Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Scottish author and journalist, known for naval service, books about Nelson's captains, and marriage to dancer Moira Shearer.
On the island
Eight records
The keepsakes
The luxury
Not recorded.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:07You retreated from the south east to Scotland. You are a Scot, aren't you?
Yes, I am. My uh my uh father's family came from Ayrshire, and my mother's from Invernessia, so I'm both a Highlander and a Lowlander.
Presenter asks
0:48You were educated in England, at Eton and Oxford. You had a jazz career at Eton, I believe.
Well, it was a it it was a very mild jazz career. I used to play my my parents were keen that I should play a musical instrument, and they m made me play the flute. Well, I found that playing the flute you have great problems with saliva. You're always shaking the saliva out of it, so I couldn't stand the flute, and also I wasn't that musical. I couldn't read the read the music well enough, so I took up the drums, which was much more agreeable, and I I had a very mild jazz career drumming at at Eton, and indeed ever since.
Presenter asks
1:21Your Oxford career was interrupted by the war. Did you have an adventurous war?
I had a quite exciting war. I was in destroyers in the Home Fleet most of the time, and in the Atlantic, Russian convoys, Norwegian campaigns, sinking the Bismarck. That sort of thing.
Presenter asks
1:41Your first book was about the Navy? When did you write that?
Yes, my first book was called Sub-Lieutenant, and it was one of three. There was one called Infantry Officer and one called Fighter Pilot by Paul Ritchie, and mine was about my time in this first destroyer. ... I wrote that in the war. A lot of it was written in the Royal Naval Barracks at Plymouth. A lot of it was written on leave at a house in Scotland. It was written in various places, and it was published in 1942.
Presenter asks
2:16You wrote a book about Nelson's captains keeping in the naval literary line. When was that?
When I was leaving Oxford I met Ale Rouse there, who had been commissioned by a firm of publishers to get various books written by authors, and he asked me if I'd like to write a book on Nelson's Captains. It took me about two years, two to three years, and I was doing other things, but I wrote it.
Presenter asks
3:42You were sending some articles back about [the ballet tour of the United States]. Was this the real beginning of your career in journalism?
Yes, I suppose so. Um I had done some things for the Sunday Times before that and uh as you say I did some despatches on the trip at this time.
“I had a quite exciting war. I was in destroyers in the Home Fleet most of the time, and in the Atlantic, Russian convoys, Norwegian campaigns, sinking the Bismarck. That sort of thing.”
“I had an audition, and they said as they do on these occasions, well, don't ring us, we'll ring you and the following day they did ring me to tell me that Robin Day was ill and Chris Chatterway had gone to Edinburgh, and would I come and do the news that night.”
“I used to sit up at the top of his stepladder between tea and dinner when I was about eleven, twelve, thirteen, absolutely absorbed in these books, you know, Trial of Doctor Buck Ruxton, who cut up a girl and threw her down Moffat Gorge, and Kennedy and Brown, who'd set fire to a taxi driver and things of this kind.”
“And I thought this was the most dreadful thing, and my wife and I stayed up on the night of his execution, un unable to believe that such a thing was going to happen.”
“Every bit of evidence that I found supported my belief, didn't go against it. I was at any moment prepared to find something that was going to turn my because I could hardly believe that such a thing had happened.”