A N Wilson

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

This week, our castaway is a young writer who's having considerable success, the novelist and biographer A. N. Wilson. Let's get this age thing sorted out first of all. You are indeed young enough to be included among the twenty young novelists recently celebrated by the Book Marketing Council, but you have in fact passed your 30th birthday. I have. I'm 32 years old. But I think that the age limit for the so-called young British novelists is 40. I didn't know that. So that I have eight years to go if they have another campaign. So you're young, but not very young. Not to last very young.

Presenter1:06

Why do you choose to call yourself by your initials instead of your Christian name, Andrew? Well, it sounds rather old-timey, rather like P. G. Woodhouse or T. S. Eliot.

Presenter1:16

One of those characters. The reason is that there are about a hundred and fifty people in the world who publish books or newspaper articles and who are also called Andrew Wilson.

Presenter1:25

Now, eight records for a desert island. Have you any musical skill? I can pick out a tune on a penny whistle or a recorder. Mm-hmm. I can't alas play the piano. You sing? I can sing in tune. I was in a choir when I was a boy.

Presenter1:38

Is music important to your life?

Presenter1:40

I'm rather a hundred best tunes sort of character. Music is important to me, but I don't know anything about it. That is to say, some music means a lot.

Presenter1:49

Do you like music while you're working?

Presenter1:53

Now what is the first disc you've chosen to play on your desert island? Well, I thought when I woke up in the morning on the desert island I'd feel very solitary and probably very melancholy, and I'd miss the sound of human voices.

Presenter2:06

And I'd above all perhaps miss London, so I thought I'd have a song which reminded me of London and I thought perhaps I'd choose, if I may be bold enough to say, a fellow author, singing a song about London, and that's Barbara Cutland, singing about a Nightingale who sang in Barclay Square.

Speaker 42:25

See outside down the streets of town Were paved with stars built for such a romantic affair

Speaker 42:38

And as we kissed and said.

Speaker 42:43

Good.

Speaker 42:45

A nightingale sang in Bartle Square

Presenter2:54

A tribute from one writer to another, Barbara Cartland singing A Nightingale Sang in Barclay Square.

Presenter3:00

What part of the country do you come from, Andrew? I was born in North Staffordshire. Come from a long line of potters.

Presenter3:07

But for most of my life, apart from times in boarding schools, I I grew up in Wales. Do you come from a large family, a lot of brothers or sisters? One brother and one sister.

Presenter3:19

What was your earliest ambition, do you remember?

Presenter3:22

Well, my very earliest ambition was to be an Australian Aborigine.

Presenter3:26

Now what went wrong with that? Well, I was the wrong colour and living in the wrong place, but I thought that would be delightfully free and easy. Yes. Then I went to stroll. I went to a convent strool as my very first strool, and I thought it would be rather nice to be a nun. I liked the clothes very much, and they all seemed very happy and sensible people. And something went wrong with that? Well, there again, you see, I'd uh

A N Wilson3:44

Well that

Presenter3:46

Got something wrong.

Presenter3:47

Where were you at prep school? In Wales or in North Derbyshire? Oh, neither. I was sent away when I was seven to a prep school in Malvern.

Presenter3:55

Well, I say perhaps concentration camp would be a better term, I think. Nice part of the country, though. I can never see it without dread.

Presenter4:03

And then to rugby. And then to rugby, which was lovely. It was like stopping, knotting your head against the brick wall. What were you best at at school?

Presenter4:10

Oh, I was so lazy at school I don't think I was particularly good at anything.

Presenter4:14

Painting. You still paint. By that stage I wanted to be a painter.

A N Wilson4:16

By that stage

Presenter4:18

Yes. And although everybody thinks rugby is a very gamesy place, largely because it gave its name to a football game.

Presenter4:26

In fact, they give you an awful lot of free time in the afternoons, and there was a wonderful art master there, drawing master, called Talbot Kelly, and I spent most of my afternoons for the first two or three years there with him. You are still very fond of learning how to draw.

A N Wilson4:39

Learning how to draw.

Presenter4:40

I don't have enough time for it now.

Presenter4:43

And then to New College, Oxford, to read what? Well, initially English literature. Then it occurred to me that everybody in the world has read Shakespeare and Jane Austen and Keats and people of that kidney.

Presenter4:54

So I thought perhaps I'd do something a bit clever and a bit different.

Presenter4:58

So I changed and did philology, Old Norse. I wanted to learn Gothic. I did Old English. Yes. Frantic mistake, of course.

Presenter5:08

Well, nevertheless, you won the Chancellor's Essay Prize for Old Norse, I presume. Oh no, no, no, no, no, that wasn't written in Old Norse, it was written in our dear old English language.

Presenter5:19

And after you came down from New College you had a rather indecisive period. Well, like everybody else, I didn't really know what I wanted to do. I joined an inn of court.

Presenter5:28

I joined the Inner Temple. You were going to be a lawyer, you thought? Well, I thought better to have a professional qualification of some kind. Terribly expensive, of course. I didn't have any money.

Speaker 45:37

Mm-hmm.

Presenter5:38

And then I became a shop assistant. What sort of shop? A book shop. Oh, splendid Very enjoyable. It sounds enjoyable. I thought it would be enjoyable, and it was an awful lot of money. It was twelve pounds a week, which seemed princely. And when I got married it was put up to thirteen pounds a week. But unfortunately they discovered that I was rather interested in books.

A N Wilson5:52

Yeah.

Presenter5:55

And of course if

Presenter5:57

One's interested in books. It's rather fatal to work in a bookshop because one doesn't sell any, one simply sits there reading them all day. Of course you got married, I believe, when you were only twenty one or thereabouts, so you had responsibilities. I had responsibilities, yes.

A N Wilson6:06

Twenty responsibilities.

Presenter6:10

Then you decided on theological studies. Had you decided to go from the law into the church? I spent a year reading theology at Oxford, yes. And you did well. You won a theological prize, I read. Do you read that, do you? Yes. Not accurate? Oh, perfectly accurate. Yes, I won the Ellerton Theological Prize. It's terribly easy, I must say, to win theological prizes, because pious Victorian clergymen left in their wills that enormous sums of money should be given out to the young at Oxford.

Presenter6:39

For writing theological essays, well, of course, very few people write them.

Presenter6:43

And I discovered it was a very good wheeze to put in for these prizes, which was it was the first time, I think it's since nineteen twenty six or something that anybody had put in for this prize. One was inevitably bound to win it. I'm sure you're being modest. How far did you get towards ordination? I spent about a year mulling it over and reading theology. And then what? Well, again, money.

Presenter7:05

You really have to be extremely rich to be a clergyman nowadays, because they don't pay you anything in the way of a grant while you're studying.

Presenter7:12

And so I left and went and became a schoolmaster. Where? Merchant Tailors in North London. What were you teaching?

A N Wilson7:17

Yeah.

Presenter7:19

Oh the inevitable

Presenter7:20

Uh Macbeth Row level, you know.

Presenter7:23

Great fun. Did you feel you had any dedicated feeling for teaching or was it just a stopgap? I think it was a stopgap. I tried to do it well. I don't think I succeeded.

Presenter7:34

I enjoyed it very much. The boys were very nice. The staff, other masters, even nicer. Rather nice to be out in that part of Metro Land. And all this, of course, invaluable material for later use in novels. I'm afraid so, yes. Let's have your second record.

Presenter7:50

Well, since you've only limited me to eight, I thought that I'd take an anthology record, with several composers on it.

Presenter7:58

And I'm very, very fond of the pianist Dino Lippati. I thought I'd take his

Presenter8:03

Last Concert

Presenter8:05

And shoop it.

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is a composer I'm very, very fond of.

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So I thought that I'd play

Presenter8:12

Schubert's impromptu in G flat major.

Presenter9:15

Dino Luppati, playing Schubert's impromptu in G flat major, opus ninety, number three.

Presenter9:22

Now from schoolmastering, back to Oxford to your old college, new college, as a lecturer. On what? Anglo-Saxon.

Presenter9:30

Had you a degree, by the way, I mean had you stayed at New College long enough? More or less I had a degree. It wasn't a terribly good one.

Presenter9:38

Then after New College to St Hughes? Well, no, I did the two jobs at the same time. We were doing Anglo Saxon at both colleges? The the Jails of St Hughes and the boys in those days of New College. Now it's the Jails of both.

A N Wilson9:44

Doing aggressive

Presenter9:51

Anglo Saxon.

Presenter9:52

When did you start writing your first novel? Oh, that's a very difficult question to answer, because I've always told myself stories in my head, and quite a lot of them I've scribbled down since the age of about five, I suppose. Yes. The first full length

Presenter10:06

Novella or novel. I suppose I was about fourteen when I read.

Presenter10:10

Wasn't very good. I ripped it up.

Presenter10:13

And then in later teens I wrote four or five.

Presenter10:16

And then I wrote my first published novel, The Sweets of Pimlico, oh, I should think in my early twenties. It was when I was teaching at Merchant Taylor's. I sat in Matron's room in front of the gas fire and

A N Wilson10:24

I said it

Presenter10:28

Scribbled on a pad. The sweets of Pimlico. Could one fairly call it a black comedy? It has been called a black comedy. Doesn't seem to me very comic and

A N Wilson10:36

Does your

Presenter10:38

I suppose it's not.

Presenter10:40

Altogether white, though. So perhaps it's just black rather than black comedy. Had you any knowledge of the of the literary world? Did you know how to go about selling a novel? Next to none. How many publishers did you send it to? Well, I sent it to a literary agent, because knowing that I had next to no knowledge at all.

Presenter10:57

I thought it was probably safer to leave it to the professionals.

Presenter11:00

Yeah, he managed to sell it somehow or another.

Presenter11:03

And you had excellent notices and you won a prize, the John Huelan Rees Memorial Prize. That wasn't a bad start.

Speaker 411:08

Yeah.

A N Wilson11:08

It was the

Presenter11:10

Not at all a bad start. Great surprise, very nice. Good. Well, we've got you started, so let's have another record. Well, as you say, I'm a Parson Monke in many ways, so that it's unthinkable I should go to the island without a hymn.

Presenter11:22

and since I shall be standing on the beach.

Presenter11:25

Longing for a ship to appear on the horizon, I think I shall be praying for those in peril on the sea.

Presenter12:29

Eternal Father Strong to Save by the Royal Naval College Chapel Choir.

Presenter12:35

Andrew, since The Sweets of Pimlico, how many novels have you published? Oh, let me see. How many have I published? One, two, three, four, uh five since then. Unguarded Hours was the next one. What goings on in a cathedral town? Your theological background already useful. Already useful, I think, yes. Perhaps not transformed enough, some would say.

Presenter12:54

Your hero Norman Shotover came to an unhappy end.

Presenter12:58

Witty malice, said the Daily Telegraph. I've got some quotes here. Witty malice, said the Daily Telegraph. Awful just awful, said The Guardian. I wasn't terribly surprised by either of those views.

A N Wilson13:06

Very well.

Presenter13:10

The author who thought it was awful just awful was a very considerable person. Ah. So that, um, although I wasn't surprised, I was a little abashed. Perhaps he was being a little superior. She, I think. She. Oh.

A N Wilson13:21

Period.

Presenter13:23

It'd be interesting to know who she was. Well, she's a famous fantasist, so I shan't say any more.

Presenter13:29

Now, despite his unhappy end, Norman Shotover was the leading character in your third novel, Kindly Light. Yes, because although it seems like an unhappy end, he flies off the tower of a cathedral in a hanged lider.

Presenter13:42

He's one of those antiheroes or accidental men who always drop up again in another place. After a Church of England life in the first novel, he has a Roman Catholic life in the second novel. There's more theological goings on. Slightly theological, yes.

Presenter13:58

Now we haven't heard from Norman again. Is he finished with, do you think, or will he pop up in further night? I don't quite know where he is at the moment. I suspect he's teaching in a rather crammy private school. I suspect he's going to surface sooner or later. I forget what happened to him at the end of Kindly Light.

A N Wilson14:07

Uh

Speaker 414:07

And

Presenter14:13

went down to Cornwall to uh teach in what he thought was a school, but all the boys had left and he found himself locked up in a Nissan hut teaching Greek to chimpanzees. Oh well there's scope for improvement there. There is scope I think. I think he probably escaped not long after the end of that book.

A N Wilson14:24

There is

A N Wilson14:26

The end

Presenter14:31

Record number four. Well, again, pursuing the idea that I wanted an anthology of various composers, and a great performer, I think that I wouldn't be happy unless I had some Pablo Trasals, and I've chosen him playing a delightful little piece by Haydn.

Presenter15:48

Pablo Carsel's playing part of Haydn's Duo No. Six in C for violin and viola, but arranged for the cello by Piatti.

Presenter15:57

Now, Andrew, so far you've never been exclusively a whole-time writer. You've had another job to do, schoolmastering or lecturing, or as at the moment, being a literary editor. So when do you write? I almost invariably write when I'm in bed. Does that mean late at night or early in the morning or weekends? Morning and weekends. I don't think I've ever written anything after about six o'clock in the evening. Yes. It's nearly always in the morning.

Presenter16:24

And now, as you say, because I am literally editor and spectator, it tends to be at weekends. And you write very fast? I write fast. It takes me a long time to think up the books. On a good Sunday in bed, how many words can you do? Seven thousand words. In a day?

Presenter16:39

Something of that sort.

Presenter16:40

But that's a good Sunday. Yeah, it certainly is a very good Sunday. Sabbath breaking. Yeah.

Presenter16:45

And you have two young daughters in the house to be kept quiet. Oh, they don't need keeping quiet. They're temperamentally extremely quiet. So you get the first draft of a novel in a very few weeks. Usually. How many draughts do you do, ordinarily? One and a half, usually. I mean some scenes work and more or less be left as they stand.

A N Wilson17:01

Yeah.

Presenter17:04

Others don't, and perhaps should have been reworked more than they were, particularly in the novels which are awful just awful.

A N Wilson17:08

Earth.

Presenter17:11

Only one and only according to one critic.

A N Wilson17:12

And only according to one Christian.

Presenter17:15

When you've produced all this scribble in bed, who types it? The earlier ones I type myself. The later ones, an admirable friend of mine called Mrs. Hewitt, types them. And then you work on the type script? Sometimes.

Presenter17:28

Your fourth novel, The Healing Art, had a more serious theme.

Presenter17:32

than the others. It did, yes. It was about two women recovering from cancer. And it won three prizes, the Somerset Morm Award, the Southern Arts Literature Prize and the Arts Council National Book Award.

Presenter17:46

And of course these prizes as well as great honour also bring money which is very satisfying. Extremely satisfying.

Presenter17:53

It's not very usual to get three awards with one book, is it? I think it has been done.

Presenter17:59

But I was very, very lucky, of course very lucky and I suspect that if the panels of judges in each individual case had known I was winning the other prize they wouldn't have given it to me.

A N Wilson18:02

And I

Presenter18:08

Now to make up perhaps for the seriousness of number four, your your fifth novel, Who Was Oswald Fish, was rambustuous and rather farcical. Well, no, I wouldn't say it was totally farcical, but um certainly has farcical elements in it.

Presenter18:23

It's not a very pleasant book, some somehow. It's the book of mine that I like the least. And it didn't win a prize. And it didn't win a prize, quite rightly.

Presenter18:32

On the other hand, I think in a way it's the cleverest novel I've ever written. It contains flashbacks to the nineteenth century.

Presenter18:40

Long passages of pastiche of a Victorian diary, which I am quite pleased with. It's the modern characters I don't think I did very well. Now, number six, the most recent, Wise Virgin. What's that about?

Presenter18:51

It's about a stroller.

Presenter18:53

Called Giles Fox, who has spent the last twenty years of his life editing.

Presenter18:57

a mediaeval manuscript which he discovered by chance, and he has a teenage daughter, and he has a rather swabsy, amiable research assistant helping him edit this text.

Presenter19:09

And he has a very unhappy emotional history. His first wife died in childbirth, and his second wife was run over by a taxi in the city road, and he's become bitter. He's also become blind in the course of doing all this close work with the manuscripts. Now this medieval manuscript that he's working on has cropped up before in one of your other books. It's mentioned in The Healing Art, yes. A treatise of Lofhefenlich, as they would have said. And it's in the Pottle Library. It's in the Pottle Library down at Selchester. Norman Shottover probably handled it without knowing it. Just as well that he didn't throw it on the fire or is it genuine, or is this a con? Is there a Pottle Library, and does this book exist?

A N Wilson19:46

Is it covered?

Presenter19:52

No, I made made up the pottle library and I made up the treatise.

Presenter19:56

Portal library is too good to be true.

Presenter19:58

Anyway, Wise Virgin, another award, the W. H. Smith Award, which brings you £4,000, which can't be bad. Lots of lovely lolly, yes.

Presenter20:08

They'll tap record number five.

A N Wilson20:08

It would have

Presenter20:09

Well

Presenter20:10

I'm very fond of Sir Walter Strott, and I wrote a book about Sir Walter Strott a few years ago.

Presenter20:16

And

Presenter20:17

In the course of writing that book

Presenter20:19

Rather strangely I got mixed up in the world of the theatre for the first time in my life. I expect it would be the last time.

Presenter20:26

Because they were restoring the beautiful opera house at Buxton in Derbyshire. And they were deciding to have.

Presenter20:33

A festival at Buxton.

Presenter20:35

Centred around the figure of Sir Walter Strott, the opera they chose was Lucia de Lamamour.

Presenter20:41

and there was a Sir Walter Strott exhibition. There were wonderful old films of Rob Roy and Ivanhoe in the local cinema, and they asked me if I would put on a dramatic presentation of Sir Walter Strott's life.

Presenter20:53

which I did, and Fulton Mackay.

Presenter20:57

who's better known to television viewers as mister Mackay in Porridge, came and portrayed Sir Walter Stroud absolutely brilliantly to the life. He he got the the wart

Presenter21:07

Shuffling

Presenter21:09

polio rhin foot. He got the what I imagined to be Sir Walter Strott's voice perfectly.

Presenter21:15

And it was very moving and very good. He performed it in the Opera House. And then the next night we heard Lucia de Lammamore, so I think I'd like an extract from Donitzett's Lucia de Lamamore to remind me of those happy weeks in Buxton.

Speaker 421:42

We still

A N Wilson21:43

Developers

Presenter22:28

An excerpt from Donizette is Lucia de la Momo, sung by Maria Callas and Tito Gobby.

Presenter22:35

Now, you write a novel very quickly, but the other half of your writing career, the biographies, and you just mentioned your first, The Laird of Abbotsford, about Walter Scott, must take much, much longer. Why were you fascinated by Scott? He's a rather neglected writer these days. He's a very neglected writer, and in many ways I think he's the most prolific and prodigious imagination in our language next to Shakespeare. Extraordinary range of characters in his novels, extraordinary range of voices.

Presenter23:06

I first really became addicted to him when I had pneumonia and I lay in bed all day.

Presenter23:12

not bothering to go out to public libraries, and simply read through the Waverley novels, which happened to be next to the bed. Then I became fascinated by his character. He's an extraordinarily brave and extraordinarily amiable man.

Presenter23:24

There's no record of anybody having disliked Sir Walter Scott. And then again I think, perhaps, as you might have guessed, since I chose Barbara Cartland to start the programme off, I'm very fascinated by prolific writers, people who can scribble out enormous quantities of fiction.

Presenter23:39

And I think that was another thing which fascinated me about Strotta.

Presenter23:43

Scribbled away because he needed the money. He did, yes, which is the reason that most people scribble away.

Presenter23:48

Not all, of course. Not all.

Presenter23:50

Now you won the John Llewellyn Rees Prize again for your Walter Scott biography. John Llewellyn Rees Prize with Barr, yes. Rather absurd. Very nice, I shouldn't say absurd. How long did it take to research it and write it? Well, it's not a very strollerly book, so that it wasn't really a matter of research. It was more my impressions of reading the complete works of Strott. I suppose the thing took about a year or eighteen months. And recently a biography of Milton. Yes, a very different kettle of fish. I've always admired Milton this side of idolatry.

Presenter24:23

I've always liked Paradise Lost very much.

Presenter24:26

I've always loved Comas and Lysidaes.

Presenter24:29

And it seems to me that no modern biography of Milton, or indeed book about Milton, has ever done him justice. They've always thought of him either as a rather dur left wing sort of character, which I think he probably wasn't,

Presenter24:40

or they have ignored his poetic genius at the expense of his political preoccupations.

Presenter24:45

And it seems to me also that nobody until I wrote that book has brought out what a funny writer Milton was, particularly in his prose works. Yes. So it was a book I felt I had to write to put the record straight. Once again again, you give a new evaluation, but not new material, really. No, working from printed sources.

A N Wilson25:00

No, it's not.

Presenter25:03

I looked at a few manuscripts of this or that, particularly of the extraordinary Castlehaven trial.

Presenter25:11

when um Lord Trussellhaven, as you know, was hanged for the most obscene practices, and his

Presenter25:19

cousin, am I right in saying, at the Earl of Bridgewater, then hired Milton to write The Master of Comas, which is a master which was sweetness and light, a master of purity and cleansing. And so I think when I went to my desert island I'd certainly want an extract from Comas.

A N Wilson25:25

Which is a master

Presenter25:35

Would you like to have that now? I think I should, yes.

Speaker 425:39

Here before.

Speaker 425:52

One half five years.

Speaker 425:55

I woke the faith, the patience and the

Speaker 426:05

Transcendent Hill to what I say.

Speaker 426:13

Is that not?

Speaker 426:24

Now King Victoria Star.

Speaker 426:27

Or sense for fungi and in time. Ha ha ha ha.

Presenter26:38

An excerpt from The Masque Comas by Milton, with music by Henry Lawes, a production by George Rylands, and we heard the voice of Robert Tyr.

Presenter26:48

Have you another biography on the stocks?

Presenter26:51

Yes, for the last couple of years I've done almost nothing except think about and read Hilaire Belloc.

Presenter26:58

Another neglected writer, really. Totally neglected. He wrote over a hundred and fifty books, almost none of which are in print except of course

Presenter27:07

The tortionary verse is for children.

Speaker 427:09

Mm-hmm.

Presenter27:10

Lord Lundy and Matilda and so on. What fascinates you about Belloc? Is there a lot to dig out, a lot to discover? There's a lot to discover, so that it was an exciting book to start.

Presenter27:20

There was a book written far too soon after his death by Bobby Spate, the actor, who was under the impression.

Presenter27:27

perfectly reasonably, since the family had given him this impression, that there was almost no manuscript material relating to Belloc's early life in fact, there was an enormous amount which I had to go to America to read through. And one discovers this wonderfully moving love story of Belloc, at the age of about nineteen or twenty, falling in love with an American girl.

Presenter27:46

and tracing her back across the Atlantic she'd been to Europe.

Presenter27:49

Walking

Presenter27:51

Across the United States, from Pennsylvania to San Francisco, and proposing to her and being turned down. Did he walk just because he liked walking, or because he hadn't got the money? He hadn't got any money.

Presenter28:03

What a fascinating story to dig up. So that's all rather exciting. And then of course I'm very um preoccupied and fascinated by his character as it emerges in later life.

Speaker 428:12

Yeah.

Presenter28:13

I think I like him principally because he was a crashing failure. He was a man of enormous genius in all kinds of areas. Twould have been a political genius, to have been a great poet. I think he was a very good poet.

Presenter28:25

Could have been a novelist.

Presenter28:27

Uh could have been

Presenter28:30

A very considerable journalist.

Presenter28:32

And in none of these areas did he quite

Presenter28:36

bring his genius to fruition. It fascinates me.

Presenter28:40

Now, we've mentioned only very briefly another of your occupations. For the past, what, two years, you've been literary editor of

Presenter28:47

The spectator, that distinguished weekly. That ancient weekly, yes. How ancient is it in fact? Eighteen twenty eight is when it started, and still going very strong. So certainly that enables you to keep up with the literary scene.

A N Wilson28:56

And there's nothing.

Presenter28:59

It does, because of course one sits in one's office at the spectator and hundreds and hundreds of books churn through every month from the publishers, so one sees more or less everything that's being published.

Presenter29:10

You've got another novel coming out, of course? I have got another novel, yes, coming in the autumn. From a different publisher, you've changed your publisher after he had done the first six. Is this a a wise thing to do, or is it a

Presenter29:24

I shall keep my fingers crossed. Um it's rather like one's first divorce, not that I've had that, thank heaven. Um one wonders if it was a good thing after one's done it, but I think it'll be a good thing.

Presenter29:35

Record number seven. Well, record number seven will be Hilaire Bellot.

Presenter29:40

He made some records.

Presenter29:42

He made a record in nineteen thirty two.

Presenter29:44

As you know, he was a poet, but many of his verses were songs, and although he on the whole detested music, because he hated having to sit still at concerts, even more having to sit still in church, he did like airs, I think is more or less what he would have called them, and he used to make up tunes to his own songs, and sing them either on board the Nona, his boat, or while he was stomping across France. And this extraordinary song, The Winged Horse, really in a way seems to be a kind of allegory of his own life.

A N Wilson30:18

It's ten years ago to day You turned me out at Lord, To cut my feet on flinty lands and stumble down the shores.

A N Wilson30:29

And I thought about the all-in-all, oh, more than I can tell.

A N Wilson30:33

I called the horn to ride upon, and I won him very well He had flame behind the ice of him, and wings within his side, And I ride, and I ride

Presenter30:46

Hilaire Bellock, singing his own song, The Winged Horse. Now, you're on this desert island. How could you look after yourself? And are you an open air man? Have you ever done any camping out?

Presenter30:57

When I was a boy Strout You were a boy scrout. I was a boy Strout. I was I'm afraid to say I was sacked from the boy Strout for having a quarrel with the Stroutmaster.

A N Wilson30:59

You let a b

A N Wilson31:01

Draw type is

A N Wilson31:04

Oh no.

Presenter31:07

But I did go on camp and quite enjoyed it. I like burnt sausages and latrines and all that sort of thing. I think I'd be all right looking after myself. I'm not sure what I'd eat on the desert island. I suppose it would be

A N Wilson31:14

I have not

Presenter31:18

Braised parrot and coconut sauce and things of that sort. Are you a good cook?

Presenter31:22

I can't.

Presenter31:24

Would you try to escape? Do you know anything about small boats navigation? Well, I'd be bored to distraction after about thirty six hours, so I think I probably would try to escape. And

Presenter31:34

Necessity is the mother of invention, so I'd probably try to make a a raft. I think it's pretty boring on a raft.

A N Wilson31:36

So I've

Presenter31:40

Pretty boring on the rough, but then one might who knows, one might come across the QE two just sailing across the horizon if one really knows. Let's have your last record.

A N Wilson31:46

Yeah.

Presenter31:49

Well, I think if I'm a being realistic, I'd probably fail to get away from the desert island, and therefore I'd be quite likely to die on it.

Presenter31:56

And if it's really a desert island, I suppose there won't be any clergyman to come and see me out of this world, so I'd rather like Elgar's clergyman in the dream of Gerontius to be singing in my ears as I kick the backeet.

Presenter33:10

An excerpt from Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius, Kim Borg is soloist with a number of choirs, the Halley Orchestra, and the conductor, Sir John Barbie Raleigh.

Presenter33:20

If you could take only one disc out of the age you've played as Andrew, which would it be? I think it would be that one. I think it would be the elder. And you're allowed to take one luxury with you. Terribly difficult. When I was a teenager somebody told me to never go away without a dinner jacket.

Presenter33:33

And I've almost automatically followed this advice since. Only given up the advice about five years ago, so almost certainly if I was marooned I'd find annoyingly that that's the luxury I would have taken. Otherwise I think I'd like to take my bed. Mm-hmm. Well, yes. I mean it's probably more real, more vital and more essential than dressing for dinner. I think so. It's sad but true. Sad but true. And so I think I'd like my bed and lots of blankets. And one book. Now you've had plenty of books through your hands, just one to take. One thing I'm not going to tell you or the pirates who throw me overboard is that the mattress of the bed will be stuffed with cigarettes and paper bags, but that's just a little secret between me and my conscience. Right. What was it you wanted? One book? One book. I believe the Bible is on the island. The Bible and the works of Shakespeare. Is it possible to swap?

A N Wilson33:53

I think so.

A N Wilson34:20

But I was

A N Wilson34:21

Is it possible?

Presenter34:23

the Holy Scriptures for Boswell's Life of Johnson. No, no. The the Bible and Shakespeare quite firmly are implanted on each island. Because much as I like going to church, I'm very troubled by much of the Bible, and I know most of it by heart anyway, so it seems rather a waste to have the Bible. It's there, I'm sorry.

Presenter34:42

Um

Presenter34:44

I couldn't really reread prose endlessly, so I'd have to take poetry, and I think I'd take an anthology and I think I'd take Palgrave's Guilden Treasury. It has almost all my favourite poems in it.

A N Wilson34:49

We enter

Presenter34:54

Paul Graves Golden Treasury, and thank you, A. N. Wilson, for letting us hear your Desert Island discs. Well, thank you very much for having me. Goodbye, everyone.

Speaker 335:28

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