Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A writer, best known as the author of 'Tarker the Otter' and many other books.
On the island
Eight records
John Shirley Quirk singing part of Delius' setting of Cinnera, which is what Mr. Shirley Quirk calls her.
Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis
Sir John Barbie Raleigh conducting part of the Vaughan Williams Fantasy Aeronaut by Thomas Tallis.
Ernest Ansome conducting the Swiss Romonde Orchestra in Dubus's La Mer.
Part of Ravel's second Daphne St Chloe suite conducted by Georges Preitre.
Mars from Holst's Planet Suite conducted by Sir Adrian Bolt.
An excerpt from the opening of Stravinsky's The Nightingale, conducted by Andri Cuitas.
Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini
Rachmaninoff's variation on a scene by Paganini. It's almost enchanting. It is enchanting.
Tristan und Isolde: Act IIIFavourite
An excerpt from Act III of Tristan and Isolda, conducted by George Schulte.
In conversation
Presenter asks
4:25Presumably your boyhood was sufficiently countrified for you to have become interested in natural history.
Well, I could I could r ride on a bicycle about two miles from from London, near near Blackheath. And I was in fields where there were partridges and pheasants and cuckoos and trout in the ri in the River Ravensborn in those days.
Presenter asks
5:22You were one of the participants in the famous Christmas fraternisation of 1914.
Yes, that was a really marvellous time. We had to go out on Christmas Eve and put in posts into frozen ground about uh forty yards away from the enemy. And they didn't fire and we were soon talking and laughing and uh The next morning we uh went over and uh went right behind the lines, and somebody played a football match. And uh I was amazed because the the Germans thought that they were um On the right side, they were too polite to say we were on the wrong side, but it was simply uh uh we were both felt the same sort of thing. This was a a practical lesson in the futility of war that must be. Well, it more than that, it sort of it altered my whole conception, because the propaganda against German at that time was pretty fearsome and and Most of it was invented. I mean atrocities and everything.
Presenter asks
6:19Did you become a writer immediately when you were demobilized?
The keepsakes
The book
Richard Jefferies
Because that is such a beautiful book and it's so brave and lovely and beautiful. It's it's uh That's the soul of man.
The luxury
I would climb on a rock on my desert island and play that tune until I saw Isolde coming to me in a ship.
Um I know I r I wrote I wrote during the war. I was I was back it was my reserve regiment in nineteen eighteen. I had finished with the war in uh March nineteen eighteen. And I was so unhappy in a way that I withdrew after Miss Dinner every night and wrote in my hut. Um, and I locked the door and I felt very nervous in case anybody should come and see I was writing.
Presenter asks
10:42Now between the wars your sympathies were non-conformist. There's a story that you and your friend T. E. Lawrence were planning an ex-serviceman's appeal to Hitler as a last attempt to stop the Second World War.
I feared that a war would come about and I thought of writing to T. Lawrence and saying, will you come with me to Germany and meet Hitler. Because he admired Great Britain very much. Perhaps I wasn't wise enough to know that a man of that tremendous artistic feeling should never be in charge of a nation because he was a perfectionist and once you begin to force perfection on other people you become the devil. This plan didn't come to anything. It came to nothing, but it came to the death of Lawrence. Because I had a telegram the next day to come and see him wet or fine at his cottage and coming back from posting or from sending that telegram he was killed on his motorbike.
Presenter asks
11:29Do you think that that appeal to Hitler could have changed the destiny of Europe?
No, I don't think so now. I think that all the conditions of Europe were bad. And the conditions for us were bad. And and and w well, what I do feel most strongly is that no nation must damn another nation so much, they must sort of see their own faults and then come together. It's so tragic when you see well, I mean, even Hitler said once, it must be recognized that in a most deadly quarrel both sides can be right at the same time.
Presenter asks
17:05Could you accept the loneliness [on the island]?
I think it'd be pretty terrible at first. But I try and discipline myself by having a routine.
“This was a a practical lesson in the futility of war that must be. Well, it more than that, it sort of it altered my whole conception, because the propaganda against German at that time was pretty fearsome and and Most of it was invented. I mean atrocities and everything.”
“When I'm flowing, I just go on and on with tremendous exultation'cause I know it's coming. I I don't regard myself uh as as a person who's doing it. I'm not conceited. I I'm just a medium.”
“Perhaps I wasn't wise enough to know that a man of that tremendous artistic feeling should never be in charge of a nation because he was a perfectionist and once you begin to force perfection on other people you become the devil.”
“I think that that is a glory of sacrifice.”
“I would like a core onglais. which is the um instrument that the shepherd plays. And I would climb on a rock on my desert island and play that tune until I saw Isolde coming to me in a ship.”