YouSaid · the spoken record

Beryl Bainbridge

lines on the record: 49
first: 2008-02-03
most recent: 2008-02-03
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Oh I think it's got to be Tauber because to be sitting on a sand dune, and presumably that the disc would play up really loud, and you could put it a little in the distance so to have this amazing voice whining away in the background that would bring emotions to the front, I think.”
2008-02-03 · Desert Island Discs · Beryl Bainbridge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, there's an amazing book, it's about seven hundred pages, because you need something that'll last a long time. It's called The Case Book of John Hunter, and it's about surgery and dissection and autopsies and treatment, and he collected all the things that are now in the Hunterian Museum, which is a wonderful place to go.”
2008-02-03 · Desert Island Discs · Beryl Bainbridge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Again I think one of doing plays with the children, I think it was that not so much maybe even writing about the Titanic those words controlled a major Tom they were looking for help so instead of writing dot dot we hit an iceberg they'd say ground control to Major Tom.”
2008-02-03 · Desert Island Discs · Beryl Bainbridge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, as long as the weather's good, I wouldn't mind a bit of nice sunshine, not too hot, but no, it'd be rather nice. Oh, I'd miss them all terribly. No, no, that wouldn't worry me at all,'cause I talk a lot to myself as it is.”
2008-02-03 · Desert Island Discs · Beryl Bainbridge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh very much, Hans Well, when I can, but they're all getting a bit big now, you see, the eldest of the little ones is fourteen, and Luther's seven, and I think they regard me as a bit fuddy duddy now, you know. They're all beautiful, yes.”
2008-02-03 · Desert Island Discs · Beryl Bainbridge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But I never leave it on the I was reading the paper only the other day some writers just lost just lost all their manuscript or something in the computer was pinched and you think, well, how can you leave it in the computer? How can you see it? How can you know what you've written?”
2008-02-03 · Desert Island Discs · Beryl Bainbridge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh yes, very much. And I used to the nice times were when I did it on an old fashioned typewriter, but that gave in, and now I'm up at the top of the house, this what are they called? Those big machines. The computers you'll be talking about. Yes, but I only use it as a very posh typewriter.”
2008-02-03 · Desert Island Discs · Beryl Bainbridge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The next one is oh now this is an odd one, this is a chap that I was called meat pie, but he's meatloaf and it's bat out of hell. And I suppose I've chosen it because I have very few modern records among this lot and I do remember him belting away something and particularly this one.”
2008-02-03 · Desert Island Discs · Beryl Bainbridge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was on a salary at one point. I never quite understood that, but I didn't really mind because I was doing better than the seven pound ten a week I'd always had. I was enjoying what I was doing, so it didn't really matter, I don't think. I don't suppose anybody else would have published the first couple of books whereas as soon as I went to Duckworth because Duckworth knew everybody all these professors and journalists and everything else immediately I got reviewed and good ones.”
2008-02-03 · Desert Island Discs · Beryl Bainbridge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Probably not no, he would have said I wasn't capable or he'd have or he might have said yes, you can do that, but then he'd have interfered he couldn't stop interfering. So no, I wouldn't have been able to do it.”
2008-02-03 · Desert Island Discs · Beryl Bainbridge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“because I'd used up all the things about childhood and my past I'd written about them. I had nothing more to write about, so I got a bit worried. So I thought I'll have to write about bigger subjects, historical ones, which I did.”
2008-02-03 · Desert Island Discs · Beryl Bainbridge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh absolutely essential that's what I believe anyway. I don't know why particularly I believe it, but I think it's true. And in my case, certainly I don't think I've ever written a book which wasn't based on something that happened to me forget the south pole and those ones, but certainly all the ones before that were all things that had happened to me practically without changing anything.”
2008-02-03 · Desert Island Discs · Beryl Bainbridge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I heard it years and years ago, and I thought it was absolutely beautiful, and gradually it became something we knew, and then my grandchildren, I we did a sort of a mock play of Scott going to the poll, and this was one of the things in the background, one of the tunes when they're struggling through the snow, and obviously somebody's several of them are going to die. So that's why I chose it.”
2008-02-03 · Desert Island Discs · Beryl Bainbridge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Ah yes, well maybe if you were born at the time when that was going on, fine, but I wasn't. Maybe my children can have that sort of relationship and do, but I can't.”
2008-02-03 · Desert Island Discs · Beryl Bainbridge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, but I don't think women can be equal, they're different species. They have different thoughts and you have different sorts and you have different expectations.”
2008-02-03 · Desert Island Discs · Beryl Bainbridge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that's what men are supposed to be like. That's what they're supposed to do. I still think men are more capable than women. I always have thought so. I have never ever thought to myself that that I was better than a man ever”
2008-02-03 · Desert Island Discs · Beryl Bainbridge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh God, no, no, no, no, I had very little money. I didn't go out, I mean I couldn't I had to babysit my children The odd thing is in the sixties and some of my friends had exactly the same experience you could hardly walk down the road without some bloke wouldn't detach himself to and if you're politely brought up you don't immediately kick em in the crotch you say thank you very much nice of you to ask me for that sort of thing. And so, you know, there were always men, we call them, my neighbour we used to call them gentlemen callless. We often had gentlemen call us. They would and sometimes they were people's husbands from up the road sometimes something happened and sometimes you managed to get out of it.”
2008-02-03 · Desert Island Discs · Beryl Bainbridge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, I see. Yes, well maybe I see it as in a funny sort of way, I don't know, but anyway, most people don't ever write about that sort of thing, do they? Or they cover it up?”
2008-02-03 · Desert Island Discs · Beryl Bainbridge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I do I think it's rubbish, absolute rubbish, and sort of talk about being centric, you know. I mean, you can't be eccentric or a bit crackers if you've managed to write a whole pile of books and to support your children. And to end up more or less okay, I mean, you can't be.”
2008-02-03 · Desert Island Discs · Beryl Bainbridge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Richard Harris playing singing MacArthur's Park. I didn't understand a word when it was first played, but then somebody told me, I don't know how true it is, that it's all about drugs. It's either Harris is singing about drugs or the person who wrote it was on drugs when they did it, I don't know, but I think it's wonderful.”
2008-02-03 · Desert Island Discs · Beryl Bainbridge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, the good thing was that you didn't just sit there with a cup of tea an awful lot of liquor went down, so of course I may have been silent at first, but afterwards one wasn't, and lots of times I ended up under the table making comments from under the table. Literally Yes, under the table once or twice, because it was comfier down there.”
2008-02-03 · Desert Island Discs · Beryl Bainbridge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, because one of my son Aaron was friendly at school with a boy called William, who was their son. How can I explain? I always knew what I wanted to write about, and Anna would read the first twelve pages and either say that's fine, get on with it, or would say I'm not so sure about that. Collins' bit was to read it and to say Oh no, you don't need a semicolon there or you need a full stop there or you want that there or something like that. But it wasn't just that it was what they introduced me to as well, I mean, sort of sitting in their kitchen, chatting to Freddy Ayre and to all sorts of professors from Oxford, and Brian McGuinness, and it was just a different world. I don't mean I felt cowed in any way at all, and they were all very nice to me. I did think of them as my betters.”
2008-02-03 · Desert Island Discs · Beryl Bainbridge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No worm I got seven pound ten a week for me and by this time I'd had another child you see by somebody else and then I got a job down the road in what is now a health farm but it was a bottle factory it was you know did wines spirits so I was very lucky yes”
2008-02-03 · Desert Island Discs · Beryl Bainbridge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, they were separate, yes But you see by this time I think I was over the worst of I may know I couldn't have done it if I was still in the same feeling as it was, but I wasn't so it was all right.”
2008-02-03 · Desert Island Discs · Beryl Bainbridge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Later I shared a house with him and his new wife he was in the basement and I me and the kids were in the top of the house. But without him sounds”
2008-02-03 · Desert Island Discs · Beryl Bainbridge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My next record is Kiss me good night, Sergeant Major, and I don't know who originally sang it, but this was I sang it to the troops in Southport during the war, and I had a little tule skirt on bally shoes no, no, tap down his shoes, of course, a little red military jacket, and a little sort of box cap. And I sang, kissed me good night, Sergeant Major, to the troops.”
2008-02-03 · Desert Island Discs · Beryl Bainbridge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, yes, yes, yes, and that's why I wanted to get married and have a house. But on the other hand, if that had happened, I would never have written another word, I wouldn't have wanted to. I'd have just wanted to be happily married. I mean, it's a solitary. And very demanding profession.”
2008-02-03 · Desert Island Discs · Beryl Bainbridge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, possibly yes, oh yes, I think so, though the fact that somebody's unfaithful to you in those days was so dreadful, you know, that was a body blow, but um. It's easy looking back, isn't it? I mean now one would think, well yes, that's what men do, you know, and you can forgive them and, you know, and I'm sure lots of people do.”
2008-02-03 · Desert Island Discs · Beryl Bainbridge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I came back from hospital from my first child from Aaron, and there was a note on the table with two cups and two plates saying Can't see you tonight, Beryl's coming out of hospital, so I don't know, and it is so difficult looking back so long ago, but I mean I adored Austin. Oh God, I loved him so much. Anyway”
2008-02-03 · Desert Island Discs · Beryl Bainbridge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There are such things as class as the lower classes who used to be called the working classes and as the middle classes you know have a bit of money and then of course there's the other lot who have a lot of it. I mean I grew up among the middle lower classes and you did talk about class a lot. I mean all this idea that you can wipe that out and say how ridiculous is daft you can't. I mean it still exists in fact it probably exists more than ever.”
2008-02-03 · Desert Island Discs · Beryl Bainbridge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well he was he was lovely he came from a different class from me and I believe in class, you see. I mean he had a much different upbringing. You know he went to boarding school very early his father was a professional man his mother was a painter I don't know”
2008-02-03 · Desert Island Discs · Beryl Bainbridge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is Richard Talber and it's the one can I forget you and it sounds rather odd this but I want this for my agent to hear Andrew who's been so good to me and so kind and so was his late wife and it sounds like a love well it is a love song but not in the way it may sound, but it's for Andrew.”
2008-02-03 · Desert Island Discs · Beryl Bainbridge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, well I had been in children's are in Manchester before this my mother had seen an advertisement in the paper and so I was doing things with Billy Whitelaw and do the Charmas and this was up in Manchester and so when I got thrown out of school I couldn't get into any other school and so I was sent off again to this wonderful ballet school and I'd never been anywhere like that before. It was lovely.”
2008-02-03 · Desert Island Discs · Beryl Bainbridge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's quite a cleverer rhyme, actually, so only human nature after all, to take a little girl behind a wall, to pull down her protection and plug in main connection, it's only human nature after all. It wasn't that wasn't, I think, take a little girl, there's nothing to do with child abuse or anything. It's just that the women were little girls”
2008-02-03 · Desert Island Discs · Beryl Bainbridge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it was only because of there was a dirty rhyme going round the school, you know, and it was written on a piece of paper, and everybody had a turn of seeing it, and I did drawings to it, I illustrated it, I thought that would be a help. But in my gimslip pocket my mother needed it for the wash, and she took it out instead of sort of she went straight to the headmistress. to show her the note”
2008-02-03 · Desert Island Discs · Beryl Bainbridge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, gosh well fact was if you'd I mean I was only thirteen fourteen or something. I mean I couldn't you weren't allowed out with men. and anyway with a German, but he was very childlike and sweet, and nothing went on.”
2008-02-03 · Desert Island Discs · Beryl Bainbridge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's not quite like it was a friendship with a German prisoner of war. Yes, that was after the war. You see, after the war, it took time for be sent back. But we met in the Binewoods, and it was very sort of innocent. They were allowed out to wander around.”
2008-02-03 · Desert Island Discs · Beryl Bainbridge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh yes, I was about nine, ten but my mother was very encouraging so was my father I mean but'cause in those days you see you weren't allowed to play with people other children because they might be a bit common or something or not nice and there was no television so you it was nice to have something to do.”
2008-02-03 · Desert Island Discs · Beryl Bainbridge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He was a member of the group, yes, quite a very big one. And there was one night when we had a party, and the Beatles I don't know whether they were called out then, but they all came round to the house. This is in Huskerson Street in Liverpool. And they played almost for two nights. I walked out, I said it was a disgusting noise. I took the children out.”
2008-02-03 · Desert Island Discs · Beryl Bainbridge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I'd like the Beatles next, and singing that wonderful song Eleanor Rigby My then husband taught at the Liverpool Art School, he was a painter. Austin Davis, and he taught John Lennon, and there was a boy called Sutcliffe, and he died very early. He died when he was about twenty one.”
2008-02-03 · Desert Island Discs · Beryl Bainbridge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well we all did, you see, I don't know about the people next door doing that, but for instance, I mean when my mother went out she was known as the Duchess. She had this lovely fur coat, well, if you call fur coats lovely and a hat and gloves and everything, and I had the same, even at the age of eleven one had a handbag and gloves. But then you came in through the door, and everybody got out of these clothes and my father would be in a very tatty ARP uniform with a berry on his head. My mother would be in a pinny and a bit of a slip underneath that and a pair of old slippers. And me and my brother would be straight out of our school uniforms into more or less rags because you were saving the clothes for best, you know, but I took that as normal.”
2008-02-03 · Desert Island Discs · Beryl Bainbridge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, he were that nobody ever got hit. It was verbal, it was terrible verbal abuse and screaming, and my father who outside was the most polite and well mannered, well thought of man, was a sort of a Liverpool job indoors, sometimes not always, not always, but at Row would break out over the smallest thing, and the row would go on for about three months, and he used to have his food in his bedroom, and I used to have to take the tray up to him and I'd put it on the floor and run for it.”
2008-02-03 · Desert Island Discs · Beryl Bainbridge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was lucky this is probably what helped me to write all these things were discussed quite openly, shouted sometimes. I was almost an adult with my parents. I mean, I'd say to them, why are you doing this and why is that? And then they tell you, you know, not because they wanted to help you. They would just regard you as a grown up.”
2008-02-03 · Desert Island Discs · Beryl Bainbridge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, I didn't realise what was behind it all until much later it was that my father was a businessman and had been doing very well in Liverpool. My mother married him on the rebound and about four years after they got married there was that slump in nineteen twenty nine or something, and he became a bankrupt so that when I was about six, seven or eight I was signing checks for my father without knowing it. It ruined his life, it ruined my mother's life, and they constantly quarrelled about it, Mrs.”
2008-02-03 · Desert Island Discs · Beryl Bainbridge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is a wonderful record called Silver Threads Amongst the Gold. And it's very sentimental and all that. But my grandfather, we're talking about nineteen forty two, 1943, something like that, used to sit at the piano and he'd sometimes sing it, and my grandma would sometimes join in. But I can remember hearing it at the back of my mind every time I went upstairs.”
2008-02-03 · Desert Island Discs · Beryl Bainbridge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“would know I'd be quite pleased, you know,'cause I'm getting a bit worried that this all sorts of other people who are three times shortlisted, four times shortlisted. I'd like to be the one that was the longest shortlisted.”
2008-02-03 · Desert Island Discs · Beryl Bainbridge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Beginning. Like to get it out of the way. There was only one time that I cared. I think that was about the fourth time when I began to kid myself that it was. You know that I would win everybody said so all the bets and everything and that was quite a bit of a shock, a bit of a taking aback. But all the other times I was fortunate enough to have a publisher who, right from the beginning, I mean they didn't you know if you sold three thousand books you were on to a good thing so it didn't really matter so they weren't they didn't care about it and I don't think I did it was just jolly nice going to the book of dinners”
2008-02-03 · Desert Island Discs · Beryl Bainbridge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The age that both of your parents had died in. Yes, yes, yes, I was convinced it was going to happen. You inherit things, don't you? And I thought I shall be you know, I shall not be here all that long.”
2008-02-03 · Desert Island Discs · Beryl Bainbridge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, and I don't think I was all that unhappy I think I've had a very good life now maybe that's I'm looking back on it from a point of quietness and something else but no I think I was perfectly all right as a child and I think creativity being Possibly only does come out of sort of a friction and trouble and something else, because it makes your brain think a lot.”
2008-02-03 · Desert Island Discs · Beryl Bainbridge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source