Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A Bletchley Park indexer who deferred her acting ambitions for wartime secrecy, making her West End debut at 83.
On the island
Eight records
Barbara Bonney, Håkan Hagegård
this duet from Mozart's Don Giovanni and goes right back to my parents. My father was an opera singer before the war... And the thing I remember my parents singing more than anything is this duet from Don Giovanni and I love to hear them singing it.
she was a sort of forerunner of Elite Pieff [Édith Piaf]... I've chosen the Voyage to Bethlehem because I also find it very touching and it makes me think of her more than all the others.
extract from The Playboy of the Western World
the best part I think I had all the time I was on the stage... it is one of the really important moments of my life as far as the theatre was concerned.
to me sort of resonant with all my youth before the war dancing just being young and they were still playing it a year or two later when I met my husband at Bletchley so I should like that.
The Rape of Lucretia (excerpt)
Kathleen Ferrier, with Anna Pollak, Margaret Ritchie
First of all, I love Kathleen Ferrier's voice. And secondly, Benjamin Britton [Britten]... wrote this opera for her. And Jim and I we were married in '46, and we went to it that summer, and it was the first thing we went to together.
Piano Sonata No. 10 in G major, Op. 14 No. 2
he says it's really dedicated to the Griffin Brown [Gräfin Braun?]... But I'm going to dedicate it to Pamela. So always afterwards, it's been my sonata.
Summertime (from Porgy and Bess)Favourite
To me it springs like a flower out of darkness, and that's what I love about it.
Piano Sonata No. 21 in B-flat major, D. 960 (second movement)
it was the thing that was in Jim's C D player when he came back from hospital... I'd like to have him with me.
In conversation
Presenter asks
2:33What was it like when suddenly the truth came to light [about Bletchley Park in the 1970s]?
My memory of the nineteen seventies is that people weren't all that interested. They seemed to be much more interested now. Bletchley seemed quite a long way away. The fact that we'd broken the codes was wonderful, and perhaps saved lives was wonderful, but it was part of history, and we were all getting on with our lives and doing other things.
Presenter asks
3:10What did the war effort mean to you there and then, as a young woman?
Well, I suppose underneath most of us felt that we really were fighting for our survival and for the survival of the things that we believed in. But I think that everybody seemed so friendly. I suppose it's like a match, really. I've never been a great sports watcher, but … we were a team. The whole country was a team.
Presenter asks
10:37Can you try to describe a little the atmosphere in Munich [in 1936]?
Well, it's rather difficult. If I'd been living with a proper German family who didn't take other students, I should have seen more of it. But these were people who expressly took English and I suppose American students. And I think the atmosphere was really I wasn't sensitive enough to realise what a lot must have been going down underneath. I didn't much like the idea of the Hitler Jugend. It didn't seem to me terribly warlike, because I had no idea what warlike was. And I didn't read the newspapers much. And I mean, one is very, very self-centred, I think, at that age very often. I wanted to get back more than anything and get on to the stage. … I'm deeply ashamed now, but I'm sorry to say I don't think I was very rarely political at all or aware of the ghastly things that were going on all around.
The keepsakes
The book
The Complete Poems of T. S. Eliot (or The Complete Works)
T. S. Eliot
First of all, cats would make me laugh. And Ash Wednesday Has my motto in it for old age, and now I rejoice at having to construct something upon which to rejoice.
Presenter asks
18:18You were given the job at Bletchley and asked to sign the Official Secrets Act. Given that you had imagination and a sense of drama, what were your expectations of your job?
I fully expected that I might be dropped over France or something. It was a very glorified idea of my languages, 'cause they weren't nearly good enough for that. But I thought it might be going to be very exciting, and I must say it wasn't when I first got there.
Presenter asks
27:34Throughout your time in Zurich and after, did you have a sense of champing at the bit — that there was something else you could have been doing with your life?
In Zurich, yes. In Zurich, because Zurich was also in those days very old fashioned and very sort of, for instance, when we brought our furniture over, although my husband was extremely busy, he had to go down to the border and sign for them, because a woman couldn't sign for them. … So it was really like being in a nineteenth century play.
Presenter asks
32:41Given your experiences, all the decades you've lived, what do you think the ingredients are for living a long and fulfilled life?
Well, luck's the greatest, I suppose. I think I've got an optimistic temperament, and I'm lucky in that. I inherited that from my parents, I think. And a good partner's the greatest thing of all. Family is a wonderful thing. A belief of some sort is great. I don't mean necessarily belonging to a strict religion. But I think believing in the human spirit. In the fact there is something there that's worth preserving and being.
“All my friends who weren't at Bletchley think that The Imitation Game is wonderful, and all my friends who were think it's rubbish.”
“I can remember even when I was rehearsing the very first professional play I was in. It was at the time of Munich. And I wasn't praying, you know, let there be no war for any other reason except that I wanted to open and play the part which I got was rather a nice one. And I'm sorry to say I'm deeply ashamed now, but I'm sorry to say I don't think I was very rarely political at all or aware of the ghastly things that were going on all around.”
“The stage could wait and the war can't.”
“If there's one thing that doesn't drive out, but subdues grief, it's fear. And I was pretty afraid, really, to start with.”
“You can't have everything. And I think I've had more than my share, really.”
“[Luxury] A very, very, very comfortable four-poster bed with a Macintosh roof.”