Colm Tóibín

Yeah, probably 10 years later, I'd settled down to do it.

But the minute he told me, and so you want to be very careful around me.

Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right.

Well, I drifted into Barcelona when I was 20 years old

I did my final exams in Dublin for my BA and I decided to go to Barcelona.

It took a lot of convincing at home, I can tell you.

I stayed there for those three years of 75 to 78.

And then a decade later, I began to go back in the summer.

Back more in the winter.

So I've spent a lot of time there over the years.

So, for example, in the story, the Catalan girls, where the three women in Argentina come back because they've been left a house.

It's that lovely idea, you know, that you're a certain age, you're in your 60s, and someone leaves you a house that you remember from childhood.

You get a chance to go back to that house.

The thing is, I know that house because I know that part of the Pyrenees.

I know what the summer is like there.

But I found myself using other things.

For example, I

I went to see, there was an American photographer called Deborah Turbeville.

She had a big house in San Miguel de Allende in Mexico.

But she told me, oh, yeah, I've got beautiful rooms.