Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A novelist and playwright best known for the cult classic novel 'The Ginger Man', which has never been out of print since 1956.
On the island
Eight records
I was one sad, very sad Christmas period. I don't usually observe Christmas at all unless say children are around and everyone was away from where I live, it's a big isolated mansion in Ireland. And suddenly it got very sad and kind of depressing. And suddenly this piece of music was being performed by this youth choir, and I was just stunned by hearing it. And it became one of my favourite pieces of music.
Even to this day it worries me that Stephen Foster, one of America's great composers, was found dead on a New York street with ten cents in his pocket when he died. And I've never recovered from this image of this marvellous composer. I've always liked to listen to any of his music. It always has moved me, knowing about his life.
I have this Red Army ensemble singing Annie Laurie, and the combination, I suppose, my interest in the Russian choirs came from my friend Gaina Stephen Christ, who loved the Russian music. And suddenly this came up. I don't know how I ever got this vinyl, I think it is, of the Russian Red Army singing Annie Laurie, but I realized that I was probably listening to one of the greatest tenors of all time who sings this.
Piano Concerto in G major: II. Adagio assai
Now, this is a piece of music I think that was recommended to me by somebody who probably thought my taste in music was so appalling that perhaps I ought to have something which was uh a bit more dignified and sophisticated. So this is uh not, I suppose, a choice I could claim for myself.
Well, this is a piece which I'm always reminded because I guess my closest, longest friend lives down in Wales. And so my attachments to Wales comes through him, you see. And I just thought, well, it deserves to be reminded that of these associations of things one celebrates after so many years, and I'm presently doing it now.
The Hilliard Ensemble & Jan Garbarek
A lot of my music that I choose has come from the fact that you're trying to look for things to use in productions of various things. And I'm always looking for things to fill in. I almost thought it would do to open up the background music to, say, the film of The Gingerman, and somehow the contrast somehow interested me.
Madama Butterfly: Humming Chorus
Well, the Humming Chorus from Madame Butterfly comes about in the same way that one or two of the other pieces do, namely associated with a production of mine of Fairy Tales in New York, the play. And I just remember it from when Susan Hampshire was the young lady who played this role and she's on stage. Her boyfriend has vanished away. And she said as this piece of music began to get played that her eyes at one point would go out over the audience and she'd see the audience sparkling and she realized it was like diamonds, tears in everyone's eyes through this scene.
Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major, Op. 73 "Emperor": II. Adagio un poco mossoFavourite
Maurizio Pollini, Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Claudio Abbado
Well, this again comes from my looking for music to suit certain things in a play, and it's again Fairy Tales of New York, where this music is playing in the background, and this Clarence Vine figure says, it's my favorite music I've chosen. Isn't she very beautiful?
In conversation
Presenter asks
2:17Is it true that Brendan Behan was the first person to read The Ginger Man?
He was indeed. He broke into my cottage in Kilcool, where I had a studio, and I was away for three days, came back, found the interior of the cottage in total disarray. Then I went out to my studio and I saw two manuscripts, one next to mine, and I opened it up and there was the word Bostall, and I knew whose manuscript it was immediately, and it was Behan's. And he was the first to read it and had a pencil ready and made corrections and suggestions throughout the manuscript, which I still have, obviously. And then he autographed it.
Presenter asks
6:12What were the circumstances of your childhood [in New York]?
Well, we lived in a place where it was the highest hill in the Bronx, and we moved from there to this small community called Woodlawn, which was separated from New York City on all sides by open countryside practically. And we even as I grew up, my young friends I didn't trap myself, but they had trapping lines and used to sell furs to the Hudson Bay Company at the end of the summer. So the life was very rural and I learned how an American l Indian lived, how you played, and we behaved and grew up like American Indians.
Presenter asks
12:30How did you end up at Trinity College in Dublin?
When I got out of the Navy to apply to universities, they were all booked up full and I just one day asked my mother were there any universities in Ireland? She said yes, Trinity College Dublin. And I wrote off and they said come over.
The keepsakes
The book
Social Register of New York (1972 edition)
Social Register Association
to check on people who whose grave sites in various cemeteries in New York I know about ... or for architectural reasons and then finding out where they lived.
The luxury
I have a long spoon with a tiny little sort of end to the spoon when I use it to make dressings, garlic dressings normally.
Presenter asks
16:23How did you first meet [Brendan Behan]?
I met him, I think we were introduced to each other as writers, and this was sort of in those days to call yourself a writer anywhere in Dublin was to invite instant ridicule for the rest of your life. And so it took a short time before insults were exchanged back and forth. Suddenly we were invited out each other, out in the middle of the street outside of David Burns to fight. And Bian, very wisely at that point, said, You know, he said, there isn't a single one of them in the pub has bothered to come out and watch us fight. So Behan and I didn't fight and we became pals. We walked off to another pub and had a drink.
Presenter asks
20:25Where did [your first great novel] The Ginger Man come from?
Well, it could have been the fact that you realized that the time was now going to pass after the war, the peace had come to Europe, and the time that we were all enjoying at universities and uh that world and the period was ending and going to be over. And that must have been a force behind my interest in just recreating that and holding on to it in some way.
Presenter asks
26:17How come this legal battle [over The Ginger Man] lasted twenty years?
Well, it could never end. The battles continued. There were delays of all kinds of things. Suddenly one day arrived that the Olympia Press was up for sale in Paris, and I sent my wife and my secretary over to Paris with a lot of money, and they bought it in the auction. And now you're looking at the owner of the Olympia Press, Paris.
“The most practical thing in the world is not to have people bothering you, so you get a big mansion surrounded by all the land you can s get a hold of. So I have practically fifteen square miles or so to, you know, indulge in privacy and uh beauty. And that's all you know is beauty day and night.”
“I grew a beard when I left the US Navy. But in Ireland, I was the only man in Ireland with a beard. And I could never go to a pub without some voice saying, you know, why have you got that beard? That would always lead to a fight.”
“In reading The Gingerman, you get up and live again. You don't die in bed after reading the book.”