Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Journalist and feminist who, as women's editor of The Guardian, campaigned for women's rights and helped found organizations like the National Housewives Regist
On the island
Eight records
Cello Concerto in E minor, Op. 85 (first movement)
GUEST: …the first one is a is part of the Elgar Cello Concerto. I think this is one of the most beautiful pieces of music I could choose. I I love the cello. …I would like on my desert island to have a very nice cello piece and the and Jacqueline Dupre playing the Elgar cello concerto movement from that would would be a great joy to me.
GUEST: …this is Elizabeth Schumann singing Richard Strauss's Morgan. …I discovered I could sing …one of the things I used to be able to play and absolutely adored was Morgan, Strauss's Morgan. …Elizabeth Schumann always was one of my favourite singers. I'd love to hear it on my desert island.
Piano Trio No. 1 in B-flat major, Op. 99 (second movement)
Alfred Cortot, Jacques Thibaud, Pablo Casals
GUEST: …I'm now I'm going to have one of my very favourite things the trio, the famous trio of my young days, Cortibo and Casals, playing the Schubert's piano trio in B flat. …I can remember hearing Corto, Thibault, and Casals think of it… In the great De Montfort Hall in Leicester, and this beautiful music and these three wonderful players is something that stays with me and I'd like to take it to my desert island.
War Requiem, Op. 66: Lacrimosa
GUEST: …is from Ben Britton's War Requiem. …the one I'd like to have on my desert island of Britons is from the war requiem, the Lacrymosa, because uh it was first performed, I think, in Coventry …and Kalina Vishnevskaya, who's a famous uh soprano, …she sang the Lacrymosa.
Concerto in C minor for two pianos, BWV 1060
GUEST: …One of my favourite two piano duets is this C minor Bach concerto. It is lovely, and I I think it'd be absolutely essential to have some Bach on the Desert Island, because …I think the undoubtedly to me the greatest composer who ever lived.
The Creation, Hob. XXI:2: 'The heavens are telling'
Choir of King's College, Cambridge; Academy of St Martin in the Fields
GUEST: …the one I'd like to have,'cause I think it's such a a heart warming thing, and I've sung it not so very long ago, is is uh Haydn's creation, The Heavens Are Telly.
Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen
GUEST: …to remind me of all this period of our lives, I thought it would be wonderful to have Paul Robeson, the one of the greatest of all basses, singing Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen.
St John Passion, BWV 245 (closing chorus: 'Ruht wohl, ihr heiligen Gebeine')Favourite
Choir of King's College, Cambridge; Philomusica of London
GUEST: …it's the last uh the last chorus from the uh the Bach St. John Passion. It's something that I think ought to be played at Almost anybody's funeral. It's a lovely farewell priest. Goodbye now. How lovely, how lovely the future is, how lovely the past's been.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:27What sort of issues do you care about today?
Not very much now, but I still do a bit of writing and I still launch the occasional not angry but rather stirred up letter.
Presenter asks
5:00Why did you put your head in your hands and weep with misery when you became women's editor of the Leicester Mail?
Well, I didn't want to be a woman journalist. I wanted to be a journalist. I didn't want to do a women's page. I wanted to to write anything, to report anything, to sob anything. I wanted to be a journalist.
Presenter asks
10:06Can you remember the atmosphere [when women first got the vote on the same terms as men in 1928]?
It was going to vote in nineteen twenty nine, which will win the Wazza general election. And I was still twenty one. It was just before my twenty second birthday, and so I got up very early in the morning, because I thought, well, if I get to the polling station just after it opens, maybe I'll be the very first woman to vote at the age of twenty one. So I dressed myself up in a scarlet jumper, because I was voting Labour. And I went off to the polling station. Proud as punch. It was a wonderful day. Never forget it.
The keepsakes
The book
Arthur Koestler
it's a quite important and learned book. Arthur [Koestler] was a wonderful thinker and a wonderful writer, and I've got it, but I don't think I've ever read it through. It's a very large book, and I think it'd last me a long while on the desert island and give me plenty of food for thought.
The luxury
Watercolour painting equipment (paints, paper, brushes)
I've been a hobby painter of watercolours and I want lots of nice watercolours, lots of nice good painting paper and paint brushes. Painting the sea is very difficult and very exciting.
Presenter asks
14:06You wrote in your autobiography that you were not a very attractive child – were you really so graceless?
It sounds conceited, but looking at photographs of us when young, I don't think I was all that plain. I think in my teens I got rather plain. But you see, the trouble was that then straight hair was very unfashionable. … I always thought of myself plain. And in a way, so in a way, I think it's quite an advantage. Why? Well, you have to earn being liked. You don't get being liked just because you're pretty.
Presenter asks
16:13You wrote that your marriage liberated you from fear of inadequacy – what does that mean?
I thought I was plain. I wasn't an or didn't think I was attractive. I didn't feel that I was all that competent at many things. … I'd had very very clever relations and my mother was a great charmer and I never thought of myself as a charmer. But my husband thought I was attractive in every way. Thank goodness.
Presenter asks
27:06How much do you still miss your husband [Kay]?
Yes, he was a very good friend. I mean, apart from being husband suffer everything, he was a a good an ideal sort of partner. I don't remember us ever having a real row. … Yes, he was. It's still it's still very much in my thoughts.
“Men don't have men's pages. They aren't confined to a man's page or to sport or anything. I want to be on the same terms as men, that's why.”
“No, there's nothing wrong with your work, Mary nothing wrong with your work. But we have to safeguard the succession, and the successor has to be a man.”
“I thought I was plain. I wasn't an or didn't think I was attractive. I didn't feel that I was all that competent at many things. … But my husband thought I was attractive in every way. Thank goodness.”
“He was a very good friend. I mean, apart from being husband suffer everything, he was a a good an ideal sort of partner. I don't remember us ever having a real row.”
“No point. I wouldn't dreamed of going to bed without making it up. [Corrected to: if I had, I think I would just have stopped eating. I didn't want to live. There's no point.]”
“The older you get, the the more you you sort of crumble, you know, physically and mentally you you lose you lose your full power and you get very fed up and you can't remember things and when you get tired just walking to the bottom of the garden and all that sort of thing. It's it's quite hard to put up with the crumbling of your faculties.”