For many years, Maggie O’Farrell wrote about subject matters not dissimilar to her own life. Modern-day couples falling in love, sibling relationships in Irish families, and young people finding their place in the world all wove their way into her novels. And, of course, with 2017’s remarkable autobiography I Am, I Am, I Am (featuring her Seventeen Brushes With Death), it really was all about her. 

In 2006, The Vanishing Act Of Esme Lennox hinted at O’Farrell’s talent for historical fact-finding but gave no real indication of what the Derry-born, Edinburgh-based author had in store for us. Readers were already gripped by her ability to tell a compelling tale and craft characters worthy of emotional investment, but it wasn’t until Hamnet in 2020 that we recognised O’Farrell’s capacity for incredible, painstaking research.

Having brought Shakespeare’s wife and children front and centre, out from the shadow of one of history’s most famous men, the author once again worked her magic with The Marriage Portrait. A teenage Italian duchess, long forgotten and buried beneath the public profile of her husband (the Duke Of Ferrara) at last had her story told. Much of what happens to Lucrezia in the novel is, inevitably, made up. But the finely-drawn aspects of life in the 16th-century Italian courts are so vivid, it’s as if O’Farrell had actually walked among them. Hearing her talk about the real-life process behind this book will no doubt be just as fascinating as the fictional output.

Maggie O’ Farrell will talk at the Lodge Stage, North Berwick, on Sunday 6 August.