John Boyne on his marriage breakdown, award-winning house and 78in TV

"Safety and security. Yeah, they're the most important things to me", says Irish author John Boyne, about what the word home means to him.

“When I made good money from The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas I put it all into the house. I cleared the mortgage. I thought, ‘Nobody can take it away from you’… If everything in my life goes wrong I have this building. I can lock myself away in it and nobody can get to me,” he tells Róisín Ingle, in the latest episode of a new podcast by The Irish Times, Back to Yours.

A room in John Boyne’s Dublin house. Photograph: Alan Betson

The 'ego room' in John Boyne’s Dublin house. Photograph: Alan Betson

In the podcast Róisín talks to well-known people about their houses, snoops in their drawers and finds out all about the homes they’ve lived in throughout their lives.

In this episode, recorded just days before his divorce was finalised, John Boyne talks about his decision to completely renovate the house he had shared with his husband after the painful breakup of their marriage.

They also talk about the Irish literary scene, John’s 78 inch television - “I must be compensating for something” - and he shows Róisín his ‘ego room’ where he keeps all of the copies of his own books.