Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A writer known for 'The Golden Notebook', a feminist landmark, and often called Britain's greatest living writer.
On the island
Eight records
giving me such pleasure in my life. I think she's a truly delectable singer. I've never heard her sing anything that didn't give me pleasure.
Drum rhythms from the Ungora Rombe dance
When I was a very little girl I used to lie in bed and listen to the drums being beaten in what was then called a compound.
I've chosen that out of the many I might have chosen. From all that ravishing seductive music from that time which we danced to throughout the war. I think of it as war music.
I love the clarinet always, and I love this piece because it is so joyful and gay and exciting and to me it sums up so much of the pleasure I got for jazz.
Concerto in D major for three violins, BWV 1064
This is Bach... which I only recently discovered in a music shop, and I fell instantly in love with it. And I've been playing it ever since.
It's an opera about a Roman emperor who somewhat improbably forgives his nearest and dearest for wanting to murder him... this appealed to my sense of the improbable.
I heard it because I wrote an opera with him later called The Making of the Representative for Planet 8 with Philip Glass... I've chosen this hymn to Aten because I think it's a very beautiful piece of music.
Chanterai por mon corageFavourite
This is a fairly recent passion of mine. I again I found this in a record shop by chance. It is trouvère music, it's very ancient, I think it's 13th century, and this is a song by a young man, a count of ten, who is a prisoner of the Saracens, and he's dreaming of his love and I thought this would be perfect music on a desert island.
In conversation
Presenter asks
2:41What do you think about being the subject of people's theses?
Sorrow, because I think the world is full of the most wonderful books and they ought to be reading all these wonderful books and not studying one book or one writer for two years, because, apart from anything else, it puts them off literature.
Presenter asks
6:16When you first came to this country [London] with the manuscript of The Grass is Singing and it was an instant success, were you surprised?
I was so green then that when the publishers rang up and said, 'You're being reprinted' … I didn't think — I thought, oh, well, yes, that's what happened to everybody. And they thought I was extremely blasé. I just didn't know it didn't happen to everyone.
Presenter asks
13:28You must have been aware quite early on of the injustices of the racial situation [in Southern Rhodesia] — was there a point when you spotted it?
People always seem to think that around about the age of nine I said, 'Ah, this is a profoundly unjust society' … Knowing something is very wrong but not knowing what is wrong and actually being able to describe it — it was years before I could describe it.
The keepsakes
The book
because it's very long. And it has lots of ideas in it for escape actually. It's full of tricks and escapes. And I love it.
The luxury
Could I have a magic carpet? Because I could use it for island hopping. I know it would not be right to try and escape on it, but I could island hop perhaps a little.
Presenter asks
17:27You'd come to this country [London] with forty pounds in your pocket, believing it to be the grail — were you disappointed?
No, I wasn't disappointed. I had quite a tough time to begin with, because I didn't have much money. But then I didn't expect very much … It was grey and miserable and unpainted and full of war damage, and the food was atrocious. I don't think anybody now would believe how awful London was then, when I first arrived [in] '49.
Presenter asks
22:50The Golden Notebook was immediately appropriated by the women's movement as a trumpet call for women's lib — but you've always said it wasn't about that?
I can truly say when I wrote it, it never crossed my mind that it was about this subject. I thought I was writing about the folly of dividing things off into, you know, male, female, black, white, old, young, and so on and so on. This is what I thought I was writing about. But quite clearly I wasn't because it has become a part of the women's movement.
Presenter asks
28:08You went back to [Southern Rhodesia / Zimbabwe] in the early eighties — was it an emotional return?
Yes, it was very emotional. But what was very upsetting was that I went back expecting to walk into the bush and to hear it full of the birds I heard when I was a girl … and the animals … They were not there. And that — it was heartbreaking.
“I was so green then that when the publishers rang up and said, 'You're being reprinted' … I didn't think — I thought, oh, well, yes, that's what happened to everybody.”
“I used to cry in my sleep about being shut out of this country where I'd been brought up. But it was quite irrational because I didn't want to live there anyway, because I found it extremely boring. So it was obviously on some level I don't understand at all.”
“I thought I was writing about the folly of dividing things off into, you know, male, female, black, white, old, young, and so on and so on. This is what I thought I was writing about. But quite clearly I wasn't because it has become a part of the women's movement.”
“I invoked what I call the self-hater, this figure which people who are mad are persecuted by — this hammering voice that you are terrible, horrible, and not fit to live … which is obviously a culturally created figure which is in you, but it's very easy to imagine that it's outside of you.”
“It was heartbreaking [going back to Zimbabwe]. They have created a very corrupt ruling class in the space of ten years. A lot of extremely exuberant and unashamed parrots they are.”