Funeral, i think it was 1965, seeing it on the television and just being told about the great man. The World Cup Final of 1966, where the nation stopped, and in our own household, my brother had a sort of flirtation with meningitis which was very dramatic, as you know, those can be fora minute, and then he was fine, thank goodness. But i watched the World Cup Final in a neighbours house and ijust remember in both those cases, in belfast, as i was, i was very aware of a national event, or at least it seemed to galvanise everybody and everything, and i was looking at images that said, the world is watching. Wow. And you mentioned belfast there. Some people, i think, are still surprised when they hear that you grew up in working class belfast. Uhhuh. And youve now written and directed a film called belfast. Uhhuh. How autobiographical a film is it . Well, its seen through the eyes of nine year old buddy. Its seen at 50 years distance from me. So inevitably, not everything happened absolut
So, this is radio drama studio. Hello, im john wilson. Welcome to this cultural life, a radio four podcast in which i ask leading creative figures about the influences and inspirations that have fired their artistic imagination. My guest in this episode is sir kenneth branagh. A huge talent, a star of stage and screen for more than four decades now. Hes an actor, director, writer and film maker whose credits range from hamlet to tenet, from henry v to thor. We spoke in the very atmospheric radio drama studio of bbc broadcasting house. Ken, welcome to this cultural life. Thank you. A show about cultural inspiration, cultural influences. What is your earliest cultural memory, do you think . Something that had a big impact . I think, early doors, i can remember Winston Churchills funeral, i think it was 1965, seeing it on the television and just being told about the great man. The World Cup Final of 1966, where the nation stopped, and in our own household, my brother had a sort of flirtat
you are fessing up, finally! i m fessing up. if berkshire county council wish to retain these and give them to some other shakespeare starved youngster, i m very pleased to hand them back! but. you know the thing that strikes me is they are in fantastic nick. you ve obviously looked after them very well. it also suggests they hadn t been borrowed or listened to or used before. this your sherlock holmes mind is correct! i was very. i read the sleeve notes copiously and then these two titles became rather important to me in the end, hamlet and henry v. did you study the record, did you learn the speeches? did you.? well, i sort of, i. speak along? speak along? i copied them a bit. i did a bit of. mimics olivier: 0, that this too, too solid flesh would melt, thaw and resolve itself into a dew! is a bad version if it! or gielgud doing his. he does a speech of hotspurs which goes, my liege, i did deny no prisoners. but i remember, when the fight was done, when i was dry
with rage and extreme toil, breathless and faint, leaning upon my sword, came there a certain lord, neat, and trimly dressed, fresh as a bridegroom. etc. that was, you know, you couldn t get it out of your system really. i bet if we overlaid that alongside the original, it would be very, very hard to tell the difference! i mean, you have been compared to olivier throughout your career, haven t you? yes, and partly because he, he. he. he was a role model. exactly, well, he was the inspiration, an actor, acting and directing films of shakespeare and so, yes, anybody who trod the same path was going to be compared, whether it was a worthy comparison or not but he was certainly an inspiration. some other people may have been compared but you, you really took the mantle, didn t you? i mean, it was for a while, it was the new olivier . was that, did it feel like a burden or was it flattering? i think i was too young to see it as flattery. i think it was more of a burden, i think it annoyed
english if i could borrow them. i liked the bright, shiny nature of them. i think i half heard in some distant part of my memory this name, olivier . anyway, i took them home and i was bowled over. already aware of sort of two extremes. in the olivier excerpts, which were from the soundtracks of the films, things like his account of hamlet s to be or not to be soliloquy which, in his brilliant film, has him atop a rocky outcrop, looking down onto the wild sea crashing against the rocks while he contemplate suicide. so he begins to be or not to be and goes through it, and william walton s music is soaring, shouting and trilling and supporting and the sound effects of the water and the wind and the waves. i mean, it s shakespeare plus a lot of bells and whistles in addition to olivier s beautiful voice. olivier: to be. or not to be. john gielgud by contrast, the ages of man being an account of his recital of great speeches from shakespeare that more