The Children of Dynmouth by William Trevor

In his brown cardigan, tweed tie, and corduroy trousers he resembled a kindly country schoolmaster. Nearly sixty, William Trevor is youthfully slender. Trevor settled languidly into an armchair, crossed his long legs, and bore the expression of a man who had just fastened his seat belt for a long and possibly perilous airplane ride. Windows curtained in Wedgewood-blue velvet opened out over rolling downs. Books lay neatly stacked on a side table amid fringed lampshades, and the walls were bare with the exception of a few Redouté prints. The interview took place in the sitting room of their Victorian farmhouse, where a small fire burned in the hearth.

They also spend a few months of the year in Tuscany and go back regularly to Ireland, where he was born. Trevor lives in a ruined mill in the green countryside of Devon, with his wife, Jane. Although my train had kept him waiting for nearly an hour, he was smiling when I arrived, and even apologized ambassadorially for British Rail’s inefficiency. Trevor met me at the Exeter railway station on a chilly, drizzly February morning, cutting a rather startling figure on the platform in his matching tweed greatcoat and deerstalker hat. His other novels include The Children of Dynmouth (1977), winner of the Whitbread Prize for Fiction, Fools of Fortune (1983), and most recently Silence in the Garden (1988). William Trevor first achieved prominence with the publication of his second novel, The Old Boys (1964) but perhaps he is best known for his volumes of short stories, including The Day We Got Drunk on Cake (1968), Angel at the Ritz and Other Stories (1976), winner of the Royal Society of Literature Award, and The News from Ireland (1986). Interviewed by Mira Stout Issue 110, Spring 1989

The Children of Dynmouth by William Trevor