Maggie O’Farrell

You know, I love looking at a map of places and particularly, you know, I think Ireland has got one of the best preserved pre-Christian pagan folkloric past, partly because possibly it was never invaded by the Romans.

So the sort of history and folklore and deities were never merged with the Roman.

So you can look at a map and you can...

Kind of guess what's happened or what kind of place it might be just from the names, which I find really thrilling.

Oh, yes.

And Wrath, of course, you know, Wrath appears everywhere.

And that means an old Iron Age hill fort.

Well, on the one hand, I wanted to write a book that was about a family who are endeavouring to survive and thrive and come out from the long shadow of the Great Hunger.

But also, on the other hand, I was interested in trying to tell the whole story of Ireland right from the very first settlers, just via one peninsula and all the people, all the different waves of people who've lived upon it.

You know, I suppose I liked the contrast between the huge, vast timescale of a landscape and the sort of almost butterfly lives of humans who live upon it.

Well, I think if a book feels easy to write, it's going to be a bad book, Pat.

I think you need to set yourself new hurdles.

And I was really apprehensive or nervous about writing this, but partly because I was worried that I'm not Irish enough.

I could hear myself in my very British accent thinking about this and talking about this book.

So I was nervous about that.

But in the end, it was just a story that wouldn't go away.

It was just something that kept tugging at my sleeve.

Yeah, I just couldn't get my great-great-grandfather out of my head.

And I just wanted to explore his story and his life and his work.

He was.