Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Eccentric biologist, archaeologist, anthropologist; author of unusual successful books and one of the world's greatest authorities on Wales.
On the island
Eight records
The Alur People of Northern Uganda
The piece I have chosen is a very typical piece of African music in that it's insistent and repetitive. ... It sounds, when you hear it first time, chaotic. It's perhaps the nearest thing to the Rolling Stones ever to come out of Africa.
I would like to have on my island some voices, so I've chosen a motet by Thomas Tylas. ... it's a forty part motet, forty voices, eight choirs of five people, and it's a lovely sound.
I was at the Newport Jazz Festival in nineteen sixty five. And he played a classic, a piece of good old jazz called Comin' Home Baby. And then he played it again, and the second time they played it he brought Ben Tucker, who was the composer up, to take over the bass, the double bass. And it was magical.
The Great Gate of Kiev (from Pictures at an Exhibition)
New York Philharmonic, conducted by Leonard Bernstein
I should like all kinds of mood music on my island and ... I can think of no better collection of moods than Ravel's setting of Mozorsky's pictures from an exhibition. ... I'd like to choose something rousing as my favourite cut perhaps the great gate of Kiev.
I've chosen a man called Sam Leitnen Hopkins, who is a master of the art. He makes it look so easy, it's effortless, almost casual. And I'd like to hear him or have him on the island with me singing Buddy Brown Blues. Lazy old Buddy Brown would be just right for the island.
I should like to have for the ... the quiet evenings some chamber music, and I've chosen something which is modern. ... It's very elegant, very sophisticated, and it's full of woodwinds, which I love.
Symphony No. 41 in C major, K. 551, 'Jupiter' (Finale)
English Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Daniel Barenboim
I feel I want to have one major work with me to keep me serious, one completely satisfying musical statement. And ... it has to be Mozart, and I think it has to be a symphony. I've chosen number forty-one in C, the Jupiter, and I'd like to hear now the ... finale, the virtuosity, the counterpoint in this leaves me breathless every time I hear it.
The Call of the Coucal (Burchell's Coucal)Favourite
On an island, a tropical island, I'm going to have the crashing of the surf and I'm going to have the raucous calls of seabirds, but no real bird song. So I've chosen a bird song, and the one I like most, which for me spells Africa, is the call of the kukawl.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:32If you had been on your own and it had been a desert island or deserted island, could you endure loneliness, you think?
Oh, without a doubt. I am a very solitary creature. I need long periods of time on my own. And if I'm not forced to be cast away, I cast myself away. I I lock myself up in a remote place and and literally for weeks on end I don't talk to anybody.
Presenter asks
4:19Were you brought up in town or country?
A little of both. My father was an architect and uh itinerant. We travelled a lot.
Presenter asks
6:27Were your personal finances satisfactory [as a student in London], or did you have to do some work on the side to get you through?
Oh, I was a penniless student and as an overseas student I had no grants and none available to me. I had to find a part-time job, and uh I took whatever it was going.
Presenter asks
The keepsakes
The luxury
A film projector with twenty Western films
Perhaps I could have a film projector with twenty of the best Westerns ever made.
What was the subject of your thesis?
I was interested in communication and uh I worked on monkey facial expressions. I speak forty different kinds of monkey fluently.
Presenter asks
16:40What was the motive of the book [Supernature]?
I never meant to write it. I was on a Greek island at the time, and ... I realized that although I'd never studied it myself, I knew more about it than they did. ... I'd always been interested in things that didn't fit, things that my science tended to sweep under the carpet. And unconsciously I had been collecting them and uh all I did was try and put them together into a sort of patchwork quilt.
Presenter asks
30:29How about getting away? Could you build some kind of craft?
Yes, I could easily. I wouldn't want to escape immediately. I'd revel in it for a while. I'd like to have, say, nine months there before I started my boat building. ... navigation would be no problem because ... I have sailed single handed across the Atlantic. Uh navigation is not nearly as difficult as people say it is.
“I am a very solitary creature. I need long periods of time on my own. And if I'm not forced to be cast away, I cast myself away.”
“I love leaving places rather than going to them. I find my limit is three months anywhere.”
“They know that the world is stranger than most science will allow, that nothing is impossible.”