Christopher Hampton

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 7 January 1996

⏱️ 37 minutes

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Summary

The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is the writer Christopher Hampton. He'll be talking to Sue Lawley about his multiplicity of talents - after obtaining a first at Oxford he went straight to the Royal Court Theatre in London where he wrote several highly-regarded plays, among them The Philanthropist. He then went on to win an Oscar for his screenplay of the film Dangerous Liaisons, to translate the work of Ibsen and Chekhov, to write the book for Sunset Boulevard, and, most recently, to direct the film Carrington, which he also wrote.

[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]

Favourite track: Requiem: The Lachrymosa by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Book: A title by Marcel Proust Luxury: Pen and paper

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hello, I'm Krestey Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.
0:05.0	For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.
0:08.2	The program was originally broadcast in 1996, and the presenter was Sue Lolly. My castaway this week is a playwright. He has an impeccable pedigree. He wrote his first play at school and saw it performed by the University Dramatic Society while he was at Oxford. He got a first-class degree, went straight to the Royal Court and over the next seven years wrote plays
0:44.8	the philanthropist among them which are highly regarded in modern English theatre.
0:49.5	But that's only half the story.
0:51.0	Theatre alone has not been able to contain the talents of a man who's
0:54.5	since written many successful screenplays including dangerous liaisons for
0:58.6	which he won an Oscar, translated the works of Ibsen and Chekhov, written the book for Sunset Boulevard,
1:04.6	and most recently turned to directing films with Carrington, which he also wrote.
1:10.0	What I like to do, says the man who seems to have done it all, are things I haven't done before.
1:15.2	He is Christopher Hampton. What do you sound like, though, Christopher is a man who can't say no?
1:20.0	Is that more the case?
1:21.5	No, I don't think so. I have been known to say no from time to time, but I do probably err on the side of doing too much.
1:29.0	Is that because you're worried that the offers will stop coming? is it the sort of freelance mentality?
1:33.0	Not really because in my 20s when I was having a more ordered existence and living in London and working at the
1:39.6	Royal Court and turning in a play every couple of years. My agent, Margaret Ramsey, who was a legendary figure,
1:46.0	and a very important person in my life,
1:48.0	he used to ring me up once a week and say,
1:51.0	you must do more, you must do more, you can't just rest on your laurels you can't just
1:55.2	turn in these plays every couple of years you must think what else you want to do and slowly
1:59.7	this water torture got through to me but it was also also the case, wasn't it, that you and your good friend David Hare, also a playwright of course,
2:07.0	believed that it was impossible to survive as a playwright beyond the age of 30.
	...

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