Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A landscape photographer who campaigned for walkers' rights as Ramblers' President, starting with literary portraits.
On the island
Eight records
Suite for Cello No. 1 in G major, Op. 72
I very much like Britain's cello suites, like cello for starters, but they had a feeling of being about the landscape for me. They probably were more about the East Anglian landscape, but the Romney Marsh landscape isn't so different. And there's a sort of mournfulness in the kind of minor keys in the music. There is a sense of desolation, but it's also extremely beautiful. Reediness, stretches of water, whole flocks or single birds flying over. And I feel that this music really gives me the feeling of that landscape.
When I escaped from my rather miserable teens, where I'd been living with my father for four years after my mother died, I went off to England and then I travelled a certain amount. And eventually rock and roll came along and I really enjoyed the music. I always loved dancing. And I love the sheer exuberance of tutti frutti.
My mother used to play records when we went to bed, but she used to play things like The Nutcracker Suite and Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, and they they became hackneyed by the time I was about three. And the first record I sort of really consciously remember was in Greece called At the Balalaika. And I wonder whether at ten it was my first sort of latching on to pop music of some kind. It was from a film track.
Bing Crosby and The Andrews Sisters
In my mid-teens, from about twelve to fourteen, when my mother went to Italy after the war. I was sent to a boarding school in Berkshire, which I absolutely loathed, and it was like being in prison. Suddenly along came Bing Crosbie, singing Don't Fence Me In. And that has great re resonance for me. And also later on, of course, when I was President of the Ramblers' Association working to try and open up Rights of Way, I was very interested in this having this song in very much a part of my life.
Cello Suite No. 6 in D major, BWV 1012
For me, a cello is one of the nearest things to a human voice that I find instrumentally. I've always been profoundly moved by the cello, and I think Bach's cello suites are particularly marvellous.
An Orkney Wedding, with Sunrise
Scottish Chamber Orchestra conducted by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies
I didn't know Maxwell Davis's work until later on. But An Orkney Wedding with Sunrise is the most delightful collection. Here, the beginning has a feeling of early morning, and it takes me back to that sort of very happy time when my children used to wake up and they didn't howl to be picked up. They used to chirrup to each other and I've always enjoyed that early morning feeling.
String Quartet No. 13 in B-flat major, Op. 130Favourite
Beethoven's late quartets have always seemed to me very introspective, and this particular bit I just find so moving that I I'm very happy to hear it again.
I know that my mother did say, and I didn't get much family history, that John Brown, whose body lies a mouldering in the grave, was an ancestor on the American side. She was part American from Old Stock American and her father was a first generation Maclean from Scotland. So I liked the idea of although the body may have given up, the soul goes marching on, because I feel her soul goes marching on in me.
In conversation
Presenter asks
6:43How did you and Ted Hughes set about collaborating on your book?
Well, typical Ted Hughes, he said there is this area. I met him in 1970 when I did his portrait. And he asked me whether I was doing landscape, and I said, Well, I do go for a walk with a camera, but I'm quite interested. Then I didn't hear from him again till nineteen seventy six. Well, I had been going up to Yorkshire, so I'd already taken quite a lot of the pictures. … I decided it was a project uh because I'd suddenly been left alone with my two children. But I became very fond of the area, so when Ted Hughes came back in in nineteen seventy six and said, I'm ready now, are you? I said, well, I'm ready but ready to start all over again, apart from just a few which I put forward, and he started writing poems with those few. And then they those poems triggered off new photographs for me, and we very much did not want to illustrate each other's work.
Presenter asks
12:23How did your mother's death on your seventeenth birthday affect you?
I think she tried to prepare us for it, but I think children just don't believe their parent is going to die. I certainly didn't until. the day before she died, and um then I could see and she said, I can't bear to see you because she saw my distress. It's something that has been a a great sorrow to me ever since. I still can't think about it without a tremendous feeling of loss, which I think has reinforced some of the my my sort of losses and bereavements in my life have been all to do with family. And I think that that early loss has made me much more unable to cope with terrible feelings of loss when they happen.
The keepsakes
The book
Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes
I decided that I'd like to have The Rattle Bag, which is an anthology of poems by Ted Hughes and Seamus Heaney. ... I think that being all alone on a desert island, I'd rather keep dipping into the poems than reread a novel endlessly or something like that.
The luxury
Set of egg tempera paints, boards, and brushes
I decided that what I'd like is a luxury set of egg tempera paints and some boards to paint on and the brushes, of course, that's all one one package. Because I u used to love painting and I still find it one of the most profoundly satisfying things. Except I never want to show the pictures to anyone on a desert island. That would be the great place to do it.
Presenter asks
15:20How did you get into publishing?
Well, I was a passionate reader from under the bed clothes at age about four, and always was. So when I'd had enough of bumming around in my twenties, I decided to come back to England and get into publishing,'cause books was where my great love was.
Presenter asks
16:00How did you start photographing literary figures?
They came to meet because I photographed my children endlessly and uh eventually I photographed anything that moved in the house and they were in the house sometimes. So I'd take a photograph of them and eventually they'd say, Do you remember that photograph you took of me? Can I use it on the book jacket? So when my marriage broke up, I thought, well, maybe I can develop on this, because I by this time had developed a passion for photography. I published a tiny leaflet with six of the portraits and sent it round everywhere. And Faber in particular were wonderful and sent me a lot of their poets to photograph during the early years.
Presenter asks
24:07Why do you think it wrong that English Heritage should attempt to protect Stonehenge with fences?
Unfortunately, it isn't quite as simple as that because they tend to advertise uh the thing to death and bring all the people and then fence it off. It's happening with the remoter stones up in in Orkney and Shetland uh and Calonish and places like that.
Presenter asks
27:39What effect did your knee joint wearing out have on your work?
Well, I was ready to move on anyway. I was sick of travelling all the time. I was never in my own home. And it just happened I was already getting very interested in the colour work. which much of it I've done from quite near where my home is, where I now live down in the country.
“Some people edit before they take the pictures. I take a lot of pictures and then spend an awful lot of time editing very carefully.”
“I feel I was exploring this country which is supposed to be mine, but to which I didn't really feel I belonged.”
“I kind of I felt like he'd walked out over the doormat and I was never going to be a doormat again. I was perfectly happy being married, had no uh ambitions, but after that I thought, never gonna do this again.”
“I've learnt about Britain through the sole of my foot.”