YouSaid · the spoken record

Frederic Raphael

lines on the record: 43
first: 2006-02-19
most recent: 2006-02-19
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

“Latin is much simpler. The luxury would be to have my Montblanc pen, an inexhaustible supply of the only ink that seems to flow through the veins of that particular instrument, and a stack of spiral squared notebooks from the Libury Joseph Gibert in the Boulmiche.”
2006-02-19 · Desert Island Discs · Frederic Raphael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, what I actually think I ought to take if this is a long haul stay, I'll take the Oxford Latin dictionary, and I could then reconstitute, or at least perhaps actually improve my Latin when one could then write a sort of Latin Odyssey about life on this island. Is that fancy enough?”
2006-02-19 · Desert Island Discs · Frederic Raphael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a really good question, and I have an awful feeling that the... The Velagras answer is the true one. I think it would be the Vuzuki Velica Storyalo, because if you feel low on a desert island, if you could sort of play the kind of sympathetic magic movie record which says there's a boat in the harbour, maybe one day there'd be one.”
2006-02-19 · Desert Island Discs · Frederic Raphael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Record number eight Well, this is a sort of counterpoint to the Bach. It's part of Max Brooks Violin Concerto number one, a piece of real kind of schmaltzy pseudo-culture, the really cultured thing, and I think it's lovely.”
2006-02-19 · Desert Island Discs · Frederic Raphael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You're a woman, and I'm a man, and on we go, and I'm a Jew, and you're not, and aren't you lucky? Oh, shouldn't have said that. But all of these categories of being which we supposedly believe in Why do we believe in them? I mean we believe you shouldn't work on Sunday if we believe that or Saturday if we don't. What about if we got it wrong and actually God meant Wednesday morning and they say you're being flippant? And so it all goes It is a comedy. It's a comedy with blood and often much blood.”
2006-02-19 · Desert Island Discs · Frederic Raphael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It would be absurd to say it doesn't matter because why does he bang on about the whole thing and it would be entirely false to say that it matters but I mean if it hadn't been for Hitler none of us would even think about being Jewish any more than the Scots go around forever you know thinking about being Scots oh my god oh yes of course they do don't they or at least very often but it's not something that they have to wear as a badge of pride because it was a badger shame and all of that stuff. You have to play the cards you get, you know”
2006-02-19 · Desert Island Discs · Frederic Raphael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is very curious that I think that the past is sort of Well, it's very well furnished. Those are formative years and what they form is the sort of ballast of your character, and to some extent the attitudes you have when you're young are either maintained through life or they have to be overthrown, but they always remain the sort of thing that you've either going to embrace or going to gird against and lose.”
2006-02-19 · Desert Island Discs · Frederic Raphael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This has been all my life and I don't deny it. You know, it is a bolt hole being a writer, but I do work almost too much because it is the one way out. The next thing, the next lucky number here. Well, this is another irresistible one to me, and that is Edith Piaf singing Miller.”
2006-02-19 · Desert Island Discs · Frederic Raphael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it makes it fair, of course, and not right and not good accountancy, but of course what happened in Europe didn't happen to me, it happened in Europe, and I know what happened. What happened when Sarah died happened to us, and I'm afraid that it's just very different, and that is the way human beings are. So I think one was introduced to a form of pain, which was entirely unique, and I hope remains unique, God knows, I hope. But it cannot be dwelt on, and the brain, I discovered, is much more callous than the heart, so to say, that is to say my brain said to me when I sort of sat down again and said, you know, I don't know how I can ever write again. Yes, you do. You take up the pen, and you start writing like now. And I did, and of course it is as it is.”
2006-02-19 · Desert Island Discs · Frederic Raphael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Someone who loses a husband or an orphan if you dispatch it. I think there is. I mean, the example has been set to me by Beatle. If she had not been As determined as she was, and of course our sons have been everything possibly hoped for in terms of of support and in particular our younger son Stephen has actually looked after Sarah's children for five years and done it always with great love and with never a word of resentment as his thirties were sort of not eaten up but certainly taken up. I could work, I could support them. We hadn't got the energy or the will to do what Stephen has done.”
2006-02-19 · Desert Island Discs · Frederic Raphael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It has to be born because people, as you realise, particularly when something like this happens, you realize that even people you've known for many years have had some. have lost children and it has to be digested. It can't be lost.”
2006-02-19 · Desert Island Discs · Frederic Raphael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, this is one of the earliest records that we ever owned, and I confess that I love it not only because it's the Vorjac Cello concerto, but also because Port Ortille is playing it, and I can see his eyebrows at work as I listen.”
2006-02-19 · Desert Island Discs · Frederic Raphael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that if you are articulate and see that there is a serious flaw or even a disgraceful flaw in something that somebody has said, if one has enough fame to command the space, so to speak, it is one's duty to speak out. Yes, I do think that. But I certainly don't do it out of any glee, and I quake with apprehension, and I dread people hating me for it. It's certainly not done with any spirit of oh boy here's a fight.”
2006-02-19 · Desert Island Discs · Frederic Raphael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That was a sort of prophylactic decision about Choby's. I mean, it's no great secret in the 60s that, you know, marriages were not particularly sealed by being in the movies. And I also wanted to do the movies very much. Make no mistake. I mean, I love the vulgar glamour and the money, which we badly did, but Beatle did not like being left behind in places, and whenever I had to come to London, we just saw pile in the car and come back.”
2006-02-19 · Desert Island Discs · Frederic Raphael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I tried to I have to say Beatles is a terrific mother, and we were on this island and we had no amenes whatever. I mean, she did the nappies and all the stuff which we had in those days. I mean, she did all the hard stuff. And it's easy enough to play games among the rocks and tell people stories about Greek myths.”
2006-02-19 · Desert Island Discs · Frederic Raphael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My mother told me'cause she was annoyed about something with me. It sort of came out by mistake. But in retrospect, it seemed fraudulent. Well, it was a bit. Record number five. Well, this is a real bit of sentiment for me for reasons which may come out later. It's a buzuki song called Varka Stoyalo. There's a boat in the harbour. Shamefully vulgar, and I love it.”
2006-02-19 · Desert Island Discs · Frederic Raphael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But he elected to conceal it from me not from my wife, by the way, not from my mother, by the way. Nice fraud, you know. She knew perfectly well, but I didn't. That was the sort of classic. He thought I would think less of him. Of course I would have thought much more of him. Such is the perverse nature of adolescence. But he did strike very elaborate moral attitudes, which of course I realized later were more to do with his dread that I would inherit his ugly tendencies towards eroticism.”
2006-02-19 · Desert Island Discs · Frederic Raphael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That he had let you down. He had a dark secret which was not very dark. I mean he is a man, and of course he had lovers, and one of them who had promised him that she could not get pregnant did not manage to keep that promise if promise it was, and did, and she was not Jewish, she was obviously a very extraordinary woman because she was a broker on the Baltic Exchange in the twenties, which can't have been many women who were brokers on the Baltic Exchange, so she was not some sad little shop girl that he had made pregnant. Now, it's not a very terrible secret.”
2006-02-19 · Desert Island Discs · Frederic Raphael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I'm not sure that wives ever are the only sons of Jewish mothers, you know, are I think my mother has always formally thought that Beetle was wonderful and certainly told other people so and knows that she has made me happy, but I don't think that Beetle was the sort of girl who was ever going to be an ideal daughter in law. I mean, she's my wife, I know. And that's the deed.”
2006-02-19 · Desert Island Discs · Frederic Raphael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The script was. I'm a very naive person as a writer. What I love are the books arriving from the printers. There's my book printed, that's what I love to see. Much more satisfactory.”
2006-02-19 · Desert Island Discs · Frederic Raphael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Record number four is from a happy experience of my own at sea The Music from the film that I did for Stanley Donnant called Tooth of the Road with Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney.”
2006-02-19 · Desert Island Discs · Frederic Raphael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, what I thought was that it wasn't final I mean to grab quickly what you've just said that's to say that the fact that Stanley died in I think it was the March of a year when the film didn't come out until July makes it absolutely certain that every single second between what actually turned out to be the day of his death and the opening of the movie had he been alive he would have been tinkering, reshooting. He did have an infinite capacity for taking pains, and he wasn't alive to take them, so the film was not correct. Equally, I think it's fair to say that he was not at the height of his powers when he was making it, and Stanley was dying. Well, you know, you've only got to feel vaguely unwell, you know, to know that you can't actually be on top of your game, and he was dying. So, you know, the film showed signs of edge.”
2006-02-19 · Desert Island Discs · Frederic Raphael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I sort of liked him to Bluebeard. I mean, each bride was vaguely aware there had been earlier brides, but you didn't actually meet them or discover where they were interred, so one always thinks he won't do anything like that to me. And of course, he always does. But if one never touches anything in life which is either polluted or even poisonous to one, you know, one doesn't actually have much experience. So I wasn't going to miss working with Kubrick, but I did kind of know what was coming in that regard.”
2006-02-19 · Desert Island Discs · Frederic Raphael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that writing movies is a servile act, and we all would like to think it isn't, and of course it isn't to begin with because they haven't got anything until they've got something from you. So I always have compared it to a relay race where you are first off, and you go belting around the track and arrive absolutely exhausted. They then take the baton and go cheerily off.”
2006-02-19 · Desert Island Discs · Frederic Raphael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Seven in the morning. It wasn't they who rang me, in fact, that was a fabrication. As a matter of fact, it was Leslie Brickus, who was And then Joan Collins came on the line, and Tony Newly and Evie, Elizabeth's wife, and I thought Oh that's nice. But I did actually say I don't think with any irony, is that what you woken me up for?”
2006-02-19 · Desert Island Discs · Frederic Raphael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Precisely how it happened. I mean, they did go out to California for the Oscars, and when they did the interview before they went, they did indeed talk about the fact that they had done this film and I was never even mentioned, even though I had spent, I mean, very, very long time preparing it and writing it, and having conferences and rewriting it, I”
2006-02-19 · Desert Island Discs · Frederic Raphael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Record number three is the full sentimental side of things which God knows is ever far from me, and that's Elephoral singing these foolish things.”
2006-02-19 · Desert Island Discs · Frederic Raphael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I cried yes because it was totally unexpected, and suddenly I was told that I was going away. Yes, I was very I was frightened and homesick, but I got over that. But in order to survive in prep school, you do have to acquire a sort of tough skin and also of course loving one's mother was not very well regarded. So there was a sense in which one was obliged to die towards home by the prevailing ethos. I can't quite explain it that there's a coal side which one doesn't want to acknowledge and the coldness is to do simply with arranging not to be vulnerable.”
2006-02-19 · Desert Island Discs · Frederic Raphael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Very reluctantly. I mean, my mother was an American lady and a very young American lady because I was born when she was 20 and she's still alive and still real smart. I mean, she will always get a joke. I mean, she's a bright, clever woman. And I think that it was in no way her wish. But you have to understand that I went to my prep school in England in the country in September of 1939, when, as you may remember, other events were taking place. That's true.”
2006-02-19 · Desert Island Discs · Frederic Raphael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I use it, I mean, but I don't want anyone to agree too quickly. I don't think I was spoiled by modern standards in the sense that it wasn't a question of being covered with gifts, because, of course, in the war, there was no money.”
2006-02-19 · Desert Island Discs · Frederic Raphael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, of course the answer is yes, also with a great deal expected of me in terms of scholarships wiping noses and having haircuts and all those things.”
2006-02-19 · Desert Island Discs · Frederic Raphael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, though it wasn't apparent, I mean he really was. We had Rosebury's prove it. Yeah, my father was a sort of Swit personality, and when he was a young man he was sort of fully fledged lounge lizard and a friend of ours called Guy Ramsay, who was a rather flamboyant Fleet Street journalist, said of my father who was his close friend. The thing about Cedric is that he looks like a gentleman when he goes to work, he looks like a dagger when he does the tango. And of course that was actually high praise, as you can well imagine.”
2006-02-19 · Desert Island Discs · Frederic Raphael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because they actually didn't like it. They rather resented the fact that I was a clever, sort of manifestly clever boy who paraded his cleverness somewhat. But also I have to say, of course, this did coincide with events in Palestine, the terrorist war, as I certainly thought of it by the Cern Gang and those against the British presence. So there were lots of headlines which excited a sort of proper anti Semitism on the part of other boys, and I always used to read the newspapers the great apprehension. So it was a pathetic period in my life in that sense. It's Marie Pariah, I'm afraid that it's more Marie Pariah than anything else because I think it's just so wonderful to live to. It's the Gavot from Bach's English suite number six.”
2006-02-19 · Desert Island Discs · Frederic Raphael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A particular bad time at Charthouse because I was rather foolish and have never ceased to be foolish in this regard, that was that I used to say the first clever, funny thing that came into my head, and usually it was disparaging of somebody who would remember it, of course. The trouble is that you don't remember what you say about people, but they have very good memories for it.”
2006-02-19 · Desert Island Discs · Frederic Raphael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was sort of I was afraid of being what I was, and the language of English schools. Of course, included, you know, Jewing people, don't be Jewy and trying to jew me out of it and all the rest of it. None of these things are said with any great malice.”
2006-02-19 · Desert Island Discs · Frederic Raphael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“and when we landed in England my father said well you can grow up being an English gentleman and not an American Jew. I mean he wasn't ashamed of being Jewish but he was very conscious of the social exclusion which was much greater in the US in those days of course than Certainly than in England for a certain kind of middle class confident Jew which my father was an example in his family, and my appalling great aunts and their magnificent mansion flats were all instances.”
2006-02-19 · Desert Island Discs · Frederic Raphael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He had refused to allow me to be a candidate for a closed scholarship to Oxford because I had been insolent, a visiting clergyman, and written him a letter in which I made rather childish but perhaps not very wicked remarks about the fact that he had made a palpably anti Semitic remark which had got a good laugh in the chapel. And I was then told that I had to write and apologize, and I said rather tearfully even at the age of nearly eighteen, you know, I wrote.”
2006-02-19 · Desert Island Discs · Frederic Raphael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In those days, they really had telegraph boys who arrived and were your sort of cheeky dicky Attenborough at sixteen looking people. And the bell rang and there was this lad, and he had to be this little yellow envelope. And it had to be good news because they wouldn't get a telegram with bad news on that topic. And I opened it and I'm not particularly ashamed to tell you I've still got this telegram yellowing even more yellowly. And I thought, that's really it. That's it. Although, as a matter of fact, I always wanted to go to Oxford.”
2006-02-19 · Desert Island Discs · Frederic Raphael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes. Yes. I mean, the thing about that was that you went up and you sat with 600 other candidates in a cold examination hall and you wrote Latin verses and proses and Greek verses and proes, and I showed off like a mad thing, which is quite contrary to my nature, but there it was.”
2006-02-19 · Desert Island Discs · Frederic Raphael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Record number one is Bessie Smith Sing Empty Bed Blues. This comes from Cambridge, really. I heard these records on L seventy eight's, of course, in a place called Jordan's Yard, which was the kind of loose hangout for Bohemian wannabe the Bohemians of the time, and the owner there loved having lovers in his house which suited me and my girlfriend extremely well because we were able to use his kitchen floor to good advantage. Not that he was very clean. More comfortable. More comfortable. Oh, well, it didn't matter. And this stack of records sat there and Bessie Smith stands for those very happy times.”
2006-02-19 · Desert Island Discs · Frederic Raphael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, the word glitter is, of course, in somewhat ambiguous. It doesn't suggest that their price is of real value. It suggests that they gleam attractively. They don't gleam particularly attractively for me. I mean, I'm certainly human enough to manage to be a little bit resentful when I fail to receive them, but I've always thought of writing as a lonely activity in which what you did was you presented your grumbles, resentments, angers in as palatable a form as you could arrange so that the enemy swallowed them thinking they were sweeties. That's the game as played. And that's what's known as style, I thought, in England.”
2006-02-19 · Desert Island Discs · Frederic Raphael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's a trick which writers quite often play. I mean, and the fun of it is, of course, that the bits that seem truest are made up.”
2006-02-19 · Desert Island Discs · Frederic Raphael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I confess that I really don't. Sometimes people invite one to lament about the lonely and often humiliated life of writers, all of which is quite true. But I confess the loneliness is what attracts me. It's a qualified loneliness because I like to be alone in the house in particular with my wife, and luckily I've spent the last fifty years being pretty well that why she chose to do it is not for me to question.”
2006-02-19 · Desert Island Discs · Frederic Raphael · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source