Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A broadcaster, writer, and poet.
On the island
Eight records
I find that when she sings that everything is all right, you know quite well that everything is all wrong, and there's something quite heart breaking, heart rending, about her records.
American Negroes, duetists, and their voices blended so well. And whenever they appeared at Birmingham Hippodrome, I went to see them.
there's a kind of party atmosphere about this song that symbolises the social occasion. And although I'm not an awfully social animal, it will give me the impression of other people being there.
takes me back to my dance band days and hear a a really very evocative bit of banjo playing
She belongs to the Ixosa tribe in South Africa ... and that's the song she sings, the click song.
Pierre Fournier and Lamar Crowson
peculiar and poignant history for me, and and I couldn't possibly have any series of records without including this one.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:36What would you be happiest to have got away from?
I haven't given a great deal of thought to that, because I spend a fair amount of time on my own. I can't think of anything that I want to get away from, particularly. Uh since I lost my sight I I feel that the thing I've missed least is the daily newspaper.
Presenter asks
3:00With so many mouths to feed, did that mean you were on short commons?
Well, it did really. I think my own daughters, my own three daughters, don't quite believe this. But when I was a schoolboy, I don't remember what it was like not to be hungry. My father was a bespoke tailor. He had a workshop opposite the home. And by dint of working about 14 hours a day, he contrived to support one wife, nine children, and two bookmakers.
Presenter asks
4:02Which poets inspired you?
Well, I think the lyrical poets uh Swinburne more than anyone else, I think. I like the music of Swinburne's verse and the rhymes seem to come by accident. You can never detect any contravance in his verse at all.
The keepsakes
The book
The Oxford Book of English Verse and The New Oxford Book of Christian Verse
Helen Gardner and Donald Davie
I thought that you might permit me another 16 volumes in Braille, which is the Oxford Book of English Verse, which is 10 volumes. And I wondered whether you'd make a little concession and allow me to take the six volumes in Braille, which is the 20th century Oxford Book of English Verse.
The luxury
I think I would have to take my Perkins Brailler so that I could uh braille a few thoughts down there and plenty of Braille paper, Manila, with me.
Presenter asks
Did [losing your sight] happen suddenly?
Well, no. I had an eye condition which is usually visited on the elderly, but uh As I only had one eye, the operation was done early rather than waiting for it to mature, and I developed other troubles after the operation, and finally a detachment of the retina, and I lost my sight altogether.
Presenter asks
11:43Had there been a temptation to retreat from life?
It was very difficult to go out at first, to meet other people. That's one of the difficulties. And I was very relieved when a friend of mine said to me, Would you like to come out for a drink? and I went out with him and we went into a pub. And then we had to face the uh difficulty of people saying to my friend. Would your friend like to sit here instead of speaking to me? That's when I first found out that they don't speak to the blind person, they speak to the person he is with.
“I knew there were such things as rehabilitation centres for the newly blind. But something in me told me that whether it was first or last, I had to do it for myself.”
“I simply wanted to practice touch typing, and the idea came into my head. Why not have a stab at writing a radio script, which was something I'd never done in my life before.”
“And when I listened to that record I formulated in my own mind that whether it's in moments of supreme exaltation, Or in the hour of his greatest need I knew with dazzling certainty That no man is ever alone.”