Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Britain's most controversial journalist; writes for The Spectator, The Sunday Telegraph and the Daily Mail; newly appointed editor of the Literary Review.
On the island
Eight records
Is there not one maiden breast
The D'Oyly Carte Opera Company
I saw this as my theme song as I as I arrived in the offices of Literary Review.
They used to sing You Are My Sunshine, and they sang it to me, not the others, I was the only boy.
The next one is the only song really I remember from my school days. Of course I knew nothing about music or pop music and all the other boys were singing this, so I had to learn it and pretend I was in the swing...
Johnny Duncan and the Blue Grass Boys
This song was being played on the tannoy every single morning as I cleaned my boots. And I I haven't actually heard it since then, but as I listened to it I thought if ever I hear that song I'll be reminded of this disgusting night feeling boots and spitting.
The next one is is particularly germane to my life in politics. It's a song which it seems to me is is the great illusion of our time, the idea of a land of milk and honey, the big rock candy mountain, which is what politicians dangle in front of these poor half-witted voters who then vote for them.
In a jukebox I heard this song from Traviato and it gave me a lifelong passion in fact for Italian opera.
Eberhard Wächter and Graziella Sciutti
The next song is chosen Pure Lee because I think it's one of the prettiest songs ever written...
This, I think, is just about as far as I go with the with the pop movement. I've rarely stopped at The Seekers... It's particularly appropriate now I've given up private eye and have got a serious job now in the Literary Review trying to improve British letters.
In conversation
Presenter asks
4:14Given your background, given who your father [Evelyn Waugh] was, was there any doubt about you becoming a writer?
Well, I mean, he had six children, of which admittedly quite a few have become writers. But it was a more likely thing to become, you know, just as if you're the son of a butcher, the odds are you might become a butcher... In mine it was perfectly normal and rather humble thing to want to be.
Presenter asks
4:44Was he a daunting man, your father?
Yes, well he he was, because what made him daunting was his moods. He was a very moody man, and so one had to be careful of him. But he wasn't at all the sort of bad-tempered ogre he's been painted. He was rather a gentle but uh melancholic man more than anything else.
Presenter asks
11:57Why did you stop writing novels?
Well, by then I had a wife and um three or possibly four children to support... And you couldn't afford it, you see, because every time I wrote a novel I gave up all my journalism and retired having saved up a bit of money and retired for three, four, five months to write a novel. And you can't do that if you've got an establishment to keep up.
The keepsakes
The book
The Oxford Book of Quotations, which would be fascinating because you'd always be trying to, you know, you're given two lines of quotation, you'd you'd wonder what happened next, and you'd be thinking about it.
The luxury
I think I'd like to take a vine so that you could grow grapes and then make wine. In fact, my luxury would be wine, but it would be a way of making wine every year for the rest of my life.
Presenter asks
17:47Could you explain what you mean by [the English disease]?
Yeah, well the Engl England's got lots of diseases at the moment. I divide it really quite sharply on the River Trent... north of the trent it seems to me they're obviously very nice people and very warm-hearted and all that. But uh it seems to me that they have no conception that in order to get anywhere you've got to do something... from the south it sounds like one almighty great whine that's going on up the north.
Presenter asks
24:22What's the worst example you can think of [of your absent-mindedness]?
Oh, God, I I uh groan when I think of all the things I do every day. I think the very worst one was I got into a train once and saw a pretty girl sitting there. I said, Oh good, I'll sit opposite her. And I sat down, and five minutes later she looked up from her book and said, Oh, hello, papa, and it was my own daughter, and I hadn't recognized her.
“I decided that anybody who chooses to go into politics must have some emotional inadequacy or something, that you have to push yourself forward. That it isn't a normal thing to want to do.”
“I think the whole of human wisdom is to make your own little corner, cultivate your own garden, and you know, you you get yourself the wife you want, try and get yourself the children you want, get yourself the house you want, and you just work for those limited ambitions and make your own little corner.”