Kingsley Amis

Kingsley Amis0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music.

Kingsley Amis0:08

The programme was originally broadcast in 1986, and the presenter was Michael Parkinson.

Presenter0:30

Our castaway is generally acknowledged as Britain's best post-war novelist. It's thirty-two years since he published his first novel, Lucky Jim. His sixteenth has just won him the Booker Prize. It's called The Old Devils and it prompted the novelist and critic Anthony Burgess to state, There's one old devil who's writing better than he ever did. He's referring to Kingsley Amis.

Presenter0:50

King, first of all, congratulations. Thank you very much.

Speaker 30:51

Thank you very much.

Presenter0:53

Reading about you, I got this feeling that you're not going to enjoy this desert island. You don't like loneliness, do you? No. I wasn't made to flourish or even survive very much on my own, and um it's partly company and partly, I dunno, something more basic, whatever that may be. What about looking after yourself? I may be a practical man in any way. No, I hope this. You know, I can just about scramble an egg.

Speaker 31:10

I have

Presenter1:13

Given a cookery book and plenty of time. Well, how much consolation then would music be on this island? How much has it in fact it been in your life?

Presenter1:21

Well, it's always been a great thing for me.

Presenter1:23

And as I grow older I find it it doesn't dim at all. In fact it becomes more important and I think I see more in what I thought I knew quite well years ago. That's the number first choice of music.

Presenter1:35

Yes, well this is a good example of that. It's uh a waltz by Johann Strauss, Tales from the Vienna Woods, and that's the sort of thing one hears practically in one's cradle, usually badly performed, often by an understrength orchestra, and one forgets how

Presenter1:47

marvelous it can be properly done.

Presenter2:53

That was Talesung the Vienna Woods, played by the Johann Strauss Orchestra of Vienna, conducted by Billy Boskowski. Just before we leave that, I was interested just the other day to hear that Brahms was a great admirer of Johann Strauss and said rather ruefully, he always delivers, doesn't he? Unlike some people I could mention. So I'm in good company there. You are indeed. Let's go right back to the beginning. Tell me about your background, about your parents. What sort of a background do you have? Well, it was a sort of respectable, lower-middle-class background, I suppose you'd call it now. And in those days, in the early and middle twenties, of course, even people in quite humble stations like my parents kept servants, oh, a servant. And there was a Welsh maid, I remember, for the first two or three years or so.

Presenter3:34

When the depression struck, I mean the the I remember that. My father never lost his job, but you know, plenty of people he knew were doing so and had done so. And there was a good deal of a sort of tension that I don't think understood, of course, at the time going on in the air. And then um

Presenter3:51

Well, my father had been to a school that he highly admired and greatly enjoyed, the City of London School.

Presenter3:57

and he wanted me very much to go there.

Presenter3:59

What kind of ambition did he have for you?

Kingsley Amis3:59

And

Speaker 24:02

Will

Presenter4:04

Understand, I don't say this in any spirit of rancor, but like many fathers, he wanted his son to be a more successful replica of himself. And I think he um had in mind for me something unbelievably prosperous, like a house on the uh Pearley bypass with a Ford V8 or something of that sort, and um a very respectable setup. Well

Presenter4:29

it became clear quite early that things weren't going to go quite that way. In what way did the things become clear? I mean Well, I wasn't another thing he wanted me to do was to be um a sportsman, you know, a cricketer. He's a v a very good club cricketer himself, and right on into his sixties I I think.

Presenter4:45

You know, it it boiled down to me having my head in a book.

Presenter4:48

You know, all this poetry when I could have been out in the fresh air. Were the books at home then, or were these books you went out and got from a Balboa yourself? There was an excellent public library in easy walking distance.

Presenter4:57

Of course the the big revolution came when I suppose I was fourteen when penguin books appeared.

Presenter5:03

And for the price of a ham roll, uh, you could get a whole novel. And who were the early influences then, Kings? Who were the the people you remember reading at that time? Well, um see, always uh greatly enjoyed P G Woodhouse. And again, one of those things that improve with age.

Presenter5:18

Quite early on, I suppose. I uh

Presenter5:20

I heard about this man even waugh who people thought rightly was very funny, but there again I didn't see till later that he's much more than that. You were an only child, weren't you? Yes. Were you in a sense overprotected by your parents in this period? Yes, I think I was. And one can understand it from from their social position at the time, the the fear of, as it were, tumbling into the working class. So kids with worse accents than ours were were very much kept at arm's length.

Kingsley Amis5:33

Yes

Presenter5:46

And so in more than one way I had to make my own way in the world.

Presenter5:54

Early on again I'd heard some of the more popular works of Mozart.

Presenter5:58

and I without ever having seen the opera The Magic Flute.

Presenter6:02

I remember that when I was at school in nineteen forty, evacuated to Wiltshire.

Presenter6:06

saving up enough to buy the second half of the second act of The Magic Flute. And I'll never forget the experience of of hearing this.

Speaker 36:19

It's all sufficient.

Presenter7:11

There's a magic flute conducted by Sir Thomas Beacham. You mentioned, Kingsley, that you you first heard that at at school. In fact, she went to school in uh in London, then in Marlborough, didn't you? Yes. Yes. You moved there, what, evacuated there, were you? Yes, in thirty-nine, yes. And what about university? You were always destined to go there, were you?

Presenter7:26

Where I was, I landed on a sofa.

Presenter7:29

a scholarship in English at uh

Presenter7:31

St. John's Oxford and Julie went up there. The w you know, the war was on and people were

Presenter7:35

turning up at any time rather than just in the autumn as it used to be. So up there I went in in April 1941. I I read a curious story that on the very same day you met Philip Larkin, who was a great influence in your life and a great friend of yours, and also joined the Communist Party on the same day. It would be nice, wouldn't it? I mean it makes a better story. It's a wonderful story because it turned out quite well. It's not impossible because at any rate one can say that both things happened in the first week. They did. When I was there, yeah. Well let's take them in chronological order then. I mean you met Larkin first did you? Yes I did just about. What was the sort of first impression because he did have an effect on your later life didn't he? Yes. Well the first impression he made was was you know very different from what I

Speaker 37:48

Yes.

Kingsley Amis7:54

It was a wonderful story because it's not

Kingsley Amis8:02

Yeah.

Presenter8:14

later learnt about him. He was almost a caricature of a hearty, beer-drinking, swearing undergraduate. Except he didn't play any games, of course.

Presenter8:23

And I only realized by degrees that he he wrote poetry, but that didn't strike me as very unusual. You know, everybody wrote poetry at that age and and in those days. And then I began to notice that, um

Presenter8:35

The perch was.

Presenter8:37

Quite unexpected to go with this hearty exterior.

Presenter8:40

And uh over the years it soon emerged that um I think the heart on us was a kind of

Presenter8:46

Protective shell in a way. Yes. And though he was always writing till he fell ill, he was al always in the the best possible warm, amusing company. And you of course shared partly your love of poetry, your love of jazz too, because he was. Yes, which we discuss much more passionately than poetry, as as you can imagine. At this time in your life, were you wanting to be a poet? Was that the ambition?

Kingsley Amis8:57

Yeah, so

Presenter9:04

Yes, we had it shared out. I I was going to be the poet and he was going to be the novelist. Funny that, view of the way things turned out later.

Kingsley Amis9:09

There'll be it.

Presenter9:11

Let's take the second event of that week as well, joining the Communist Party. What circumstance did you do there? Well, it was a way of defying my parents and my background, wasn't it?

Presenter9:20

And it it gave me one or two useful bits of information or uh insight into how the party worked. How, you know, not only was the entire committee of the Labour Club, which was uh avowedly Marxist directed, entirely run by members of the Communist Party, but also the Liberal Club and the Conservative Association. I think we missed one one time. We we lost a Conservative seat to a Conservative, if you suit me. You know, closed membership it was called. I was an open one, though they they they obviously weren't going to entrust me with any difficult or confidential task. But it all fell away the morning after I joined the army in 1942. I I looked around, as it were, all these men and I thought, well, that stuff obviously doesn't apply.

Presenter10:02

Who all these chapters to life is it actually exists?

Presenter10:06

Let's have another toast of record.

Presenter10:08

Well one of the things that Larkin did was to educate me in jazz, because at that time everybody knew something about jazz. Everybody had some jazz records, France Waller, Benny Goodman, Artie Shawnson.

Presenter10:17

But it was Philip who

Presenter10:19

showed me that there was more to it than that and there were there were um

Presenter10:22

records by people I'd never heard of. I heard dimly, for example, of of Bix Beiderbeck as a name, but it wasn't until Phillip played me his record of, um, for instance, I'm Coming Virginia,

Presenter10:33

that I realized quite what kind of artist Beiderbeck was.

Presenter11:37

Kingsley, after Oxford you went into the army, you were commissioned. I mean, what what did you make of the army? Did you enjoy it?

Presenter11:43

Well, I I hated it at the time, like everybody else.

Kingsley Amis11:43

I hate it.

Presenter11:46

But it was nice for one thing to have all decisions about one's future, all that had been very much in the air before, completely taken away.

Presenter11:53

and uh looked after by somebody else. It also was getting away from home in a in a big way.

Presenter11:59

After you came out of the army, you took your B Lit postgraduate degree and you failed it. Yes. You failed it. That was pretty well unheard of. Yes. Well, I see, in a way, I cheated, but it was too late to do anything about it.

Kingsley Amis12:03

Failed it.

Kingsley Amis12:05

Yeah.

Presenter12:11

I had started to study for this uh research degree in the belief, justifiably, that uh it would help me to get uh an academic job teaching.

Presenter12:19

And I began the first two or three terms of that, at which point I was shortlisted for a job in Swansea, and got the job partly on the understanding, which is everybody's understanding,

Presenter12:29

And I would get this Bedit degree, because everybody always had, till they came to me.

Presenter12:34

And I put my thesis in.

Presenter12:37

And uh the man not a bad fellow in many ways, uh Lord David Cecil.

Presenter12:42

who was then teaching at New College. He had been my supervisor, and he didn't supervise me at all. I never saw him. So I went away and uh teamed up with a fellow called FW Bateson, who was, I think, more interested in what his pupils were doing.

Presenter12:55

And um to my horror, when I got into the Viva for this thesis, there was Lord David Cecil as chairman of the board of two.

Presenter13:04

And I realized, um, later, uh ruefully that um

Presenter13:08

I got caught up in a bit of academic crossfire. And it was v funny because uh for years afterwards, whenever there was any kind of anonymous attack on on uh Lord David, you all thought it was me.

Speaker 313:11

But it was a bit funny for

Presenter13:18

And he used to give me very uneasy looks when we ran into each other much later. It didn't make much difference though, did it? I mean, you got the job in sort of a no, quite, yeah. Do you do you enjoy teaching? Do you enjoy lecturing?

Kingsley Amis13:24

Yeah.

Presenter13:28

Oh, very much. Yes. I mean there are lots of satisfactions.

Kingsley Amis13:29

Yes, I mean

Presenter13:32

Didactic chap. You've only got to s talk to me for ten minutes before I start giving you information. And of course, I think you have to have that if you're a teacher. You you enjoy acquiring information and you enjoy passing on information. And um.

Presenter13:44

There's no substitute I've found since for that relationship, because it's really the only way you can discuss literature closely.

Presenter13:52

Because if you start talking to somebody in the club and say, well, of course, at the beginning of book six of Paradise Last, Mil Milton says something very unexpected. He said, Well, yes, old boy, that's fine. Um sh shall we go down to lunch now?

Presenter14:06

And you can't do it. But then in in the academic relationship you can, and I do miss that very much. Another choice of record picking, is that another example I I see of uh what I was saying about

Presenter14:17

seeing more in what you thought was familiar.

Presenter14:21

So if I mention Dvorak and his New World Symphony, one thinks, of course.

Presenter14:25

Especially if one goes as far as saying the slow movement. One thinks of that wonderful, unbeatable tune that everybody knows that takes up the first.

Presenter14:32

Five or six minutes of that movement and tends to overlook something equally marvellous, I think.

Presenter14:40

That happens in the middle.

Presenter14:42

Not such a singable tune, but I think just as fine.

Presenter15:45

That was the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Ichván Kirtesch.

Presenter15:49

Kingsley, let's now talk about your this long association you have with Wales. We've been talking about Swansea, where you you first went there. What do you like particularly about it?

Kingsley Amis15:53

Where

Presenter15:59

Well, it it's the people. I mean it it's a marvellous mixture and I still think this and feel it very strongly.

Presenter16:04

At first, you think, well, it's not, it's England. And of course, South Wales is very English, and Swansea is, to a large extent, an English town.

Presenter16:12

and an English speaking town.

Presenter16:15

And it's only when you see things a bit more familiar that you see that they aren't really an awful lot of English influence. And

Presenter16:23

Sadly or or not, they've lost their language. They haven't quite lost

Presenter16:28

A good deal of it when I first arrived in oh, thirty seven years ago.

Presenter16:32

But um except for rather artificial attempts at revival, it's dying. And that's one of the themes that I tried to put into the old levels. But I I think it's it's the Welsh temperament, if you can call it such a thing.

Presenter16:44

But I think it's different. How is it different? It's more cheerful. It's warmer.

Kingsley Amis16:45

How do I say

Presenter16:50

more friendly and um

Presenter16:53

Sometimes misleadingly so. If they're going to cheat you, they cheat you with a smile. That seems um uh deceptive or double deemed but of course En Englishmen will cheat you just as heartily, but with with a a sour look.

Presenter17:05

So I'd rather have the Welsh equipment. Isn't it although changing in the sense we're all becoming very much alike, very similar wherever you go? Yeah, and I don't know what you do about that because when I first went there

Kingsley Amis17:12

Yeah.

Presenter17:17

Wales as an idea or separate entity from England was already

Presenter17:21

fast disappearing and of course it's come a long way since then, I'm sorry to say. And of course it's um

Presenter17:29

As I make one of the characters say, it's you know, English people needn't laugh when Welsh people lament the passing of their culture into something homogeneous and like everywhere else, because it's happening to England too.

Speaker 317:40

Hmm.

Presenter17:41

And um I I don't know what you do. I mean we already uh speak the language of um

Presenter17:47

the the rest of the English-speaking world.

Presenter17:50

And I want to see in the actual changes in the language as spoken in England how Americanized it's becoming or how D

Presenter17:59

What would you call it, Britishised or?

Presenter18:02

Can you give an example? Can you give a current example that bothers you when you hear people saying a certain thing, things like that?

Kingsley Amis18:02

Yeah.

Presenter18:08

Well, yes, I know one easily gets pernickety about that, but if you say we didn't quarrel in eleven years, that used to mean we were together for eleven years, we knew each other, and we never had a quarrel. But now it tells me we had a quarrel 11 years ago and haven't had one since. And the do-have construction is creeping in. I mean, it seems bizarre to say, you've got it all wrong. Oh, I do.

Presenter18:31

But it's coming here, and it it is an Americanism. I have no objection to Americans or American art and culture, but I don't want it.

Presenter18:39

substituted for the one that I started off with. Indeed, of course. I mean, you taught twice in your career, didn't you, in America? Yes. Did you enjoy that engagement? Oh, enormously. The first year was at Princeton in New Jersey, which was uh thoroughly enjoyable. About the best year I can remember spending anywhere.

Presenter18:54

and I fell so much in in in love with America

Presenter18:58

When I went over again in the late sixties and spent four months in Nashville, I still remained pro American. Saying something after a a session at that place.

Presenter19:09

That's another choice of record. There were English jazz bands or dance bands, the only ones that with anything really to them were American bands. And I again quite early

Presenter19:25

latched on to Count Bass's marvellous, unique orchestra. And um well, I'd pick a number with Jimmy Rushing singing, preferably. Say, exactly like you.

Speaker 219:38

I know why I waited, I know why I'm blue. Waiting here for someone exactly like you. Why should we spend money on a show or two? No one does not know. You make me feel so

Presenter19:59

has a wonderful count bassy band exactly like you.

Presenter20:03

Lucky Jim, of course, as I said, I mean that was your first novel and that I mean started you off. I mean none of this stuff about starving in garrets for you and sending in manuscripts being rejected.

Kingsley Amis20:06

Yeah.

Speaker 220:06

Yeah, I mean

Presenter20:12

Well, wait a minute. I mean, I rejected one. Yes, well s so did lots of publishers. The it's really my second novel, I could just know nobody's ever going to see the first one. Really? And my God, nobody's ever going to see it. I'm taking care of that. Oh, it was it was appalling.

Speaker 320:24

Hey.

Presenter20:25

It was turned down by or half a dozen publishers, and very rightly. Years later I ran into the chap who first turned it down at a party. Very crowded. We only had time to shout two things. He he shouted to me, I'm terribly sorry, and I shouted back, You were quite right.

Presenter20:40

So it's true that that when Lucky Jim was done and delivered, the first publisher to see it, Victor Gallantz, published it, but only after some delay. Victor wasn't at all happy about it really.

Presenter20:51

He thought it was uncultured or anticultural.

Presenter20:54

And it was his his nephew Hilary Rubenstein and and Livia Gallantz who

Presenter20:58

pushed it through. Of course it made made your name, didn't it, immediately and then well yes. I mean I I've got no complaints, but it was a little bit gradual. I mean the name came before the sales really.

Presenter21:08

It didn't start to be read in much numbers until it's been out a year or two.'Cause you were then labelled with the the group of writers who became the Angry Young Men, weren't you? I could never quite work out what that was all about, could you?

Kingsley Amis21:12

'Cause it

Speaker 321:12

Uh

Kingsley Amis21:12

And it

Kingsley Amis21:17

I couldn't.

Kingsley Amis21:20

Yeah.

Presenter21:21

Not really.

Presenter21:22

As I said at the time, you know, I wa didn't think I was angry much unless I hit my thumb with a hammer, you know. And I think it was it was a piece of literary journalism. You know how people like to have a pigeonhole. They say, Oh, he's one of that lot and it means you've uh slotted him and you know you needn't really

Speaker 321:33

Oh, yeah.

Speaker 321:35

Yeah.

Presenter21:38

think so much about how he might or might not differ from his contemporaries. And it looks rather quaint now, but it was uh useful to me at the time. Very useful, I mean commercially of course, obviously. I mean it was quite an exciting time in the literary world there, wasn't it? I mean all kinds of new novelists coming through, new attitudes toward the novelist.

Kingsley Amis21:44

Yes episode.

Kingsley Amis21:48

Yeah.

Kingsley Amis21:54

New attitudes towards the novel.

Presenter21:57

Well, when I started writing it for half a dozen years, but I think everybody was sort of exhausted by the war, and in my case, was celebrating not being in the army any more. It's quite a time before people got round to some serious work, and when they did,

Presenter22:10

There did seem to be a sort of new wave.

Presenter22:13

I was thinking it was about the Angry Young Men and Song what they had in common.

Presenter22:17

was that none of them had public school accents.

Speaker 322:20

Yeah.

Presenter22:20

Hmm.

Speaker 322:20

Yeah.

Presenter22:20

And that was really quite rare before the Second War.

Presenter22:23

I don't know there's any great social shift or what the r reason was, but it it did happen that way. Of course they the people they wrote about didn't have public school accents either, did they? I mean, your heroes are entirely different. And of course m many more people think that I'm a Yorkshire than think I'm a Welshman, because uh

Kingsley Amis22:32

Twenty

Kingsley Amis22:34

Mm

Presenter22:39

Dixon, well, he wasn't a Yorkshireman, but he came from the north simply because he couldn't come from London, could he? Because everybody else's hero had come from London. Could you base Tim Dixon on anybody?

Presenter22:48

Well, no. You were going to say that you've heard it was based on Philip Lachin. On Philip Lachin, yes. Only the start.

Kingsley Amis22:52

I'm so blocking, yes.

Presenter22:54

Because I I thought, yes, well that would be funny. There's a way of avoiding writing about oneself in a way. And he's called Dixon because Philip had digs in Dixon Drive in Leicester, where he was librarian at the university. But as soon as I started seriously

Kingsley Amis22:54

Jazza

Speaker 322:55

But

Presenter23:09

That all that went by the board.

Presenter23:11

When you look back at that point in your life, uh Kingsley, and it must have very pleasant memories, because not only in Lucky Jim, but you wrote that uncertain feeling, I like it here, take a girl like you.

Presenter23:21

I mean, four very, very good books in that in that period down in Swansea there. You must look back at it with great affection.

Kingsley Amis23:24

But anyway

Presenter23:27

Well, I do. I think there's twelve years in Swansea, minus one year in America, as as we were saying. I think that was my my best time really. I made so many friends so fast.

Presenter23:37

So I lived there.

Presenter23:38

A very active social life, but working too. And I was I was in, you know, top gear all for all that time.

Presenter23:45

Another choice of record.

Presenter23:47

Nobody admires Tchaikovsky's first piano concerto more than I do, the one that everybody knows. But you haven't got to look very far before you find that there's a second one, and there's actually a third one which nobody ever plays. And um

Presenter24:00

Well, the the first movement of of that second piano concerto of Tchaikovsky, though recognizable by the same man as the first concerto, is I think

Presenter24:10

quite different in approach.

Presenter24:12

And the selled oysters?

Presenter24:14

Emil Gillels.

Presenter25:14

Kingsley, let's bring your interview right up to date, in fact, because we talked about the first book, Lucky Jim, and now we're in a situation with your sixteenth book.

Kingsley Amis25:21

Yeah.

Presenter25:22

The Old Devils, you've in fact won the Book a Prize. Tell me, there's a lot of hypes around the Book of Prize, an awful lot of publicity. It's the one time the other novels get talked about actually in public. D does it mean an awful lot to win it? In commercial terms I'm talking about, novels. Oh, commercial terms, very much so. Um there's the

Kingsley Amis25:31

She's a little bit more.

Kingsley Amis25:37

Yeah

Presenter25:39

what you might call the primary money, like primary picketing, I mean the the the the the prize, which is fifteen thousand very useful pounds. And there's also the secondary money, because uh more copies get sold by far than would otherwise have happened abroad as well. Uh and um the cop that it has effects everywhere.

Speaker 325:58

Yeah.

Presenter25:59

It'll increase American sales and it makes the Dutchmen and the Norwegians and the Italians more generous with their advances. So there's all that.

Speaker 326:05

So there's all

Presenter26:06

The critics too have been, generally speaking, very, very kind. I mean uh writing better than ever. Do you think this yourself? I mean do you feel that you are writing better the older you get? I can't possibly tell. I mean I'm the as it were the last man who can tell. I had butterflies about this one and about the last one m extreme in this case. I mean I'm not the sort of man who tears up books. He's spent

Kingsley Amis26:09

Oh yes, marvelous.

Presenter26:26

years on. But I came closer with this than anything before. Seems I needn't have bothered. But I mean the only thing you can say but you you don't learn much by writing a lot of novels because

Presenter26:37

Each attempt is you'll have to start again, you're back on square one.

Presenter26:42

Absolutely. They're one or two little.

Presenter26:44

Little tricks of the trait, I think you learn. You learn how to handle transitions more smoothly, get your characters without fuss from one scene to the next, one place to the next. And you you become better at covering up your weaknesses and and exploiting what virtues or advantages you may have. And um you you get better at what might be called the tip of the iceberg con.

Presenter27:07

What's that? You imply that you know everything about such a subject. You know, for example, I try to imply for you I know everything about uh Istesvods and th that sort of life in Wales, and all about the chapel, just by quoting two or three little bits. And the implication being I could tell you all about it if I had room.

Presenter27:25

But I'm just letting these little bits out. So that's the tip, because there's a huge iceberg. Of course, there isn't really any iceberg.

Presenter27:32

Are you writing another novel at this moment?

Presenter27:35

Well, Michael, really, I think I might be allowed a week or two off to think about these and to enjoy myself and royster and so on. But yes, I mean I'm very lucky. I mean every novelist's prayer is that before he's quite finished with novel A, some little intimations, thoughts, inklings of novel B are beginning to trickle into his head. And you all you can do is to keep your fingers crossed and hope for that. If it's going to happen, it will. If it's not, too bad. But I'm still touching wood a bit. As you see, that started to happen quite quickly, six weeks after final delivery, before this one was published. And that's a vital thing.

Presenter28:11

Another choice of record. Well, I always greatly admired, as soon as Philip Larkin brought him up in conversation, Pee Wee Russell. I think if I had to plump for one outstanding jazz man, it would be him. Again, if I I'm not too tedious about Larkin Brown, remember Larkin saying, What's all this talk about, you know, Picasso and Ezra Powell? Surely Pee Wee Russell is the greatest living artist.

Presenter28:32

So here he is in Eddie Cardin's Strat Miss Lizzy.

Presenter29:37

Kingsley, you're sixty-four now. Um do you find that growing old has got any advantages at all? I mean any good care to tell me about? Oh, yes. You can say much more what you think and avoid what you don't like doing. I mean I can't tell you how long it is ago since uh

Presenter29:52

I uh decided or began to feel I didn't really like dinner parties and didn't really much like going out in the evening at all.

Presenter29:59

Don't mistake me, I I love having a few drinks and somebody to eat wi with a few pals. That's different. Anyway, the the other day somebody asked me, I said, No, I'm

Presenter30:07

Sorry, I never go out to dinner. Oh, uh

Presenter30:10

And it was a a hush at the other end of the telephone. You're poor old thing, you can't make it any more. And they didn't realise with what glee.

Presenter30:17

And enjoyment of setting down to your best whisky. Because you you're not going to get that when you go out, are you? I got the best whisky in the world right there, and I can also pour it.

Kingsley Amis30:24

Neither.

Presenter30:27

In quantities that suit me. The question probably sounded rude, because what I meant to say was in fact that that your book, The Old Devils, is in fact about this very subject, isn't it? Oh yeah.

Kingsley Amis30:35

Yeah, so

Kingsley Amis30:36

Oh yeah.

Kingsley Amis30:38

How they can

Presenter30:41

Well, I think I think they they enjoy their socializing and their drinking, but I think in other respects they're having a a worse time.

Presenter30:47

than I do, because um

Presenter30:49

Most of them have still got, you know, problems to solve, difficulties to try and get away from. I I think I've done that myself. But, um, I suppose it doesn't console you much, does it? I mean, for getting old? Except that of course I think it might console you for the thought.

Presenter31:07

of getting old. Nothing will really do it.

Presenter31:10

the thing itself. But if by, you know, by writing a book I can make people laugh about the thought of it a little, that's that's a help.

Presenter31:17

Final choice of record please Kingsley. Oh yes, well now we're going to hear the third of the three extraordinary voices of jazz, all white men, by coincidence I think Bixby de Bick, Beaby Russell whom we just had, and Wilde Bill Davison. This record has got the convenience of bringing in a fourth voice that nobody can really get away from once they've heard it, Sidney Becher. So this is Running Wild, made under the name of Art Hodies I think, but it's got Wilde Bill and Sidney Beche in it.

Presenter32:49

Kingsley, you're now on your desert island. You have to choose one record from the eight. Imagining the seven have disappeared. I'm s so carried away by that last one. I think it would have to be that last one. And there are after all, I think, thirteen other tracks to um

Presenter33:04

Enjoy. So it would have to be that one. Barbara Davidson and uh Sinebeshi. Yes. And then you've got the the book, of course. Assume that you have the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare.

Speaker 333:07

Yeah.

Presenter33:14

Well, it would be uh if multi-volume works are allowed, I'd take the Oxford English Dictionary. Um full of information not only about the language.

Kingsley Amis33:16

Take

Presenter33:20

But about everything else. I mean, there's an awful lot of information about alcohol.

Presenter33:25

In that dictionary, you discover if you look at the various words. And what about the luxury object inanimate?

Presenter33:30

Oh, well, if malt whiskey, Scotch whiskey, is an inanimate object, certainly a funny way to look at it. But I'll have some of that. King's Demis, thank you very much indeed.

Kingsley Amis33:47

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