0:00:02 > 0:00:03BBC Four Collections -
0:00:03 > 0:00:06specially chosen programmes from the BBC Archive.
0:00:06 > 0:00:07For this Collection,
0:00:07 > 0:00:08Sir Michael Parkinson
0:00:08 > 0:00:10has selected BBC interviews
0:00:10 > 0:00:12with influential figures
0:00:12 > 0:00:13of the 20th century.
0:00:13 > 0:00:15More programmes on this theme
0:00:15 > 0:00:16and other BBC Four Collections
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0:00:21 > 0:00:24LUDOVIC: Dame Rebecca, Rebecca West is not your real name, is it?
0:00:24 > 0:00:27No, my real, my born name,
0:00:27 > 0:00:30was Cicely Isabel Fairfield,
0:00:30 > 0:00:35which is a name quite impossible, unless you have blonde ringlets
0:00:35 > 0:00:38and bright blue eyes. I had neither.
0:00:38 > 0:00:42Now, I read that you wanted to become a writer from a very early age.
0:00:42 > 0:00:45- Is that so? - Well, we all wrote in the family.
0:00:45 > 0:00:49It was a sort of permanent condition.
0:00:49 > 0:00:51My...
0:00:51 > 0:00:54my father was a writer.
0:00:54 > 0:00:57He wrote on politics and he was a journalist.
0:00:57 > 0:01:02And I had uncles and aunts and cousins.
0:01:02 > 0:01:07It was something you did in the house, like embroidery or carpentry.
0:01:07 > 0:01:09And you wrote this article in The Freewoman
0:01:09 > 0:01:13about women's rights. What was that article about?
0:01:13 > 0:01:18It was about Mrs Humphry Ward, who wanted women not to have the vote.
0:01:18 > 0:01:25And, so, I gave...I gave her a good going-over, as one can, at 18.
0:01:25 > 0:01:30I was brutal, contemptuous and altogether very disagreeable.
0:01:30 > 0:01:32And... As you can be when you're 18.
0:01:32 > 0:01:35I couldn't write anything so cruel now.
0:01:35 > 0:01:39And, then, when you were 19 or 20, you reviewed, in The Freewoman,
0:01:39 > 0:01:41- I think, a novel of HG Wells... - Yes.
0:01:41 > 0:01:43- ..called Marriage. - Yes.
0:01:43 > 0:01:47Now, what was your view of HG Wells at this time, before you met him?
0:01:47 > 0:01:49Well, he wrote books.
0:01:49 > 0:01:53And I thought that he pretended to be a feminist and really wasn't.
0:01:53 > 0:01:58LUDOVIC: What sort of a man was HG Wells like, to be with?
0:01:58 > 0:02:02Er...he was excellent fun, everybody will tell you that.
0:02:02 > 0:02:06And he was also, to his friends,
0:02:06 > 0:02:11there was an extraordinary thing that is not remembered about him,
0:02:11 > 0:02:13that he was so kind to a lot of people.
0:02:13 > 0:02:18He had on a string a whole lot of unsuccessful writers
0:02:18 > 0:02:22and people who he'd been at school with
0:02:22 > 0:02:26or had been at the Imperial College with.
0:02:26 > 0:02:29He was awfully kind to a lot of people.
0:02:29 > 0:02:33LUDOVIC: How do you rate him as a writer today?
0:02:33 > 0:02:34Er...
0:02:34 > 0:02:37Oh, some of his stuff is beautiful,
0:02:37 > 0:02:42and I've often thought that his dialogue was so good,
0:02:42 > 0:02:45that he would've made a very good playwright.
0:02:45 > 0:02:48But somehow he never got down to that.
0:02:48 > 0:02:50And, of course, all his stories,
0:02:50 > 0:02:57really he brought the subject of science fiction on a hundred years,
0:02:57 > 0:03:01by the short stories he wrote himself.
0:03:01 > 0:03:08There were very, very few approaches to science fiction until HG wrote.
0:03:08 > 0:03:11You have a few odd things like intimations
0:03:11 > 0:03:15of strangers from other worlds in, say, Sheridan Le Fanu.
0:03:15 > 0:03:19You get a sense of there being more than one ordinary...
0:03:19 > 0:03:22er...kind of life.
0:03:22 > 0:03:29And he peopled the science fiction scene with a dozen forms of spookery.
0:03:29 > 0:03:31Well, now, of course, at this time,
0:03:31 > 0:03:35you were writing yourself and you were meeting many other writers.
0:03:35 > 0:03:37- And one of them was Shaw... - Yes.
0:03:37 > 0:03:41..who wrote of you in 1916 to Mrs Patrick Campbell as follows...
0:03:41 > 0:03:44"When I arrived here..." - here, I think, is Glastonbury -
0:03:44 > 0:03:48"..I struck a precipitous flirtation with Rebecca West,
0:03:48 > 0:03:50"an extremely clever young woman,
0:03:50 > 0:03:53"whose critical writings have been startling everyone.
0:03:53 > 0:03:56"Rebecca can handle a pen as brilliantly as ever I could
0:03:56 > 0:03:58"and much more savagely.
0:03:58 > 0:04:01"We fell into one another's arms, intellectually and artistically,
0:04:01 > 0:04:06"and had I not turned 60 and been afraid of being ridiculous..."
0:04:06 > 0:04:07Do you remember that?
0:04:07 > 0:04:09Certainly I do remember it, very well.
0:04:09 > 0:04:14And it's one of the funniest passages I know, in all of Shaw's writing,
0:04:14 > 0:04:17because he was trying, the silly old buffoon,
0:04:17 > 0:04:19to make Mrs Pat jealous.
0:04:19 > 0:04:23What was that year...? It wasn't Glastonbury, it was Keswick.
0:04:23 > 0:04:25Quite a difference.
0:04:25 > 0:04:28No holy thorns on Keswick.
0:04:28 > 0:04:33- But...what date was that? - Well, I have it as 1916.
0:04:33 > 0:04:38Well, do you know, I'd known him since I was 17.
0:04:38 > 0:04:42I'd been introduced to him, I think by Ford Madox Ford.
0:04:42 > 0:04:46And I was much fonder of Mrs Shaw than I was of him.
0:04:46 > 0:04:54And there was never the smallest sentimental attachment between us.
0:04:54 > 0:04:57And he was simply making Mrs Patrick Campbell feel
0:04:57 > 0:05:03that he'd had a wonderful walk-out with somebody young and charming.
0:05:03 > 0:05:06It's no relation to reality.
0:05:06 > 0:05:10I went many a long walk with him, over the fells,
0:05:10 > 0:05:13with my sister, my older sister,
0:05:13 > 0:05:19and a man who was a civil servant called Slattery.
0:05:19 > 0:05:23And I don't think I ever was alone with him at Keswick.
0:05:23 > 0:05:25And men are awful liars.
0:05:26 > 0:05:29LUDOVIC: What did you feel about Shaw,
0:05:29 > 0:05:32as a companion, as a man of letters?
0:05:32 > 0:05:35He's a mythical figure to us. Was he a forbidding character?
0:05:35 > 0:05:38Was he easy to talk to? What was he like?
0:05:38 > 0:05:42Well, the question of being easy to talk to never arose.
0:05:42 > 0:05:44He was talking steadily.
0:05:44 > 0:05:46And very delightful it was.
0:05:47 > 0:05:51LUDOVIC: And how do you reckon he stands now in English literature?
0:05:51 > 0:05:57People like to, er, go and see his plays,
0:05:57 > 0:06:00because I think he was, really - I think it's been pointed out before -
0:06:00 > 0:06:04he really treated words as if they were notes in music.
0:06:04 > 0:06:08And he wrote speeches that were like beautiful operatic arias.
0:06:08 > 0:06:12And it's wonderful stuff to act. All actors love Shaw.
0:06:12 > 0:06:15And you go there for a sort of performance.
0:06:15 > 0:06:17But I don't think he had enough ideas
0:06:17 > 0:06:19and I don't think they were good ones.
0:06:19 > 0:06:21LUDOVIC: Of all the writers of that time,
0:06:21 > 0:06:23and there were many considerable ones,
0:06:23 > 0:06:26leaving aside HG Wells and Shaw,
0:06:26 > 0:06:30who do you find, looking back, the most interesting?
0:06:30 > 0:06:34Well, there was something very beautiful about Conrad.
0:06:34 > 0:06:38Of course, Conrad had very funny sides to him.
0:06:38 > 0:06:44HG always used to say that every two years,
0:06:44 > 0:06:46he used to want to find out what it was
0:06:46 > 0:06:49that the English saw in Jane Austen.
0:06:49 > 0:06:54And he'd shut himself up in a room with the works of Jane Austen,
0:06:54 > 0:06:56and then the family would hear noises
0:06:56 > 0:06:58of breaking furniture inside the room,
0:06:58 > 0:07:01and he'd burst out and say, "I can't understand it!"
0:07:01 > 0:07:03And that was rather like him.
0:07:03 > 0:07:06LUDOVIC: I don't suppose Jane Austen would have understood Conrad!
0:07:06 > 0:07:08Oh, I think she would.
0:07:08 > 0:07:12I think she had a... She expected the animal...
0:07:12 > 0:07:15She expected the male animal to jump anyway.
0:07:15 > 0:07:19But he couldn't understand it. But he was a sweet person.
0:07:19 > 0:07:23I used to meet him with a man who wrote very good short stories,
0:07:23 > 0:07:25now forgotten, called Cunninghame Graham.
0:07:25 > 0:07:29And it was always very, very delightful.
0:07:29 > 0:07:34But I must say that it always amused me that Conrad,
0:07:34 > 0:07:37though I'm sure he was the most faithful and loving husband,
0:07:37 > 0:07:39very kind to his wife,
0:07:39 > 0:07:44he was very touched by a beautiful girl who came to England,
0:07:44 > 0:07:48whose name, I think, was Jane Guggenheim, Jane Taylor.
0:07:48 > 0:07:51She was the wife of Deems Taylor, the composer,
0:07:51 > 0:07:53absolutely marvellous, with orange hair.
0:07:53 > 0:07:59And he was distinctly, sort of rather ethereally, in love with her.
0:07:59 > 0:08:04And so when his letters came out, I turned up the index
0:08:04 > 0:08:07and I found an entry for her, so I thought,
0:08:07 > 0:08:12"How is this marvellous stylist going to describe the woman that he loved?"
0:08:12 > 0:08:17And I looked up, and he said, "An American woman came to lunch today.
0:08:17 > 0:08:19"Yum-yum."
0:08:20 > 0:08:22REBECCA: And that was all he said about her.
0:08:22 > 0:08:26LUDOVIC: Do you think that any writers of today
0:08:26 > 0:08:28have the same kind of stature
0:08:28 > 0:08:31as those of your contemporaries in the 1920s?
0:08:33 > 0:08:34No.
0:08:34 > 0:08:38I think partly because they had... they had...
0:08:38 > 0:08:44A writer had a much more comfortable life.
0:08:44 > 0:08:47They hadn't been upset by so many wars.
0:08:47 > 0:08:49And, then, when they got money,
0:08:49 > 0:08:52they had comfortable houses, with servants.
0:08:52 > 0:08:55And there wasn't the scurry and the running about
0:08:55 > 0:08:58and the huge demands from the Inland Revenue.
0:08:58 > 0:09:03And it was easier for people to write more books than they do now
0:09:03 > 0:09:06and to keep up on a higher standard.
0:09:06 > 0:09:08LUDOVIC: But would you say there was anybody writing today
0:09:08 > 0:09:11you felt was of that standard?
0:09:13 > 0:09:17No. I think there's more people whose whole work
0:09:17 > 0:09:21forms a very interesting sort of corpus.
0:09:21 > 0:09:24LUDOVIC: What about Solzhenitsyn?
0:09:24 > 0:09:27Well, that's so tangled by political advocacy,
0:09:27 > 0:09:29and, of course, to me,
0:09:29 > 0:09:35a writer is someone that has to stand apart from politics.
0:09:35 > 0:09:38You always have to know better than the men of action.
0:09:38 > 0:09:43You always have to give the...
0:09:43 > 0:09:48point of view that's not...complicated
0:09:48 > 0:09:52by the fact that you have to bear responsibility.
0:09:52 > 0:09:56Politicians have to bear responsibilities for actions
0:09:56 > 0:10:00which depend on views of the moment,
0:10:00 > 0:10:03of the moment when the action is called for.
0:10:03 > 0:10:08Writers have to look at things from a more long-term point of view.
0:10:08 > 0:10:11LUDOVIC: You wrote in 1944,
0:10:11 > 0:10:13"A left-wing journalist is what I have been
0:10:13 > 0:10:15- "since I was 18 years of age." - Yes.
0:10:15 > 0:10:18Is that how you still consider yourself?
0:10:18 > 0:10:21No, because I know more.
0:10:21 > 0:10:23If I was... If I was...
0:10:23 > 0:10:27If I hadn't learnt to...
0:10:27 > 0:10:31slowly, to have a writer's point of view...
0:10:33 > 0:10:36..I might still be on the level of party politics.
0:10:36 > 0:10:37But I hope I'm not.
0:10:37 > 0:10:41You've written more recently that to be a left-wing writer
0:10:41 > 0:10:43is to be "in the mood" and you talk of
0:10:43 > 0:10:47"the peculiar heresy to be told that a left-wing government
0:10:47 > 0:10:50"is the most natural thing for England."
0:10:50 > 0:10:52So it seems that you have changed.
0:10:52 > 0:10:57I don't think that it's natural
0:10:57 > 0:11:00for people to be left-wing,
0:11:00 > 0:11:04for England to have a left-wing government,
0:11:04 > 0:11:09because I remember the time when it was completely natural for England
0:11:09 > 0:11:14to have just a Tory government or a Liberal government.
0:11:14 > 0:11:17It was completely natural in those days.
0:11:17 > 0:11:21It would've been profoundly unnatural to have had a Labour government,
0:11:21 > 0:11:24because I don't know where you would have found the people
0:11:24 > 0:11:28who were fit to carry it on.
0:11:28 > 0:11:32LUDOVIC: In your youth, you were, as you've already told me,
0:11:32 > 0:11:34a great fighter for women's rights,
0:11:34 > 0:11:36- women's freedom. - Yes.
0:11:36 > 0:11:38What do you think of women's lib today?
0:11:38 > 0:11:41Well, there's so many different sorts.
0:11:41 > 0:11:45There's so many different sorts of women's lib.
0:11:45 > 0:11:51I would think, on the whole, it was a thoroughly sane movement.
0:11:51 > 0:11:54I can't think of...
0:11:54 > 0:12:01Some women's lib writers strike me as, um...
0:12:01 > 0:12:04asking too much of fate.
0:12:04 > 0:12:09For example, many of them write as if it was a woman's right
0:12:09 > 0:12:13to live with a man they weren't married to.
0:12:13 > 0:12:17But that's not wholly irrelevant.
0:12:17 > 0:12:21There may all sorts of women who need to be liberated
0:12:21 > 0:12:24from all sorts of forms of sex oppression,
0:12:24 > 0:12:29who are not attractive and who would not get male lovers or husbands
0:12:29 > 0:12:34and who might be lesbians or might be unattractive to women.
0:12:34 > 0:12:40I think it's too highly charged with the idea of sexual liberation.
0:12:40 > 0:12:43LUDOVIC: But do you feel that men and women should be,
0:12:43 > 0:12:44from a social point of view,
0:12:44 > 0:12:48really completely equal? I mean, as regards pay,
0:12:48 > 0:12:51as regards who pays the bills and all that kind of thing?
0:12:53 > 0:12:54Um...
0:12:56 > 0:13:02Well, I mean, my own experience was limited by the fact
0:13:02 > 0:13:04that if I hadn't paid the bills,
0:13:04 > 0:13:09if you mean write them and manage some expenditure,
0:13:09 > 0:13:15my husband would've left them in various pockets,
0:13:15 > 0:13:17and they wouldn't have been dealt with.
0:13:17 > 0:13:20And his household, domestic ability...
0:13:20 > 0:13:26- his ability to run a household... - I thought he was a banker?
0:13:26 > 0:13:31Oh! That's an interesting thing. He was a banker.
0:13:31 > 0:13:36He went in and banked as merrily as the next banker,
0:13:36 > 0:13:37for quite a number of years.
0:13:37 > 0:13:40But what he should've been was an art historian.
0:13:40 > 0:13:43That's what he really was best at.
0:13:43 > 0:13:45- And, um... - I only mentioned that
0:13:45 > 0:13:47because you said that he wasn't very good
0:13:47 > 0:13:50as far as the household bills were concerned,
0:13:50 > 0:13:52which is surprising to find in a man who was a banker.
0:13:52 > 0:13:56Oh, no, I don't think so. They're a scatty lot.
0:13:56 > 0:13:57Very scatty lot.
0:13:57 > 0:14:01I've known lots of them, and most of them are very scatty.
0:14:01 > 0:14:05And don't think about the household bills as...
0:14:05 > 0:14:09It's not really the same as floating an issue and all that carry-on.
0:14:09 > 0:14:12LUDOVIC: One of the...of the many books you've written,
0:14:12 > 0:14:14one of the most famous, I suppose,
0:14:14 > 0:14:18and for which you're most widely known, is The Meaning Of Treason
0:14:18 > 0:14:20and The New Meaning Of Treason.
0:14:20 > 0:14:22Why were you particularly interested in that?
0:14:22 > 0:14:24Was that as a result of the Nuremberg Trials, or what?
0:14:24 > 0:14:28No, it began before the Nuremberg Trials, I think.
0:14:28 > 0:14:34It was that I had used to...
0:14:34 > 0:14:37work on the farm during the war
0:14:37 > 0:14:43and then I used to come in and have one glass of gin and tonic water
0:14:43 > 0:14:47and turn on the wireless to hear James Joy...er, William Joyce.
0:14:47 > 0:14:50James Joyce would have been quite different!
0:14:50 > 0:14:52- William Joyce. - Lord Haw-Haw.
0:14:52 > 0:14:54Yes, Lord Haw-Haw.
0:14:54 > 0:14:58And, then, when he was brought up for trial,
0:14:58 > 0:15:02The New Yorker asked me to do the trial
0:15:02 > 0:15:07and to do Amery's, and I got fascinated by the subject.
0:15:07 > 0:15:09Now I can hardly bear to hear of spies,
0:15:09 > 0:15:11because I've just had too many of them,
0:15:11 > 0:15:13and, of course, it's changed.
0:15:13 > 0:15:17There used to be the odd cock-eyed idealist,
0:15:17 > 0:15:22and most of their suppositions were, as it happened, wrong.
0:15:22 > 0:15:28But now...the spies who are employed
0:15:28 > 0:15:33are mostly professionals who might have robbed banks or anything else.
0:15:33 > 0:15:37They're the people who really get hold of the stuff and sell it.
0:15:37 > 0:15:39And it's not interesting any more to me, to my mind.
0:15:39 > 0:15:44LUDOVIC: Well, now, coming up to the present, are you still...?
0:15:44 > 0:15:48You write columns, I know, but are you still writing books?
0:15:48 > 0:15:51Well, I'm trying to finish a book.
0:15:51 > 0:15:56I've had a great deal of difficulty with my eyes,
0:15:56 > 0:15:58because I've got double cataract.
0:15:58 > 0:16:03And I've had various illnesses.
0:16:03 > 0:16:07And my work has been interrupted.
0:16:07 > 0:16:10But I'm two-thirds through a novel.
0:16:10 > 0:16:13LUDOVIC: How do you write? With a typewriter or in longhand?
0:16:13 > 0:16:17No, it's maddening. I can't see a typewriter any longer.
0:16:17 > 0:16:24I write just with a, um... I write with a big book
0:16:24 > 0:16:27and my writing pad supported on the big book.
0:16:27 > 0:16:28And I get along all right.
0:16:28 > 0:16:31LUDOVIC: And are you able still to read quite a lot?
0:16:31 > 0:16:35Oh, yes. I can read. If I have the book here
0:16:35 > 0:16:38and my close, near spectacles,
0:16:38 > 0:16:42I can read. I can read much more slowly than I did,
0:16:42 > 0:16:45but I do read it.
0:16:45 > 0:16:48Nobody has caught me out yet, reviewing a book that I haven't read.
0:16:48 > 0:16:51LUDOVIC: What do you read mostly?
0:16:52 > 0:16:59What do I read? Well, I read a great deal of poetry.
0:16:59 > 0:17:03And I read a certain amount of modern fiction
0:17:03 > 0:17:06but with growing despair,
0:17:06 > 0:17:09though I like some modern writers very much.
0:17:09 > 0:17:11I like that Polish woman who writes about India,
0:17:11 > 0:17:13with the unpronounceable name.
0:17:13 > 0:17:16Mrs Prawala...isn't it? Or something like that.
0:17:16 > 0:17:19- That's a very good writer. - Do you ever watch television?
0:17:19 > 0:17:22Quite... Very often.
0:17:22 > 0:17:26I asked you that because you've had a swipe at television interviewers,
0:17:26 > 0:17:29Dame Rebecca, as you have at many...
0:17:29 > 0:17:32You look surprised, so let me just remind you what you said.
0:17:32 > 0:17:36In an interview in the Sunday Telegraph a few years ago,
0:17:36 > 0:17:38you spoke of television interviewers,
0:17:38 > 0:17:42"putting some minister involved in a crisis through his paces.
0:17:42 > 0:17:45"A man who has never borne responsibility
0:17:45 > 0:17:49"is giving hell to a man who is bearing responsibility
0:17:49 > 0:17:51"of a specially onerous sort".
0:17:51 > 0:17:55Now, those aren't exactly the views of a radical writer, are they?
0:17:55 > 0:17:58- More, perhaps, of a Colonel Blimp. - No, certainly not!
0:17:58 > 0:18:00Certainly not!
0:18:00 > 0:18:02Why would that...? Now, this is absurd,
0:18:02 > 0:18:05because this would apply
0:18:05 > 0:18:10to any Prime Minister and any Minister for Employment.
0:18:10 > 0:18:14LUDOVIC: But no politician has to appear on television
0:18:14 > 0:18:15if he doesn't want to.
0:18:15 > 0:18:19What chance have they? What chance would they have with their own party,
0:18:19 > 0:18:21if they didn't have television...
0:18:21 > 0:18:25make television appearances?
0:18:25 > 0:18:30- It's practically compulsory. - Looking back on your life,
0:18:30 > 0:18:33what is the book, or what are the things you've written,
0:18:33 > 0:18:36that you would most like to last?
0:18:36 > 0:18:39I don't care much about which book.
0:18:39 > 0:18:45My best work, some of my best work, has been done purely ephemerally.
0:18:45 > 0:18:52I mean, in newspapers, in reviews, because of various circumstances.
0:18:52 > 0:18:57My husband was ill for a very great...for a number of years,
0:18:57 > 0:19:02during which I really couldn't undertake any long, long work.
0:19:02 > 0:19:04Er...
0:19:04 > 0:19:07And I think that if you...
0:19:07 > 0:19:12if you want to read what Europe was like before the Second World War,
0:19:12 > 0:19:16the Balkans was like, I think Black Lamb And Grey Falcon
0:19:16 > 0:19:19is quite a useful book.
0:19:19 > 0:19:23I also think I wrote a very good life when there was no other in English,
0:19:23 > 0:19:26oddly, you will be surprised to hear, of St Augustine,
0:19:26 > 0:19:28which I think is really quite a good book.
0:19:28 > 0:19:29And, um...
0:19:31 > 0:19:33..I like one or two of my novels.
0:19:33 > 0:19:36But as for lasting, I don't know if the universe is going to last,
0:19:36 > 0:19:40- so what of it? - Dame Rebecca, thank you very much.