Desmond Hawkins

Speaker 10:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive.

Speaker 10:05

For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music, the programme was originally broadcast in 1982, and the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:31

This week sees the twenty fifth birthday of the BBC Natural History Unit, so it seems right that our castaway this week should be its only begetter, the writer, critic, and broadcaster, Desmond Hawkins.

Presenter0:43

Desmond, does music mean a lot in your life?

Desmond Hawkins0:46

Yes, it does. It it I think always has done, but perhaps uh increasingly so now. I listen a lot. Have you any practical skill? Do you play anything? Not very well. I I had some piano lessons as a lad, and I sang in the choir and learnt a bit about music that way. And I sometimes fiddle about with a recorder, but uh no, I'm not really an instrumentalist.

Presenter1:05

Did you find it a very difficult task to choose just eight records to take to this desolate island?

Desmond Hawkins1:11

Yes, I did, because I've got a wide Catholic taste. I'm not a specialist and uh so there it is, you know, there's a lot of things I'd love to have taken.

Presenter1:20

What's your first record?

Desmond Hawkins1:22

Well, I rather chose a Beethoven because uh I suppose he's been my my longest music companion as as a youngster I used to uh

Desmond Hawkins1:30

play symphonies and conduct them all to myself, and I still am a Beethoven man, so I chose a cello sonata, which is played by Jackie Dupre and Stephen Bishop, whom I admire, both of them.

Presenter2:41

An excerpt from the Beethoven cello sonata No. three in A Major, opus sixty nine, Jacqueline Dupre and Stephen Bishop Govasevich.

Presenter2:51

Most of your work, Desmond, has been associated with the West Country. Are you a West Countryman by birth?

Desmond Hawkins2:57

Well, I'm not absolutely no. I I think I'm almost naturalized now, but I I was born in Surrey.

Desmond Hawkins3:02

And I do have moments of treason during the cricket season when I have to hide my zeal that Surrey should win the championship. Otherwise, I'm pretty west country by now. Right. Are you one of a large family? No, I just had the one brother. Were you at school in Surrey? Yes, yes, I was, near Guildford. My parents lived in Guildford, and I was at a school called Cranley. As a boy, what was your ambition? What did you want to do? Well, I wanted to open the batting for Surrey. I was quite clear about that. Did you ever achieve that? No, I never did, alas. And I was prepared to be Prime Minister in a bad year if they were short of talent, but uh otherwise I took life as it came, I think.

Presenter3:29

No, I never

Presenter3:37

What did you do when you left Grandin?

Desmond Hawkins3:39

Well, I went uh for a time into the family business.

Desmond Hawkins3:42

I was one of the sons who was looked to to carry on the succession. I was quite unsuited for it.

Desmond Hawkins3:48

And I gradually began turning my hand to writing and after a while I took the plunge and became a freelance writer.

Presenter3:55

Things

Desmond Hawkins3:55

Yeah.

Presenter3:55

Yeah.

Desmond Hawkins3:55

Uh

Presenter3:55

Did you want to write about what was making your fingers?

Desmond Hawkins3:58

Well I was very interested of course in the in the novel. My hero was D H Lawrence. I I never met Lawrence but I I met Frieda, I knew her quite well and uh I wrote one or two novels and I used to be a fiction critic and uh to me the novel was very important. And and poetry those two things I think really.

Desmond Hawkins4:14

What was your first book to be published? One of the novels? Yes, it was called Hawk Among the Sparrows and uh it did quite well in its day. It came out in Swedish and was in America and it turned up in a penguin and uh all looked fine. And then the war came and uh the second one went up in the uh St Paul's Blitz. All the copies were burned, you know. All the copies were burned, yep.

Presenter4:31

All the copies were burned, you were the copies.

Presenter4:33

And you've never been tempted to go back to fiction since those first two

Desmond Hawkins4:37

Not really, no, because uh by the time the war was over my world was such a very different world that um no, uh I became a a different sort of writer, I think, really.

Desmond Hawkins4:47

And I'd been tempted rather into broadcasting by then.

Presenter4:50

Your second record.

Desmond Hawkins4:52

Well, I'd like uh the voice of friends on the island to some extent. Uh music's great, but I'd like to hear some human beings. And one I would like would uh be an old friend of the pre war days, Dylan Thomas.

Desmond Hawkins5:03

And Dylan not perhaps being the the Swansea Hamlet, as he used to call himself, but doing something I'm very fond of. It's a really it's the lyric of a musical song, Pretty Polly Perkins of Paddington Green, which I think he does beautifully.

Speaker 35:16

Straight did depart with a tear on my eyelid as big as a bean.

Speaker 35:22

Bidding goodbye to Polly.

Speaker 35:25

and Paddington Green.

Speaker 35:28

In six months she married.

Speaker 35:31

This hard-hearted girl.

Speaker 35:33

But it was not a white count and it was not a gnarl.

Speaker 35:36

It was not a bad

Speaker 35:38

But a shade or two I

Speaker 35:41

To the bowlegged conductor of a topanny bus.

Presenter5:47

Dylan Thomas, reading Polly Perkins. You published some of Dylan's work, didn't you?

Desmond Hawkins5:52

Yes, I did. I used to be literary editor of uh the New English Weekly and a quarterly called Purpose, and the uh proprietor of Purpose did allow me to pay contributors, so I was able to give Dylan a a guinea for a poem, which in those days was rather splendid. It didn't last long, I'll be it. Oh, no, no, w w w we used to meet each morning at the Yorkshire Gray and the guinea I think had probably gone by lunchtime.

Desmond Hawkins6:15

You wrote a book about Lawrence.

Desmond Hawkins6:17

Well, I I did the Everyman selection. Yes, Frida Lawrence agreed there should be one cheap selection for young students and young writers to have, and so I made this selection of a bit of everything, short stories, poems, letters.

Presenter6:26

Alright.

Desmond Hawkins6:30

and a preface and so on that I love doing.

Presenter6:33

And you'd fulfilled a a similar function for John Donne.

Desmond Hawkins6:36

Yes, I did. Yes, yes. Well, he was a little bit more.

Presenter6:39

Do you see any collection?

Desmond Hawkins6:40

Between the two? Oh, yes, I think so. I mean, they they've both got this um close uh English passion for exploring.

Desmond Hawkins6:47

love and the sexual relationship in in all sorts of uh

Desmond Hawkins6:51

High metaphysical terms. Uh they're both very English in that sense, I think, and both very exciting.

Presenter6:57

Now you said you were uh short-circuited, as it were, into broadcasting. How

Desmond Hawkins7:02

How did that come about?

Presenter7:02

Yeah.

Desmond Hawkins7:03

Well, of course when the war started most of the things that I had been doing as a freelance were dying off one by one, and broadcasting was becoming very hungry for writers, so that Lawrence Gilliam

Desmond Hawkins7:13

In those days with Head of Features, he got in touch with really a whole group of us and invited us to become writers on some sort of basis for the BBC. I was with Louis McNeese doing a documentary series for the North American Service. Stephen Potter came in then, Eddie Sackville West, really a whole lot of my generation of writers were drawn in in that way.

Presenter7:34

Great names your men

Presenter7:37

Yeah.

Desmond Hawkins7:38

You worked on War Report for a time? Yes, I did, and then uh I had the job of uh editing it. The BBC put me up to edit it for the Oxford Press, and so I met every war correspondent as he came back, and I can make the proud claim, I think, that I am the only man who has read every single war correspondent's report from every theatre of the war from the first day to the last, because that was the essential before I began to put the thing together.

Presenter8:05

That must have been a very interesting introspective.

Desmond Hawkins8:07

Well it was, you know, because you see, again, that was a great generation of broadcasters. I mean that there was Dimbleby, there was Frank Gillard, there was Winford Warden Thomas. Really many great names uh i in radio came back from having been war correspondents. And I met them one by one and talked over uh all all the questions I by then had.

Desmond Hawkins8:27

And it was a a great education for me in that side of broadcasting, indeed.

Desmond Hawkins8:32

Time for your th third record, isn't it? Yes, number three.

Desmond Hawkins8:36

Well, I think uh on a desert island I would want a sense of plain sanity. I would want something of English eighteenth century.

Desmond Hawkins8:43

And so I I think of Handel, and I think of the song that some bus used to bawl out round the piano called Where're You Walk.

Desmond Hawkins8:50

But done rather better for me by John McCormack, one of the the great names of course in in my youth was uh

Desmond Hawkins8:57

this wonderful tenor and um

Desmond Hawkins8:59

I love his voice still.

Speaker 39:15

Please where are you sitting?

Speaker 39:19

Total quotient

Speaker 39:22

Uh

Presenter9:35

Charlie

Speaker 19:39

Yeah.

Speaker 19:42

Aw sh

Presenter10:02

John McCormick singing Handles Where'er You Walk

Presenter10:06

Now there was a very very famous programme that you worked on

Presenter10:11

for a long time, just after the war.

Desmond Hawkins10:13

I can think of two. It could be Country Magazine or it could be The Naturalist. I was thinking of Country Magazine. Yes, yes. Well, that of course was during the war and then onwards and after.

Presenter10:18

Yeah.

Desmond Hawkins10:24

My mentor there was uh Jack Dillon, again one of the great names of radio. It was Jack who took me in hand and taught me how to write for the ear instead of for the eye.

Presenter10:33

Uh

Desmond Hawkins10:34

And that really took me down to the West Country, and it was when I went down to Bristol I developed that side of things.

Presenter10:40

Were you given the West Country area? Poor.

Desmond Hawkins10:42

When regional broadcasting started after the war, I had been in London at Jack Dylan's heels, and then I went down to Bristol.

Desmond Hawkins10:51

and was the features producer there so that um I had that to develop.

Presenter10:53

That's good.

Presenter10:55

You were doing country magazine at um Jack Dillon's Heels, and there were all those marvellous country characters that you discovered between your singers of folk songs, poachers, horse copers, blacksmiths.

Desmond Hawkins11:04

Yeah.

Presenter11:07

Would such a series be possible to day?

Desmond Hawkins11:10

I don't think it would, honestly, you know, Roy. I I'd like to believe it was, and I can think of some characters that I know still in the West Country.

Desmond Hawkins11:17

But they're not as thick on the ground, they're not as numerous.

Desmond Hawkins11:20

You don't find pubs where they sing the folk songs as they used to do, you know. I mean, I've been back to one or two.

Speaker 111:24

Dude.

Desmond Hawkins11:28

that I had gone to twenty years ago with Jack, where you would have

Desmond Hawkins11:31

Then rate one night a week when the old men would sing their songs. But now it'd be the jukebox and space invaders and that'd be it.

Desmond Hawkins11:39

Europe

Presenter11:39

Remember any

Desmond Hawkins11:40

Yeah. But

Presenter11:40

Killer incidents in those

Desmond Hawkins11:41

Uh Days with Jen

Presenter11:42

Yeah.

Desmond Hawkins11:43

I remember going to a pub that was called the Eel's Foot, which is the most extraordinary name. It was down in Essex, and it really was genuine.

Presenter11:48

Yeah.

Desmond Hawkins11:51

And it it had an absolute sort of hierarchical pecking order. Nobody was allowed to sing until old whoever he was had got up and done his bit.

Desmond Hawkins11:59

And we just sat there and listened devoutly.

Desmond Hawkins12:02

And uh after a while Jack began to record, and uh that was how the collections were made in those days.

Presenter12:08

And of course recording was a much more tedious and difficult job than it is now.

Desmond Hawkins12:11

Oh much more.

Desmond Hawkins12:13

Yes, you know, you a seventy eight soft wax disc, you had three and a half minutes and that was it. And the the moment you'd started, you'd just got three and a half minutes and you were done for.

Presenter12:21

Can you remember any particular scoop that you brought of?

Desmond Hawkins12:25

Well, the one I remember most vividly was not precisely a scoop, but uh I set out to record the Seven Boar with Ludwig Koch.

Desmond Hawkins12:33

And there we had just three and a half minutes to go.

Desmond Hawkins12:38

And we had uh a brand new recording car and a rather slow uh engineer, bless his heart. He's dead now, so I must be careful how I speak of him, but uh he was not the quickest. And I was down the bank uh holding a microphone with a sort of chain of hands of farmers to save me from being swept away.

Desmond Hawkins12:55

And along came the boar and we recorded it triumphantly, we thought.

Desmond Hawkins12:59

And as they pulled me back up the bank, out of the microphone and I hadn't realized that it could also talk back to you, out of the microphone came the engineer's voice saying, I'm ready now.

Desmond Hawkins13:08

Oh dear. It was just passing through Gloucester at that time, and there's another six months to go by before it came up again.

Desmond Hawkins13:17

Uh

Presenter13:17

Yeah.

Desmond Hawkins13:18

Well

Presenter13:18

Especially it did. Do it again in six months.

Desmond Hawkins13:18

Yeah.

Desmond Hawkins13:21

That's right. That's right.

Presenter13:22

Yeah, what's your next

Desmond Hawkins13:23

Very cool.

Desmond Hawkins13:24

Well, I would choose something, I think, from the folk of the West Country.

Desmond Hawkins13:28

There's a song I'm very fond of. It's called The Pricketty Bush. I collected it with Frank Collinson in Cranbourne Chase from a hurdle maker.

Desmond Hawkins13:35

And uh McConnison arranged it for Marjorie Westbury and John Randa Tenner.

Desmond Hawkins13:41

And the choir of the Red Maid School in Bristol, which in those days had a beautiful little choir. They must all be grown up ladies by now, but they sang delightfully.

Desmond Hawkins13:50

And it's a record that would make me very happy on the island. It would take me back to Cranbourne Chase and the West Country and all those bygone days.

Presenter13:58

Hold up your hand, dear Judge. Just stay though.

Speaker 114:04

Come live, oh boy, for I think I see my own true love are coming across your sky. All the beautiful wish that brings my heart on the soul.

Speaker 114:24

With the tin bush, I never give

Presenter14:29

The Pricketed Bush, a West of England folk song, with Marjorie Westbury and a lot of other people.

Presenter14:36

You were producing feature programs in Bristol, the West region. Now you began this wild

Desmond Hawkins14:41

Yes, I did. I started a programme called The Naturalist. This was really an idea and encouragement from Frank Gillard.

Desmond Hawkins14:48

I'd met him as a war correspondent when he came back. He said he was going down to Bristol to start regional broadcasting.

Desmond Hawkins14:53

And what I like to go down with him. And when I got there, he said, You're interested in um natural history and things like that?

Desmond Hawkins14:59

London think they could take three programmes of that sort from us, so would you like to do that? So I did these three programmes.

Desmond Hawkins15:05

And they liked them well enough and and we ran for about, I suppose, twenty years. I don't know, we seemed to go on and on and on.

Speaker 115:08

Yeah.

Desmond Hawkins15:11

and at my masthead was a a bird song I'm very fond of, which Ludwig had recorded.

Desmond Hawkins15:17

It's uh for me the the voice really of of wildness in England, the sound of the curlew, which is a absolutely beautiful sound.

Desmond Hawkins15:25

And that became my trademark and uh and that I think

Desmond Hawkins15:28

to some extent put Bristol on the map as the centre for that sort of broadcasting.

Presenter15:33

This is the sound that opened every programme of natural

Desmond Hawkins15:36

Yes, it was. Yes, it was. And one of the things I'd learned in a way with Jack Dillon in Country Magazine was that this new field of natural sound recording was of course a great novelty.

Desmond Hawkins15:48

And I realized that people really were hungry for the feeling of of nature and the out of doors after all the war years and the rationing and the austerity and all that.

Desmond Hawkins15:57

And this was a great opportunity to start something fresh in broadcasting, I think.

Presenter16:00

Now I know you want to hear the sound of that curlew on your desert island. This seems the right place to play it, do you think?

Desmond Hawkins16:07

Yes, I do. Yes, and uh I like it with Ludwig's voice introducing it, because that gives me the the sense of a friend on my island as well.

Speaker 316:15

I went closer and closer, miles away.

Speaker 316:19

And really they were a pair of curlew. Nesting was very rare that they were nesting there in.

Speaker 316:25

There was a pair, and this very pair

Speaker 316:29

I watched for days and days on end and he recalled

Speaker 316:33

All what you have now.

Presenter16:46

The sound of the curlew. I suppose you were on to tape recording by then. Life was easier.

Desmond Hawkins16:51

No, no, not at all. No tape recording came in uh really rather late for some re I mean the BBC I think was very wedded to uh wax disc recording.

Presenter16:53

No table

Desmond Hawkins16:59

And uh I always thought we were slow to go over to tape recording.

Presenter17:03

While mighty oaks from Little Acorns Grow, those Naturalist programmes rarely were the beginning of the BBC's marvellous Natural History Unit.

Desmond Hawkins17:12

Yes, they were really. I mean, we found fairly quickly that there was a a big popular response. So we started another series called Bird Song of the Month, and then we started Birds in Britain, and before we knew where we were, really, we were catering for quite a big section.

Desmond Hawkins17:28

Of the radio audience in those days, and that laid the foundation, in a sense, for what followed later.

Presenter17:34

So it began with birdsong, and now it turns David Attenborough around the world. That's right.

Desmond Hawkins17:38

That's right. Yes, it does. Yes. I am sometimes rather amazed by just what has happened.

Presenter17:43

No

Presenter17:44

You did some early television natural history programmes, too, with Peter Scott, I seem to rem Uh

Desmond Hawkins17:49

That's right. It's yes, we started a programme called Look.

Desmond Hawkins17:52

And fortunately, Peter Scott at that time was only just off the road from Bristol at the Wildfell Trust at Slimbridge, so it was a very obvious sort of alliance for us to work together.

Desmond Hawkins18:03

And um

Desmond Hawkins18:05

We began with, I mean, such film as we could scratch up, because there wasn't very much film around in those days. It's uh it's extraordinary to look back on, but

Desmond Hawkins18:12

For those programmes we had the effort of one assistant film editor for half a day. I think nowadays you'd expect a full cutting room for about four weeks before you were to attempt anything of that sort. So we had to do as best we could. Peter did some sketches, he was very good at quick sketches.

Desmond Hawkins18:31

The excitement was that now we could show what before we had been showing simply in sound, now we could we could put the picture with it. But at that stage, only in black and white, of course, colour was to come later.

Presenter18:42

Now you became head of West Region Programmes and eventually controller of West Region, right up among the top men. Did that take you away from the studio? Yes, yes, it did. Sadly.

Desmond Hawkins18:53

Sadly, sadly. Yes, it did, really. You know, you can't have everything in life. What it gave me, of course, was a hand on certain levers that that I hadn't been able to get hold of before.

Desmond Hawkins19:03

And this made it possible to develop the Lecturer History Unit.

Speaker 319:05

Yeah.

Desmond Hawkins19:07

And um in a way, I think a programme maker has so much in him, you know, and after a while you are really going around the course for a second time. And so I enjoyed uh, I think, uh trying to find y younger men and encourage them and to develop the thing.

Presenter19:21

Well developing that natural history unit really was something worthwhile.

Desmond Hawkins19:25

Well, I enjoyed it.

Presenter19:27

Uh

Desmond Hawkins19:27

Another

Presenter19:27

The record

Desmond Hawkins19:29

Well, this is another side of my life altogether really, but uh in later years I've got more and more fond of opera. Uh I I didn't go much on it when I was young, but uh increasingly uh when it is really good it is to me one of the great experiences. And I can uh think of one or two moments uh in Covent Garden particularly which uh

Desmond Hawkins19:48

I shall take the grave with me. One was the first time

Desmond Hawkins19:52

I went to see Joan Sutherland, or to hear Joan Sutherland.

Desmond Hawkins19:55

in Norma, which I had known.

Desmond Hawkins19:57

Before only on one record I had of Rosa Poncelle.

Desmond Hawkins20:01

who was the last great norma back in the twenties. It's an opera that hadn't been sung until Jan Sutherland brought it back, I think.

Desmond Hawkins20:08

And the great duet that she does with Marilyn Horne, I mean for Marilyn Horne is the final one before she leaves the story.

Desmond Hawkins20:15

But it's just a terrific moment and uh I can remember just standing and cheering and uh feeling so, so happy. It's a wonderful experience.

Desmond Hawkins20:24

So that's what I would choose.

Presenter21:25

A duet from Bellini's Norma sung by Joan Sutherland and Marilyn Horne.

Presenter21:32

Now, since leaving the corporation as controller of the West Region, that top post, your activities have included quite a number of books, mostly about the West Country and the South, Wildlife of the New Forest, for example.

Desmond Hawkins21:47

Yes, that's a that's a little book. It's based on a film that I did for the Natural History Unit with Eric Ashby, who's a very fine filmmaker, one of the very best we've developed, I think, in England over the last twenty years.

Presenter21:58

And you've done a book about Somerset, about Avalon and Sedgmore.

Desmond Hawkins22:01

S Here's ahead.

Desmond Hawkins22:03

Well that's a to me a a tremendous part of the West Country and one of the most exciting I think those low Somerset Moors, the Peat Moors and the the Withy Country. Really they're quite unique. I didn't know anywhere in England like them at all.

Presenter22:16

Is it the topographical part or the history part that in Uh

Desmond Hawkins22:20

Well, I think it's both. I I think more and more uh what I love to do if I can, uh I'm not I'm no expert in anything, but I love to try and read a landscape with as many

Presenter22:20

Well I think it

Desmond Hawkins22:30

weapons as I can in a sense, a little bit of archaeology and a bit of history and a bit of natural history and a bit of geology and so on. And gradually it sort of all makes a story for me and uh

Desmond Hawkins22:41

I love to try and read it and relish it in that sort of way.

Desmond Hawkins22:44

And those Somerset Moors, I mean from Glastonbury right the way down to Athenley,

Desmond Hawkins22:49

is oh, it's a wonderful country.

Presenter22:51

Yes, it is. It's a favorite corner of mud.

Presenter22:54

And you've written a book about Cranbourne Chase, a part of the country I don't know well, but I'd never realized before that it was an entity, a particular area, with its own personality.

Desmond Hawkins23:05

People don't, you know. They look at the Ordnance Survey map and they see the words written sort of vaguely across somewhere near Sixpenny Hanley and Tollard Royal. And I find when I talk to people about it, I haven't found anybody who really knows quite where the boundaries were, and they're always interested. But I tell them that it was about twice the size of the new forests. It was a royal hunting area. Oh yes, King John made the first perambulation of the bounds. And it stayed with the royal family right through Re Little James I.

Desmond Hawkins23:34

Henry VIII used to give it to his wives as a wedding present. It was a a charming gesture. I mean, while they lasted they had the revenues from Clanbourne Chase. Oh, I see. It's a nice little perk, you know, until you lost your head.

Presenter23:42

Come on.

Presenter23:44

Yes, as soon as you got that you began to work. Yes, you did.

Presenter23:48

Yeah.

Desmond Hawkins23:48

Another record.

Desmond Hawkins23:50

Well, I I I've chosen an another operatic one. In a way, it's the counterpart. Norma's the two women singing in the tremendous emotional thing. The other thing I adored was Grant Evans and Dantasquale. It's to me one of the great performances that I've seen.

Desmond Hawkins24:05

Sadly, uh I I I find he hasn't actually recorded Don Pasquale, but other people have, and there's a terrific duet between the two, this time two men, which I think is very, very funny, very exciting, and uh

Desmond Hawkins24:17

Well, I I would want that with me. That would give me great joy, I think, of a an evening after a rather depressing day if I could listen to these two men.

Presenter25:06

Yeah.

Presenter25:23

A duet from the second act of Donizette's Don Pasquale.

Presenter25:27

Fernando Corena and Tom Krause.

Presenter25:31

Now, Desmond, you have something of a a fixation on on Thomas Hardy. Yes. You you more or less cornered the market in adapting his books for radio, and you have a book out about him and his novels, and you have a new one out about one of his women friends.

Desmond Hawkins25:47

Yeah.

Presenter25:47

Yeah.

Desmond Hawkins25:47

Yes, I do, and that's a fascinating one to me, because uh

Desmond Hawkins25:51

She was totally unknown, except really just as a name.

Desmond Hawkins25:55

and I started trying to find material about her.

Desmond Hawkins25:59

And it became one of those sort of obsessive searches that you find yourself involved in.

Desmond Hawkins26:04

And in a curious way, every now and again I kept hitting a a real jackpot of material, of papers, of diaries, and in the end I had her love letters and her personal diaries and her marriage settlement. And so much material, and I thought, well, really, this woman's story must be told.

Presenter26:21

Love letters to Hardy himself?

Desmond Hawkins26:23

No, the love letters from her husband to her and her to her husband when she was young, she had an extraordinary um marriage due, really. I mean, the husband was forbidden to come to the house and it's one of those great family battles went on and and all this made very exciting reading.

Presenter26:39

What was this lady's name?

Desmond Hawkins26:40

Her name was Agnes Grove. She was the daughter of General Pitt Rivers, so she began as Agnes Geraldine Pitt Rivers.

Presenter26:46

General Pitt Drivers, he was a great archaeologist.

Desmond Hawkins26:48

He's a great archaeologist, that's right. He lived at uh Tollard Royal and at the next village was another great uh landed gentry mansion, the the home of the Groves, and uh Sir Thomas Grove was the MP for the district and so these two great dynasties found themselves becoming allied through Agnes and the future Sir Walter Grove.

Desmond Hawkins27:09

And the battle that went on uh between these uh two

Desmond Hawkins27:14

Great lockings of horns about marriage settlements and uh and they got to within ten days of the marriage when he was still forbidden to come to the house because the lawyers hadn't agreed and oh, it's a it's a it's an incredible story. What do you call the book? It's called Concerning Agnes. That's the title of the poem that Hardy wrote. He was eighty-six when he heard she died. They'd been friends for thirty years. And at eighty-six, believe it or not, this old man took a sheet of paper and he just wrote at the top of it concerning Agnes and he wrote one of the most beautiful elegies in the language, I think.

Desmond Hawkins27:46

So I took that as a title. She is Agnes.

Presenter27:49

Right, now you're on this desert island. Have you any...

Presenter27:53

expectation of uh being able to look after yourself. I mean, you were you know about wildlife, you've been in many hides, in many uncomfortable places.

Desmond Hawkins27:59

This bedding

Desmond Hawkins28:01

Places

Presenter28:02

Could you survive on a desert island?

Desmond Hawkins28:04

Well,'cause food's always a problem, isn't it? Because you don't know what's safe to eat and what's poisonous. Uh I w have once been on a desert island for three days or four days. That was Steephome in the Bristol Channel. And there, of course, I knew what was eatable and what wasn't. So it depends a bit which part of the world you're going to wreck me on.

Desmond Hawkins28:22

I think the South Seas. I see. Well, I I would hope that the.

Presenter28:22

I think

Desmond Hawkins28:26

The vegetation was mainly benign, and there was a few fish I could catch and so on. So yes, I think I could manage.

Presenter28:31

Oh yes, I think

Presenter28:32

Do you think you could escape? Do you know about navigation?

Desmond Hawkins28:35

Not very much. No, I'm not really very good at that. But I think well, I should probably sit tight and I should reckon that Peter Scott and the World Wildlife Fund would probably be passing by at some time to see if I'd become extinct or whatever. And I might get a lift that way.

Presenter28:51

What's your last record?

Desmond Hawkins28:53

Well, it's one that uh means a lot to me. It's the Schubert octet, which I find very moving. I think of Schubert as a man to whom friendship meant a lot, and the the slow movement in the octet speaks to me of uh

Desmond Hawkins29:06

somehow of feelings of friendship and I I love it very much.

Presenter30:10

The beginning of the second movement of Schubert's Octet in F played by the Malos Ensemble.

Presenter30:16

If you could take only one disc.

Desmond Hawkins30:18

Uh

Presenter30:19

We have

Desmond Hawkins30:20

That's the cruel bit, isn't it? It is indeed.

Desmond Hawkins30:23

Well, it would be hard, but uh I I think I would take the Schubert. That would satisfy many moods for me, I think.

Presenter30:30

and one luxury to take to the island nothing of any practical use.

Presenter30:34

Yeah.

Desmond Hawkins30:34

Well, would you allow me a mermaid?

Presenter30:36

No, i your luxury has to be inanimate. If you can find a mermaid when you get there, jolly good luck. But we can't supply one.

Desmond Hawkins30:44

There's something in the room.

Presenter30:46

Something else.

Desmond Hawkins30:48

Then I'd go for something a bit more prosaic, I think.

Desmond Hawkins30:51

I think I would have to have a pair of binoculars with me.

Desmond Hawkins30:54

And I could do perhaps a bit of bird watching and uh generally scout around the island a bit.

Presenter30:59

And mermaid searching too.

Presenter31:02

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

Desmond Hawkins31:05

Well, it it it ought to be the collected poems of Hardy, but I reckon I perhaps know enough of them by heart to leave that one behind, and I think I would take

Desmond Hawkins31:13

I'm sure Roger Peterson has done a field guide to the birds of this island.

Desmond Hawkins31:17

And if I had that with my binoculars, uh that would give me a quite a a satisfying way of passing the time. So I'd take the field guide to wherever you tell me the uh island is. Field guide by Roger Torrey Peterson.

Presenter31:29

Roger Torrey Peterson. Right. And thank you, Desmond Hawkins, for letting us hear your Desert Island Disc.

Desmond Hawkins31:36

Oh, I've enjoyed it really, thank you.

Presenter31:37

Thank you. Goodbye, everyone.

Speaker 131:46

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