Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Novelist and scientist, best known for his ambitious sequence of novels.
On the island
Eight records
Violin Sonata No. 1 in D minor, Op. 75
just to reveal the little phrase, the Petite Fraze, which is so important in the love affair between Swan and Odette at the beginning of Proust's great novel.
Henry IV, Part 2 (Act III, Scene 2: The Orchard Scene)Favourite
this is a part of the orchard scene from Act Three, Scene Two of Henry IV, Part II, when Sir John Falstaff is meeting an old acquaintance, Mr Justice Shallow, and they known each other as very young men long, long ago, fifty odd years ago. ... And I think to any ageing man this means something. We've heard the chimes at midnight ourselves, and this brings back one's disreputable youth.
partly it's a classical demonstration of nostalgia. I've never been to the Hebrides, let me hasten to add, and I do know Canada fairly well, and I can't help feeling Canada is a nice place to feel nostalgia in about some rather bleak island. However, it is passionate and real nostalgia. But also, I confess that when the Hebrides, with singular unanimity or near unanimity, voted against the European community, I like to think of some Hebridean civil servant in Brussels now singing the Hebridean vote song.
First, it's very beautiful, as read by Lord Olivia. Secondly, it's not quite right. That is, when the psalms, like the rest of the authorised version, were translated. They were using, of course, a text which was mainly slightly anachronistic even by by the by sick the standards of sixteen eleven. ... I was brought up in the Church of England. I'm not a believer. And therefore I hanker after the liturgy and the words that I heard as a boy.
Were I Laid on Greenland's Coast (from The Beggar's Opera)
Elsie Morison and John Cameron
Beggars' Opera is a sort of rather simple thing that I can understand, but also I really wanted it for rather the same reason that I chose the Twenty Third Psalm. I think it's been prettified. I think the beggar's opera has been prettified rather too much.
Kutuzov's Aria (from War and Peace)
I saw this at the Belchoy. Many years ago, not too long after the war, and it was intensely moving, this great song which is really saying that we shall have to go back behind Moscow. This is what Kutuzov is telling his generals at a council. But in the long run, Russia will prevail.
Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125 'Choral'
is partly because the um Ninth Symphony is the national anthem of the European Community, of which I was and am a very strong supporter ... But also there's a private joke. Owing to my uh musical imbecility, lots of loving friends, male and women, won have tried to educate me. and they usually have tried to educate me by trying to teach me how to pick out the themes in the Ninth Symphony.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:36Lord Snow, does music play an important part in your life?
I wish it did, but I have to become quite clean and say that it doesn't. I'm musically deficient. It's been a grief to me all my life.
Presenter asks
4:24What did you read [at university]?
I read chemistry and physics. ... I always knew that I wanted to write books, but I thought the books I wanted to write meant that I had to nose my way among people and things before I could write them decently. So therefore I had to do something else to start with. Yes. And I had a tiny talent for science, very tiny, but enough to mean that I could probably become some sort of professional. And so I did it that way.
Presenter asks
6:46How did you take to political life?
I didn't like it much, but I thought I'd been a backroom boy for a long while, and been saying things in private, and ought to stand up and say some things in public. And I told the Prime Minister I'd do it as a matter of duty for a year. I did it for nearly two, and I thought that was an honest bargain.
The keepsakes
The book
In the same spirit, I should choose something where I could do some work. I should choose a Russian grammar and try and learn the language properly.
The luxury
Lots of paper, writing books, and biros
I've thought about this, but I don't think there's any point in taking a work of art, however great. Business as usual. Business as usual.
Presenter asks
When did you conceive the idea [for Strangers and Brothers] and what really inspired you?
Very curious answer to that. I conceived the idea at ... Eight thirty in the evening on january first, nineteen thirty five. These things don't usually happen like that, but it did happen that way.
Presenter asks
19:18Can you think of any way in which your scientific training would help you as a castaway?
I don't I really don't think so. I'm not I'm not very good at looking after myself. I think I should be a most incompetent castaway.
“I always knew that I wanted to write books, but I thought the books I wanted to write meant that I had to nose my way among people and things before I could write them decently.”
“I was brought up in the Church of England. I'm not a believer. And therefore I hanker after the liturgy and the words that I heard as a boy. And I think this is true of many people. If I were a believer, I think I should feel differently. Not on this, because here the song is so beautiful you can take it. But where it really bears on real religious truth, and where the translation is clearly wrong, then I think it's non-believers who hanker most passionately after the past verbal beauties, and believers who are more interested in the truth.”
“All professional writers have to be disciplined, certainly if they write long novels. You've got to sit on your bottom to write a novel, as someone once said.”