Colm Tóibín: Free State Special

Come to me and you're very welcome to Free State Podcast. Thank you. How are you? I feel great. Do you? Do you? At this time of the year, are you somebody who reflects on the year? No, I don't do any introspection at all. I don't think so, no.

Was like, do you ever... One of the reasons is that in America, where I spend a lot of time, people talk about themselves all the time. So a lunch with someone is where they talk about themselves and the other half, they're not just where you talk about yourself. And it's not as though the interesting is happening. It's not as though they're telling you about just how they feel, the small things in their lives, the apartment, their cat, how they might change their cat.

And I would think, actually, do I have to listen to this? Because if I do, then I have to start talking myself about how I feel. And your car. And really feel anything. I mean, I don't really have feelings. You know, people have feelings and say, oh, I feel sad at Christmas. I just don't do that sort of feeling, you know, like sad at Christmas or happy in the summer or delighted to be here or nostalgic for 1942 or

I don't have all that. So therefore, what do you say about yourself that other than I'm here, as far as I know, and I'll be here maybe until the new year? But you love people. You love being around people. I'm interested in strangeness.

So if anyone tells me anything really interesting, like some very odd thing about themselves, or their mother, or their granny, I'd be really interested in that listen carefully. But if you find in America, people don't do that. They just carry on telling you about them that they're orthodontist. They're diet a lot. I find they talk about what they're eating. What this new drug is the biggest subject of the season.

And I'm always a year behind, but what's it called? A zempic. I thought I'd call it Olympic. But I was the last person to be told about it. But then once I was told about it, I realized that everyone had been telling me about it all long. It just hadn't been listening. But honestly, you see people. I mean, I don't want to use... There are certain words you can't use anymore. And one of them is the F word, which is fat.

You just can't say, and the thing called fat shaming in America. If you make the slightest remark about someone, like they're out of breath, someone said, that's fat shaming. You can't fat shame. So, since you can't fat shame, what can you do with those imp... What's it called again? Ozempic. Ozempic. You see, people who wear really fat last year are really thin this year. But you can't mention it. No, you have to say you're looking great, but that's an Irish thing, you can say that. And it's a made-binshy thing, you know, you're looking great. You can get away with that.

But if you said, oh my god, fools of fat have fallen off, then you'd be back to having insulted the person last year's person and fat him. And even though the fat is no longer there to be shame. But it's not just, you see, the fat has gone.

I'm talking, I'm really, I'm talking seriously about this, that people's attitude towards life changes along the way, and they become super confident. And you know the way if you're in any way challenged like me, for example, I'm gonna be 17 next year, so they're getting in and out of a taxi, someone isn't worth it. You're just better to walk the two miles, because just getting in and out, especially in the world is low, and you get in, oh my god, how am I ever, and you can't find a seatbelt, you're pulling around, and you know, now,

You're going to be getting in and out of Texas like a ballerina. That's going to change your attitude towards life in general. And you're going to be up early, I feel. You're going to be more cheerful. And you're going to be in general, I think, more at least in my experience of this drug that I now know people who are taking it. They really just are.

It transforms the attitude towards life, not just it doesn't affect if you have a fat liver or a fatty liver. It's not just the interior strangeness of everybody is going to be changed. All those things we have, pancreasism, kidneys and livers.

Well, God bladders. I mean, it's so hard to know the names. So, you know, it's even hard to know the names of things that are outside you. But, you know, this is changing everything. It's changing Christmas because it's the only thing people are talking about. Are you on it? When are you going on? You don't need to be honest. My doctor says, you know, and honestly, it's the big subject.

But does it change? Because there's also that school that says like all these things, you know, if it's coming to you easily, it's kind of not worthwhile. Like there's that. You know, what people said about statins? No. You know, so in other words, you tell people a year in advance, statins are coming and people are just, you know, what? It's just going to do what? And then now if you just throw a stone, you hit a statin taker.

But I don't want to frame things in terms of the 12 months, but you had a remarkable year with the publication and the success of Long Island. I saw you, Oprah Winfrey, picked it as her book. I saw you in Costco, which I wasn't aware of Costco as an Irish resident. I wasn't aware of Costco till I saw the pictures of you.

you kind of became, you're almost doing sort of, it's like the novelist, the writer's version of doing kind of stadium tours. You'd gone to the kind of... Yeah, I mean, I just think that, you know, the whole business of writers standing, giving droning readings of their book, you know, and people just, just yawningly boring, and people getting the book signed and going home. And I think, I do something. And so there was a very nice marketing woman in the publishing house in New York, and she said, would you be willing to do this? And I said, yeah.

It's Costco. So we walked into a Costco. Oh, it started with Costco stock in my book. Now, I think that sort of thing has come into an end in America, but they stock about three books every season. And they're usually by, you know, someone a very big, best-selling author, Lee Chiles, or somebody like that. They're starting to stock mine.

And I thought this was great. I had to do an interview for the Costco magazine. So I got interested in the idea of Costco because, of course, you have to be a member. Right. But it's not an exclusive club. It's a club for everybody. In other words, you buy all your toilet paper. You go once a year and you do a massive toilet paper shop. And you walk out your car with just tons of toilet paper. And then you don't worry about toilet paper again. It's incredibly cheap if you do it like that.

Because nothing like that ever turns out to be cheap, because you don't end up using it or you lose it or a mott eats it or something. But the idea is that you buy in bulk and they buy in bulk. But I got fascinated by the rotisserie chicken, because this was $4.99, $4.99. And it was really enormous. And my speech about it was that it was the chickenness of the chicken that I like to look at. There was a lot of chickenness in the chicken.

Meaning you often buy one of those pre-chickens and by the time you have it home, it's all dry and you cut it open and there's just one sandwich in it. And then a week later you sort of, well me if you're me, a week later you find all the rest somewhere on the draining board or something. And so I just thought I'd make a speech about the chicken and then we put it on TikTok. And everywhere I go, I mean really the other night,

I met a young poet whose work I admire and he came up to me, you know, and I thought he was going to be to say, look, I love your book, I love Long Island. I thought he was going to be one of those, ah, you know, I've been reading you. He just said, hold on, are you the TikTok guy?

And like you said, in all innocence, like with that, I'm sure I've written all these books, I've written all these stories and plays, I've written poems, I've done everything. No, are you the TikTok guy? The lies that I said, I am, you're on the TikTok. And are you on TikTok? No. No, no, no. I'm on Facebook, which is seemingly for old people. But I'm not on that thing, the unmentionable one owned by the fascist. Like as I wouldn't be on one owned by Hitler, for example.

I mean, if it's your own social media, a Himmler-owned one, if Goring-owned one, would I be, I don't think I would, I think I'd just, and even if I had been on a Goring Board, just say, I was on a social media system, same on Facebook, a Goring Board Facebook, or Pinochet Board Facebook, or indeed, you know, some current, modern, fascist Board Facebook.

If one of the lepens, if that old lepenneman more Facebook, I think all the first thing you do is get off Facebook. But it's interesting to see how easy fascism creeps in. It creeps in because ordinary people just think, well, I'm using one of these systems. I'm not going to say which one. And I don't want to be offered because all my friends are still on it.

And people are still on it. And that just shows you how easy it would be. If Hitler came, he'd be laughing at us all. He'd be absolutely howling. He would be on the floor with Mirth about how easy it is for a fascist to start entertaining us and bring us into their little little web and their little systems. I mean, it's really astonishing. There was a debate around the use of the word fascism during the election in America.

Did you have any hesitation? No, I just think fascism for me has always been a term of abuse. Like it doesn't really, you know, it doesn't just throw you at a dictionary definition. It's a fascist. You could come out of a shop and find that, you know, come out of a dentist and say, that dentist is a complete fascist.

Yeah, but it doesn't know. No, no, I'm not talking about. There's not a dictionary term. I mean, in order to be a fascist, you have to tick the following five boxes. And since a certain candidate only ticks four of them, then he isn't really a fascist. He's something else. And no, I don't have a problem. I don't have a problem with the word. I think it should be thrown around generally.

But some of the definitions seem to kind of place it so specifically in the 1930s, so you didn't actually conform to what people were doing around fascism. But I think politically, if you have somebody who doesn't want to run for election, who wants to bully everyone around, who's going into foreign countries and trying to finance their elections, owns a system whereby I can enter into your mind and cause you to change your opinion.

And everything he does is retrograde. And obviously it's not in favor of liberty, progress, equality, or any of those things. Then he's a fascist. And I mean, it's a lovely word to you. I think it's a better word than I've said, a bollocks, to use a fascist. Maybe a fascist bollocks. Again, I can think of a few people who...

I want to ask you a bit about Long Island because it has been a huge success and it's such a mesmerizing story. One of the things that struck me reading it was that the characters are so well-defined, but time is also a character in the book in the sense that

in a way, how quickly, I know it's a cliche, but how quickly time goes and how much can happen at the same time. So you have Eilish Lacey coming back after 20 years and so much has changed, but so many things are sort of similar as well. I suppose she's under the impression, this is between about 1952 and 1976, that things are frozen in Enes Morcy, that her friend Nancy is single again.

you know, Jim is still unmarried and her mother is still alive. So it's possible for her to be fooled into thinking, but just because these obvious things haven't changed, that, you know, the word itself hasn't changed. But, you know, in a way, that idea would just say she's 22 and now she's 46. I think in anyone's life,

That's a big period of time. It's a transforming period. And certainly for a woman, it is. And she changed much, you think, because she strikes me in this a little bit, like I did think, and this isn't a sympathetic view, so she reminded me a bit of Carmella Soprano, in the Sopranos, in that there's a kind of a moral court, but when it suits her.

Yeah, you have to be careful with me when you're interviewing me, because I don't know who that is. My parents kept me home from screwing up, and I missed some of those major TV series, so I've never seen that. Well, she's Tony Soprano's wife.

who would be very, she would be very moral in certain ways. But at the same time, she always manages to find an accommodation to stay with Tony's role. If you say, I'm sorry, you mentioned this, because you have me both delighted. I've never seen it. And also, I don't know what you're told.

But what I had to do was make sure that every time she speaks, she's articulate, by which I mean that she would speak in full sentences, that she would, I would tend not to use, if it was, I would, I don't put I'd, if it was, I have, I wouldn't put I'd when she's speaking. So she tends to have a sort of command

that she has developed all on her own, out there in that house on Long Island, bringing up two children, and just trying to educate herself. There was a moment in our house where my family, my mother, really, it wasn't also my family, it was my mother, decided that she really didn't want to read the Irish press anymore, she wanted to read the Irish Times. That's a big moment, it's a 1960 something, to say 1968, say.

And you realize there's something going on, and it's in the Irish times. So we had problems living next door, which is great because I could go in every evening at seven o'clock into their house with our Irish press and get their Irish times and bring it into our house. But I'm not sure they ever read the Irish press, but my mother would devour.

You know, it may binge you down McCarthy, but it wasn't just the feminist stuff. It was she thought the editors were beautifully written lovely use of the semi colon and things. I mean, just but it caused you towards life, which was that life is going to change and life could be exciting and that there was a new thing going on. And this is what happens in the novel. I mean, I took that episode in our house and gave it to English in America that she begins to get a subscription to the New York Times on a Sunday only. They would deliver on a Sunday.

The others are having their lunch, all the Italian family having big long lunch gossiping and shouting. She's just going through what's in the New York Times. That's a really transforming thing to happen to a woman who hasn't got that grace or education that she begins to educate herself. I think she's a feminist.

without the word, without reading the feminist text, without marching, without knowing, she's become someone who has a view for an opinion of her daughter, that her daughter will be educated, that her daughter will go to college. This would matter to her.

So that's the big difference with her, that she's been going through American feminism without knowing it. Right. And then she goes back to in a score with him. And finds what she thinks, doesn't say what she thinks. She thinks it's the same, but of course Nancy has changed as well. Exactly the same way. Nancy goes to Dublin, Nancy wants to get her house done in a whole new cool way, from a magazine. And Nancy goes to Dublin to buy clothes. I mean, that's a difference between the 50s and the 70s. No one in that score through the 50s would think of going up to Switzers.

Yeah. Well, very few people would. I mean, they wouldn't have the courage to go into Switzerland. But by the 70s, they would. How's it at an impact on Eneskorthi? Because, you know, when I'm reading it, I was like, you know, looking at places, you know, you can go and, you know, you go on Google Maps and see where is. I wonder, like, with the success of it, are people, you know, are people going to start coming to Eneskorthi wondering, where would this be? Where would that be going out to caution? Yeah, that happened early on with Australians in Ireland. They wouldn't go down.

What's happening now, more, is that a lot of Chinese tourists go to Ennis Gorti, and they're looking for all sorts of things, including the family house, and they came up to street recently, a big group of them, and people tried what to do. They did it in the museum, they did a big half a room, was for Eileen Gray, and the other half was for Brooklyn. That was nice.

But I think that that had its day, but there's no one trying to do that forever. Because it was just for those few years, it was the thing that was well known. In the town, the topography of the book is almost like in the novel I wrote about Henry James, who was a real figure and Thomas Mann, I was using the scaffolding of their biography to work from.

to create illusion that they're real characters, even though they're sort of half fictional, half real. With this, the topography of the town, the names of streets, the names of pubs, the names of shops, and all of that's real. So it's like a bedrock to work from, it's like scaffolding, or it's like, yeah, it's a sort of architectural metaphor, it's the best way to do it.

example as well of how things have changed in the terms of Nancy, and she got out of the supermarket when Don's came in. And now someone comes to her with the toasted sandwich, you know, getting under the toasted sandwich. These are the lovely little things that really change life. I mean, the arrival of the toasted ham and cheese, or the toasted cheese into a pub, and you know, it would be in that little plastic thing that put them into this little thing, and you could sit there eating them.

I mean, this was a huge thing that people don't think about because they're so used to it. Some pubs don't do it, but the ones who did, and they weren't necessarily the posh ones. Some little publican would decide he was doing this. And that's a big moment of change. And I wanted just to use something like that.

And how has Eneschorthe changed now when you go back when you see it? And it's not as prosperous as it was. And whereas Gory is because it's Gory's a commuter town. And Wexford for some reason also looks pretty good. And Eneschorthe is, I think, is the next one that's going to actually become very prosperous in the next decade. So if I was in business, I'd buy a building in Slaney Street and I'd make it into some amazing shop. But it hasn't happened yet.

And how does it change in terms of that sense of people knowing everybody's business and what is going on? In Long Island, they manage to have an affair without anyone knowing. Later on, you realize that someone doesn't know, but they don't tell, you know, Alicia's mother doesn't tell anybody what she knows. She says that she realized early on in life that she don't spread gossip, it gets into trouble.

So, Jim and Nancy managed to do that business up there. They really are. I'm crossing the market square going into Rafta Street. Quite later, she's coming out of his house at three in the morning. Nobody sees them. It's not as if everyone knows everyone else's business. People think they do, and then they don't.

So it wasn't as powerful as we like to imagine. You could still live a private. Absolutely. I mean, you see what you do is you put in the sort of superstructure thing is, oh, everyone knows everyone else's business in small towns. And then you start working in ways that they don't. And it's only interesting if you break the cliche that they don't. I mean, a lot of things happen in the town with anyone knowing.

I mean, Ainsch manages to come back from, she managed to leave a wedding with Jim. Was there anyone knowing? That's something you should never be able to do for a wedding with someone. I mean, how could you do that? But, and then drive to Curlet Clow, drive back into Enescore. You drop them and the keys.

go back to her own parking space and then walk to the town at, like, must be midnight or something, like down to his pub and actually ring the bell without anyone seeing her or knowing what she does. She tells no one, he tells no one. The question then they want to work out is how does Nancy know? So that's...

So, you know, I was, it isn't the case in the book that everyone knows one another. I want to ask you about the beautiful book on James Baldwin this year as well, which is a really fascinating study of him. And I love, you know, it's just a book to kind of devour, but

There was, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you

And I wonder how you feel about that at the moment in terms of countries like Ireland where there seems to be this tension, certainly on the fringes about what the nation is and who is part of the Irish nation. I think the argument has to be made again and again and again that if we do not in these European countries of ours renew our populations.

we're going to have not only aging populations and what we're going to have nobody to care for them. In other words, it's not as though someone has snatched my job as a strawberry picker. In Southern California, it's not as though the avocado harvest is Silicon Valley. Someone takes our jobs from us. A lot of the jobs that people do who come in first generation

I mean, in certain cases are jobs such as, you know, working in hospitals at night. So you find, oh, if you don't like immigrants, well, they'll be there when you're dying because they'll be the only person in the hospital that night will be the Lithuanian nurse and get used to it now.

and be grateful that these people have come into Ireland, all places, the most woe-be-gone place in Europe, where there was a famine in the middle of the 19th century, where there was such emigration out of the country that it was the phrase the vanishing Irish was being used in the 1950s. Now, as a gift to us, these people are arriving to work in our country to renew our football teams, our hurling teams, for God's sake. Everywhere you go, you've got better food.

Everywhere you go, you've got better services. And everywhere you go, you've got a general sense of cosmopolitan, just there are different people wandering the streets, who have different backgrounds to you. Now, if you're not grateful for that, then I really need to make the argument again in some other way. It needs to come back in some other way. And if the novel Brooklyn and the novel Long Island don't help,

This is what it's like to go away. It's never a simple business of going to grab someone else's job in America. At least doesn't go to America to grab someone else's job and become an enemy of the people and has to be deported by Trump.

She goes because she can't get a job in Ireland, but then she goes and look what she contributes. I mean, in other words, she is the mother to two of the most wonderful new citizens. I mean, just think of what her children in Long Island are going to do in America or be in America. And so the idea that, you know, was in the 1930s, they needed enemies and they made them communist and Jews. And it was great. Thank you. You know, that really ended well.

You know, and now they have to, in order to, they have to find an enemy. So, you know, they can't do women, because often they are women, you know, or they're married to women, or they're the children of women. And so they pick immigrants, but it makes no sense. It has no, there's nothing rational about it. It's not as though, you know, the asylum seekers are coming to get you. You're coming to get them. I mean, who are the thugs in Ireland?

The thugs are the people who have attacked the asylum centers. So you go, like, if you're talking about deporting people, I'm not sure, you know, I'm not sure this is the right way around, because even just to see the film and also, you know, we have a funny relationship in Ireland with the Garde. Yeah. You know, I mean, it isn't just that they're unarmed. It is that, you know, you would call a cop if you were in any, you know, if something happened to say, well, you better call a cop.

I know they're annoying if you're speeding, for example. There's nothing more annoying than a cop. Like, you're mining your own business in your car, driving it off. There's no one else on the road, and certainly a cop. But that's a minor irritant. But in general, the idea of Irish police

about their own business, protecting a place, being attacked and spat at and insulted by a group of what? A group of Irish people? So, you know, who are the troublemakers here? And I watched that footage, as I presume you did. I was horrified by it. And it made me think, actually, these cops are decent people who are really, really doing their job. And I couldn't believe they're restrained. Now, cops are, you know, to say they're not always restrained.

But in this instance, they really put up with a lot. There must be people listening to this who are cops thinking, I did. I mean, it was awful standing there. Without that footage, the RT footage. Yeah. And I have to say, one of the funny things about Ireland is you love being proud of it sometimes if you're away somewhere.

But if you're in Italy now, or Spain, or France, or Germany, or America, you see, look at Ireland, look at the way, for example, Sinn Fein has not got involved in playing an anti-immigrant card. Look at that sort of funny restraint, which must have covered a lot of discussion.

Now, there are good reasons for this, but nonetheless, they did not. They didn't play that card in the election. They didn't even use code much. So therefore, Ireland is this extraordinary stable country where we love Simon. We sort of loved Leo slightly, but liked him. We love me, Hall Martin, and we're getting used to Mary Lou.

And then we can just kick the greens regularly, but we love them now they're gone. Amen, Ryan is going to become, you know, this hero suits me. And I mean, you know, in other words, it's a very, we don't have Marine Le Pan. We don't have vaults. We don't have their horribly tied in government. And we don't have this rising force in Germany of all places who are coming out of East Germany. So we just don't have this. And it's a lovely stability.

And what we should do is keep making the argument that, you know, it's just been great if the government did a bit more, maybe, like if it got up early, maybe what time are you up at? What plan do you have? And how's that plan going? And could you tell us every day? In other words, I watch publisher's book.

I watch booksellers. And people have plans. And you think, this book is coming on a certain date. Well, years time, imagine if it hadn't come out, the book. If it does come out. And I write it. But then I watch government about housing. You see, hold on a minute. What's that? Do you know that train was meant to go to Navan? How's that train going that was coming from Navan, the commuter train from Navan? How does that look at the moment? How's the children's hospital?

Speaking of which, isn't it great that McDonald's have managed to build a thing in a few weeks, just at their entrance to the hospital. McDonald's is still not open, but like Ronald McDonald's. So I'm not suggesting Ronald McDonald's should come and run the country. He should not. I think it's a disgrace that he's with McDonald's near it. And I think obesity remains a problem despite this new drug I was talking about. What's the drug called again? Asempic. Asempic. I think that's how you pronounce it. Asempic. But in other words, there is a need.

for, I think, it's every area of to do with infrastructure, the creation of infrastructure, public works, that really, really needs examination. What is that? We interviewed Owen Murphy last week, the former housing minister, and he wanted to make housing an emergency.

when he became housing minister and he was told, you can't do that. It's not an emergency legally because we've known about it. That was the attorney general's kind of advice. So they then just, they did the incremental, keep it going, steady, conservative kind of approach to it. But that seems to permeate so many areas of Irish life, that sense we don't.

We don't want to address something with urgency for fear of the consequences. And I wonder when we have an election which is kind of stable, does that feed into that a little bit again that we don't need for anything to do anything too urgent because the people

are happy with how things are. Yeah, if you just took it somewhere like in a Scorty, and imagine what it must have been like in 1920 with the tone of independence. Because you could name Vinegar Hill Villas, St. Aidan's Villas, St. John's Villas, Parnell Avenue, Press Road, were all built in the 30s.

by Irish government. And they were built using systems to do with the Mexico County Council. So there were county council houses. There were often local authority houses. So there were various systems used to create them. People, of course, moved into them, paid rent, and people eventually bought them. I think that buying of them was the first problem. In other words, actually, you certainly had this extraordinary stock of housing.

Yeah. And then you didn't. I know. And so you think, well, who made money on that? Unfortunately, the people who were given the house in the first place paid rent on them, it was meant to be a sort of social adventure, to actually create more equality.

And I suppose Thatcher began it, that idea. But in Enescore, it happened earlier, where people wanted to buy their own house and live in their own house, which is a cultural thing. You want to own your own house. But the idea that Devilaire in the 1930s and into the 1940s could build, I mean, just think of it, Cromlan, you know, Cabra, those houses that are so solid, that seems such a legacy now. And that every yuppie wants now,

Yeah. And the word yuppy has died out. Let's love to use it again. The word yuppy wants to live in fabric. And in, you know, thingless, big, big, big, big, big. Oh, no. Stony about it was stony. Hold on. Stony about it happened in the 80s. Right.

I bought a house with a story about it in 1982. I was very grateful for it, but it had an outdoor toilet. And I wish I kept that, you know, the outdoor toilet has a monument to something. But I mean, so, you know, Vingless is called fabulous. Yeah.

And you think, and what is resistance now then? Because people will say there's too much bureaucracy, there's too much. But is there, do you think there's an ideological resistance at the heart of it? Yeah, I think there's all this idea that any sort of public private, you know, the thing has to have a private element. But I think it's also very, very difficult now to get people who at some normal price can build a house. So in other words, if you just, you go in, you go in trouble to try and find a plaster.

Just say you need some plastering on. So in other words, there's a huge need for a massive influx of skilled workers from elsewhere. That means, of course, we're going to deplete some poor country. But nonetheless, the idea that we don't need vast numbers of people to come and live here in order for us to be able to do what we need to do, which is, for example, build houses. So I think the first problem you would have is the builder.

The risk the builder has to take, the fact costs are going up all the time and every year. So there are loads of problems solved them. But you don't need to clear an emergency to solve them. I mean, just call it an emergency yourself at home privately. Look in the emergency, it's an emergency. Get up ill and Murphy. Instead of causing a by-election and running out of power and writing a book moaning about everything. Just solve the problem for us.

Yeah, the book is kind of interesting. I have to defend him in that book. Yeah, I know. Honestly, I often on Christmas Day around that time, I read one of those books. I read an old door, this wonderful book on the Sunnydale Agreement, for example, on Christmas. Because I hear in my, for what are you doing? I'm reading an old door on the Sunnydale Agreement, and I loved it. So yeah, I'm going on Christmas, my Christmas Day book.

is on Murphy. Okay. I'm really looking forward to it. Very good. But I wanted to ask you a couple of things on that too. When you talk about, I'm amazed that this has happened in Ireland. When you talk about how things were in the past, it's now become, in those little pockets of the far right, Ireland of the 1950s and earlier,

is now idealized as if this was a golden age, or we should be trying to go back to it. I always thought we would be resistant to that element of the far-right projects, the way they have in Brexit, and the way they're in Britain, and make America great again, because everyone would just remember.

this was terrible. We were poor, we had TB, everything, but yet in some ways it's an indication that you can convince yourself or persuade yourself anything. I think that when you talk about the far right in Ireland, it's like talking about the multi-millionaire class. It's almost oxymoron in itself, the far right in Ireland. If you're claiming that

those nice brothers from Kerry. Right. They're marvelous. And they do mean business. They're in business. They represent their constituency because they feel that their constituency, quite right, is underrepresented in Dublin. And so in Dublin to make deals. So they're not, what are they called again, those brothers? Healy race. Yeah, they're marvelous. And they're not in Dublin. So if they're not the far right,

Really? Who's elected to the dole now for far right? Really? So it's lovely. So they can just blather away and give them freedom of the airway and give them all the freedoms to speak away. But no one's listening very much. No one believes I think about the 50s. Everyone knows what it was like. What was it like?

People had outdoor toilets and then they emigrated. They couldn't believe they're indoor toilets. People just couldn't believe when they left Ireland to go to England as a nurse say that she wouldn't have a horrible consultant who couldn't be found. I don't remember at the time a consultant was someone who couldn't ever be found, a hospital consultant. How would you know a hospital? He was always, he cannot be found because he's moving between his private patients and his private patients and his private patients. That has more or less ended now.

Like if you're a nurse in Ireland, you can actually find the consultants. But you go to England in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s. The consultant is just an ordinary person and he's been paid an ordinary salary. But that's just one example of the sort of, obviously you were gay and went to England, you could go to heaven. There's a literally great nightclub down off of Trafalgar Square called heaven. I remember going into it myself and it was an excellent place.

And, you know, you're trying to get, just going back over the sort of little gay bars and Dublin and the gay sort of misery, the whole thing is dandruff. And so, you know, nobody. I mean, they're just small things, but also, you know, everyone hates Michael O'Leary as a sort of national bastard, but Ryaner.

And everybody pretends to, hey, Rhino is just like you look at the list of where Rhino is going. It's just excellent place with so many consonants in the sound that it must be a great place and some in some way in some part of Poland or some part of Moldova or something. Just excellent. Yeah. And it's transformed everything where you wouldn't be paying.

And you're in March at the weekend in one of those cities, including the Italian cities, you can see the Irish couple slightly retired, wandering along, looking slightly lost as they look up and wonder if this is a leaning tower of pizza or not. But in other words, Irish people get to do all this weekend traveling now. So it's all excellent. It's very hard to think of a complete downside that would cause you to feel nostalgic for any time in the past in Ireland.

I know. It's a kind of crazy idea. It doesn't mean people are happy, of course. People, of course, are drinking too much. Do you think? I do, yeah. Happiness isn't something you really, again, when you talk, I just want to point out you've nearly choked on your drink when I said that. It's not something that, as an individual, it's not something that preoccupies you. Is it?

I think it's a lovely thing, and the Americans made up, really, that you talk about life, liberty. And what we have, we want life, and we want liberty. Is there anything else we want? Would that be enough? Do your French had equality? Liberty, I got equality, fraternity. Fraternities, and fraternity is a nice idea, too. But the Americans had a wonderful phrase, the pursuit of happiness.

And you think, oh, you mean I could line a beach and I could swim in the sea. I could go shopping in Bronta. But it's a lovely concept, but it doesn't really mean anything. But the pursuit is quite a wealth. Oh, it's beautiful. Because the pursuit of it can be endless. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Oh yeah, this isn't the right to happen, the pursuit of it, meaning your day. Why are you driving from here to there? Why do you want a bigger house? Why do you want to pay for your taxes? Why do you think Donald Trump will save you? He'll save me because he's going to be good about the economy. He's going to keep my enemies such as they are, invented ones.

So yeah, the pursuit of happiness becomes, I suppose, a way of life. And because I always think people who say, I just want to be happy as if it's a very simple thing. It's actually, you might as well say, I just want to be living on Mars. Yeah, I had a friend and his 70 siblings really didn't make money. They got nice jobs, but it was nothing. The mother said, it was awful. None of you did well.

And one of them said to the mother, we're all happy. And the mother said, happy, as though that was some awful idea, like some silly thing. What was that about? Oh, happy, she said.

I want to ask you about, it struck me reading Long Island, but it's not really about the book at all, but there is a line that puts a time on it in some ways when Jim talks about parking in Montrose, which he started to do after the bombings.

And I wonder, I was just thinking about that and reading back over some stuff you've written over the years and talked about the North. That period, but after 1974 when, and it's something we've talked a lot about on our podcast, like when the South kind of detached from the North,

When you look back into what were the factors, because one of the things that struck me just reading some of the stuff you've written that, joining the EU or join the EC as it was, when that happened, changed Irish people in the South. And Britain joined and the North joined too, but we suddenly had an alternative.

Yeah, it wasn't like that. I was still in school in 1972 when Bloody Sunday happened, January the 30th. And we were watching a film, was boarding school in Wrexford, and we were watching a film, and the film was stopped on the Sunday night and said, boys, we have something of an announcement to make, and 13 unarmed Catholics. And so the British Embassy was burned, and some other things were burned, and were a lot of marches. Now, that is probably the moment

When something happened, but it didn't happen publicly. It wasn't as though some even Connor Cruz or Brian who was really trying to preach for a sort of detachment from the north. Even he didn't say it. This is the moment we must decide, do we want to be involved in this? We want burnings of buildings in the center of Dublin, or do we want to move away from that? Now, that wasn't a debate. It wasn't debate. It happened.

And it wasn't as though people said, oh, next year we'll be joining the EU on the 1st of January 73. And therefore, this is how we see ourselves as Europeans and not involved in some tribal conflict. It happened not at all. It happened without debate. It happened without discussion. It happened without any images.

of it happening. And it was all the more powerful for that. It wasn't a debate. You didn't vote for it. It just went by one people moved in that direction. It was a very odd business. I mean, I suppose the hunger strikes is interesting that when

they ran for election, they ran in Lao, you know, this is in 1981. They ran in Lao, they ran in Monaghan, Cav and Monaghan, obviously in Donegal, but that those border places became the place where the North could impinge, but try and get further than draw the, you know, try and get, like, just people just, it turned out, Otty continued to cover the North. I mean, it would be the lead item on the news sometimes, but I remember,

when I was editor of McGill. Yeah, I was going to ask you about that, which was between, what, 1980, I was there in what, 82, 83, 84, a bit of 85, that then you couldn't really put the North on the cover. Why? If you put John Hume on the cover, well, please wouldn't buy it. I mean, the cover was a commercial thing. I mean, Vincent Brown was, as the owner was, as a publisher, I was the editor.

Quite rightly, I think, said, you know, I have to have an involvement with the cover. You do what's inside, but this is a commercial thing. Yeah. And he had a very good nose for that, especially what wouldn't work. He's proved that if you put the red border around, like, Time magazine, you sold a significant number of copies more than if you didn't do that. Right. What is that about? Well, it's about what things look like on a news agent stand.

But we would try and put the North on once a year, but that was only if you put the provos on, not Sinn Féng, the provos, because that would have some sense, there was some oddly enough, some element of excitement for that. I mean, not just that people were interested in reading about it, but they really weren't. Now, you could do big things, we did a Libya liri, did a massive profile of John Hume, and now the McCarthy wrote, and even McCann wrote,

But Mary Holland wrote, but try the cover. Try what John Humonthe cover. Try what one of the unionist leaders on the cover. Try and put any people just wouldn't. I mean, literally you could watch. You could watch. Yeah. And sometimes, you know, returns came physically. I mean, the magazine would come back into the office like piles on red, on board. And you'd realize, that was my mistake.

But if you put Charlie Hoy on the cover, you could just put Charlie Hoy, Charlie Hoy, Charlie Hoy on the cover. Because it was elements of, you know, his skullduggery excitement and mystery. And, you know, honestly, just put Charlie Hoy on the cover.

But as the editor then, when you were covering those stories, did it affect how you would then, how much you would devote to them, or was it something? No, it was true that if you were doing a profile of John Hume, you would put a lot of energy, because you weren't going to do it twice. It was the same five years. Because you also get a lot of space, so you could give 15 pages to it.

Um, and uh, I mean, there was one very funny thing. Vincent found a fellow in England who was totally anti-Irish, but Vincent thought he was the best rugby writer. He was the rugby correspondent for the, um, Mark reason was, no, no reason. Mark reason. No, someone reason. John reason. John reason. And he was the good man. And he was the, um, daily telegraph, rugby correspondent. And he became a rugby correspondent. And that was a lot of fun because he, you know,

It would mean that phallasin, sheepskin coats coming off the lens, would go not over. Look what he just said. And that sort of added, there were a lot of ingredients like that that you could work with. But it's an interesting thing, I think, looking back at it now, because the north...

In terms of, there's been a kind of, pardon the word, explosion in interest at the moment in various aspects of the Lord. You say nothing, the book, and you haven't seen the television programme. Have you? Have you seen? I thought I was going to, I've been to assume the assumption about this. And there seems to be this new interest but also a new revisionism, if you like, in terms of how we, how people talk about the conflict and the troubles.

And like, you know, there's a kind of a sense, you know, and we've talked a lot about it on this podcast. And if Joe Raleigh was here, he'd have a different view to me, but I'm here. So I'll give my, you know, this idea that there was no alternative, that there was nothing else that people could do.

And I know in Bad Blood, I think you mentioned, which is an amazing book that everyone should read about your walk along the border. And you met lots of Protestants, you met lots of ordinary unionist people. But also, I think there's a scene where there's a Sinn Fein or IRA man approaches you at a funeral and says, why is the South?

abandoned us, which again is a persistent feeling to this day. And I wonder how you think about that now looking back, because I feel as somebody who was implacably and incredibly hostile to the IRA and still hostile to what they did, that maybe I did actually forget about the broader Northern Nationalists. I think if you think about the larger question, you missed the point.

The point is that in January 1976, 12 men were coming home in a mini-boss home work. So they were local people coming home from where they worked, to where they lived. Everyone knew them in the place where they lived. Everyone knew the place where they worked.

Many of us were stopped. They caught up with the army, which was for some reason, British army. And then they were taken out and someone said, there's one Catholic among their 11 Protestants and one Catholic. Stand out. The Catholic stand out. And this poor man is called Richard. I mean, the other didn't want him to stand out. I mean, one of them said to me, he was our friend. The only one that survived. The only one that survived. And so,

He thought he was going to be shot. I asked him. I said, and he said, what would you have thought? I've never seen anyone as traumatized. You came to the door in Bestbrook in the town and there was the reporter, he has stupid reporters. I said, did you think they were going to shoot? There's 10 years later. And he looked, what would you have thought? And he ran and they turned the guns on the work. There were actually provo and he turned the guns on the 11. And one of the 11 is still alive. He's called Alan Black. He's a marvelous person.

As is the Catholic survivor, Richard. I mean, the two of us still live there, you know? I don't know if Richard is still alive, but Alan Black is. Now, my question is...

Who did it? Who ordered it? And 1976, so just say you're 25, meaning you're born in 51, meaning you are now, what age would you have to be, like 70, 73, 74? I mean, it's not impossible. It's most likely, in fact, that of the group who shot those men, someone, five or three or four of them are still alive, who ordered it.

who knew it was going to happen, who looked after the man immediately afterwards. So you're talking about 20 people. I'm just taking on it. It's probably about 12, they're 12 people alive who supervised that, did it or helped with it. Now, I don't want them to come forward. I don't want to see them. I don't want to know about them.

But I do want everyone to realize that they have never said they were sorry. I mean, even sorry is a stupid one. I mean, the organization itself has never said that was not just wrong. It was a complete disgrace. It was lower than low. And the people who did it should be ashamed. The shame should go on forever.

This is what happened in the Basque country in the last 20 years, that the eta people have realized and said, and because if there's a moment of movement in Parliament to denounce some monument, the eta people will be the most anti-violence in the Parliament. We're not getting that here. Because I think the Sinn Fein movement towards politics was so gradual,

I'm a grateful for. I mean, people said, could you just stop shooting people and run for election? And they did that. So why are we moaning so much? We're moaning so much because the movement has not been complete. It's not just, it's not just as an army council, you know, organizing what Mary Lou is saying about housing. Obviously, you know, Owen O'Brynne's policy on housing is Owen O'Brynne's policy on housing, but that they cannot distance themselves from the past entirely.

In other words, it isn't as though they're saying, we're a new generation. We're saying that the previous generation, what they did was so wrong, so wrong. There's a moment in saying nothing, where the two price girls have an aunt and bridey, in making a bomb blew her arms off and became blind.

And she's trying to smoke with no arms, and they put the Instagram to her mouth, and she's blind. And just talk about did she love dancing, and she sort of nods, but it isn't as though they're saying, well, that generation, the bombing came out of the 50s, was so wrong. We're not going to do that again. So it's just that it's a cast of mind, it's a way of thinking, and it's a way of constantly evading, of saying, well, finding a form of words that we know as code for, we don't really mean what we're saying.

Well, to me, it's always the thing where they speak. It's spoken in the past of voice as if it's sort of, you know, the explosion or whatever happened to fail from the sky. Anyone thinks that what happened in the North was necessary. There was no alternative. Troutman coming home in many of us.

And to say, well, that was a nice relationship. It wasn't a nice relationship. It was done in retaliation for something else. And something was done the following week in retaliation for that. It was part of a spiral. It was part of a pattern. But no one at the time when that happened said, like, is this what we've come to?

You know, like, is this... I mean, you're on a wolf tone, or you can't be invoking boldness, Tanner. Like, you get people coming from a mini bus and you shoot them. I suppose, again, you know... I mean, I get them moaning and, like, they're all like, give me a break. We look, they look back at what happened in the... In the War of Independence or in the Civil War and the de atrocities that were committed then. Now, I think one of the differences is the period of time that this... It just kept going on. No, no, no, no.

He says it was just as bad, but the minute Finafore came into power, I know Sean from the Mass said that Finafore was a slightly constitutional party, but he said in 928, by 1932, and there was a decade, I mean, sorry, just nine years after, de Valera is having nothing to do with his past.

like it's over. And there's no sense of him involved somehow in all sorts of... He was involved in an entirely new way of running politics.

All I'm saying is that if Sinn Fein were to come into power in the Republic, which they won't do now, and the reason they won't do is that no party can go into coalition with them. Why can no party go into coalition with them? Because they could not have in a...

any government they could not be Minister for Defence or Minister for Justice. They would have to bring in the Labour Party or what the darned socks is. The darned socks would have to run the Justice and Defence because they still couldn't do it after all these years after the ceasefire. How come? Because they won't speak about those things truthfully.

But is that because, unlike in the 20s, they still have two audiences they need to speak to. There's an ordinary nationalist who, for understandable reasons, want a united Ireland a lot more than

people here are, you know, I think, I think this is amazing, like, start that, you know, 2% of Sinn Fein voters, their reason for voting for, in the side, their reason for voting for Sinn Fein is Irish unity. Yes. And that's, that's domestic. Yeah. So that's, and that's Sinn Fein. Whereas in the North, and again, I know from doing this podcast, we have an awful lot of listeners in the North, like the Northern Nationalist experience, understandably, is different. And they want unity is something that

It's a grand concept, that idea of unity. And we're back with John Hume, just saying there's no such thing as territory, they're only evil. But until they have to somehow address that, they have to keep those people. And as the only, they can't detach from them the way Devolera could, because at this point, everyone in the South, which was all he had to concern himself about, was sick of that.

But I mean, I think that there will come a time if this government, particularly with this government because there's a possibility of an enormous inertia coming in now because they don't have the third party with a real hungry agenda. And so you get an extraordinary sort of laziness of feeling, well, we just, you know, we don't have to every day fulfill an agenda that after the period, there will be a time when there really will have to be a possibility of an opposition party in government.

But we're still finding that two parties which are perfectly reasonable, such as the darned socks and the Labour Party are just not able to do it. I mean, just a question again, how come? When it comes to United Ireland, though, you also see things like people resistant. If it does happen, they resist things like, you know, we can't change the national anthem, we can't change the flag.

Yeah. What do you think about those, surely those things should be up for negotiation? Yeah, I mean, I think that the, take the national anthem, the Irish national anthem, I mean, I think most national anthem is a sort of ludicrous, I mean, God's safe, our gracious king has to be the worst, you know. God's a, God's a, God's a, gracious king. Yeah, what? Like, that's gracious, but anyway, what's God?

But the Irish National Anthem is a particularly unfortunate history. Brendan Bien's uncle wrote it, and Brendan Bien told Anthony Cronin, who told me that the big family's secret was that it was first used as a comic turn in a musical.

Now, you know, in other words, it would be a variety show, and someone would come on and sing, you know, a big, badmoor's melody, and some soprano would arrive on, some comedian would come on. And Pat O'Connor wrote, I think, where three fellows who looked most unlikely, and I say a really tall fellow, a fellow with, you know, really skinny, with his uniform falling off, and another fellow.

at a time when there was a lot of citizen army, there was a lot of funny little armies wandering around, people were militarization, and they would come out on the stage. Now, listen to the opening words in English, and they would sidal out onto the stage, the house of laughter from the people of Dublin, and they would go, soldiers are we.

Now, why the soldiers are we? Because it's, obviously, Gilbert and Sullivan were using, you know, two little jars from school, are we? And that's what you did in the musical, like you came out to do. Yeah. And so, the people, so interesting, like the Irish translation is much more dignified, you know, where the ancient soldiers of Ireland, you know, shouldn't have been the fall, it's not very yellow. But it's, um,

So, and every time it happens in English, even when I say that, I go, oh my god, two little girls, I think of, you know, like a really big tall fella, looks gornless on the street, there is a soldier's ludicrous coming out with like a tiny little fella and say a big pre-ozemic fella.

the audience howls, and that's how our national anthem began. But for example, every year at the Oxford Opera Festival, and we're going to hear wonderful music, and there's a great orchestra, and the great singers, before the, every night, before the, it's a national opera house, before the opera begins, the conductor comes out, the orchestra's ready to play the national anthem, and as the Irish words are in short time, so the audience is usually half Irish, half English.

And the English are so amazed that the Irish can all sing the song, because they start to have their day. And when it comes to the moment, the gunny's grip and the player, you know, people stop singing about bullets, and as though this is somehow or other, you know, the guns.

I'm not sure we should replace it with Ireland's call, or anything ludicrous, or you're waltzing the tilde or something, but Moore's melody. But this one, the Irish national anthem, is probably right that those national anthem should begin as jokes and make their way into high solemnity.

Someone like me can just sit around or have to stand up and look solemn and just think, you know, the whole idea of nations, the whole idea of saying, we, you know, we're Irish and we have our national anthem, of our national theater, our national youth orchestra. Give me a break about now. Just go away, national. I guess, you know, I was

When you mention Ireland's call, the story of how that originated is that when Ireland first qualified for the Rugby World Cup, they had no anthem because they'd fudged it for years because of the 32 gente. So in the first match, they lined up and they had to scramble to find a song and the song they played.

As you see, they're getting ready for a battle, and suddenly over the Tanoy comes to drop the rose of Trillie. So the affair like a rose of the summers was not her beauty alone that won me. Oh no! It was the truth in her eyes ever dawning that made me love Mary. That would get you ready for a rose of Trillie. That would be great. This grum would be like nothing on earth.

And you mentioned at the start, I want to ask you, maybe you don't have any, you said you're turning 70 next year. Yeah. Do you, does that? I'm not putting a thought into it. And, um, you know, even the idea of that 70 is the new 50 or the new 45 or the new 57, like that's all ludicrous. Um, and, um, the thing is keep, keep taking your statins, George, you know, and then this new, what's it you think called?

as ampeque. Do you've got that to look forward to? We should get this sponsored by as ampeque. That is lovely. Actually, what I like about it being 70, well, I will be 70 next year, is that maybe people will start treating me with some respect. Maybe I'll start treating myself with more respect.

Well, I'll come on the program and I'll say that I'm very disappointed at the way that, you know, I've talked in a whole different way about, you know, I find a tone that is some lying somewhere between Michael Deacon and Mary Robinson, you know, aspiring nation. I feel at the moment that there still is a need for Irish people to reflect more deeply, I think, about the whole idea of nationhood itself. I think there's something that now more than ever, I think we need a profundity in our thinking.

about nationhood and also about, I think it's time we rethought the idea of when we go into a church, perhaps we should leave a lot behind us outside and go in with an entirely fresh way of thinking. And that I think we should all of us listen more to what the monks of Blenstor do when they get up at six in the morning, they remain silent.

I think that silence out of that silence will come. Not a triumphalism. I don't want to try. You can't talk like that for now. Make it completely easier to yourself as well. It's very hard. I think I prefer the pre-seventeen. Well, I would too, but I think I'm going to have to get some sort of gravitas going. I write all these books and stuff.

And yeah, I think the only thing that struck me and, you know, when you say 70s and you 50 people say things like that now, but your father didn't reach 70. My father didn't reach 70. So when you get there, it will be. Yeah. Yeah. I suppose it's that elemental right that here I am, you know, and that that here I am. It's a lovely sound to us. You know, soldiers are weak.

Colton Bean, I think we will leave a third. Thank you very much. I was very wonderful. Thank you. And keep taking your... A zempick. I'm not taking anything. I'm not taking anything. Just have it beside you. Just in case. Lovely. Thanks for coming in. Okay.