Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
2 appearances
Britain's best post-war novelist, author of Lucky Jim, whose sixteenth novel won the Booker Prize.
On the island
Eight records
It certainly evokes mine early adolescence to me very clearly. Meant a lot to us, me and my pals, at I suppose around the age of eleven and twelve and so on. And we all trooped down to see them and they appeared at the Stratum Astoria for the stage show.
Johann Strauss Orchestra of Vienna, conducted by Willi Boskovsky
It's a waltz by Johann Strauss, Tales from the Vienna Woods, and that's the sort of thing one hears practically in one's cradle, usually badly performed, often by an understrength orchestra, and one forgets how marvelous it can be properly done.
I remember that when I was at school in nineteen forty, evacuated to Wiltshire, saving up enough to buy the second half of the second act of The Magic Flute. And I'll never forget the experience of of hearing this.
It was Philip who showed me that there was more to it than that and there were there were records by people I'd never heard of. I heard dimly, for example, of of Bix Beiderbeck as a name, but it wasn't until Phillip played me his record of, um, for instance, I'm Coming Virginia, that I realized quite what kind of artist Beiderbeck was.
Symphony No. 9 in E minor, 'From the New World' (Slow Movement)
London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by István Kertész
One thinks of that wonderful, unbeatable tune that everybody knows that takes up the first five or six minutes of that movement and tends to overlook something equally marvellous, I think, that happens in the middle. Not such a singable tune, but I think just as fine.
Count Basie and His Orchestra with Jimmy Rushing
I again quite early latched on to Count Bass's marvellous, unique orchestra. And um well, I'd pick a number with Jimmy Rushing singing, preferably. Say, exactly like you.
Piano Concerto No. 2 in G major
Nobody admires Tchaikovsky's first piano concerto more than I do, the one that everybody knows. But you haven't got to look very far before you find that there's a second one... the first movement of of that second piano concerto of Tchaikovsky, though recognizable by the same man as the first concerto, is I think quite different in approach.
Henry Creamer and Turner Layton
I always greatly admired, as soon as Philip Larkin brought him up in conversation, Pee Wee Russell. I think if I had to plump for one outstanding jazz man, it would be him.
Running WildFavourite
Art Hodes with Wild Bill Davison and Sidney Bechet
This record has got the convenience of bringing in a fourth voice that nobody can really get away from once they've heard it, Sidney Becher. So this is Running Wild, made under the name of Art Hodies I think, but it's got Wilde Bill and Sidney Beche in it.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:31Have you ever indulged in the daydream of being a solitary castaway on a desert island?
Not a solitary one, no a castaway, perhaps.
Presenter asks
0:40Do you think you could face up to being a solitary castaway?
gregarious, you know, hopelessly dependent on my fellows. And after about 24 hours of saying, well, how nice it is to be here. I start, you know, nosing round for a saloon bar or something of the kind, I'm sure.
Presenter asks
1:02How much does music mean in your life?
Well, it's all of course got to be a secondary interest. I'm a complete amateur, but it does mean quite a lot to me in different ways. I mean, not just as an entertainment, of course, a time filler background thing. And also um It's something I take very seriously. When occasion affords.
Presenter asks
1:22Do you play any instrument yourself?
The keepsakes
The book
James Murray
Full of information not only about the language but about everything else ... there's an awful lot of information about alcohol.
The luxury
if malt whiskey, Scotch whiskey, is an inanimate object, certainly a funny way to look at it. But I'll have some of that.
Only the gramophone, but I do that with great assiduity.
Presenter asks
1:29Did you have any set plan in selecting our eight records?
But I felt that um One I suppo uh I suppose one should be as Catholic as possible, but I did try to reflect what I just said in my choice. But one doesn't choose one's music merely by It's married. Or even its appeal to mood, but it it can have all sorts of other uses. It can remind you of things you've done, places you've been, and so on.
Presenter asks
2:05We're doing this program chronologically, are we?
Uh yes, I think it might be a right be a notion.
Presenter asks
3:59What kind of ambition did [your father] have for you?
[Like] many fathers, he wanted his son to be a more successful replica of himself. And I think he um had in mind for me something unbelievably prosperous, like a house on the uh Pearley bypass with a Ford V8 or something of that sort, and um a very respectable setup.
Presenter asks
5:20Were you in a sense overprotected by your parents in this period?
Yes, I think I was. And one can understand it from from their social position at the time, the the fear of, as it were, tumbling into the working class. So kids with worse accents than ours were were very much kept at arm's length.
Presenter asks
7:48What was the sort of first impression [of Philip Larkin] because he did have an effect on your later life didn't he?
The first impression he made was was you know very different from what I later learnt about him. He was almost a caricature of a hearty, beer-drinking, swearing undergraduate... And I only realised by degrees that he he wrote poetry, but that didn't strike me as very unusual... And uh over the years it soon emerged that um I think the heart on us was a kind of protective shell in a way.
Presenter asks
9:11What circumstance did you [join the Communist Party]?
Well, it was a way of defying my parents and my background, wasn't it? And it it gave me one or two useful bits of information or uh insight into how the party worked... But it all fell away the morning after I joined the army in 1942. I I looked around, as it were, all these men and I thought, well, that stuff obviously doesn't apply.
Presenter asks
15:49What do you like particularly about [Wales]?
Well, it it's the people. I mean it it's a marvellous mixture and I still think this and feel it very strongly... I think it's the Welsh temperament, if you can call it such a thing... It's more cheerful. It's warmer. More friendly and um sometimes misleadingly so. If they're going to cheat you, they cheat you with a smile.
Presenter asks
26:06Do you feel that you are writing better the older you get?
I can't possibly tell. I mean I'm the as it were the last man who can tell. I had butterflies about this one and about the last one m extreme in this case... you don't learn much by writing a lot of novels because each attempt is you'll have to start again, you're back on square one.
“Not a solitary one, no a castaway, perhaps.”
“gregarious, you know, hopelessly dependent on my fellows.”
“I start, you know, nosing round for a saloon bar or something of the kind, I'm sure.”
“Well, it's all of course got to be a secondary interest. I'm a complete amateur, but it does mean quite a lot to me in different ways.”
“Only the gramophone, but I do that with great assiduity.”
“I wasn't made to flourish or even survive very much on my own, and um it's partly company and partly, I dunno, something more basic, whatever that may be.”
“I was going to be the poet and he was going to be the novelist. Funny that, view of the way things turned out later.”
“I think there's twelve years in Swansea, minus one year in America, as as we were saying. I think that was my my best time really. I made so many friends so fast.”
“You learn how to handle transitions more smoothly, get your characters without fuss from one scene to the next, one place to the next. And you you become better at covering up your weaknesses and and exploiting what virtues or advantages you may have.”
“If by, you know, by writing a book I can make people laugh about the thought of [getting old] a little, that's that's a help.”