Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Writer of best-selling adventure novels.
On the island
Eight records
that's what I like to have as my swan song. When they carry me out feet first, that's what I'd like to go out singing, unmusically.
Symphony No. 3 in E-Flat Major, Op. 55 "Eroica"Favourite
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Herbert von Karajan
it has nice associations because my wife and I were in at New Year's Eve we were at the concert in Berlin and heard this cut.
I always think about my wife when I hear the words to this, and this is one of the things that I sing in the shop. This is the one that she does listen to.
I love all his stuff so much that the choice was quite arbitrary.
I just love the sound of the pipe, that sort of beautiful, mysterious sound. And the cut I've chosen is the theme from Evita because, you know, I've seen that uh musical three or four times and loved it.
In conversation
Presenter asks
2:43How far do your colonial roots go back?
Well, my mother's side of the family were pioneers in Zambia, in Northern Rhodesia. My grandmother was the first white woman on the Copper Belt. … But that's not very far back. That's sort of the turn of the century.
Presenter asks
3:15What do you remember about your childhood [in the bush]?
My family were my father particularly was very keen on hunting and the bush life. … my earliest memories are going out with thirty or forty bearers and in in great style. We used to set up camp with four or five tents and a big thorn tree scareum round the camp to keep the lions out in the evening and the the camp fire at night and the sound of lions sort of just over the hill and you know you cuddle down in your stretcher as as a child listening to all the little night apes in the trees above you and the owls hooting. It was tremendous, it really was.
Presenter asks
5:47Was it your ambition to go into commerce?
No, but it was my father's ambition. I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to be a a journalist and a reporter. And he said to me, Don't be a damn fool, you'll starve to death. So do something useful. So I had to go and got my B com and went into accounting.
The keepsakes
The book
I can read that endlessly. You know, one word leads to another and you've got all the references from English literature as well. So it's not only just the words, it's it's all sort of beautiful references back to archaic English and everything.
The luxury
big brass bedstead and feather mattress
my big brass bedstead from home and the feather mattress. You know, it's the size of a polo field and it's it's very, very comfortable.
Presenter asks
10:02When did you write your first book, and what was it?
What happened was that my marriage at that stage went on the rocks and I was divorced and had no money, so I had nothing to do in the evening, so I started writing a book and I got so involved in it that I used to take the manuscript to work with me. And fortunately, at this stage of the game, I had a little department all to myself in the income tax department dealing with deceased estates. So I used to let the two ladies who were under me get on with the war whilst I wrote my book. And not only that, I wrote it on government stationery.
Presenter asks
14:03Why was your second novel [The Dark of the Sun] banned?
It was banned in South Africa, I think, for sexual descriptions and violence. But you must remember that the standards in South Africa are totally different to those that exist in other part of the civilized world. And books get banned very easily. Particularly at that time.
Presenter asks
20:15Do you sometimes employ a professional researcher to dig stuff out for you?
Yes, I do, full-time professional researcher. That's my wife. She just gets her board and lodging there, you know, and don't pay much. But really, she's so good. If I need something and I'll say to her, Look, I want to know about so-and-so, and she'll go down to the library and dig things out.
“I've always been a sort of solitary bird, a a loner. I think to be a writer you have to be.”
“I find politics really rather boring. And one of the things about politics is the thing that is a burning issue at one minute, six months later people have forgotten that it ever existed. And I like to busy myself or concern myself rather with the old values that are always interesting to human beings, you know, power, money, sex, that sort of thing.”
“when you write a book, a novel, it's a team of one, it's you. You get all the kudos and you take all the brick bracket that's thrown at you. But if you end up as a writer of film scripts or books that are easily translated into films, you're very low down in the hier hierarchy, you know, in in the pecking order.”
“Discipline is absolutely essential. You know, if you had to just wait until inspiration came, the tuna would be running out in the bay and inspiration would drift away whilst you went fishing”