Tom Stoppard
Desert Island Discs
BBC
4.3 • 14.3K Ratings
🗓️ 12 January 1985
⏱️ 34 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Tom Stoppard, the playwright, began his career as a journalist on a local newspaper in Bristol. In conversation with Roy Plomley, he talks about his writing, which has been mainly for the theatre and has included several free translations of plays including Rough Crossing; now in the repertoire of the National Theatre.
[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]
Favourite track: Careless Love by Bessie Smith Book: Inferno in two languages by Dante Alighieri Luxury: Plastic football
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. |
| 0:05.0 | For Wright's reasons, we've had to shorten the music. |
| 0:08.0 | The program was originally broadcast in 1985, and the presenter was Roy Plumlee. This week are cast away as the distinguished playwright Tom Stoppard. |
| 0:35.0 | Tom, we're dumping you on this desert island to complete isolation. |
| 0:40.0 | Could you adjust to loneliness? |
| 0:42.0 | I don't have to adjust in a sense because I like being on my own sometimes and I'm not somebody who I think would go mad being alone. |
| 0:51.0 | What about the consolation of music? How strong would that be? Music has never really been in the |
| 0:55.8 | foreground of my life. It's been in the background now and again often enough for me to be able to think of |
| 1:01.6 | music I'd like to have with me. |
| 1:03.0 | Have you any musical skill? Were you ever put to the piano as a child? |
| 1:07.0 | No, I played the triangle in a percussion band in the main square of Darjeeling in Northern India around 1944. |
| 1:17.0 | You have just eight records to take with you to your tropical island. |
| 1:21.0 | What's the first? |
| 1:22.0 | The first one is Bessie Smith. Blues was the first |
| 1:26.4 | kind of music which was more than background to me. It's the first music I ever felt |
| 1:32.0 | emotional about. I've chosen careless love, but I could have |
| 1:36.2 | chosen 40 others. And this is one which has the bonus of Armstrong on Cornet. |
| 1:43.0 | It was done in 1925. |
| 1:45.1 | And it used to move me to tears and probably will again. Oh, no, no, no, |
| 1:53.4 | tell it's love. |
| 1:56.4 | You lie to my head like one. |
| 2:09.0 | You wreck the life of a meaningful girl. |
... |
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