Maggie O’Farrell

speaker

1,785 appearances 8 recordings 7 series first heard Feb 2026 last heard 14 Jun

Maggie O’Farrell’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 8 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 7.

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Sara & Cariad's Weirdos Book Club · Land by Maggie O'Farrell with Maggie O'Farrell · 11 Jun 2026 podcast

But that's, I mean, those two details are such a tiny and irrelevant details to the whole disaster.

And obviously I knew a bit more, obviously, because of my background.

But yeah, so actually when you really look into it, it's so horrifying and it was so avoidable and so unnecessary.

And the thing that really, still really gets my goat is that John Trevelyan was...

appointed famine minister.

He was in the British government.

So he was famine relief minister and under his auspices, a million people died of starvation and upwards, probably more, and another further million emigrated.

He described it as an act of God for it was punishing an idle and ungrateful people.

And he was given the highest order of, he was not, I mean, I think he's a knight or he was knighted after.

So I still find that amazing.

I can't believe the British government hasn't revoked that knighthood because they should.

You know, when I was looking at the dates, when I went back and I found in the records my great-great-grandfather, Tomas, and I realised that he'd been employed by the Ordnance Survey in 1848.

And he'd been doing the revisions of maps of Ireland in the 1850s.

And I thought, hang on a second, what must that have been like?

you know revising them because it wasn't said in the notes that i could find why they needed to revise it but obviously you know the country had undergone this huge horrible change yeah you know it lost a fifth of its population through starvation and a further million had left and you know whole towns were wiped out whole villages and um you know all these estates had been redrawn and tenants had been thrown off and sent away to america and

And I just thought, you know, obviously that's why they had to revise the maps.

And what must that have been like to have lived through that terrible disaster and then have to, you know, would he have, would it have been, you know, it must have been upsetting to do it, but also it must have felt necessary to him, I imagine, to get it right, to set it down.

I think it was just interesting.

You know, I think there's been so many novels and films about emigrants, you know, people going to America and arriving.

And I think those novels and films are brilliant.

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