Hamnet, author Maggie O’Farrell on her latest novel !
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What inspired Maggie O'Farrell's latest novel Land?
After an award-laden spring which brought a claim to the film adaptation of her novel Hamnet, my next guest hopes that summer will bring readers and critics alike to enjoy her new novel which is called Land and which has just been published. Maggie O'Farrell, you're very welcome to the programme.
Thank you so much for having me, Pat.
Now, I've been lucky enough to have had a copy of your book for a few weeks now, so I've enjoyed it very much. And I realise the genesis of the novel is actually to be found within your own family.
Who was Maggie O'Farrell's great-great-grandfather Tomás?
Will you tell us about your great-great-grandfather, Tomás?
Yes, with pleasure. We were always told as a child, as children, you know, and I think all families have their myths that one of our antecedents drew the first ever map of Ireland as if he was just a lone man band, which obviously is very far from the truth. But I used to imagine, as you can probably tell from the way I speak, I was born in Ireland, but I didn't grow up there. But we used to come back every summer and I would look out of the window of our little car at, I don't know, Kerry or Donegal or Galway going past.
How does family history influence O'Farrell's writing?
And I would imagine him as this lone person striding up a mountainside, probably with a kind of 20 centimetre ruler in his hand or something like that. But obviously that was a complete fantasy. And I did go looking for him. slightly more seriously recently. And I went to the... So the archives in Dublin hold the Ordnance Survey records for Ireland. And it took me a while to find him because if you work for the Ordnance Survey, which, of course, is a British government, British army-run organisation... If you worked for them and you were Irish, you weren't allowed to sign your own work. It had to be signed by a British army officer. So he was hard to find. But I did, in a list of labourers, underneath a memorandum about paid leave, I did find his signature.
What challenges did Tomás face while mapping Ireland?
And it was an extraordinary moment, Pat, because it proved that actually there is a seed of truth in myth. that my family wasn't making this up. And also, it was an amazing feeling to be touching a piece of paper that I knew he had touched at one point.
You also remarked, strangely, and it shows what DNA can do, that his handwriting was remarkably similar to your own.
Yes, I mean, actually, in those days, they all had this incredible kind of slanting, very beautiful copperplate script. I mean, I would love to say mine is as neat as that. It's not. But there is a weird, there was a weird similarity, certainly. Mine's a lot messier, I have to say.
But you'd already found a clue on a map that was framed of your uncle, which you'd overlooked, the whole family had overlooked, until you espied it.
How does the Great Hunger shape the narrative in Land?
Yes. So hanging in my parents' house, it was my uncle's who passed away and he left it to my dad. And so hanging in our house is a map drawn by, in the book, he's called Tomas and his son is called Liam, who's based on my great grandfather. And so he, his son had drawn a map, which is in the style of an OS map of an imaginary place. And it's been hanging there for years and I've passed it hundreds of times back and forth. And one day, a few years ago, I don't really know why, I decided to look at it with a magnifying glass. And in the top corner of it is a little kind of medallion about the size of an old postage stamp. And when you look at it through a magnifying glass, you can see that there's a portrait inside it of...
my great-great-grandfather. And, I mean, it must have been done with a brush of maybe two or three bristles.
What themes are explored in the family saga of Land?
It's so tiny. And he's standing behind a British soldier in a red coat and the soldier is looking through a theodolite. And it was just astonishing because there he has been, hiding in plain sight all these years. And it's quite a politically freighted portrait because standing behind Tomás looks quite anxious and and the soldier was looking through a theodolite and it was just, I was absolutely flabbergasted to find it there.
Now, it is set in the years post-famine and, you know, 30% of the population eliminated, whole villages decimated and falling to ruin.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What inspired Maggie O'Farrell's latest novel Land?
0:01–0:41
2
Who was Maggie O'Farrell's great-great-grandfather Tomás?
0:41–1:13
3
How does family history influence O'Farrell's writing?
1:13–2:00
4
What challenges did Tomás face while mapping Ireland?
2:00–2:51
5
How does the Great Hunger shape the narrative in Land?
2:51–3:40
6
What themes are explored in the family saga of Land?
3:40–4:44
7
How does Maggie O'Farrell reflect on her Irish heritage?
4:44–5:41
8
What are Maggie O'Farrell's thoughts on the Hamnet film adaptation?
5:41–17:10