An Evening with Maggie O’Farrell: Land (Part Two)

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
Insurance isn't one size fits all, and shopping for it shouldn't feel like squeezing into something that just doesn't fit. That's why drivers have enjoyed Progressive's Name Your Price tool for years. With the Name Your Price tool, you tell them what you want to pay, and they show you options that fit your budget. Enough hunting for discounts, trying to calculate rates, and tinkering with coverages. Maybe you're picking out your very first policy, or maybe you're just looking for something that works better for you and your family.
Either way, they make it simple to see your options. No guesswork, no surprises.
Ready to see how easy and fun shopping for car insurance can be? Visit progressive.com and give the Name Your Price tool a try. Take the stress out of shopping and find coverage that fits your life on your terms.
Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:54)
Introducing Meta Glasses. You have questions, they've got answers.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:59)
Hey Meta, what's the capital of Peru?

**SPEAKER_1** (1:02)
Lima. How do you say, where's the restroom in Spanish? Dónde está el baño?

**SPEAKER_5** (1:08)
Hey Meta, is a hot dog a sandwich?

**SPEAKER_1** (1:11)
Technically, no. Spiritually, yes.

**SPEAKER_6** (1:14)
Hey Meta, what should I do with my life?

**SPEAKER_1** (1:16)
That's one of life's biggest questions. What do you think?

**SPEAKER_2** (1:20)
Ask anything with the new Meta glasses.

**SPEAKER_4** (1:23)
Welcome to Intelligence Squared, Where Great Minds Meet. I'm Senior Producer Mia Sorrenti. In this episode, we return for part two of our recent live event with award-winning author of Hamnet, Maggie O'Farrell. O'Farrell joined Claire Armistead live on stage at the Brighton Dome Corn Exchange to discuss the art of historical fiction and in the new novel Land.
If you haven't heard part one, do just jump back an episode to catch up. But now let's return to the conversation live at the Brighton Dome Corn Exchange.

**Claire Armistead** (1:53)
Let's talk a little bit more about the other thing I raise about deep history, deep mapping because there's a whole mythology that shapes the landscape and comes out of the landscape and belongs to it. It also has a physical history, which is there are people buried under this land.
Who have been here a very long time.

**Maggie O'Farrell** (2:19)
So I knew that I wanted to write, part of the book was going to be about a family and part of it was going to be an attempt to tell the story, the whole story of a country via one peninsula and all the people who have lived on it. So I knew that I wanted to go right, right back in time. So the book, I hope this isn't off putting, the book does go back to Bronze Age Ireland. There is actually one clause that takes you back to the Ice Age, but it's only one clause, I promise.
I was very pleased that I managed to keep it in there. My children call me a neek. I don't know if anyone knows that word. A neek? Yeah. It's a cross between a nerd and a geek.
I quite like it though.

**Claire Armistead** (2:55)
I like it.

**Maggie O'Farrell** (2:55)
I'm owning it.

**Claire Armistead** (2:56)
Keep that one.

**Maggie O'Farrell** (2:57)
Yeah. Anyway, so the second part of the book does go right back to the Bronze Age on the same peninsula.
I mean, I really love doing it. It's partly inspired by one of my favorite museums in Ireland, which is one of my favorite museums everywhere. It's in Dublin. It's the National Archaeology Museum, which is such a beautiful building, and it's such a beautiful collection, and one of the things I love about it is it does, that there are objects found in Ireland which tell the whole story of it, and most of them are found not by archaeologists, but just by people who happen to be digging on their land or digging turf. Anyway, so that section is very influenced by that museum. So it does go back, and I was really worried when I handed it in. So I've worked with the same editor, amazingly and very luckily, for almost 30 years now. When I gave her the manuscript, I was slightly worried that it was going to come back to me with basically WTF in the manuscript.
I mean, she would never write that, but I was worried she would say, what's going on here? But she didn't, luckily. So it is still in there.

**Claire Armistead** (3:57)
And it centers on a sacred well. And actually, probably one of the reasons why they keep digging up these things is because they were thrown into people through net sort of little offerings down, didn't they?