Tag: peter quartermain

In this interview between Peter Quartermain and Basil Bunting, conducted on 21 November 1984, Quartermain asks Bunting three main questions. The first prompt is to “tell me about going to Russia or trying to go to Russia in 1919.” The second is to “tell me about your relations with, was it, Ramsay McDonald,” leader of Labour Party. The third question, which receives the most cursory response, is simply, “then at some point you went to Rapallo, when?” This conversation, which is both biographical and political in scope, pairs well with additional recordings of Bunting, also available on the SoundBox Collection website, that follow a more literary bent.—Klara du Plessis

On 20 November 1984, Peter Quartermain conducted an interview with Basil Bunting. This forms part of a larger series of interviews, some of which are also available on the SoundBox Collection website. For the most part, this interview functions as a series of informational queries, requests for the identification of names, how Bunting met certain people, and where some obscure quotations are from in his writing. As Quartermain jokes, “I’m digging up all kinds of rubbish.” A lot of the time, Bunting does not know the answers himself, but occasionally he launches into literary anecdote when, in Quartermain’s words, “we’re still on books. Didn’t I say this would be painless.”—Klara du Plessis

This interview between Peter Quartermain and Basil Bunting was conducted on 20 November 1984. It forms part of a series of interviews that are partially accessible on the SoundBox Collection website. Quartermain labels “these [as] silly questions or small questions,” mostly asking for information and checking facts about Bunting’s life and writing. Interestingly, Quartermain is able to correct Bunting on his answers, having done a lot of research of his own and memory being fickle at best; this repartee makes for important commentary on fidelity and the oral history interview.—Klara du Plessis