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Maggie O'Farrell has not joined FLAPSS and has not endorsed it. This page is a reference record assembled from published interviews and public remarks. Every answer below is a direct quotation with the source and date shown next to it.

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Maggie O'Farrell

Irish-British novelist

United Kingdom · b. 1972

Born in Northern Ireland, Maggie O’Farrell, 50, went to Cambridge University and then became a journalist. Her first novel, After You’d Gone, won the 2001 Betty Trask award. Subsequent books include the 2010 Costa book award-winning The Hand That First Held Mine, and the memoir I Am, I Am, I Am. Her latest novel is The Marriage Portrait. The stage adaptation of Hamnet, which won the 2020 Women’s prize for fiction, is at the RSC Swan theatre in Stratford from 1 April to 17 June, and at the Garrick theatre in London from 30 September to 6 January 2024. She is married with three children and lives in Edinburgh.

10 answers 0 followers reference

Question When were you happiest? Time & hindsight read 575 other answers →

Last summer, swimming in a waterfall in Cumbria with my daughters.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 25 March 2023 source ↗

Question Aside from a property, what is the most expensive thing you have bought? Money & investment read 195 other answers →

All my clothes are secondhand, but I did buy a pair of new silver Vivienne Westwood shoes to get married in, which I still have.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 25 March 2023 source ↗

Question What does love feel like? Relationships read 211 other answers →

Effervescence in the soul.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 25 March 2023 source ↗

Question How close have you come to death? Death & what remains read 208 other answers →

How long have you got? I have written a memoir and the subtitle is Seventeen Brushes with Death.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 25 March 2023 source ↗

Question Which living person do you most admire, and why? Values & belief read 401 other answers →

Darnella Frazier, the teenager who filmed George Floyd’s murder. It took astonishing courage to stand on the pavement in front of those policemen, and we all owe her so much.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 25 March 2023 source ↗

Question What most recently made you cry? Identity & self read 192 other answers →

Last week, while I was wet-wrapping my child’s chronic eczema.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 25 March 2023 source ↗

Question What is the trait you most deplore in others? Values & belief read 195 other answers →

Interrupting or talking over people. As a stammerer, I am particularly alert to this.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 25 March 2023 source ↗

Question Which moment embarrassed you most? Failure & regret read 121 other answers →

I started stammering badly the first time I was on live radio, on Woman’s Hour on Radio 4. When I think about it now it brings me out in a cold sweat.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 25 March 2023 source ↗

Question What is the most important lesson life has taught you? Time & hindsight read 130 other answers →

To keep going and never give up, and to enjoy it to the absolute full because, at any moment, the curtain can fall.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 25 March 2023 source ↗

Question What is the worst thing anyone has said to you? Failure & regret read 121 other answers →

“You’ll never walk again.” This was when I was eight or nine and recovering from viral encephalitis.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 25 March 2023 source ↗

Every quotation above is reproduced from the source shown beside it and has not been edited. Maggie O'Farrell did not write these answers for FLAPSS. Request a correction or removal.