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Author Interview: Unknown Soldiers
Sunday, April 10, 2005 - By Gavin Daly
Sebastian Barry was inspired by his grandfather when he createda moving story about an Irish soldier in WW1.

As a child, Sebastian Barry shared a bedroom with his grandfather, who had been a major in the Royal Engineers during World War II.

The former soldier told the young boy his “history of the world'‘, about building canals inAfrica and defusing bombs forMontgomery in the desert.

It was, the 49-year-old Barry remembers, “an exotic, slightly surreal fact'‘ that his relative had experienced those things. When his grandfather left theMonkstown home for the US, Barry was suddenly in the room on his own “without the story-man'‘. Imagining he heard breathing and noises, the boy retreated into an imaginary world.

“I put my head into the yard, somewhere I always felt safe,” says Barry, tracing the roots of his writing career. “I would walk around the yard, and I would touch the noses of the calves, and I would look for the eggs under the straw. I would do all those things in order to kill that fear.

“But even as a grown man, supposedly grown up with your own children, you still feel those same fears. We might give it different names, but there is always that breathing in the corner of the room. So in order to reallybe free, I think youmake a book or a play.”

He pauses, as though the information just tumbled from his mouth, without any thought or knowledge fromhis brain. “I'msort of surprising myself saying that,” he says.

It is not strange, then, to hear Barry talk about his latest book, A Long LongWay, as if it were outside his influence. The book is an astonishing and haunting chronicle of Willie Dunne, a young volunteer in theRoyal Dublin Fusiliers,wholeavesDublin in 1914 to fight in Europe. It is written in Barry's characteristically lyrical style. He is fascinated with the detail of ordinary people trying to do their best in a big-picture world, but without sentimentality.

Willie is quickly thrown into the brutality and futility of the war, as well as the confusion of events unfolding in Dublin. After the “sudden murderous kerfuffle''of the 1916 Rising and its aftermath, Willie, “a thinking boy'‘, is left displaced and struggling to comprehend howtheworld has changed.Barry's aim is not revisionism, but to reenter theWorldWar I narrative alongside the better-known history. The character of Willie came into being ten years ago as the son ofThomas Dunne, the steward in Barry's now world-famous play, the Steward of Christendom. By the time Barry's last novel, Annie Dunne, was published in 2003,Willie's outline was clear.

For research, Barry - who did not fully read or write until nine years of age and still finds reading a chore - read history books, regimental histories, battle plans and reports.What he was really seeking, however, was “the music of the book'‘.

Initially concerned at the darkness of that period of history, Barry found something unusual happening. “As soon as the characters were made up sufficient to be standing there, they sort of brought me along with them,” he says, still wide-eyed even ayear after completing the book. “It was an amazing experience. By September 2003, I had about 150 pages of it. I had another year-and-ahalf to do the book,but itwas finished by Christmas. I don't even remember doing it.” While the writing was relatively easy, the difficult part was to “render invisible'‘ the history behind Willie's experiences, so that it read as an integrated narrative.

“Willie's own naivety was an enormous help to me,” he says. “He's puzzling it out, and you're puzzling it out and, by jingo, I think sometimes they [the young soldiers] were puzzling it out.” The result is a brilliant tale told through anecdote, conversation and humour, but historically accurate nonetheless.

The book, Barry says, is “for anyone who wants to feel an additional adjective of Irishness'‘, and not just for those with some connection with the war. “It touches on that remote sense of something happening in the corner of the room of history of your own family.” If there is one central theme, it is of “trying to think yourself into other people's ways of looking at Ireland'‘. Barry cites the example of his wife, a Dublin Presbyterianwhose family listened to the Queen's speech at Christmas and “kept their heads down, but were intensely Irish'‘.

Barry,who has four novels, six plays and three volumes of poetry to his name, is clearly consumed with the character of Willie and a part of Irish history that he feels has been erased. By the final quarter of the book, he says,Willie is “justwithin awhisper of becoming a very valuable Irishman, with all the traditions in him. “He is becoming a man as Ireland becomes Ireland.” The apparent contradictions of the time,when some menjoined the British Army while others joined the IRA, animate Barry.

“This is the incredible thing - there wasn't a single conscripted man among them. They were all volunteers, as innocent as bedamned. And the IRA recruitswent out in the same spirit. It is thebuttonyou canpush in a young man.” Inwriting A Long Long Way, he clearly felt a responsibility not to let down either history. His eyes brim with tears when he talks of writing aboutWillie's experiences, almost as though he had no part in their creation. “I'll never get over that year, 2003,” he says. He remembers going to a football match with his daughter and seeing the crowd of 42,000 people in terms of the war.

“When we came out from the grounds andwalked up towardsDonnybrook inthe crowds ofmen andwomen and children, that was how many of us had died in that war. That got half a line in Lyons history ofmodern Ireland that we read at school,” he says, shaking his head.

‘Even Roy Foster - to whom the book is dedicated for friendship - only has four lines onWorldWar I in his history of modern Ireland.That is a measure of how that world has vanished completely. “These men died and largely you can't speak about them. I wanted to show what they actual ly went through, so that when we are calling themtraitors, at least let usknowwhat they were put through. “Calling back those worlds - curious as they may seem - is a necessity. You complete a part of yourself you were kind of scared of.”

Barry has first-hand experience of that fracture in Irish society, as his great grandfather - the basis for the steward - was a superintendent with the Dublin Metropolitan Police and regarded as a “terrible old traitor'‘ by some people.

“In The Steward of Christendom, the steward has a speech in praise of Queen Victoria,” he recalls. “I remember feeling almost like Iwaswriting histor ical pornography or something. It felt a wicked thing to be doing, but it was true to the character.” WritingALong LongWay was a similar experience of travelling back in time, without one's preconceptions. “You are trying to go back as the person themselves, to be in a place in Ireland before our Ir ish history happened,” he says.

“You can see why it became so important to divide up these histories and to prioritise the histories at the time. But now that we are, as a country, coming to the age of maturity or whatever, now we can talk about it.” Others agree. Producer Noel Pearson has already bought the filmrights for A Long LongWay and Barry is working on the screenplay.

“Noel said: ‘That sounds like avery sad film, but we're grown-ups now and we've got to be able to tell a story.”‘ Barry says. It's not stretching it to suggest that the book could ultimately rank alongsideThe Steward of Christendom as Barry's finest work. He still remembers being astonished at the reaction toThe Steward, for which the late actor Donal McCann received rave reviews.

“I wasn't a young person, it was ten years ago and I was 39,” Barry says.

“My feeling was that if I could get out of London without having let down Donal McCann, I'd be doing well. But, of course, it went on and on for two glorious years with Donal as the toast of the world.”

While he describes McCann as “an exemplar of what it is to be human'‘, he ismodest about his own role in bringing the play and his other works into existence. “Well, we live in a modest world and everything is going to be imperfect,” is all he will say.

“Donal himself was a good old thing and was imperfect. And so is Willie Dunne.”

A Long Long Way by Sebastian Barry is published by Faber & Faber, priced €17