Malcolm Lowry, nominated by Ian McMillan
Great Lives
BBC
4.2 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 23 April 2019
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Matthew Parris meets the poet Ian McMillan to find out about the life of his literary hero Malcolm Lowry.
Ian first discovered this 20th century writer's work as a young sixth former searching for literary inspiration. He stumbled by chance upon the writer's most famous novel, Under the Volcano, and Lowry's lyrical lines have remained with Ian ever since.
Joining Matthew and Ian to discuss the life of this Merseyside writer is the artistic director of Liverpool's Bluecoat Theatre, Bryan Biggs.
Together, they discuss the biography of this complex and intense man, a life that was full of sea-voyaging, shack-dwelling and heavy drinking.
Producer: Camellia Sinclair
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 April 2019.
Transcript
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| 0:36.0 | I know I'm going to sound romantic, but there was a glitter, a gleam in his eye either of madness or of genius or a touch of both. |
| 0:47.0 | The eyes were quite extraordinary. |
| 0:50.0 | Mostly he'd keep his head rather down and sight-wiz and suddenly look up at you, you know, |
| 0:56.0 | and you'll get this flash of these beautiful blue eyes. |
| 0:58.0 | He had very bright piercing blue eyes, and my mother always used to say that they were a bit of the sea. |
| 1:06.0 | They don't like anybody else's eyes. His eyes were part of the sea. |
| 1:10.0 | Those ocular descriptions featured in the 1967 BBC documentary |
| 1:16.0 | which told the life of a writer whose existence was as dramatic, myth-laden and |
| 1:21.3 | complex as his work, the story of the 20th century writer Malcolm Lowry. |
| 1:27.5 | The documentary was called Rough Passage and here to help me find out if that's a fair description of the life that |
| 1:34.1 | Lowry led is his proposer the writer and broadcaster Ian McMillan who among other |
| 1:39.7 | things is currently poet-in-residents for Barnsley Football Club Ian before we begin on |
| 1:44.8 | Larry how do you become poet-in-residents for a football club what do you do? |
| 1:48.7 | It's a bit like a kind of Lowry-esque quest to be poetic about everything. So many years ago when we were in the |
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