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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The Book Show · How Maggie O'Farrell's inner 'neek' came out with Land · 14 Jun 2026 podcast

What on earth are you thinking?

And to say clearly, in a very neekish way, there is one clause in the novel that takes you right back to the Ice Age in Ireland.

I was so happy that I managed to get it in because I thought there's only one tiny clause in one sentence, but it does go right back to the glaciers when they were covering Ireland at one point.

Oh, that sounds very arrogant if I said yes, I do.

I don't know.

All I know is that I had an unusual experience with this book in that as soon as I had the first sentence, I mean, I suppose I'd been thinking about it for a long time, about these two ancestors of mine, and I couldn't really see a way into it as a novel.

I couldn't work out how to...

where to start in the story and my road into it in a sense.

And then I was on a train going from Belfast to Dublin and it was delayed and I was looking out at Ireland and somehow, I don't know why, the first sentence just came into my head.

His father was ever a man of few words.

And as soon as I had that sentence, it was like a key turning in a lock and I could just see, I could see the novel unrolling before me.

And I just, I knew my way along that road.

It was really strange.

And that is, you know, I think all novels that you write are different and the ideas come very differently and they have a very different gestation.

And this one, certainly, I mean, I very rarely have the beginning of a book.

I usually come around, I usually find that halfway through or so.

So this one was very different in that way.

So it just kind of unrolled and I just knew these things had to happen.

I knew that there was going to be some emigration.

There were going to be a few boats.

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