The incredible John Banville speaks at Longford's Booktown Festival

Capping a glorious three day festival Granard Booktown 2025 welcomed John Banville to the School Hall for a conversation with Belinda McKeon on Sunday evening.

Born in Wexford in 1945, the esteemed author is now resident in Dublin. Considered one of the great contemporary stylists, Banvill is an auto-include in any list of Ireland's literary greats.

His first offering, Long Lankin, was published in 1970. He has since gone on to create 31 books including The Book of Evidence, shortlisted for the 1989 Booker Prize and winner of the 1989 GPA Award, and The Sea, the winner of the 2005 Booker Prize.

He has also published “polity violent” crime novels under the pseudonym Benjamin Black. His many awards also include a Lannan Literary Award, the Franz Kafka Prize in 2011 and the 2013 Irish PEN Award for Outstanding Achievement in Irish Literature.

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Guiding the Sunday evening conversation was Longford author Belinda McKeon. Belindan is a novelist, short story writer and playwright.

Her novels, Solace and Tender, have been widely acclaimed, and her short fiction and nonfiction have been published in The Paris Review, Granta, Winter Papers, A Public Space, and The Stinging Fly.

The Sunday evening get together was a perfect distillation of Granard Booktown. McKeown has a wonderfully relaxed stage style, affording the audience the experience of eavesdropping on a particular engrossing conversation.

Banvill took to the stage in a rust coloured scarf to abate the Spring chill, a glass of white wine in his hand. Steered by McKeown he links anecdotes that illuminate a writing process he describes as "wrestling with language".

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Humorous, engaging and understated he exclaims: “Don’t tell me that, Oh God,” when his host asked him about the 31 published works, “I'm baffled by the notion of writing these books, God what was I doing?”

He throws in quotes like, “I don’t write particularly well, I just do it better than everyone else” or “accountants invented language,” and “the greatest human invention is the sentence” to provoke thought.

In a surrealist moment he spoke of the spectacular of the commonplace, “bluebottle are exquisite” and within minutes a fly came to rest on his outstretched hand. His exclamation: “There’s nothing ordinary about this place,” could have alluded to his time in Granard, or Ireland or even the world.

John Banville's conversation with Belinda McKeon in The School Hall, Granard was a sublime insight into the life of one or Ireland's best contemporary literary voices.