Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Playwright known for his verse dramas and comedies; wrote his first play at age eleven.
On the island
Eight records
Piano Trio No. 1 in B-flat major, D. 898
Alfred Cortot, Jacques Thibaud and Pablo Casals
it's the first record I ever possessed.
The Faithful Shepherd Suite: Bourrée
London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Sir Thomas Beecham
I shall need on the desert island something to um keep me on my toes. I think I'm most likely just to lapse into a kind of torpor unless I have something which stirs me up a bit.
Concerto for Double String Orchestra: II. Adagio cantabile
London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Vernon Handley
The slow music, unforgettable slow movement of uh the Concerta for Double String Orchestra.
Singing in the Rain from that marvellous film musical.
Spring Symphony, Op. 44 (Closing passage)
If the desert island doesn't have a spring, I think I shall have to make one for myself
String Quartet No. 13 in B-flat major, Op. 130: IV. Alla danza tedesca
I feel I'd like to have the first that I heard, the first Beethoven quartet I heard, which was I remember very clearly it was in nineteen twenty nine, and that is the quartet in B flat.
Symphony of Psalms (Closing passage)
London Symphony Orchestra and the English Bach Festival Chorus conducted by Leonard Bernstein
at least it it somehow makes the human voice part of space and the sky and the sea, and I think on a desert island would be very comforting.
In conversation
Presenter asks
2:32What part of the country do you come from?
I was born in Bristol... where my father was working as a lay reader in a parish there. And he died when I was three and then we we moved from Bristol. And about a year later my mother took my brother and me off to Bedford, where she heard the education was very good.
Presenter asks
5:51What happened to you when you left [school]?
I taught for almost a year before going to a strange place in Bath called Citizen House, which was half a social centre and half a theatre... I acted there, in a way, and also was office boy and took the letters to the post at midnight.
Presenter asks
14:09How did you choose your subject [for Venus Observed]?
I don't know. It it it ev it evolved. It was a bit of a battle because of course uh that was the opening date for the theatre. And I started the play and then couldn't see how to move across to the second act.
Presenter asks
The keepsakes
The book
Which would remind me of a great deal that uh isn't actually in the book.
The luxury
I think if I got to spend days on the Desert Island I can only do it if I have some proper rest. ... so that at least I would get a good night's rest and could face the day with a certain amount of hope.
How well could you adjust yourself to isolation and loneliness?
Very hard to say until one tries it, but I think I could.
Presenter asks
22:43How good would you be at looking after yourself?
Not very good, I'm afraid... Not really a handyman, no.
“you can't walk a stage until you've swept it.”
“I remember the the stage director Alison Colville coming to me and saying, Do stop him changing any more. I rubbed right through the pages of the script. So I went back to the stalls and was sitting just behind John. And he changed beginning to change something, and I was just about to tap him on the shoulder and say, Don't when he s I heard him say, Good, good it's always better when it's different.”
“I began to get very interested in the family in my parents and grandparents and great grandparents and uncles and aunts and so on. And Fascinated to find how much I belong to them or how much of them belong to me in a way.”