The Spectator

Colm Tóibín began his writing career as a journalist. Although he wrote his first novel, The South, in 1986, it took him a further four years to find a publisher. Since that seminal moment, Tóibín has delivered five other novels; two books of short stories; two plays, as well as several works of non-fiction. He has been nominated for the Booker Prize three times, and won The Costa Novel Award, for Brooklyn. In his latest book of essays, New Ways to Kill Your Mother, Tóibín explores the odd relationships that various writers, including W.B Yeats, Samuel Beckett, John Cheever and Thomas Mann, had with their families, and asks how it informed their work.

A new world flavour to Shelf Life this week, as the novelist Sean Thomas Russell joins us from Vancouver. He has been getting to grips with Shakespeare — an attempt, perhaps, to escape the pervasive influence of Bill O'Reilly. His latest novel, A Ship of War, is published in Britain next week. 1) What are you reading at the moment?   Shakespeare After All by Marjorie Garber. I've been on a Shakespeare kick recently. I just finished Will in the World by Stephen Greenblatt and A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599 by James Shapiro. I recommend all three. 2) As a child, what did you read under the covers?  The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.