Rachel Billington

Speaker 30:00

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

Speaker 30:05

For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in 1983.

Speaker 30:11

And the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:30

Our castaway this week is the novelist Rachel Billington.

Presenter0:35

Do you play records a lot?

Rachel Billington0:36

Yes, I do very, very loudly, too but luckily my speakers are not against the party wall.

Presenter0:42

Do you ever play them while you're working?

Rachel Billington0:44

No, I don't play records, but I do play Radio Three or all the time. It starts me off in the morning, and that's absolutely a central part of my working life.

Presenter0:53

Are you a musician? Do you play an instrument?

Rachel Billington0:56

No, when I was about thirteen I told my parents, who were totally unmusical at least my father was that I must learn the piano. None of the other children had ever learned any instrument.

Presenter1:04

How many of you?

Rachel Billington1:05

There were eight children.

Presenter1:06

Yeah.

Rachel Billington1:07

And none of them had, and I did for about two years, so that I can read music, and my well, three of my four children are now learning instruments, so I'm good enough to help them.

Presenter1:15

Yeah.

Rachel Billington1:16

And good enough, I think, to appreciate, but no more than that.

Presenter1:19

But you haven't kept up your piano playing yourself.

Rachel Billington1:21

No, no, sadly not.

Presenter1:23

Uh

Rachel Billington1:23

Uh

Presenter1:23

How difficult did you find it to choose just eight discs that may have to last a long, long time?

Rachel Billington1:28

Incredibly difficult uh very difficult. I mean, in the end I used two criteria. One were things that would remind me of my past, and the other was just things I love and and couldn't live without the sound of wonderful music.

Presenter1:41

Where do we start? What's the first one?

Rachel Billington1:44

Well, the first one casts me quite a long way back, I'm sorry to say now, which is to my childhood. I went to a string of convent day schools in London.

Rachel Billington1:53

One of them was in Cromwell Road, so occasionally we were taken to the Oratory, the most wonderful, flamboyant Catholic Church. And the most exciting thing was to have benediction, and there were two great hymns that they sang. O Salutaris was one which started O Salutaris Hostia, and the other one which I've chosen, Tan Tomego.

Speaker 22:41

Sim and Man and Deep Single

Speaker 22:48

Wash head and me

Speaker 22:54

Uh

Presenter3:12

Tantamergo, sung by the Benedictine nuns of Saint Cecilia's Abbey, Ride in the Isle of Wight.

Presenter3:19

Now, Lady Rachel, you're the daughter, a daughter, of the Earl and Countess of Longford, and I'm happy to say you're the fourth of the literary Longfords to appear on this programme.

Presenter3:30

Now, recapping, your father writes mainly biographies, and so does your mother, but her field is principally the nineteenth century and your elder sister, Lady Antonia Fraser, deals in the seventeenth century, and nowadays detective stories as well.

Presenter3:47

And you have a literary brother.

Rachel Billington3:49

Yes, my brother Thomas. His last book was a book on the Boer War, which was extraordinary, actually very dramatic, almost fictional. He had such good pieces, such wonderful research of what people had actually said at the time.

Presenter4:01

Mm-hmm.

Rachel Billington4:01

It's a very exciting book.

Presenter4:03

And your sister Judith writes poetry.

Rachel Billington4:05

And she writes poetry. Yes, it's had several volumes of poetry published.

Presenter4:08

So you were brought up to the sound of typewriters.

Rachel Billington4:10

Well, no, no in fact we were brought up to the sound of orange boxes or whatever it is politicians stand on.

Rachel Billington4:16

Because my uh mother and father, when I grew up, were deep in Labour politics. My father uh was in the Cabinet after the war. My mother, during the war, stood for Parliament, didn't get in, I'm rather glad to say, because I much as I admire politicians female politicians, I do think their children have to compromise quite a lot.

Rachel Billington4:35

And she didn't.

Rachel Billington4:37

and and therefore she scribbled a bit. She wrote one or two books which were received with some suspicion by us on how to bring up your children.

Rachel Billington4:46

I can't remember what the book was called, I'm ashamed to say, but the one dedicated to me was to Rachel, see page fourteen, and if you looked up in page fourteen you would find a very large heading saying BITING.

Rachel Billington4:58

I was used as the example of the biter. We all, I think, were guinea pigs. But.

Speaker 24:58

It was used as the exact

Rachel Billington5:03

It wasn't till we were grown up that she started writing seriously.

Presenter5:07

What were you good at at school?

Rachel Billington5:10

Oh, I was good at everything, she said complacently. I wasn't very good at anything.

Presenter5:11

Yeah.

Rachel Billington5:15

I was just all right, and that was helped by the fact that it was a small school. I mean, I boast rather proudly of at one point being captain of games and head of the school. My husband then points out that there only were twenty seven in the school.

Presenter5:28

Uh

Rachel Billington5:28

Yeah.

Presenter5:28

So it wasn't too difficult.

Rachel Billington5:28

So it wasn't too difficult.

Presenter5:30

You went on to take a degree in English.

Rachel Billington5:32

Yes, I did. I

Rachel Billington5:33

I suppose I did, because I had always read voraciously. I hadn't written that much, in fact, up to that point, but I simply would read literally six books a day, and as I didn't quite know what I wanted to do, it seemed to me I could just carry on reading, and this was a continuation of growing up.

Presenter5:51

You had ambitions to work in the theatre at one time.

Rachel Billington5:55

don't put it quite as strongly as that. I suppose I was very attracted by it. I used to do a certain amount of acting at school, and then when I was um at Oxford I got involved in several productions. I used to go along to auditions. I remember one occasion

Rachel Billington6:09

when I was asked to sing a song, and I was always teated on the edge of not being very good at music, but feeling I I wanted to be and trying very hard and loving it. And when I was just asked point blank to sing a song this was Oxford when we were all being rather rebellious, as you can imagine.

Rachel Billington6:24

Only song I could think of was Silent Night, Holy Night, which I sang to the sort of horror of the people who were auditioning me, and I then in fact got a part.

Rachel Billington6:33

as a troll in Pierre Gynt, and the only notable feature of that was my fellow troll, in black T shirt and black tights writhing round the very dirty planks of the Playhouse stage, was Michael Yorke, who went on to rather more acting fame than I did.

Presenter6:49

You also got mixed up in some Metzart productions.

Rachel Billington6:53

Yes, that was later. When I finished my university days, I worked in London for ATV as Associated Television. And there was a little company called the Opera de Camera. It does still exist, but under different ages. And they used to do smallish operas in people's drawing rooms. They did, I remember, La Serva Padrono by Pergolesi, with just a few characters and very good singing.

Rachel Billington7:16

And it was so successful that we, or the producer, got rather more exciting ideas, and he first of all did a production of Seraglio in fact my elder sister's garden on a most wonderful September night. It was beautiful. Never seen a more beautiful production. The singing was splendid.

Rachel Billington7:35

I played a harem girl, which was well received, I think.

Presenter7:39

I'm sure.

Rachel Billington7:39

And that was so successful that we then got even more thrilled at this new operatic world we were exploring outside the opera houses, and decided to do a performance of the magic flute, probably one of the hardest

Rachel Billington7:53

Operas to stage anyway in the middle of Belgrave Square. But unfortunately, by the time we'd got round to getting the production together, dulcet, warm evenings of September had passed, and it was, as I remember, late October or something like that. And it was extremely cold, very cold, in the interval people left and came back with beds and idedans and hot water bottles and

Presenter8:18

What were you playing?

Rachel Billington8:19

Well, in theory I was had, as usual, my large, glamorous parts. I was a Beast of the Wood. Unfortunately, I was also the costume mistress, and everything was rather hurried, and I'd rushed off to get some great big heads that the Beasts of the Wood could wear. And we'd never managed to rehearse at all, as the Beasts of the Wood, there hadn't been time. We'd never even tried on our heads. And when we came to try them on, we found that there were no eye holes, so we couldn't see where we were going at all. So I'm afraid poor old Tamino had to play to nobody at all. We never dared approach the stage.

Presenter8:45

Come to the

Presenter8:52

Pretty good.

Presenter8:53

Is it memory of those days that have prompted you to take a Mozart opera disc?

Rachel Billington8:57

Yes, yes. Uh a few years after that I discovered uh Mozart. Well, it's an incomplete opera, but it it it's the opera that uh Mozart started before he wrote Seraglio, and is rather reminiscent of it, uh, called Zaida. And there's one particular aria which I think is as beautiful as anything he wrote.

Speaker 29:19

Uh

Speaker 29:20

Uh

Speaker 29:34

I want to be

Rachel Billington9:36

Uh

Speaker 39:37

No, since the winner is

Speaker 210:00

I believe.

Speaker 210:03

Right, Colonel.

Presenter10:17

An aria from Mozart Saida sung by Edith Matis.

Presenter10:22

Now, you talked about being with ATV. What took you into the lush field of television?

Rachel Billington10:29

I think I always had been interested in the performing arts i in one way or another. And of course television then in the early sixties was quite an exciting, relatively new area, particularly commercial television. And I was also interested, though in a fairly subliminal way, in writing. I hadn't thought I was going to be a writer in any

Rachel Billington10:48

capital letters, and I went into the research area of television, which is rather like being a journalist in a way. So it seemed to me to combine the visual and the written word in an interesting way.

Presenter10:59

You researched a Bernard Braden series, I believe.

Rachel Billington11:01

That's right, yes, yes, that was the forerunner to the Esther Ranson show, really. It was very similar.

Presenter11:06

He was racquet-busting.

Rachel Billington11:07

I yes, I wasn't very good at it, though, because I was so terrified of ringing people up and asking nasty questions. I used to blush all over and shake and hated it. I did it, yes. I thought it was very good for me to learn to

Presenter11:15

I did it.

Rachel Billington11:19

go into the world and deal with the world, so it was a good experience.

Presenter11:22

What else do you work on?

Rachel Billington11:24

And then I worked on heavens, I can't even really remember

Rachel Billington11:28

I

Rachel Billington11:29

I worked on a programme with Nick Tomlin for a while, who died, that was heard, and they were all they were always starting new programmes at that time, which didn't seem to last too long.

Presenter11:38

Then you moved to the United States also in television.

Rachel Billington11:41

Yes, in doing really exactly the same kind of thing. It was ABC Television, American Broadcasting Corporation, which at that time was rather hoping to have a big injection of money and being taken over by IT and T, so they suddenly had this huge documentary department.

Presenter11:55

Yeah.

Rachel Billington11:55

of which I was a small member.

Presenter11:57

Which ones did you work on? What field?

Rachel Billington11:59

I worked mostly for about six months on a programme about drug addiction.

Rachel Billington12:05

And that was rather interesting at that sort of period in the middle sixties because it was the time when the marijuana and the whole pot smoking and the flower people and the Californian life style and the dropouts, all this was kind of there on one side. And I did in fact do various research programmes about people like Dr. Timothy Leary and the people who were saying this is beautiful, this is wonderful, this is how we can enjoy our life.

Speaker 212:22

Mm-hmm.

Rachel Billington12:31

But in fact, the documentary I was working on was about a terrible, tragic, kind of pathetic heroin addict on the New York streets whose only future was death, which of course sadly turned out to be true with a lot of the flower people of the singers of that era. But I was seeing a very stark reality in in rather contrast to the court of glorious tales we were being told about it.

Presenter12:54

But

Presenter12:55

Six months this was really an investigation in depth.

Rachel Billington12:57

It was very much. We filmed all over New York and also went down to Lexington, Kentucky, where there's a very big state hospital stroke prison. And a lot of the addicts would be sent there when they were caught for passing drugs or I can't remember what the laws were, but they were much stiffer then. And they would be put there to try and get them off the drugs and also as a prison sentence. It was ter terrifying down there. These I'd never seen anything like it. I mean, I was very young, and this as an experience for a young English girl to go to a vast American prison.

Rachel Billington13:28

And going to the women's wards were also quite extraordinary, and opened my eyes to a lot of things I think were rather good for me in that way.

Presenter13:36

Rather distressing.

Rachel Billington13:37

Very distressing and it was very sad because I naturally did get

Rachel Billington13:40

rather involved in the lives of the people who I was uh filming or helping to film. And the particular boy who was married, who had a sort of equally pathetic drug addict wife, died very soon after we finished the programme. And it it certainly taught me not to get too involved with the other side.

Presenter13:57

I see you've got a a Bob Dylan record on your list. This seems a good place to slip that in.

Rachel Billington14:02

Yes, yes. I I suppose after what I've said, it seems odd that I find him so wonderfully evocative, but I do.

Presenter14:09

What's he singing?

Rachel Billington14:10

He's singing Mr. Tambourine Man.

Speaker 214:17

Hey Mr. Time for Rainman, play a song for me. I'm not sleepy, and there's no place I'm going to.

Speaker 214:29

Hey Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me. In the jingle jangle morning, I'll come following you.

Presenter14:42

Bob Dylan.

Presenter14:43

Rachel, while you were in New York you met a British television director, who I gather had been pushed in your direction by none other than Malcolm Muggeridge.

Rachel Billington14:51

Oh yes, the famous Cupid story.

Presenter14:54

He looks rather like it.

Rachel Billington14:56

He didn't quite do it in that way. What happened was, about two or three years before, perhaps even longer, he had got at us in two different directions. He had got at my parents, who were great friends of his, and threw them at me to tell me that there was this wonderful man called Kevin Billington, who I should definitely marry, and my life would be happy.

Rachel Billington15:15

I, however, was otherwise involved, and also imagined him for some reason, six foot eight tall, with red hair, and talk against him because of this.

Presenter15:23

Had they worked together?

Rachel Billington15:24

They were at the time working together. I think they were then making uh the film The Twilight of Empire in India. In fact, Kevin says that Malcolm got under his guard because they were flying low over Bangalore, as the story goes.

Rachel Billington15:37

And Kevin nervously was going pale and quavering, and Malcolm, seizing his chance, said to him, Kevin, I've got just the wife for you, Rachel Packenham. And he never forgot this, because he was so terrified fear having lowered his guard.

Rachel Billington15:52

Anyway, we didn't meet then, refused to meet each other, and a few years later someone else got us together in New York, but Cupid's darts had obviously stuck, and a little later I

Rachel Billington16:03

I didn't immediately run back after him to London, I'm happy to say, but I did fairly soon after.

Presenter16:08

You took him out on some of your drug investigations.

Rachel Billington16:12

Yes, it was a most unsalubrious first.

Rachel Billington16:15

date we had because I was then working on this drug program and had to see this uh rather pathetic

Rachel Billington16:20

addict, who, as I didn't know then, was dying in Bellevue Hospital, which is the fairly

Rachel Billington16:25

grim, large State hospital along the river in New York, and we met in a hotel, and as part of my kind of I'm not letting anyone tell me who I should marry

Rachel Billington16:34

When we met, I said, Well, you've all right.

Rachel Billington16:37

Fine, let's go out this evening. But I first got to go along to this hospital.

Rachel Billington16:41

And he, not to be outdone, said,'All right, well, I'll come too'. So we sat either side of the bedside of this poor chap, and that was our first evening together. The things improved a bit after then. We went up a lot of very tall buildings, which is fairly easy to do in New York.

Presenter16:52

After a very tall

Presenter16:57

And who got married?

Rachel Billington16:58

And we came back and we did, fairly soon.

Rachel Billington17:01

and in fact he then really started me writing.

Rachel Billington17:05

because I left my job in New York.

Rachel Billington17:08

And he was then involved in a film.

Rachel Billington17:11

Which would lead us on to our next bit of music, in fact, I think. But uh before then I couldn't find a job. The BBC did offer me some job, I remember, but it was something that I considered beneath me, and there was not much that was beneath me, so it must have been some very unfortunate job.

Presenter17:26

You didn't deliberately get out of television because you didn't want to be trespassing on his patch.

Rachel Billington17:29

No, I don't know.

Rachel Billington17:30

Well, it was that. Yes, it was very much that. It it's a bit awkward when someone has I mean, at that time he'd won a lot of awards, he was well known in that kind of area, and it was

Rachel Billington17:40

It was difficult both not to go to the people he knew who were in a position to

Rachel Billington17:46

give jobs and and yet to do it. So I didn't want to do that.

Rachel Billington17:50

And he said, Well, what else can you do?

Rachel Billington17:52

And I said, Well, I've always thought I could write, and being a sensible Northerner, he took this seriously immediately, and said, Well, then write.

Rachel Billington18:02

as he was rather busy himself.

Presenter18:04

And so

Rachel Billington18:04

And so he started me off, in fact, writing.

Presenter18:07

It said that you started your first book while you were on your honeymoon.

Rachel Billington18:10

Yes, we did. It was a book mostly drawing on my New York experience. Well, honeymoon, it was quite a long honeymoon.

Rachel Billington18:18

And it was in Scotland, and we were snowed up, and there wasn't an awful lot to do, so I feel I have an excuse for starting the book.

Presenter18:26

Yes.

Rachel Billington18:27

I d didn't write all day.

Presenter18:29

What's your fourth record?

Rachel Billington18:32

Well, the fourth one is linked to this period of meeting and coming back to England and marrying my husband, because he was then directing a feature film called Interlude, and it was all about a conductor who was played by Oscar Werner, who falls in love with a young girl.

Rachel Billington18:49

And

Rachel Billington18:51

It had in it, naturally, some of the most wonderful music, and the most gloriously romantic music as this was this.

Rachel Billington18:59

tremendously attractive man with this young woman and also some very sad music because there was a good wife. Anyway, I managed to blot out that part of it. And for me this record, which is Rachmaninoff's second symphony, says to me this is love, this is what love is. In in the film, this bit of music was played uh at Kenwood and Oscar Werner, looking dazzlingly attractive, was on the the plinth in the water and it was at night.

Rachel Billington19:23

and as far as I remember his beloved ran across the grass, and this superb bit of music flowed out, say this is my sort of bit of love music.

Presenter20:32

Bar to the third movement of the Rachmaninoff Second Symphony, Andrei Prebin and the London Symphony Orchestra.

Presenter20:39

Now, your first novel, All Things Nice, which I haven't read, what was it about?

Rachel Billington20:44

Well, it was about a young girl who's in New York and she spends half her time with

Rachel Billington20:49

very rich high society, having a good time in Long Island, and the other half involved in investigating uh drug addiction. So you may guess that it was somewhat autobiographical. But I think first novels. Yes.

Presenter20:59

But I think first novel novels.

Rachel Billington21:01

I think that's allowed in a first novel.

Presenter21:03

Was the novel bought by the first publisher to whom you sent it?

Rachel Billington21:06

Yes, it was. Yes. Heinemann published all my first.

Rachel Billington21:09

five books or something like that, five or six books. And in fact, in those first years I wrote a lot of novels. I think the first three novels probably came out in in less years, or that sort of amount.

Presenter21:22

How many have there been so far?

Rachel Billington21:24

Eight, I think. If you include a children's book I I've written quite recently.

Presenter21:29

And you now have four children.

Rachel Billington21:29

Never have

Presenter21:31

Well it it's a good kind of writing to have taken up. It isn't like television where you have to keep on the move.

Rachel Billington21:36

No, that's what I always say. I mean, I as a defence in my role as the good mother, I say, well, at least I'm in the house. I was did once have a rather upsetting experience, however, when I was on some programme or other and talking on this kind of subject. And there happened to be a psychiatrist there, and I was saying, but of course, although I do do my work, I'm very lucky. Unlike people who go to the office, I can stay at home, and this means the children know I'm there, even if they can't disturb me. And the psychiatrist got really quite angry or hot and bothered and said to me, Did I realize I was giving them terrible deprivation complex? Because the fact I was there but not available was far, far worse for them than if I had left the house and was away clearly in an office. And that that upset me for a moment. Then I decided it was total nonsense.

Presenter22:21

Oh dear.

Presenter22:25

It's very hard to make a psychiatrist happy.

Rachel Billington22:27

Well, I thought children had to learn at some point that there are moments they can't have their parents, and they might as well learn sooner than later. And they say I think they appreciate it. They're they're very good about it now. And I don't work in their time, at the end of the day, when they come home from school, that's their time.

Presenter22:34

Yeah.

Presenter22:42

We got to record number five.

Rachel Billington22:44

Oh, it's well this is a sort of tribute to Radio Three, the music programmes in the morning, because I've always worked in the morning because that fits in with school times and with children. In fact, at the very beginning of my writing career my husband used to lock me into his study in the morning, so I got into the habit to make me write. Now he tries to kick me out to make me do other things like watering the garden. But anyway, so I've always worked in the morning.

Rachel Billington23:08

And my whole mood is is made for me by whatever is being played at nine o'clock after the nine o'clock news, which is when I start the children have gone for school. And I chose this music because I thought

Rachel Billington23:19

Uh well, for various reasons. One, it's a marvellous piece of music.

Rachel Billington23:23

Two, because it's so uplifting, it's so joyous, that it starts me off right for the day. I feel the work will go well. And then, as it happens, the two people who are playing, Alfred Brendel and Imogen Cooper I know Alfred Brendel and admire him very much, and Imogen Cooper I was actually at one of my convents with, and it is Mozart's Concerto for two pianos.

Presenter24:40

An excerpt from Mozart's Concerto for Two Pianos in E flat, Kirkel three six five, Alfred Brendel and Imogen Cooper at the Two Pianos, and the Academy of Saint Martin in the Fields, directed by Neville Mariner.

Presenter24:54

Now, these eight novels, most of which I've been dipping into, they're about your own world, about well-educated, well-travelled, mostly well-heeled youngish people. Fair.

Rachel Billington25:06

Yes, as long as you don't add a derogatory overtone. There is a sort of slight feeling in among the English, I notice.

Rachel Billington25:13

that if you're writing about middle class, well heeled people, you're not writing very seriously, unless, of course, you're writing about them set in the nineteenth century or possibly before the Second World War, which of course is nonsense. But I accept it as a fair description. In fact, the great tradition of novelists have almost always been among the

Presenter25:28

Yeah.

Speaker 225:28

Yeah.

Rachel Billington25:32

middle class educated people. And it's only a very new idea that only people who haven't had a proper education have hearts to suffer and heads to worry.

Presenter25:42

Oh yes, th th th there's quite a lot of suffering. Um each one seems based on a on a strong sexual situation. There's the young girl and the middle aged man, that was Lilax Out of the Deadland, and a promiscuous wife, that's called Beautiful.

Rachel Billington25:57

Yes, they're all about obsession in one form or another.

Presenter26:00

Good.

Rachel Billington26:01

Perhaps except for the very first one. But my second book was in fact um had a man as a central character, The Big Dipper, and that was about a man who it it becomes obsessed by food, not by sex. And then my third book, Lilot's Out of the Dead Land, was, as you say, about a young girl with a married man, but it's again very much about her obsession with him, which she knows is bad for her and she can't bear. I mean, I'm very interested in where you go when you become obsessed by something, whatever it might be. And I suppose, let's face it, sex is something people tend to get obsessed with rather a lot.

Presenter26:33

Do you write purely to entertain?

Presenter26:36

Is there a didactic feeling anywhere?

Rachel Billington26:38

I certainly think that there is no point in writing something if you can't communicate. I don't think I write purely to entertain. I don't think they're didactic. I think what I'm trying to do is make people feel.

Rachel Billington26:51

I'm trying to get

Rachel Billington26:52

cross emotion to people, to make them feel the emotion of other people. And I think this is what writing novels is about, to try and bring out from your reader.

Rachel Billington27:02

particular kind of emotions that maybe they haven't felt and that this sends them back to the world having grown a bit wiser. I think novels do this, and you learn a lot more from novels i in this way than than any amount of nonfiction. I think novels are very serious business, even those that appear to be and should be entertaining as well.

Presenter27:20

Have you one on the stocks at the moment, a new one?

Rachel Billington27:23

Uh well occasion of sin has only well it hasn't been out that long, no is the answer.

Presenter27:26

Can we see that?

Presenter27:28

Record number six.

Rachel Billington27:29

Oh well, this is actually linked in a way to the latest novel.

Rachel Billington27:34

Because I've always admired more than anything else the Russian novels.

Rachel Billington27:38

and I think to lump together them is rather ridiculous, but I do think they seem to have to me, reading them in English, obviously, one quality in common, which is a ability to go straight to the heart of the matter and say things that English will

Rachel Billington27:50

will shiver and shudder and make a comic joke of it or parody use satire anything. The Russians will say it straight out and I admire that tremendously. And in fact, uh Occasion of Sin was inspired by Anna Karenina. And therefore I couldn't resist having uh a piece of music on my island which would remind me of of that. And so Eugene O'Negin, Tchaikovsky's Eugene Oniegin, and I love the ara I've chosen.

Rachel Billington28:17

is um

Rachel Billington28:18

To me it's very fascinating. It's one of the great love songs.

Speaker 228:28

Monsieur was

Presenter28:31

Uh

Speaker 228:44

I'm not sure if I can do it.

Speaker 228:49

Yeah.

Presenter28:51

Yeah.

Presenter29:08

Tageriyaskriva Chinyasa

Speaker 329:17

Overlord

Presenter29:21

Nikolai Gyarov as Prince Gremin in Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin.

Presenter29:28

You do break away from novels occasionally and and write for radio and television.

Rachel Billington29:32

Yes, I do. I suppose this is rather casting back to my earlier interest in the stage and the visual medium. I started, in fact, writing plays for radio, which were performed and

Rachel Billington29:43

That rather naturally led me into the drama field and so then I s wrote well so far I've had performed a couple of plays for television, the one about a battered wife, Don't Be Silly, and then one about a widow that Dorothy Teotin did called Life After Death. I find writing for television very, very interesting.

Rachel Billington30:01

I write quite differently to I do, I think, for novels. I naturally find television seems to me to work very well as a kind of drawing room.

Rachel Billington30:08

form of drama in the sense that you can get very, very close to characters and you can really deal with human relationships very well indeed, and I find that very rewarding and exciting to do.

Presenter30:21

You said you start writing regularly after the nine o'clock news in the morning. What is your discipline after that? Do you do so many words or for so many hours?

Rachel Billington30:30

No, I don't particularly limit or

Rachel Billington30:33

To say limit myself to words would really sound cheerful, wouldn't it? But I don't force myself to turn out a particular amount, but I do keep a a time

Rachel Billington30:41

It's not quite as strict as it used to be. Now I know I'm going to do it, that I have this absolute compulsion. When I started, I had to.

Rachel Billington30:48

I'm not sure if I can do it.

Rachel Billington30:50

Now I would much rather be doing it than um

Rachel Billington30:53

buying four pounds of potatoes. So in that sense it's it's the thing I want to do.

Rachel Billington30:58

I tend to write till about lunch time, but sometimes I will write

Rachel Billington31:02

Through till three.

Rachel Billington31:04

So if I if if the children aren't back or I'm not doing anything.

Presenter31:08

And weekends off.

Rachel Billington31:09

And weekends off. I used to again work them, but I found that was terribly unfair on the children.

Rachel Billington31:14

And I'd hate them to scre I mean, there was a terrible moment, I remember, when I did learn a small lesson about the problems of being a working wife and a mother, when

Rachel Billington31:23

One day, I have an excellent uh girl who helps with the children, without whom I wouldn't be able to do anything at all.

Rachel Billington31:30

That's very important.

Rachel Billington31:32

But it was her day off, and so I happened to be at the doorway at lunch time when one of my children came home early. Because it was still sort of quite early, I had a potty in one hand and a dirty sheet in the other, and the door bell rang, and I opened the door, holding the potty in one hand and the sheet in the other, and this my daughter, who was then about seven, sort of took a step backward and said, a huge smile lighting up her face, and said, Oh, mummy, you look like a real mother.

Presenter32:01

Then I realized I did have some way to go, but still.

Rachel Billington32:02

Then I realized I did have some way to go, but still.

Presenter32:07

Right, let's have some more music.

Rachel Billington32:09

I've always really loved music, Mozart, C.P. Bach. I mean, the early music has tended to

Rachel Billington32:17

uplift me, make me feel wonderful. It took me rather a long time to move through to the later composers. So the moment when I suddenly started enjoying Wagner was a tremendous um

Rachel Billington32:27

Red letter Day, and I've now, I suppose, seen

Rachel Billington32:30

I'm still only a beginner. I've seen two cycles in the Opera House and much enjoyed the cycle on television.

Rachel Billington32:37

And so I felt I would want something on my island, something Wagnerian. Of course it's very difficult to choose a little piece, so in the end I felt

Rachel Billington32:45

Um just in case things didn't turn out too well there, I would have Siegfried's funeral march.

Presenter33:52

Siegfried's funeral march from Wagner's Goethe Dammerung

Presenter33:56

George Sheltie conducting the Vianna Philharmonic Orchestra. How are you going to look after yourself on this island, Rachel? Are you a practical person?

Rachel Billington34:04

Um uh no. I don't think so, but I am quite good at making the best out of bad situations.

Presenter34:12

Outdoor pursuits? Ever done any camping out?

Rachel Billington34:15

Yes, I used to camp out when I was about nineteen. My only problem is I'm very susceptible to mosquito bites. This would be my real worry. I have got the answer to that, which is to put a stocking over your head. It does make you look terrifying in the morning, but as there'd be no one to see me but me, I suppose that would be all right.

Presenter34:31

What about food? Done any fishing?

Rachel Billington34:33

Yes, once in Ireland I did some fishing.

Presenter34:36

Thanks a lot,

Rachel Billington34:37

Well, it was in very glamorous surroundings, and I didn't catch anything at all everybody else did, and we were given huge meals of grilled fish by about six servants, so um I've never had any rustic any experience of genuine fishing.

Presenter34:51

Would you try to get away?

Rachel Billington34:53

I think I would. I think I'd swim. I'm rather a strong swimmer. But I'm a great optimist, you see. I wouldn't swim out in the belief I was going to drop to the bottom in the end. I would actually swim out in the belief

Presenter35:00

In the end.

Rachel Billington35:03

that a boat would hove on over the horizon and pick me up.

Presenter35:07

I do hope you're right. And let's have your last record.

Rachel Billington35:11

My last one is most glorious bit of music. To me it says everything about people, about human nature. All I'm most interested in, the perfect surface, and yet with this terrible feeling of pathos underneath. And in fact, my husband used this bit of music, which is Rosamunde by Schubert, at the opening of a film he made of Ford Maddox Ford novel, The Good Soldier, which was on television fairly recently, in which in that book indeed everything is glittering at first on the surface, and gradually you discover the terrible passions going on underneath.

Presenter36:44

Part of Schubert's incidental music to Rosa Munde.

Presenter36:47

The Concert Gebar Orchestra of Amsterdam conducted by Bernard Heitink.

Presenter36:52

Well, there are your eight records. If you could only take one of them, which would it be?

Rachel Billington36:56

Well, I think as long as I had the whole record, I would have to take the piano music, the Mozart piano music, because I think on the other side it has Alfred Brendel playing solo.

Presenter37:05

Right. And one luxury to take with you, one treasured possession, one thing you would like to have, but no practical

Rachel Billington37:11

Do I always feel it must be no practical? Well, it depends how you define this. I mean, I write on these special pads. They're not luxury in the sense they're gold plated or otherwise, but they are shaped in a particular

Presenter37:15

Communicate.

Rachel Billington37:23

form and they have a particular kind of whiteness and a particular

Rachel Billington37:27

length and breadth and they're eighty pages in each pad and the holes are properly spaced. And without them I couldn't write a word at all. Is that what that

Presenter37:36

Perfectly right. Yes, you can have a lot of things.

Rachel Billington37:38

I can take that. You couldn't slip in a pen. I feel I wouldn't be too good at making charcoal.

Presenter37:42

Yes, you'd better have several pens. You have business as usual, you continue to write. And one book, The Bible and the Collected Works of Shakespeare, are already there when you arrive.

Rachel Billington37:42

So it's

Rachel Billington37:45

You are right.

Rachel Billington37:52

Well, what I would like to take, because I feel this would answer all kinds of

Rachel Billington37:57

problems for me is Anna Karenina, but I would like to take it in Russian.

Rachel Billington38:02

because it seems to me that I know the novel very well.

Rachel Billington38:06

and naturally wouldn't want a dictionary, as I'm only taking one book, and therefore I would be able to, gradually, as the years passed, make out what was being said in this novel, and so not only would I have this wonderful story book to read, but I'd also learn Russian in the process.

Rachel Billington38:22

So I felt there I would be combining two wonderful things in one book.

Presenter38:27

Splendid. We are tempted to give you a Russian grammar as well. We might bind that into the back. Or don't you want

Rachel Billington38:31

No, no, I don't want one, because then I would do it much too quickly. This is like sort of looking at the the Egyptian stones or something, so I'd have to work this out for myself. That would be part of it.

Presenter38:41

All right. And thank you, Rachel Billington, for letting us hear your Desert Island Discs.

Rachel Billington38:46

Thank you.

Presenter38:47

Goodbye everyone.

Speaker 339:13

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