Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A writer best known for her Whitbread Prize-winning novel 'Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit'.
On the island
Eight records
What is Life to Me Without Thee?
And it's something I heard when I was a young child. My mother was a very good pianist and coming from Accrington, five miles away from where Ferrier was born, Ferrier was very important to us and I heard her music all through my early life and this is a particular favourite.
Soave sia il vento (from Così fan tutte)
And it was the first piece of music that I ever discovered for myself. I heard it playing out of an open window when I was at Oxford, and I kept going back and walking up and down in front of the window, thinking they'll play it again, they'll play it again. And eventually they did, and eventually I found out what it was, and it began in me an uh a love of Mozart and a love of classical music.
And it's it's a song which has many romantic associations for me. Um it was played for me by the girl that I fell in love with, and I carried on playing it to myself as I went through various and many romantic affairs.
And I am drawn to heroines who have achieved something against their own circumstances, like Ferrier, like Callas, who get to a point where they should not be, but who do it anyway. And so Callas, when I play this, gives me strength.
Dame Janet Baker with the Orchestra of the English National Opera conducted by Sir Charles Mackerras
And whenever I go down there in the autumn, the hunt is just beginning. And whatever you think about hunting, this is the most extraordinary sight across the cold ground in the early morning air. And it's a sight I associate with Ruth and with my work. And that's why this aurea is particularly important to me.
Arleen Auger with the City of London Baroque Sinfonia conducted by Richard Hickox
And the the aura I've chosen is one which I associate with the woman that I love and have loved for five years, and who herself was such a strength to me when I was writing that very difficult book, Art and Lies.
Well, this has to be Strauss, it has to be the trio from Rose and Cavalier, which I know is a great favourite on Desert Island is, but nevertheless it is a great favourite of mine.
Philip Langridge with the Orchestra of the Welsh National Opera conducted by Sir Charles Mackerras
This seems to me to be very beautiful, and it is about living alone and solitary, living the contemplative life, and being cut off from envy and from spite.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:20Are you saying that you need [criticism], that it motivates you in some way?
It doesn't motivate me, it makes me surer of what I am about. After I published Sexing the Cherry in 1989, I decided that I would never again read any reviews, and I have stuck to that.
Presenter asks
3:23Is writing more important to you than being loved?
No they're equal in my life. But I think that the writing itself creates in me the character that I am and that is able to be loved and to give love.
Presenter asks
5:11Tell me about your mother, Mrs. Winterson, as you call her.
She was a a a woman of of of Rabbilisian dimensions, um a woman for whom the Bible was a living, breathing, moving thing and she lived inside it, she was Old Testament, she was one of the prophets and she knew exactly what was right, exactly what was wrong, and For her, a rod of iron was a gentle punishment. It was quite a violent household in that respect.
The keepsakes
The luxury
I couldn't decide between a case of Krug and a printing press. Well, a printing press might be too utilitarian.
Presenter asks
What does this phrase mean that the Wintersons had adopted you because they wanted a child they could dedicate to God?
My mother always saw her life in operatic terms, in grand dramatic terms. She wasn't at all oppressed by being poor, by being nobody. She felt that she had a mission, that she had been called by God to find a child, and that this child would fulfil all her ambitions for her.
Presenter asks
19:28Why did you call her Mrs. Winterson?
It suits her. And I couldn't call her mother. It distances her. It distances you from her. It would be it would be inappropriate to call her mother.
Presenter asks
28:01Why do you do those things [like nominating your own book as Book of the Year]? Because obviously, as one hears them or reads them or hears you say them, it does sound pretty outrageous.
I say it because I believe it. I'm not a liar. ... I am a true writer, and I believe that my work will last. I do not believe that any artist of any worth at all has ever been modest about their abilities.
“I court solitude, and indeed, if I don't have long tracts of it in my life, then I am not a good lover, not a good friend, not a good citizen, and not a good writer.”
“I think failure is to form habits, and habit is probably the most dangerous thing that a human being can fall into. Then you're no longer question, then you're no longer looking. You're only half alive when you're acting out of habit.”
“There is no such thing in this country as constructive criticism, there are only ignorant reviewers.”