P D James

Speaker 40:00

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

Speaker 40:05

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

On our Desert Island this week is one of the top-ranking writers of detective fiction, P. D. James.

Presenter0:37

misses James, how big a part does music play in your life?

P D James0:40

Well, I don't think of myself as musical. I don't play any instrument. I'm afraid I don't understand much of the technique of music. But I certainly couldn't imagine life without records and without listening to music.

Presenter0:52

Do you ever play discs when you're copytyping, for example?

P D James0:56

No, never no. When I'm writing I'm in an entirely different world. I don't even then listen to music.

Presenter1:02

What sort of plan did you have, if you did have a plan, in in choosing your eight records?

P D James1:07

Well, they are records really which I very much enjoy listening to. Some of them are records which I have enjoyed, but which I would like to get to know a great deal better, and some of them have very happy memories for me. What's the first one?

P D James1:23

When I was a girl I lived in Cambridge and I was at the Cambridge Girls' High School, and I often hurried home at the end of the day because I wanted to catch even song at King's College Chapel. I can't imagine being stuck on an island without one record of King's College, and the one I would like is the choir singing the Foray Requiem, that lovely, almost joyous and sensuous music. This is the version conducted by David Wilcox.

Speaker 42:09

For song is glorious in the world.

Presenter2:49

An excerpt from the Foray Requiem, the choir of King's College, Cambridge, with the new Philharmonia Orchestra, conducted by David Wilcox. Were you born in Cambridge?

P D James2:58

No, I was born in Oxford, carelessly enough.

Presenter3:01

Very good.

P D James3:01

Yes, and then I moved to a beautiful town on the Welsh borders, Ludlow, and from Ludlow to Cambridge.

Presenter3:05

And from Dublin to Cambridge.

P D James3:07

Yes, I'm extraordinarily fortunate. I've always lived in beautiful places.

Presenter3:12

Did you have a a settled and happy childhood?

P D James3:15

Fairly settled. I don't think particularly happy. I I don't look back on childhood as one of the happiest times of my life.

Presenter3:23

What did you want to do? Do you have a clear idea of what your future ought to be?

P D James3:27

I think as soon as I had any sense of the future at all, I knew that I wanted to be a writer.

P D James3:34

I can remember talking to a friend of my father's when I was about eight, and asking him how books were produced, and how they got published, and how people knew which one to buy and he explained that there were people called critics who read them, and then wrote in the newspapers saying whether they were any good and I can remember at that early age this struck me as a most extraordinary procedure.

Presenter3:54

What was your first job?

P D James3:56

When I left school I went as an assistant stage manager at the Festival Theatre in Cambridge. I had the idea then that I might like to be a playwright. I left school very young, at sixteen. Of course I wasn't really an assistant stage manager. I was a general dog's body. You know, I helped shift the furniture. I chased round Cambridge begging and borrowing props to people.

Presenter4:11

Yeah.

Presenter4:17

Well that isn't easy.

P D James4:18

Oh, not in the slightest bit, you know, jerking the rug from under the landlady's feet, and promising her two seats in the gallery as her reward.

Presenter4:22

Can be promising it.

Speaker 14:23

Yeah.

P D James4:25

And uh w for the evening performance I would sit in a dark little cell at the back and lift up a flap, and there was a queue. I think the seats for the gallery were a shilling. I used to sell the gallery seats.

Presenter4:35

How long did you stay at the Festival Theatre?

P D James4:37

Until the war, and then of course the theatre closed down.

Presenter4:41

So what do you do?

P D James4:42

I went into the local food office and issued ration books.

Presenter4:46

Oh dear, what a come down after the theatre

P D James4:48

Yes, rather less exciting, I must say. The food office was in a rather dark little room in Christ College, and there we sat.

Presenter4:55

Most splendid surroundings.

P D James4:56

Oh, very beautiful, very beautiful.

P D James4:59

Will it have your second record?

P D James5:01

Well, as I shall be on the island I would love to hear as much of a human voice as possible, and this voice is particularly beautiful, Janet Baker, singing a very English song, John Dowland's Come Again.

Speaker 45:16

Come again, sweet Love of Lynn, My graces that refrain To do me due delight To sing, to hear, to touch, to kiss, to dawn with me again in sweetest sing.

Speaker 45:43

We'll go see.

Speaker 45:45

Yeah.

Speaker 45:46

Touch to kiss to do again in sweetest sea.

Speaker 46:00

Of a grave that I may cease to moon, Through thy unkindness day.

Presenter6:14

Janet Baker singing John Dylan's Come Again.

Presenter6:18

It was marriage that got you out of that food office in Cambridge, wasn't it?

P D James6:22

Yes, I moved uh to London with my husband. He was then a medical student.

Presenter6:26

What did you do?

P D James6:27

Well, I s worked in the Marylebone food office.

Presenter6:30

Oh dear, those same rational

P D James6:31

Yes, the same old ration books. Um we were rather poor, but he used to earn money by fire watching, and this was rather fun. He and other medical student friends we used to have marvellous parties at the top floor of the premises he was supposed to protect. I remember on one occasion we were in the middle of just such a party when an inspector came to see that all the equipment was in order and that everyone was fulfilling their proper jobs, and my husband rather let the side down when the stirrup pump was brought forward by crying out, My God, it works

Presenter7:02

What part of London were you in?

P D James7:04

But

P D James7:06

Well, we lived in a small flat off Manchester Square, which was uh the house was subsequently bombed, but luckily not while we were actually in it.

Presenter7:14

And after the Ministry of Food?

P D James7:16

Well, then I had my first child, so I gave up work, and my husband became a doctor, and went into the Royal Army Medical Corps.

Presenter7:25

And when the war ended you went into the medical field yourself.

P D James7:28

Yes. This was because um my husband came home from the war mentally disabled, so it was necessary for me to earn a living to support him, as he hadn't a disability pension of any kind, and we by then had two small daughters. So I went into the National Health Service.

Presenter7:41

Here's

Presenter7:44

What sort of work are you doing there?

P D James7:46

I was a general clerk to begin with. I worked for Paddington Group Hospital Management Committee and later on for a regional hospital board. Among the jobs I administered five psychiatric outpatient clinics at one time and this gave me a great deal of very useful experience. And then I moved to um a Metropolitan Regional Hospital Board. And again I was concerned for the mental health service.

Presenter8:08

Hm, this is very valuable background for you.

P D James8:11

Particularly when I was at Paddington, three of my books are concerned, you know, with hospitals or with nurse training schools, and one is set in the psychiatric outpatient department.

Presenter8:22

Record number three.

P D James8:24

Well, I think you know some evening on the island I might like to go to the theatre.

P D James8:29

So I've chosen a play.

P D James8:31

The most I I think um amusing and exciting of comedies, the importance of being earnest and naturally I want the version with John Gilgard and Edith Evans, please.

Speaker 48:42

Are your parents living?

Speaker 48:45

I have lost both my parents.

Presenter8:47

Yeah.

Speaker 48:48

To lose one parent, mister Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune.

Speaker 48:53

To lose both looks like carelessness.

Speaker 48:57

Who was your father?

Speaker 48:59

He was evidently a man of some wealth.

Speaker 49:02

Was he born in what the radical papers call the purple of commerce, or did he rise from the ranks of the aristocracy?

Presenter9:13

John Gilgood and Edith Ebbens in an excerpt from Act One of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest.

Presenter9:20

The decision to write, misses James. Do you remember any one moment when you took it?

P D James9:26

I can certainly remember the moment when I realized that I had got to begin, to get started, or I never would be a writer. I was then in my late thirties. There were all sorts of excuses for not having started earlier partly, of course, the war when I was younger, then the need to qualify and earn a living. Um and the time came when I realized there was never going to be a convenient moment to begin my first book. I had got to make the time, I had got to start. So I began getting up early in the morning and started on my first novel.

Presenter9:57

Why did you decide on a detective novel?

P D James9:59

I very much enjoyed reading detective novels. Dorothy L. Sayers was a potent influence, I think. I didn't want to write the usual autobiographical first novel. I was fascinated by construction, and a detective novel does have to be constructed. It must have, you know, a beginning, a middle, and a satisfactory end.

P D James10:19

I did aspire to be thought of as a serious novelist, and it seemed to me this would be a marvellous apprenticeship, because of some of the technical problems of the genre.

Presenter10:28

How early did you get up?

P D James10:30

usually about six o'clock, and worked for two hours before it was time to start getting ready to get up to the office.

Presenter10:35

By that time your two daughters were at school and to a certain extent off your hands.

P D James10:39

Well, because of my husband's mental illness they had to go to boarding school very young, and I lived with my parents in law.

Presenter10:46

Now, looking at the whole spread of your work, that first book, Cover Her Face, looks a little bit old-fashioned. You hadn't got into your stride. Village Tea Party, Doctor, Vicar, and so on.

P D James10:56

Yeah.

P D James10:57

I think it's a derivative myself. I'm rather surprised, though, how many of my readers have a particular affection for it. Perhaps they're like um the poet Auden, who said he couldn't bear a detective story unless it was set in an English country house.

Presenter11:11

And the first appearance already of a character who is to become very familiar to you, your detective, Adam Darglish.

P D James11:18

Yes. I chose a professional detective because I was aiming at realism, and I felt that in real life amateurs don't keep stumbling over bodies, and of course if they do, they don't have the facilities or opportunities to investigate the crime, so that I'd better try to create a professional peace officer.

Presenter11:35

I've spoken guard now. How many books has he appeared in?

P D James11:38

Hey.

Presenter11:38

8. And he's steadily been promoted through the years.

P D James11:41

He's done extremely well. He's now Commander of New Scotland Yard, yes.

Presenter11:43

But he's now

Presenter11:45

And he writes verse which is unusual.

P D James11:48

Yes this may be a slight cheat. I wanted him to be a complex and interesting human being, and not a stereotype, so I made him a poet but only in one book do we get a sample of his poetry, which may be just as well, I feel.

Presenter11:59

I haven't come across that. There is a sample.

P D James12:02

Yes, in a book called Unnatural Causes. Just a short extract.

Presenter12:06

I must look that up.

Presenter12:08

And you have a female detective, a a private detective.

P D James12:12

Yes, this is Cordelia Gray, who first appeared in a book set in Cambridge called An Unsuitable Job for a Woman, and she also features in my last book, The Skull Beneath the Skin.

Presenter12:22

Have the two met.

P D James12:24

Oh yes, they have. Their paths have crossed once or twice, and my readers, particularly my American readers, are now getting rather agitated, and suggesting that I ought to marry them off.

Presenter12:34

But

P D James12:35

A little too neat, I feel, Relly.

Presenter12:36

I think really only when you've finished with them, when you move on to something else.

P D James12:40

It might be an alternative to killing them off, you know.

Presenter12:42

Right.

Presenter12:43

So, going back to the beginning, there was the manuscript of your first novel, all neatly typed and on your desk. How did you choose which publisher to send it to?

P D James12:53

Well, I was dining with some friends, and the actor Miles Mallison was of the company, and he wrote books, I think, about the theatre.

Speaker 413:00

Yeah.

P D James13:00

I told him I'd finished a novel, and he suggested I should send it to his agent. I did so, and she took it on, and I've been her client ever since.

Presenter13:09

So it was accepted straight away.

P D James13:11

It was accepted by the first publisher she sent it to. Wasn't I lucky?

Presenter13:16

Very lucky. Splendid. And you're still with that publisher.

P D James13:18

I'm still with that publisher. I don't know really how I would have stood continual disappointment and frustration, so I am extraordinarily grateful that I was so lucky. And although it was difficult to write the book and took a long time, at least once it was finished it was accepted quite quickly.

Presenter13:38

What's her next record?

P D James13:40

Well, I do love choral music, and I want some of Elgar's dream of Gerontius. I have a particular affection for this work, because my elder daughter sings in a choir. She has a lovely alto voice.

P D James13:53

And the choir had the great privilege of singing Dream of Gerontius in the festival hall. We went as a family to hear it. It was a great moment for her, a great moment for me. The version I'd like is the one conducted by Sir John Barbaroli, again with Janet Baker, who sings the part of the Angel, and with the Hulley Choir and the Sheffield Philharmonic Chorus.

Speaker 414:23

O the threshold has wait for mercy that is alone its love.

Presenter15:07

An excerpt from Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius

Presenter15:11

Sir John Barbierolly conducting the Halley Orchestra, the Ambrosian Singers, the Halley Choir, and the Sheffield Philharmonic Chorus.

Presenter15:19

Now, you remained a part-time writer for a number of years. That meant that your output was fairly small to start with.

P D James15:26

Yes, nine books in twenty years. Yes, it is a fairly small output.

Presenter15:31

and all those years you were working at the crack of dawn.

P D James15:34

Yes, yes, I was, and then uh traveling up to London and um doing a full-time job.

Presenter15:39

How do you work? Do you plan the story carefully before you start? Do you do a a an accurate skeleton and then flesh it out?

P D James15:47

With my kind of fiction this is absolutely essential.

P D James15:50

I have to know precisely what is going to happen and in what order. I mean, I obviously have to know where the story is going to be set, who is going to be killed, by whom, where, how, when, and why. I have to insert my clues. Um I have to decide how the detective, whether it's the amateur or the professional, is going to discover the truth, and how to deal with that most difficult last chapter, the De Noumont, when everything has to be explained and where you hope to reach a peak of excitement.

Presenter16:20

And you can't these days assemble all your casts in the library.

P D James16:23

Oh, no, those happy days when they dressed for dinner and then meekly filed in in full evening dress to hear the solution. No, it has to be plotted with great care, and in fact I do have charts and note books and so on.

Presenter16:28

To hit the

Presenter16:35

Do you work in long hand, or do you type?

P D James16:37

I like to feel a contact between a pen and a paper, but my handwriting is atrocious, so very quickly I either dictate it on to tape and then it goes to a professional typist, or I um type it myself on an electric typewriter, but still at the end it goes for professional typing.

Presenter16:54

How many drafts do you think you're going to do ordinarily?

P D James16:57

At least two. Some passages go beautifully prose seems to sing along, and it might be as good as I can make it, you know, at the first try others are far more difficult. But certainly at least two.

Presenter17:11

Record number five.

P D James17:13

Well, I should like some humour on my island. Of course I'm going to have the importance of being earnest, but um I'd like a funny song. It's difficult to know what humour would stand the strain, you know, of my having looked for the twentieth time for a sail which hasn't appeared. But I've chosen Noah Cowd singing his Mad Dogs and Englishmen. I think this would cheer me.

Speaker 117:36

Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun. The toughest Burmese bandit can never understand it. In Rangoon, the heat of noon is just what the natives shun. They put their scotch or eye down and lie down. In a jungle town where the sun beats down to the rage of man and beast, the English garb of the English Saab merely gets a bit more creased. In Bangkok, at twelve o'clock, they foam at the mouth and run. But mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun.

Presenter18:05

Noel Card, Mad Dogs and Englishman. You mentioned just now the location of of some of your books. Now it has been noted that nearly all of them are set in an enclosed community uh the psychiatric clinic, a writer's colony, a school for nurses. It's almost as if you're thinking in theatre terms, isn't it?

P D James18:25

Yes, it is. Um I think there are two reasons for this, two main reasons. Firstly, as a writer, I'm intrigued by the interaction of people in a closed community, particularly when it's a hierarchical one, like um the nurse training school or a hospital or a forensic science laboratory. But of course it has another advantage in that it confines the suspects and you have a limited number of people with, you hope, credible motives for the crime.

Presenter18:56

And in no sense are they conventional thrillers. For example, in Shroud for a Nightingale, you go quite deeply in into an exploration of the philosophy of nursing.

P D James19:06

Yes, yes, ind indeed I do. I think I said quite a number of things in that book about nurse training, which I feel quite deeply.

Presenter19:12

Yeah.

Presenter19:14

And from the hospital administration you were doing, you went to the criminal department or the home office. Now this was more useful material.

P D James19:21

Yes, it was. This happened after my husband's death. I think then I was at that stage which many middle aged people must feel. You know, am I going to do the same old thing until I'm sixty? I felt I needed a change, and it was now possible to have one. So I took a competitive examination and passed it, and went into the civil service, and, as you say, I went to the Home Office in the Police Department.

Presenter19:44

Now your books are not for the squeamish, you do face up to the nasty details.

P D James19:49

Yes, this is part of trying to write a realistic novel. I felt you know in so many of the crime novels of the nineteen thirties the corpse lying on the library floor was really only covered with mock blood and would leap up and take a bar at the end of the story. It seems to me that death violent death is very horrible and very frightening, and when one of my characters first encounters, first discovers the corpse, I feel that the reader also should share that sense of shock and outrage.

Presenter20:18

Why do you think people like reading of horror and death?

P D James20:22

Well, I think this is a fascinating question, and I have given it a great deal of thought. I think paradoxically, you know, the detective story is psychologically reassuring. It does rest on the premise that murder is the unique crime, and that even the most unpleasant, disagreeable, dangerous person has the right to live his life to the last natural moment. And in an age when death and murder are so often gratuitous, this is reassuring. And then the puzzle at the heart of the novel is going to be solved at the end. And I think that we live in an age when we're beginning to suspect that some of our problems social, economic, international, really can't be solved. Now, here you have a puzzle, and at the end of the book, you know it's going to be solved by human ingenuity, human intelligence, human perseverance. That, too, is immensely reassuring.

Presenter21:13

Record number six.

P D James21:16

Well, this is Bach Saint Matthew Passion, one of my favourites. I couldn't be on the island without this. Klempere conducting, please.

Presenter22:27

The first chorus of Bach's Saint Matthew Passion.

Presenter22:31

Otto Klempere conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra and the Philharmonia Choir.

Presenter22:36

One of the pleasures of of your books is your skill as a descriptive writer. Especially do you like writing about the English countryside.

P D James22:43

Oh yes, I greatly enjoy this. I do a great deal of research before any book, you know, visiting the location, looking at the sky, the earth, the trees, the whole appearance of the scene.

Presenter22:54

Those, of course, are the perks of the writer, those sort of trips to absorb atmosphere.

P D James22:58

Oh

P D James22:59

Absolutely.

Presenter23:00

It wasn't long ago that you decided at last to retire from the civil service and write all day long, or as long through the day as you wished to.

P D James23:07

Through the day as you wish to.

Presenter23:10

Yeah.

P D James23:11

Yeah.

Presenter23:12

Now everything's been happening for you. Your books have been selling in enormous editions, particularly in America. Have you been over to America to survey the scene?

P D James23:20

Yes, I've just come back actually from a three-week promotion tour. Very exhausting.

Presenter23:26

Thanks, sir.

P D James23:27

Yeah.

Presenter23:27

And there are two or is it three films in in various stages?

P D James23:31

Yes, one that's been released. One in America, which I think they're they're still finding a scriptwriter. And one um television film, which Herbert Wise is directing for Anglia.

Presenter23:43

Oh, that's right. That's going to be in six instalments.

P D James23:46

Yes, it is. This is of um a death of an expert witness, the one set in a forensic science laboratory.

Presenter23:52

And uh what's the one that's been released?

P D James23:55

This is the one featuring Cordelia Gray, an unsuitable job for a woman.

Presenter23:59

Now obviously you're doing exceedingly well. Have you been tempted? Do you think of going into tax exile?

P D James24:06

No. I want to stay here. I have two beloved daughters and five grandchildren. My friends are here, so that um I complain about tax. We all complain about tax. I think I shall be staying here.

Presenter24:18

Right, good. Number seven.

P D James24:21

Well, again, the human voice, and I would like a tenor, to hear a splendid male voice. My dear mother used to play the piano, particularly on Sundays, because she was brought up in the tradition, you know, of um sitting round the piano, standing round the piano, and and uh having musical evenings. So I should like some Victorian ballads. But the particular song I want, I think, is earlier than that, because it's Robert Teer singing Tom Bowling, Dibden's song.

Speaker 425:03

Here a sheer hike lies for

Speaker 425:10

But daily

Speaker 425:18

No more heal ye the tempest hound for death has grown.

Speaker 425:33

His form was of the earth's beauty, his heart was kind and soft.

Presenter25:50

Tom Bowling. No

Presenter25:52

It seems that um everything you've tried, everything you put your hand to, you've done exceedingly well. Do you think you could handle being a castaway?

Presenter25:59

The problems of a desert island?

P D James26:02

Well, I was a girl guide when I was young.

Presenter26:04

Oh well done. Any badges?

P D James26:05

On any badge

P D James26:06

Oh, numerous badges. Please don't ask me if they're all too embarrassing.

P D James26:10

I think I could construct a shelter of some kind. It might be wise to have it up a tree, you know, until I was sure that the animals were friendly. I don't think I could light a fire. This idea, you know, of um rubbing two sticks together I could never do it as a guide, and I don't believe anybody can do it.

Presenter26:14

Yeah.

Speaker 426:14

Uh

Presenter26:25

Ah, but there are things like watch glasses or spectacles or something of that sort.

P D James26:29

No, I hate to tell you I don't think any of that would work.

Presenter26:32

Wouldn't it?

P D James26:33

No. I'm sure I shall get cast away in some kind of woolly, so I thought you know I could unravel it, and then get two sticks, and knit it up into a net, and see if I couldn't catch some fish. But then I dare say it would be very cold at night, and I'd have to knit it up into a woolly again.

Presenter26:33

I'm

Presenter26:46

Very ingenious stuff. Would you try to escape?

P D James26:50

Oh, no, no I should stay put. No. When in difficulties, I think, stay put, and wait to be rescued. I'm sure my children and my splendid sons in law would get some kind of expedition mounted, you know.

Presenter27:01

Well, if they don't, uh we'll look after you. Your last record.

P D James27:06

Oh, lovely, lovely Baroque music. This is um Telemann's concerto in D. I love it because um it has the trumpet, John Wilbram playing the trumpet, and I think the sound of the trumpet is one of the most lovely sounds in the whole of music. And this is a marvellously triumphant, splendid, exciting piece of music.

Presenter28:22

Telemann's concerto in D for trumpet, two oboes and strings. John Wilbraham with the Academy of St. Martin and the Fields, conducted by Neville Mariner. If you could take only one disc, which would it be?

P D James28:35

Oh dear, I think it has to be the Bath St. Matthew passion.

Presenter28:38

Right. And you're allowed to take one luxury, with your one object of no practical use whatever.

P D James28:44

Well, I don't know whether this is cheating.

P D James28:47

But I would like all the equipment necessary to sew a huge patchwork quilt, and I would like a great bag full of splendid pieces of silk, and then I could devise it. You see, I don't think it would ever get finished, so it really wouldn't be a useful object.

Presenter29:02

It would you can make a tent out of it if you got it big enough.

P D James29:05

Are you going to tell me this doesn't count? Because I've got a second choice if you really won't let me have it.

Presenter29:10

Let's hear the second choice.

P D James29:11

Well, then, I would like some claret some really superb claret and as many bottles, please, as you can possibly supply me with. Then you see, if I'm not rescued, I'll be able to die happy.

Presenter29:21

Drinking cloud really

P D James29:21

Drinking claret, really, and listening to the foray requiem. What could be better?

Presenter29:24

You better. I think so. You better have the claret. Much better choice than that quilt.

P D James29:28

Quote.

Presenter29:29

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

P D James29:33

I take it that the Bible is the St James Version. You're not going to. Oh, I'm most believed. Otherwise, I don't want any of the modern translations. Thank you, Roy. You may have those. Well, as I'll have all the splendid poetry I could wish for, I'll have a novel. The longer the better. And I'd like to be transported, please, to the gentle and spacious landscape of Victorian provincial England. I'll take Middlemarch. And as there are four subplots, I've really got four novels in one.

Presenter29:36

Of course, otherwise I

Presenter30:00

Right. Middle March by George Eliot. And thank you, P. D. James, for letting us know your Desert Island Discs.

P D James30:06

Thank you very much for inviting me, Roy.

Presenter30:08

Goodbye, everyone.

Speaker 430:34

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