Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
2 appearances
A writer who won an Oscar for the screenplay of 'Darling' and is best known for the BBC series 'The Glittering Prizes'.
On the island
Eight records
Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 61
Nathan Milstein with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, conducted by William Steinberg
I know Milstein rates very highly, but I've chosen him for a rather literary reason. That is that there's a character in a book of mine called Lindman, whose name is Milstein, who doesn't play the violin, and certainly not as well as this gentleman.
in early 1960s my wife and I lived in Paris for a while and we walked past the Olympia music hall where Piaf was giving her last concert and I was so disgusted by the fact that the prisoners used to go in order to see her die on stage, which was frankly what they sort of hoped for, that we didn't go. Now I realize that perhaps one ought to have gone.
Piano Trio in F major, Hob. XV:2
The third record is a a sort of is is a is a joke, at least I mean it's it's the kind of record which which amuses me. I don't know whether it's intended to be amusing, but it is
Concerto in D major for Lute and Strings, RV 93
I couldn't do without a bit of Vivaldi, I don't think, though I I was totally put down when I saw a very very sort of sophisticated French critic talking about Vivaldi and saying that he was only good for wall paper. But I dare say that even on a desire one might find some kind of wall to paper.
I thought it would be good for my soul, and it would remind me that even on a desert island, at least I wasn't in Charterhouse Chapel.
Concerto in D minor for Violin and Oboe, BWV 1060R
it would be absurd to go without any Bach at all. In fact, it's quite tempting to go only with Bach
the seventh record is a Greek record. I'm rather devoted to Buzuki, and a friend of mine, a very highbrow and distinguished person who came to stay with us, said, If you put any of that stuff on, I shall leave. However, if he comes to the desert island, I won't play it. But otherwise, I think it'd be quite a good idea.
Cello Concerto in B minor, Op. 104Favourite
Paul Tortelier with the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by André Previn
it's sort of mainly for the eyebrows, really.
This comes from Cambridge really. I heard these records on Old Seventy Eights, of course, in a place called Jordan's Yard, which was a kind of loosh hangout for bohemian, wannabe bohemians of the time. And the owner there loved having lovers in his house, which suited me and my girlfriend extremely well because we were able to use his kitchen floor to good advantage.
English Suite No. 6 in D minor, BWV 811: V. Gavotte I
I'm afraid that it's more Mari Pariah than anything else,'cause I think it it's just just so wonderful to live to.
Record number three is the full sentimental side of things which God knows is never far from me
Record number four is from a happy experience of my own. It's the the theme music from the film that I did um for Stanley Donovan called Tooth of the Road with Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney.
Varka sto gialoFavourite
Well, this is a real bit of sentiment for me for reasons which may come out later. It's a a a a Buzuki song called Varka Stojalo, There's a Boat in the Harbour. Shamefully vulgar, and I love it.
Cello Concerto in B minor, Op. 104
Paul Tortelier, London Symphony Orchestra and André Previn
Well, this is one of the earliest records that that we ever owned, and I confess that I love it, not only because it's the Vorjac cello concerto, but also because Paul Tortilla is playing it, and I can see his eyebrows at work as I listen.
Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor, Op. 26: II. Adagio
James Ehnes, Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal and Charles Dutoit
Well, this is a sort of counterpoint to the Bach. It's part of Max Brooks' violin concerto, number one, a piece of real kind of Schmoltzy pseudo-culture, the really cultured thing, and I think it's lovely.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:31Is music important in your life?
No, I think the answer is that it really isn't. I'm consoled by the fact that Nabokov always said that music was a completely closed book to him, and few other books, of course, were. However, I do rather regret that it isn't. I mean, I like to listen to music and I could wish that I actually understood better what I was listening to, but I fear it's uh too late to learn that particular language.
Presenter asks
3:32What were your ambitions as a schoolboy [at Charterhouse]?
To get away from the school. … I thought of being a writer partly, I think, as a response to this, though doubtless my mother will produce things which I wrote uh when I was very much younger than uh than the time when I was at school, so it may be that writing was one's destiny or one's choice, I'm not sure about that.
Presenter asks
4:59Did it strengthen your ambition to be a writer, having worked with journalists [at the Sunday Express]?
I think I saw quickly how it was done. I did actually write things on the Sunday Express … And I realized then, very quickly, how the public had a right to have the thing presented to them in a fashion which was at least understandable. And although I haven't always stuck entirely to that, it was a good lesson.
The keepsakes
The book
I could then reconstitute or at least perhaps actually improve my Latin, when one could then write a sort of Latin Odyssey about life on this island.
The luxury
The luxury would be to have my Mont Blanc pen, an inexhaustible supply of the only ink that seems to flow through the veins of that particular instrument, and a stack of spiral squared note books from the Libere Joseph Gibert in the Boonmiche.
Presenter asks
7:03What did you read [at Cambridge]?
I read classics first um because again I was uh rather easily led I think and um classics is what I got my scholarship on … halfway through my second year I did become passionately involved in in philosophy, which was called Moral Sciences at Cambridge … and did philosophy in the last couple of years.
Presenter asks
19:58As a writer [on films] you were working with a director and a producer, to a considerable extent a team job. Did you find this fulfilling or frustrating?
No, it's really awful. No, I loathe working with other people really, except when the script is done. … I don't like working with other people. … to have an idea as a writer, if you pass it, it's passed. But not only to have an idea, to have to explain it to somebody else, let and also to have to explain why her name is going to be Martha and not Georgina, and then to have a conference about whether it wouldn't better be Emma. I mean You find that kind of thing drives you absolutely mad.
Presenter asks
23:46Why do you bother [reviewing books]?
I think there are various reasons. One of them is that I think that it's important that there should be some kind of um person who is not merely a professional critic, but also knows what it's like to be actually a creator and can recognize elements in a book which perhaps a a pure critic uh doesn't see. Also, it's great fun to send in a piece um on a Tuesday and it's in the paper on Sunday … The other fun of it is that you have to read round a book as well as read the book. So it makes it insist that one inform oneself, and that's pretty good.
Presenter asks
0:28Do you have a love-hate relationship with writing itself, or does it flow freely?
No, I confess that I really don't. Um sometimes people invite one to lament about the lonely and often humiliated life of writers, all of which is quite true. But I confess the loneliness is what attracts me. It's a qualified loneliness because I like to be alone in the house, in particular with my wife, and luckily I've spent the last fifty years being pretty well that.
Presenter asks
2:24What was the glittering prize for you?
Well, the word glitter is, of course, I mean, somewhat ambiguous. It doesn't suggest that it is a bad prize. They're prizes of real value. It's just that they gleam attractively. They don't gleam particularly attractively for me. I mean, I'm certainly human enough to manage to be a little bit resentful when I fail to receive them. But I've always thought of writing as a lonely activity in which what you did was you presented your grumbles, resentments, angers in as palatable a form as you could arrange so that the enemy swallowed them thinking they were sweeties.
Presenter asks
6:28Was this anti-Semitic moment in your school life extraordinary, or was there more of it?
No, no, no. It wasn't extraordinary at all. I came to England at at the age of seven from from the US, um and when we we landed in England my father said, Well, you can grow up being an English gentleman and not an American Jew. ... I was sort of I was afraid of being what I was, and the language of of English schools, of course, included, you know, Jewing people, don't be Jewy ... None of these things are said with any great malice. But for a boy alone at school ... It was nerve-making, let's say.
Presenter asks
19:07What about your relationship with your father [and his secret]?
He had a dark secret which was not very dark. ... he had lovers, and one of them who had promised him that she could not get pregnant did not manage to keep that promise ... And she was not Jewish. ... Now, it's not a very terrible secret, but he elected to conceal it from me ... He thought I would think less of him. Of course, I would have thought much more of him. ... But he did strike very elaborate moral attitudes, which of course I realized later were more to do with his dread that I would inherit his ugly tendencies towards ... Eroticism.
Presenter asks
25:01Does [your daughter's death] get any easier to bear?
No. Um it has to be born. ... what happened when Sarah died happened to us, and uh I'm afraid that it's just very different. ... So I think one was introduced to a form of pain which was uh entirely unique. ... But it cannot be dwelt on, and the brain, I discovered, is much more callous. than the heart, so to say. That is to say, my brain said to me when I sort of sat down again and said, you know, I don't know how I can ever write again, Yes, you do. You take up the pen and you start writing like now.
Presenter asks
28:23Why do the things that happen to us in our formative years go on mattering to us so much?
It is it is very curious that. I think that the past is sort of ... Well, it's very well furnished. Those are formative years, and what they form is the sort of ballast of your character. And to some extent, the attitudes you have when you're young are either maintained through life or they have to be overthrown, but they always remain the sort of thing that you've either going to embrace or going to gird against and and and lose.
“I don't really think that writing books is about making friends. I understood that the idea was to write books in which one expressed something, said something, and perhaps … Made some kind of change to the world or the way people saw it.”
“I never get on any kind of conveyance to get out of England without feeling that freedom has begun. And I never come back, whatever the virtues of living here, without a certain feeling of resuming prison garb.”
“I think that after that, um, if not a Man Friday, at least a Girl Friday, would have been something which I would very much have wanted, and I and I still would quite quite like to have, I think. Uh total solitude is fairly daunting to me, but I have imagined it.”
“I've always thought of writing as a lonely activity in which what you did was you presented your grumbles, resentments, angers in as palatable a form as you could arrange so that the enemy swallowed them thinking they were sweeties. That's the game as played. And that's what's known as style, I thought, in England.”
“I think that writing movies is a servile act, and we all would like to think it isn't. And of course it isn't to begin with because they haven't got anything until they've got something from you. So I I always um have compared it to um a relay race where you are first off and you go belting around the track and arrive absolutely exhausted and they then take the baton and go cheerily off and ... When they get the gold medal at the end, they've entirely forgotten there was a first leg to the relay at all.”
“I think one was introduced to a form of pain which was uh entirely unique. ... But it cannot be dwelt on, and the brain, I discovered, is much more callous. than the heart, so to say. That is to say, my brain said to me when I sort of sat down again and said, you know, I don't know how I can ever write again, Yes, you do. You take up the pen and you start writing like now. And I did, and of course it is as it has been all my life, and I don't deny it. You know, it is a bolt hole, being a writer.”