Generations that have come before them. They should accept lower wages, they should accept a security as part of life. Well, it didnt quite work out like that, did it . And you know what . That politics and got Out Of The Box is not going back in any box because we are there, demanding and achieving something very different in our society and in our lives. Labour leaderjeremy corbyn. So who was performing tonight . We had katy perry on the pyramid stage. She went down very well. The Headline Acts will be fioo fighters, they were meant to perform another year but a member of the band broke his leg. As she and will be closing the festival on the ed sheeran will be closing the pyramid stage. Most of the cloud will be across scotla nd most of the cloud will be across scotland but it is Thickening Up over Northern Ireland and will bring rain into the western side of england and wales. Temperatures around 15 degrees in england and around 15 degrees in england and around 12 in scotland. A split day tomorrow, the southern half of the uk quite cloudy with rain, dull and damp. In the north, the best of the sunshine across the eastern side and a further north, a scattering of showers. Temperatures up as high as 22 in the south east. It will be quite unsettled next week. Some spells of heavy rain at times. There will be a breeze to go with that and not a great deal of sunshine. Cloud in many areas. Hello, this is bbc news. The headlines. The government says 27 high rise blocks of flats in 15 local 34 3a high rise blocks in local authorities have failed five leading safety tests. Four buildings on the Chalcots Estate near Swiss Cottage in london were evacuated last night by authorities for urgent fire safety works. Some residents spent the night in hotels or on air beds in a leisure centre. Around 80 households have refused to leave. A cyber attack at westminster the House Of Commons Authorities Say they re investigating attempts to hack mps and peers email accounts. Now on bbc news. Talking books at the hay festival. Hello and welcome to talking books at the hay festival. Founded in 1987 around a Kitchen Table in wales, hay has been bringing readers, writers and thinkers together for 30 years, and it has evolved into a global celebration of literature, culture and science. Today, i am delighted to be talking to sebastian barry, who is the only novelist to win the costa book of the year award twice. Hes one of irelands finest writers, and his fiction is often rooted in stories passed down through his own family. His latest novel, days without end, is set in america in the mid 19th century. Applause. I am delighted to be here today to talk to sebastian barry, who to be honest, does not need an introduction from me, does he . He is a prolific poet, playwright, and novelist. Twice nominated for the man booker prize for fiction, and the winner of countless other prizes and plaudits for his nine novels and 14 plays. Not bad for someone who couldnt 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 until you were nine. Well, lets say eight. 0k, eight i beg your pardon. Why were you such a slow starter . I think i came out of the starting blocks at great speed, but the speed was not anything to do with reading or writing. It was to do with loving my family. I was so busy, i think, for those eight years worshipping and adoring them that i didnt think i needed to go onto these dark arts of writing and reading. They were in themselves books, and i have spent the following 50 years trying 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 where there is the ticker tape and the talk is in the tape. It seems like something visible to me. And not only that, but the particular phrases and cornucopia of memory of individual members of my family, like my great aunt annie, for me, represented her. It was an alternative version of her. And because of that, when the day comes, inevitably, the older people in the generations ahead of you die, you can bring them with you in this kit form of floating language 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 university of that and not worry about anything else. I have to say, all credit to my mother and father, they didnt bat an eyelid. Maybe they werent paying a huge amount of attention, but no one ever mentioned dyslexia or anything like that. When i went back to ireland, i suddenly learned to read. Well, god intervened, didnt he . God, that Catholic Irish border. That Catholic Irish god. Which is of course a very pagan god, actually. In the irish schools, i was. I went to an lcc school in london. I dont know if anybody went to such a school, but i dont think they exist any more. For some reason, i hope it wasnt something as blatant as because i was a poor irish child, i couldnt learn to read in england, that would be too horribly historically apt. But when we went back, they presented me in this frightening school, i have to say, because i now had an english accent, cockney accent i was talking like that, you know. If you want to get beaten have to death in an irish schoolyard, go and try that accent. So i was learning to be irish game, which is a very strange experience for a child because i was irish. But they also had this mysterious book, and might parents were profound agnostics, although my mother, i think, secretly would go to mass because she didnt connect going to mass with religion particularly. She liked going to hear the noises. And this little book was the irish catechism. I dont know if they even do it any more. And it was very useful because it said, who made the world . And god made the world. And even i, with my inability to understand language, could connect that little word, god, with the sound that i knew already. And in that way, in the marriage of the sounds that i knew and the words i was being pointed out, i learned to read. In regards to music, if i couldnt read or write, i could sing as a little boy. I am one of those children who led the Procession Singing ave maria. And everyone around me weeping. I mean, what could be nicer than that . And people sometimes say, i did like your book and i was so upset. And im thinking, great you were crying . Yes. Brilliant at what point did you decide to be a writer, but perhaps it would be better to ask, conceive as yourself as a writer . 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. This is the Abbey Theatre . In dublin. You were rarely at home because it was a theatre, because it was a repertory theatre, but in the moments she had to be with me as a child, at one stage, and i dont remember it because i was nine months old, she said that she put a pencil in my hand and said, there you go, sebastian, you can write or draw with that as you please. And this was her instruction. So in a tragic sort of way, and upsetting way, i have done what my mother told me to do. Your latest novel, days without end, was inspired in part by a story your grandfather told you in bed when you were a boy. Tell us a little bit more about that. Now youre talking more about books. My grandfather actually. Jack ohara was his name. He actually had a big ledger, and in this ledger, it was probably something to do with his years in africa, i dont know what it was, he always going to write his memoirs. But unfortunately for him, 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 the time of the oil strike. Youre far too young to remember this. You could not heat any of the houses because the oil was too dear, so naturally we were getting to bed together. So my grandfather and myself in the bed, and if you couldnt write down his life, i was content with the totally invented version of his life that he liked to tell me in bed. And, you know, i beg you remember these. These grandparents who are the most important things in a childs childhood, for me, anyway, and it was the savoury of my childhood. And those lovely moments as a child when you feel a certain aroma, Aura Of Irish History as he lets rip a fart in the bed. And he says, keep the heat in which was very important in that terrible winter where there was an oil strike. And he would tell me the most incredible things. And in another part of the house, probably in daylight, my mother would be whispering in my ear the actual things that had happened. So i got this wonderful double narrative of the same thing, and i can see now i am still negotiating between those two versions and delighting in the fact they contradict each other. My grandfather had great desires to be considered a gentleman, but he was not a gentleman. His father was a Working Class man from sligo. That is not going to stop him inventing himself as a gentleman. So when the war came, he was an engineer and he got a commission in the royal engineers. And that was because he felt he wanted to have status in the world, so it was not such a great reason. But what did he do then . He did bomb disposal, and he was brilliant at it, and he had two medals for two tours of duty in the south of england defusing bombs during the second world war. But my other grandfather was an incredible, a nationalist and had been out in 1916. I remember a beautiful moment outside that grandfathers gate when my army grandfather, lets call him that, came to collect me, and they shook hands. They had never met before that or after that, but i thought that was a very important handshake in irish history. So he sparked more or his story sparked this novel which is set in america in the mid 1850s, and essentially it is a gay love story between two young men, one who has, overfrom ireland, and they create a family by adopting a native american girl, and in some ways it is a little bit like your fifth novel, a long long way, which was set during the first world war. These are people trying to find safety amid the horrors of war. And i wondered if you mightjust read just a little flavour to give us a sense of the family, i suppose, that they create. When i was a child, there was a very frightening body of people, and i hope there is no descendants of these people here, i dont want to offend you, but there was a thing called the league of decency in ireland which said that the family was the most important thing and the trouble with homosexuality was it was the enemy of family. And as i was writing this book, and although winona is initially giving to them as a servant, john cole and thomas take her as their daughter, and she becomes their very reason for being alive. And i thought, well, dear old league of decency, look at this a family of an ideal source and there is something very ideal and lovely about it. Of course, thomas is telling the story, so he is seeing winona in very ideal terms, as they think it is our duty as parents to do. And somewhere buried in this little passage i think is some of what i feel my own daughter. John, he was born in december, seems to remember that month, and maybe i remember i was born injune. Winona says she was born during the full moon. Anyhow, we rode all of that into one, and on the 1st of may, we have assigned our birthday to the three of us. We say winona is nine years old and john cole has settled on 29. So that must make me 26. Something along those lines the point is, whatever ages we be, we are young. John cole is the best looking man in christendom. And this is his heyday. Winona is sure the prettiest little daughter ever man had, beautiful black hair, blue eyes like a mackerels blue back, or a ducks wing feathers. Sweet, little face, cool as a melon when you hold it in your hands and kiss her forehead. God knows what story she has seen and been part in. Savage murder, for sure, because we caused it. Walk through the carnage and the slaughter of her own. You could expect a child that has seen all but to wake in the night sweating, and she does. Thenjohn cole was obliged to hold her trim thing form against him and soothe her with lullabies. Well, he only knows one and does it over and over. He holds her softly and sings her the lullaby. Where he got that, no man knows, not even himself. Like a stray bird from some distant country. Then he lies on her bed and she pushes in tight against him like you might imagine bear cub do in the winter night or maybe even wolves tighten Likejohn Cole was that bit of safety she trying to reach. A harbour. Then her breathing slowly lengthens and then shes snoring a little. Time to come back to bed in the darkness with the dim of the candle. 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, to whom indeed the book is dedicated. Just tell us how that happened. When he was 16, you see, we all have this experience of the Wordless Teenager and we all think that maybe it is hiding criticism. But often at times it is just hiding a lack of words to say what they need to say and they will learn the words again. But anyway, at 16, he was even more in trouble for words. Because something was 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 of wicklow, in the hills, there had been a number of young man who had taken their own lives, and i was so frightened and not sleeping and afraid of this thing. And i eventually, 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 in he came into our bedroom, the poor stone effigies of the parents that are rung out by looking after three children for 20 years, exhausted, not getting out of bed as often as we used to and not as quickly either. And he said, the thing is, dad,. Oh, god. Sentences starting with the thing is. Never turn out very well. The thing is, im gay. And i said, oh, thank god. I am lying in the bed. Oh, thank god. You wont have to go through this heterosexual nightmare we have been through all of our lives. And from that moment, there was the beginning of university, you dont need words to teach a student, old, straight to teach a stupid, old, straight man, yourfather, about things he showed it to me. You have said that everything in the relationship between thomas and john, you learned from toby. I wonder what he felt or thought when he read the book. Job well done i said to him recently, did you read the book . And he would not answer me. And then he was talking about something else, and then as if a gesture, a generous gesture, he said, oh, and dad, you are not gay, but you are an ally. And i thought, wow. And he said, i liked your book. Now, i have to say, when Robert Mccrum reviewed this book in the observer, it was overwhelming. But only ten times less than the overwhelming moment when your son says, i like your book. He didnt say he loved it, that it was a great masterpiece. No. I liked your book. Am i right, hes the only one of your three children to have ever read any of your books . Allegedly he has read this book. You have, of course, raided Family History before, havent you . Your novel, a long long way, i think featured a Great Uncle Another Book Featured A great uncle, the secret scripture, another great aunt. You touched on this at the beginning, but i would like you to talk to us little bit more about it. Why do you do it . I dont really make a raid on it because there is nothing there. What interested me as a child was preserving these people eternally. I had to find some way of replacing them, so i also felt as a human being, an irish person who didnt seem very irish, which was quite important in the 70s and 80s because of the troubles in the north. My family had been in a lot of trouble in the previous troubles in the 205. So what i was trying to do was surround myself with the family, because the mystery is, maybe, you dont actually need real people in your family. For example, roseanne in the secret scripture, if any of you read it, had no name. This is the final indignity you can put on somebody. Her family, when she was sectioned in the 40s, apparently for immorality. I think for beauty. They sectioned her, the people nearest to her told the extended family that she had died of tb. But she didnt die. She was in this institution for the rest of her life. After that book was published, and we had Great Adventures with it within publishing, of course, but there was a moment where nurses wrote to me and said, can we name our new lecture hall after roseanne . Because we really think we would like to do that, and its a psychiatric institute. And i didnt have the heart to say, well, i only made up her name so i said, yes, of course somewhere there is this name on a lecture hall. If you ever accidentally find it up there, you know why. If if you find yourself there. I think that is magical, though, that you can make somebody up and somehow they become more real than yourself. We talked about tobys inspiration behind this book, and we did talk about your grandfather and he got very upset about what he saw as you airing the dirty laundry of the family in public, so there are some pitfalls. 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 globe as a british merchant seaman. But byjingo, when he read that book, it was about gun running in africa, about drunkenness of his wife and himself, and the horror he inflicted. Oh, my god. And i was the grandson he adored, and he was the grandfather i worshipped. And he called me in to 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, you f. Ending with an r. I never heard him curse. I mean, he was a soldier. He said, how did you know these things . And we never spoke again until the day he died. You talked about your own childhood being a singular mess. And i wondered if you would ever write about that. I thought i had this happy childhood, then, to be honest, i found out something. This sort of retrospectively dropped a bomb on my childhood, this discovery, which of course i cannot discuss you will forgive me for saying that. Im saying this as buoyantly as i can, but it was as if all the things i valued, and all the work i had done for 30 years, had vanished away and i had got everything wrong. And then i had the comfort of this Incredible Dublin Protestant woman who has been my wife for 32 years. How did she put up with that . And then my three children. So 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 have been writing for nearly four decades now. I have taken a0 years to write to stay few little books. And does it get easier . It gets more exciting for some reason. I dont know why that is. Maybe it was just this book. What i like about it, actually, is i can have that experience at 61. It truly is why it is called days without end, because it made me think, when we were in the heyday of the children, they are not days you often think of as having an end, so they are actually days without end. And maybe they are the best days of your life. We dont know. But it intrigued me and pleased me that, you know, writing a book like this, ok, i am getting a bit older and it is going to get a lot worse quite surely, but even so, i can still do this. And maybe thats the first feeling i had when i was 22. That 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. That was the excitement of that. I feel we should conclude by asking you to sing ave maria. Well. This is schubert as you have never heard it before. And hopefully never will again. Ave maria. Thats all i can remember. Ladies and gentlemen, sebastian barry. Thank you. Good evening. Well start good evening. Well start with good evening. Well start with a good evening. Well start with a quick look at the Satellite Sequence from today. It shows this curl of cloud over the uk. The closer you are to their centre of that, the stronger the window. A breeze for Western Parts of england and wales as well. Not much rain until later on. The Cloud Thickening over wales will bring some bring with it. That spreads further inland, scattered showers over scotland. That area of low pressure d rifts over scotland. That area of low pressure drifts towards scandinavia. The winds are coming down from the north and north west behind that no, never a one direction. A breezy start of the day in scotland with scattered showers. Those will be on the west. But towards the east, a bright and breezy start. Similar in Northern Ireland and the far north of england. And that figure cloud and rain. Always biggest on the western side of wales. The far south Eastern Corner will start driving, of england. Patchy rain towards the south and west, you might see that early on In Glastonbury. Then a north south split with the northern half seeing the best of any sunshine. The 7 2 of the best of any sunshine. The 7 2 of the uk, a loss of cloud. Ray will be light and patchy but a dull afternoon. 23 degrees, not bad in the south Eastern Corner. 15 degrees in glasgow. A little rain early on In Glastonbury but into the afternoon and evening, cloud breaking up and sunshine comes through. Images of a breeze. Getting on the monday, the best of the sunshine will be across the far south and east. The west will have cloud and rain spreading into Northern Ireland. There could be some quite wet weather. Northern england and southern scotland on monday night into tuesday. Low pressure is firmly in charge with rain around for me. In the next week, quite unsettled, with spells of potentially heavy rain. Quite breezy and quite cloudy. This is bbc news. The headlines at 9 00 the un fears for up to 150,000 civilians. They are trapped in mosul in iraq, held by so called islamic state. There has been a massive landslide in china. More than 100 people are still missing. 3a high rise blocks of flats across england have failed fire safety tests on their external cladding according to government figures. And a rock stars welcome for britains opposition leader, jeremy corbyn. He says he is inspired
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