Susana Walton

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 13 January 2002

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This week the castaway on Desert Island Discs is Lady Walton. Within two weeks of meeting the composer Sir William Walton, Susana Gil Passo had accepted his marriage proposal and left her home in Argentina. When they moved to the island of Ischia, she began transforming the barren land into what is now La Mortella - one of the most famous and beautiful gardens of the Mediterranean. It boasts more than 600 exotic plants - including tree ferns, jacaranda and the huge Victoria Amazonica Waterlily - and is the backdrop to summer concerts organised in Sir William's memory. In conversation with Sue Lawley, she talks about her life and work and chooses eight records to take to the mythical island.

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

Favourite track: Troilus and Cressida, Act Two by Sir William Walton Book: The Education of a Gardener by Russel Page Luxury: Downy pillow

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, I'm Kresti 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 2002, and the presenter was Sue Lolly. My castaway this week is a gardener on the island of Iskia in the Bay of Naples
0:34.8	she's created an enchanting and exotic place. When she first moved there more than
0:39.7	40 years ago, her friend Lawrence Olivier described it as a stone quarry. Today, its beauty
0:45.9	is internationally famous, abundant witness to her marriage to one of our most famous composers,
0:51.2	Sir William Walton. Her husband was more than twice her age and
0:54.7	took her to Iskeer for the peace he needed to work. His peace gave birth to her
0:59.8	passion, a marital sideline that became a work of art in its own right.
1:05.0	I was created to take care of Williams, she says.
1:07.9	I would never have married a normal man.
1:10.3	She is Susanna Walton.
1:12.2	So he was less than normal.
1:14.0	He was a workaholic.
1:15.0	So you had to find something to do, Susanna.
1:17.0	Is that really how this garden came about?
1:19.0	The garden came about because William, after he produced this beautiful opera,
1:24.0	Troy Lus and Cressida, it was quite evident five, six years of our life
1:29.0	had gone by and he said, I have never been so happy in my life as here.
1:37.0	And I thought it was because he'd got married, not a bit of it.
1:41.0	It was because he for six months a year did not see a human being and I'd said
1:49.7	darling it's not the ideal for me. So he immediately jumped up and said I'm going to buy a lovely piece of ground and you can make a garden.
	...

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