Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Storyteller and illustrator of children's books about everyday life, best known for Alfie and Annie Rose and The Tales of Trotter Street.
On the island
Eight records
Flute Concerto No. 1 in G major, K. 313
Sarah Brooke, Philharmonia Orchestra, conducted by Tamás Vásáry
I have a a a son, Tom, and uh he used to play this as a boy, so I would like this. It's it's a very vibrant, life affirming piece of music.
My Very Good Friend the Milkman
early days when I knew John we used to put this on and dance about to.
Billie Holiday with Lester Young and Benny Goodman
I felt somewhere far away a sort of adult world was beckoning.
Deh vieni, non tardar (from The Marriage of Figaro)
Lucia Popp, London Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Sir Georg Solti
To me Mozart's Marriage of Figaro is the opera, because it's so accessible, and yet there's this enormous underlying sophistication and complexity.
I think I have to have a a Bob Dylan record just to remind me of the exasperation and exhilaration of bringing up teenage children.
Rhapsody No. 2 in G minor, Op. 79 No. 2
when she was a girl living at home, she used to play the piano, and I used to be in the kitchen listening to her practice. And you know when you listen to someone wrestling with a piece and then suddenly you think, Yes, you've got it.
I would like this Beetle song, which reminds me of Liverpool.
Gloria in D major, RV 589: VII. Quoniam tu solus sanctusFavourite
Choir of King's College, Cambridge, conducted by Sir David Willcocks
Because I work alone, I've always felt that the the the one thing you miss is this working with a group, you know, when you've really got it together.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:11Does your work have a fundamental quality of reassurance about it?
Yes. They're a very young audience and they're not really ready for the wilder shores of fiction, you know, witches and wizards and things. I'm offering them a very real world that they can inhabit.
Presenter asks
5:24How did Alfie begin? Did he begin as a character or a picture?
Well, it begins a a picture in your head to begin with. The words and the picture happen together. You know, they're they're unthinkable one without the other. And they float about for quite a long time. This very strong image in your head, like an iceberg.
Presenter asks
9:08Where do you get your storytelling abilities from? Were you much read to as a child?
No, not much. Um my mother was a widow and in those days, you know, if they didn't widows didn't work unless they had to. It was like really very quiet. This was West Kirby. In West Kirby, on the Wirral, near Liverpool.
Presenter asks
The keepsakes
The book
The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age
Simon Schama
I'd choose a non-fiction book. Which I can dip in and out of endlessly, and that would be [Simon Schama]'s study of Holland in the Golden Age. It's called An Embarrassment of Riches.
The luxury
It's a painting of a woman who's just been abandoned on an island. You can see the little ship sailing away. And the god Bacchus has just arrived with the nymphs and satires, and it's that heartbeat of a moment when he's leaping out of his carriage to claim her.
How old were you when your father died?
Oh, I was only four. But when we were we were an all-female family, um there was so much time that really we made up these very complicated games and characters who go on for days, always bursting out from behind the sitting room curtains, hoping for applause.
Presenter asks
21:27How do you manage to control three and four-year-olds when you do events?
You don't know anything about them. They come into the school or library or a a festival somewhere they're all just sitting there and for you've no idea what whether they speak another language at home, what style of care they have, whether they can read yet. But there's always the stock character, you know, the one that never stops talking.
“I think of it like a f a film, really, because I'm addressing an audience who don't read yet.”
“I think we will go into this century, you know, punch drunk if we if we're not careful, so quick on the uptake that we miss half the point.”
“I think it's a mistake to think that children, when they're even when they're very little, necessarily want big primary colour things with a with a thick back line. They're quite capable of looking at detail.”