Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A novelist best known for 'Black Narcissus', set in India, author of over fifty books.
On the island
Eight records
TräumereiFavourite
Because it's so simple, and as played by Herods. It is of great beauty... And it suited my childhood, absolutely,'cause half the time I wasn't there. I was in my own world.
Duke Ellington and His Orchestra
It was the ballroom dancing that was so lovely in those days... It was very smooth and very, very clever.
Philadelphia Orchestra (conducted by Eugene Ormandy)
I love very much because my life has been one of extraordinary changes. And I don't know any other piece of music so pecked with different styles of music.
The human voice is the most wonderful. And one of my very favourite songs, and I know it's one of the most difficult.
Ballet Theatre Orchestra (conducted by Joseph Levine)
I love it very much because it allows my love of music and dancing. Because that little piece in music dances by itself without even a dancer.
Bénédiction de Dieu dans la solitude
This is a piece of music that I love very much. And I played usually at night... when I am near despair.
In conversation
Presenter asks
2:01Does it irritate you at all that you haven't necessarily been critically acclaimed?
No, but... I can quite understand it. They are what I would call cerebral writers. And I am only a storyteller.
Presenter asks
2:28Do you object to being called sweet?
Yes, because it's a lie. I'm not in the least afraid. You take Green Ear to summer. A young girl who betrays her lover and hands him deliberately over to the police... That's not sweet.
Presenter asks
5:20Can you just give me a picture of the sight and the smell of that place [on the banks of a Bengali river]?
People have no idea of the drink. Gigantic size. Of the rivers, our particular river is the Megla... something of that flow and calm and space. I think influenced our childhood. Very much.
Presenter asks
9:11How much did it hurt that you were the ugly duckling of the four sisters?
The keepsakes
The book
The Atlantic Book of British and American Poetry
Edith Sitwell
because it has American and French as well as English
The luxury
A widow's cruse filled with whisky
I would like to take a Widow's Cruise. ... It'll be filled to the brim but not with flour and oil. Mine will be filled with whisky.
They were all... very, very attractive... I inherited the Hingley Nose... And I remember one day at lunch... my father... looked down the table at me... And he said, Where did that child get that face? And nearly broke my heart. I went out and sobbed
Presenter asks
12:13Why did [your teacher] impose on you the idea that you shouldn't have anything published until you were twenty-five?
Because... so many young stopped brilliantly and burn themselves out. A lot of the writing nowadays is very shoddy... because they don't know... grammar. They don't know feelings, words that don't work with reference books and thesaurus.
Presenter asks
17:30Was it a terrible disgrace when you found you were pregnant?
I absolutely refused... to abort... This was my baby... My first husband... said, Well, you'll have to marry me and pretend you like it... and [I] found myself with a marriage that was incompatible.
Presenter asks
26:53Why don't you accept an advance for a book?
Directly you accept money, you put yourself into a straightjack... And if you have a synopsis, sure as eggs are eggs, is it your books going to turn out different?... So you have to write the kind of book you don't want to write.
“I can't remember a time when I didn't write. There was a flow that never stopped, and I think it came from those rivers.”
“There's always a right word, but you have to find it. And you've got to listen. They don't listen.”
“If you have a gift... painting, music, writing... it's a gift. But it's not a gift that you can ignore... It is something that demands your attention... All of the time.”
“You don't give up writing. If you're a bone writer and two writing gives you up.”