Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Writer of short stories, children's books, and screenplays.
On the island
Eight records
Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 61: II. Larghetto
Yehudi Menuhin, New Philharmonia Orchestra, Otto Klemperer
Oh, it's just uh I mean, I would choose masses of Beethoven if I could, because he's one of the great men, Himmenbach, and uh I just didn't know which to choose, whether I chose a piano concerto or a quartet or or this, but uh this is a fine record and uh played by a fine violinist.
The greatest to my mind. The greatest voice has ever been in broadcasting and the greatest poet of our time.
Mass in B minor, BWV 232: Agnus Dei
I once said to a professional musician in Washington called Mark Bitstein, what is the greatest musical work that's ever been composed? And he said Bach's mass and B minor. And I went home and I played it and I played it and I must say I think he's right.
Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125 "Choral": III. Adagio molto e cantabile
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Herbert von Karajan
I didn't know which symphony to choose, but I I've taken the ninth. Here's a part of the third movement of the ninth, the choral.
Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D major, BWV 1068: II. Air
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Herbert von Karajan
This movement, uh which you're going to hear, the air from this, is wonderfully well known, but you you must never call it, well you haven't, but so many people do refer to great music, which we hear a lot of as being hackneyed. It's not. It's simply the greater the music, the more often you hear it.
Piano Sonata No. 11 in A major, K. 331: II. Menuetto
has got to be a Mozart. I haven't had one yet. Another of the the greats. I I didn't know which to choose, so I I've taken one of the lovelies, uh a sonata in A.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:39Could you adjust yourself to isolation on an island?
Very easily, yes. I look for it more and more in my life to day. I hate to say it, but I would love it.
Presenter asks
3:28Were you bright at school?
Not particularly, no. No, I was better at games than at uh than at work. Certainly no sign of uh … Any ability to uh … Write or do anything else. No, I was I was nothing at school. I I wasn't even a house prefect.
Presenter asks
3:50What did you read [as a boy]? What were you fondest of reading?
Everything I could get hold of from Dickens and Thackeray and oh, there was an American fellow who, when I read him, I couldn't turn the light off at night, a short story writer called Ambrose Bierce. Oh, yes, indeed. Who had a wonderful title to his collection, which was Can Such Things Be? Yes. At age 11, I couldn't turn the light off. A formidable writer. Yes.
Presenter asks
4:48What did you want to be as a boy, as a schoolboy?
The keepsakes
The book
The New Oxford Book of English Verse
Helen Gardner
If you're going to be there a great number of years, it would have to be poetry.
The luxury
a still, cuttings from a vineyard, and tobacco seeds
It causes great problems for a Sybarite like me. The two things that I wouldn't want to do without is smoking and drinking.
I hadn't the foggiest idea what I wanted to be. All I knew was that uh when my mother said uh my father died when I was three, so uh my mother brought us all up. … She said, Do you want to go to Oxford or Cambridge? … And uh I said, No, I don't. She said, What do you want to do? I said, I want to get a job that'll take me to distant lands.
Presenter asks
18:57What made you change your mind [about letting television adapt your short stories]?
With all due respect, except for a few … superb shows like upstairs, downstairs, the quality of television is not very high and I thought, well, … I'm not exactly starving, and so let's hang on to them. … And and also I I had uh just enough sense to realize that a large package of them is better than trickling them out in one or two. … And so I waited. … And uh … Finally I thought I found the right … People to do them. … And uh … Agreed.
“As a matter of fact, it it helped quite a lot because it is impossible after listening to great music to write absolute rubbish.”
“I'm attackless … sort of fellow and uh that's the one thing a diplomat mustn't be, you know.”
“I only write, really, what I think is funny. One is an entertainer.”
“I'm a pretty restless sort of chap. Don't like lying on the beach doing nothing.”