Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A novelist.
On the island
Eight records
Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 in G major, BWV 1048
English Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Raymond Leppard
Well, the first one was a nice antiseptic kind of antidote to a lush tropical island. It's a nice little bit from Bach, the Brandenburg Concerto's number three.
Messiah, HWV 56: "Come unto Him"
Ah, this is really a tribute to Isbel Bailey, who has this wonderful pure high voice which my singing teacher was always trying to drum into me. I was to learn many years later from a bookseller in the West End that one of my later historical novels had been specially asked for by Isabel Bailey, so I thought I must, I must hear one of her records. This is one of her most beautiful, most difficult songs to sing from Handel's Messiah.
Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor, Op. 22
Well this is the record I use when I'm in the middle of a very tender passage uh and the door bursts open and Mango says, Where are my clean socks? ... This is a very romantic piece by Stancon from one of his piano concertos. Guaranteed to get you into any sort of mood.
Der Rosenkavalier, Op. 59: Closing Scene
Anne Howells and Teresa Cahill, with Scottish Opera, conducted by Alexander Gibson
Well, this is a Scottish opera recording because Alastair and I have been friends of Scottish opera from its very inception.
Symphony No. 7 in A major, Op. 92Favourite
London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Colin Davis
This one is Beethoven because the nine symphonies of Beethoven were my own very first introduction to classical music, and I feel if I were deserted anywhere to have an opportunity really to listen, not musical wallpaper, not working, but really listen to the music, you couldn't have anyone better.
Cello Concerto in G major, G. 480
Moray Welsh, with the Scottish Baroque Ensemble
Well, the next record is in fact a piece of Boccarini, but I've chosen it because it's played by the cellist Murray Walsh. And Murray was a schoolboy at Watson's, which is quite near us in Edinburgh, and we had the pleasure of hearing him when he was still very, very young at the outset of his career, before he went to study in Russia with Rostipovich, and now of course is an international star.
John Williams, with the English Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Daniel Barenboim
Ah I've chosen the guitar concerto because it's to remind me of many, many frozen nights sitting in a cold car outside the studio where my two kids were being taught the classical guitar. In fact, I love the guitar, and I used to know Spain very well, and got to be very fond of guitar music.
Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major, Op. 10
London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by István Kertész
Well, it's something that I have written a lot of chapters to. Devorjac I love. It's wonderful, comforting music, and I have all the symphonies. But this one in particular I think is a splendid one to finish with. It's symphony number three.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:34Could you endure loneliness for a long time?
Oh, yes, I love it. Kind of silence and time to think is something I don't have very much of, and I would prize it, yes.
Presenter asks
4:09What were you good at at school?
I was fairly well in all roundo. I I came away with a a little gold duck's medal at the end. Um the thing everybody thought I was going to do, including me, was to be an artist. But my parents, in a very Scotch kind of way, thought that meant living in a garret in Paris with a berry on my head, which wasn't actually possible since the war had broken out anyway.
Presenter asks
9:57Why did you make the decision [to write an historical novel]?
Well, it wasn't really planned at all. ... what really happened was I'd had a rather sudden bereavement. My father died, and being an only child, there were certain strains involved, and I escaped a lot into reading historical novels. I read an enormous amount. and then ran out of the kind I like to read, which is a kind of not entirely too solemn variety. And my husband was the impresio. He said, All right, if you can't find what you like to read, why don't you write one yourself?
The keepsakes
The book
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Edward Gibbon
I think it must be a book that one could read and enjoy reading thoroughly over a long period. and the one that's written in elegant English. So I've picked Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
The luxury
I nearly chose a paint box, and then I thought, no one means of providing myself with music all the time, and that would be, I think, pleased could I have a guitar.
Presenter asks
12:11How did you organize your writing [with two small kids and a husband]?
People always used to say,'At what hour do you start writing in the morning and do you plan your day'? The answer is,'It is awful. My whole day rests upon the programmes of everybody else. If whatever my husband is doing involves me, then that's that, and I may not know till the last moment what he is doing. The children, my own sort of family, my mother, my friends, and of course the domestic running of the house, and what's left over and it's usually through the night.
Presenter asks
29:22How are you going to manage on this desert island? Are you a capable sort of person?
You know, I've been married for thirty five years to a King Scout, so I think I have some of the more primitive skills.
“I did study singing for quite a long time. I I'm the proud owner of half an L R A M. I never got the other one.”
“I can sleep for about fourteen hours at the weekend and emerge bloated but restored, and then I I set off on a diet of a few hours a day from then on.”
“I spent two years on that. ... On the research, which was longer than I'd meant to ... the awful thing was I found that the so-called accepted facts were really based on a very shaky set of premises. and there began to grow up a kind of shadow of another probability that I felt was rather stronger. than the one that scholars so far had thought to be the likelier premise. And that's horrific because when you're a historical novelist, you know, you're not meant to contradict the pundits.”