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Sixty seconds with Sophie Hannah...
Sophie Hannah is a poet, novelist and children's writer. She is the author of five psychological thrillers and has also published five collections of poetry. Her fifth, Pessimism for Beginners, was shortlisted for the 2007 TS Eliot Award.
RTE: Describe yourself in a sentence?
Hannah: I am talkative, nosy, sociable and nothing interests me more than people and the way their minds work.
RTE: What's the one record you'd take to a desert island?
Hannah: Veedon Fleece by Van Morrison. It's better than Astral Weeks, though not many people seem to realise this!
RTE: What did you want to be when you were growing up?
Hannah: I always wanted to write, ever since I was a young kid, and my plan was to get a boring, easy job that would support me financially and leave me with lots of energy for my writing.
RTE: Who's your oldest friend?
Hannah: Suzanne Davies - I met her when we were both 11, and we're still close friends now.
RTE: If I ruled the world...
Hannah: I would see to it that every pregnant woman was able to have a Caesarian section if she wanted one, on the grounds that it's barbaric to compel women to go through the agony of childbirth if they would rather not. I would also make it illegal to make any woman feel guilty about bottle-feeding her baby if breast-feeding is proving almost impossible, or if she simply wants to be able to hand her baby over to someone else in the early weeks/months and have a break. I would also do lots of other things, but if I tell you all of them, we'll be here all day!
RTE: Which book do you wish you'd written?
Hannah: I think it's a bit creepy to wish you'd written someone else's book, however much you admire it. My favourite books are The Black Prince by Iris Murdoch, A Dark-Adapted Eye by Barbara Vine, and Coming From Behind by Howard Jacobson - but I don't wish I'd written them. I'm happy for Murdoch, Vine and Jacobson to have written them.
RTE: What makes you angry?
Hannah: Hypocrisy. I try not to have any principle that I might one day sell out on. As a result of this, some people have accused me of not having any principles at all. But there are very few things that are always bad and wrong, no matter what the circumstances. What's the point of saying, 'Infidelity is wrong' and then having to amend it by saying, 'Oh, but if your husband neglects and ignores you...' The things I feel strongly about - I am very much against capital punishment - are things I can safely say I would never be hypocritical about.
RTE: Name your five dream dinner party guests.
Hannah: Iris Murdoch, Eckhart Tolle, Deepak Chopra, M Scott Peck and Edna St Vincent Millay - on the condition that they all left by about eleven, and didn't mind a takeaway.
RTE: Who would you least like to be stuck in a lift with?
Hannah: I can't tell you, because the person is supposed to be a friend of mine. I got into the friendship not knowing how much of a pain this person would be, and now I'm trapped in it and wondering how to extricate myself - so being stuck in a lift is a pretty good metaphor for the friendship!
RTE: What inspired you to start writing?
Hannah: I always loved books, and always felt compelled to write - there was no real reason I was aware of, I just had to do it.
RTE: Where would you most like to live?
Hannah: In Cambridge, exactly where I do live. I lived there between 1997 and 1999, and fell in love with the place. Then we had to move up north because my husband got a job in Yorkshire, and we spent 12 years pining for Cambridge, promising ourselves we'd move back there when we retired. Then we got fed up of waiting, so my husband gave up his job and we moved back last February. It's heaven! I travel a lot, all over the world, and I've never seen anywhere I've preferred to Cambridge.
RTE: Sum up your latest book in no more than 12 words.
Hannah: Blood-soaked body on property website, fleetingly. Then disappears. Is Connie going mad?
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