Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Artist and graphic satirist, known for Punch magazine, Molesworth books and the St Trinians schoolgirls.
On the island
Eight records
Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis
London Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Sir Adrian Boult
It's a fantasia on a theme by Thomas Talis, and Thomas Talis as an echo of England that Vaughn Williams crystallizes into a form of nostalgia that if you're a prisoner and you want to recreate England, your childhood or the history, the actual smell of the country in which I was born, this particular record is perfection.
Choir of King's College, Cambridge, conducted by Philip Ledger
Well, the second choice, Spotless Rose, basically is the roots of my childhood, my life. I was born in Cambridge. I spent all my time fascinated by the architecture and by the history.
I bought this book [about George Grosz], and it became my Bible. I suddenly realized the actual possibilities that i graphic satire could be so explosive, so so disastrous.
Im Abendrot (from Four Last Songs)
Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, with the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Otto Ackermann
I think the next record in a way sums up a situation where you are lost, cut off from the world. No communication whatsoever within a thousand miles, and around you everyone you've known is dying.
Bob Thiele and George David Weiss
To me, it is one of the most marvellous. A thing I'd love to take with me onto a desert island, and I can listen to it all the time. Anytime. It's euphoric.
Johnny Mercer, with Henry Mancini and his Orchestra and Chorus
is something which is nostalgic for both Monica and myself because I worked enormously on reportage in America.
Piano Concerto No. 21 in C major, K. 467: II. Andante
Daniel Barenboim, with the English Chamber Orchestra
And so the reason we've chosen Mozart is simply because not only is it an extremely personal thing for us too, but because it's a It changed in France a little, I think, judging by the reaction of the public and the press. It changed the attitude of the French towards this particular horror [cancer].
The Champagne Song (from Die Fledermaus)Favourite
Rather sums up exactly the vision of Monica and myself in the kitchen.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:40Do you miss the old country [Britain]?
Well, I don't miss any particular country because I think the point is if you're a freelance artist and you're commenting on the world around you, you've got to live on an island. And I had the advantage of perhaps being captured and put into prison. And one curiosity is that once you've been a prisoner, you never escape from your island prison.
Presenter asks
5:55How much do you think that experience [as a prisoner of war] influenced or permeated your work that came after that?
Perhaps to a certain extent, but I think basically what changed was the fact that. There'd been a war. And war is nothing but killing. I mean a soldier is there to kill, that's all. I mean you're trained to kill. So the mentality really of everyone who was involved in the war was that no longer the politeness of pre war existed. Horror, misery, Blackness, the horribleness that one saw. This obviously changed the attitude towards all things, and certainly as far as humour was concerned.
Presenter asks
17:15Did you realize immediately that this was going to be a terrible experience that wasn't going to be in line with any kind of international agreement on the holding of prisoners?
The keepsakes
The book
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
Oxford University Press
what I'd love to have is a recent publication which is the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. But the problem is it's in sixty volumes. So I thought if you could persuade Oxford to bind it into one book. It'd be rather like a concertina, but I'd like to take that as my my one book.
The luxury
Oh, champagne. No, I had thought actually I had thought that my luxury would be a mosquito net, because I know that when you're stuck on an island, you're going to be eaten alive anyway by insects. Then I thought, oh, to hell with that, let's have champagne. Because what I would do is I would drink this I would have the best possible bottle of champagne, probably crystal rotor, and then I would write a note, put it into the bottle, throw it into the sea saying, please send another one.
When you're nineteen years old and you're taken prisoner by a people you have of which you have no conception at all, of a culture which is so far from your own. You have absolutely no idea of what your future would be. It was only gradually, as the years went by, the months went by, that you realized that you were, in fact, Dirt. Available to your captor to do anything he wished. You were nothing at all.
Presenter asks
25:56Did you also have in mind that you were creating a record of these events?
Oh, very much so. He's I wanted to create a record. I wanted to be a camera. And that's it. I am a camera. If you like, it began my career as an artist reporter, but it wasn't directly that that Decision. The decision basically was: I had to let people know what was happening.
Presenter asks
29:29You essentially decided to turn your back on [your life in London] both professionally and personally... you wrote a note and you just said 'I've gone'?
Yes, I think it was the best decision I ever made. It took a long time for the relationship between myself and the children to sort itself out. But in fact, the decision was correct, I think. The thing is that, all right, it was brutal. But I think a decision like that has to be brutal. You are a very well-known personality at that time in England. You suddenly decide to disappear and to start from zero.
Presenter asks
37:39Do you keep in touch even now with other survivors and do you feel the need to talk to them?
Oh yes. Oh, absolutely, yes. There aren't many of us left now, unfortunately. I think the last news I had, I think we're we're probably down to about twelve, I think, of two hundred and forty or something like that... we just talk w we discuss the fact that we're there. And uh it's a consolation to know there are still one or two people with whom you've shared that sort of experience, who are still around to guard the memory in that sense.
“once you've been a prisoner, you never escape from your island prison. And it gives you the point of view of looking around you and being able to comment or react to anything that's around you without having any parochial responsibility.”
“I decided that I'm I'm sorry, but I had to abandon my wife, abandon my children, abandon my house, abandon my r career, abandon my reputation, the lot, and start from zero.”
“If all your generation, everyone you knew, died when they were nineteen and twenty. You've got the biggest present in the world. You live from day to day thinking, My God, you know, I should have died when I was nineteen and I'm eighty five now. How many presents can one have in one's life? I mean, every day is a present.”