Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Writer and traveller known for autobiographical books about his travels, notably on a square-rigged sailing ship in the Australian grain trade.
On the island
Eight records
Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major, Op. 73 ('Emperor')
Artur Schnabel with the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sir Malcolm Sargent
Because it was the first piece of classical music that I bought for myself with my own money, or whatever money I had, before the war.
Well, my second record deals with my private life at this time, because I was, like most people, rather interested in girls, and it brings to mind a a very attractive schoolgirl, whom I knew in those far off days in nineteen thirty seven.
Symphony No. 6 in B minor, Op. 74 'Pathétique'
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Wilhelm Furtwängler
It makes me feel uh camoso, as the Italians say, in the same way as it did when I first heard it, which is many, many years ago.
And this record it was only really when I was in a prison camp and used to go there were a few records and used to go to musical society evenings or days, it didn't matter whether it was day or evening that I really began to I can't say understand fugal music, but to appreciate it, its infinite soaring capacity, or if anything, can take you out beyond the barboire of a prison camp. Something like this to Carter and Fugue can do it.
I not only like it, but it's part of history in a way. It's Beatles. It isn't. Early Beatles is record, but it's mature Beatles from Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club band, which is very appropriate to me at the moment, as I was born in nineteen nineteen.
The Flies Crawled Up the Window
Well the next record is an extraordinarily frivolous one and I include it because on my island I can't only be intellectually feasted by music but I've also got to remember a lot of happy times had especially with, you know, my children and other people's children and my children's children and so forth had been phonitum.
Record number seven is a record which doesn't have any extraneous memories for me, it's just Really? Marvellous piece of music.
SolaceFavourite
Well, my last record is by a man called Scott Joplin, who was a rag pianist, and his works I would gladly have all of them on my desert island, because I never get tired of them.
In conversation
Presenter asks
4:25What were you good at at school?
I was good at history, I was good at uh English, and I was, although I may not look it, I was extraordinarily good at divinity, but unfortunately, having a rather dirty mind, I always used to laugh at th the slightly off coloured bits in the Old Testament, and I got a bad reputation as a result of that.
Presenter asks
4:30What did you want to be [when you left school]?
Well, I didn't really want to be anything. I didn't want to leave school. I wanted to go to the university and read history. But my father, when he found out that I'd fail irretrievably, I would have thought, you know, algebra, and therefore failed my O-levels in mathematics, it was obligatory to pass. He said you must go and learn business... And so he took me away from school at the age of sixteen and put me into an advertising firm in London...
Presenter asks
7:20I believe you had a very frightening experience within an hour or two of going aboard [the sailing ship] for the first time.
Yes, I I shall never forget that, because I got on board and I was wearing my ordinary clothes and slippery shoes, and I met the second mate, and uh without any further ado, he said, Up the rigging. And he made me climb up the rigging in these slippery shoes... And I went up to the top, to the royal yard... which is about a hundred and a hundred and eighty something feet... But it was a good idea, because I soon got over my fears of going aloft in a sailing ship.
The keepsakes
The book
Dictionary of National Biography
I would take the whole of the Dictionary of National Biography, which deals with all British men of more or less genius or interest since the beginning of recorded history until the present day. I would hope that I would get off my island before I would have to get the next volume.
The luxury
A couple of cases of Glenmorangie malt whisky
I think I'd take a couple of cases of Glenmorringy or some malt whisky like that and and use it uh particularly c look forward to it, you know.
Presenter asks
12:32A group of you went ashore to sabotage a German airfield in Sicily and something went wrong [during the war]?
Yes, well, unfortunately, a lot of this had been going on and there were something like a thousand men on the airfield... they flooded the place with uh searchlights and uh we succeeded in blowing up a number of spare airplanes... A big storm came up, the boat sank and we spent eight hours in the water... And we were picked up at eight o'clock the following morning by Italian fishermen who took us into Catania in Sicily. That was the end for us.
Presenter asks
16:26How long were you in the bag [as a prisoner of war] altogether?
Well, I was captured in august nineteen forty two and we were finally let out, uh or rather the Americans liberated us on a very memorable day, april nineteen forty five.
Presenter asks
19:33How did you get out of that particular trade [the fashion business]?
Well, and I got out of most things by uh getting sacked. And what happened then, this was in 1956. I had written a book called The Last Grain Race about my life as a sailor... And this book showed signs, to everybody's surprise, including my own, of being a success before it was published. And this gave me the confidence to ask a friend of mine... to go to a very unknown part, a completely unknown part of Afghanistan at that time called Nuristan...
“I think that other choices, or most of the choices one would make, being alone on a desert island and and and away from all the people you knew and loved and everything, would be remembering happy times or otherwise, or evoked by the music you were listening to, or whatever you happened to be listening to if it wasn't music.”
“I think, considering I'm by myself and I would want to have some slight celebration from time to time, even at Christmas, I think I'd take a couple of cases of Glenmorringy or some malt whisky like that and and use it uh particularly c look forward to it, you know.”
“And I would hope that I would get off my island before I would have to get the next volume.”