Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Journalist and writer; pioneering Fleet Street columnist for the Sunday Express and Daily Mail, later author of gardening books.
On the island
Eight records
Concerto for Two Violins in D minor, BWV 1043Favourite
Christoph Poppen, Isabelle Faust, Bach Collegium Stuttgart, conducted by Helmuth Rilling
Bach's church music and is also his orchestral music seem to me have a sort of soothing quality that I might need when I first get thrown by a wave or whatever it is on that beach.
I loved some of the post war musicals, of which the most thrilling to me was West's Side Story. And of course it has to be Marie's song. I feel pretty. Oh, so pretty. She sings in ecstasy, but we in the audience know all the time that Nemesis is waiting for her.
Al Bowlly with Ray Noble and his Orchestra
Ray Noble, Jimmy Campbell and Reg Connelly
I met first love at Oxford. I wasn't all grim, you see. He and I, we got the Good Night Sweet Hole on the brain.
Nothing moves me so much as the music of Cordwell on the singing of Lottilenia, that rashping Minatory voice. It's a great portent of what was to come.
Maria Callas, Orchestra of La Scala Milan, conducted by Victor de Sabata
The one I would choose would be A First Night at Covent Garden. The first night of Zepharelli's Tosca. Maria Callas in the name part, singing Tosuka. She acted with heart and soul. And everybody was in tears when she sang Visa Darte...
Sinfonia Concertante in E-flat major, K. 364
Now Osborne gave me this and saying it was a strange work, he didn't understand. but loved it, and I feel really rather the same. But I think it would calm me down. It's almost serene.
Falstaff (Act II, Duet: 'C'è a Windsor una dama')
Tito Gobbi, Rolando Panerai, Philharmonia Orchestra, conducted by Herbert von Karajan
He wrote one comic opera, Falstaff, which is as musically brilliant as anything else he ever wrote, but very funny. I had like to hear some men's voices on my island. I'm fond of having men around me.
I must have something, even if it makes me cry, to remind me of home. So I've chosen a little song by Bellini, a little love song, sung by my granddaughter... when she was about seventeen at a school concert.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:03What was it like [in Fleet Street back in the fifties and the sixties]? Because it was quite a male dominated place, wasn't it?
Uh well, it's a very immodest thing to say that I was the Queen Bee, and I can't agree with that. But yes, it was male-dominated. It is a heavenly place to work, and I think I like the newspapers better than anything I've done before or since. because they were all then concentrated in Fleet Street or one of the streets or And every time you went out of the office you'd bump into somebody and say, Go and let's have a drink, or have you time for a sandwich or something. It was much more. Well, friendly really, I suppose. Even to women.
Presenter asks
2:53You were the first woman to write such a column, weren't you? How would you define exactly what you were trying to do?
All I was trying to do was communicate with my readers so that they may not have entirely agreed with me, but they thought on the same sort of terms that I thought.
Presenter asks
6:24You've written that in fact you were frightened of your parents?
Oh, absolutely terrified. They were the last of the Victorian parents. They thought that everything that parents did was right and everything that children did was wrong. My father was the worst. He was very strict and he hadn't much humour. My mother at least was extremely amusing, good company when she chose to be, but What I respect them for was that we never had much money. But they saw that every single one of us got the best possible education.
The keepsakes
The book
Emily Eden
I think after a good dose of Hamlet. and uh spending a bit of time reading the book of Job or the book of Kings, I would definitely want a novel. So I would definitely take it. The Semi-Attached Couple by Emily Eden. It's my permanent bedside book. It's rather high life, I'm afraid, but I think on one's island one might be quite glad to read a bit about castles and dukes and so on.
The luxury
Hand-embroidered white cotton nightdress with wild flowers
Oh, yes. Well, I wouldn't want to sleep in the island with nothing on,'cause I've got an objection to insects. So I'd like a very beautiful night dress, an exquisite one, of the finest white cotton, hand embroidered with all the wild flowers of an English spring.
Presenter asks
8:41The thing that really shaped your childhood in the twenties was, of course, the existence of your younger brother John, wasn't it? Tell me about him.
Well... I don't want to say too much. 'Cause he might not like it. But he was epileptic and therefore very handicapped. as far as the normal things of life. And it fell to me to be his friend and companion. Indeed, I looked after him to a very large extent,'cause mother wasn't very good with him. He was just sort of my ally all through life. And when he died after a rather sad life, not until he was forty. But I miss him.
Presenter asks
22:45You've written 'I have always been slightly afraid of Max.' What does that mean? How would you characterize that kind of fear?
Well, he's a very strong, unyielding character. and uh on the fundamental things of life. I don't think we ever really agreed very much.
Presenter asks
23:30But when you divorced his father, Macdonald Hastings, [Max] went to live with his father. That must have been very hurtful for you.
Oh no, it wasn't hurtful to me at all. I mean the divorce was hurtful'cause uh it is a very painful experience. But Max had ex all the same tastes as his father, who also loved shooting and fishing and rather macho life. So it was quite natural he'd have been born stiff in London.
“Most lives are untidy, and mine is no exception, she says, but it has rarely been boring.”
“And I think it also makes you probably rather uh bossy, people might say, because if you've got a lot of responsibility when you're young, you expect to have responsibility when you're young, you expect to have responsibility when you're older.”
“I do honestly think that there is not often a particular reason why people dislike another person. I think they just dislike them. And I think that quite young He just took against me. Didn't like me. Well I think we're better friends now.”