Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A writer and illustrator, best known for creating the Orlando the Marmalade Cat series of children's books.
On the island
Eight records
it's my younger son who said I must use it because I have always experimented. That's my watchword, really.
Everybody was crazy about the third man, weren't they? The Ziddar I had never heard of Ziddar before.
Prelude and Fugue No. 1 in C major
I would be so absorbed by it that I wouldn't worry if I wasn't rescued.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:19Why was Orlando created out of boredom? Boredom of whom or what?
When my son, the elder son, was four and a half, there was just Beatrix Potter and Baba the Elephant and Ardidzoni. And really, though they're superb, and always will be, I got awfully bored repeating these things. And then I um was talking to my friend C. K. Ogden, and I said the trouble about having children. I said there were no good children's books to read. And he said, Well, who better? Than the mother to write children's books. So I had right, and we had a cat called Orlando, and it And of course to a small four-year-old a cat is another person. So I started telling him stories which I made up.
Presenter asks
5:18You had a fairly miserable childhood, unlike Orlando's cosy family life. Was there part of you in writing that was trying to compensate for what you hadn't had?
I didn't have a uh an un an unhappy childhood because I made my own childhood. I had a very good childhood, but no f no love and affection in it.
Presenter asks
14:20What were your impressions of Epstein and his circle?
He was very, very um reserved and very solemn and a great man. It was his wife that I liked. She was she was his first wife and she was enormous and Scottish. She was like a great jelly that was just melting. And she called me Childy and they took me on Sundays. to the Cafe Royal, which was a meeting place for all artists and bookies and thugs and aristocrats, anything you and wonderful harlots, two specially wonderful ones. And I used to go with them and drink their coffee, ma'e grande, it was called. Until Epstein realized that I was I'd met Augustus John, he said, or I can't remember exactly, but well, you either belong to us And don't have anything to do with Augustus or the other way around. Well, Augustus was much more fun.
The keepsakes
The book
Marcel Proust
And I've chosen this book because Jeff's Wood, who was a great friend of mine and influenced me very much, he insisted upon my reading it and I was about twenty-five, I suppose. And so I sat down and I started to read it. It's absolutely riveting. Well now the thing is that I've tried three times to read it again and I can't. It's something I think you do when you're young. That's why I want to take it with me and have to do it.
The luxury
a jalaba (cloth of gold, lined with faded shell pink)
I would take it with me 'cause I don't want to be parted from it.
Presenter asks
21:22What did you think and feel when you realized that he wanted you to marry his son, not him?
Well, then I thought, well, this is my [missing] brother, presumably. And it will complete my family, you know? That was the reason. I never meant to marry Douglas and I never [fell] in love with him. Per se. But it was [stupid near John], really?
Presenter asks
28:32What would you like to be remembered for, if not for Orlando?
I would like to have been a writer, you see. I had the two pulling at me, and the drawing was um the easiest thing, 'cause you start at four years old to do it. And writing. I don't I couldn't have made a living by writing.
Presenter asks
32:20As you look back across your ninety six years of life, what was the highlight for you?
So many. You see, I lived in kind of epochs, and each epoch took me into a different circle of friends, and I met those terribly interesting people. I can't think why they bothered with me, because I'm not an intellectual. And Douglas said, Well, you're a good companion. I I can't think why they had anything to do with me.
“I didn't have a uh an un an unhappy childhood because I made my own childhood. I had a very good childhood, but no f no love and affection in it.”
“She would take away my sketch book, and of course I was absolutely besotted by drawing. So she would take those away as a punishment, knowing how much it would hurt. And that was torture.”
“I've regretted it always. And a great friend of mine, a woman, said, When Kathleen married Douglas her light went out.”
“I would like to have been a writer, you see. I had the two pulling at me, and the drawing was um the easiest thing, 'cause you start at four years old to do it.”
“I always felt it was like a hoard of white horses galloping rhythmically along up in the clouds, and their manes and tails following. I would be so absorbed by it that I wouldn't worry if I wasn't rescued.”