Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Broadcaster known for intelligent, thought-provoking programmes and pushing boundaries of taste and decency; pioneer for women in television.
On the island
Eight records
A very intense person, rather beautiful, I remember rather kind of crazy as well and obsessive, but totally dominating any room he was in, and his music is the same it's obsessive and absolutely brilliant.
The Tallis Scholars, directed by Peter Phillips
The Christian religion has thrown up most beautiful buildings, beautiful paintings, and beautiful music. So I do love to hear church music, and I've chosen Thomas Talis's Spemin Allium, which is one of the most sublime pieces of English music ever.
Der Rosenkavalier (Trio from Act III)
Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Christa Ludwig and Teresa Stich-Randall
It is hugely romantic, brilliantly orchestrated. It's a touching story of a woman of a certain age conceding her lover to a younger woman.
Peggy Lee and the Benny Goodman Sextet
Peggy Lee always sums up that era for me, and she sings with such amazing concentration. and so simply, you wonder how she could pare it down and yet keep it so enormously powerful.
His music and his style and his lyrics and all that he stood for has always been important to me.
String Quintet in C major, D. 956 (Adagio)Favourite
Emerson String Quartet with Mstislav Rostropovich
As I get older I like chamber music much more. I love the focus it brings, and the Schubert quintet in C major is just sublime and again, focussed, concentrated, and just purely beautiful.
Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
I should miss the human voice if I were on this island. The human voice is so important. I spend my time talking and enjoying conversations. I would just long to hear the human voice.
Peter Grimes (Four Sea Interludes: Dawn)
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, conducted by Benjamin Britten
I've chosen an interlude from Peter Grimes. I regard Peter Grimes as probably the greatest post war opera. There are certain interludes in this magnificent piece of music, and I'd like to hear the opening one, perhaps the most famous and the most lyrical.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:48Do you regard yourself as somebody who's interested as a broadcaster and writer in portraying and helping other people to understand the world, but also as an individual, are you interested in trying to shape things, in trying to influence debate?
Yes, I've always regarded the world as to be improved. I have this slightly, I suppose you would call it liberal do-gooding attitude. It's used as a pejorative phrase, but I'm quite pleased to be considered a wishy-washy liberal. When at various times in my life there have been crises abroad or in domestic policy, I've been willing to put my voice behind some cause or whatever. And I do think that it's a good thing to do. You feel you can be part of change.
Presenter asks
5:49Have you contemplated for yourself the [end of life] journey? Would you make your way to Switzerland if you had to, if you saw the end coming?
I've made a living will. And I've talked to my family, and I've talked to my doctor, so I've done as much as possible to avoid the phrase my father used when he was very, very ill. He said, Joan, don't let them mess me around. I knew exactly what he meant. So I've I hope that I've indicated to all those who love me that that's what I want to prevail.
The keepsakes
The book
Leo Tolstoy
I thought about this a long time. I thought it had to be something that I know, so that I wouldn't be disappointed. So I'm not going to take Don Quixote or Dante's comedy. I'm going to take Tolstoy's War and Peace. It contains everything. It contains family, contains war. It contains philosophy, it contains domestic life, ambition. Everything. So it will continue to reward me throughout my stay.
The luxury
an abundance of paper and a series of pencils
I recently published my first novel, and I do think that everyone has in them a creative instinct which often doesn't get fulfilled, and mine has always nudged away at my life and never had room enough to expand. So I would like to take an abundance of paper, a series of pencils. Then I could both draw. I think I could derive dyes from the various vegetation around, so that we could transfer that into painting if I needed to. But I think I could also write, so I could indulge what shreds of creativity are left.
Presenter asks
Did your mother's depression mean that she was unable to be enthusiastic about your own achievements?
She was proud of me in a rather quiet way, I think. Both my parents were proud and a bit bewildered when I got a place at Cambridge. No one in the family had ever been to university before. They didn't really know what universities were like. They watched me kind of drift away from the background that they knew and enter this other world of, you know, scholarship and bright young things and glittering prizes, all of which bewildered them.
Presenter asks
15:16How did you deal with [the rules and chaperoning at Cambridge]?
You did have to be back in college by ten o'clock at night. Young men had to be signed in at the Porter's Lodge, and then had to sign out of your room. It didn't occur to them that if you didn't sign them in they wouldn't know the men were there, and of course we found ways round the rules. I mean, my generation was quite used to staying over in the men's colleges, and not being discovered, leaving a rolled up blanket under the eider down so that if anyone looked in your room it was clear that there was somebody asleep there.
Presenter asks
22:50What about the play [Betrayal]? What about seeing elements of what had really happened to you portrayed and consumed by audiences?
I found it a great shock when he showed me the script. And decided really that there was nothing for it but to get get over my shock and live with it. People have said since that it was a kind of tribute. I tried to see it that way. He was very eager that I should like it, and indeed always wanted me to see productions. He would always tell me there's a new production of Retail that's in Leicester.
Presenter asks
23:59Having an affair means that you subvert some of that truth, that you inevitably have to live below the radar... that must have been a curious situation for somebody like you to be in.
Don't forget that I spoke about the society in which I grew up, in which there was a good deal of hypocrisy, and people very rarely spoke about their emotions or what their emotional life involved. I also learned as a student that actually the thing to do was not get caught, and that you needed to defy the rules of society at that time in order to have the things you wanted, which seemed reasonable. So, in a sense. The nature of an affair and the point of the betrayal was, of course, that there were internal betrayals between those who were the protagonists, and it seemed all at one with my attempt to be truthful to myself. Right. Rather than being truthful to the conventions of the time.
“I do remember society being very closed down, very conventional, a lot of hypocrisy, a good deal of secrecy. And I grew up quite fearful of the world and wondering what it was really going to be like, because inside me I had churning all sorts of ideas and ambitions and fantasies which didn't seem to fit any observed conventions.”
“I was in revolt against what I saw as a woman's lot. It was clearly that men ran the world and they had a much better time. I mean, they just they got out more, they ruled things, they had all the top jobs. Who wouldn't want to be a boy in those circumstances?”
“The important thing about bringing up children is you must break their will. And I remember thinking, No, I do belong to a different generation. My generation do not believe that that's what you do with children, which is why we had noisy, troublesome, creative, lively, assertive children, and not obedient little robots, which was my mother's ideal.”
“The interesting thing about living on your own is it does give you a great sense of your own identity and um confidence in the direction that you're taking. So you do live life entirely on your own terms. You don't have to offer compromises or concede at all. Um you can paint the walls any colour you like. I'm having an extremely good time having my own way.”