Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Writer of children's books.
On the island
Eight records
Symphony No. 9 in E minor, Op. 95, 'From the New World' (Third Movement)
London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by István Kertész
Chiefly because I just because I love it. It's very exciting, I find. Um i I have a great fondness for um not American films as such, any kind of American film, but I love the good old-fashioned cowboy films. And I think I always get the same kind of feeling from this as I do from a really good cowboy film.
Eternal Father, Strong to Save
Holman Climax Male Voice Choir and the Mabe Ladies' Choir
Well, my second record uh dates really, I suppose, from those days, and because of having a father who was a sailor, for those in peril on the sea. It's part of life to do with the Navy. And we had it at his funeral actually too.
Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Sir Thomas Beecham
I don't quite know why. Um it just does things, it trickles up and down my spine and um I suppose it's very central. But I do love it.
Anne Ziegler and Webster Booth
Yes, well it was the one that everybody was singing and whistling. Just at the time that Rupert was around
Pipes and Drums of the 1st Battalion, Scots Guards
This I think is perhaps to do with with the kind of book I write. It's The Flowers of the Forest, played on the Pipes.
Under Milk Wood (excerpt including Polly Garter's Song)
Diana Maddox and Richard Burton
The only record I've chosen which isn't music. Well even that's mostly a song. But um I love this. I discovered Dylan Thomas. I suppose not more than ten years ago, but he was one of the lovely discoveries of my life.
The Lark AscendingFavourite
Boyd Neel Orchestra with Frederick Grinke
Always had a great fondness for you before I came to Sussex, but it does express Sussex very much for me the Downs. But it expresses England altogether. If I was homesick on my desert island, I would put the Larcas Ending on and I would have England.
Choir of King's College, Cambridge, conducted by David Willcocks
Got this wonderful hopeful feeling. It's a sawing upward piece of music. Um it's it's all of the resurrection, everything going up into the sky.
In conversation
Presenter asks
3:09How far back can you go [with your memories]?
Oh, my very first memory. I was only eighteen months old. … I was taken for a walk, I was taken along a path. And I came out from the narrowness of this path into an open space. where there were things in cages. notably a squirrel, restlessly sort of wandering round and round his cage, obviously with a headache. and all the injustices and sorrows of the of the world broke over my head for the first time at that sight.
Presenter asks
4:41What do you remember about [Malta]?
Oh, little sort of cameos. I remember branches of an orange tree hanging over a wall. And I remember the people coming and going in the streets. … Sailors, of course, everywhere. And in those days still a great many women wearing the foldetta, which I don't suppose you would ever see in Malta nowadays, which was a very becoming headdress.
Presenter asks
5:27Can you describe that horrible thing [the spinal carriage]?
But it was rather like a wicker coffin, and it was very uncomfortable. And you were lay flat out in this thing, and of course all you could see were the branches of the trees or the roofs of the houses going by overhead. And it was extremely boring.
The keepsakes
The book
Rudyard Kipling
It would have to be Kim or Kwenneth Graham's Wind in the Willows, and Kim is longer.
The luxury
Presenter asks
11:42Why did you give [miniature painting] up?
But I gave it up to write. I think for this very reason that I began to feel that I'd got to do something to break out. And I could write as big as ever I wanted to. I could use an enormous canvas if I wanted to.
Presenter asks
16:31In which period do you feel most at home?
I think in Roman Britain. … I always feel it's perhaps a little Shameful to be quite so at home with the Romans, because they were only a very bourgeois lot. But I do feel very at home with them. … I do feel that Here I am back to home again, when I get back into a Roman story.
“I never got incarcerated with other disabled children.”
“I do get feelings. I've been here before. I think I do believe in reincarnation. I hope I do. Because I think it's the one thing that makes sense, that makes for justice and A really sensible pattern to life.”
“I can only create from the top of my head down my right arm and act the point of my pen.”