Maggie O’Farrell

That's a terrible idea.

So, you know, I just, I would kind of come close and I think, no, no, I can't.

And then I'd have it again.

And I actually wrote three other books so as not to write Hamlet.

And then I look back when I kind of finished, I wrote a memoir and I finished my memoir and I sort of gave myself a talking to and I said, you know, either you have to give this a go or you've just got to forget about it.

You can't keep on buying more books about Shakespeare and then changing your mind.

So I just thought, I just need to plunge in.

I just need to do it.

And I knew that I had to start with Hamlet, had to be putting the boy front and centre.

And so I just wrote this thing one day that just said a boy's coming down a flight of stairs.

And somehow it was, I don't know, it was like a key turning in a lock.

It was the right time in my life and it was the right point in the story.

But it was like, you know, I did.

And that's partly why I don't name Shakespeare in the book, just because, I mean, partly because I wanted people to see him as a human, not as a literary icon.

But

But also because I literally could not write a sentence like William Shakespeare came down the stairs and had breakfast.

I just think, oh my God, what am I doing?

No, it is.

I had an extraordinary teacher at school, Mr Henderson, he was called, and I'm not saying that age 16 I heard about the existence of Hamnet and I thought, one day I'm going to write a novel, but...

I was just instantly fascinated by the similarity of the names.