It is rare to meet a man as interesting as David Campbell; rarer still to be given access to his rich and vibrant history. But Minstrel Heart, David’s memoir, gives you the opportunity to join David on a journey through his childhood in wartime Fraserburgh, to a holiday job with a life-changing conclusion, through a pivotal role as a BBC radio producer, and finally to his international career as an acclaimed storyteller.
We sat down with David one afternoon to discuss Minstrel Heart, love, poets and storytelling, and the exhilarating adventures that have shaped his life.
What drew you to storytelling?
I think I was born a storyteller. When I was very little, maybe two or three, my aunt came to visit our house when my mother was ill, and I was incessantly telling her stories. And then, when I was a little older, I was always organising performances. So, I always was captivated by stories and poetry, even when I was quite young.
Were there particular stories that you liked to tell?
When I reached an age that I liked reading, I was in love with Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn – the rebel characters. Then, of course, at that age, we were also reading Richmal Compton’s ‘Just William’ – they were bandits and outlaws.
When I was about 12, I also had a gang, and the gang had a quarry. It was amazing – paradise! We not only built huts, but had Olympic games, performances. They would sit in the hut, and I would sit at the fire, some distance away, and I would tell stories – I’d have been 12. So, I was telling stories, some I’d read and some I invented. Then at school, I loved debating and drama club.
Did you think, at the time, that one day you would be known for storytelling?
No, because at that time there was not such a vogue for storytelling in the settled community. It wasn’t until I got to know travellers, like Duncan Williamson and Sheila Stewart, that I really knew about the life and living of a storyteller. And, of course, Donald Smith at the Storytelling Centre – he was a great champion of drama and stories.
Is that what drew you to radio? Because it was a way for people to tell stories.
Yes, it did. I loved radio. When we were young, of course, it was the thing. Funnily enough, my job in radio was offered to me by the beautiful Sinclair Aitken, who was head of broadcasting in Scotland at the time, because, when asked a question about my life, it gave me the opportunity to tell a very strange story.
It was about the time I spent with a character, whom I knew to be Mike, in a fabricated boarding school. This man turned out to be Lord Brendan Bracken, Churchill’s Minister of Information during the War.
I arrived at a place on the banks of Loch Lomond, and was met by a red-haired man that, at the time, would be nearly 50 – I thought it was the butler! I asked after Ian, who was my companion, and the red-haired man replied, ‘He’s having a b-b-b-bath.’ I knocked on Ian’s door and he came dripping out of the bath, and when I asked who that was, he said, ‘That’s the person we’re looking after – Mike.’
A uniform was laid out in my bedroom: red stockings, white shorts for dinner and grey shorts for lessons. It was a world that was entirely alien to me. It was often difficult because Lord Bracken, in his guise, hated authority and would say ugly things like, ‘It’s a p-p-pity he’s got to eat like a m-myxomatosisised rabbit’. So, the atmosphere was tense and miserable. And because he was reckoned to be damaging himself by drinking and smoking, if we caught him, we were to cane him. Which was, again, completely alien to our tradition. We were used to the strap in Scottish schools. Caning seemed so miserable and undignified. However, I was very fond of him in his way because we got to know one another, and when he died, not long after, he left enough money for my mother to buy a house, for my brother’s medical fees, for my university fees.
When the whole thing blew apart – a tutor appeared and said, ‘Do you know who that is?’ and when I said I did not, he said, ‘Well, that is Lord Brendan Bracken’ – it was a shock. This man also said that if the press got a hold of it, every kind of implication would be drawn. The truth was, the only thing that was awkward was that he was clearly a masochistic character. He didn’t ever, in any way, meddle with any of us. Of course, it was a turning point in my life; an important education of the heart.
There are a lot of big characters in the book – you mention Sorley McLean, Norman MacCaig, Seamus Heaney...
I was very lucky – I belong to a group called The Heretics, which was run by a young rebel called Stewart MacGregor, and through this I was able to get to know various poets. When I became a producer at the BBC, I was able to invite them to come and read their poetry. I was thirled to poetry, so I had landed in paradise.
There are stories about them all. I knew George MacKay Brown very well – I went to visit him in Orkney; he was a delightful man. But they were all, in their own way, fascinating men. Iain Crichton Smith was extraordinary. I loved him. I remember on one occasion, visiting him in Oban, leaning out of the window, and giving a sermon to the people on the street below – I knew his mother was very religious, you see – and he was laughing so much he was literally rolling on the floor. The more he wriggled, the more I preached.
Sorley McLean was an amazing man, my goodness. I remember taking Duncan Williamson, the traveller, to visit him, and hearing Sorley say, ‘I wonder what it was that made David Campbell a streaker.’ And that was true, because I remember at New Year at Sorley’s, I’d thrown off all of my clothes, run out into the snow and came running back in, and they hardly paid any attention. But Duncan wrote a poem about it, which is in the book, called ‘The Skye Streaker’.
What inspires you to write poetry?
When I was young, I would write about streams and nature, but soon I fell in love, at the age of 12, to a fair-haired girl named Izzy, with long pigtails and blue eyes. It had all the sweet, unbelievable innocence of first love, when the height of delight and ecstasy was to hold her hand as I walked home. I wrote some verses for her, and subsequent girlfriends throughout my teens. I’ve had a propensity for falling in love all of my life.
I think that’s what the book feels like to me, an ode to all kinds of love.
It’s never really been possible for me not to love. I can love one person, but I can’t not love others. Which, as I went along in life, was a bit tricky, as you would imagine. But I think I was born like that. My brother was a faithful person; one wife. My sister was a bit flirtatious when she was younger but when she married, that behaviour stopped. So I think I was born with a different gene. Even now, if I see people doing certain things, their behaviour takes me; I’m filled with affection.
You’ve talked a lot about the stories that are in the book. Were there any particularly happy memories you enjoyed revisiting?
There have been many happy times. I had a great time with Duncan touring the world, and now I have this caravan up in Glenuig. Being there with friends, with the sea and the sky, and the sky and the sea, makes now as happy as any other time.