Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Writer, lecturer and broadcaster on gardening, known for many books and talks on flowers and gardens.
On the island
Eight records
I'd like to hear a male chorus. I do like a good rousing tune, whatever it is.
The Stars and Stripes ForeverFavourite
Band and Trumpeters of the Royal Military School of Music, Kneller Hall
I'd like, if I may, is to have a record that's connected with my grandfather. It's uh Sousa's Stars and Stripes Forever. And the reason I want it is because my grandfather was a bandmaster of the Royal Sussex Regiment, and I'm told that he invented the roll of drums before the national anthem and also put all Sousa's marches to band music.
The Biggest Aspidistra in the World
If I might, I'd like because it's fun, gardening, you see, it's not all seriousness, and I'd like to hear Gracie Fields The Biggest Espadistra in the World.
Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Willi Boskovsky
I just like it, and it reminds me of you know, I I had my days dancing round with my husbands and boyfriends it say brings it back.
All night long there was these sea lions singing or or making a weird noise, like a lot of sheep, and I'd love to hear that song again.
Peer Gynt Suite No. 1, Op. 46: I. Morning Mood
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Sir Thomas Beecham
I'd like mourning because it reminds me of a marvellous woman I met in the Galapagos who spent her almost her whole of her married life there, some fifty years.
I'd want to be reminded of home at times, and I think that's such a stirring song.
Because that's really stirring and so enjoyable. And also it will remind me of a place I've never been, and that's Cornwall.
In conversation
Presenter asks
2:45When did this fascination by gardening started?
I suppose it started when I was eighteen months old. My mother said I fell headfirst into a tub of liquid manure which my father used in the garden. … He brought me out looking rather green and decided to go and for solid fertilizers for that period.
Presenter asks
9:12When did you start writing?
I was forced into it by my father-in-law, Amos Perry. He said, I want an article for country life on Aquaria. And so I shut myself in an attic. I was so miserable about it. It took me hours and hours and hours. This time I was about um nineteen or twenty, so it's a long while ago. However, I wrote it and I got fifteen shillings for it. But it um it started me on the go.
Presenter asks
15:51Have you visited a desert island?
Oh yes, really oh yes, I really have, more than one, but particularly in the Galapagos Islands. Where my son Roger was the director of the Charles Darwin Research Station for some six years. And I went out there and I was nine weeks out there on this island.
Presenter asks
The keepsakes
The luxury
rechargeable solar energy lamp
I know that in the tropical islands it's dark at six, and it's a long, long night, so I would like a rechargeable solar energy lamp.
Could you look after yourself on a desert island?
I'd have a job, I'll be frank with you, because desert islands are either volcanic Or coral. They're both nasty things to walk about on. Near the coast, I'd have to have some stout boots and I'd struggle and hope to live mostly from the sea. … if it was um um coral island, well, everywhere … Pandanus grows, which is a plant with a big leaf which you could make into very easily into some sort of cover. So yes, I could.
“I see music in flowers growing and in birds and animals, and so I get it in another way.”
“I went in all fear and trembling, but they were so nice to me, so pleasant, and I learnt a lot. They're the cream of British haughty culture.”
“Wherever you go there's a new plant to find. And there's old friends that you knew as little tiny miserable things perhaps in a greenhouse here. But when you go to the tropics they're huge and going away s as they should do. And this is so exciting.”