Pat Barker and Benjamin Myers in conversation: ‘I’m absolutely intolerable when I’m not writing’

Benjamin Myers and Pat Barker, Durham, July 2024. Photograph: Gary Calton/The Observer Ahead of new books by both, the two English novelists discuss their friendship, the baggage that comes with being labelled ‘northern writers’ and why the Krankies’ memoir is a must-read Benjamin Myers first came across the Booker prize-winning author Pat Barker when he was seven or eight and, though he didn’t read her till much later, she made an impression, even then. “I was on holiday with my parents and found a copy of Union Street , Pat’s first novel,” he recalls. “I asked my mum about it and she said: ‘Oh, not only is that set round our way but the author is from Yorkshire.’ I was so struck by that. It’s partly what made me want to be a writer.” A decade ago the two became acquainted, brought together by an old friend of Myers who was seeing Barker’s daughter. By then, Myers was establishing himself as one of the most electrifying voices in British fiction, setting most of his work, such as the 2013 Gordon Burn prize-winning novel Pig Iron , in his native north-east. Barker, who has published 15 books over a stellar 40-year career, including the Regeneration trilogy and more recently a series of novels reimagining the Iliad from a female perspective, continues to be an inspiration for him. Ahead of the publication of his new novel, Rare Singles , a meditation on grief, love and the redemptive power of music, and Barker’s return to ancient Greece in The Voyage Home , the two friends met up over Zoom to discuss what it means to be “northern writers”, the perils of inhabiting characters of a different race or gender, and the authors and books they love. Have you ever felt the need to resist the “ northern writer” label [Myers lives in Hebden Bridge , Barker in Durham ]? Pat Barker Being a northern writer, even now – or perhaps especially now – requires a kind of courage or bloody-mindedness, because we are so deeply unfashionable. I remember Hilary Mantel saying that […]

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