Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Crime writer and creator of Inspector Morse.
On the island
Eight records
In Paradisum (from Requiem, Op. 48)
Westminster Cathedral Choir, City of London Sinfonia, David Hill
Well, I no longer believe in the Almighty or or in any future life, but I I've always loved a lot of church music. And I I think if there is a future life I I shall long to be paraded into eternity by the in paradisum from the Foray Requiem.
singing Abide With Me for lots of reasons. M my father ha had had quite a a gentle, light, baritone voice, and he used to sing this, and I've always myself enjoyed very much all this sentimental stuff. In fact, I'm not at all sure I know what's wrong with sentimentality.
Étude Op. 25, No. 5 in E minor
I want to hear a thing my brother used to play very often at Shop Annette Tude. Opus Twenty Five No. Five used to play this and practice it quite regularly, and it's a very beautiful melody.
I I want to have a record of the Beatles beque I have two children, Sally and Jeremy, and when I was teaching in in the early sixties when the Beatles came on the scene, I was quite contemptuous of all these silly boys and girls who came along, you know, and wrote in their satchels... And then in the mid seventies, when the Beatles had a re a renaissance of interest, My my children uh started playing the Beatles, and I realized what a silly man I had been.
Clarinet Concerto in A major, K. 622: II. Adagio
Jack Brymer, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Sir Malcolm Sargent
When we started on Morse a wonderful man came to see me, called Kenny MacBain, and we went for some beer in North Oxford... He died very young, forty one, and and and uh at his memorial service we had the uh Slow movement to the Mozart clarinet concerto.
Well, this w uh will remind me very much o of my schooling in Stamford. A man called Gerard Hofnung who came along... And yet he was a wonderful man, and I remember him with a huge affection, enormously civilised fellow. And so I'd like to hear him at the Oxford Union, partly because I've been honoured myself once or twice to go along and talk there.
Beim Schlafengehen (from Four Last Songs)
Lisa Della Casa, Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, Karl Böhm
I'd I'd like to hear one of the four last songs, uh the Baun Schlaffengeen, and uh there's so many recordings, but I I think Lisa Della Casimovi um does something to the songs which few of the others do.
Götterdämmerung: Brünnhilde's Immolation SceneFavourite
Kirsten Flagstad, Orchestra and Chorus of La Scala Milan, Wilhelm Furtwängler
it reminds me uh uh a lot about Cambridge when when I know my brother and and other people were always playing Kirsten Flagstadt, either prob b in the Liebestode or or Bits of the Ring and so on. And I've always uh thought that Kirsten Flagstadt has slightly more musical and warm voice than some of the Brunhildes
In conversation
Presenter asks
4:39Is it true that [Inspector] Morse was born one wet afternoon in Wales?
Yes, it's not unknown for it to to rain in North Wales, is it? And I don't think there's any anything really that's worse than being with a family when it is raining outside on a holiday... And it was raining, and I had nothing to do there... And I read both of'em, and I didn't think that either of'em was any good. And I I just had this idea, well, I've nothing to do, you know, I I might. be able to do something which is probably as good as this stuff
Presenter asks
6:28How easy was it then to get that first book published?
Well, I had a list of three publishers... I sent it to the first one, and they kept it for a long, long time, and then sent it back and said it wasn't really very satisfactory. And somebody in the meantime had said, forget Goulanx and go to Macmillan... And a dear man there called Lord Harding of Penshurst... rang me up within twenty-four hours of him getting it... And he said to me, look here, it's full of faults and warts and everything. But he said, I'm going to publish it exactly as it is.
Presenter asks
9:27Which parent was it who pushed you [to study] and why?
Well, I I think both uh both uh my mother and father left school at the age of twelve. And so they they they had no formal education themselves... we never had any trouble like that because our parents wanted us to sit down. and and open the books and do the work. But I think we used to feel we wanted to do well for our parents, perhaps even more than for ourselves.
The keepsakes
The book
Collected Poems and Classical Papers
A. E. Housman
I'd very much like you if you if you could to to to uh bind together the collected poems of A. E. Hausmann with all his classical papers as well. Uh that will keep me going and give me enormous joy.
The luxury
Well, please, miss, if I can. I would like. A pair of nail scissors. For some deep reason way down in the psyche. I I've always been anxious to keep my fingernails clean and tidy. And when I go away on holiday I sometimes forget a pair of Nail scissors And I I I think if you could do that.
Presenter asks
14:14Were you a good teacher?
I think that it it's probably the best thing I ever did teaching, really. I was a very, very good. schoolmaster in a sense. I don't think I was a very good educationalist, but I had a great skill... I was very, very good at getting people who were not naturally enormously clever through examinations at grades slightly higher than they should have had, you know.
Presenter asks
15:56How would [an O-level Latin paper from the 1960s] compare [with a GCSE Latin paper today]?
Well, you'd par you'd pass uh far more pupils now than you did. You'd pass far more of them at higher grades. You would have smaller demands upon the uh children, boys and girls, in terms of how much they read or what was expected. You would take out the difficult things... And as I say, I think the big thing is that all the people who worked for me during those years would say that standards are going down.
Presenter asks
18:32What persuaded you to write more [than the first Morse book]?
Well uh There is this perpetual challenge when the publishers about what they call the second book hurdle, isn't there?... And I I I I know my my editor said to me, Why not try another one just to see if you can do it? You know. And I I felt this was a challenge because there are a lot of people who who only write one book really and the second one's a bit of a come down. And so I I thought I would try to do two.
“I think unless you're a genius, which w w which I'm not, I think if you start writing fiction it's going to be semi-autobiographical.”
“I think that was the moment when I began to feel a door was opened. uh to the appreciation of classical music.”
“I think that with me, the only thing that um I I would say I do is a twisting and turning and so on. I think the plot for me is rather more important than it is for many crime writers.”
“I've killed enough people in Oxford. It's become the crime capital o not just the United Kingdom, but of the European common market.”