On Wednesday 8th November we were delighted to welcome Bath’s local independent bookshop - Mr B’s Emporium - to The Mission Theatre. After a surge in ticket sales Mr B’s asked if they could bring their event with the award-winning author Maggie O’Farrell to our stage, where a sell-out audience listened intently to this popular and eloquent novelist.
Known best for works such as Hamnet, I am I am I am: Seventeen Brushes with Death and After You’d Gone, Maggie discussed her latest novel: The Marriage Portrait in conversation with novelist Becky Hunter.
An appreciative audience heard Maggie speak movingly and with great insight about the writing process, the development of ideas and themes and how she often finds that she amends a first draft as the storyline and characters take on an independent voice and identity of their own. She explained that it is often the over-looked and marginalised historical figures that catch her imagination and stand centre stage in her novels.
Maggie spoke of why she delayed for a number of years writing Hamnet and how she had felt when she heard it was to be turned in to a play. She said that she found it interesting that The Marriage Portrait - written during the pandemic - features in it’s narrative a real sense of lock-down and isolation despite being set in sixteenth century Florence.
Answering a wide range of questions Maggie delighted everyone present with her witty and entertaining replies and then stayed on for an hour meeting the public, signing books and chatting about her novels.
Hunter tweeted today:
“A very wonderful - and completely surreal - night last night interviewing the complete legend that is Maggie O’Farrell for @mrbsemporium at the atmospheric @mission_theatre. Maggie is and was a complete dream, obviously. A proper career highlight!”
