YouSaid · the spoken record

Frances Wood

lines on the record: 60
first: 2010-12-05
most recent: 2010-12-05
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

“I'm very moved and interested by First World War Memorial Sculpture, the sort that has enormous bronze figures of gentlemen in Macintoshes with Sam Brown belts and kind of neatly laced boots and shoes, I find them very intriguing.”
2010-12-05 · Desert Island Discs · Frances Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'd like to take the Zuhai, which is a nineteen thirties Chinese dictionary called the Sea of Words. This is partly because I read Terribly Fast, and I would be terrified of running out of reading material. And the SOHA is quite sort of difficult, but it's also actually a terribly funny dictionary because it's the 1930s. It's sort of the beginning of the modern age, and it's got all sorts of things like, under the character way, you get things like Prince of Wales and you get John Wycliffe spelt wrongly, and you get the Wilmington Electric Machine, all spelt in sort of sideways English. It would mean I'd carry on learning Chinese and I'd be able to come back and be sort of, you know, the brain of 1930s China.”
2010-12-05 · Desert Island Discs · Frances Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I could it would be a pretty bad one, my brother's actually brilliant at building and making and things, but he takes ages. I mean, I am quite I think I'm sure I could lash something rather hideous together quite quickly”
2010-12-05 · Desert Island Discs · Frances Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think I could quite easily I would actually miss English tremendously because as well as you know reading books I do actually very much enjoy the process of writing and I would I think English is a wonderful language and I would miss that I'd miss being at sort of the peak of a language because if in China I mean I can stumble through mama huh but I mean I wouldn't ever be quite up there at the top I like being able to write beautifully”
2010-12-05 · Desert Island Discs · Frances Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I prefer books to a lot of people. There are certain people who I prefer enormously to books, but The mass I'd much I'm always happy I mean yes, take a book.”
2010-12-05 · Desert Island Discs · Frances Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would miss books terribly, people say our house is known as the House of Books and Bamboo, and that would be frightfully, frightfully difficult.”
2010-12-05 · Desert Island Discs · Frances Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because when I used to do the school run, in order not to have seven children squabbling in the car, I used to play tapes, and after we'd done just William and the complete works of Sherlock Holmes, we went on to Tom Lara, who was a rip roaring success bizarrely.”
2010-12-05 · Desert Island Discs · Frances Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think so, yes, yes. And Isaiah has grown. I mean, they have a shared passion for history and keep exchanging books on the Crusades and things like that. Very few people are very, very, very important to me, but the crowd, not so much.”
2010-12-05 · Desert Island Discs · Frances Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's very good. I mean, I think his father to be fair wasn't I mean, you know, he's one of those people for whom babies are not wildly interesting. He was very good about responsibility, if not quite as hands-on. So I never felt alone in that sense.”
2010-12-05 · Desert Island Discs · Frances Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, because I think he's incredibly good, and I went to see him as Falstaff at Leeds, and he was absolutely brilliant. He was terribly moving. I mean, I could have killed Henry V with my bare hands at the time. He was wonderful in it.”
2010-12-05 · Desert Island Discs · Frances Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He could, but he isn't just he got a first that leads, and he's absolutely brilliant, but what he's going to do, which is what he's wanted to do since he was two years old, I think, is he's going off to train to be an actor at Bristol Olvick Theatre School.”
2010-12-05 · Desert Island Discs · Frances Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think I will when I retire what I want to do actually I'm afraid to say when I write detective fiction is to kill all the people I've hated but”
2010-12-05 · Desert Island Discs · Frances Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think like is putting it mildly I mean the house is I should say head deep in. Yeah, I'm crazy about detective fiction. And I rather long to write it sometime.”
2010-12-05 · Desert Island Discs · Frances Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Being in China made me hardy actually, I'm amazed. And when I came back, I thought central heating was soft because we didn't have any of that. Yeah, I think so it trained me.”
2010-12-05 · Desert Island Discs · Frances Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, but it was jolly cold often in winter you go outside in your padded coat, and you have to remember students in China, I mean there were no cups of coffee or quick cigarettes or it was out there jump about and then back into class.”
2010-12-05 · Desert Island Discs · Frances Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not a terrible lot, although I think in one way to be fair to us, I think that the horrors of the famine had been to a large extent eclipsed by the horrors of the Cultural Revolution which was still ongoing. And, I mean, I think many people didn't know until afterwards. There were the bodies that floated down the Pearl River to Hong Kong. But it was very difficult to know what had gone on in detail. But it was very difficult, but just towards the end of, say, July, August seventy six, which was when Mao was clearly on his way out and everyone was in a state of real fear as to what was going to happen. You did get a real sense of foreboding. Could that mean civil war? What was going to happen? So you did know that the whole country was on edge.”
2010-12-05 · Desert Island Discs · Frances Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We used to eat it on little brown Russian loaves which again were baked in the friendship store, little brown rye loaves, jolly nice and”
2010-12-05 · Desert Island Discs · Frances Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Ah, the caviar, oh gosh in those days because the Russians and the Chinese weren't speaking, there was caviar sold in the friendship store in Peking because in the past I was there been millions and millions of Russian experts who needed to eat caviar and of course it came from the Amor, you know, the river where caviar comes from Russia and China it's a border between them and so Chinese caviar was sold by the jamjar. You had to take your own jam jar and you would get a large jam jar for about sort of ninepence because the Chinese and the Russians weren't speaking. The Chinese didn't know about luxury goods. They didn't realize that the caviar in the outside world was, you know, the price of gold. So we used to have caviar for breakfast on Sundays.”
2010-12-05 · Desert Island Discs · Frances Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, that was sport. Of course it was. One part of compulsory sport in a Chinese institution is throwing hand grenades. I mean, it's a bit like putting the shop, but it's like they have these little, they have these little plastic models of hand grenades, which were the old kind that looked like bottles. And it was a test of accuracy, throwing. I just like throwing a ball except we threw hand grenades instead.”
2010-12-05 · Desert Island Discs · Frances Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I went in nineteen seventy five seventy six as a British council exchange student. This was the Cultural Revolution, I mean, and everyone in China was a fierce and kind of uptight Red Guard. So we were exchanged for sort of 10 very serious Chinese students who all knew exactly what they were going to do. They were going to go to the United Nations and be ambassadors and promote Marxism, Leninism, Mao Zedong thought, and then in return the Chinese got this rather shocked.”
2010-12-05 · Desert Island Discs · Frances Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's not much good asking me. You know they're dirty, but I find it very difficult to know. But they make me laugh. I think they're wonderful.”
2010-12-05 · Desert Island Discs · Frances Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Piano Red Allen and right string baby but the wrong yo yo I had a wonderful friend at Cambridge who ran a record shop which sold mostly completely mad blues records and every so often he'd dash round on his bike and say You must hear this it's funnier than anything else”
2010-12-05 · Desert Island Discs · Frances Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I haven't I've usually been fairly okay, and in fact because Chinese people are terribly nice and they're the sort of people who say after you've stumbled through two words they say God you're really brilliant you speak wonderfully you know not like the French who sniff at every mistake you make”
2010-12-05 · Desert Island Discs · Frances Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is true, it is a tonal language, for example the words for fish and jade are very close. The words for mother and horse are very close. And even one of my Chinese tutors said that the first time her son, who was a little Chinese boy, encountered a horse he looked at his mother in some surprise, and obviously couldn't quite see the connection.”
2010-12-05 · Desert Island Discs · Frances Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, but I don't know that there's anyone who's ever actually learnt all of those. You have to learn each character. It's not like an alphabet where you can build up and then you can guess. Each character has to be learned as you encounter it. I find it, you know, it endlessly interests me rather than depresses me.”
2010-12-05 · Desert Island Discs · Frances Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Bit of a fluke, I think, really. At school I had been quite good at French and quite good at Spanish, but I decided I wanted to do a language that was as I said at the time as difficult and as different as possible. I don't know why I said difficult because I'm fundamentally fairly lazy, but different I wanted. And I'm just deternally grateful that I chose Chinese and not Arabic or Japanese, for example, because I think Chinese is opens an entire world.”
2010-12-05 · Desert Island Discs · Frances Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The rules were that the doors were locked at twelve, and if you came in there was a thoroughly funny rule that they said if you come in between eleven and eleven thirty you pay the porter thrupence and if you come in between eleven thirty and twelve you pay him sixpence it was all sort of cups of cocoa after hall and wearing your gown”
2010-12-05 · Desert Island Discs · Frances Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I had sort of I don't think I looked wildly excited, I had sort of sort of square cut. We used to go to Vidal Sassoon and get free haircuts with those funny you never knew quite how many points you had at the back but of course it was also the time of the mini skirt so I had kind of practically invisible skirts and we did things like spray paint our boots silver and so on so it was fun being an art student.”
2010-12-05 · Desert Island Discs · Frances Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it yes, it was, I mean, I think it was a time when sort of Liverpool art school became, as it were, slightly the centre of the universe, and obviously all those things were very much part of it.”
2010-12-05 · Desert Island Discs · Frances Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh yeah, I remember seeing Adrian and Alan Ginsbow terribly funny, too, sort of tubby, dark haired bearded gentlemen who looked very similar, and yet, and Roger McGoff taught us liberal studies, and Adrian Henry taught us graphics, so we were very much part of the Liverpool scene.”
2010-12-05 · Desert Island Discs · Frances Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, it was a fabulous year to be in Liverpool. I was very lucky I was simply a child swap. I went to stay with friends who the father was a painter and worked at Liverpool Art School, and I went and did the pre diploma year. But it just happened that it was the year that the Liverpool poets all got going, Roger McGarth, Adrian, Henry, Brian Patton, Allen Ginsburg came to visit Liverpool”
2010-12-05 · Desert Island Discs · Frances Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because I spent a very amazing year at Liverpool Art School in between school and Cambridge and Penny Lane came out that year and so it sort of symbolizes a magical year at art school.”
2010-12-05 · Desert Island Discs · Frances Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think so, I mean, I think my parents were, you know, really very good, but I must say I do think bringing up children nowadays sometimes it's a question of crossing your fingers and just incredible luck that they come through.”
2010-12-05 · Desert Island Discs · Frances Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, nothing much, well, I think it was quite good actually because all the pressure got taken off me over A levels because it was assumed that I wasn't going to pass my A levels and therefore God knows what would happen to me. And so, of course, I managed to do terribly well because I didn't have any pressure. And I went to see one psychiatrist who said, well, I think your mother's going through quite a hard time I think parents do often get the wrong end of the stick.”
2010-12-05 · Desert Island Discs · Frances Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think if you grew up in Hampsy Garden suburb, there was much more kind of early access to things like it would have been people. Working class home you just have been clipped round the errand, told to get on with it.”
2010-12-05 · Desert Island Discs · Frances Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I remember I know I used to carry much bigger things Latre Le Neon, which is about kind of, you know, two foot wide. which was very foolish. Yes, I don't know. I mean, at school, I suppose we were all a bit sort of pseudo-intellectual, but also kind of mildly naughty and kind of much more ordinary ways.”
2010-12-05 · Desert Island Discs · Frances Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, he always said, I mean, he was quite a joker, my father, but I think they were given some training, and he was told obvious things like, you know, don't try and make off with a Rosetta stone, it's probably better to try and save the Lindisfarne Gospels and so on. And he also claimed there was a funny little locked box on the mantelpiece in the bedroom that he slept in, and he always claimed that there was a gun in it, and so that if there was an intruder he could take the gun and rush through the gloomy galleries of the British Museum, but I'm not sure about all of that.”
2010-12-05 · Desert Island Discs · Frances Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh no, you loved it, you loved it. Probably a bit dangerous, but still And on Sundays, when the reading room was closed, there was a very gentle slope down from the superintendent's desk to the doors that went into the North Library, and I used to push my brother crashing down this slope on the book trolleys through the doors into the North Library, because we could, we played around in the reading room on Sundays.”
2010-12-05 · Desert Island Discs · Frances Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, at that time they had a system by which sort of semi senior officials had to spend a week living in what was called the rotor house, which was just to the right hand side as you go into the British Museum. And there was a wonderful great drawing room where my parents would give parties, and downstairs there was a kitchen with a cook in it, and there was a dumb waiter which we used to put my brother in. And on Sundays, when the reading room...”
2010-12-05 · Desert Island Discs · Frances Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We're going to hear Pako Banef and Minasifa Mare, which well it's actually it's a Lawca song, that's the main thing, that it's Pakoiban singing Lorca.”
2010-12-05 · Desert Island Discs · Frances Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I suppose with the conscientious objectors from Algeria, yes. I don't know that they would have thought it as really risky, but I suppose it potentially was.”
2010-12-05 · Desert Island Discs · Frances Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was very active, yes, I mean as a child the incredible drag of being compelled to deliver Labour Party notices endlessly, you know, to no financial reward. I'm sure no child would do it without money, but also there were things like with the French kind of political connection, I can remember my parents looking after refugees from the Algerian War, you know, young men who were refusing the draft coming and staying through friends in France and smuggling contraceptives into France and things like that. So there were sort of international collections as well.”
2010-12-05 · Desert Island Discs · Frances Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't remember so much tales as I remember Angus himself. I remember him. coming to a party. I suppose I was probably about seven or eight and my brother was about five, and my mother, who was she was very progressive, obviously trying to explain to us about homosexuality, because he was coming with Tony, his partner, and she was trying to say that they were kind of like they were married. And obviously this was meant in a sense to make us not stare at him, but I remember sitting under the piano the entire evening and just, you know, fixing him with a gimlet stare wondering what on earth was going on. And he was... had a wonderful squeaky voice and it was very nice but it was all very mysterious.”
2010-12-05 · Desert Island Discs · Frances Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I think my father went first because pretty well everyone from the British Museum who wasn't in the forces and apparently he made a whistling noise when he breathed so he didn't go into the army. I think that was a good thing because I think he would have been some sort of objector. But he didn't mind breaking codes. So he went there with all of the people from the British Museum and my mother was a wren and she was secretary to Angus Wilson, the novelist, who was then working in the British Museum, and he introduced my parents after the war. He was a”
2010-12-05 · Desert Island Discs · Frances Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, and I think some of my memories, I mean, I think early memories are often a bit dubious, but I do seem to think I remember being on a boat when I was two and we went to France for the first time, and I remember things like French houses that we stayed in every summer, because we'd go every year”
2010-12-05 · Desert Island Discs · Frances Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My father worked in the British Museum Library from before the war he was a French specialist, and my mother taught French.”
2010-12-05 · Desert Island Discs · Frances Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I suppose some of my I have memories of hanging upside down on a trapeze in the garden in the sun, you know, you have those sunny childhood memories, but I mean that the Georges Prassins is one of the things one of my memories of comfort is being upstairs and sort of meant to be going to sleep and hearing Dad downstairs typing and Georges Grassin's always playing My brother in the same room as me, but we divided the room up with wardrobes and things like that. So we were sort of just, you know, very comfortable at home and with Georges Prassins and the typewriter.”
2010-12-05 · Desert Island Discs · Frances Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“takes me back to childhood it's Georges Bassin's singing the ballad des, ballad of the women of the past, and George Brassance was my father's perhaps favourite singer, I suppose, and say this reminds me of childhood”
2010-12-05 · Desert Island Discs · Frances Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, I think the familiarity that I have now with the diamond suit is fantastically important. Oil painting ceramics you can leave them on display forever. Nothing much is going to happen to them. Paper is a much more delicate material, so it'll be put on exhibition every so often, but we can't really afford to leave it there all the time.”
2010-12-05 · Desert Island Discs · Frances Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is. I mean, it's obviously a world treasure. Yes. I suppose what I can say is that we try as hard as we can to make it available to Chinese scholars who need to see it. I also think that now, you know, given things like the internet, I mean, we've got the diamond sutras up on the World Wide Web, you can zoom in, you can see it actually rather better on the Internet, that you can, you know, in a rather darkened case in the library itself.”
2010-12-05 · Desert Island Discs · Frances Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source