Sebastian Barry Talking Books

Now on BBC News its time for Talking Books.

Hello and welcome to Talking Books here at Hay Festival. Founded in

1987, around the kitchen table in Wales, the Hay Festival has been

bringing readers, writers, and fingers together for 30 years. And

it has evolved into a global celebration of literature, culture,

and science. -- thinkers together. Tonight, I am delighted to be

speaking to Sebastian Barry. He is one of Ireland's finest writers. In

his fiction is often rooted in stories passed down through his

family. His latest novel, it Days Without End, is set in America in

the mid-19th century. -- novel, Days.

I am delighted to be hit today to talk to Sebastian Barry, who, let's

be honest, does not need an introduction from me. He is a

prolific poet, playwright, and novelist. Twice nominated for the

Man Booker Prize or fiction. And the winner of countless other prizes and

plaudits for his nine novels and 14 players. Not bad for somebody who

could not read or write until he was nine. So, Sebastian Barry, given so

much of your fiction is rooted in your own family history, it seems

entirely appropriate to start in your childhood. You could not read

or write and tell you a nine. Why were you such a slow... Eight. OK,

eight. While you such a slow starter? I think they can out of the

starting blocks at great speed. But the speed was not anything to do

with reader writing. It was to do with loving my family. I was so

busy, I think, for those eight years, worshipping them and adoring

them, that I did not regain needed to go on to the dark arts of writing

and reading. They were in themselves books. And I have spent the

following 50 years tried to prove that to myself. I think I understood

language, not as this rather recent technique of something written down,

but like in those cartoons of the 18th century, with a tickertape, and

the talk is in the tape. It seems that something is visible to be. --

to me. And that cornucopia of individual members of my family,

like my aunt Annie, it represented her. It was alternative version of

her. And because of that, when the day comes, inevitably, with these

older people in the generations ahead of you, when they die, you can

bring them with you in this form of floating main wish. And I think in

those eight years, my whole work as a novelist, at the age of six,

seven, and eight, was to learn the universe about, and nothing else.

And all credit to my mother and father, they did not bat an eyelid.

They might have been paying attention, but nobody ever mentioned

dyslexia or anything like that. When I went back to Ireland, I certainly

learnt to read. God intervened, didn't he? Guide. That Catholic

Irish guy. He was at the very pagan. I went to an LCC school in London. I

don't know of anyone whinges at a school in London. I do not they

exist any more. -- I don't know if anyone went to such a school.

Anyway, when we went back, they presented me at school, in this

frightening school, I must say, because they now had an English

accent. If you want to get beaten half to death in an Irish

schoolyard, try that accent on. I was Irish, but they had dismissed as

book, and my parents were profound agnostics. My mother secretly would

go to mass because she didn't connect going to Mass with religion,

particularly. She just like to go to hear the noise. This little book was

the Irish catechism. I do know they even do it any more. It was a thing

that they gave you, and it was useful, because it set who made the

world, and God made the world, and even I could connect that little

word God with the sound of a new already. And in that way, in the

marriage of the sows that a new and the words that I was being pointed

out, I learnt to read. -- sounds that I knew. I could not read or

write, but they could sing is a little boy. I was one of those

children that led the position at Lord's, singing Uleybury. What could

be nicer than that? -- singing Ave Maria. When people say they don't

like Bible, I say great. Brilliant. At what point, then, did you decide

to be a writer, but perhaps it would be better to ask when you consider

yourself as an author. My mother, while not paying attention to a lot

of things because she was a very great actress, and was very busy,

and in those days, in the Abbey, you would rehearse in the afternoon, and

then do the evening show. A crack this is the Abbey Theatre? Yes, and

Dublin. It is whether true theatre. The three that she had to be with me

as a child, at one stage, she said that she put a pencil in my hand and

said that I could write or draw with it as I please. -- repertory

theatre. That was her instruction. So the tragic way, I had only done

what my mother told me to do. Seal latest novel, Days Without End, was

inspired by a story that your grandfather told you in bed when you

are boy. Tell us a little about that. So your latest novel. My

grandfather, Jack O'Hara, he had a ledger. He was always good to write

his memoirs in this ledger. But unfortunately, the way he wished to

remember his life was just not how it happened. So we were in this very

draughty, cold, Victorian mansion, outside Dublin. It was at the time

of the oil strike. So you couldn't hit the houses. So my grandfather

and myself, in the bed, and... -- heat the houses. He couldn't write

his life down, I was content with the totally invented version of his

life that he liked to tell me on that. And you know, I beg you

remember. These grandparents are the most important things in a child's,

in childhood. To me, it is the saviour of my childhood. And those

lovely moment as a child when you feel a certain aroma, Aura, of Irish

history, as he lets rip a fight in bed, and says keep the heat in. --

fart. Which is important during the oil strike. And he would tell you

the most incredible things. -- aura. And in another part of the house,

probably in daylight, my mother would be whispering in my ear the

actual things that happened. So I got this wonderful double narrative

of the same thing. You know, I can see now that I am still negotiating

between those two versions, and delighting in the fact that they

contradict each other. My grandfather had a great desire to be

regarded as a gentleman. He was not. But that is not going to stop him

inventing himself as a gentleman. When the war came, and he was an

engineer, he got a commission in the Royal Engineers, that was because he

felt that he wanted to have studies in the world. So was not such a

great reason. What did he do? He did bomb disposal. -- status. He was

brilliant at it and got two medals for tour of duty for defusing bombs

in the Second World War. But my other grandfather was a nationalist.

I remember a beautiful moment outside of that grandfather's gate,

when my army grandfather come -- army grandfather, let's call him

that, they met and they shook hands. So his story sparked the novel which

was set in America in the 1950s. And it is a gay lustre of between two

young man's, one who has come over from Ireland. -- and it is a gay

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

Long Long Way, set during the First World War. These are people trying

to find safety in the horrors of war. I was wondering if you would

read us a little flavour to give us a sense of the family, I suppose,

that they create. You know, when I was a child, there was a frightening

body of people, and hope there are no dissenters are the people you, I

don't mean to offend his people. These people said the family was the

most important thing and the problem with homosexual Obi was it was the

enemy a family. As I was writing this book, although Wynona is

initially given as a servant, that she is taken as a daughter. And she

becomes a reason for being alive. And I thought, dear old League of

Decency, look at theirs. Of course, the story is being told in very

ideal terms about this adopted daughter, Wynona. Some are part of

this passage is some of what I feel about my own daughter. His is to

remember that month, and maybe our rowers born in June, and Wynona says

she was born during the full Buckman. Anyhow, we roll all that

into one, and on the first of May, with a signed our birthday for the

three of us. We say we are known as nine years old, and John Cole is

settled on 29, so I must be pretty sick. Something along those lines.

Whatever as we may be, we are young. Jon Cole is the best looking man in

Christendom. And this is his heyday. Wynona is certainly the prettiest

daughter that anyone ever had. Like hair, blue eyes, like a mackerel's

blew back, or a duck's feathers. Cool as a melon, her face, when you

hold in your hands. God knows what stories she has seen and been a part

in. Savage murder for sure, because because that. Walk through the

carnage and sort of her own. You could expect a child who has seen

all that to wake in the night sweating, and she does. Then John

Cole is obliged to hold her trembling form against him and

soothe her with lullabies. Well, he and Ian is one, and he does that

over and over. He holds her softly and things are a lullaby. Where he

got that, no man knows, not even himself. McGee Street bird from a

distant country. Then he lies on her bed and pushes him him. -- like a

stray bird. Tied in late Jon Cole with that that is a safety she is

trying to reach. A harbour. Then her breathing slowly lengthens and she

is snoring a little. Time to come back to bed, and then in the

darkness, he looks at me and nods his head. Got her sleeping, he says.

You sure do, I say. Not much more than that needed to make men happy.

APPLAUSE. I think to my introduction I needed to add actor, as well. That

was marvellous. This relationship between Thomas and John was in part

inspired by your own son, Toby, who indeed, the book is dedicated to.

Tell us how that happened. When he was 16, is it we all have this

expresses a teenager, and we think it is may be hiding criticism. But

oftentimes, it is just hiding a lack of worse to say, what they need to

say, and they will learn the words again. But at 16, he was even more

in trouble for words, because something is bothering him. And he

was becoming depressed. And when our children are depressed, it beholds

us as human creatures to mobilise ourselves and find out what is

troubling them, because in our district Kaymer in the hills, there

had been a number of young men who had taken their own lies. And I was

so frightened and not sleeping, afraid of this thing. -- district,

in the. Thankfully, in the magic of our family life, his elder sister

said to Toby, Toby, just go in and say it to them. Because she knew

what the trouble was. Just go in and say it. So then he came into our

bedroom, the poor stone effigies are the parents, wrung out by looking

after children for 20 years, exhausted, not getting out of bed as

often as we used to, and not as quickly, I did -- quickly, either.

He said, the thing is, dad... I was like, oh God, sentences beginning

with the thing is a no good. He said the thing is, I am gay. I thought

thank God, and I am lying in bed, thank God. You won't have to go

through this heterosexual nightmare that we have been going through.

LAUGHTER. From that moment, it was the beginning of this university...

For much of our time, we don't need words to teach your old straight

father about things. You said everything in the

relationship you learn from Toby, I wonder what he felt or thought when

he read the book fashion learned? Job well done! LAUGHTER -- learned.

I said to him recently, did you read the book? He wouldn't answer me, he

was talking about something else. As as if a generous gesture, he said,

oh, dad, you're not gay, but you're an ally. I said, wow! And I liked

your book! I have to say when Robert Mike Rann reviewed this book in the

Observer, it was overwhelming. But only ten times less than the

overwhelming moment when your sun says I like your book, you don't

have to say I loved it, adorable, great masterpiece, I liked your

book. Am I right he's the only one of your three children to have ever

read any of your books? Allegedly he has read this book! LAUGHTER you

have of course raided family history before, haven't you? Your novel a

long long way featured a great uncle, on Kanaan's side featured a

great aunt, the secret Scripture, another great aunt, you touched on

this at the beginning but I'd like you to talk to us a bit more about

it, why do you do it? I don't really make a raid on it because there's

nothing there. What interested me as a child obviously was preserving

these people eternally. I had to find some way of replacing them. I

also felt a certain urgency as a human being, an Irish person, who

didn't seem very Irish, which was quite important in the 70s and 80s

because of the Troubles in the north and my family had been in a lot of

trouble in the previous Troubles in the 20s so what I was trying to do

was surround myself with family because mystery is mainly that you

don't need real people to be your family. For a sample Roseann in the

secret Scripture, if anyone read it, had no name, this is the final

indignity you can visit on somebody. Her family when she was section in

the 40s apparently for immorality, I think for beauty, but when they

section her, the people nearest her told the extended family that she

had died of TB but she didn't die, she was in this institution for the

rest of her life. After that book was published and we had great

adventures with it in publishing of course, but there was a little

moment where nurses wrote to me and said Kammy name our new lecture hall

after Roseann because we would like to do that because it's a cycle

psychiatric institution and I said yes, I didn't have the heart to say

I've made up her name. Somewhere there's this name on a lecture hall

if you accidentally find yourself there, you'll know why, that's

magical, you can make somebody up and somehow they become more real

than yourself. We've talked about Toby's inspiration behind this book

and you did write about your grandfather and he got very upset

about what he saw as you wearing the dirty laundry of the family in

public, so there are some pitfalls in this. Imagine his horror having

carefully fed me the imaginary story of his life with all its glory and

achievement, and indeed he had achieved a lot in his life, he

sailed around the entire Gollob as a British merchant seaman, but by Jin

go when he read that book, it was about gun running in Africa, it was

about the drunkenness of his wife and himself and the horror he

inflicted and I was the grandson he adored and he was the grandfather I

worship and he called me into number 22 Mitchell way in Dublin where he

lived in the most Spartan of circumstances and he sat me down on

the chair and I was terrified because the book was there on the

table and he said are you F -- ending with letter are. I was a

soldier. I said how did you know these things? We never spoke again

until the day he died. You talked about your own childhood being a

singular mess, I wondered whether you would ever write about that? I

thought I'd have this happy childhood and then to be honest I

found out something, this retrospectively dropped a bomb on my

childhood, this discovery, I can't discuss, forgive me for saying that,

I'm saying this as buoyantly as I can but it was as if all the things

I valued and indeed all the work I had done for 30 years had vanished

away and I've got everything wrong. Then I have the comfort of this

incredible Dublin Protestant woman who's been my wife for 32 years, how

did she put up with that? Then my three children. Who am I to say

having had a difficult childhood was any other thing than a beautiful

precursor to the happiness of my adult life? You've been writing for

nearly four decades now. I've taken 40 years just to write a few little

books. And does it get easier? It gets more exciting for some reason.

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

like is I can have that experience at 61, that's why it's called days

without end because it makes me think when we were in the heyday of

the children, they're not days you often think about having an end so

they are actually days without end. Maybe they are the best days of your

life, we don't know, but it intrigued me and pleased me that,

you know, writing a book like this, OK, I am a bit older and obviously

it's going to get a lot worse quite shortly but I can still do this and

maybe that's the first feeling I had when I was 22 but even though I was

chaotic and depressed and unhappy and ridiculous and impossible to

live with, I could get up in the morning and write a story in a

little room and by evening I would have a short story. The excitement

of that! I feel we should conclude by asking you to seeing your are

they Maria. Listen, this is Schubert as you've never heard before -- Ave

Maria. And hopefully never will again!

Ave Maria... Maiden mired. That's all I can remember. Ladies and

gentlemen, Sebastian Barry! Thank you, thank you.