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Chapter 1: What is the main topic of Martin Doyle's latest book?
The Last Word on Today FM.
Joining us for the Culture Club today is the books editor of the Irish Times. You've met him previously on the programme when he wrote the acclaimed Dirty Linen, The Troubles in My Home Place, which was shortlisted for the Irish Nonfiction Book of the Year in that year. And he's just published a hosting, Interviews with Irish Writers. between 1991 and this year.
Martin Doyle, thank you very much for being with us here on The Last Word for The Culture Club. Tell us a little bit about this new book and what's in it.
Thanks, Matt. So it's interviews that I've done over the course of my career, a bit of a retrospective, I guess, with 60 Irish writers dating back to, I don't know, Patricia Scanlon, Marion Keys in the early 90s for the Irish Post in London.
through people like, I don't know, Brian Moore, Pat McKay when The Butcher Boy came out in 92, Roddy Doyle just before he won the Booker Prize for Paddy Clark, ha ha ha, in 93, all the way up to, say, Sebastian Barry. That's the only one that's not yet published. It's about his career, but it also includes
you know, mention of his forthcoming novel, which is the third in the trilogy set during the, in the aftermath of the US Civil War, which was coming out in September. But Jan Carson, Sally Rooney, a lot of the big names. In fact, I'd say we did a poll last year of asking 60 people for their best books, best fiction of the 21st century so far.
And I think the authors of 22 of the top 25 are in my book.
when you went back and you read, particularly the ones from the 1990s, were you tempted to? Did you edit and revise them? How was it going back and looking at how they were written up that far back?
Interesting question, Matt. There's a journalist question. Um... If I was being absolutely honest, I would say there was one potential libel that I thought was probably best not to repeat. Probably shouldn't even say that much, should I? So you took it out. I took that out. That's wise. Generally, no. Like there was a little say.
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Chapter 2: How does Martin Doyle reflect on his career as a journalist?
So it was kind of mid-market. So I could do fairly highbrow stuff as well as more maybe commercial or popular fiction that I maybe, you know, wouldn't find a home in the Irish Times so much. The interviews that I've done more recently for the Irish Times, I can go longer. So like interviews with Clare Keegan or... Sally Rooney were more along 4,000 words.
So you can kind of do, you can go into a lot more depth if you like. And maybe the more recent books are kind of career retrospectives where I'm talking to Colm to Bean about his entire career or Sebastian Barry about his entire career. That's a different kind of thing than just talking about one specific text.
What are you looking for in an interview with an author?
I guess, you know, you're looking for something that surprises you. You're looking for something new. Like, you know, if somebody pitches me a feature about Ulysses, which they inevitably do, particularly with Bloomsday around the corner.
I should say here for listeners, there was an eye roll when you said that.
This is radio. Thank you, Matt. You know, like there are kind of hardy perennials in journalism and there are kind of things that crop up all the time. You know, I've been doing this for 35 years. I don't want to be reading the same stuff. And I don't think readers want to be reading the same stuff. So say when I interviewed Sally Rooney, there'd been a lot about her politics.
And we did touch on that. We touched on Gaza. Of course we did. But, you know, what struck me reading her latest novel, Intermezzo, was... Something that I'd kind of noticed elements of in her previous fiction, and that was, you know, religion and Catholicism, which, you know, Sally Rooney is family a Marxist novelist. And guess what? She's a Catholic Marxist.
I probably, you know, had the lazy presumption that because her mom ran an art center in Castle Bar, her dad was a trade unionist. I probably, you know, had the lazy assumption that she was she'd grown up in a kind of a post-Catholic family. family or household. But actually, you know, she'd gone to, I think, a convent school. She'd done the sacraments.
She'd had a probably pretty similar childhood to my own. And I find that really interesting talking to Sally about, you know, her kind of coming to the realisation that when she had kind of maybe rejected Catholicism as a teenager because she understandably rejected its teaching on... on sex, on abortion, contraception, divorce and so forth, those kind of social teachings.
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Chapter 3: What challenges did Martin face while revising past interviews?
Let's hear a little bit of The Smiths, This Charming Man.
I guess I'll let you make a man of me, yeah. When in this charming car, this charming man. I count the life's complexity when the leather runs smooth on the passenger seat. That is still a great, great track.
You have lots of stories from growing up. You have a friend, Davey, who used to take music from or be gifted when he was done with them.
Yeah, so I guess when I first started getting into music, I had a friend, Davey, from Lurgan up north where I grew up, and he sort of helped me with my musical education, and he would record tapes, you know, home taping as killing music. But yeah, he would do... And charge you for it. And charge me for it, yeah, the type, yes.
LAUGHTER
So a double edged blessing. But still, yeah. He gave you stuff like Visage albums and Depeche Mode. Again, gave wouldn't be quite correct. He sold me some of his kind of records that he was no longer had a passion for. But, you know, to be fair, yeah, he did sort of introduce me to having a record collection of my own.
And very 80s stuff, everything but the girl and the Blue Nile and things like that.
To be fair, it was the 80s, Matt. Yes. But yeah, there was another friend, Paul McAdam, who I think moved over to Manchester and got involved in the music scene. And he genuinely kind of introduced me to bands that I hadn't heard of, like everything but the girl, the Pogues, who had just started out, and the Blue Nile, who I absolutely love.
The Blue Nine albums are still worth listening to. A Walk Across the Rooftops is still a brilliant album.
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Chapter 4: What insights does Martin offer about interviewing authors?
There's always brilliant characterisation. You know, their thrillers undercut are actually enhanced by a brilliant comic timing and it just hits the spot for me.
Now, for actors, you've gone for Daniel Day-Lewis and Saoirse Ronan. So let's just hear a little bit of Daniel Day-Lewis starring as Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood. And in this clip, Plainview takes his revenge on Eli, played by Paul Dano.
It was Paul who was chosen. He found me and told me about your land just before. Why are you talking about Paul? I did what your brother couldn't. Don't say this to me. I broke you and I beat you. It was Paul. He told me about you. He's the prophet. He's the smart one. He knew what was there and he found me to take it out of the ground to know what the funny thing is. Listen, listen, listen.
I paid him $10,000 cash in hand. Like that. He has his own company now. Prosperous little business, three wells producing, $5,000 a week. Stop crying, you sniveling ass. Stop your nonsense. You're just the afterbirth, Eli. No. Slithered out on your mother's filth. No. They should have put you in a glass jar on the mantelpiece. Tide, where were you? Who was nursing you, poor Eli?
None of Bandit's sows? That land has been had. Nothing you can do about it. It's gone. It's had. If you would just take this lease, Daniel. Drain it. Drain it, Eli, you boy.
Daniel Day-Lewis in one of his most traumatic roles. There were many. Why did you pick him in Sir Sharona?
Like, you know, he's one of these actors who's never done a bad film. Going right the way back, I'm not sure which is the first one of his I saw, probably My Left Foot. His portrayal of Christy Brown was astounding. Did that win an Oscar? It did. He won an Oscar. But, you know, the boxer, just everything that he did, I just think he has such a presence and also so versatile.
Like, you don't get the sense that he's doing the same shtick every time. The kind of method acting or whatever, like, you know, whatever it is, it delivers. And then Saoirse Ronan? You know, again, you know, I think the first thing I saw her in was Atonement. Was that her first film? I should have done my research before I came in. But, you know, she was magnificent in it.
she would have been in earlier ones even as a child yeah I'm thinking of one action action movie she did the name of it escapes me but yeah she's matured incredibly as an actor yeah so I guess you know as an Irish actor you know she's probably I think the best of her generation that's all I'd say no you've picked us a favourite play as the Stuart of Christendom by Sebastian Barry who you mentioned earlier why have you picked this one
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Chapter 5: How does Martin describe his musical influences?
As an editor, you're conscious of space on a page. I'm constrained by time. So very quickly, you've picked one non-American TV show. This is England, which was initially a movie and then three TV series by Shane Meadows.
Yeah. So again, I guess, like I mentioned earlier on, you know, my kind of passion or predilection for North of England working class. So this is set in Nottingham, where Shane Meadows, the director, is from and writer. And so that's probably more English Midlands. But it is such a hugely powerful, moving film. series that sort of spans from the punk era through Thatcherism to more recent times.
You know, it's set in a kind of a working class milieu in Nottingham. Brilliant characterisation. There's love stories, there's friendships, but there's also serious social issues, racism. you know, working class alienation, poverty and so forth. Honestly, I can't recommend it highly enough. I don't know if you saw, there was one that was, one of his that he sort of set in Dundalk or something.
Can't remember the name of it, but it was superb as well.
OK, we don't have time to discuss your buried treasures in any detail. You gave us more than one. Most people just give us one. You gave us The Revenants as a band. You gave us a documentary by Davy Hammond, Dusty Bluebell's 1971 Belfast Kids songs. You gave us The Lost Soldier song by Patrick Wigginley as a novel. And you also gave us Lorsey Lovie's spoof cork version of The Snowman.
They're buried treasures, all right. I'm out of time. Thank you so much. Martin Doyle, books editor of the Irish Times, who has just brought out his new book, Hosting Interviews with Irish Writers, 1991 to 2026.
Thank you so much for your time on the programme.
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