Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A writer specializing in wine and gardens.
On the island
Eight records
Bix Beiderbecke and Frankie Trumbauer and his Orchestra
Bix Beiderbeck was the one who excited me most. His voice was the most distinguishable. I was then playing the trumpet myself, and I knew the easy ways to get around the scales, and Bix always did it in an unexpected way.
Benny Goodman and his Orchestra
I've always loved the excitement of a particular concert that took place at the Carnegie Hall in New York, the year before I was born, in fact, in nineteen thirty eight. when Benny Goodman got together the best jazz men that he could find.
Choir of King's College, Cambridge, David Willcocks and Roy Goodman
I think [it] shows the beauty of boys' voices. in the most astonishing way.
I'm Getting Sentimental Over You
Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass
This is a piece of really bouncy dance music because I spent quite a lot of time in the sixties in and around New York... of all the foot-tapping tunes that I can think of, in case I ever get depressed on this island of mine, is I'm Getting Sentimental Over You.
Violin Concerto No. 3 in G major, K. 216
Pinchas Zukerman, English Chamber Orchestra and Daniel Barenboim
Mozart is just a composer who I couldn't leave off the desert island because in his music one finds everything. And I think that in his third violin concerto there is an absolute consummation of everything which is reasonable, which is measured, which is elegant, which speaks of the eighteenth century.
Mass in B minor, BWV 232: Dona nobis pacemFavourite
New Philharmonia Orchestra and BBC Chorus, conducted by Otto Klemperer
I think the final chorus, the dona nobis parchem, give us peace, uh the most topical and apt thing to play today. It sounds to me like the whole human race singing at once.
Acis and Galatea: As When the Dove
Norma Burrowes, English Baroque Soloists and John Eliot Gardiner
Handel, I think, is my probably my single favourite composer... I particularly fell in love with Norma Burroughs, the soprano, who when she sings this song, As When the Dove, puts a fabulous amount of life and feeling into her singing, I think.
this strange tune, with sort of ghost words which I take to be Gaelic, I'm not quite sure, stuck in my mind and reminds me of that marvellous evening in the theatre.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:31Could you endure loneliness?
Yes, I think I could.
Presenter asks
3:56What were you good at at school [at Rugby]?
Getting out of work, I think, really, as much as anything else. I did a bit of running, I did a bit of shooting, I played the trumpet quite a bit. I wasn't very ambitious as a schoolboy.
Presenter asks
4:26What did you read [at Cambridge]?
I read English. I don't think I had any aptitude for anything except my own language. But it wasn't just a soft option. I really loved reading and wanted to express myself as clearly as possible. I saw the future in that.
Presenter asks
10:07What was your first job when you came down [from Cambridge]?
I got a job of writing features for Vogue, and that meant I was a staff writer in the features department, and I was sent out to look at anything from an art gallery in Bond Street to a theatre, or even occasionally, a collection of clothes.
The keepsakes
Presenter asks
23:41Have you thought of putting aside an acre as a vineyard?
I've thought about it, but I think um I think it was Sam Johnson who said that a man may criticise a table though he couldn't make a table himself... My business is looking at uh what other people do in the way of wine. If I were doing it myself, I should be too concerned with my own results. I I want to stay aside from wine making and taste other people's wine and be the critic.
“I just thought that I must try and write down anything that interested me and hope it interested somebody else.”
“I was a young man who'd just really been bowled over by discovering what lovely stuff wine was, and I... Wanted to make it sound simple.”
“I was looking round for another subject, and at the same time I was overawed by these beautiful trees, and I wanted to find out something about them. And I went to look for the book that would tell me, and to my absolute delight, I didn't find it. And I thought, this is something I can do. I can write the book for people like me about trees.”