Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Playwright, novelist, and Queen's Counsel, best known for his work in law and literature.
On the island
Eight records
Soave sia il vento (from Così fan tutte)Favourite
Kiri Te Kanawa, Frederica von Stade and Jules Bastin
The first one is, I thought, appropriate to the desert island, because it's Sua Velvento from Cosi Fantuti, and it means peaceful winds, peaceful breezes, and I hope that would be appropriate to the island.
Jack Buchanan and Elsie Randolph
My second record is really to do with the fact that in the intervals of performing Hamlet for my father my great ambition was to be a song and dance man.
Cello Concerto in E minor, Op. 85
Jacqueline du Pré, London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir John Barbirolli
Well, I know that on my desert island I'm going to miss England very much. I mean, I think England has the best climate in the world, and also the best food in the world, Kiri Sina. and I can think of no more English. music than the Elgar cello concerto, and no one else could possibly play it except Jacqueline Dupre.
Luciano Pavarotti and Mirella Freni
I I did have in my youth a bit of the Vie de Boheme, which I'm not sure that writers get now. I mean our Cafe Momus was the Swiss pub in uh in Soho, and you could go there and meet writers and painters.
And I then started a very happy life with my present wife. And it was one of those periods of life when we started Really a Gare, and all we had was a small portable television set and her record of Bob Dylan. And this is a a song called Just Like a Woman which reminds me of her and of those times.
Tosca (Act III: Shepherd's Song)
Well, this is uh the Shepherd's Boy song at the beginning of Act Three of Tosca. And I've really chosen it because I think however horrible things may be, and whatever sort of Betrayals and executions and cruelties are going on. There's always something nice in the next valley.
Piero Cappuccilli and Ileana Cotrubaș
I have to have some verdie. And I suppose the sort of central theme of Verdi is a father's love for a daughter, which is something that I've experienced, and so I've chosen Rigoletto, and Rigoletto singing about his daughter Look after this little tender flower. For me.
I spend a lot of time debating with myself what my favorite opera is. and I've decided that it's Don Giovanni.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:29How do you feel about this Desert Island project? Could you endure it?
Well, I'm quite good at being alone in the day. I wouldn't mind the days. I do get a bit restive in the evenings, I think, and I haven't really spent many evenings alone in the course of my life. But I I don't mind being alone. I think I should miss an audience. I mean, I'd have to write plays for the seagulls, presumably.
Presenter asks
1:02How much does music mean in your life?
It means a great deal increasingly. I play a great deal of music and I have become, late in life, addicted to opera.
Presenter asks
3:22Your father had the great misfortune to lose his sight, but he continued in his profession as a barrister. This must have involved a great feat of memory?
Well, he he did have an extraordinary memory. He could take a huge thick bundle of letters and say to the judge, Look at the letter on page two hundred and one. It's the letter dated the seventeenth of June, and the judge would look at it, and that was what it was. I never quite knew whether it was courage or whether he just refused to admit that he was blind and went on regardless.
The keepsakes
The book
The Oxford Book of English Verse
Arthur Quiller-Couch
I think that I'd choose mister Rumpole's favourite book. which is the Oxford Book of English Verse, the Quiller Cooch edition. You certainly don't want anything up to date. And I would learn my way slowly and steadily through the Oxford Book of English Verse.
The luxury
Well, I mean, I thought of champagne, but you can't have enough of that, so I think I'd have to have a bath. Really, because I can only think of plots in the bath, so I just have to have a bath with some sort of solar heating.
Presenter asks
5:06Would I be right in saying, John, that on the whole your school career was undistinguished?
Well, I had a wonderful moment of glory when I played Richard the Second at the Dragons School. … But at Harrow I was only noted for growing mustard and crest on my top hat.
Presenter asks
26:10In writing [your autobiography], did you enjoy that opportunity to look back?
Yes. I mean, I don't find the book any different from writing rumpole or writing plays or or or whatever, because I think that everything you write really is a part of your life. And I live in a perpetual process of living and trying to translate it. back to an audience in in what might be called art, so that really the book is no different to me from writing anything else.
Presenter asks
29:19How would you make out as a castaway? Are you good at looking after yourself?
I'm quite a good cook. And I could grow things. I'm quite a good gardener. I I don't know how good I should be as a builder of huts. I should be absolutely hopeless as a builder of boats. … Well, I think I'd cling to the wreckage. I think I'm a survivor.
“I was an only child. Is that right? Yes, I am, and I was addicted to theatre from a very early age, so I had to perform the entire works of Shakespeare. taking all the parts, and I used to duel with myself as Hamlet make love to myself as my own mother, and drink from my own poisoned chalice, so it r it was really rather an embarrassing performance which I used to give.”
“I knew from about the age of ten that I was going to be a writer.”
“I think I learnt more about the theatre from Jacques Charon and from doing that Faido play than I have from most other people.”
“If you give someone who's very close to you to the public, you lose them in a in a curious sort of way.”