Beryl Bainbridge
Desert Island Discs: Archive 2005-2010
BBC
4.4 • 804 Ratings
🗓️ 3 February 2008
⏱️ 34 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the writer Dame Beryl Bainbridge.
She grew up in Liverpool - in a home filled with acrimony and argument - and started writing when she was still a child. Her only ambition, she says, was to get married and have a 'proper' family, but when her first two children were still young, her marriage broke down and she turned to writing once again. She believes she finds inspiration from the trouble and friction of everyday life and that if her marriage hadn't failed, she would have been too happy to write another word. Now she is one of our most respected authors. She has written 17 novels and countless articles, screenplays and television plays. She's won armfuls of awards too - but, despite being shortlisted five times, she's never won the Booker prize. She doesn't mind not winning, she says, but she would like to be the writer who has had the most nominations.
[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]
Favourite track: Can I Forget You? by Richard Tauber Book: The Case Books by John Hunter Luxury: Pens and Paper.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, it's Nicola Cochlin. Young people have been making history for years, but we don't often hear about them. My brand new series on BBC Sounds sets out to put this right. In history's youngest heroes, I'll be revealing the fascinating stories of 12 young people who've played a major role in history and who've helped shape our world. Like Audrey Hepburn, Nelson Mandela, Louis Braille and Lady Jane Grey, history's youngest heroes with me, Nicola Cochlin. |
| 0:27.8 | Listen on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:30.3 | Hello, I'm Krista Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. |
| 0:35.3 | For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music. The program was |
| 0:39.0 | originally broadcast in 2008. My castaway this week is the writer Dame Beryl Bainbridge. |
| 1:01.2 | When asked why she writes, she says, |
| 1:03.0 | It is something life forces you to do. |
| 1:05.7 | If you had been very happy, perhaps you wouldn't have bothered. |
| 1:09.1 | The volume and quality of her work imply, therefore, |
| 1:11.1 | that her existence has been far from blissful. She has written 17 novels and numerous plays for |
| 1:16.9 | stage and television, winning the Whitbread Prize among many others, and being shortlisted for |
| 1:21.6 | the Booker no less than five times. The writing began when she was a child. In an attempt to |
| 1:27.3 | cope with the fierce domestic battleground of her home life, |
| 1:30.4 | she would put pen to paper in secret. |
| 1:33.0 | Once I'd written it down, she said, all those neuroses were gone. |
| 1:36.7 | It was marvellous therapy. |
| 1:38.8 | So, Beryl, Bainbridge, after all this apparent therapy, |
| 1:41.7 | do you sit opposite me now as a calm, centered and entirely happy |
| 1:46.1 | human being? Yes, and I don't think I was all that unhappy. I think I've had a very good life. |
| 1:52.9 | Now, maybe that's, I'm looking back on it from a point of quietness and something else. |
| 1:58.8 | But no, I think I was perfectly all right as a child. |
| 2:02.6 | And I think creativity |
... |
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