With Great Pleasure
is one of the best programmes on BBC Radio 4.
If you haven’t discovered it, do give it a try. The series asks
well-known names to pick prose and
poetry they love - so it’s a fantastic way to discover new writers and hear old favourites.
This week I got the chance to attend a recording of two forthcoming programmes at the BBC’s Broadcasting House. The shows featured two ultra-inspiring
women – the first, comedian and writer Natalie Haynes and the second, Vogue editor-in-chief Alexandra Shulman.
The programmes will both be broadcast in February so I don’t
want to give too much of the game away but Natalie Haynes’s selection included two
rare and exquisite readings by one of our most distinguished writers. Like the
rest of the audience, I couldn’t quite believe my eyes when he walked on to the
stage.
Then it was time for the second recording. I was fascinated
to hear Alexandra Shulman’s choices – not only because she is a brilliant
editor but because she is exactly the same generation as me. And sure enough,
listening to her choices (beautifully read by Tracy Wiles and Stella Gonet)
sent a shiver down my spine. Her favourites included Noel Streatfeild’s classic
White Boots, Dorothy Parker’s The Telephone Call, Rosamund Lehman’s Invitation to the Waltz and even Mediterranean Cookery by Elizabeth David.
Shulman recalled how the book took her straight back to her North London
childhood, in the days when her mother (the distinguished journalist Drusilla
Beyfus) would rush in from work and start cooking supper from scratch in their
tiny kitchen.
As the child of two journalists, Shulman said that when she
was growing up journalism seemed like very hard work for little remuneration.
But she loved reading journalists’ writing and the journalist she most admired
was Joan Didion, whose Play It As It Lays
was another of her (universally excellent) choices.
Shulman, dressed in a stylish bottle green velvet dress, was
surprisingly modest and self-effacing as she talked about the titles she’d selected.
Being asked to do the programme was, she said, “an incredible treat and
privilege.” Actually, being part of the audience was a treat and privilege
too.
PS. Alexandra Shulman’s debut novel about three friends who
graduate in the 1980s is out in paperback this week. Can We Still Be Friends (Fig Tree, £5.99)
