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Jennifer Johnston, who will be 80 on Tuesday, harnesses the power of words to her own watching and listening skills in crafting intelligently truthful, deceptively conversational tales of different Irelands, writes EILEEN BATTERBYThe Arts Literary Correspondent

WORDS BECAME important to writer Jennifer Johnston at an early age; words and the stories those words could shape, would shape. As a child she was aware of her mother, an actor, learning lines. She also grasped the edifying, if at times unsavoury, allure of secrets. Most of all, she discovered the power of truth. Her intelligent, ironic, almost neutral fiction of voices deals in truths, rarely pleasant – but as she has often said herself, “living isn’t easy”. The daughter of playwright and broadcaster Denis Johnston and actor and director Shelah Richards, Johnston began her lifelong study of human behaviour by watching her parents end their marriage when she was eight years old and her brother, Michael, was three. Her father went away to war and, for her, never really came back.