Sebastian Barry

:00:00. > :00:21.Now on BBC News its time for Talking Books.

:00:22. > :00:30.Hello and welcome to Talking Books here at Hay Festival. Founded in

:00:31. > :00:34.1987, around the kitchen table in Wales, the Hay Festival has been

:00:35. > :00:38.bringing readers, writers, and fingers together for 30 years. And

:00:39. > :00:43.it has evolved into a global celebration of literature, culture,

:00:44. > :00:50.and science. -- thinkers together. Tonight, I am delighted to be

:00:51. > :00:54.speaking to Sebastian Barry. He is one of Ireland's finest writers. In

:00:55. > :01:01.his fiction is often rooted in stories passed down through his

:01:02. > :01:11.family. His latest novel, it Days Without End, is set in America in

:01:12. > :01:24.the mid-19th century. -- novel, Days.

:01:25. > :01:32.I am delighted to be hit today to talk to Sebastian Barry, who, let's

:01:33. > :01:35.be honest, does not need an introduction from me. He is a

:01:36. > :01:41.prolific poet, playwright, and novelist. Twice nominated for the

:01:42. > :01:45.Man Booker Prize or fiction. And the winner of countless other prizes and

:01:46. > :01:50.plaudits for his nine novels and 14 players. Not bad for somebody who

:01:51. > :01:56.could not read or write until he was nine. So, Sebastian Barry, given so

:01:57. > :02:00.much of your fiction is rooted in your own family history, it seems

:02:01. > :02:04.entirely appropriate to start in your childhood. You could not read

:02:05. > :02:11.or write and tell you a nine. Why were you such a slow... Eight. OK,

:02:12. > :02:17.eight. While you such a slow starter? I think they can out of the

:02:18. > :02:20.starting blocks at great speed. But the speed was not anything to do

:02:21. > :02:27.with reader writing. It was to do with loving my family. I was so

:02:28. > :02:31.busy, I think, for those eight years, worshipping them and adoring

:02:32. > :02:39.them, that I did not regain needed to go on to the dark arts of writing

:02:40. > :02:42.and reading. They were in themselves books. And I have spent the

:02:43. > :02:49.following 50 years tried to prove that to myself. I think I understood

:02:50. > :02:54.language, not as this rather recent technique of something written down,

:02:55. > :03:00.but like in those cartoons of the 18th century, with a tickertape, and

:03:01. > :03:09.the talk is in the tape. It seems that something is visible to be. --

:03:10. > :03:17.to me. And that cornucopia of individual members of my family,

:03:18. > :03:21.like my aunt Annie, it represented her. It was alternative version of

:03:22. > :03:25.her. And because of that, when the day comes, inevitably, with these

:03:26. > :03:31.older people in the generations ahead of you, when they die, you can

:03:32. > :03:35.bring them with you in this form of floating main wish. And I think in

:03:36. > :03:43.those eight years, my whole work as a novelist, at the age of six,

:03:44. > :03:46.seven, and eight, was to learn the universe about, and nothing else.

:03:47. > :03:49.And all credit to my mother and father, they did not bat an eyelid.

:03:50. > :03:54.They might have been paying attention, but nobody ever mentioned

:03:55. > :03:58.dyslexia or anything like that. When I went back to Ireland, I certainly

:03:59. > :04:07.learnt to read. God intervened, didn't he? Guide. That Catholic

:04:08. > :04:11.Irish guy. He was at the very pagan. I went to an LCC school in London. I

:04:12. > :04:17.don't know of anyone whinges at a school in London. I do not they

:04:18. > :04:22.exist any more. -- I don't know if anyone went to such a school.

:04:23. > :04:26.Anyway, when we went back, they presented me at school, in this

:04:27. > :04:32.frightening school, I must say, because they now had an English

:04:33. > :04:38.accent. If you want to get beaten half to death in an Irish

:04:39. > :04:44.schoolyard, try that accent on. I was Irish, but they had dismissed as

:04:45. > :04:49.book, and my parents were profound agnostics. My mother secretly would

:04:50. > :04:55.go to mass because she didn't connect going to Mass with religion,

:04:56. > :04:59.particularly. She just like to go to hear the noise. This little book was

:05:00. > :05:04.the Irish catechism. I do know they even do it any more. It was a thing

:05:05. > :05:10.that they gave you, and it was useful, because it set who made the

:05:11. > :05:14.world, and God made the world, and even I could connect that little

:05:15. > :05:18.word God with the sound of a new already. And in that way, in the

:05:19. > :05:24.marriage of the sows that a new and the words that I was being pointed

:05:25. > :05:28.out, I learnt to read. -- sounds that I knew. I could not read or

:05:29. > :05:36.write, but they could sing is a little boy. I was one of those

:05:37. > :05:42.children that led the position at Lord's, singing Uleybury. What could

:05:43. > :05:53.be nicer than that? -- singing Ave Maria. When people say they don't

:05:54. > :05:58.like Bible, I say great. Brilliant. At what point, then, did you decide

:05:59. > :06:04.to be a writer, but perhaps it would be better to ask when you consider

:06:05. > :06:08.yourself as an author. My mother, while not paying attention to a lot

:06:09. > :06:12.of things because she was a very great actress, and was very busy,

:06:13. > :06:17.and in those days, in the Abbey, you would rehearse in the afternoon, and

:06:18. > :06:23.then do the evening show. A crack this is the Abbey Theatre? Yes, and

:06:24. > :06:30.Dublin. It is whether true theatre. The three that she had to be with me

:06:31. > :06:39.as a child, at one stage, she said that she put a pencil in my hand and

:06:40. > :06:43.said that I could write or draw with it as I please. -- repertory

:06:44. > :06:50.theatre. That was her instruction. So the tragic way, I had only done

:06:51. > :06:55.what my mother told me to do. Seal latest novel, Days Without End, was

:06:56. > :06:59.inspired by a story that your grandfather told you in bed when you

:07:00. > :07:07.are boy. Tell us a little about that. So your latest novel. My

:07:08. > :07:17.grandfather, Jack O'Hara, he had a ledger. He was always good to write

:07:18. > :07:23.his memoirs in this ledger. But unfortunately, the way he wished to

:07:24. > :07:33.remember his life was just not how it happened. So we were in this very

:07:34. > :07:40.draughty, cold, Victorian mansion, outside Dublin. It was at the time

:07:41. > :07:49.of the oil strike. So you couldn't hit the houses. So my grandfather

:07:50. > :07:54.and myself, in the bed, and... -- heat the houses. He couldn't write

:07:55. > :07:57.his life down, I was content with the totally invented version of his

:07:58. > :08:04.life that he liked to tell me on that. And you know, I beg you

:08:05. > :08:09.remember. These grandparents are the most important things in a child's,

:08:10. > :08:13.in childhood. To me, it is the saviour of my childhood. And those

:08:14. > :08:21.lovely moment as a child when you feel a certain aroma, Aura, of Irish

:08:22. > :08:28.history, as he lets rip a fight in bed, and says keep the heat in. --

:08:29. > :08:33.fart. Which is important during the oil strike. And he would tell you

:08:34. > :08:37.the most incredible things. -- aura. And in another part of the house,

:08:38. > :08:41.probably in daylight, my mother would be whispering in my ear the

:08:42. > :08:46.actual things that happened. So I got this wonderful double narrative

:08:47. > :08:50.of the same thing. You know, I can see now that I am still negotiating

:08:51. > :08:55.between those two versions, and delighting in the fact that they

:08:56. > :08:59.contradict each other. My grandfather had a great desire to be

:09:00. > :09:03.regarded as a gentleman. He was not. But that is not going to stop him

:09:04. > :09:07.inventing himself as a gentleman. When the war came, and he was an

:09:08. > :09:11.engineer, he got a commission in the Royal Engineers, that was because he

:09:12. > :09:15.felt that he wanted to have studies in the world. So was not such a

:09:16. > :09:23.great reason. What did he do? He did bomb disposal. -- status. He was

:09:24. > :09:29.brilliant at it and got two medals for tour of duty for defusing bombs

:09:30. > :09:34.in the Second World War. But my other grandfather was a nationalist.

:09:35. > :09:43.I remember a beautiful moment outside of that grandfather's gate,

:09:44. > :09:51.when my army grandfather come -- army grandfather, let's call him

:09:52. > :09:58.that, they met and they shook hands. So his story sparked the novel which

:09:59. > :10:04.was set in America in the 1950s. And it is a gay lustre of between two

:10:05. > :10:09.young man's, one who has come over from Ireland. -- and it is a gay

:10:10. > :10:14.love story between two young man. It is a little like your fifth novel, A

:10:15. > :10:18.Long Long Way, set during the First World War. These are people trying

:10:19. > :10:22.to find safety in the horrors of war. I was wondering if you would

:10:23. > :10:26.read us a little flavour to give us a sense of the family, I suppose,

:10:27. > :10:30.that they create. You know, when I was a child, there was a frightening

:10:31. > :10:35.body of people, and hope there are no dissenters are the people you, I

:10:36. > :10:39.don't mean to offend his people. These people said the family was the

:10:40. > :10:43.most important thing and the problem with homosexual Obi was it was the

:10:44. > :10:50.enemy a family. As I was writing this book, although Wynona is

:10:51. > :10:54.initially given as a servant, that she is taken as a daughter. And she

:10:55. > :11:05.becomes a reason for being alive. And I thought, dear old League of

:11:06. > :11:13.Decency, look at theirs. Of course, the story is being told in very

:11:14. > :11:17.ideal terms about this adopted daughter, Wynona. Some are part of

:11:18. > :11:23.this passage is some of what I feel about my own daughter. His is to

:11:24. > :11:28.remember that month, and maybe our rowers born in June, and Wynona says

:11:29. > :11:33.she was born during the full Buckman. Anyhow, we roll all that

:11:34. > :11:37.into one, and on the first of May, with a signed our birthday for the

:11:38. > :11:44.three of us. We say we are known as nine years old, and John Cole is

:11:45. > :11:48.settled on 29, so I must be pretty sick. Something along those lines.

:11:49. > :11:57.Whatever as we may be, we are young. Jon Cole is the best looking man in

:11:58. > :12:01.Christendom. And this is his heyday. Wynona is certainly the prettiest

:12:02. > :12:07.daughter that anyone ever had. Like hair, blue eyes, like a mackerel's

:12:08. > :12:14.blew back, or a duck's feathers. Cool as a melon, her face, when you

:12:15. > :12:18.hold in your hands. God knows what stories she has seen and been a part

:12:19. > :12:21.in. Savage murder for sure, because because that. Walk through the

:12:22. > :12:25.carnage and sort of her own. You could expect a child who has seen

:12:26. > :12:30.all that to wake in the night sweating, and she does. Then John

:12:31. > :12:34.Cole is obliged to hold her trembling form against him and

:12:35. > :12:38.soothe her with lullabies. Well, he and Ian is one, and he does that

:12:39. > :12:43.over and over. He holds her softly and things are a lullaby. Where he

:12:44. > :12:50.got that, no man knows, not even himself. McGee Street bird from a

:12:51. > :12:58.distant country. Then he lies on her bed and pushes him him. -- like a

:12:59. > :13:04.stray bird. Tied in late Jon Cole with that that is a safety she is

:13:05. > :13:07.trying to reach. A harbour. Then her breathing slowly lengthens and she

:13:08. > :13:13.is snoring a little. Time to come back to bed, and then in the

:13:14. > :13:23.darkness, he looks at me and nods his head. Got her sleeping, he says.

:13:24. > :13:40.You sure do, I say. Not much more than that needed to make men happy.

:13:41. > :13:45.APPLAUSE. I think to my introduction I needed to add actor, as well. That

:13:46. > :13:51.was marvellous. This relationship between Thomas and John was in part

:13:52. > :13:57.inspired by your own son, Toby, who indeed, the book is dedicated to.

:13:58. > :14:02.Tell us how that happened. When he was 16, is it we all have this

:14:03. > :14:06.expresses a teenager, and we think it is may be hiding criticism. But

:14:07. > :14:10.oftentimes, it is just hiding a lack of worse to say, what they need to

:14:11. > :14:13.say, and they will learn the words again. But at 16, he was even more

:14:14. > :14:18.in trouble for words, because something is bothering him. And he

:14:19. > :14:23.was becoming depressed. And when our children are depressed, it beholds

:14:24. > :14:26.us as human creatures to mobilise ourselves and find out what is

:14:27. > :14:30.troubling them, because in our district Kaymer in the hills, there

:14:31. > :14:34.had been a number of young men who had taken their own lies. And I was

:14:35. > :14:39.so frightened and not sleeping, afraid of this thing. -- district,

:14:40. > :14:44.in the. Thankfully, in the magic of our family life, his elder sister

:14:45. > :14:48.said to Toby, Toby, just go in and say it to them. Because she knew

:14:49. > :14:54.what the trouble was. Just go in and say it. So then he came into our

:14:55. > :14:59.bedroom, the poor stone effigies are the parents, wrung out by looking

:15:00. > :15:03.after children for 20 years, exhausted, not getting out of bed as

:15:04. > :15:11.often as we used to, and not as quickly, I did -- quickly, either.

:15:12. > :15:17.He said, the thing is, dad... I was like, oh God, sentences beginning

:15:18. > :15:23.with the thing is a no good. He said the thing is, I am gay. I thought

:15:24. > :15:27.thank God, and I am lying in bed, thank God. You won't have to go

:15:28. > :15:34.through this heterosexual nightmare that we have been going through.

:15:35. > :15:42.LAUGHTER. From that moment, it was the beginning of this university...

:15:43. > :15:46.For much of our time, we don't need words to teach your old straight

:15:47. > :15:54.father about things. You said everything in the

:15:55. > :15:59.relationship you learn from Toby, I wonder what he felt or thought when

:16:00. > :16:07.he read the book fashion learned? Job well done! LAUGHTER -- learned.

:16:08. > :16:12.I said to him recently, did you read the book? He wouldn't answer me, he

:16:13. > :16:18.was talking about something else. As as if a generous gesture, he said,

:16:19. > :16:25.oh, dad, you're not gay, but you're an ally. I said, wow! And I liked

:16:26. > :16:31.your book! I have to say when Robert Mike Rann reviewed this book in the

:16:32. > :16:35.Observer, it was overwhelming. But only ten times less than the

:16:36. > :16:40.overwhelming moment when your sun says I like your book, you don't

:16:41. > :16:45.have to say I loved it, adorable, great masterpiece, I liked your

:16:46. > :16:51.book. Am I right he's the only one of your three children to have ever

:16:52. > :16:58.read any of your books? Allegedly he has read this book! LAUGHTER you

:16:59. > :17:03.have of course raided family history before, haven't you? Your novel a

:17:04. > :17:08.long long way featured a great uncle, on Kanaan's side featured a

:17:09. > :17:12.great aunt, the secret Scripture, another great aunt, you touched on

:17:13. > :17:16.this at the beginning but I'd like you to talk to us a bit more about

:17:17. > :17:22.it, why do you do it? I don't really make a raid on it because there's

:17:23. > :17:26.nothing there. What interested me as a child obviously was preserving

:17:27. > :17:33.these people eternally. I had to find some way of replacing them. I

:17:34. > :17:37.also felt a certain urgency as a human being, an Irish person, who

:17:38. > :17:41.didn't seem very Irish, which was quite important in the 70s and 80s

:17:42. > :17:45.because of the Troubles in the north and my family had been in a lot of

:17:46. > :17:49.trouble in the previous Troubles in the 20s so what I was trying to do

:17:50. > :17:53.was surround myself with family because mystery is mainly that you

:17:54. > :17:58.don't need real people to be your family. For a sample Roseann in the

:17:59. > :18:03.secret Scripture, if anyone read it, had no name, this is the final

:18:04. > :18:09.indignity you can visit on somebody. Her family when she was section in

:18:10. > :18:13.the 40s apparently for immorality, I think for beauty, but when they

:18:14. > :18:17.section her, the people nearest her told the extended family that she

:18:18. > :18:21.had died of TB but she didn't die, she was in this institution for the

:18:22. > :18:25.rest of her life. After that book was published and we had great

:18:26. > :18:28.adventures with it in publishing of course, but there was a little

:18:29. > :18:34.moment where nurses wrote to me and said Kammy name our new lecture hall

:18:35. > :18:41.after Roseann because we would like to do that because it's a cycle

:18:42. > :18:45.psychiatric institution and I said yes, I didn't have the heart to say

:18:46. > :18:48.I've made up her name. Somewhere there's this name on a lecture hall

:18:49. > :18:52.if you accidentally find yourself there, you'll know why, that's

:18:53. > :18:58.magical, you can make somebody up and somehow they become more real

:18:59. > :19:01.than yourself. We've talked about Toby's inspiration behind this book

:19:02. > :19:05.and you did write about your grandfather and he got very upset

:19:06. > :19:09.about what he saw as you wearing the dirty laundry of the family in

:19:10. > :19:15.public, so there are some pitfalls in this. Imagine his horror having

:19:16. > :19:20.carefully fed me the imaginary story of his life with all its glory and

:19:21. > :19:25.achievement, and indeed he had achieved a lot in his life, he

:19:26. > :19:29.sailed around the entire Gollob as a British merchant seaman, but by Jin

:19:30. > :19:33.go when he read that book, it was about gun running in Africa, it was

:19:34. > :19:39.about the drunkenness of his wife and himself and the horror he

:19:40. > :19:43.inflicted and I was the grandson he adored and he was the grandfather I

:19:44. > :19:48.worship and he called me into number 22 Mitchell way in Dublin where he

:19:49. > :19:51.lived in the most Spartan of circumstances and he sat me down on

:19:52. > :19:59.the chair and I was terrified because the book was there on the

:20:00. > :20:04.table and he said are you F -- ending with letter are. I was a

:20:05. > :20:10.soldier. I said how did you know these things? We never spoke again

:20:11. > :20:14.until the day he died. You talked about your own childhood being a

:20:15. > :20:18.singular mess, I wondered whether you would ever write about that? I

:20:19. > :20:22.thought I'd have this happy childhood and then to be honest I

:20:23. > :20:26.found out something, this retrospectively dropped a bomb on my

:20:27. > :20:31.childhood, this discovery, I can't discuss, forgive me for saying that,

:20:32. > :20:36.I'm saying this as buoyantly as I can but it was as if all the things

:20:37. > :20:39.I valued and indeed all the work I had done for 30 years had vanished

:20:40. > :20:45.away and I've got everything wrong. Then I have the comfort of this

:20:46. > :20:51.incredible Dublin Protestant woman who's been my wife for 32 years, how

:20:52. > :20:55.did she put up with that? Then my three children. Who am I to say

:20:56. > :21:01.having had a difficult childhood was any other thing than a beautiful

:21:02. > :21:07.precursor to the happiness of my adult life? You've been writing for

:21:08. > :21:11.nearly four decades now. I've taken 40 years just to write a few little

:21:12. > :21:17.books. And does it get easier? It gets more exciting for some reason.

:21:18. > :21:21.Does it? About I don't know why, maybe it's just this book. What I

:21:22. > :21:25.like is I can have that experience at 61, that's why it's called days

:21:26. > :21:29.without end because it makes me think when we were in the heyday of

:21:30. > :21:33.the children, they're not days you often think about having an end so

:21:34. > :21:38.they are actually days without end. Maybe they are the best days of your

:21:39. > :21:42.life, we don't know, but it intrigued me and pleased me that,

:21:43. > :21:49.you know, writing a book like this, OK, I am a bit older and obviously

:21:50. > :21:53.it's going to get a lot worse quite shortly but I can still do this and

:21:54. > :21:57.maybe that's the first feeling I had when I was 22 but even though I was

:21:58. > :22:00.chaotic and depressed and unhappy and ridiculous and impossible to

:22:01. > :22:05.live with, I could get up in the morning and write a story in a

:22:06. > :22:10.little room and by evening I would have a short story. The excitement

:22:11. > :22:17.of that! I feel we should conclude by asking you to seeing your are

:22:18. > :22:21.they Maria. Listen, this is Schubert as you've never heard before -- Ave

:22:22. > :22:27.Maria. And hopefully never will again!

:22:28. > :22:44.Ave Maria... Maiden mired. That's all I can remember. Ladies and

:22:45. > :22:47.gentlemen, Sebastian Barry! Thank you, thank you.