Douglas Reeman

Douglas Reeman0:00

Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Disc's archive. For rights' reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen eighty three.

Douglas Reeman0:11

And the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:30

This week, our Castaway is a writer of sea stories. In fact, he's two writers of sea stories. Stay with me, and all will be explained. Douglas Riemann, how much does music mean in your life? I think it means uh a lot inasmuch that various pieces of music have acted as milestones of my life really and uh when I hear a certain piece of music it always reminds me of a place or an event or some part of my job in the past. Have you any skill at music? Do you play an instrument?

Presenter0:59

Well, when I was a boy, uh I suppose fifteen or sixteen I must admit I was a drummer in a jazz band. Yes, it was called Rim Shot Roy and His Rhythm Rascals, and we really knocked them cold. And you were Rimshot Roy, weren't you? No, no, I was just a drummer. Um the the chap who taught me was Rimshot Roy and he played about four different instruments.

Douglas Reeman1:13

Well no no

Presenter1:20

Where were you playing? Oh, we used to play at all the school dances and uh round surrey and so on. It was a real riot. Did you sing the vocals? Oh no, no, nothing like that. No, I just nearly deafened myself playing these two drums. That was quite good, actually. Do you play discs nowadays? Oh yes, yes. And uh I play tapes too when I'm driving. I like to be accompanied by music as much as possible. Do you play music when you're writing or researching? When it's the first chapter of a new book, I think it's the most agonising moment when you actually you've done all the research and you sit down and there's that awful bit of paper. You know, everybody says it, I know, but it is awful, page one, chapter one. And then I think to calm yourself you've got to play a piece of music and just try and relax the nerves.

Presenter2:05

Now, you're on this Desert Island. Did you find it hard to narrow your choice down to just eight discs? I thought it was dreadful. I had no idea it was going to be so difficult because I've been listening to Desert Island discs for a number of years and I thought, well, that's easy. But I've just done a tour across Australia and New Zealand, and every different town I was in, I had a different selection of eight records. Well, in the final list that you have with you, what's the first one? It's when I was a lad from HS Pinafore, and I chose it mainly because Gilbert and Sullivan's about the first music I remember as a boy. And the first radio programme I ever did anywhere, they played it as a sort of signature tune. They said, well, you seem to make more money now by not going to sea than you ever did when you were in the Navy. I grew so rich that I was sent by a pocket marrier into Parliament. I always voted at my party's call, and I never thought of thinking for myself at all.

Speaker 23:09

I thought so little they rewarded me by making me the ruler of the Queen's Lady. I thought so little they rewarded me by making him the ruler of the Queen's Lady.

Speaker 23:23

Uh

Presenter3:23

Now lambs one or whoever you may be if you want to rise to the top of the tree if your soul isn't fettered to an office stool be careful to be guided by this golden rule

Speaker 43:34

To be done about the sky.

Speaker 23:35

Stick close to your desks and never go to sea And you all baby rulers of the Queen's Navy Stick close to your desks and never go to sea And you all baby rulers of the Queen's Navy

Presenter3:54

George Baker's, the Right Honourable Sir Joseph Porter, KCB, in HMS Pinafore. What part of Britain do you come from, Douglas? Surrey. I was born in Thermstitton in in Surrey, and um I suppose I haven't moved very far from it ever since, except to go out of the country and come back again.

Presenter4:13

Yours was an army family, I believe? Yes, uh my father and grandfather and various uncles and so on. They're all in various regiments.

Presenter4:22

And it caused quite a stir when I once till I wanted to go in the navy. You became very fascinated very early by maritime matters. Hm. It's it's difficult to say exactly when it happened, but um it must have been when I was about eight or nine or ten or something like this. And I remember w walking into um Portsmouth dockyard with my father. This was in the good old days when they had navy weeks, none of this navy days business, and um there was the victory lying there, looking very splendid, and opposite her, or just a bit further along, was the old Iron Duke.

Presenter4:54

Jellicoe's flagship from Jutland. Every year I used to go from one to the other and I knew every inch of those two ships, and I think it really started there. Did you make models? Yes, I made models. In fact, my friend and I at school we ran quite a business. Um we used to make these things and and sail them on the pond or the recreation ground and then if they didn't capsize we used to sell them at quite a profit.

Presenter5:17

You were at school in Surrey, were you?

Speaker 45:17

Are you

Presenter5:20

Now after the war started

Presenter5:22

You joined the boys' training ship HMS Ganges. How old were you? Well, I was sixteen when I uh put my name down, as it were, and uh all the boys were about sixteen and seventeen.

Presenter5:33

And it was a very hard sort of place. It was it's situated in Shotley, just by um Harridge.

Presenter5:40

And the main point about Ganges was it had the enormous mast, very high, which boys were expected to climb over every morning.

Presenter5:48

And I have a terrible head for heights. It's a terrible thing to admit, but I did have a bad head. And um I was a class leader, so I used to stand at the top on the first fighting top of this mast, and when I saw the instructor lecturing the other boys, I used to pretend that I had gone round the difficult pieces and uh got away with it. Likewise, I was a very bad swimmer, and uh we had to swim two lengths of the bars in in a full duck uniform, and I knew I'd drown, so I got my best friend to swim it twice, and we weren't very well known then, and uh he said name, he said Riemann, I said okay. Otherwise, I suppose I'd still be floundering up and down there in a white duck suit. You had all the makings of an excellent sailor. So yes, yes. And then what? You graduated as a midshipman? Yes. I went to sea in a very old destroyer, what they used to call a V and W class destroyer, because they were built in the First World War. Every ship name began with a V or a W. And I went on the Atlantic convoys and North Sea convoys and up to North Russia and so on.

Speaker 46:28

Yeah.

Douglas Reeman6:33

Yeah.

Presenter6:52

Let's break at this point for your second record. What's that to be? Well, it's um Yehudi Menuin, the Beethoven Violin Concerto, mainly because I first saw him when he came to entertain the fleet, and he's been a great favourite of mine ever since. I see the man when I hear the music.

Presenter8:08

An excerpt from the Beethoven Violin Concerto in D Yehudi Manuin with the new Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Otto Klempre.

Presenter8:17

Well, there you were at the age of seventeen, serving in destroyers on convoy duties. North Atlantic and what, Murmansk? Yes, that's right. That was pretty tough, wasn't it?

Douglas Reeman8:26

That's

Presenter8:28

Yes, it was. The weather was the main enemy for most of the time, because in the summer it was daylight, more or less twenty-four hours a day, and the convoys had to go a long way up towards the ice, used to go up round Bear Island. So you were a long time within easy reach of aircraft, enemy aircraft. Whereas in the winter time, when the ice came down, then although you were closer to the enemy shore, at least you had the weather to protect you. Very, very heavy seas indeed, very rough. Terrible conditions, and of course, the British losses were awful in the convoys. I mean, you saw ships going down around you, did you? Yes. It was a terrible experience. Because all this is hindsight, of course, because I was very young, and it was a young man sort of war, and you were just grateful that you were you were still in one piece. I think that's the resilience of youth, as you might say. But the awful thing was to see the signal flying to close up the gaps in the convoys. Nobody stopped. It just closed up the gap and sailed on. It was rather distressing to see a a ship you'd known for some time just falling out of line and disappearing astern. Really being left to the wolves, as it were. Well, and try and take off survivors, but that was the job of

Douglas Reeman9:03

Yeah.

Presenter9:36

The last ship on the convoy escort, usually a very awful job to get alongside.

Presenter9:41

How long were you doing convoy duty? Oh, about six months. It it seemed longer at the time, but uh six months convoy work was quite hard. And then? Well, then I transferred to the love of my life. I went to uh motor torpedo boats and I spent the rest of the war serving in those. Which areas? Well, started off in uh Felixdow, which isn't more than a stone's throw from the Ganges, funnily enough, and then uh worked up and down the enemy coasts, the Dutch coast, Belgian coast and across to Denmark, and then back rounded to the Mediterranean. We followed the army along the North African coast and covered the invasion into Sicily and then into Italy.

Douglas Reeman10:20

Yeah.

Presenter10:21

And I believe you also covered as a third invasion, the Normandy invasion. Yes, that's right. When we cleared the Mediterranean we came round and regrouped, ready for Normandy. Let's have your third record. Well, I don't think I'd be tired of hearing the sea, so I thought we'd have uh a bit of Mendelssohn, Fingel's Cave.

Presenter11:37

The opening of Mendelssohn's Fingels Cave

Presenter11:41

The Scottish National Orchestra conducted by Alexander Gibson.

Presenter11:45

Now you saw plenty of action, Douglas, a lot of

Presenter11:49

Terrible things. Did you get off scot-free? Were you wounded at all? Yes, I was wounded twice, fairly badly. Once when a boat I was serving in sank and some depth charges exploded in the water. Where was this? This was in the North Sea. And we were making our way back, having been damaged, and eventually the boat started to sink. And the weather got worse, the wind got up, and we had to bail out. And then as the boat dived, the depth charges went off because they weren't set to safe. So I got quite knocked about when that happened. And then later, during the Normandy campaign, I was wounded then as well. Where did you end the war? In Germany, funnily enough. It's rather a fitting end to the conflict, because we were actually in Kiel when the war ended. And it was quite extraordinary experience because the enemy, as far as we were concerned, were pretty faceless. We hardly ever saw anybody at all. You saw a shadow or a flash of gunfire, or you might pick up a dead man out of the water. But otherwise, they were pretty much at a distance. And then suddenly to find yourself in a ruined harbour with ships lying bodily on the jetty, it was quite extraordinary to see a destroyer, a big two thousand tonne destroyer, lying on the jetty who had been blown out of the basin by an RAF bomb. And to see all these thousands and thousands of German sailors all standing there watching us, looking thoroughly miserable and dejected, and their hands in their pockets, just waiting for somebody to surrender to. And this is how it lasted in Germany. I was there and uh trying to put things right in the harbour and sinking ships in the Baltic which were full of gas and things like this, getting rid of it, and generally trying to put Kiel back together again with the army. And I shall always remember that because I didn't realise then, of course, but it stood me in very good stead when it came to writing about the enemy and I began to see them as people and not just as sort of inhuman savages. You had seen all this and I believe you were still only twenty-one. That's right, yes.

Douglas Reeman13:48

Yeah.

Presenter13:50

Did you mean to stay in the peacetime navy? Oh yes, I tried very hard. I thought that was the the life that I always wanted and I succeeded in doing an extra six months, but of course it was impossible. I was um RNVR and like thousands of others were being put on the beach and that was it. I couldn't stay in any longer. So what did you do? Well we had a man who came out from the Home Office to address all the young officers and people and he was trying to get recruits for the Metropolitan Police because there'd been no recruiting during the war and it was a sort of if we like you and you like us basis because uh you d had to do six months in uniform after training and then with any luck you could get into one of the branches like fingerprints or special branch or CID.

Presenter14:33

And so I did that. I uh I actually walked the beat in the east end of London. Well then again you were where a lot of the action was. Oh yes, yes, it was the good old east end, of course. It's it's been spoilt a bit now by all the massive building plans. But in those days you still could walk the beat in comparative safety. You might get involved in a few fights and things like this, but people were always very friendly to the police in those days. When the sergeant wasn't looking you'd have a packet of whelks or something off one of the stalls and a pint of Guinness. It was a very nice life for a single man.

Speaker 214:38

Why then

Presenter15:04

You finished up in the CID? Yes, yes. That was still in the East End and uh a lot of policemen that I know who some of them who are still in it who are quite senior now they of course maintain that it was the police who taught me how to write because if it's one thing uh the police can teach you it's how to put a report together so that you get um

Douglas Reeman15:06

Yeah.

Presenter15:25

The date, the time and the place and I saw whatever it is was happening in the first line of your report. Good factual writing. Absolutely. Yes, no bones.

Douglas Reeman15:31

Good fact.

Douglas Reeman15:33

Yeah.

Douglas Reeman15:34

He has no boats.

Presenter15:36

Did you intend to make your career as a policeman? No, I I didn't know what I I wanted to be. It just seemed a good thing to do at the time. I just couldn't face doing any more courses. I had the chance of going to university like everybody else did after the war. I didn't want to do that. I was in the Naval Reserve and I also used to do a lot of sailing at weekends and I delivered yachts for people and things that if I had a weekend off, I used to have a little advertisement in the paper and uh I used to deliver yachts and try and make a a few um pounds on the side that way. Why did you leave the police?

Presenter16:10

Well, the war came, let's say the Korean war, and they wanted more reserve officers back again, so I thought, well, here's another chance of getting back into the navy. So I went back in into naval uniform again, but for a very short while, and we certainly didn't go to Korea.

Presenter16:24

But after that and the complete change, I I just couldn't face going back into the police again. Record number four. Well, record number four is Malena Dietrich singing um Lilli Malena, because to me that sums up those last terrible months in Germany when you you were out at night trying to find a little warmth and happiness in a cafe. And I remember a German singer looking terribly sad, sitting on my lap in this cafe where we were all having a drink and and singing this rather lilting sort of tune which seemed to sum up uh

Presenter16:58

The attitude that prevailed between the British and the Germans, that is to say, we who'd had to do the fighting, and it sort of summed it all up.

Speaker 417:06

My dear Kazan, for them gossentor.

Speaker 417:12

Titan la tern steit sinor da faux.

Speaker 417:17

Double and be once we dazzle

Speaker 417:21

My dear Latino.

Speaker 417:24

Bohnbierstein, the Einstein Lille Molly.

Douglas Reeman17:29

Emma?

Speaker 417:31

The I Slily Marie.

Presenter17:36

Lille Marlena sung by Marlena Dietrich.

Presenter17:40

Douglas, you had seen a lot of life, a lot of adventure. When did it occur to you that you had some first class material to write about?

Presenter17:48

Well, the idea was put into my head by a girl I met in in Jersey. I was sailing at the time and put into Jersey and I met this girl who later became my wife and uh I suppose I've been trying to impress her, you know, telling her some tall stories or something like this. And eventually she said, Well, you really ought to put this down on paper.

Presenter18:08

And so I I gave the usual answer, well I would if I had a typewriter and all this sort of thing. And so she bought me a typewriter, she bought it for four pounds. It was it was it was so pre-war it was practically extinct. This was in Jersey? No, we were back in England by this time, so she gave me this typewriter, which incidentally we still have because although it's past use. My wife still types the chapter heading or something like that, just for luck, because we've gone through about eight typewriters since then, but this was the lucky one. And I wrote two short stories in 1957 and then The Book, which was the first book. Did you sell those short stories? Yes, the first one went like a flash for three pounds, or three guineas, I think it was. And the second one was rejected by everybody, and that was quite an achievement because there were a lot of magazines in those days. And so I sent it to a magazine which has now gone bust called the Wide World magazine, where every story was supposed to be true, you see. And I told them my story was true, so they published it, and I got ten guineas. And I was a bit worried, because there was a little piece in the magazine which says this story was checked by senior officers who were present at the time and it's absolutely true. And of course, then I began to realise that everything else in the magazine was probably a lie as well. So you wrote your first full-length book. Was anyone advising you about what the length ought to be and which publisher to send it to? No, that was the wonderful thing about it. It was a marvellous book because we didn't know anything about writing. And my wife used to type bits for me. And when a character appeared in the story, that's all that happened. We just said, oh, the tall man with a moustache or something, page seven, he appears. But there were no notes. And we just ambled along, not really knowing how long it should be, and it just happened. What was it about that? Well, it was about my sort of war, really. It was about motor torpedo bits, about the adventures of a young man in the English Channel during the Second World War, and a few of the characters he knocks around with. In fact, it's very much my sort of story. Were you doing this full time, or were you doing a job by day? Oh, I was doing another job by then. I was a children's welfare officer for the London County Council, and that turned out to be very useful. Met a lot of people, banged a lot of doors, had a lot of

Douglas Reeman20:21

Yeah.

Presenter20:23

Rude answers occasionally, but um it it was all worthwhile.

Presenter20:30

Was it bought by the first publisher you sent it to? Yes, strange enough. And uh it was dreadful because it was three months before I had a reply from the publisher and having no experience I wasn't sure that was good or not. I didn't like to ring them up and kisses, oh the hell with him, send it straight back again. Anyway, three months uh passed and eventually he sent for me and he said, Oh, we quite like it. You know, he wasn't sort of over the moon about it, he said, We quite like it, and we'd like to give you a contract. What are you doing now? and I said, Well, nothing. That's it, that's the book.

Presenter21:00

And so he gave me a contract and I suddenly found I was a writer. A full-time writer. Hm, yes. After the first one was published, yes.

Douglas Reeman21:04

Right.

Presenter21:07

Good.

Presenter21:08

Another record. Well, when the first book was published we lived aboard our boat. We got married and we lived on a very nice boat and we had a cat. His name was Benbo and he was black and white and he was quite splendid. And when uh I heard T. S. Eliot reading from his um book of practical cats I thought the song of the jellicals had just suited him down to the ground.

Presenter21:29

Yeah.

Speaker 221:29

Jellicle cats come out to night, Jellicle cats, come one, come all The Jellicle moon is shining bright, Jellicles come to the Jellicle Ball

Speaker 221:40

Jellical cats are black and white, Jellical cats are rather small, Jellical cats are merry and bright.

Speaker 221:47

And pleasant to hear when they cut a wall. Jellical cats have cheerful faces. Jellical cats have bright black eyes.

Speaker 221:55

They liked to practise their airs and graces.

Speaker 221:58

And wait for the jellical moon to rise.

Presenter22:01

The Song of the Jellicles from his Book of Practical Cats read by T. S. Elliott.

Presenter22:07

Now, the books you were writing were sea stories of the First and Second World War. That's right, yes, yes.

Speaker 422:12

That's right.

Douglas Reeman22:12

Yeah.

Presenter22:13

Now you could write and sell one of these every year.

Presenter22:16

And then it was suggested that you also undertook to write a different sort of sea story. Yes, my American um publisher it was who put the idea because he knew that I was very, very keen on the eighteenth, nineteenth century sailing era. I'd always loved it and um everything about it. I always regarded the square rigger ship as one of the most beautiful creations of man, even though it was rather a hard way of proving it. But um he gave me the opportunity and my British publishers fell in line with it and so

Presenter22:47

I had to have a pseudonym. I chose Alexander Kent as the pseudonym because I wanted to keep the two styles of writing absolutely separate. And it was ten years after I'd begun writing my Riemann books, and so I thought that I keep try and change the style slightly. Also, otherwise you just end up with a modern man in sort of fancy dress, and I wanted to keep him a man of his times. In fact, when I'm writing about the central character who's called Richard Belytho,

Presenter23:15

I think that it's happening now. For instance, at the moment I'm writing about eighteen hundred and two. When I'm looking up news items, I s ask myself, well, what's happening now, not what's happening then. What were the dates of Richard Bolitho's naval career?

Presenter23:30

Well, he was born in seventeen fifty six and he dies in eighteen fifteen and he goes to sea at the age of twelve, like most uh young officers of that period. And we follow his career through various ships and various campaigns. All the campaigns in the stories are real. I put my ships and characters in front of a non-fiction backcloth, if you like. And just to make it more difficult, you don't write these books in sequence? No, well, I have been nearly tripped up once or twice. I like to jump about a bit because otherwise I think it would get rather dull, keep on repeating things all the time.

Presenter24:06

And so you get an instance where a character will appear, and I'll ask Belliatho about something which has happened in a previous ship. Well, of course you have to remember that perhaps that previous ship hasn't appeared yet, because you haven't written the book. Oh dear, yes. This must indeed keep your wits about you.

Douglas Reeman24:19

Uh

Speaker 424:19

Oh dear.

Douglas Reeman24:19

Yeah.

Speaker 424:23

Oh, yes.

Presenter24:25

So nowadays you write one Douglas Riemann book and one Alexander Kent book every year? Yes, I try it.

Speaker 424:30

Yeah.

Presenter24:32

And it's quite a busy life really. And my wife and I do a lot of travelling for research, so that we're never really not working. And it's I I think we both enjoy it that way. How long did you live on your boat? Hm, uh about four years, I think it was. And we kept her for a little while afterwards, but uh it got rather difficult looking after her. She's still going strong. Where did you take her? Well, we used to take her to the continent in the summer or the west country and and then in the winter we used to come up on the Thames and tie up in the winter. And uh that was when I was writing one book a year and I used to write the book in the winter usually.

Douglas Reeman24:49

To school.

Presenter25:04

Well now, with two books a year, you don't get time for that sort of larking about. No, that's absolutely true. I don't even own a boat now, it's just terrible.

Presenter25:13

Record number six we've got to. Well, this really relates to um the Alexander Kent piece. It's William Boyce Symphony No. One. It's from the music in London, sixteen seventy to seventeen seventy, and I discovered that this is the sort of music which Richard Belitho would have appreciated, although he detests London for the most part. It's the sort of music he would have heard when he came to London to the Admiralty or something of that sort.

Presenter26:39

The opening of Boyce's first symphony in B flat major, the English Chamber Orchestra conducted by Emmanuel Hurwitz.

Presenter26:47

The fascinating part of writing your books must be the research, especially the period research in the eighteenth century. Yes, it is. To start with, I thought that I knew it all, of course, like most people do, I suppose, but the more you dig into it, the more you discover. For instance, you make a lot of friends that you might not ever see, people who write to you about it. And the owner of a very well-known wine shop in St James's wrote to me and asked me if he could help with one of these Belitho stories. And when I said, well, I want him to take some wine with him to the East Indies in the next book, he actually got out the order books to show me what the young captains are ordering those days, the actual books of the period. And then he shattered me by saying, well, which route is he going by? And I said, well, I haven't decided yet. And he said, well, if they go round Cape Horn, they take ordinary red wine because it gets thrown about such a lot. If they go round the Cape of Good Hope, the ship is on the same tack for such a long time, they take hock, so it can lie in the bilges and get nice and cool. It's a real gem, that was. Oh, that's fascinating. And of course, you're using places like the Greenwich Museum and Portsmouth and Plymouth and whatever. Yes, and I am lucky, of course, as Alexander Kent. I'm a governor of the frigate for Droyant, which lies in Portsmouth Harbour, the oldest British warship still afloat. And of course, um I look on it as an author with his own frigate and I can wander around between decks and pick up the atmosphere very easily.

Douglas Reeman27:53

And

Presenter28:17

In fact, you have a collection of naval relics in your house. Yes, this is true. We're having the house redecorated at the moment, which is just as well, because it's beginning to look a bit like a museum. And we have swords and snuff boxes and charts and cannon and all sorts of things. And of course, the centrepiece is the Emma, which is the chair which Lady Hamilton gave to Nelson in 1802 and which was on board the victory. Well, that's a wonderful thing to have. Where did you find that? Well, it was for sale in London at one of the big sales, and a man who works for the National Maritime Museum, he put me on to it. I wouldn't have known about it otherwise. So that's where your friends come in, you see. So I bid for it at vast expense, and now it stands beautifully in the house. It gives you quite a feeling when you sit in it. I'm sure.

Presenter29:07

Adding to your workload, you're starting a series of a third kind of sea story. Yes, this is um another family saga and it's about a Royal Marine family. It starts about eighteen fifty when sail changed over to steam. It's quite an interesting period actually and uh takes in the West African campaigns and the Crimea.

Presenter29:29

That's in the first book. And then uh

Presenter29:32

It'll g go on through other campaigns, uh China and the First World War and so on. It's very, very interesting to do because it's really you see the changing face of our own society with each book. It's it's it's quite fun. You're writing this series under the name Douglas Riemann?

Douglas Reeman29:44

Yeah.

Presenter29:46

Yes, because I I'm working on the assumption that I shall still be alive when the last one is done, so that um well, it'll be a a fairly up to date one and will fit in very well with the other Riemann books. So this means you're going to write three a year from now on, does it? Well, it it rather looks that way. Um maybe sort of two and a half, I think.

Presenter30:06

How many volumes have you written altogether since, what, 1957 was it, or fifty-eight? Well, fifty-eight the first time it was published. I I've I've written um I think it's uh thirty-four have been published, uh and then one non-fiction on top of that. What was that? That was a book called Against the Sea and it was a series of um independent battles with the sea. Uh

Presenter30:28

challenges like uh what you say, Round the World Yachtsman or Bly's Lonely Boat Ride after the Mutiny and The First Submariner and things of this sort. I thought it was going to be a very easy book to do when I started it and um in actual fact because each chapter was a book all of its own that took me ages. Never got over it.

Presenter30:47

Right, so going back that makes how many volumes? Well, thirty-five altogether. And how many copies have you sold throughout the world? Have you any idea? Well, in English, uh I I think it's fifteen million. Fifteen million? Hm, yes. That's a lot of books. That's a good many miles of shelves, I should think. That's what I think it must be. And they're in foreign languages as well. Oh, yes. Mind you, not every country publishes both of us. For instance, the Germans don't publish Riemann for some reason. Because they might be slightly anti-German. Yes. But on the other hand, the French do publish Kent, which I can't understand. Those are anti-French. But they're a long way back. But the Japanese and the the one or two on the other side of the Iron Curtain, so-called, and uh about eighteen languages altogether, which is very gratifying.

Douglas Reeman30:59

Yeah.

Speaker 430:59

Uh

Douglas Reeman31:05

And there

Douglas Reeman31:14

And it might be

Douglas Reeman31:16

Yeah.

Presenter31:34

We've got to record number seven. Well, this is another Alexander Kent favourite, I'm afraid. It's the Old Superb, sung by Frederick Harvey, because the Old Superb, to me, sums up the splendid wooden ships of the 18th century. The fact that we tend to take them a bit for granted today, but as I was saying to someone a little while ago, the victory was 41 years old when she fought at Trafalgar. Really? Yes. And the superb, I wrote a book based on the superb, and she was a wonderful ship. And she never went into port, and she had an incredibly encrusted, rotten bottom, and she could never keep up with the fleet. But she, as it says in the song, she sailed when others slept. The wind was rising easterly, the morning sky was blue. The straits before us opened wide and free. We looked towards the Admiral where high the Peter flew, and all our hearts were dancing like the sea. The French are gone to Martinique with fallen twenty sail. The old superb is old and foul and slow. But the French are gone to Martinique and Nelson's on the trail. And where he goes, the old superb must go.

Presenter32:45

The Old Superb sung by Frederick Harvey.

Presenter32:49

Now, Douglas, doubtless you learned a lot of survival drill in the Royal Navy.

Presenter32:54

Are there any desert island sequences in your novels? Yes, yes, there are one or two. Um they they're usually rather more romantic than I suspect the one is you've earmarked for me, but uh they're usually people on these islands, or they pop up from time to time. Not on ours, I'm afraid. No, no, I I had a feeling it was going to be like that. Could you rig up a shelter? Could you look after yourself? And live off the land?

Douglas Reeman33:09

Not a

Douglas Reeman33:11

Of net

Douglas Reeman33:17

And look off.

Presenter33:19

Um well, uh yes, I I'd have a a good go at it, I think. But I think my my main task would be to get off the island as quickly as possible.

Douglas Reeman33:26

Awesome.

Presenter33:28

Well, I should try and build a boat, I think. I could do that, I think, with a bit of help and a few tools and the tools you'd make yourself.

Douglas Reeman33:33

No

Presenter33:36

Having made some kind of craft, something that would float at any rate, could you navigate it in the right direction without any instruments? Yes, yes, I could. But then again, um your island sounds it might be a very long way away. I think I'd have to depend on passing steamships and wave to them or something like this. Yes, a slight air of caution has crept in. Yes, yes, it has, yes. What's your last record? It's um Pierginth Sweet Morning, because I think that um

Douglas Reeman33:58

This

Presenter34:07

The worst part for me would be waking up in the morning

Presenter34:10

And I think you'd have to be led into it very, very gently on an island. When you wake up and you suddenly realize where you are, you're not in a hotel room or whatever. You're there and you're absolutely dependent on your own resources. So very, very gently.

Presenter35:23

A gentle version of Morning from Grieg's Piergint Suite to Wake Up To on a Desert Island, played by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Sir Thomas Beacham. If you could take only one disc out of the eight you've played us, which would it be? I think it would be the um the song of the jellicles actually, with T. S. Eliot reading that piece, because I don't think I would miss the music, but I think I would miss the sound of a human voice more than anything else. And you're allowed one luxury, any one object of no practical use? I've always wanted to learn how to grow orchids, and I never actually got round to it. Now would it be possible to have an orchid-growing kit, is there such a thing? Oh, yes, of course. If there is such a thing, you shall have it, and an instruction book, and whatever. Well, that's what I would take. Now, you're allowed one book anyway, apart from your orchid-growing book.

Presenter36:16

One book apart from the Bible, Shakespeare, and Orchid Growing for Beginners. Well, it sounds a bit corny, but I would take the Admiralty Seamanship Manual because it would teach me how to build my boat and how to sail away back to civilization. Very sensible choice. And thank you, Douglas Riemann and Alexander Kent, for letting us hear your Desert Island Discs. Thank you from both of us. Goodbye, everyone.

Douglas Reeman37:03

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