Dannie: Leo is an audacious human being and I think that creeps into everything he does. Nye Bevan once said to him: “Leo, be irreverent.” Well, Leo didn’t need anyone to tell him to speak his mind. He has made close friends, but he’s also made lots of enemies. I think it’s partly a Welsh thing. My mother was very beautiful and warm, but she was the most tactless person.
“I have to tell you…” followed by some intensely personal remark, is something I’ve heard in the family all my life.
Leo taught me the alphabet. “A stands for armaments, the capitalists’ pride. B stands for bolshie, the thorn in their side…” I used to listen to my brothers arguing about Marx and Freud, and pick up what I could. Leo never made allowances for age. There was a quiz in the Cardiff News Chronicle and he’d read it out to me — I’d be about 8 to his 15: “What were Nelson’s last words?” Then he’d thunder: “You don’t know? You really don’t know?” We argued all the time, about almost anything, but it’s difficult now. Leo has been deaf for a while but it’s got worse, and you can’t argue with someone who is deaf.
Our father managed a cinema in Aberavon, and when Leo was five or six he’d stand up on stage and announce the films for the following week. He just enjoyed being looked at. Later, around the time of the Spanish civil war, he’d stand on a soapbox in Llandaff Fields and shout about unemployment. To me, as a schoolboy, the politics of Leo and his friends were a big influence, but then, as I got older, I realised I was really only interested in making poems.
I have a great deal of admiration for Leo’s stamina. He made a lot of difference within the Wilson government and he applies that same doggedness to his writing. It took him years to reform the laws on divorce and homosexuality. These weren’t issues that were going to win him much glory, but he was fearless.I don’t find Leo easy, but I think he’d be far from boring to live with. He’s a man of strong opinions and he likes to express them, irrespective of the fact you may have contrary views. And I am always the youngest. My opinion counts less than his, even now. Not so long ago he said to me: “Do you know who Jubal [mentioned in Genesis; a musician descended from Cain] is? And when I said yes, he snorted: “You know!”
Leo was the chap who could fix things, too. He was competent in every way, not like a fluffy poet. When my wife was alive, he’d often address things to her rather than me because he thought as a scholar she was more knowledgable, which wasn’t always the case. I don’t have an inferiority complex, but I acknowledge that he is far more educated than I am. I’ve only had a medical education. He has read every word Daniel Defoe ever wrote; the only one I’ve read is Robinson Crusoe. I think the fact that he continues to write is to do with those moments of paralysis, where you have to write another book to prove to yourself that you’re alive My last novel was long-listed for the Booker, but even if Leo was impressed he wouldn’t tell me. My greatest encouragement came from my brother Wilfred, a deeply caring man and a huge influence on both of us. When I showed Wilfred anything, he’d say: “Wonderful!” He thought everything was wonderful. “Want a lift to Cardiff?” “Wonderful!” “Would you like some more cheese?” “Wonderful!” He was the nicest member of the family and we miss him.
Leo was very fond of my wife. We’d all get together for dinner occasionally, but mostly our worlds were separate. We’re no closer now we’re older. I suppose his deafness makes it that much harder, because he can’t laugh at my weak jokes and I feel I have to defer to him because of his age. Maybe it was always a little bit like that. Leo could give you a list of revolutionaries who are second sons. In fairy stories, the youngest appear to lose out. But have you noticed? Somehow they always win in the end.
Leo: Old age, like adolescence, is a very difficult time. People say: “I feel 21.” Well, I don’t. I feel 90. My physical incapacities are a constant reminder of my age, and only my wife saves me from them. She tends me and makes sure I keep on working. Dannie is seven years younger than me and I think of him as a boy. He was the Benjamin of the family and he still is. He retains the innocent eye of a little child.
I believe that one’s position within the family constellation is all-important. Older brothers and sisters influence their younger siblings, whereas the youngest do not influence their elders very much. Dannie was influenced by me, and we were both influenced by our older brother, Wilfred, who died last year, to my grievous loss. The biggest difference between us is that I knew our grandparents. One grandmother was an Orthodox Jew, the other a secular feminist. Their influence on me was enormous and they gave me a very different sense of identity from Dannie’s.
Dannie is regarded as one of the finest Welsh poets of the century, and there’s nothing synthetic about that. But it means he has identified more closely with the Welsh culture rather than the Jewish. He calls himself a Welsh Jew. When people call me a Welsh Jew, I say: “Don’t be silly. Being born in the stable doesn’t make you a horse.”
My father, a splendid man, left me a great deal, including his debts. He was always going to make a fortune. He had the dreams, but not the ability to succeed. He ran a little cinema — it was all a fantasy world — and Dannie picked up on the romanticism. When he was about five he used to jump into bed with me in the morning and ask me to read from Palgrave’s Golden Treasury. He was so empathetic, he used to cry when I read Matthew Arnold’s The Forsaken Merman. Fortunately, Dannie was also influenced by Wilfred and me, and that dose of realism resulted in his poetry being not only romantic, but tinged with an almost brutal pragmatism.
He needed to distinguish himself in his own way, and he has, by finding something that we couldn’t do. In some ways he was more ambitious than me. He wanted to be a poet of excellence, and that is a greater ambition than to be a mere lawyer or politician.
Dannie is gentle. All his life he’s made friends. People either like me or hate me, but Dannie attracts affection. I’ve needed a thick carapace to protect me from the antagonism I’ve aroused. If I know I’m right, I’ll always say: “F*** off.” It means the friends I do have understand me. When Michael Foot visits, it’s like the dialogue of the deaf — he can’t see and I can’t hear. We put up with it because we love each other.
Contact with Dannie has always revolved around my older brother and our wives. My main concern at the moment with Dannie is that he keeps going, after the loss of his wife. Being a widower is very bleak. Until my first wife died, 10 years ago, I had never even been inside a supermarket. I had to go to one just to find out what people did.
Dannie had a different relationship with his wife. They worked together, they wrote books together, he never went anywhere without her. They were completely and utterly bound together. He was driving the car when she was killed, and although the accident wasn’t his fault, he has to deal not just with loss but with survivor guilt. It was difficult, God knows, for me to cope with my loss, but for him it is too much to bear.
The important thing is that he keeps writing. I’m terribly worried he’s given up, and that really is fatal. With courage, pain can be transmuted into something positive. It’s hard, but then just to live requires courage, particularly when you’re in your eighties. You are kept alive by work and love, and there are years of work left. Dannie can overcome this. He must transmute his grief, his pain, his tragedy into poetry and it may make him an even better poet. As it is, I suffer with him because my feelings for Dannie will always be paternalistic. To me, he’s still the kid brother.
