Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Novelist who won the Booker Prize and was later a runner-up.
On the island
Eight records
Cello Concerto in B minor, Op. 104: II. Adagio ma non troppo
I would take um Rostropovich playing uh Dvorak's cello concerto. I think he is the greatest cellist. [...] And I would give all my novels just to play one bar like him.
My second record is a recording by my brother Harold of the List Sonata. [...] He was the eldest of our family, and he was a child prodigy.
Minuet in G major, Op. 14 No. 1
Most of my choices in this programme are to do with family and nostalgia, and nostalgia doesn't necessarily imply good taste, and in fact the minuet is a silly little piece. But if I were to hear it on the island it would ship me right back into my childhood with a certain amount of pleasure.
My next record is um also related to family. [...] my elder daughter, Sharon, is a composer. [...] this is one of her pieces called One Big Tree which she is conducting and singing.
Partita No. 3 in E major, BWV 1006: I. Preludio (Gavotte en rondeau)
My next record is the Gavotte from a Bach Partita, because it reminds me of my young brother. [...] I remembered the first year my brother was going in for it [...] I got to think that the way he played it was the norm. [...] So that when I hear a kind of authorized version by someone like Highfits, I find it hard to believe a note of it.
Don Giovanni, K. 527: 'Mi tradì quell'alma ingrata'
I came to offer a very late in life. [...] And I came to operate accident. [...] I had an unexpected stopover in Rio [...] and I went to an opera and the opera happened to be Don Giovanni. [...] Lucia Popp singing part of the Aria Mi Tradi from the second act.
Violin Concerto in D minor, Op. 47: III. Allegro, ma non tanto
When we grew up [...] my sister was learning the Sibelius Violin concerta. [...] every morning she would wake me up with her practising and I felt the same [...] I would like the last movement of the Sibelius to remind me of her.
String Quintet in C major, D. 956: II. AdagioFavourite
Hollywood String Quartet and Kurt Reher
From the Schubert string quartet in C major, I think the greatest piece of chamber music ever written [...] In so far as I am, I would like to play thee second jello of this work.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:15Do you believe, then, Bernice, that writing is far less of an accomplishment than playing a musical instrument?
Yeah. No, I don't think there are any rules about it. I think this is just a personal choice. I would rather have become a musician, a cellist. [...] because I get a lot more pleasure out of listening to music. I take music enormously seriously. In the sense that although I'm a serious writer, I don't take my books seriously.
Presenter asks
4:24Winning the Booker Prize then, as you did in 1970, must have come as a bit of a shock.
It came as a shock and a little bit of an embarrassment, because I didn't take myself all that seriously. But it did make an enormous difference to my life. A radical difference, in fact, because it was the difference between earning a living as a writer and not earning a living.
Presenter asks
9:08Tell me about your own family. Was it a happy one?
On reflection, yes, it was happy. But I remember time filling deeply resentful. Being an outsider in the family [...] not being the musician. [...] My mother used to say to me, to comfort me, she said, 'In a family like ours we have to have a listener.' [...] Looking back, of course, it was the greatest gift she gave me. Because the ear has to be practised as carefully as any fiddle. [...] So in hindsight, yes, it was a happy childhood, but in at its time I remember crying a lot. Because I was the outsider in a way.
The keepsakes
The book
John Donne: The Complete Poems and Selected Sermons
John Donne
The Poems for Joy and the Sermons for Solace.
The luxury
A painting by my daughter Rebecca
I would take one of her paintings and I would be totally surrounded by family and I would feel safe and comfortable.
Presenter asks
10:20[Your parents were] Jewish immigrants, weren't they? How had they come to choose Cardiff?
Well, they didn't. The pattern was that you came across Russia. And you went to Hamburg, which was the setting off point for Europe or America. My father had a already had a brother in America. And when he got to Hamburg he asked for a ticket to America. But [he] got a dishonest ticket who charged him for a ticket to America, but put him on a boat to Cardiff. And my father, bless him, was in Cardiff for three weeks under the impression that he was walkingly streets of New York.
Presenter asks
21:06How important is your Jewishness to you now, Bernice?
It is me. I mean, it's not a question of importance. It's like saying, How important are your brown eyes? They're there. And clearly they have a great deal to do with my vision. I mean optical vision, my writer's vision. It's a Jewish vision, I suppose.
Presenter asks
24:56Which is your favourite of your seventeen novels?
I think a five-year sentence. That work. I mean structurally it works. And I'm happy with the theme of it. [...] The central character, Miss Hawkins, the spinster, is fundamentally very pathetic, isn't she? [...] Sometimes I go to the supermarket and I shop and it's strange, although I live alone, I still shop for an army. My trolley is just full. And in front of me perhaps there's a woman who is a Miss Hawkins, and I can almost predict the contents of her shopping bag. [...] And I think the character of Miss Hawkins came out of that vision.
“I would give up every seventeen of them in order to play one bar like Rostropovich.”
“I think life is pretty ridiculous, you know, and the only way one can survive with any kind of grace or dignity is by seeing the ridiculous side of nature and the almost offensive endurance of human beings.”
“My father used to say to us when we were children, it was a kind of mantra that orchestrated our childhood. He would say, 'Remember you are a guest in this country.'”
“The only reason I'm not mad is my lunacy is channelled into my work. I think all writers have to be slightly crazy to do it at all.”
“When a writer is writing a novel, they believe that they are immortal. Because death wouldn't have the effrontery to take you away mid sentence.”