Ian Richardson

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

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

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And the presenter was Roy Plumley.

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On our desert island this week is the actor Ian Richardson.

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Ian, could you face up to isolation? Not very well, I'm afraid. I don't operate at all well on my own.

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and I think I'd probably have a great deal of trouble.

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Adjusting to my own loneliness. How much do you think eight records would help?

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The ones I've chosen would help enormously, which is precisely why I've chosen them. I play the piano, and um I use the piano exclusively for my own amusement. I don't ask people to listen to it because that would embarrass me, and indeed I don't play at all well if I'm aware that people are listening. I use it also to unwind after a stage play or, more particularly uh now, uh a long stint at the studios, television or film.

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Did you find it hard to narrow your choice down to just eight, that miserable limit you were setting? Yes, extremely hard. In fact, um I'm grateful for the warning being in good time that you were going to honor me by inviting me to be here, because it took a long time to narrow it down. And my choice actually doesn't necessarily represent

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The music that I most love.

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On the contrary, it represents music that I am deeply fond of, but which provokes in me a series of thoughts, emotions, states of mind.

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That I think would probably be helpful and conducive to.

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Keeping me sane on the desert island. What's the first one? Well,

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There was a splendid lady, a resident of Stratford upon Avon, where it all kind of began for me. She used to give singing lessons.

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And of course many of the actors took advantage of her services. Her name was Dan Jokes.

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And she provided in one hour.

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Half an hour of fascinating gossip.

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and another half hour of bellowing away at her side by a Beckstein.

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Increasing one's vocal range and improving and uh controlling one's diaphragm.

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and she commonly chose a particular operatic area to suit one's needs, and the piece chosen for me

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It was Nasun Dorma.

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From Turundot.

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I must have made an appalling hash of it.

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But I've never lost my affection for the aria, especially when it sung with effortless beauty.

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By the late U C Bierling.

Ian Richardson3:03

Ooh boy

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Uh

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Jussi Bjolling singing Nesum Dorma from Turendott.

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You're a Scot, of course? Yes. From where? Edinburgh.

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But I left Edinburgh.

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as most young men did at my generation when I was eighteen, to go into the forces. Was there any background of the arts in your family? Absolutely none at all, and this presented

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problems for my parents, because they must have been aware that I was emotionally in search.

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Of something.

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And because there was no theatre background, the connection

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It was not possible for them.

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and in consequence, at school, where a little bit of interest was taken,

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Someone wrote to my mother and said, We think your son possibly is musically inclined and I was sent to music lessons, hence my ability to play th the piano, but it was quite obvious quite soon that I wasn't in the concert pianist class and I never would be, so they decided to try art, and uh my first essay into that field of

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artistic endeavor was

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indicative of total lack of comprehension of it.

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However, the answer came in a very curious way. It was the custom each year.

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for the score to hold an armistice service in memory of the men from both world wars.

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And I was asked on this one occasion

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To stand up in church and recite the Lawrence Spignon poem, They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old, age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn At the going down of the sun, and at the morning we shall remember them.

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And

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Normally this was read from the lectern, and I decided, without any foresight or any knowledge of the art of performing at all, that it might help if I memorized it.

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And so I did memorize it. I stood away from the lecture so that I could be clearly seen in my grey flannel shorts and white shirt and tie.

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And halfway through what is after all a very short piece, I became aware

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of not just a silence in the church, but uh

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A silence that was filled with

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Chemistry, if you like.

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And I'm ashamed to say that I felt at the same time a surge inside me of of power, I suppose it was. I could only have been about eleven or twelve.

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And

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At the end of it there was an even more prolonged silence.

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as I moved back to my place and said,

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As a result of this experience, one of my teachers wrote to my mother and said, We've been making a serious mistake all this time. Mrs. Richardson, your son is an actor.

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That slapped my poor mother straight between the eyes, and she didn't quite know what to do about it. She, of course, was on my side, as all mothers tend to be with their sons, and she was worried about the reaction of my father.

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And um I think probably with a little bit of justification. But before you could do anything about going onto the stage you had to do your national service. Well yes, th you could do it two ways. Um you could either go to college or university first and then do your national service or vice versa. But either way, national service was compulsory and I decided to get it out of the way first.

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Uh

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Well now, before we talk about your army service, let's have your second record. What's that? Well, we've been talking about my Scottish background and

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It's very important, uh particularly in my profession.

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to have a kind of emotional bolt hole.

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somewhere to take stock of what one is and where one comes from.

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And the Erskine Lovelot is the kind of music

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to induce in me a gentle state of self examination.

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And particularly on this recording, which I'd like to have as sung by the Glasgow Warfields Choir.

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Uh

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Uh

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Yeah.

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The Iriske Love Lylt by the Glasgow Orpheus Choir.

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So into the army. What happened to you there? They didn't know what to do with me.

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I was a completely, utterly, hopeless soldier.

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and made the classic mistakes of all time, like dropping my rifle on some one else's boot, which he'd spent all night before polishing, whereupon he turned round and laid me out flat, unconscious on the ground, with a right hook to my jaw, not because I'd hurt his boot, but because I'd destroyed the sheen of the toe cap.

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When I came to, the sergeant said to me, I'm glad you've woken up, cause you're on a charge. That amusing little tale is indicative of the hopelessness of my army abilities. If you like, it was kind of like playing a not very good part in a very long drama.

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That amusing little

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And I applied for an overseas posting, hoping that that might improve it.

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and I was sent to Libya

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Which was at that time in the occupation of the British, to Benghazi in particular. And there they put me in an office.

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As a secretary to one of the officers in charge of the special investigation branch of the military police. Interesting. Yes, it was, insofar as I've been able to draw on it later on.

Ian Richardson9:40

Interesting.

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when, you know, Detective Rose came my way. But anyway, what happened on one ra important occasion uh was that the the unit all went off on one of those hopelessly stupid exercises into the desert, just to sort of play at Lawrence, I suppose, uh leaving me kind of in charge. And I I went to the mess and met

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The man who was the chief announcer was the Forces Broadcasting Service. This was a unit of broadcasting studios which stretched across all the the countries occupied by the British after the war. And he said, Would would you like to come along and read a book at bedtime for us? The stories of Edgar Allan Poe would suit that boring sonorous voice of yours. So I went along and I read one. It was really rather successful, and I went on to read a series of short stories. And I loved every minute of it. Coincidental with this, one of the announcers, of which there were five in all, continuity announcers, discovered that his health was imperilled by the climate and he had to be posted elsewhere. And this left a vacancy. Well, the Forces Broadcasting Service was supposed to be filled by members of the Armed Forces anyway, although these people there were all civilians. And there was a document in existence at that time whereby, if it was filled in by the right people and signed on the right places, could get me secunded from a military unit to the broadcasting unit. To cut a long story short, that's precisely what happened. It happened all the quicker because the commanding officer was away in the desert being Lawrence.

Ian Richardson11:03

Good.

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How long were you in uniform? I had to stay in the army for three years, six months in all, because in order to get into this broadcasting unit,

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They double-crossed me into signing on for a short service. And then drama school. I came home intending to try and get into Rada. My mother, who hadn't seen me for three years, threw her hands in horror into the air and said, Oh, son, son, please try and find somewhere a wee bit closer to home. We haven't seen you for three years. And I realized that it was thoughtless and and insensitive of me to think of turning on my heel and going away again.

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And I found a drama school not long since begun in Glasgow called the Glasgow Academy of Dramatic Art. There I went for three years and had a very happy time. You were a star student, of course. You won a gold medal. Well, my father said to me, If I'm going to back you in this enterprise, tell me what is there in it at the end for you. And I said, Well, I mean, hopefully employment. He said, No, there must be some awards of some kind. And I said, Well, there's a gold medal, a silver medal, and various sundry prizes. Get the gold medal and I'll back you up. And I had it sort of hanging over me. I didn't think my father realized just how seriously it hung over me. However,

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I did get the gold medal. What was your first professional job? I was given a job before the third and final year came to an end. One of the judges on the panel of judges who came for the diploma performances was Bernard Hepton, the actor who at that time was artistic director for the Birmingham Repertory Theatre. And he had lost what they called in those days his character juvenile. The actor he lost was an extremely handsome young man called Albert Finney. And I not only got Albert's job, but his dressing room and his digs. The Birmingham Repertory Company. One of the best companies in the country. I know, wasn't I lucky? Indeed, you were. Let's have your third record. I didn't get to know France.

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Until I met my wife.

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and I had only vaguely heard of Edith Piaf.

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My wife had an old seventy eight recording of one of her songs, and I think it's a little masterpiece.

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It's about a man whose wife has left him, who is

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preparing to gas himself.

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It's an outrageous piece of melodrama, and perhaps that's why I love it so much, being something of a ham myself. It's called Monsieur Lenaud.

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La si le nom rais homme.

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Il bon satous qui la faire.

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C'est a tense son à bonner.

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Maisine des papa pair.

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Let's pop a book out there.

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It's a pause, yeah.

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Oh yeah.

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Maison Bio Secret forever.

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La Toruvetanam, Torebia, Torebia.

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Lady Piaff one of her early successes, Monsieur Lenoble.

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So what was your first professional part in Birmingham?

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It was on a play called A Dead Secret.

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Which was a dramatization of a true murder mystery. I came on at the very end of the last act.

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Watch

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As a lawyer's article clerk.

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who brought the bad news that the verdict was guilty or something. And it was only a few months later that you were playing Hamlet. Ah, may I please contradict you? It wasn't so few, it was nearly eighteen months. Well, that's a short time after your debut in the theater. I tell you how it came about.

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Let's go.

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Sir Barry Jackson, who was still very much alive, was nevertheless retired from an active participation in the company.

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And he had vowed before he died to complete the entire Shakespearean canon in performance at his theatre.

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But as so often is the way with elderly people, as the end of the canon drew near, so he felt the end of his life was inevitably tied up with it.

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And so he would postpone. And although they had had a Hamlet, he decided I hope because I looked sort of vaguely right and was young enough to revive it. He did. It wasn't actually the first

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Shakespearean performance I'd given. I didn't play Shakespeare at Birmingham, but as a student I I'd essayed the role of Henry the Fifth.

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And I hadn't had too happy an excursion with it, no fault of my own.

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We played it for schools exclusively, and before the walls of Half Fleur was a very spectacular scene, in so far as the walls were tangible things on the stage a a huge wooden scaffolding covered with netting with papillomache over it to look like rock, with crenellations at the top, with three live trumpeters with their instruments, and two crossbow firers. And the idea was that this was wheeled on, and when it was in position, the wheels at the base of the tower were locked in position on the stage with brakes.

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It was a matinee, and I came rushing on full of zeal and untrained expertise.

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It was a map.

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And launched myself on to this.

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Turret these walls of Haarfleur with the great cry once more unto the breach, dear friends and to my horror realized that they hadn't put the brakes on, and the walls of Harfleur with screaming helpless musicians who don't know any better because they're not actors, and I, as the king of the English, were exiting very rapidly into the winds.

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Anyways.

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Oh, what a gorgeous man

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Mm-hmm.

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It was, and thankfully it didn't deter me from Shakespeare.

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And so when Hamlet actually came my way, I I was thrilled and not at all daunted by the disaster of Henry the Fifth.

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And what happened next after Hamlet, after Birmingham? It coincided with Peter Hall, who had been appointed director designate of what was then called the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre.

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going round with his assistants all the provincial repertory companies in England, looking for recruits to fill out his first company which was to begin work in the early spring of nineteen sixty.

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Unbeknown to me, one of his spies saw my hamlet and thought it good enough to report back to him. He saw it, and from that I got a contract.

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Hmm.

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Well, at Stratford you were made a long term contract player, and when I say long term, I mean long term. How long was your stay there? Well, in all, although I did have a couple of breaks from it, it it covered fifteen years.

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Of your many roles which were your favourite?

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I think, in terms of personal satisfaction, Barone in Love's Labour's Lost.

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Richard the Third, because it's such a glorious piece for a piece of Breviora acting.

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Okay.

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And, curiously enough, Coriolenus.

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It's got it.

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Well, I'm thrilled that you should say that, because I was filled with acute inferiority complexes about playing it. Coriolinus had until that time been played by someone of some stature. I mean by stature, muscular stature, height and everything. I'm five foot nine, I weigh ten and a half stone, and I'd never, by any stretch of imagination, been looked upon as a a muscle figure. The director, John Barton, said to me, Oh, but we're going to play him as an athlete, and I want you to go and look at that statue on the War Memorial at Hyde Park Corner. That's the sort of thing I have in mind.

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Anyway, I did play it almost as naked as the statue. A statuesque performance. Yes. Unfortunately, my Talusophidius rammed a sabre. Why on earth we were fighting with sabres I've never understood, but it was a real sabre. He rammed it an inch and a half into my knee joint. Oh, no. And I was limping rather heavily on the first night, which didn't please some of the critics.

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Uh anyway, I

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Uh

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Shakespearean acting, of course, is highly dangerous. I presume you had some weapon training. Well, this is one of the marvellous things about Stratford, because we did have someone there to teach us how to handle the weapons. And I have done fights with rapier and dagger, rapier by itself, long sword, double-handed sword, clay morch, Roman short sword, and sober. I've had some experience, and I have the scars to show it. I mean, I really have never had a weapon put in my hand and come out at the end of a season unscathed, ever.

Ian Richardson19:23

Yeah.

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It's time we had another record. What's your fourth?

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Talking about accidents and everything, lead me straight into it. I'm not really a religious person, you know.

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Well, not in the conventional sense.

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But I believe very strongly, as Shakespeare says, that the heavens themselves, the planets, and this centre, observe degree, priority, and place.

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I don't know what Mahler had in mind when he composed his third movement for his fourth symphony.

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But what it suggests to me

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is the vast awesome beauty of an ordered universe.

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and the music of the gods.

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The third movement of Mahler's Fourth Symphony, Herbert von Karian conducting the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. And of course, with the Royal Shakespeare Company, you weren't only doing Shakespeare. You you spent, I remember, about six months in a bathtub as Marat in the Marat Sade play. Yes, that was a curious experience.

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artistically very successful, but not at all agreeable to do. It was a very demoralizing, depressing play. And some bloodthirsty Jacobean plays, the Revengers' tragedy in particular. Well, that I should have mentioned to you earlier, perhaps, as being

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One of my favorites insofar as it was the first leading part I had. I mean, I'd played feature roles of some stature, Tranio in the Shrew and Oberon in Midsummer's Dream, but nevertheless nothing smack bang at the center of things, if you see what I mean. And Vendichi in the Revengers tragedy was that.

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And it it was incredibly difficult, but very exciting. And it was Trevor Nunn's first major production for the IC.

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The critical response to it was such that he was already, as a result of that, clearly Peter Hall's successor.

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Did you go on a lot of foreign tours? Yes. In nineteen sixty-four we took Schofield in King Lear.

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And the Comedy of Ellas with Diana Rigg, Alec McCarr, Michael Williams, many others who've subsequently become formidable names in the profession. And we took these two productions because Lear was such a monumental task for Paul that it was felt necessary to ask him to perform it no more than three times a week. And so we slotted in Comedy of Ellas on the side.

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And actually it was a very useful piece to take because it took only one hour fifty minutes to perform. So that when when when people like particularly in Russia, when Mikoyan and Kosygin decided they wanted to pay a visit, it it it was very useful because they could avoid the four hour version of King Lear and come to one hour fifty minutes of comedy of Eras and said.

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So that when when

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They gave us a reception afterwards, I remember.

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And um we all went into this room and they they were looking quite unashamedly at at the girls.

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Almost like Victorian stage door Johnnies used to look at actresses, you know. Obviously they hadn't realized that we'd grown up a bit in in a way, and that we didn't behave like that any more, and that actresses were people who could be ladies, you know, anyway. That was all right, except that they suddenly noticed that dear Elizabeth Spriggs, who was playing the courtesan, was not there. And Mikoyan said through his interpreter, Where is Spriggs over? and I panicked and thought, Oh, my God So I I rushed to her dressing room and found her sitting there, thankfully still in costume, and I said, Mr. Mikoyan is asking for you and she said, All right, dear, I'll be right there putting her headdress back on. I have to tell you, talking of costume, that uh she had on a gown which was very low slung at the neck and displayed her charms quite prominently, you see. Now, Mikoyan was a very short man, and Elizabeth is quite a tall and statuesque lady, so that as she came into the room in full sail, I may say, towards him, it was inevitable that this short man's eye level should find itself on a par with Elizabeth at her most beguiling.

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And he turned to the interpreter, and for the first time I saw him agitate. It came out with a lot of Russian that sounded roughly like

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This morning you have noticed about your journey, Madame.

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The interpreter hesitated, and I said, What does he say? What does he say? The interpreter blushed, a thing I never thought I'd saw a Soviet do, and he said, Mr Mikoyan wishes Sprigsova to know that his wife has been dead for ten years did you. I was just about to say, uh, Berlin, Prague.

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Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest, Warsaw, Helsinki, Leningrad, Moscow

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Washington, Boston, Philadelphia, New York. Ah, splendid. All expenses paid. Yes.

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So really, after your first long slab of of ten years with the company,

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He was saying

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Yourself, I assume, that you had played all the parts that you were really suited for in the Shakespeare rep? I had. After all, I'd I'd started at the age of twenty six, and here I was now, nearly forty.

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And

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Uh there wasn't a lot left.

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For me to play until I was that much older. So, what did you play next, as a contrast?

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I went into a musical of Trelawney of the Wells, which opened the refurbished Bristol Old Vic Theatre, and I had a very happy association with that. It came to the West End and played at the Prince of Wales Theatre for six months, which is as long as any play ought to do before it goes stale. And I I I loved it. It was the Julian Slade musical.

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Uh

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And then I went off and I did a film. As a result of having uh proved myself in a musical, I was given the role of the priest in an unsuccessful film version of Man of La Mancha with Peter O'Toole and Sophia Lorenz.

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Uh then I came back from that and the BBC television people grabbed me for a five-part dramatization of Huxley's Islace in Gaza. It was my first essay into the world of television playing the leading role, so I was actually chucked in at the deep end and I would much rather, you know, have played a smaller role just while I got used to the atmosphere of the studio and and those mysterious cameras whisking about, you know. However, I was thrown in at the deep end and I survived and it it attracted a bit of attention. Well, there's a lot going on, so let's break at this point for your next record.

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Well, I've chosen my favourite no card song, sung by the master himself. It was written over thirty years ago.

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And the brilliant wit of the lyrics is still topical, and I think as well as cheering me up on the desert island, it will remind me that I am probably not missing very much at home.

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There are bad times just around the corner. There are dark clouds ho-

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And it's no good whining about a silver lining, For we know from experience that they won't roll by With the scowl and a frown, We'll keep our peckers down And prepare for depression and doom and dread

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That's what I'm saying.

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Uh

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We're going to unpack our troubles from our old kit bed and wait until we drop down dead.

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No card.

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Now, Ian, although you decided to quit the Royal Shakespeare Company after ten years solid, you were tempted back on a number of occasions. You went back to alternate the roles of Richard the Second and Bolingbroke with Richard Pascoe. How did that work?

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It worked supremely well.

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I didn't think it was going to, and I'm sure Dicky didn't think so either. But, you know, he's such a generous man, and such a joy to work with on the stage. Generous actors are really very few and far between, I'm here to tell you.

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And it it it it was remarkable, insofar as Dickie, who, unlike me, is a deeply religious person, went for the elegiac aspect of the king. I went for the player, the theatrical aware monarch. So that they were completely different. It presented some problems. Did you find rivalry creeping in between you?

Ian Richardson28:24

Two.

Ian Richardson28:27

But

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It didn't creep in with us backstage, but Dickie had his own fans and I had mine, and they would only come when they could be sure of seeing whoever, you know. And I there was one occasion. I have to tell you that when we both played the King we took a great deal more care with the make up, you know, I mean I put a little gold dust to my eyes.

Ian Richardson28:48

Play cool.

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A touch of juze, I believe it's called in the theatre. And I came out of my dressing room, which was alongside Dickey's, and he came out wearing his glamour too. And I said, Dickie, I'm the king. He said, No, no, no, I'm the king.

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Well, my God, we've made a terrible mistake. We'd better rush down to the stage director, which we did, and the stage director said, I don't know who's playing the King, we'll have to check out front, so they had to go out front and look at the play bill. And and the the lady at the box office said, Well, it better be Mr Bresco, because I've sold lots of tickets to people who won't laugh The other one So the only rivalry really was outside the box office.

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Now, when eventually you you left the classical theatre, it was for another musical. Yes, it was. I'd been in New York doing a programme of my own compilation about Shakespeare's Kings. I went there at the invitation of the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and I took five actors as well as myself and a musician, and we did The Wars of the Roses, all the best bits. We did it in black tie dinner jackets. And I didn't know it, but there were two men in the audience who were looking for a Henry Higgins for the twentieth anniversary presentation of My Fair Lady. And they thought that I kind of fitted the bill. They offered me the role. I laughed at them and said, Don't be ridiculous. They increased the financial offer and I succumbed. And I went and did that for a year, which was a very, very tough assignment. I'd never, you must understand, played eight times a week, every week, for a year. In the Royal Shakespeare Company, sometimes we kept plays in the repertoire for several years, but they were always played with other plays in between, so that you never perform more than a maximum of twice in any round you can't.

Ian Richardson30:25

Not the

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Yes, and I you see, because I was used to the RSC way of doing it, I d I didn't follow my predecessor, Mr. Harrison, and play it laid-back and casual. I know I went all out for the shore, Higgins. You know, where does all that man's unused sexual energy go? I was highly physical and extremely volatile, and that was very tiring. And after six months, my concentration began to waver. I had to rely on my dresser to tell me what scene I had just done and what was coming next. It was a very frightening experience, and it actually put me off the theatre. And I rarely

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Put the kibosh on my disgust at the theatre, if you like. When the next role I accepted was not in America but in Canada, the role of Jack Tanner in the full length version of Man and Superman, which takes five and a half hours to perform without interval.

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Then at the end of that, when I was thinking seriously that I ought to abandon the theatre and give myself a rest,

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And I was looking forward to going back to our house in France and just resting there. The telephone rang in my little

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Cottage by the shores of Lake Ontario. Incidentally, this was a shore festival in Niagara on the lake.

Presenter31:35

In Ontario. And it was Trevor Nunn from London. He wanted to find another Edwardian piece to follow on the successful footsteps of the Sherlock Holmes they'd done there. And he asked me if I had any ideas, and we used lots of valuable telephone time across the Atlantic. And eventually I suggested the Scarlet Pimpernel. And he liked the idea and said, when could I get back? And I said, well, my contract expires at the end of the month, and I'll come home at once. I did. I went home to find that they'd run into copyright problems. I said, Do you think you'll resolve them, Trevor? Yes, we hope to. I said, Therefore, I will not get myself involved in a theatre project which would demand six months minimum of my time, should the play be a success. I'll ask my agent to confine my contribution to television, where, unless it's a series, you aren't expected to work for more than a month. And that was how I went back to television, having only done that first essay with Eilis in Gaza. And in television, more or less, I stuck.

Ian Richardson32:22

And that

Presenter32:31

Right.

Presenter32:32

Well, this was a change of direction and a point to pause, so let's have the next record. I mean, I mentioned uh France a moment ago. My my family have a a villa there in the south of France.

Presenter32:44

and on one of our early visits there,

Presenter32:47

We made the journey by car, stopping for one of the two nights such a journey demands, in a small village in the heart of the Auvergne.

Presenter32:57

The room allotted to us was next to the linen cupboard.

Presenter33:00

where a chambermaid was hard at work. She began to sing.

Presenter33:04

and although not trained,

Presenter33:07

quite a lovely voice, and her repertoire was exclusively folk songs of the district.

Presenter33:13

And I later discovered uh that Vittoria de Los Angeles had recorded an album.

Presenter33:18

of Songs of the Auvern and this is my next choice.

Presenter33:42

Uh

Ian Richardson33:44

Shit, shit, because I got steel, shit, shit, melissa stand, barber it, meliss pastad.

Speaker 234:03

Yeah.

Presenter34:04

Is any other way?

Presenter34:22

Victoria at Los Angeles singing one of the settings by Conte Loub of Songs of the Auvergne.

Ian Richardson34:28

But

Presenter34:29

Oh, going back to television, you had a a big success as the mole in Tinker Taylor Soldier Spy. Right.

Presenter34:37

That came about in a m very mysterious way, and and this is purely my own impression. There probably isn't a single factual piece of evidence here to back up my story here. However, I'll tell it just the same, try and stop me. But I had to attend a memorial service for the late Leo Guin, and Sir Alec Guinness was there to read a piece of Shakespeare.

Ian Richardson34:49

Ha ha

Presenter34:57

And he and I found ourselves standing next to each other afterwards, and I complimented him on his reading, and we got talking about this and that and all the rest of it, and within a few days of this meeting

Presenter35:09

The scripts of Tinker Taylor, so to spy, arrived on my doorstep.

Presenter35:13

And I like to think that it had something to do with Alec. You know, I don't suppose the listeners realize it, but when you are an actor of the statue of Sir Alec Guinness, for example, you usually have a say in who plays the roles around you. And that's what leads me to think that it had probably something to do with him. Sorry, Eric, if I'm wrong.

Presenter35:31

And of course Churchill and the Generals was a very successful.

Ian Richardson35:33

And that was great.

Presenter35:35

And were Ramsay MacDonald. Yes, that pleased my father enormously, who was a great.

Presenter35:41

fan of the first Labour Prime Minister, my father being a lifelong socialist, and also my father was production manager for Motivity and Price, which means that his boss was Sir Alexander Grant, and he was on the periphery at the time of all that scandal about the shares and the car and all the rest of it. So I used him, my father, quite a lot, to fill in some detail about the time. It was rather good to have a spokesman of that period to tell me about it. And I enjoyed doing it because my family rather love it when I play Scotsman, because it means that they haven't entirely lost me.

Presenter36:12

Record number seven.

Presenter36:14

There's something so inexpressibly pure about the extraordinary sound.

Presenter36:21

Produced by The Unbroken Male Voice.

Presenter36:24

I think it really is the most precious of musical instruments, possibly since it is transitory.

Presenter36:30

We were talking of Tinker Taylor, so to spy. It was a master stroke.

Presenter36:33

to have the Nunc de Mittis to cover the closing credits but the recording and the boy soprano became famous quite independently.

Presenter36:43

And it's in this respect I would like to include it in my choice.

Ian Richardson36:51

God let us know thy soul and die.

Ian Richardson37:12

Guarding my soul, thy love.

Ian Richardson37:27

Full my eyes have seen the side make a shine.

Presenter37:44

Master Paul Phoenix he's mister Paul Phoenix by now in the recording of the nonc demittus which was used in Tinker Taylor Soldier Spy.

Presenter37:55

How are you going to manage on this desert island, Ian? Can you look after yourself?

Presenter37:59

I can sort of

Presenter38:00

I suppose light a fire. Have you been fishing?

Ian Richardson38:03

Have you got anything?

Presenter38:04

Yes, I have. In Scotland, so fishing is no problem, but I would have to try and make a a hook out of something, I suppose. Could you build some kind of shelter? Yes, that's no problem. Would you try to escape? Yes, at the very first opportunity. Do you know anything about navigation? Would you be able to go in the right direction? Yes. I would be able to follow the stars. Really? Yes. You're going to get your castaways badge first class. Oh, no, I'm not. I'm not. The only reason I say that is because, you know, like a lot of.

Ian Richardson38:25

Oh no, I'm not.

Presenter38:30

lads at the time I was in the Boy Scouts, you know, and we went through all that bit about, you know, there's the starter and

Presenter38:36

If your shadow are cast this way and all the rest of it, then it means that you're facing in that particular direction of all that sort of rubber. You're the most promising castaway material we've had for a long time. Let's have your last record.

Ian Richardson38:41

You're the man.

Ian Richardson38:44

Let's have your last

Presenter38:46

Well, I would like William Wharton's incidental music for Laurence Olivier's film Henry the Fifth.

Presenter38:53

This was the first Shakespeare I ever saw in performance as a boy in Edinburgh, where Shakespeare was not very often performed.

Presenter39:01

And I can say without hesitation,

Presenter39:03

that the profound impression it made was largely responsible

Presenter39:07

For sowing the seed that grew into a long and fruitful association with the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Presenter40:13

The Ashincourt song from the Henry V. Suite, the music written by Sir William Walton for Olivier's film.

Presenter40:20

If you could only take one of the ape records you've played, which would it be? The one you've just played. The Henry V News.

Presenter40:27

And one luxury to have with you.

Presenter40:30

I wanted to ask for a piano.

Presenter40:32

But even if it arrived intact, it would eventually need professional attention.

Presenter40:38

and I couldn't bear to touch it if it jangled harsh and out of tune.

Presenter40:41

So

Presenter40:43

I decided instead to ask for a large supply of paper,

Presenter40:47

And pencils, or ballpoint pens. Now, I want this because in every case of solitude one has ever heard or read about.

Presenter40:54

The castaway, the prisoner, the recluse, whatever, has had an overwhelming desire to commit something of himself to paper, and I want to provide for this emotional need.

Ian Richardson40:57

And uh

Presenter41:04

Now you have already on the island the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare. You may choose one other book.

Presenter41:10

This is perhaps the most difficult one.

Presenter41:13

To answer, but I have decided to ask for a comprehensive book of quotations. I'll tell you why.

Presenter41:20

I would possess in one volume the cream of everybody's writing and all the best things that everybody has ever said. Good. And thank you, Iain Richardson, for letting us hear your Desert Island discs. Thank you. Goodbye, everyone.

Ian Richardson41:58

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