Alan Howard

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.

Presenter0:33

This week our castaway is the actor Alan Howard.

Speaker 10:36

Uh

Presenter0:36

Helen, is music important in your life?

Presenter0:39

Uh yes, yes it is. You play the piano?

Alan Howard0:42

I used to play the piano, but sadly I don't any more. I learned from the age of six and then it uh it it came and went, and then I went through a bad period of just not practising, and I never had a piano at home.

Alan Howard0:54

So actually uh sadly I can't really play at all well now.

Presenter0:58

Do you play discs a lot?

Alan Howard0:59

Uh

Presenter0:59

Uh

Alan Howard0:59

Yes, quite a lot. Quite a lot.

Presenter1:01

Now, you've spent a large slice of your life with the Royal Shakespeare Company, playing mostly in London and Stratford or Von Aden. Does this mean that you have to keep two homes going, with with the result that when you want to play a disc it's always in the other home?

Alan Howard1:14

That's one of the problems. I used at one time to try and actually have two places to live in, in London and in Stratford, and then I couldn't make that work out either logistically or economically.

Alan Howard1:25

So I if I go out to Stratford I have to go to rent somewhere and then one has to drag things like equipment if one wants to play all the way up there.

Presenter1:32

Well

Alan Howard1:33

Which is a bit of a problem.

Presenter1:36

Uh

Alan Howard1:36

What's the first disk you've chosen?

Alan Howard1:38

First is Gizabeta piano sonata.

Alan Howard1:41

I had a friend when I was uh

Alan Howard1:43

So about thirteen, a friend at school who was an extraordinary pianist, he used to play Beethoven sonatas and uh straight through could read them perfectly. And uh I used to struggle, used to spend a whole year on one sonata. So uh that would remind me of those days and uh I mean they're they're just wonderful music. So it's the opus twenty-eight.

Presenter2:08

The opening of Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 15 in D, Op. twenty eight, played by Daniel Baremboen.

Presenter2:16

You're from a theatre family, both on your father's side and your mother's.

Alan Howard2:19

That's right, yes, yes I am.

Presenter2:21

Your father is Arthur Howard, the comedy actor.

Alan Howard2:24

Mm-hmm.

Presenter2:24

Your uncle was Leslie Hard, the the film actor and producer.

Presenter2:29

One of the first castaways on on Desert Island Disc, incidentally, many years ago.

Alan Howard2:33

Good heavens. That must have been in about forty one or forty two or something, I suppose. Do you remember him? I don't actually remember him. I believe I did sort of uh meet

Presenter2:43

Tim, but only in the prime, as it were. And your mother was Jean Compton Mackenzie. She was the daughter of Compton Mackenzie, the author?

Alan Howard2:51

No, she was uh his niece, in fact. She was the daughter of uh Frances Compton, who was uh also an actor, but uh who lived most of his life in America. Became an American. And she came over here very early, I think, when she was about nineteen.

Presenter3:07

And of course Faycompton.

Alan Howard3:09

Yeah.

Presenter3:09

Comes it

Alan Howard3:09

Enter the Tree

Presenter3:10

Uh

Alan Howard3:10

She was my great-aunt. Yes.

Presenter3:13

Were you an only child?

Alan Howard3:14

Uh

Presenter3:16

As the son of theatrical parents, do you remember your childhood as a rather switchbag life, periods of affluence and then times when things weren't going so well?

Alan Howard3:24

Very much, sir. Very much, sir. Uh always swings and roundabouts. Uh my father was away in the war and my mother was trying to be an actress in in London at that time, so very often one was um

Alan Howard3:37

you know, passed off over to uh other people in the family and sent away to boarding school or whatever.

Alan Howard3:43

And holidays? I spent a lot of holidays in in the Outer Hebrides.

Presenter3:47

Come from the kingdom.

Alan Howard3:48

Yes. He was a great islands man. He was a great islands man, yes.

Presenter3:49

Uh

Presenter3:50

Use a

Alan Howard3:53

Obsessively an island's man.

Alan Howard3:56

I mean, my memories of uh of Barra as a child are are very strong, very powerful. Did you take it for granted that you were going into the theatre as the fifth generation? Yes, I always somehow assumed that I would do it. Uh it it came and went a bit.

Alan Howard4:11

My parents certainly discouraged the idea quite a lot. They didn't think it was a particularly, you know, uh secure thing to be up to. And certainly I wasn't in any way encouraged. We did quite a lot at uh

Alan Howard4:23

So Shakespeare at school and then I got sort of into it there. And then during national service I did quite a lot in Germany and

Speaker 14:25

I want to go.

Alan Howard4:30

Yes, I suppose I always did assume that I would be for some reason.

Alan Howard4:34

Let's break off at this point for a second record. What's that to be?

Alan Howard4:37

It's a Mozart opera, The Magic Flute, which I remember first hearing, I think, when I was about fourteen, and I was electrified then, and I still am, and I play it frequently. It's a constant source of inspiration to one's work, and also in one's life. I find it a permanently accompanying work. What I'd like to hear now, if possible, is the Queen of the Night Aria, the great sort of cursing piece where she gets really angry. And it was the first time I really heard Koratura singing when I was fourteen. It just riveted me by its power and its sensuality.

Presenter5:21

One of the Queen of the Nights arias from Mozart's The Magic Flute, sung by Lucia Popp.

Presenter5:28

Alan, many actors start at a drama school. You didn't. No, I didn't.

Alan Howard5:32

Didn't. I used to wonder whether I should have done. My family took a rather perhaps I don't know in those days, maybe an old fashioned point of view. They said, Well,

Alan Howard5:43

We had to go and sort of sweep stages or whatever, and we think that's probably what you ought to do to find out what the theatre is all about.

Presenter5:50

Is that how you did start seeing the stage?

Alan Howard5:52

Yes, that is how indeed I started. Which stage? The Belgrade Theatre in Coventry, when it very first opened in fifty eight. How long before they let you on the stage with the curtain up?

Alan Howard6:05

I think it took about a year before I got to play, you know, just the odd sort of small part. And then it was something like

Alan Howard6:14

It was something like eighteen months before I eventually became

Presenter6:17

Yeah. Do you remember what the first occasion was when you spoke a line on the stage?

Alan Howard6:23

I think the first time I I actually had to speak, curiously, was a play w which I cannot remember it was a new play, and it was about Algeria, and I was playing an Arab.

Alan Howard6:34

and had been taken prisoner.

Alan Howard6:36

And I had to say, And don't ask me what it means, but there was an Arab expert around who said that this was some kind of a prayer, and I just had to keep mumbling this in the corner. So that was how I respect.

Speaker 16:43

Me, what do you mean?

Presenter6:47

Right.

Presenter6:52

I'm not the idea you spoke. One of our foremost Arabic actors. Well, then you infiltrated your way into the company.

Alan Howard7:02

Mm-hmm.

Presenter7:03

How long were you a Carpentry.

Alan Howard7:05

Altogether, on and off, I suppose about two and a half years. I had at the odd time away when we did, um

Alan Howard7:11

Roots on Oweska's play at the Court and in the Duke of York's.

Presenter7:15

Uh

Alan Howard7:15

Was Joan Plowright with you i in Coventry? She came to join the the company for Roots, to play that part, but uh the rest of the company were in the company at Coventry. Wasn't Roots one of a trilogy? Yes, it was. Yes, and I was involved in the trilogy when they did them again at the court later on. So you were already in the West End, weren't you? Well, yes, but only on, as it were, on leave as it were, from Coventry, because then most of us went back to Coventry after that little sortie.

Presenter7:38

Oh.

Presenter7:44

After that.

Alan Howard7:46

And then I stayed on there for as per another six months.

Presenter7:47

Yeah.

Alan Howard7:50

Let's have your third record. What's that? This is a a Haydn quartet. Chamber music has sort of increasingly become great sort of source of interest to me. And um Haydn, I think, is a sort of tremendous exponent of the form. And this is opus seventy six, number four.

Presenter8:11

The beginning of the second movement of Haydn's Quartet, opus seventy six, number four, played by the Aeolian Quartet. So, Alan, you you finished the Wesker trilogy. What was the next landmark in your early career?

Alan Howard8:25

I went to Chichester.

Presenter8:27

Yeah.

Alan Howard8:27

Is that one?

Presenter8:27

So John Clements was running it.

Alan Howard8:27

So John Clements was running it? No, no, it was the very first season of Lawrence Olivier was running it. What parts did you play?

Presenter8:31

Yeah.

Alan Howard8:35

The Duke of Ferrara in a thing called The Chances, which is a moment of Fletcher play, which opened that season and then indeed opened the theatre.

Alan Howard8:46

It was a very prestigious season. What happened next?

Presenter9:08

Yeah.

Alan Howard9:12

Then um I did a bit of television, a bit of radio, a lot of unemployment, playing in various sets. I went to

Alan Howard9:20

Latin America, which was quite a a trip. What we were doing in America in Europe. And that was in 1964, the quarter centenary. We did uh they formed a company called the Shakespeare Festival Company and it was British Council and tenants. Who was correcting Ralph Richardson was playing Shylock and Bottom and we took The Dream and The Merchant of Venice.

Speaker 19:24

What we all do in the next

Presenter9:36

It was correct.

Alan Howard9:44

Wendy Toy did one of them, David William did the other. And that was uh an extraordinary experience to go to all the Latin American countries pretty well, and a lot of European countries as well. But the Latin American thing I think was

Alan Howard9:58

It opened my eyes to all sorts of things and I was at I think at the right sort of age to

Alan Howard10:04

Absorbital.

Presenter10:05

And that was the first time you had played check.

Alan Howard10:06

Shakespeare, of course? No, not entirely. I'd played Shakespeare at school and I'd played Shakespeare in rep at Coventry, but uh it was certainly the first time I'd done it, you know, I mean, touring.

Alan Howard10:18

on that sort of scale.

Presenter10:20

And after that long tour, what? What did you return to? Oh, massive

Alan Howard10:25

unemployment.

Alan Howard10:29

What did I do? Oh, I did a sort of folk crazy film in Norway for months and months, which I did nothing except hide the lights. It was the only time I ever got to be in a a scene was when Anthony Mann would say, Hey, why don't you come and be in the scene and stand in front of that lamp? I don't know how to hide it. You know, to stand around in the freezing sub minus thirty degrees hiding lamps. And then I did a play at Oxford, which came to the Phoenix Theatre.

Presenter10:47

Ha ha ha.

Alan Howard10:59

an Ivy Compton Burnett play called Heritage and Its History. Mhm. And I went to Nottingham and I did uh Richard the Second

Alan Howard11:08

And um Measure for Measure there is John Neville directed with Judy Dench in Measure for Measure.

Alan Howard11:16

And then sometime after that I think I I went to the RSE I think. Which year was that? That was about sixty six I'd say.

Presenter11:23

Well, that was a very important event in your career, so let's break off there for your fourth record. I am.

Alan Howard11:29

Just reminded that talking of the Latin American tour and uh

Alan Howard11:35

It was the first time that I'd well, actually the second time I worked with Ralph Richardson, and I've chosen this record partly to do with that. It's uh Ralph Richardson reading the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, a poem which is a particular favourite of mine, and I find it fairly appropriate, perhaps, for this island venture ahead.

Speaker 111:43

Uh

Presenter11:57

Sir Ralph Richardson, reading a section of Coleridge's The Ancient Mariner, a section which must be singularly depressing for any prospective castaway. So your first appearance, Alan, with the Royal Shakespeare Company, in nineteen sixty six, what was your first role? Or Ceno in Twelfth Night.

Alan Howard12:14

which was directed by Clifford Williams, who I had actually worked with in Coventry and actually it was Clifford Williams really who gave me my first sort of break in Coventry, as I remember, because I was reading in a part from the book.

Alan Howard12:29

in Major Barbara.

Alan Howard12:31

And the actor who was supposed to be playing it was on holiday and he wasn't going back till last week, so Clifford said, Why didn't I learn the part and perhaps move it around?

Alan Howard12:39

And then he said, Well, maybe the uh other actor would like to have another week's holiday so that was tremendous. I got the chance of playing Charles Lomax in that and I hadn't seen him then for a long time and he was directing um Twelfth Night, so that's how I joined.

Presenter12:53

When you joined the Royal Shakespeare Company, had you decided that you wanted to play a lot of Shakespeare, that it was something that you were good at, that you felt in harmony with?

Presenter13:02

Yes, I wanted to do Shakespeare. Yeah.

Alan Howard13:05

I suppose like uh well, a lot of I mean, as a lot of actors do.

Alan Howard13:09

They want to do uh

Alan Howard13:11

good work and I suppose at that time I felt that that was probably the best work that might come my way. I wasn't uh I didn't really make too much headway, I don't think, in the the type of theater that was going on at that time.

Presenter13:25

Mm.

Alan Howard13:25

Yeah.

Presenter13:25

Although you have been released occasionally to do other things, you've been with the company ever since, since 1966.

Alan Howard13:31

Yeah.

Presenter13:32

Yes, more or less, on and off. I mean, I've had the odd break away from them. Now, we don't want to recite a long list of parts you played. I suppose the part which first drew attention to you was Achilles in Troilus and Cressida. Do you agree with that? Yes, I suppose it was. Yes, I think that's true. And the following year, 1970, you were invited to play Hamlet. Yes. The big one.

Alan Howard13:47

Yes, I think that's true.

Alan Howard13:52

Yeah.

Alan Howard13:53

Yes, the big one.

Presenter13:56

Oh, since then you have established a theatrical record by being the first actor, I believe, to play all Shakespeare's Plantagenet kings.

Alan Howard14:03

Yeah.

Presenter14:03

N

Alan Howard14:03

Merely.

Presenter14:04

Knock

Alan Howard14:04

Uh

Presenter14:04

Uh

Alan Howard14:04

Uh

Presenter14:04

Uh

Alan Howard14:04

Yeah.

Presenter14:04

Right.

Presenter14:05

No.

Alan Howard14:05

No, because I didn't play Henry the Fourth. I played Prince Hal in the Henry Four plays. So he's the only one I haven't played. Although I have played him in Richard the Second, if you see what I mean, Once Upon a Time. I have played Bolingbroke. But no, not in that particular sequence. I was playing Hal. But certainly I think I'm the first to have gone right through the whole lot of them, as it were.

Presenter14:10

In that

Speaker 114:10

Uh

Presenter14:31

Which is, well let's have a list. Richard II, Henry Four in two parts, Henry V, Henry VI in three parts, and Richard III. You've played three of those plays in a day. For example, morning, afternoon and evening, you you've done the three parts of Henry VI. How much playing time is that?

Presenter14:51

It's about nine nine hours, I suppose.

Alan Howard14:53

Yeah.

Presenter14:53

Oh, this is a feat of physical endurance. There's another triple build you've done in a day.

Alan Howard14:59

Yes, the two Henry Fours and Henry Five and uh the sixes, yes.

Presenter15:04

Well, it it it's not only a a feat of endurance, it's a feat of memory. Are you a quick study? Do you learn easily?

Alan Howard15:09

No, I don't. I'm a very bad study actually. Very slow. And I I try to develop all sorts of ludicrous systems, none of which work. I mean, I try everything. But the only thing that works is literally sitting down and slogging at it.

Presenter15:22

Looking at it. Looking away at it. Now you brought Richard the Second and Richard the Third into the current repertoire at the Aldwich.

Alan Howard15:29

Mm-hmm.

Presenter15:30

Have you worked with the same director on all the plantagenet plates?

Presenter15:34

Yes, Terry Hans has done them all. Uh

Alan Howard15:36

And uh we've done a lot of plays now together.

Presenter15:39

Good mutual trust and understanding.

Alan Howard15:40

Yes, it's it's been a very good growing relationship. I think it's very vital if you're going to embark on a sort of a project as long as that, because the amount of trust that is required on both sides, I think, is enormous.

Presenter15:54

In so many elaborate productions there are so many things that could go wrong. Have you any memory of any particular episode that sticks in your mind?

Presenter16:04

Uh well there are

Alan Howard16:04

There are lots. There are legion. There's one I can

Alan Howard16:09

think of just now, which was in Henry V, early on when we were doing it, there was this huge ramp that used to come right out of the stage and used to come up at forty-five degrees, which had ladders behind it and ladders resting on it on the front. And the idea was that all the soldiers had come charging over this ramp as if they were running away from the breach. And then Harry Five comes charging after them and says, you know, come back, come back, come back once more and to the breach, sort of go back into it. So invariably I was the last one on. So we all used to wait in the wings and one night we were waiting for the the music started and nothing happened. The ramp, just nothing happened. It was absolutely flat on the ground.

Speaker 116:57

Yeah.

Alan Howard17:02

And so we also have it.

Speaker 117:03

Uh

Alan Howard17:05

And they started then pushing me forward. And they said, Go on now, go on, go on, go on, we just gotta do it on the flat. And they were about to push me on. And I said, Wait a minute, don't be stupid. It's you who have gotta go first. I'm supposed to be chasing you to bring you back. So I'd halfway gone on, then decided to come back off again, pushed them on, and then we played this ludicrous scene on the dead flat stage, pretending that we were hanging on to ropes and grappling irons. It was ludicrous. Time for another record. What next?

Alan Howard17:36

I'd like a memory of the RSC if I was going to be away for a great length of time. And uh so much of my work has been connected with the work of Guy Wolfenden, who is the music director of the the RSC.

Alan Howard17:47

and has written some very fine music for many of the plays that I've been in.

Alan Howard17:53

And I'd like to hear

Alan Howard17:55

the coronation march from uh Revengeless Tragedy, which in many ways I suppose was the first really successful thing I did with the RSC in nineteen sixty six.

Presenter18:08

The Royal Shakespeare Wind Band playing The Coronation March, written by Guy Wolfenden for The Revengers' Tragedy. You must have walked on to the stage to many coronation marches.

Presenter18:23

Yes.

Alan Howard18:24

But

Alan Howard18:25

Quite a number. They're very difficult to time, coronation marches, and uh a great deal goes on with stop watches and there's usually an immense involvement with millions of cloaks and footwear and wigs and it's always too dark and you can never see and everybody falls over.

Presenter18:43

And and as a reminder, of course, that piece of music, that the Royal Shakespeare Company doesn't present only Shakespeare, uh Jacobean plays, comedies like Wild Oats, in which you had a great success.

Alan Howard18:55

No

Presenter18:57

What was the date of that, about eighteen forty fifty?

Alan Howard19:00

No, sir.

Presenter19:01

Earlier, seventeen ninety one. Who was it?

Alan Howard19:03

Now you had a family connection with that play. I did. It was very strange. My my great grandfather used to play Wild Oats a great deal, and I was given once a

Alan Howard19:13

A drawing by the library in Stratford of my great-grandfather. What was his name? Edward Compton. And uh it just said underneath I'm the bold thunder, Jack Rover, and nothing else, and nobody knew what this play was or where it had come from.

Alan Howard19:29

until one day they turned up the RSC turned up Trevor Nunn, in fact, turned up with this play in a very, very old edition which was

Alan Howard19:38

tinier print. And it was wild oats. And then we discovered this line about um

Alan Howard19:44

Both thunder.

Alan Howard19:45

And uh again Cliffer Williams.

Alan Howard19:49

Uh and my path crossed and uh

Alan Howard19:53

Yeah.

Presenter19:53

We did it and it was terrific. Yes and great fun. Did you play Jack Rover, the part which your great-great-grandfather has played? That's right, yes. Marvellous, lovely feeling of continuity. It was good fun.

Alan Howard19:54

Yeah, so

Alan Howard20:02

It was

Presenter20:05

The Royal Shakespeare Company has its own built in fringe, small studio theatres, both in Stratford and London. And well, you've done a spell in both. I saw you in a nineteenth century Russian comedy, The Forest. at the Warehouse in London, which was a delightful production.

Alan Howard20:21

Yes, that's very good indeed. That was a great find as well.

Alan Howard20:25

Funnily enough, another uh I mean the Jack Rover part in Wild Oats as an actor and the part that I play.

Alan Howard20:31

In the forest is also an actor, although a tragedy.

Presenter20:35

rather than a comedian.

Alan Howard20:36

Yeah.

Presenter20:36

Yeah.

Presenter20:37

And at the warehouse you've been in a rather unusual play called Good.

Alan Howard20:41

Yes, by C. P. Taylor.

Alan Howard20:44

It's uh coming back for a bit of a longer spell later on next year.

Presenter20:48

Frank. I haven't seen it yet. I hope to see it when it comes back again. It's about a

Alan Howard20:51

God

Presenter20:52

A rather benevolent man who becomes a Nazi, is that right?

Alan Howard20:55

That's true.

Presenter20:56

True, yes.

Alan Howard20:56

It is set in Germany in the 30s. That's not to say that that's all that the play is about, it's about a lot of other things. I mean, it is a.

Speaker 121:03

I mean if you

Alan Howard21:04

an examination of how, you know, human beings get themselves involved in in all sorts of uh mistakes or errors by just uh the most banal of mistakes, uh you know, by small compromises, uh by evasions of the truth, just very slightly.

Alan Howard21:23

which then put under enormous pressure you know tends to sort of build and and uh it's good peas.

Alan Howard21:30

Record number six, what next? Uh this is Sir Schubert, another string quartet, Sir Death and the Maiden.

Alan Howard21:38

I think the thing about these string quartets is that there seems to be so much meat on them. I think that if one's going to be on an island for however long it might be, one will need something that one could play and play and play and still keep finding something. And I think there's a great deal in this piece of work.

Presenter22:01

The beginning of the second movement of Schubert's string quartet No. fourteen in D minor, Death and the Maiden, played by the Amadeus Quartet.

Presenter22:11

Alan, you've been with the Royal Shakespeare Company, no?

Presenter22:15

adding up for fifteen years. Do you ever get a feeling of being enclosed in a small community?

Presenter22:21

Yes and no. Do you ever think wistfully of of acting in a in a collar and tie somewhere?

Speaker 122:23

I think whisky.

Presenter22:28

Yes, or with a whisky and soda.

Alan Howard22:30

That's what I would really like.

Alan Howard22:33

On the whole, it's very various. Luckily, working in Stratford is like working in a different country. Working in London is like d working in another country. There have been all sorts of opportunities to play abroad. I played all round the world. I played in America and in Europe a lot. And

Alan Howard22:53

The fact that one does keep moving, in that sense, gives one the feeling that one is working in different jobs and at the same time the companies change.

Alan Howard23:02

and the plays change and each new production is like another country, it seems to me. And at the same time one is working with people that one is closely associated with and that one respects and that seems to me the object.

Presenter23:17

It has kept you away from films and television.

Alan Howard23:20

Yes, it has. But then films in a way have largely died out, or if they haven't, uh you have to spend an awful lot of time hanging around waiting for them to be set up, to discover that they're not going to be set up. And I find that in some senses life is a wee bit too short. I just like to get on and keep doing something that's

Presenter23:33

My five

Alan Howard23:40

But I want to do.

Presenter23:40

And in television, you were in a spy serial a year or so ago.

Alan Howard23:44

Yes, did you enjoy that?

Alan Howard23:46

Yes, I did. I would like to do more I mean another thing is that uh

Alan Howard23:50

The amount of work that one does in a company like this, you you get very boxed in logistically because you're connected with uh a production or two well, it's nearly always three or four productions. Then their future life invariably involves you. So it's very difficult to project how far in the future one is going to be available, and indeed how far other people work that far in advance.

Alan Howard24:16

That's one of the reasons why, you know, unless one perhaps just gets out for

Alan Howard24:22

you know, a long period of time. Other work isn't as available to you as it might be.

Presenter24:27

Going off at a tangent, are you, as so many actors are, superstitious?

Alan Howard24:32

I've only got one superstition, and that's the Macbeth one, that you're not supposed to quote Macbeth in somebody's dressing room. Or if you do, then there are all sorts of idiotic things you have to do, like turning around three times and knocking on the door and then cursing and swearing, and that exorcises the thing.

Presenter24:51

Yeah, that's

Alan Howard24:51

And I only do that because once, or in fact twice, when it's happened, I haven't made the people do this. And the first time it happened, it was in Henry Four, Part I, and in the fight between Howell and Hotspur. The last eighteen inches of my sword, which was an extremely heavy sword, in the middle of the fight, it broke and it went like a blue streak straight into the only empty seat in the front row. It actually sort of stuck into the seat. So I get superstitious about that.

Presenter25:24

Record number seven.

Alan Howard25:26

This is uh Haydn again. Um it's a mass, often called a Nelson mass, but I think it's more normally known as the sort of Miser in Angustis, which is a a mass in time of need. It's very vital and it might stimulate one into doing something.

Presenter25:45

The opening of the Kyrie from Haydn's Mass in D minor, the Nelson, a recording directed by David Wilcox in the chapel of King's College, Cambridge.

Presenter25:57

What are your open-air occupations, Alan? How are you going to manage as a castaway? I mean, are you good at.

Presenter26:04

Well, carpentry, fishing, any of those things.

Alan Howard26:06

terribly good at things like that. I I go to to the Hebrides occasionally, not often enough, uh sadly.

Alan Howard26:13

And I have a friend up there who has a boat, and I have been fishing with him on a number of occasions. Successfully? Yes, for mackerel and get the odd cod. But I don't know that's that's under his guidance and with his help. But I think on my own I would be probably pretty feeble, but I'd have a go.

Presenter26:20

Tap.

Speaker 126:20

Uh

Presenter26:27

I think

Presenter26:30

On the whole, do you think you'd be reasonably efficient as a castaway? You'd make things possible for yourself.

Alan Howard26:36

Application, yes, I suppose if I or maybe acted my way into it, perhaps. Perhaps I'd start playing this uh this very capable sort of person. This week, Robinson Crusoe. Would you try to escape?

Speaker 126:48

Through it.

Alan Howard26:50

Well, unless the people that were nearest and dearest to me came and found me, then I think it would become unendurable after a while and I ought to try and find them.

Alan Howard27:01

So I suppose I would have a go eventually if any opportunity presented itself to me, I think.

Presenter27:01

So I

Presenter27:07

Do you know anything about navigation, the stars?

Alan Howard27:10

No, not really. No, I'm trying to learn. I'm trying to learn.

Presenter27:15

Trying to

Presenter27:17

If we've got

Presenter27:47

Philip

Alan Howard27:47

Yeah.

Presenter27:50

The opening of Mozart's String Quintet, K six one four, No. six, played by the augmented Grummio Trio. If you could take only one disc with you out of the eight that you played, which would it be?

Presenter28:04

The Beethoven piano. Beethoven piano sonata. Yes. And one luxury, one item, one object of no practical use, that you would like to have with you.

Alan Howard28:08

Yeah.

Alan Howard28:16

Well, I um signally failed when I was a young man to learn the piano. I've always been meaning to try and do something about it. So if I could have a very comprehensive do-it-yourself or teach yourself or re-teach yourself how to play the piano along with the piano itself.

Alan Howard28:40

I think that's what I go for. Is it possible to have the ball?

Presenter28:41

Is it possible to have the book? The instructions? Yes, well that'll be your one book, won't it? I was going to take one book apart from the Bible and Shakespeare. So you've got that, and you've got your upright piano with a waterproof cover. Self-tuning. Indeed, yes, yes, yes.

Alan Howard28:48

Blue shake on the

Speaker 128:49

Yeah.

Speaker 128:57

Yeah.

Presenter28:58

And do your practice morning and afternoon. And thank you, Alan Howard, for letting us hear your Desert Island discs. Thank you very much indeed.

Speaker 129:00

Morning

Presenter29:07

Pleasure. Goodbye, everyone.