Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A gardener and one of Britain's best known gardening personalities, with his own television show, books, and newspaper articles.
On the island
Eight records
And this is a song. about Sarah really. And in fact Dylan had a wife called Sarah and this I know this song was written about her. It's bitter and it's angry but it's desperate because everything is surmounted with this love for Sarah and that's certainly my case.
A Hard Day's NightFavourite
I love The Beatles. But this one reminds me of a time when I was nine, nineteen sixty four, and my older sister Anthea took me to the cinema to see A Hard Day's Night. in Bournemouth. And as the curtain went up and the opening chord was played, the entire cinema screamed. And for me, Life changed, nothing was ever the same again and this still thrills me every time I hear it.
Symphony No. 22 in E flat major, 'Der Philosoph': I. Adagio
City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir Simon Rattle
the next record um takes me to Cambridge because this is Haydn, Symphony number twenty two, De Philosophe. And I used to put this on in my rooms in Cambridge. And there was not a second I was there when I didn't feel privileged. I just felt Completely blessed to be there. I loved working. And even it always just triggers that sense of purpose and quiet determination with knowing that I'm on the right track.
St Matthew Passion, BWV 244: Kommt, ihr Töchter, helft mir klagen
it's Bach, the Matthew Passion, which I regard as one of the great wonders of the world. But what I particularly love about this bit is you have Christ. mocked, reviled, abused, and this sublime music and this sort of torture. And then this this choir, the voices rising above it, and it's it's this sense of humanity overcoming the worst of all conditions, and it's it sort of combines art, beauty and an absolute faith in humanity.
here is the prince of all depression, Leonard Cohen, who I adore and that growly voice, you know, you've got to have with you, it's a grown-up voice. And this is a song called Anthem, which I was listening to not so very long ago, feeling very bleak. And there is this refrain, you know, that everything that's made is broken, because that's how the light hits in.
This is my own family, my separate, my non-sibling family. This is. To remind me on my desert island, feeling very lonely, um, of the times at home when my children, who are now all teenagers, And I and Sarah have shared our music. And some of the happiest times we have in the household are when there is music blaring out, filling the entire house that we all like, and there's just this sense of shared liberation.
I love his work, all of it. But I've chosen this, it's a track called Road, because I'm working at a project at the moment with a group of persistent offenders, most of whom are addicted to hard drugs, getting them, growing things, working with the seasons, working with the climate and the landscape, as part of a larger charity that I'm setting up. And really what this song is, it's for them really, and it's just to say that if you can make it through one day, that's enough.
I love the blues. And he uh made this recording when he was about sixty odd, and it was made about forty years ago. And I love. The sort of way it's loud and it's proud and it's passionate and strong and yet taps into the whole biblical reference which, you know, I was brought up with, I I really know very well. And it seems to me that it's a defiant voice that could otherwise be oppressed, but it's not.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:29Was there an epiphany when you thought, Ah, the soil is where I belong?
There was a particular moment, but it it took took a while. ... I was sowing carrots, and I knew how to do it. I didn't need guidance, and I knew, and suddenly the warmth of the sun on the soil, and my hands on the soil, and the seeds cupped in my hands, felt ... Exactly the right thing at the right place, and I felt as at home as it's possible to be with anything or anywhere.
Presenter asks
6:40How disabling is [depression] in the winter?
If I do the right things. which involves using light boxes and involves backing off work and and you know avoiding lots of triggers, I can function at about fifty percent. If I do the wrong things, I can't function at all. ... There's a sort of regime that I follow which involves lots of exercise, lots of light from any source I can get it, and a sort of retreat, a hibernation from the world. So I stumble around rather ineffectively and hopelessly.
Presenter asks
8:20Tell me more about your family background then, because it was both affluent but frugal.
It was, and I think that it was I don't even know if that exists any more. ... Both my parents were only children. And they grew up in what I now know to be sort of very comfortable middle-class circumstances. My mother. inherited sort of comfortably large house with cottages and sort of five acres of gardens and stuff. But my father never really earned any money to speak of. ... She had it. ... There was a trust fund that my grandfather left that that put us all five of us through private education. And occasionally what would happen you'd come home from school and find the bare space on the wall where a picture had been sold to pay for something
The keepsakes
The book
Henry Vaughan
I've gone for the collected poems of Henry Vaughan, which I know very well but I still return to again and again all the time, and I think it is exquisitely beautiful, writing about the Black Mountains, where I now have some land and intend to live the rest of my days, and I think is the most beautiful landscape in the world. So it would remind me of that landscape.
The luxury
Hendrickje Bathing by Rembrandt
Because no other work that I've ever seen has such glowing love of humanity. … Bathed in beauty and stepping into the water, just lifting up her skirts, and I'd think of Sarah and I would think of that. And it would be humanity.
Presenter asks
10:29What did you do [as a child] because you were effectively the black sheep of the family?
I was a naughty boy, and I was always being sent home from parties or. I was asked to leave my first little school because they couldn't handle me. ... I used to sort of. tie people up and I remember putting nettles down the girls' knickers and sort of but I was just rombosterous.
Presenter asks
17:05What caused [the jewellery business] to slump? Was it badly run, or was it just fashion?
It was a combination of things. We were so inexperienced that we were borrowing far too much. We were borrowing on future profits. I was spending too much time gardening. We uh and that clearly is not the right thing to do when things are going pear-shaped, and there was. ... Better people than us went under.
Presenter asks
29:28If Sarah hadn't come along and if you hadn't found her, what do you think might have happened?
I I think probably I wouldn't be talking to you now. I think that I I mean, I I cannot see how I would have survived. I really can't. Um there has never been a moment when Sarah has actually stopped me. uh doing myself in. But there have been lots of times when if it hadn't been for her The world. ... If it wasn't for her. Um there's nothing there's not enough left. ... when you are depressed, you don't think rationally like that. And so I think it would have been impossibly bleak.
“It never crossed my mind. I mean, that's the truth of it. It felt completely private. It never once until I was way into my thirties did it cross my mind that this private passion could translate into any kind of public arena at all.”
“I guess sort of had what amounted to a nervous breakdown, you know, and something sort of breaks inside you and and then you have to just keep mending it. You have to keep rewiring it.”
“The good thing about my life is that there is ecstasy as well as anger. I get huge pleasure and joy. from the natural world and the world around me and my family and my friends. And maybe the price you pay for that is, you know, if you have your highs, you've got to have your lows.”