Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Novelist and biographer, one of the twenty young novelists celebrated by the Book Marketing Council.
On the island
Eight records
A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square
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. 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
Impromptu in G flat major, D. 899 No. 3
Well, since you've only limited me to eight, I thought that I'd take an anthology record, with several composers on it. And I'm very, very fond of the pianist Dino Lippati. I thought I'd take his Last Concert and shoop it. is a composer I'm very, very fond of. So I thought that I'd play Schubert's impromptu in G flat major.
Eternal Father, Strong to Save
Royal Naval College Chapel Choir
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. and since I shall be standing on the beach. Longing for a ship to appear on the horizon, I think I shall be praying for those in peril on the sea.
Duo No. 6 in C major for violin and viola (arranged for cello by Piatti)
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.
I'm very fond of Sir Walter Strott, and I wrote a book about Sir Walter Strott a few years ago. And In the course of writing that book Rather strangely I got mixed up in the world of the theatre for the first time in my life... they asked me if I would put on a dramatic presentation of Sir Walter Strott's life... 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.
Lord Trussellhaven, as you know, was hanged for the most obscene practices, and his 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.
Well, record number seven will be Hilaire Bellot. He made some records. He made a record in nineteen thirty two. As you know, he was a poet, but many of his verses were songs, and although he on the whole detested music... he did like airs... and he used to make up tunes to his own songs, and sing them... And this extraordinary song, The Winged Horse, really in a way seems to be a kind of allegory of his own life.
The Dream of GerontiusFavourite
Kim Borg, Hallé Orchestra, Sir John Barbirolli
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. 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.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:06Why 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... 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.
Presenter asks
3:19What was your earliest ambition, do you remember?
Well, my very earliest ambition was to be an Australian Aborigine... 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.
Presenter asks
3:47Where were you at prep school?
I was sent away when I was seven to a prep school in Malvern... I say perhaps concentration camp would be a better term, I think... I can never see it without dread.
The keepsakes
The book
Francis Turner Palgrave
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.
The luxury
I think I'd like to take my bed... it's more real, more vital and more essential than dressing for dinner.
Presenter asks
How far did you get towards ordination [for the church]?
I spent about a year mulling it over and reading theology... money. 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. And so I left and went and became a schoolmaster.
Presenter asks
22:35Why were you fascinated by [Sir Walter] Scott?
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... I first really became addicted to him when I had pneumonia and I lay in bed all day... and simply read through the Waverley novels... Then I became fascinated by his character. He's an extraordinarily brave and extraordinarily amiable man... I'm very fascinated by prolific writers, people who can scribble out enormous quantities of fiction.
Presenter asks
27:10What fascinates you about [Hilaire] Belloc?
There's a lot to discover, so that it was an exciting book to start... one discovers this wonderfully moving love story of Belloc, at the age of about nineteen or twenty, falling in love with an American girl... Walking Across the United States, from Pennsylvania to San Francisco, and proposing to her and being turned down... I think I like him principally because he was a crashing failure. He was a man of enormous genius in all kinds of areas... And in none of these areas did he quite bring his genius to fruition.
“I'm rather a hundred best tunes sort of character. Music is important to me, but I don't know anything about it.”
“It's rather fatal to work in a bookshop because one doesn't sell any, one simply sits there reading them all day.”
“I almost invariably write when I'm in bed... Morning and weekends. I don't think I've ever written anything after about six o'clock in the evening.”
“I was sacked from the boy Strout for having a quarrel with the Stroutmaster.”