`I spent 111 days outside the country last year, promoting books. I'm dying to go away for a trip without a laptop. I want to read other peoples' books." Maeve is 60 next month, the right age, she feels, to retire: "That's the age, isn't it? I've no regrets. I've had a great time. When my next novel, Scarlet Feather, comes out in August, I will have published 16 books, and I've been writing my column for The Irish Times for 32 years."
This is not a definitive departure: she has many short stories she wants to put into a book, and she is "leaving the door open" to write an occasional column for The Irish Times: "But only if I have something burning to say." At the moment, she has no time to focus on writing her column: "I'm doing so much charity work, and trying to finish Scarlet Feather. Everything is catching up on me."
She joined The Irish Times in 1969 as women's editor, having spent most of her 20s as a teacher of French, history and Latin. She studied French and History at UCD, where she also did her H-Dip. "I was never so surprised in my life to receive an honorary doctorate from UCD in 1990," she chuckles. She received another from Queen's in 1998.
Her interest in writing began when she sent letters home from a kibbutz in Israel to her devoted parents, who were so impressed with her ability that they were convinced she should be published. She left teaching to focus on freelance writing before she joined The Irish Times.
"The height of my dreams in the 1960s was to be a columnist for The Irish Times. Everyone I knew read it, so it would be like writing for a crowd of friends. When I went to England in the 1970s, I was worried I wouldn't be sending interesting-enough things home to the paper. Then when I came back to Ireland in the 1980s, I was afraid I wasn't enough of a young thing to find my niche." Au contraire. Her gossipy, personable column achieved cult status, not only in Ireland but, as letters from fans attest, as far afield as the US and Japan.
Meanwhile, she was building her career as a fiction writer. Two collections of short stories appeared in the 1970s, Central Line and Victoria Line, followed by a third, Dublin Four, and her first novel, Light a Penny Candle, in 1982.
As with her Irish Times column, she began to attract a huge audience for her fiction, and, in a UK survey to mark World Book Day last month was voted Britain's sixth favourite author (beating Jane Austen, Dickens and Shakespeare). Maeve modestly protested: "I'm mainly an airport author, and if you're trying to take your mind off the journey, you're not going to read King Lear." She was also included in Britain's top 10 best-selling authors of the decade.
One of her novels, Circle of Friends, was made into a film in 1995, starring Minnie Driver and Chris O'Donnell. In the same year she sold 2.5 million copies of her books around the world (her work has been widely translated, including into Hebrew and Korean). Her trademark fascination with ordinary human dilemmas, which led her to devote many of her Irish Times columns to problem-solving, is one of the enduring features of her skillful, empathic fiction.
In the early days her publishers were very keen for her to include more raunchy scenes: "That was one thing I stood firm about. My books are about how people talk, they are not about graphic sex. All that plunging and thrusting and writhing - it's not something I could write about properly. A lot of people like reading my books for that very reason. You can safely give them to the pastor's wife without causing offence." Maeve has the perhaps dubious honour of having been claimed as the favourite author of Barbara Bush, who invited her to the White House for tea in 1991.
In spite of the arthritis, Maeve's health is "grand", with no aches and pains. She admits to not walking as much as she should: "I hate walking. I know it's good for me but I hate it." However, once she is retired, "there'll be no excuse". Meanwhile, she is sitting in a room that is "full of guilt", trying to sort out her many commitments. She does have a secretary, but is unable to delegate: "You either have a Bride Rosney or you do most things yourself."
Once all the letters have been answered, the pages proofed, the telephone calls made, and Scarlet Feather is ready, she looks forward to "a nice 20 years of reading, travelling and maybe some minimalist walking".
One suspects, however, that Binchy's irrepressible curiosity about and affection for the human race will draw her back to the laptop, even if only to compose, as a recent letter writer to The Irish Times suggested, a book entitled Retirement.