Maggie O’Farrell

They wanted just to have British people working on it.

But they very quickly got into a lot of difficulty because, of course, the language is very complicated.

There are lots of different dialects and rivers and towns and mountains all have different names and different dialects and often have different names in Irish from one side of the island, one side of a mountain to the other.

And I think also I've read that the Ordnance Survey would set up their trig point and spend a lot of time getting it absolutely accurate and then come down the mountain and go to sleep in their camps.

And during the night, the Irish would move the trig point just a few miles.

few feet which I love the act of rebellion it really made me laugh every time I read about it so the first set of maps were a bit of a disaster and they took decades rather than the couple of years that they had they had planned for so when they did their second revisions they decided that it was time to bring in some Irish to work as translators and also it was kind of local civilian assistants they were called and that's what my great great grandfather was who was termed a labourer but actually when you actually see his work he was

very, very well educated, could write beautifully and survey and describe things and translate.

But I think it must have been very complicated, I think, for him to be working for the British Army.

I imagine it was a source of shame and probably opprobrium from a lot of other people.

But in a way, you know, I think...

The maps wouldn't... There wouldn't be so much Irish culture and language and history preserved on those maps had people like my great-great-grandfather not worked on them.

Because without people like him, without men like him, they would never have got accurate translations and the names would have been completely anglicised and there would have been a lot of culture and things like sacred wells and...

ancient burial grounds wouldn't have been marked possibly so I don't know I think it's complicated and I would love to talk to him about what it was like and how it felt but I can't so that's what anyway so the imagined dialogue I would have wanted to have with him I wrote a book instead

I think so.

I mean, I'm not much of a planner, either in life or in fiction.

I don't know if that shocks you, Will.

But I don't really plan.

I don't plan a book before I start, usually.

And I kind of plan it as I go along.

And I research things as I go along.