Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
An artist, writer, cartoonist and theatrical designer.
On the island
Eight records
I particularly like contraltos and she really had the most lovely voice, I think.
I think it's it's wonderfully moving and uh I always think that great story that at uh the Verdi's funeral and they the coffin came out and the whole of that vast square was packed.
Noël Coward and Gertrude Lawrence
I think it absolutely sums up that period. And I think it still remains frightfully funny.
Les mamelles de Tirésias (excerpt)
Orchestra, Chorus and Company of the Opéra-Comique, conducted by André Cluytens
it's only a comic opera and it's I think absolutely delightful. I mean it's all about sex change. But I mean when we say sex change, it's not taken so seriously. Poula is Boulanc and it is frightfully funny and I think the music is absolutely delightful.
Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, conducted by Ernest Ansermet
some people find it rather arid, but uh I think it's a very moving work. I'm very fond of it.
Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott, BWV 80Favourite
South German Madrigal Choir and Consortium Musicum, conducted by Wolfgang Gönnenwein
I think it is Bach at its his his finest. I I'm very fond of big male voice choirs.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:38Does music play an important part, as far as you're concerned?
Oh, yes, I think it does. Um, I am no exactant. I mean, I short time I played the flute in the school orchestra, but those are many, many years ago. So I can't be said to be an execantant anyway.
Presenter asks
2:51Did your mother [who was an artist] teach you the rudiments very early on?
Oh, yes, she always encouraged me to to to draw like mad and and and uh so I've always gone on doing anything with Lord.
Presenter asks
3:09Was the art instruction good there [at Charterhouse] in your day?
Excellent. First rate. One thing I really I really am grateful to Stratahouse for was that. He was a charming old boy, who was a very, very good watercolourist and was very firm. W watercolours was all. And there's no messing about with oil paints. He said quite far too much mess was made by all oil pens. And I think quite rightly th that uh if you could master watercolours which is in a way a far more difficult medium would then go on to oils in later life.
The keepsakes
The book
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Edward Gibbon
Cannot honestly cross my heart and say I've ever read it from cover to cover. I mean, vol one and two I know very well, but the long passages have come quite fresh to me in the latter part of the work.
The luxury
I should like a lot of sturgeon. So that I would then have a constant supply of caviar the whole time.
Presenter asks
What did you read [at Oxford]?
Um, what did I read? I hardly read anything. No, I yes, no, it's rather awful. I'd read English literature, yes, like a fool. And the stupidest seal stupidest school I could have taken.
Presenter asks
14:44What's your discipline in drawing [your daily cartoons]? Obviously you can't stockpile them.
No. I think it's a good thing not to stop the way things that I've always tried to I I go into the office to do them. … And I don't go into the office before four o'clock because it's got to be topical and on the next day's news and I wait till the early editions are out for the evening papers. … Go ahead from there and hope I shall be through by different time. I mean, well, hope to be through by seven or half past.
Presenter asks
21:41Can we expect some more [volumes of autobiography]?
No, I don't I don't I've always started. I think then something goes wrong or somebody doesn't like something always. … rather trickier period my life eaters that I knew at Oxford. Difficult not to be r too outspoken perhaps occasionally. I don't think that still it it's more difficult because the first part of one's life falls into natural sequences and come to a well pointed end. … but it's not so easy, I think, sort of I'm trying to uh … encapsulate in one's thoughts and emotions for the next thirty, forty years.
“If you don't take a first, it doesn't matter what the hell you take.”
“One is staggered really how good it was and one feels we're not so good now. I mean that is always a a a rather unpleasant aspect of the situation.”
“I would like to do it in a neoclassical style, but I don't think the materials would lend themselves to such subtleties.”