Maggie O’Farrell

error and he went back to america before they realized and that story it was like someone had driven something through my innards you've changed that story slightly in the book but it actually has the emotional punch as you tell it in the novel well it's true that's because i based it on a real story and i just the idea of this one child having one parent and them not finding each other because of one tiny slip-up

No.

Well, there was an edict saying that the workhouse needed to be a terrible place in order to discourage people from going in, that they wanted people to work instead.

So they were deliberately structured to be a tortuous, terrible place to be.

I think when you read history books about the famine, I think it's a mixture of anger and just so much grief, you know, and just actual disbelief that something which seems sort of medieval could have happened so recently, you know, and was happening...

was supposedly governed by a country so close, but apparently it was of no interest to that country, or they didn't really care.

And the fact that Charles Trevelyan, who was in charge of famine relief in the British government, called the famine an act of God.

It was a form of punishment for an idle, ungrateful, unself-reliant people, were his exact words.

And a year after he wrote that, he was given a knighthood for his work in the Irish Famine.

Yes.

I mean, you know, I'm hesitant about to say that.

I know how bad it sounds in my very British accent to say yes.

It's not very British, in fairness.

I don't know what it is.

My accent's a bit vague.

But yeah, I suppose, I mean, I think I've never felt...

I think what happened was I was offered an OBE for services to literature and I was very grateful.

I was very grateful and honoured to be offered it.

But it was about the same time that I was researching The Famine and I also knew that Charles Trevelyan held a knighthood

And I refused it.