Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Illustrator and compassionate observer, collaborated with Graham Greene, Doris Lessing, Robert Graves; fought in Spanish Civil War.
On the island
Eight records
this particular uh sound just made me burst into tears because it reminded me what my mother said. She said, If you go on with the ideas you have, you'll be a a rolling stone that will gather no moss.
this is one song which I remember she always used to sing uh in the kitchen when she prepared uh food.
The Lincoln and International Brigade
it's one of the songs of the uh English speaking um units of the International Brigade.
Czech Philharmonic Orchestra (conducted by Rafael Kubelík)
I heard for the first time Mav Last and I'd like to hear ... which is the river that flows through Prague.
Bolshoi Theatre Orchestra (conducted by Mark Ermler)
this was the one that really got to me most because it it it really shunted me into um the Russian psyche and this superbly evocative, tragic music which seemed to me um essentially Russian.
I first uh heard these um this urban music, queller, it's very buoyant music, very happy music.
this is a memory of um straying into a bar which turned out to be uh the Blue Note ... when I first heard the uh this incredible jazz pianist, Thelonis Monk.
Far HorizonsFavourite
James Biddlecombe (with Glyn Boyd Harte)
He wrote this for me ... On the occasion of my eightieth birthday we had a party at Hidcutt and um I was completely overwhelmed because it's really About uh Edward Lear.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:30What makes you angry today?
Uh income tax increases and that sort of thing ... Having been a Marxist um gives you a a sort of um analytical mind, and uh I read three newspapers a day and that sort of thing, and countless weeklies ... Oh yes, I get angry, but I don't go out in the streets any more.
Presenter asks
1:49Were you not also creating propaganda [with your early drawings of socialist workers]?
Uh because eventually i it it got to the point where I just couldn't um bear drawing uh you know this birthless optimistic um attitude towards uh industrial reconstruction, as it were.
Presenter asks
2:18Did you know that the kind of happy, smiling people you drew at work were actually probably pressed men?
Well, you could see it, yes, but y I didn't know they were political prisoners or uh that it was all contrived. I thought, well, they were rebuilding their country. You know, like Poland, for example, was a country which was completely on its back.
The keepsakes
The book
The luxury
solar-powered Apple Macintosh personal computer
this may sound astonishing, but I'd really like to take a solar-powered Apple Macintosh.
Presenter asks
How long did it take [travelling through Graham Greene country]?
Well, because of his uh innate pessimism, he'd sort of managed to visit every unpleasant place, you know America and uh South America rather, and um and Europe. It it it was it was very depressing. But when you actually started to do the drawings, uh you know, you forgot that.
Presenter asks
6:44Did [Graham Greene] have right of veto [over your book covers]?
He said this won't do. Yes, many of them. Well, not too many of them. But ... he would say things like, um This character is not sympathetic. Uh people won't pick up the book.
Presenter asks
9:11When were [your parents] finally persuaded [of your artistic career]?
I used to send them books, uh the early books, you know, the uh social books and um uh they thought um I would never succeed ... But the first book that really impressed uh my mother, my father would never say anything, he he didn't even turn up at an exhibition I had at uh in Manchester, he wouldn't come in, just stood there ... wouldn't come he couldn't bring himself to admit that he was wrong, I suppose.
“I became a whiner through living high on the hog, you know, in the best hotels behind the Iron Curtain.”
“I said, This is going one of the last journeys I'm going to make alone. And he says, Well, you must always be alone. You see, that's the point, he says.”
“I think most children do entertain themselves. It mirrors the development of man, in a sense. Men did that ordinary men hunting. You know, they would just decorate the walls of caves with these animals they hunted.”
“I felt like Judas, but ... Nobody would talk to me after that.”