Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Actress best known for Philida Trant in 'Rumpole of the Bailey', plus Diana Cooper, Jemima Shaw, and the Phamme Fatale.
On the island
Eight records
Well, taking up the premise of my attraction to the twenties and thirties, there is a great spectrum of music of this time that I love, not the least of which is Gershwin, I think we reached um a peak in songwriting and uh musical style and wit that has to a certain extent gone.
Domine Deus, Rex caelestis (from Gloria, RV 589)
Nancy Argenta, The English Concert & Trevor Pinnock
I have a long association with church music, which goes back to all my places of education, when I've sung in various choirs, but culminating when I was at drama school... It was also while we were performing a particular concert in the church, as the church choir, that I met my husband.
Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Op. 18
Vladimir Ashkenazy, London Symphony Orchestra & André Previn
On this desert island I think I would be terribly bereft without a cinema screen. One piece of music which would give me first of all, it's a piece of music I love secondly, it would give me total recall of one of the great moments to me in film history, at the film Brief Encounter...
I've been a long time admirer of Julie Andrews, and an equally longtime admirer of Stephen Sondheim. Because of my passion for musical theatre, and I think he's one of the greatest exponents.
This brings us back to the music of the twenties and thirties. I have a great passion for the great lyric writers. This one I think embodies everything that I love. It's a beautiful lyric... I think the lyric is very opposite for someone struggling on their own on a desert island.
Make Our Garden Grow (from Candide)Favourite
I'm in danger of revealing too much of my love of musical theatre. But from another corner of it, if you like, comes Leonard Bernstein, who I admire greatly, and his work Candide is one of my favorite. And this last track, which is called Make Our Garden Grow, is full of hope and would give me enormous encouragement on my desert island...
As you probably witness, pop music doesn't ride very high on this list. I'm not a lover of pop music per se, but there are certain exceptions. Um I feel the lyrics of pop music are generally so banal. that the least that it can do is make you want to get up and dance.
Bournemouth Sinfonietta & Kenneth Montgomery
I have always loved English traditional music. My Top exponent. of this is Percy Granger. His treatment of English folk music is really wonderfully witty and clever.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:11How much is your cool, slightly haughty image really you, and how much is it simply the roles you are cast in?
Well, I hope it's the type of roles I'm cast in because I've never seen myself that way… I think what I am is, along with most other people, absolutely terrified most of the time. And we all have different ways of of covering that up. And in my case, I suppose… I go into a sort of glacial shell. and apparently look as if I know what I'm doing when I don't at all.
Presenter asks
9:22Why were piano and elocution lessons considered necessary for you as a child?
I don't know. I think my family believed… that um an education if you had no money for anything else in the world, you spent it on education because it was something you could never take away… and so it was natural that my mother would get my sister and I to do the same thing.
Presenter asks
11:08Was there a moment when you actually decided you wanted to go on the stage?
Yes. The first time I saw professional theatre was when I was ten and my mother brought me… to see Where the Rainbow Ends at the Victoria Palace… and to suddenly see a complete stage show like that, I I thought I had landed on another planet, and I just looked and thought that's the only place I want to be.
The keepsakes
The book
Harold Pinter
I thought I would like to sort of go through each play and reassess it and play all the parts myself.
The luxury
Anything to do with my hands is the one antidote that I find the most soothing in life.
Presenter asks
14:44Were you any good when you finally got to drama school?
Well, I think what they thought I was was technically uh adroit, but not giving enough in the um emotion department. which does take quite a while to release in everyone, but in my case, because I'd already started a career… if that persona has started to form, you've got to break it down.
Presenter asks
22:11How much did you mind about not becoming pregnant during your thirties?
Quite desperately really, but I think the crisis point was inevitably towards the the late thirties when I realized it probably wasn't going to happen… Quite a few years of intense heartache which I didn't really share with people for a long time.
Presenter asks
27:03Why did you decide to go back to work after waiting so long to have children?
I did decide that I would want to be for my children the person I'd always been. I think it's very important that truth exists as much as possible in the upbringing of children, and that you're always true to them. And part of that is being truthful to oneself.
“I think what I am is, along with most other people, absolutely terrified most of the time. And we all have different ways of of covering that up.”
“I as a child I knew what um Berfstroganoff was before I knew what Shepherd's Pie was, so I used to yearn to be ordinary and live in number two railway cuttings and for my mother to wear a headscarf and things like that.”
“I think I've grown up with a feeling that it's not too good to be too successful as a child, because it it then makes you these things are character building, and it makes you try all the more when you grow up.”
“I don't think there's a there's a night when I go and look at them in bed when I still can't really believe they're there.”