Jill Balcon

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 14 October 2007

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the actress Jill Balcon. She has the voice of an old friend - and it's not surprising, she was a BBC radio announcer during the war and has been acting and performing poetry consistently since. Poetry has always played a central role in her life. She was only 12 years old when she first saw the poet Cecil Day Lewis. He had come to judge a poetry-reading competition at her school and although he was more than 20 years her senior, he was, she says, the most beautiful man she had ever seen.

They were married for more than 20 years. Since his death in 1972, she has maintained her own acting career, continued raising their children - the acclaimed cookery writer Tamasin and Oscar-winning actor Daniel - and also worked hard to preserve his legacy.

[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]

Favourite track: Romanza: the 3rd movement of Symphony No 5 in D Major by Vaughan Williams Book: The collected works by Thomas Hardy Luxury: A barrel of Guerlain Jicky perfume.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello I'm Krestey Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.
0:05.0	For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.
0:08.0	The program was originally broadcast in 2007. My cast away this week this week is the actress Jill Balkan. She has spent her life immersed in the arts. As a child she always
0:35.4	knew she wanted to act and for more than 60 years she's appeared in radio,
0:39.3	theatre, television and film. I suspect however that the parts she holds dearest are the key
0:44.8	supporting roles she's played. She is the daughter of Sir Michael Balkan, head of Ealing
0:49.1	Studios in its heyday and a noted filmmaker. When she was in her 20s, she married one of Britain's most respected poets, C Day Lewis.
0:57.0	And she's the mother of the Oscar-winning actor Daniel
1:00.0	and the acclaimed co-curie writer Thames and Day Lewis.
1:03.0	Jill, your life then, as I say, has been, it appears to me,
1:06.0	immersed in the arts, not just your work, but you're very passionate about music.
1:11.6	You have been passionate about the
1:13.0	the eight discs that you've chosen today and of course you were heavily
1:16.3	involved in Cecil's writing. Has the arts very much been your
1:20.2	bread and butter? Absolutely, yes, of course.
1:23.7	I listened to five hours of music every day, not consecutively, naturally, because I got a lot of other
1:29.4	things to do.
1:30.8	So it is with words, the music and words on my lifeline.
1:35.0	And what about the, I mean I presume to say there, the supporting role was one that I imagine you took seriously reading about you and knowing about you.
1:44.3	How do you feel about that when you are, I guess you must all the way through your life have been referred
1:49.6	to as first of all daughter of, then wife then mother of is that fine or is that
1:54.8	that's absolutely true I'm very proud to have been all those things very proud
	...

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