YouSaid · the spoken record

Julia Donaldson

lines on the record: 45
first: 2009-11-15
most recent: 2009-11-15
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've chosen a book which is called Poem for the Day, and it's got three hundred sixty five poems in it, and you're supposed to learn them, so I think I'll try and do that in my hope I'd only be there for one year. I wouldn't have to start all over again the next year.”
2009-11-15 · Desert Island Discs · Julia Donaldson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The final piece is Handel's recorder sonata in F All my three boys played the recorder and I think it's a beautiful and quite underrated instrument. And also I feel this is quite a calming piece of music. I'd like something quite sort of soothing and calming.”
2009-11-15 · Desert Island Discs · Julia Donaldson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, Ali, he's got a fellowship at Oxford University doing something very mysterious to do with maths and computing science. And Jerry is at Dundee University studying politics and philosophy, which is actually same subject as my father did.”
2009-11-15 · Desert Island Discs · Julia Donaldson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My sister very often comes and Alistair and Jerry sometimes come along when they can and Jerry acts wonderful dragon in room on the broom so yes it is a sort of family van trap Donaldson”
2009-11-15 · Desert Island Discs · Julia Donaldson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, on the patron of a charity called Artlink Central, and it instigates really brilliant projects where an artist it could be a visual artist or a musical person or dramatist works with groups of disadvantaged people and the people might be children or adults they might be from psychiatric hospitals you know kind of thing Hamish never got actually or a lot of elderly people they work with”
2009-11-15 · Desert Island Discs · Julia Donaldson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So this is a song called Remembering Marie, the words written by Brecht and David Bowie sings it. It was a song that Hamish loved when he was a little boy It's about someone who is looking back on the time of their first kiss they don't even remember the girl's face but they do remember this little cloud that was in the sky the cloud was only there very fleetingly and Hamish used to call the song bloomed for minutes that's a phrase within the song I suppose you could say it that's true of Hamish.”
2009-11-15 · Desert Island Discs · Julia Donaldson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not really, I mean Sometimes I think it was a sort of almost an unselfish thing sometimes during Henry's lifetime I had This is when he was drinking very heavily and passing. leads in this terrible lifestyle. I used to think oh no, you know if Malcolm and I die or when we die. And Hamis grows old, it is very, very good looking buoyant just the thought of him, growing old and being some old whino and then kind of how difficult it would be for the other two, you know sometimes well I didn't wish him of course I didn't want him to die but I used to sometimes wish that he would die before us”
2009-11-15 · Desert Island Discs · Julia Donaldson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I mean Venish died, everyone's then so sympathetic, but I don't think people fully understood how hard it was during those twenty five years of Hamish's life. We got a film of when Hamish was a little boy and friends can't understand how we could watch it without dissolving into tears, but actually probably we would watch it and dissolve into tears during Hamish's lifetime during the very, very difficult years in his late teens and twenties. Then we were sort of grieving for that little boy. With Hamish, I just wish he could have had a better life.”
2009-11-15 · Desert Island Discs · Julia Donaldson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I mean, that's terribly difficult. The younger ones Alistair and Joey I mean, they've just been terrific. I mean, Hamish would drive them mad in lots of ways, but at the same time they did love him and really understand him. And, you know, I mean, even at Hamish's funeral, they both did such wonderful speeches. Here they've been”
2009-11-15 · Desert Island Discs · Julia Donaldson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, really, as the years went on, we knew that Hamish was different. Hamish just had huge behavior problems and was always getting sort of chucked out of different schools as very, very, very difficult to handle. But I suppose we were always just told You know why don't you have a kind of contract with them and give him a gold star every time he It does something right. And, you know, we did all that. I'm not saying that was necessarily bad, but it was, you know, it was something deeper than that. And I think really by the time he was in his early teens, we, Malcolm and I really did feel there was something. Very much the matter, but it wasn't till he was about 16 or 17 that he had this full-blown psychotic episode.”
2009-11-15 · Desert Island Discs · Julia Donaldson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Be very nice to think that because Emma Hamage Really, despite his very, very troubled life, he did give a huge amount to me and to mock me.”
2009-11-15 · Desert Island Discs · Julia Donaldson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Really he was, you know, he'd resist every happy change, and he had the loudest cry of any child I'd known, but of course we were first time parents and we were terrifically proud of him and his spirit and he had a wonderful imagination and he wouldn't really play with toys, he would just play with bits of cardboard and say they were ice creams or violins or whatever and he just lived in his imagination really.”
2009-11-15 · Desert Island Discs · Julia Donaldson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I thought I had to get Malcolm in if I'm going to be on this desert island. I would love to hear his voice. And also Malcolm's a wonderful actor and mimic. And in this song, Crochon Blues, he is singing in the voice of a French truffle-hunting pig.”
2009-11-15 · Desert Island Discs · Julia Donaldson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, I do drive my family mad, I think, that I'm not one of these secretive writers, just like I would let my friends read my diary, you know. In fact, what I do, I tend to give what I've written to one of them to read aloud to me Especially if it's in rhyme, and if they stumble and they're putting the stress on the wrong syllables, which wasn't what I'd intended, then I rewrite that bit because I think it's maddening when a parent has a book which just doesn't seem to rhyme or scan properly, so they've been very helpful to me.”
2009-11-15 · Desert Island Discs · Julia Donaldson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They did, as my oldest son Hamish, he was very, very imaginative, and he had an imaginary friend who came out of the mirror. It was this reflection, and this inspired a series of books about a very naughty princess called Princess Mirabel, who comes out in the mirror. So obviously that was inspired by Hamish.”
2009-11-15 · Desert Island Discs · Julia Donaldson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's true, but actually anyway in his house, mainly I would go into the primary schools, and the lovely thing about those schools is the children just were so keen and receptive, and I think in some cases the school was a kind of haven really, you know, they'd be on their tummies in the corridors doing wonderful paintings and things like that. And well, lots of them came from lovely homes, actually. They weren't all from, I think, this deprivation thing gets exaggerated. But the thing is, I think people think that writing residence means you're doing your own writing. I was hardly doing any writing. I was helping people with writing projects in schools, but also in the community. So I think it was quite a practical kind of job, actually.”
2009-11-15 · Desert Island Discs · Julia Donaldson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it's about music for a start, and music is a big part of my life. I just think it's got a very beautiful tune. In fact, when my mother died this was a song that we chose my niece who's got a beautiful voice, sang this at her funeral.”
2009-11-15 · Desert Island Discs · Julia Donaldson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I did. You know, I was really keen to act. And unfortunate now that the way my career has gone, it's kind of gone full circle. And now I am doing a lot of acting, albeit it's just acting out my own stories, but some authors cringe and hate facing the public, and I absolutely lap it up. But don't actually think of myself as primarily a writer. I think of myself equally as a performer. I mean, if you came to our house, there's a whole room devoted to props and costumes. And, you know, every book festival I go to with Malcolm and usually my sister comes along and sometimes some of my children, a couple of my children come and we act out the stories and we sing the songs. I mean as well as writing the stories I spend almost as much time dramatizing them.”
2009-11-15 · Desert Island Discs · Julia Donaldson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, no, I was just an understudy. I was understudying the fairies, but actually two fairies, I think, were ill on the same day. So I had to be two fairies. So Titanius says, Peace blossom cobweb mirth, mustard seed. And we had to say, ready, and I, and I, and I, and, you know, hope the audience wouldn't notice their only three of us.”
2009-11-15 · Desert Island Discs · Julia Donaldson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“NARA, although now I've still got those diaries and I had a huge crush on Mick Jago and I don't think I'd want that to be published now.”
2009-11-15 · Desert Island Discs · Julia Donaldson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I did give a direct but actually I used to let my friends read my diet. It wasn't a terribly outpouring sort of diary. I was probably a secret writer who wanted to be read even then. That's”
2009-11-15 · Desert Island Discs · Julia Donaldson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, yes, I mean of course it was frustrating for him and he I think naturally had a very even temper but you know sometimes he would just get so frustrated and one time just saying I wish I could walk I think that's it it was just one time I heard him say that but actually he was fortunate in a way because his job was cerebral he played the cello he could still play his quartets so you know it could have been worse”
2009-11-15 · Desert Island Discs · Julia Donaldson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think that really Michael Flanz is the same. And he died of a heart attack when he was fifty nine. And when that happened, my father just said, that's the way I'll go. And my father did die of a heart attack when he was 59, just like Michael Flanders.”
2009-11-15 · Desert Island Discs · Julia Donaldson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The next piece of music is another song and it's Michael Flanders and Donald Swann, who are great heroes of mine, and this is Slow Train.”
2009-11-15 · Desert Island Discs · Julia Donaldson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“where we had always been on the ground floor, our family. It still obviously was a lot of work for my mother, you know, she had to meet him when he came back from work and heave him out of the car into the wheelchair and yes, and of course things weren't very adapted for disabled people so everywhere they went she had to take this sort of bottle for him to pee into if there wasn't a grunt downstairs loo and things like that.”
2009-11-15 · Desert Island Discs · Julia Donaldson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He was then, yes, I mean, when he came out of hospital for a while he tried to learn to walk with crutches and calipers. I remember sitting on his knee when he first came back and saying oh no this feels all kind of wiry and metallic, these caliper things he had on his legs but he gave that up and he then yeah he was in his wheelchair. It was”
2009-11-15 · Desert Island Discs · Julia Donaldson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I do remember the time when I understood the The gravity of it, I think when it first happened it was very gradual, you know, I remember my sister used to pull and out of bed. We had a jokey thing pulling him out of bed in the mornings and one day he was a bit achy and stiff and then next thing we knew he was in hospital and he was still in hospital and I must have been ill in bed myself having a meal with my mother in the bedroom and I suddenly saw she was crying and I'd never seen my mother cry before I think in those days people held it in much more and just in a flash at six years old I realised this was a huge huge thing.”
2009-11-15 · Desert Island Discs · Julia Donaldson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, this is really for my father because we had one of those old fashioned wind up record players and he had a big collection of seventy eights and this piece of music which is Haydn's piano tree and G major the Gypsy Runda my sister and I called it the tune that came back again because the same little tune kept coming back again and we used to hide behind the furniture and sort of pop out every time this tune came back again.”
2009-11-15 · Desert Island Discs · Julia Donaldson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, that's right. Yes, you were ruining everyone else by building all these houses and hotels. Yeah, that was what he hated about it.”
2009-11-15 · Desert Island Discs · Julia Donaldson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well my father had done politics, philosophy and economics at Oxford just before the war broke out and he was in that quite left wing generation and I mean like he hated the game monopoly. My sister and I used to play monopoly endlessly with our aunts and uncle and my father thought it was such a terrible capitalist game.”
2009-11-15 · Desert Island Discs · Julia Donaldson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think they were just very good at letting us be as whoever we were, and you know we learnt musical instruments, we learnt the piano, but they weren't breathing down our necks, making us practice like I probably was with my sort, and I'm afraid. We were both quite academic children, but if ever a report came home where, you know, I hadn't done very well on some subject, my mother never, never wagged a figure and said, Oh, you could do better, not at all, not at all pushy as parents.”
2009-11-15 · Desert Island Discs · Julia Donaldson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, very much so. My father played the cello and a quartet would come to our house so my sister and I used to give them their tea and their biscuits because my mother would be out at choir practice in the Hampshire Kruel Society and she'd come back singing and yeah there was lots of music going on.”
2009-11-15 · Desert Island Discs · Julia Donaldson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, we were the only children, I suppose we were spoilt, Rosson really, you know. In a way, it was lucky parents because actually my father when I was six developed polio, and so he was in a wheelchair for most of my childhood, whereas my uncle, you know, he could sort of play ball games with us on the heath and so on, so that it was very good in that respect.”
2009-11-15 · Desert Island Discs · Julia Donaldson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I lived in a tall Victorian house with my granny who lived on the top floor, an aunt and an uncle who lived in the middle floor, and my parents and my sister and our cat Geoffrey, who must get them in, on the ground floor, and the Hamster teeth was just at the bottom of our road, so my sister and I spent a lot of time playing on the heath. I knew”
2009-11-15 · Desert Island Discs · Julia Donaldson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, the second record I've chosen is Edit Piaf singing La Foule, I suppose really, because it brings back those days in Paris, those busking days.”
2009-11-15 · Desert Island Discs · Julia Donaldson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Can you explain it? Yeah, well, really, my heart was set on being an actress. And I think that stemmed from when I understood the fairies in an old Vic production of Amid Sunlight Stream, but then I think by the time I was with Malcolm, I sort of thought, do I really want to be sweeping stages in Clendridnud Wells? And I did a quick secretarial course and wormed my Michael Joseph Publishing Firm as a sort of secretary cum tea girl, you know, I think that's the way publishing often.”
2009-11-15 · Desert Island Discs · Julia Donaldson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That wed Yes, I suppose so maybe it was more my generation, though. I don't think any of us were thinking about you know pensions and steady jobs and I think the current generation probably for very good reasons are perhaps more conventional.”
2009-11-15 · Desert Island Discs · Julia Donaldson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Who Yes, we did, that's right, I wrote a little operta with songs for the bridesmaids and the best man, and ask and we sang at our wedding. Actually, we had our best man was Colin Selle and I'm sorry I haven't a clue and he accompanied the whole thing. I don't know.”
2009-11-15 · Desert Island Discs · Julia Donaldson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He could play them all on his battered old left handed guitar, and the three of us used to then sing and dance and take this big hat round which Malcolm had brought back from Kenya. At one point the hat blew into the Seine when we were crossing a bridge, a Malcolm stripped down to his vest and underfence and dived off the banks of the Seine and rescued it and he was really my hero after that.”
2009-11-15 · Desert Island Discs · Julia Donaldson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, he revolutionized everything this was our friend Malcolm from Bristol he was a medic, and he said, I'm coming, I'm arriving, I'm joining you right the Beatles, he had about twenty Beatles songs, all the songs from the musical hair. I mean, this list about hundreds long. And he could play.”
2009-11-15 · Desert Island Discs · Julia Donaldson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know about that. Well, it started when I was a student. I studied drama and French at Bristol University and we got packed off to Paris to improve our French. And of course everything was very expensive in Paris and I had a guitar and I could play about five chords maybe and I had a girlfriend Maureen and we used to sort of go down the champs Elyse singing I can still remember a repertoire as pleasier blowing in the wind and greensleaves as the main ones we did.”
2009-11-15 · Desert Island Discs · Julia Donaldson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's just the most heavenly tune, and I think to me it's about the loveliness of life, you know, despite tragedies and troubles and, you know, this fresh feeling of regrowth and renewal.”
2009-11-15 · Desert Island Discs · Julia Donaldson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of the bed. Well, to be honest, I'm not really thinking about anyone. I think like any, maybe it sounds grandiose to call myself a poet, but I mean, any poet, they're thinking about what they're writing. You know, if you bake a cake even, okay, you know, it's got to be for children's party, but you actually just want this cake to be perfect in itself. So I'm just thinking about my creation, but I suppose sneakily, yes, I really, really care about the growing-ups think. I've been a parent of young children myself, and I know how awful it is when they reach for, I won't mention any names but some book that you hate, and it's so nice when they choose one that you enjoy reading. So yes, I do want the parents to enjoy it.”
2009-11-15 · Desert Island Discs · Julia Donaldson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, they don't really. It's a lot of blood sweat and tears. They take a long time to germinate. They might take a year in my head. And then it seems to me it takes absolutely ages to craft them and it is a labour of love really.”
2009-11-15 · Desert Island Discs · Julia Donaldson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“By my son Alistair. That's right. I mean, at this stage, you have to remember I had had a few books published, but most of them were for educational publishers, which does count, of course it does count, but Iris dying to have another book out there in the bookshops. And I got halfway through, and I did get stuck, and I was going to give up, and I told my son Alistair about this, and he said, no, go on, mum, I think it's really good. So he did inspire me to continue.”
2009-11-15 · Desert Island Discs · Julia Donaldson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source