Maureen Duffy: ‘Imagination, compassion, passion are what matters’

What was the first book to make an impression on you?

The Big Christmas Wonder Book when I was eight, full of stories and poems, some of which I can still recite, and heavily illustrated throughout its nearly 800 pages. I also remember tales of the American forest: Little Jerry Muskrat etc, Reddy Fox and Old Granny Fox.

What was your favourite book as a child?

The above but also Greek and Roman Myths.

And what is your favourite book or books now?

Ulysses.

What is your favourite quotation?

Come madam come, all rest my cares deny,

Until I labour, I in labour lie. (John Donne)

Who is your favourite fictional character?

Orlando (Virginia Woolf’s version)

Who is the most under-rated Irish author?

It depends on when you ask the question. Sometimes it’s WB Yeats, sometimes O’Casey. Writers go in and out of fashion.

Which do you prefer – ebooks or the traditional print version?

Traditional print.

What is the most beautiful book you own?

For images, Kenneth Clark's Piero Della Francesca. For words, the poems of John Donne.

Where and how do you write?

Sitting in an armchair in my sitting room.

What book changed the way you think about fiction?

Ulysses.

What is the most research you have done for a book?

Acres and years for the biographies of Aphra Behn and Henry Purcell!

What book influenced you the most?

When I was very young the poems of John Keats, later Milton's Paradise Lost, then poems of John Donne and Yeats.

What book would you give to a friend’s child on their 18th birthday?

Complete Shakespeare if they hadn’t got it or John Donne if they had.

What book do you wish you had read when you were young?

It depends how young. I read voraciously from the age of four and a half. I don’t think I missed much that was available for my age. We had six books for me from the public library every week, and six for my mother.

What advice would you give to an aspiring author?

Don’t give up the day job, find your own voice, read, and ignore publishing fashions. Do your own thing.

What weight do you give reviews?

Useful publicity to encourage people to read it for themselves.

Where do you see the publishing industry going?

In relentless pursuit of the bestseller, greater conglomeration, less and less regard for real originality and imagination as witness 50 Shades of Grey.

What writing trends have struck you lately?

The return of historical fiction which was said to be dead in the 20th century, and the rise of self-publishing as the mainstream narrows .

What lessons have you learned about life from reading?

Imagination, compassion, passion are what matters.

What has being a writer taught you?

Not to give up and to be true to your own voice.

Which writers, living or dead, would you invite to your dream dinner party?

Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, John Donne, WB Yeats, Sean O’Casey, Elaine Feinstein, Joyce Cary, Helen Waddell ... no room would be big enough to hold them all.

If you were to write a historical novel, which event or figure would be your subject?

I prefer to blend past and present so I’ve just rewritten the lives of Columbanus and the Abbess Hild into a novel set in the present and the future.

Maureen Duffy is a poet, playwright, novelist and biographer of Aphra Benn. She was born in Worthing, Sussex, in 1933 to and English mother and Irish father, and Irish writers and myths have influenced her writing. Her first novel, How It Was, was published in 1962, and her latest, In Times Like These, a political fable about the break-up of the United Kingdom, came out last year. Duffy’s first openly gay novel was The Microcosm (1966), set in and around the famous lesbian Gateways Club in London (renamed the House of Shades). Together with Brigid Brophy, Duffy founded the Writers Action Group in 1972, through which they mounted a sustained campaign for Public Lending Right (annual payments for authors based on the number of library loans of their printed books), until the law was passed in Britain 1979. “A new novel by Maureen Duffy is always an important event. She’s one of the most honourable and interesting writers we have” – Rose Tremain

[ maureenduffy.co.uk ]