Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Writer who won the Booker Prize for 'Heat and Dust' and wrote screenplays for Merchant Ivory films such as 'A Room with a View'.
On the island
Eight records
And Sheikh Revala, well it I feel quite nostalgic about Sheikh Revala'cause it was our second film.
I immediately took to Indian music, like Indian sweets, the greatest thing that ever happened to me. And I love these Indian women singers, who for me were somehow an expression of everything a woman artist does.
Keyboard Sonata in E minor, K. 263 / L. 22
In relation to the last record, the last record, Pavin Sultana singing, that was sort of me absolutely within India and accepting it and loving it. The next record is me sl and you know, turning away again, saying, Oh, well, but There's all that unwonderful, wonderful Western music and all that wonderful, wonderful West and It's sort of nostalgia, homesickness, and me in my really western mood.
Stephen C. Breith and the Madrigal Choir of the Munich Musikhochschule
This is a a piece of liturgical Jewish music. It is called Avino Volcano. And it's what's sung on the high holidays, that is the Jewish New Year, the Day of Atonement. And it sort of says um Our Lord, our Father, inscribe us in the Book of Life and give us a year of happiness, which is you can't ask f for more than that.
Mass in B minor, BWV 232: SanctusFavourite
BBC Chorus and the New Philharmonia Orchestra
Now when I wasn't listening to Horowitz playing Priscalati, every Easter and every Christmas I'd play the Mass in B minor. I don't know. This was my Easter and my Christmas celebrations in in India.
Yeah, well my next piece of music is from Surviving Picasso, which is among my favorite films. And the music here has been composed by our long time composer, partner, friend, companion, Richard Robbins, who's sort of the fourth member of our team.
It's a man singing, but he's singing. My ankle bells are ringing and they're making a noise and disturbing the silence in which I wish to meet my lover. Well, actually it's like the song of Solomon. It's the soul speaking uh, you know, to his friend, to God, and and he's singing as the soul, as a f as a not as a woman, but as the feminine soul.
String Quartet No. 16 in F major, Op. 135: IV. Der schwer gefasste Entschluss
Last week go back uh again to my great homesickness for the West that I used to feel and and then when it was really uh you know, when I really wanted to feel really European, I would play Brayton string quartets.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:20What do you put [the success of the Merchant Ivory partnership] down to? Why has it worked?
Well, we always say because we each of us have minded our own business. I mean, Jim's directed. Isma's produced … And I'd never dream of doing anything except writing.
Presenter asks
5:34What were your first impressions of India [in 1951]?
Before that I'd been all through the war in England and after the war and, you know, everything was pretty basic and grim and grey and suddenly you come into this grand fairy land of sights and sounds and colors and what not. And sweets, I suppose. I mean you'd been what, Nazi Germany, wartime England, you can't eat have eaten many sweetens. No, absolutely. I would starve for for them. And Indian sweets are the essence of all sweetness that there ever could be. I used to eat by the pound.
Presenter asks
9:45When did it start to pall, India? When did you begin to feel that India was a place you had to survive?
I think after about uh I mean, the first ten years were wonderful and I felt Indian. I never wanted to leave. I thought everything was great. But then I started getting homesick. I think that does happen. Just for you know, European civilization and Euro just European background, everything. And then India became sort of um became alien to me.
The keepsakes
The luxury
I always like to lie on uh, you know, one of this uh chaise lawn, look out of a window at a tree against the sky.
Presenter asks
13:06Why do you think you failed [to stay in India]? Why couldn't you stay?
I think it's probably something to do with but you know, if I'd been, say, a doctor or uh like my daughter is a trade union leader or somebody who was really contributing something there. Well, no, could really work in India and it you know, and be there and and Could do something. Have a purpose. Yeah. I I really didn't. I began to feel uh Somehow as if uh I didn't really have a right to be there.
Presenter asks
15:09It was the other children, wasn't it, who made you aware of what and who you are [in Nazi Germany]?
When we walked to school, of course there were German children shouting after us, you know, it's Jew, Jew and throwing things at us and yeah, well, all around us more and more we could only go to Jewish shops,'cause we could only go to Jewish schools and He couldn't go to cinemas. So we you know, we always lived under knowledge that we couldn't stay there long.
Presenter asks
27:31When you finally left India, you went to New York. Why?
New York is the most European place on earth. I know. Without uh the uh bad connections uh that Europe's really, you know, had for my generation.
“I suppose because I started off as a refugee anyway. And once you're a refugee, I guess you're always a refugee. I mean, you don't really ever belong to any place at all, and you take on a sort of At least I did, a sort of chameleon quality.”
“Everything that so much delighted me before, all the strong sensual things it was just too much. And then I mean, it was just too strong. It's a very, very strong place. Like a curry is a very strong food. I mean, it's not like boiled potatoes. But I started wanting the boiled potatoes again.”
“If you're a writer, at least my kind of writer, certain certain kind of writer, you Um you look inward and you open up worlds uh from within yourself.”