Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A restless travel writer and novelist, best known for his acclaimed accounts of journeys through Russia and China.
On the island
Eight records
O tu que in seno agli angeli (from La forza del destino)
I fell in love with the old singers when I was a teenager … I met him in New York when he was a very old man.
Ceremony of the Mevlevi Whirling Dervishes
Whirling Dervishes of Konya (recorded by Colin Thubron)
It reflects my first visit to Asia … it doesn't have a western shape, it has a sort of continuum like eternity with variations played on it and it has no beginning or end.
Piano Concerto No. 23 in A major, K. 488 – II. Adagio
Alfred Brendel, Academy of Saint Martin in the Fields, Sir Neville Marriner
I loved Mozart from almost some childhood … this to me is one of the most poignant of all his slow movements from the Twenty-third Piano Concerto.
Der Abschied (from Das Lied von der Erde)
Christa Ludwig, Philharmonia Orchestra, Otto Klemperer
This is the song of the earth … fascinating to me always, I think, because of his delight in the beauty of life and yet the consciousness of its transience.
Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen (from Rückert Lieder)
Janet Baker, Hallé Orchestra, Sir John Barbirolli
I remember meeting Janet Baker once, and I always thought there was something special about this song, and she said indeed it was her sort of signature tune.
String Quartet No. 14 in C-sharp minor, Op. 131 – IV. Assai vivace – Vivace
I love these late Beethoven string quartets … the sheer richness and inventiveness and vitality in them.
Die Nebensonnen (from Winterreise)
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Klaus Billing
A typical travel writer's choice, I guess … a journey in music, if you like, with sort of time seen as a road.
Love duet (from Die Schöpfung)Favourite
Gundula Janowitz, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Berlin Philharmonic, Herbert von Karajan
I've chosen from it the the first love song on earth, I guess, the wonderful Adam and Eve love song.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:29But is it a desire to travel, or is it a desire to arrive?
I think in my case it's more a desire to arrive. I have a dream of a place, an idea of a place, which I want to go and corroborate or find a a a difference in. I think the the love of simple movement may be there as well, but the ultimate thing is the realization of of a destiny.
Presenter asks
2:47You must have come across some desert islands in your time, have you?
A few. … Yes, nice but static. I think that although the solitude of a desert island would quite appeal to me, I'd probably take about three weeks before I notice nobody else was on it at all. I think really that a traveller … is looking at the horizon all the time. … I would be trying to, I think, stitch her off together with monkey hide or something and and go over that horizon.
Presenter asks
6:08What's the worst situation you ever found yourself in?
It's always hard to say because you don't know how real the danger was. Um when I was in Tripolis, which was a very violent Muslim city, a mob assembled to, as they said, string me up, that I I grabbed the hands of the people in the front of the crowd and tried to make contact with them in very bad Arabic … and they eventually sort of let me drift away. That was an ugly moment. But usually in the Middle East it was sort of anarchy from below that threatened. In Russia and China I felt more sort of fear of sort of authority from above.
The keepsakes
The book
Victor Gollancz
a very tranquil but powerful book, and it might even just stop me wanting to get away at all. It might reconcile me to being on the island and stop me building my monkey hide boat.
Presenter asks
12:53Does that mean you weren't surprised by what happened in Tiananmen Square earlier this year?
No, I was surprised. But after it had happened I found there was a sort of thudding sense of recognition in me as to what had occurred. It seemed natural that those old men had to do that. They didn't have any other way, given the generation which they belonged to. … Was over the initial shock? I can't say I ever understood, but I came closer. … when I talked to them I felt a deep disturbance because it seemed to me that they were alienated actually from what they had done themselves. They didn't recognize themselves who they had been at that period. And it struck me then that in Chinese society that more than with us morality is vested in government.
Presenter asks
19:54But your lost love was unattainable – perhaps that suits the nature of you?
I don't know. I think I could have been happy under very different conditions to those in which, say, I'm relatively happy now, which is as a single man. Marriage in itself never appealed to me as a sort of institution. … To be with the woman I loved for a long period. Yes, of course it did. But I think marriage was something that always struck me as constricting, maybe. … I think as a very young man, I felt it was the end of relationships, the end of adventure, the end of that sort of travelling, if you like.
Presenter asks
24:37What's the time scale of all that? How do you set yourself for research, travel, and writing?
Well, it sounds strange, but the travelling itself is quite a short time, and it's embedded in this enormous time, really, that you spend at least a year and a half with language and research, then maybe no more than three or four months … in actual travelling, and then probably a year in writing it. … I find that it pays diminishing returns, really. The first month you're receiving a massive data and pouring down notes, and then that starts to dwindle, and you realize there's a time when you sort of know in yourself that you must go home.
“I think it's never the same as your expectations. And when I first travelled, I had, I think, a romantic idea of the society I was going to … Later, I think you become fascinated by the reality, and the romantic side rather diminishes, and what takes hold on you is the extraordinariness of what you find.”
“So that you dare to do things that you wouldn't do if you were simply travelling to enjoy yourself or even for interest.”
“Your notes are your life.”
“I remember after some months of travelling in inland China that I saw a group of criminals who were being paraded in a square … And I was looking at the faces of the crowd, who seemed to be blank actually, and in a way I was horrified at the sufferings of the individual. But there was some rather uneasy sense in me that I now understood this as the natural result of a culture that thought and felt that way, that was immensely poor and practical, and that this was a perfectly natural way to govern.”
“I could wake up every morning and hear the world being created again. That'd be perfect.”