A CONVERSATION WITH DAVID DAICHES.(Interview)

WHEN I RECORDED the conversation from which these extracts have been edited and arranged, David Daiches was in his eighty-eighth year, retired from his most distinguished career as a university teacher of English, and probably the most senior literary critic and man of letters to enter the new millennium. In a world so much surrendered to jargon, technology and superficiality, his words remain subversive and refreshing and I felt they were worth recording.

It is occasionally worth saying things that perhaps seem obvious, because the obvious is always most easily overlooked. Sometimes we need to be reminded that, as Professor Daiches says, "These things are interesting, poems and novels and plays are interesting, because they illuminate human situations in a way that is convincing and moving. And unless you can communicate that fact to your students you miss the whole point of the exercise."

Hugh MacDiarmid once told me that David Daiches saved his life. MacDiarmid had been giving a talk at Downing College in Cambridge, where, he said, at that time the only alcoholic drink allowed on the premises was sherry. He frowned. "I don't know whether you know this, but sherry is a kind of wine." It didn't sit easily on his stomach. He said, "In any case, there were about five hundred bottles of sherry consumed that evening ..." And afterwards, he was feeling more than a little queasy. Then he remembered that his old friend David Daiches was nearby, at Trinity. He managed to get there, and Daiches produced a bottle of malt whisky, which they drank together. "That settled my stomach!" said MacDiarmid. When I recollected this to Professor Daiches he smiled and confirmed it: "That's right," he said. "It was Glenmorangie. I've never seen a man more delighted to see it. He said, `Thank God it isn't sherry!'"

I knew David Daiches before he acted as the external reader for my PhD thesis on MacDiarmid's later poetry. I contacted him afterwards to ask if he could give me advice about how best to turn it from an academic work to a publishable book. I remember his friendly and prompt reply, that he would be happy to do so, let's meet. At that moment he said he didn't have his notes on my thesis to hand but he could tell me from memory that in the sentence that ran from page 253 to page 254 there was a mixed metaphor that was simply intolerable.

Of course he was right. His encouragement, friendship and example have always been exactly as right and as reliable. The conversation that follows is published with Professor Daiches' kind permission and approval.

Alan Riach: David, you're in your eighties now ...

David Daiches: Yes. I was born in 1912.