Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Novelist and television writer.
On the island
Eight records
Vedor is a Carter from the Fifth Symphony, and it's meant to pull me together. When I arrive on the island and the shock of being shipwrecked, I imagine I'd need something very bracing. And I think organ music is pretty bracing, and this is a very stirring piece, and I'd play it very loud.
Symphony No. 6 (First Movement)
London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by André Previn
My second record is Vaughan Williams, to remind me of England, when I'm sitting on my island. I could have taken a lot of Vaughan Williams, but I had to choose one, and it's The Sixth Symphony.
My third record is Tosca, because I love Puccini and Tosca in particular, and Maria Callas is my favourite soprano, and Gobby was wonderful Scarpia and Scarpia is such a wonderfully evil part.
Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde
I do love opera very much, and I couldn't go on my desert island without Wagner, and so it would have to be the end of the Lieberstadt with Nielsen, one of the greatest pieces of music ever written.
Complete change of mood. One of the things I thought on my desert island was that I'd want Music for all sorts of moods. And this is for when I want to wallow. Instead of being cheered up in a depression, as I could be by Vidor, I might want to be brought even further down by Frank Sinatra. And this reminds me of Diana, who's my favourite character in Mackenzie, my new series. And when she's depressed, this is what she plays.
What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?
Well, this is to cheer me up after Sinatra, and it's wonderful Barbara Streisand. singing What are you doing the rest of your life?
Well, I thought I would like the human voice on my desert island that I would want someone to talk to me and who better than a great poet reading a great poem, which I first read actually in a university entrance exam back in the late fifties, when it must have been shortly after he died, I suppose. I didn't even know the poem. I don't know whether that meant it was a recent poem or I was very ignorant. But anyway it's Fern Hill, Dylan Thomas.
Im Abendrot (from Four Last Songs)Favourite
My last record is Strauss. I'd like to take far more Strauss, but I've chosen the four last songs, Schwarzkopf, and it's the fourth, because if I was never rescued, I think it could reconcile me to the idea of dying alone on the desert island. It's the most wonderfully serene music.
In conversation
Presenter asks
4:13What were you good at at school?
English Surprise. Um, very much on the art side. English, history, Latin, art, music, terrible at maths, terrible at biology, totally one sided and unscientific.
Presenter asks
5:14Did you really feel that [working as a civil servant] was a stop gap?
Oh yes, but it it was so lovely to be earning even a small amount of money after being a student for so long. It was wonderful to be employed. … I actually have a payday, but I was still int intending to write novels.
Presenter asks
12:03Were you really angry about the way they treated your book [in the film adaptation of Three into Two Won't Go]?
I don't think I was angry. I was disappointed. I was a bit sad, but on the other hand I was grateful for the money … And it seemed so wonderful to have a film made at all that I don't actually remember being very angry, just disappointed.
Presenter asks
The keepsakes
The book
Rosamond Lehmann
Well, I'd take one of the books that has influenced me most that I have read most often since my teens that I still think is a magnificent novel that I've learned a great deal from, and it's The Weather in the Streets by Rosmond Lehmann.
The luxury
An unlimited supply of champagne, please. I'm told I should choose Krug fifty nine.
You decided to go back to university for a bit [to do an MA].
Yes, I must have been mad. I thought my career was going to fold up. … This was purely an anxiety statement. … I think creative work makes you very insecure anyway, and superstitious. … I thought, how would I earn a living if I suddenly found I couldn't write any more?
Presenter asks
19:18For that success [of Bouquet of Barbed Wire] would you admit that you were writing commercially?
In the novel you had written seriously, the novel is from the heart. … Yes, absolutely, all the novels were. I don't consciously think about commercialism and it was just a wonderful opportunity to dramatize my own book. … without having things changed the way they are in a film. I saw it as freedom to put the book on the screen faithfully. I wasn't thinking about commercialism.
Presenter asks
30:59Could you look after yourself on a desert island?
I am very practical in an urban environment. I think I would be an absolute dead loss on my desert island.
“It's so difficult to start work at all that I find music does help a little. Nothing helps enough.”
“I think creative work makes you very insecure anyway, and superstitious. It's not like being able to swim or type or something that you can reasonably expect to go on doing. It might just the ability might leave you one day.”
“I think although it's true, I'd rather put it another way that I like to write about conflict. … And that's why they have a rotten time, because all their interests conflict with each other. Um I want to write about high drama. I want strong characters and I want them in conflict with one another.”
“I have a sort of screen in my head, and I see the characters very clearly moving around, and I hear what they're saying, I hear the dialogue, and I see the faces. And the problem is really concentrating on that screen, watching and listening properly, and overcoming your natural reluctance to face the blank sheet of paper.”