest, it is trying to do best, it i is doing all these things, and it's showing you a point on how to get off this bloody islet.

James Clavell32:50

Haha.

Presenter32:51

Uh

James Clavell32:51

And one luxury to make the island a little less bloody while you're there.

Presenter32:55

Well, I don't need luxuries. A luxury is something I don't really have or I don't want. I mean, uh Gucci shoes doesn't mean anything to me. Or a luxury? What's a luxury? If it's not a companion.

Presenter33:09

I would be quite in balance. Without one.

James Clavell33:11

Right.

James Clavell33:13

And you can take one book. You have two books on the island already.

Presenter33:17

What are they?

James Clavell33:17

The Bible and Shakespeare. You can choose one more. I'd bring the Koran.

Presenter33:22

Quran Yes. All right. Reason being that you can read that forever and you can keep on reading it like the Bible and it goes on forever and it's in poetry, which is rather nice. And it tells the same sort of stories, great stories.

James Clavell33:34

Blended.

James Clavell33:35

And thank you, James Clavell, for letting us hear your Desert Island Disc. Thank you.

James Clavell33:40

Goodbye, everyone.