Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Poet and writer of children's books, best known for his poetry and children's literature.
On the island
Eight records
The Play of Daniel: OvertureFavourite
This is a musical drama, sung in Latin by an unknown author of the twelfth century. A thrilling story of the adventures of the prophet Daniel in the land of Babylon and in encounters with pits full of lions and goodness knows what. There's a splendid overture to this little opera, which is crisp and witty and bright and amusing, and always makes me want to jump out the house and dance. I love it.
And Mr Lee stood at a harmonium with one foot diagonally across two pedals, pumping away furiously, and he taught us a marvellous vocabulary of British song and folk song. And one of the songs from those days is a song I really couldn't do without. It's Tom Bowling, a wonderfully affecting poem by Charles Dibden about the dead sailor
Well record number three is an echo from my days in the dance band. It was an old seventy-eight record I had of Garland Wilson playing a tune by Cole Porter called Just One of Those Things, a wonderful pianist who quite often sounds like eight men playing one piano.
Of a reading by Gielgood, by Sir John Gielgud, of one of Shelley's finest poems, the poem about Was it Mandius of Egypt, where the traveller has has seen a a great shattered stone figure in the desert. Absolutely unforgettable piece of work.
Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra in E-flat major, K. 365
Alfred Brendel and Walter Klien
If I was a composer, instead of a man trying to put words together, I'd like to be able to write the kind of music that Mozart wrote. Brilliant, sparkling, clear... And one of my most favourites of all is Concerto by Mozart, the one he wrote for two pianos. And I'd like to hear it played by Alfred Brendel and by Walter Klein.
Well, this is a ballad called The Cut a Wren. It's sung by the Ian Campbell folk group. I've always loved it because it has a very deep historical root. It's concerned on the surface with the ritual hunting and killing and dismemberment of the wren on St Stephen's Day, on Boxing Day. But underneath it's very much a song of protest
Imagine the Duchess's Feelings
Noël Coward and Carroll Gibbons
For me, I suppose he epitomizes the theatre of the 1930s. I never saw him perform. I'd love to have done so. I've always admired his very smart and slick technique and his professionalism and the way he could write words to be sung.
Wonderfully romantic landscape of Bohemia, which I think Janacek catches perfectly in his Sinfonietto. There's a part towards the end of the second movement, the Andante, which expresses the atmosphere of that wonderful country in a wonderful way.
In conversation
Presenter asks
3:14Were you bright at school?
No, I wasn't, and I wasn't very ha you know, I didn't really enjoy school very much after I left the primary school. I used to go to a huge Church of England primary school about five hundred yards from my home... But one marvellous thing that happened there was that we had every Friday afternoon a music lesson conducted by the head master, Mr A. K. Lee... and he taught us a marvellous vocabulary of British song and folk song.
Presenter asks
5:40What else interested you at school apart from music?
Well, I enjoyed reading English. Of course, I was absolutely hopeless at science and mathematics and all that kind of thing. And I still don't know, I'm glad, rather proud to say, one end of a football pitch from the other, nor do I care. But English always absolutely fascinated me.
Presenter asks
7:27Why did you opt for the Royal Navy?
Well, I think it was pure ignorance. Uh I'd read all the First World War poets, and uh the accounts of what happened in France and Belgium in the First World War didn't appeal to me at all. And the notion of going to sea, I suppose, was a romantic one, rather a mistaken one in my case. I mean, when it actually came to going to sea in a destroyer, I found that the sea was even more difficult and dangerous than the business of confronting the enemy
The keepsakes
The book
James Boswell
I think I'd take the book that got me through the Second World War, Boswell's Life of Johnson, splendid piece of work about that wonderful, commonsensical man, I can never get tired of stories about Johnson and his life, and I admire him very much indeed.
The luxury
I think I'd like a really nice grand piano so that I could improve what might be laughingly called my technique.
Presenter asks
8:43Was there any opportunity for writing at all [during your time in the Navy]?
No, none whatever. It was the um uh there was the opportunity for the preparation of writing. You see, in the thirties I didn't really know what was my line... But being in a small ship or being in a shore establishment somewhere or other meant that one had a job to do and that one couldn't really write a novel or a play, for example. One hadn't got the time or the physical space. But poetry can be written in the head with nobody else having the faintest idea of what's going on.
Presenter asks
10:30Did you consider going back to the old job [after leaving the Navy]?
No, not for a second. I made up my mind during the war that if I survived it, that at least I'd do something with my life which I wanted to do. And so I threw up my old job and was lucky enough to get a place in what was then called a teacher's training college and went off and took a a course in teaching and emerged, as I thought, a teacher.
Presenter asks
20:31Do you enjoy performing [your poetry readings]?
No, I don't, to tell you the truth. I mean, I I'm told I look as if I uh as if I enjoy it, but I feel guilty. I feel that I should be at home. Writing, instead of bouncing about reading poems, is really terribly easy if you've written the poems. It becomes boring.
“I've frightened more woodworms out of more ancient pianos than anybody else in the west of in the west of England.”
“I don't really think I taught anybody anything, Roy, actually. I mean, I learned far more from the children than they ever did from me.”
“I've never met anybody who loathed the navy more than I did or who was more uneasy on what Shakespeare called the wild and wasteful ocean.”
“I am by temperament, I suppose, um a solitary man. I really wouldn't mind it all that lot, and I should be able to get on with some work.”