Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Northern English novelist, best known for his 1960 debut 'A Kind of Loving'.
On the island
Eight records
Well, I think in all this turmoil we're always looking for a little serenity of mind and spirit without opting out altogether. And there's one composer who in his very, very short life, he only lives to be thirty-one, seemed to find that uh deep inside himself, and that was Schubert. You can find it in the some of the impromptues and in the quintet and in such songs as Du Biste Rue.
The Trojans: Royal Hunt and Storm
One of the greatest inventions of man is the is the modern symphony orchestra. One of the earliest geniuses to exploit that was Berlioz. His opera The Trojan is about a hundred and thirty years old this year, and I'd like to hear from that marvellously orchestrated the Royal Hunt and Storm.
Woody Herman and His Orchestra
Well, about that age, when I was about sixteen, in my teens, I was absolutely mad keen on jazz. I was very, very knowledgeable about jazz in those days. And I think the big band reached its zenith about that time with the first post-war Woody Herman orchestra the third herd which had marvellous soloists and very free arrangements which allowed improvisation and and a marvellous powerful drive. It absolutely made my hair stand on end to hear things such as this one that I'd like to hear, North West Passage.
I like exuberance in the arts, but I also like a sense of mastery of a great power sort of held in reserve. And one of my very, very favorite composers is Sibelius. I love that feeling of great majesty and restraint that he worked towards and finally achieved in his Seventh Symphony.
Peter Grimes: Act II Duet (They are children when they weep, we are mothers when we strive)
Women's voices in duet or trio or quartet can be very, very appealing. Richard Strauss used that combination in several of his operas and so did Benjamin Britton in Peter Crimes and I'd like to hear from Act Two of Peter Grimes they are children when they weep, we are mothers when we strive. They're talking about men really and how they look after them without the men really knowing or appreciating.
Intermezzo: Symphonic Interlude
Well, I mentioned Richard Strauss. Again, he's a composer I've always liked. I'd thought about taking one of the big symphonic poems, but I've opted for what I think is a haunting Interlude from his opera Intermezzo.
Well, back to the great days of the big bands, I think. I think one of the greatest arrangements I know of one of the greatest popular tunes ever written is the nineteen forty Artie Shaw version of Stardust.
Symphony No. 2Favourite
Well, there's one composer who me, the working class lap from the north of England, can't live without and may seem rather incongruous, and that's Edward Elgar, who has always meant a great deal to me in his cadences, in his tunes, in the the melancholy, the nobility of his uh utterance. And one of my very, very favourite of his works is his his Second Symphony.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:45Why have you never left the area that you were born in?
I think that if a writer in the north or in the regions finds his own sort of Barnsley … and if the penny suddenly dropped, that there is something tender and romantic about Barnsley or about Dewsbury or about Wakefield. Well, that's the kind of thing that happened to me when I suddenly realized that here was a whole mine of material to work from, to write about, enough certainly to last me the uh the rest of my life. … always there is that string holding me back to my roots, I suppose I started becoming myself, finding myself much too late in life to sever those roots very, very easily. And in fact, I saw no reason to do it. I wanted to be part of a provincial regional Renaissance.
Presenter asks
5:15What about your father? What did he do?
He's a coal miner. Uh in fact My grandfather was a coal miner. I had several uncles who were coal miners, and of course I belonged to the For the first generation of scholarship boys, I had a county minor scholarship when I was eleven. … and I went to grammar school the month, the very month that the Second World War broke out, and it was a a matter of great satisfaction to my father that I was going to go into a job, he hoped. that wouldn't involve the same kind of hazards and the h c same kind of labor that he
Presenter asks
8:33When you were at school, did you write there? Were you good at writing essays?
The keepsakes
The book
Marcel Proust
I've always been going to read Prouce's Remembrance of Times Past, and since I don't seem to be able to get round to read it in the with the kind of life that I uh lead now, I'll take it with me.
The luxury
I've got to take a a lot of paper and some pens because surely I'll be able to get down to write those superb, refined short stories that are the ambition of my life.
Well, English was about the only thing that really and I was any good at all history and I yes, I think I could put words together. in some fashion. But of course there's all the difference uh between that and becoming a creative writer, writer of novels. … when I left school, I left as an abject academic failure. You know, I mean, I'd wasted all that bright promise. They picked me out at eleven, and at sixteen I was just uh I was just nobody.
Presenter asks
13:00How did the writing start then? When would it first start writing?
I'd become more and more interested in music. It was a real outlet for me. … And I gave a programme of records one night … Connie, my wife … said to me, I think you ought to be able to write something, you ought to be able to write stories. … So I began to write for magazines. … things completely remote from my own life. You know, I never dreamt That anything that I knew, or anybody that I knew, could be any kind of fit subject for fiction. … And one day I picked up a book of stories by H. E. Bates, and I realized in my astonishment that they were about Fairly inarticulate people. … I realized that here was the key, here was what I'd been looking for. … and suddenly I was seeing all the life around me. … And that was the moment when I became a writer and I sat down then and thought I must try to get these people, the people I know so well, onto paper.
Presenter asks
19:00Did [becoming a celebrity overnight] disturb the pattern of your life at all?
Well, not for a while. I stubbornly sort of went on working for a while at the in the uh in the drawing office. I was married, I had two small children by that time. I used to find that I was spending more time pretending to be a writer than actually writing, you know. I mean, I I did become a sort of minor celebrity and people wanted to talk to me. … What I did see was the possibility, for the first time, that I might actually become a full-time writer, and I come to this by very, very gradual stages.
Presenter asks
25:02What kind of process do you have [for writing]?
Well, the bird of inspiration is gonna alight on my shoulder when I'm actually sitting there working, not when I'm walking about waiting for it. And I've got to keep office hours. I've got to sit down and make myself write. And the magic, if it's going to happen, will happen then. Because I know one or two basic truths about writing, just one or two. And one is that when we're actually sitting there with a pen in the hand, We're actually in touch with a part of the mind that we don't normally use as we walk about trying not to bump into each other. But you've got to let the memory, the unconscious, all these things make the meaningful connections that make up a piece of work.
“I wanted to be part of a provincial regional Renaissance. And so I thought, if I stay here, That is what I can be.”
“I realized in my astonishment that they were about Fairly inarticulate people. They were about people to whom words soon ran out. Even though his characters lived in sort of rural country surroundings, I realized that here was the key, here was what I'd been looking for.”
“I think post war Flexibility, full employment, partly after the war, the emergence of some first generation grammar school boys who were questioning their own role and their own place in that society, were thinking that they might move out, wondering what of value they were going to leave behind.”
“I'm not a solitary. I I like to be solitary inside myself with other people around me. I'm fairly gregarious really.”