Colm Toibin

For a boy from Enniscorthy, Co Wexford, UCD in the seventies was pure excitement. I even found the architecture totally exciting - unlike everybody else - and I still like the arts block. The general level of lecturing and tutorials was astonishingly good and I am full of gratitude. The very first thing I remember about UCD was Denis Donoghue in Theatre M reading the crucial passage from Heart of Darkness in a most dramatic voice. It was one of the three books on our modern novel syllabus. The others were As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner and Women in Love by DH Lawrence. Seamus Deane was also on the faculty. He recited Break, break, break on the cold grey stones of the sea in a very different sort of way.

I was seventeen and just up from the country. I found not being patronised by anyone quite remarkable. No one spoke down to you in either English or history. The general level of discourse was very high. The high points of my education were Donoghue on King Lear and Deane on Henry James. Both were absolutely remarkable and brought an eloquence and seriousness and a whole new vocabulary to things. In the history department, I was fascinated by Fergus Darcy's lectures on religion and irreligion in Victorian England. You have no idea how good and funny they were. He opened up a whole new world of non-conformist religion. I gained a totally new view of England. I had never before realised that Victorian England was a place of enormous intellectual ferment. Kevin B Nowlan, who lectured on Marx, was highly dramatic and had a marvellous lecturing style. I did my final documents course on Restoration Ireland and England. We were working on original documents, which was a great training. During that time I discovered one of the great sacred spaces of Ireland - the National Library.

THERE was a great emphasis on Irish constitutional history at UCD. I didn't know we had such a thing. I had always thought that Irish history was simply a set of violent actions to get the British out of our country. At UCD, they taught what I call a Fine Gael version of Irish history. Unlike everyone else in Belfield, I loved the library. From 8 to 10 pm each evening it was wonderful. It emptied out and you could get in a marvellous two hours sitting near the window enjoying the shadow and the light on the lake. The bar was terrific, until 1974, when it was discovered by the commerce students and life was ruined for everyone.

I went to everything at UCD. I attended Dermot Morgan's lunchtime shows and saw Frank McGuinness acting in a Middle English play. They were both a year ahead of me. I turned out to see any writer who visited the college. Everybody came - Francis Stuart, Mary Lavin, Thomas Kinsella, Anthony Cronin, Seamus Heaney, John Banville. These people were icons then and they still are. Talking to Francis Stuart when I was seventeen, had an enormous impact on me. UCD improved me enormously and I met a whole group of people there who are still my friends.

Throughout my undergraduate years, I wrote poetry. I never thought of being a novelist. For me, literature was the most important thing in the whole world and I was in awe of it. After college, I applied to the civil service along with almost everyone else. But then I went to Spain, got my head turned and I became a journalist.

Colm Toibin, who is shortlisted for the Booker Prize for his latest book, The Blackwater Lightship, was in conversation with Yvonne Healy.