Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Bestselling novelist of meticulously plotted thrillers; raised in strict Welsh Plymouth Brethren home, later a prominent Labour supporter.
On the island
Eight records
Well, this is the music of my childhood, the Triorchie Male Voice Choir. My mother remembered lying in bed as a child, early in the morning, and hearing the miners coming back from the night shift, singing as they walked through the streets of the town where she lived, Mountain Ash. And she used to say, and they could sing as well as the Triorchie. And this song was a song that could make my mother cry. It's called Mavanwi.
My parents got a radio in 1959 when I was ten years old, and the BBC Light programme came into my life, and it was on the light programme that I heard my first twelve bar blues, and I think it was probably Ray Charles playing the electric piano and singing What Did I Say?
In nineteen sixty six the Beatles brought out their best ever album, Revolver. In the same year I fell in love with Mary Elson, a girl at our local church, who was also in the Plymouth Brethren. And we eventually were married. We were married for seventeen years and we're still friends. And we had two children. And my nickname for our first child, my son, is Sunshine. So this record is Good Day Sunshine.
When Marie Clare, my daughter, was two years old, she walked on the record player and destroyed my favourite album, which was Stevie Wonder's Greatest Hits. So to remind me of Marie Clare at the age of two, this is Stevie Wonder singing My Sharia More.
The Choir of the South African National Anthem
In 1983 Barbara came into my life, and we eventually got married in 1985. She brought with her into my life three step children, who I eventually came to love very dearly indeed, and they're very beloved. And also Africa, because Barbara had a traumatic history in South Africa. Her ex-husband had been killed by the apartheid government. He was murdered. And she had been told that she was next on the list, and so she had fled from South Africa. And so my next record is the South African National Anthem in Cozy Sikhale.
Violin Concerto No. 3 in G major, K. 216Favourite
Anne-Sophie Mutter, Berlin Philharmonic and Herbert von Karajan
This is, I suppose, about what an artist does, and I feel that what we produce is happiness. Because when you stand in front of a picture and you go, Oh wow or you're lost in a play. It's instant happiness. And the person who does that for me best of all is Mozart.
Well, as I s we said before, I'm a bit of a Sybarite. I love luxury and a lot of the luxurious things in life are associated with France. So to remind me when I'm on this awful desert island of all the haute cuisine and cashmere sweaters and First Class Hotels that I'm not enjoying is a plaintive French song called La Grunouillère.
My favorite music of all is the blues. I've had enormous pleasure in the last few years being part of a blues band. called Damn Right I've Got the Blues. And so my last record is actually the only record that we've made. It's probably the most popular blues song of all time, and it's called Hoochie Coochie Man.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:06The truth is, Ken, that life was never the same once you discovered James Bond, wasn't it?
That's right. When I was twelve years old I read my first James Bond story. It was Casino Royale. And I was just blown away. I mean I had been reading children's adventure stories and I had read all the ones in the junior library and they admitted me earlier than normal to the adult library.
Presenter asks
5:20Why was [Eye of the Needle] the breakthrough? What was different about it from the ten that went before?
Eye of the Needle was the first book that I researched that had what people call texture, a feel for the grain of every day life. It was also the book in which I solved the problem of pace. As a newspaper reporter I had learned to write very briskly, learned on the South Wales Echo. And it took me a long time to unlearn that brisk newspaper style.
Presenter asks
9:06How strict was [your Plymouth Brethren upbringing]? How unworldly was your life?
When I was a child in Cardiff, we didn't have a T V or radio or record player, and I wasn't allowed to go to the movies, which I consider now an outrage,'cause all my friends went to the pictures every Saturday morning. And I was also you know, we went to church three times on Sunday. I was bored to death by going to services in those days.
The keepsakes
The book
Ludwig Wittgenstein
I've been thinking about this book for thirty years. He says things like Death is not an event in life. I've been thinking about that ever since I read it in the 60s. Absolutely fascinating.
The luxury
A constant supply of fine French wine
the ship that was wrecked just happened to be carrying the entire cellar of a great collector of French wine, so that every week or so a case of Chateau Latour or Court on Charlemagne or Salon le Manile is washed up on the beach, and I have a constant supply of the finest wine in the world.
Presenter asks
9:44When did you turn your back on [religion]?
Well it was round about what when I reached what people call the age of reason. I never believed in my parents' religion after about the age of seventeen or eighteen. It was a a conflict for me in my teenage and it was something that I was very concerned about. But at some point during my university years it just all fell away and I didn't miss it at all.
Presenter asks
14:26How much was [your writing] a desire to be a creative writer, and how much was it a desire to be very rich and very famous?
I certainly had the need to tell these stories. And, you know, I wrote all those short stories, even though nobody read them but my family and the people next door. But it was also fueled by a vision of myself in a Rolls-Royce surrounded by adoring fans saying sign, sign, sign. I mean, that was part of my dream.
Presenter asks
27:22Was [your Sunday paper article about Tony Blair] you getting your own back finally?
Well, you know, if this had only happened to me, it would have been a thoroughly trivial thing. But it happened to many people. Most of the Shadow Cabinet in those days, over a period of about five years, found that stories appeared in the Sunday newspapers about them saying that Number 10 was displeased with them or they were doing a bad job and all of these stories were planted. as part of a kind of internocene war. that was going on and I thought the only person who could stop it was Tony himself.
“I can only speak for myself and I think what I do that people enjoy is I structure the story very carefully so that there is always something happening that makes you want to turn the page. But you're quite right. In the end there is something that you can't quite get hold of in an author's head.”
“I'm a Sybarite. I like luxury and yet cashmere socks and ... I can, and I'm not quite sure why. I ought to be um sitting in Le Gavroche feeling dreadful because of all the money it's costing, shouldn't I? But I don't at all, I just like it.”
“I'm going to absolutely hate it. The most important thing in my life is the family, and they won't be there. I won't want to write if there's no audience. I don't think I'll want to tell a story. If I think nobody's ever going to read it.”