Open reel tape

  • This material is held at
  • Reference
      GB 133 FRD3/11/1/7
  • Dates of Creation
      [Early 1960]
  • Physical Description
      2 pieces: tape on plastic 7" reel, in original EMI plastic storage case; with loose note.

Scope and Content

Various readings by RD compiled by John Donat after his father's death. Identified as "JD presentation in Tunbridge", this tape was presumably made for a talk by John Donat about his father's poetry readings, and may well relate to an address he gave to the Kent and Sussex Poetry Society on 18 February 1960, entitled 'Poetry Workshop: the Voice of Robert Donat' (documented in FRD2/1/17).

The only poems identified by title are those which include brief introductions by RD himself; the readings are as follows: (1) ['Upon Westminster Bridge' by William Wordsworth]; (2) ['La Belle Dame Sans Merci'], and (3) ['When I have fears', both by John Keats]; (4) ['The Immortal Swan' fragment]; (5) 'Testing only', in which RD hopes for better weather, less asthma and BBC results; (6) 'The Way through the Woods' by Rudyard Kipling; (7) 'Stone fish Lake' by Whan Chei; (8) 'Futility' and (9) 'Greater Love', both by Wilfred Owen; (10) 'The Death Bed' by Siegfried Sassoon; (11) ['Bustopher Jones' and 'Jellicle Cats' from T.S. Eliot's Practical Cats], read to music; (12) ['Pompilia' extract from Browning's 'The Ring and the Book'; (13) Shakespeare anecdote and reading of the 'Dirge for Fidele' from Cymbeline; (14) Two Epitaphs (18th Century; introduced by RD); (15) introduction to and reading of 'Carol' by Jill Furse; (16) introduction to and reading of 'The Prayer of St Francis of Assisi'.

Duration: 48 minutes. With manuscript note of contents.

Arrangement

Transferred to cassette no. D63.