Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Aristocrat, painter and writer, best known for his seventy-four lovers and the murals that cover his stately home, Longleat.
On the island
Eight records
Sarlo Fernandez and Jean-Pierre Fabien
I'd like something wonderfully rhythmical, percussion, something that uh doesn't have strains of music going through it, but I can let myself go in dancing, in just being fully alive to rhythm.
Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, conducted by Neeme Järvi
Something wonderfully wild, bestial, fierce. Something that appeared in Fantasia... I just hope those animals aren't there on my desert island, but I'd like to hear it musically.
Vienna State Opera Choir and Vienna Philharmonic, conducted by Sir Georg Solti
I'd like um I'd like a Wagner chorus. The Pilgrim's Chorus would probably be my favourite choice there.
Flute Sonata in C major, BWV 1033: Allegro
I'd like something where they nice clear flute-like music, and the best proponent of that, I think, is Bach.
I'd like a record that brings up the spirit of when my children were very young and they were coming down to stay with me in France and the thing that got got them jumping around, dancing...
Lucia di Lammermoor: Mad Scene
Of operas, I d love Lucha de la Mamour and the dying scenes of something dramatic happening, probably that when she is herself dying or going mad, I would love that to take to my desert island.
Alexander Thynn, Marquess of Bath
I'm choosing this one because it was the one I wrote for Anna, my wife. It's called Love Words, and so I think we ought to have some reminder both of the fact that I have been a singer as it has been recorded, and also some words of affection to my wife.
Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125 'Choral': FinaleFavourite
Oh, let's have something arousing in the European national anthem, Beethoven's Choral Symphony.
In conversation
Presenter asks
2:38What does [Longleat] mean to you?
I think it's a most wonderful stage backdrop. My life is entirely lived against that backdrop. I think I'm very lucky to have a wonderfully ornate, historical, inspiring backdrop to do anything that I choose to do. And I, in a sense, am serving it. I'm the acolyte in the temple, seeing that it gets enjoyed by a a massive audience that helps pay for its way.
Presenter asks
10:19Why do you think you never succeeded in pleasing your father?
Well, you see, any analysis of this is bound for me to mention too much that I don't really want to go into. We'd um uh he would have liked me to be somebody who followed in his footsteps with pride... and the fact that that wasn't ha... I was always saying, No, I'm going to be an artist, no, I'm going to be I I wasn't being the image of the person following in his footsteps that would have made life easier.
Presenter asks
11:13Why is it that your entire background is one of isolation?
Having begun to do my own thing without encouragement from my family or my mother encouraged me at the start, but that dropped away after the divorce and she was more concerned, perhaps, to um reintegrate with my father's approval... [but] I was by then able to think in terms of I can champion my own cause.
The keepsakes
The book
Combined Dictionary and Thesaurus
I want to be continue writing, so I think my book will be a combined dictionary and thesaurus.
The luxury
A bicycle with a generator to charge a laptop computer
My luxury I've got to have that laptop computer somehow, and I will have a a bicycle perhaps that I combine with charging it up and also get rid of I don't suppose I'll be getting too much extra fat on this island, but it it it'll be good exercise anyway.
Presenter asks
13:29At what point did you give up trying to impress your father and grow the ponytail and start wearing flamboyant clothes and painting the walls?
Well, it came in stages. Uh when I was at Oxford I was learning how to put ideas that were different to the ones that he preached together and to be disagreeing with him. Well, one could even say trying to pull the carpet from under his feet in argument in, let's say, the dining room when I went over there for dinner. I would be deliberately seeking to show that I totally rejected his ideas.
Presenter asks
21:41Why do you call [your lovers] wifelets?
I felt that it would be running them down to call things like concubines, mistresses. I just sort of preferred a a pleasantly humorous term that one can all talk and all feel, yes, I have a happy wife... the intention was to have children, so it was to make it a family something in a in a family form, and uh yes, I can also call them lovers.
“I think I'm very lucky to have a wonderfully ornate, historical, inspiring backdrop to do anything that I choose to do. And I, in a sense, am serving it. I'm the acolyte in the temple, seeing that it gets enjoyed by a a massive audience that helps pay for its way.”
“I think if a paranoid person is truthful in mapping out how he came to be paranoid, the parents do have a a strong role to play.”
“I believe I'm good, but can we just leave it at that?”