A: I don’t use the internet for research in that I have learned not to trust it. If I go into a university library that’s one thing, but all of the material that people throw up on the Internet so often is made up out of their own heads, and it’s just not reliable at all so I don’t use it for that. No, what Alex Gogan did was he got me using the Internet for direct communications with my publishers and my agents, which has turned out to be a blessing, because I was a bit of a Luddite. So he converted me and I really wanted to thank him because it’s been very worthwhile. 

Did you use the Internet for tracking down the folks who provided you with letters and other materials that were part of your research?

No, I didn’t, they were from my own personal knowledge and connections in Ireland. I used a lot of my grandfather’s journals. My grandfather was Henry Mooney [same as the central character of 1921] -- actually his name was Henry Mooney Price, but I dropped the Price because I wanted to use him as a fictional character since I wanted to put a lot of things in his mouth that he probably never said, and move him around in places in Ireland as a witness. He was there, and he was writing about [events] at the time, but I needed to use him in several other places, such as Ballyseedy, so I used him as a fictional character. But I have a huge network of friends and associates involved in various aspects of Irish history and sociology, and I tapped all of them.

Was your grandfather a journalist, like the Henry Mooney in 1921?

He was, yes.

OK, I had wondered why you had chosen a journalist as the central character for this story when in the past, with books like Bard and Lion of Ireland, you have used the historical characters themselves.

Exactly. ... In dealing with the people who are our modern-day heroes in Ireland, whether it’s Padraig Pearse or James Connelly or Michael Collins, I don’t like to alter history at all, and I don’t like to interpret people who at least have relatives who are still living. I wanted to be able to present them exactly as they were without any of my own accretions to them, and for that reason I wanted to use fictional characters to move around and through the real history so I wouldn’t have to alter real history in any way, shape or form. In writing this particular series of books, what I wanted to do was demonstrate and explain the history of Ireland in the 20th century -- and do it in a way that I hope would be entertaining and exciting because it’s a very exciting time and very exciting history -- but also give fictional characters that the readers could empathize with. It’s not necessarily easy to empathize with larger-than-life heroes. So I tried to introduce some very human people that [my] readers could make a connection with.

To what extent do the details of the character Henry Mooney reflect your grandfather’s life?

Oh, it’s him right down to the ground. He was there in 1916 [the year of the Easter Rising] -- he actually left Ireland after the civil war because he was heartbroken with the results of the civil war. He became a newspaper man in Texas, and was a newspaper man all his life. And he actually encouraged my interest in history. I remember as a little girl -- my grandparents partially raised me -- and as a little girl he would have the radio on, 6 o’clock every evening, and say, ‘Now come on in, we’re going to listen to the news.’ And it was just quite an important highlight of my day, to go listen to the news with my grandfather.

It must be a special thing then for other members of your family, to have you write this book using him as a character.

Well I hope so. I hope they all enjoy it and getting to see him and know him and remember him as I remember him. He was a lovely man. He was a gentle, kind, objective man, a very patient man. At a time when Ireland was very overwrought and passionate, he tried to thread his way down a moderate line, which surely wasn’t always easy. But I adored him, pure and simple.

Did that present any challenges that your other books did not -- using someone who you actually knew personally as a character?

No, it made it easier, really. Because I didn’t have to construct a character, I knew the character. Usually when you do fictional characters you have to make them up, and I think all writers, whether they will admit it or not, make up their fictional characters partially using bits and pieces of themselves. Because ourselves are what we know. And if we are going to have a fictional character that expresses an aspect of our own character, it’s easy to draw on that, as an actor in a play draws upon what is in themselves. But when you’re using someone you really knew you don’t have to do that.

Generally speaking, when you begin the process of writing a new book, do you have those fictional elements in mind, or does the research suggest those to you as you go?

You hit it spot on -- the research suggests when I need. What I am doing with this series, and there will be five of them all together, is first I write each book as if it were a non-fiction history -- I just write the history, I just relate it as if I were writing a text book for schools. And then I see where I need fictional characters to be. I see what I want the readers to see, and I go back and I weave the fictional characters through that, so they are in the place, at the time, and can tell the story. It’s twice as hard as if I just sat down and did it straight through, of course. But I did it that way with 1916 because I was so determined to be absolutely scrupulous in my representation of history, and not to change anything. Because in Ireland that’s our most mythologized story, the story of the Easter Rising. So I had to get it absolutely spot on, and having done that I’m sort of stuck with it, I’m going to stay with it all the way through.

Can you tell me about the other books in the series that are coming?

Yes. The next one, which I’m about halfway through with now, is called 1949, and it tells the story of Ireland during the war years -- which we in Ireland call the Emergency -- and the [Eamon] De Valera years, the De Valera constitution, and it ends with the time when Ireland was actually at last cut free from the commonwealth and declared itself a republic. John Costello was in Ottowa, Canada in 1949, and without any kind of consultation with Britain, announced that Ireland was leaving the commonwealth, which was a great shock to everyone, but we finally had our republic. And so that is such a high point in Irish history that I wanted to tell that particular story. And also the story of the Irish involvement in World War II, on both sides, which is really very interesting. We were fighting very hard to maintain our neutrality, but of course Britain wanted our ports, what they called the treaty ports, to use, Germany wanted our alliance on their side, the Irish rightly said, well, Germany has never done anything to us and Britain has been bashing us for eight hundred years. So it was a very difficult, complex time for Ireland, and it’s a very interesting one.

Then the book that comes after that will be called 1969, which of course shows the outbreak of the present troubles in the North, when everything blew up. And then the last book in the series -- I originally titled 1999, now, by the time I get to it I’m not sure what the title will be -- it really chronicles the peace process, the development of the peace process, leading up to an beyond the Good Friday Agreement. So it may wind up being called 2002. But the same fictional characters, or their descendants, will go all the way through the series.

Oh, interesting. Could I assume, then, that the next book would include Ursula [a young character in 1921]?

She is the protagonist -- good guess! You do pay attention, don’t you? This is her story.

Well, you clearly loved that character.

I do, I do. I know people are going to ask me, ‘Are you Ursula?’, and I’m not, not in any way, shape or form. But she was such an interesting child. She was fictional, but there is a story that a little girl had been abandoned during the Bachelor’s Walk Massacre [in Dublin] in 1914, and there was only that mention of her in history -- a newspaper article, in fact -- and nothing else, so I began speculating, who she was, what happened to her. She became Precious, who then became Ursula. And she will probably go all the way to the last book [of the series], because if she was born around 1910, I can take her right up to the end of the century, as a very old lady seeing all these things happening.

Is there any chance of any of these books, or any of your earlier books, being made into movies?

Oh, do you want to hear a grown woman cry? [laughs] Five, five of my novels, have been optioned for films, and none has yet made it to the screen. When Lion of Ireland was first published, way back in 1980, it was optioned, and optioned again, and then I was told, ‘Well, big-budget historical movies are not in favor now.’ And then I was really stubborn, because I’m kind of a stubborn person -- I insisted it had to be made on location in Ireland, using Irish actors, because I really didn’t want to hear an Australian accent pretending to be Brian Boru. And so that threw a spanner in the works. And over the years it has been optioned and re-optioned, and now as I say, five of them are under option -- its sequel Pride of Lions; and Bard, the story of the coming of the Milesians to Ireland; and Grainne, the story of Grace O’Mally; and The Last Prince of Ireland has also been optioned. So they’re all sitting out there waiting. We may see one of them one of these days -- please God, before I have to go with my Zimmerframe!

If it could only be one, which one would you most like to see put on film?

You do ask good questions! Originally, and for always, I suppose, I would have said Lion of Ireland, because I really had my heart and soul in that. Now I’m not so sure. I think probably the easiest to film would be The Last Prince of Ireland, which is a riveting, tight-focused story, and just covers a period of two weeks, and it’s about one of the greatest heartbreaking adventures in Irish history. I don’t know. I’d be happy to see any of them made into a film, actually.