Maggie O’Farrell: ‘The worst thing anyone’s said to me? You’ll never walk again’

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.

When were you happiest?
Last summer, swimming in a waterfall in Cumbria with my daughters.

Which living person do you most admire, and why?
Darnella Frazier, the teenager who filmed George Floyd’s murder. It took astonishing courage to stand on the pavement in front of those policeman, and we all owe her so much.

What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
Impatience.

What is the trait you most deplore in others?
Interrupting or talking over people. As a stammerer, I am particularly alert to this.

What was your most embarrassing moment?
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.

Aside from a property, what’s the most expensive thing you’ve bought?
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.

Describe yourself in three words
Very unruly hair.

What makes you unhappy?
I have to be outside at some point in the day or I get really unhappy.

What do you most dislike about your appearance?
My posture could do with a lot of improvement. It comes from sitting much too much over a desk.

If you could bring something extinct back to life, what would you choose?
A world without smartphones.

What is your most unappealing habit?
Recycling newspapers and magazines that nobody else has read yet.

What scares you about getting older?
Creaky joints.

What is the worst thing anyone’s said to you?
“You’ll never walk again.” This was when I was eight or nine and recovering from viral encephalitis.

Would you choose fame or anonymity?
Something in between.

What was the last lie you told?
I had a really bad haircut last week and said, “Yeah, it looks fine.”

What does love feel like?
Effervescence in the soul.

Which living person do you most despise, and why?
Anyone who eats nuts on a plane after an announcement saying there is a passenger with a life-threatening nut allergy. People do that more often than you think. Someone in my family suffers from life-threatening allergies and it is terrifying.

When did you last cry, and why?
Last week, while I was wet-wrapping my child’s chronic eczema.

What is the closest you’ve come to death?
How long have you got? I have written a memoir and the subtitle is Seventeen Brushes with Death.

What is the most important lesson life has taught you?
To keep going and never give up, and to enjoy it to the absolute full because, at any moment, the curtain can fall.