Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Author of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, featuring Botswanan detective Precious Ramotswe.
On the island
Eight records
Soave sia il vento (from Così fan tutte)Favourite
It's a piece of music which I think is so peaceful and has such a wonderful message in it. If you're going on a journey, may your journey be an easy one. May the winds that take you off be gentle ones.
It means a great deal to me because when I was a boy we had one of those windy up gramophones and you wound it up and then you put the seventy eight on and we had a lot of Paul Robeson. But Lindy Loo is a is a lovely, lovely song, and it reminds me of Winding Up the Gramophone.
this particular song is a wonderful... a count of friendship, which is a subject uh which interests me. It's a woman uh singing about her husband... and they're towards the end of their lives now, and she remembers him when he was younger, and it's just a marvellous uh song of the friendship that exists between Married persons, but it could refer to friendship between anybody.
Choir of St. Paul's Cathedral, Andrew Lucas, conducted by John Scott
something that deals with what we've just been talking about, about love. And there's some wonderful lines in this. Love is as strong as death. Well, some people would say even more powerful than that.
Everybody knows, as time goes by, from Casablanca. I suppose you could say it's sentimental, but why not? And it reminds me of a wonderful experience that I had in that I went to Casablanca, arrived at night, went out, got a taxi, and the taxi drove down the road, and the beam of light swung round and illuminated a sign which said Casablanca. And in the taxi, as I went in, I'm afraid I couldn't help but hum the tune that we're about to hear.
it will remind me of the fact that my daughters, Lucy and Emily, sang in a performance of that in the Greyfriars Kirk in Edinburgh some time ago, and it will remind me of the fact that I've got daughters who can sing.
this is a very amusing po poem that he r wrote to describe going round speaking to audiences in the United States. And this resonates with me because I do a lot of this now myself and uh they're very nice, generous audiences, but one flies in and out of places
Irish musicians singing uh and playing a lovely, I think rather haunting piece of music called The West Coast of Clare. I think this is a this is a a beautiful, rather wistful piece of music. It um it brings tears to the eyes and I think if music can do that then uh it's worth listening to.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:52When did you first feel [the character of Precious Ramotswe] coming on?
Well, I suppose the very beginning of the whole thing goes back to nineteen eighty, when uh I went across to Botswana on a number of occasions to visit friends of mine. And uh on one particular occasion I went with my uh hostess to visit somebody in the village who was going to give them a chicken for lunch the next day. And we went off to see this woman, and I shall always remember her. Uh she was wearing a red dress and she was traditionally built, and there was a chicken pecking around in the yard... and she chased the chicken, caught it eventually, and promptly wrung its neck. And I thought what a remarkable woman and I wondered about her life and what lay behind it, and I thought one day I might write about a woman like that in Botswana.
Presenter asks
3:48Why do you feel these books have become so successful?
I think that's true. I think that people rather like reading about good people, and Mara Matsui is a very good person. And I think that people feel that this is a very distressing world, and indeed it is a very distressing world in which we live. And if people can go somewhere through a book where certain values that they would like to believe in are given form and applied, they feel strengthened and encouraged. And I think that that's a legitimate thing for literature to do.
Presenter asks
6:17The keepsakes
The book
W. H. Auden
Well, I think there's no question but that I would take the um collector shorter poems of of WH Orden. or any collection of substantial collection of Orton's works, I would take that.
The luxury
A good pair of shoes made by a London shoemaker
I think that I would rather like to have a good pair of shoes made for me by one of these London shoemakers. So I'd mentioned to them that I was going to Des T Island, and perhaps we should have a particular sort of soul. But these people are so discreet and experienced that they would say, Well, we've done this before, sir.
What happened that made [the book's success] different?
Well, it was published initially by a small publisher in Edinburgh, and we had some generous reviews. The critics were very kind, but nothing really happened. And then the books were imported into the United States by Columbia University Press, and bookstores ordered five copies here and there. And then a word of mouth effect started. And the New York Times, that great and good newspaper, then did a whole page article about my books, which attracted the attention, I think, of the large publishers in New York.
Presenter asks
10:45Do you think [your mother's unpublished manuscript] is part of what fired you to write?
Well, I suppose if uh if I was on the uh analyst's couch that conclusion might be might be drawn. Uh I don't know... I wrote as as a boy. I remember sending off my first manuscript uh when I was eight. Um it was a manuscript called He's Gone... And I actually sent it off to a publisher somewhere, and I got a very kind letter back, which which which is nice. Had I got um an unkind letter back, a brush off, maybe I wouldn't many years later have written.
Presenter asks
12:43You said [your year lecturing in Belfast] was a very important year for you. Why do you say that?
Yes, it was very important for me, and the reason why I say that is that I found myself in the middle of conflict. As you say, that period was a period of great hope because it was the first power-sharing agreement, and also it was a period of great despair in that that collapsed. And so I saw a society which had been through a lot, really, I suppose, a small-scale civil war, really. And you couldn't be indifferent to that.
Presenter asks
20:35How can we stop what you describe really as a kind of loss of moral sense?
Well, I think it's it's it's very difficult, because we create a moral climate for ourselves in society. And if we entertain ourselves constantly with images and thoughts of of human cruelty and human suffering and human selfishness, and present these as entertainment... my view is that that rather creates a a climate of that in society, and then we throw up our hands in horror when we see people treating uh the suffering and unhappiness of others as uh lightly. Uh we we destroyed um social niceties, uh we destroyed the the the notion of manners, for example, as being something which enables us to get along together in in a crowded world reasonably happily and with due concern for other people.
“I think that writing emerges from the subconscious mind.”
“I think if you're a writer and you start to ask why you write or how you write, uh you could probably stop writing.”
“people have said to me that these books are are a very long uh love letter uh to a country, and uh I'd say, well, yes, they probably are, and it's it's a love letter that I'm I'm very proud uh to sign my name to.”