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LIVE on @CrowdcastHQ shortly | Maggie O'Farrell talks about her new book Hamnet http://crowdcast.io/e/hayfestival_event11 | #ImagineTheWorld
"I tried to write this book for a long time. I had a few different stabs at it. After I finished my memoir I gave myself a talking to. It was time" - Maggie O'Farrell #ImagineTheWorld
"Not enough people know that Shakespeare had a son called Hamnet. And yet he was so important. Without Hamnet’s early death at the age of 11 we wouldn’t have the plays Hamlet or Twelfth Night" - Maggie O'Farrell #ImagineTheWorld
"All you have to do is read the first act of Hamlet - the whole play is underpinned by this huge chasm of grief and loss" - Maggie O'Farrell #ImagineTheWorld
"The biggest drama of Shakespeare’s life happened off stage, in Stratford" - Maggie O'Farrell #ImagineTheWorld
"Biographies often give Hamnet just a brief mention and follow it with remarks about the high rates of infant mortality at the time, as if it wasn’t so important, as if he wasn’t grieved. I just don't believe that was true" - Maggie O'Farrell #ImagineTheWorld
"We still speak the language of past pandemics. We say 'bless you' when people sneeze because it was the first sign of the plague" - Maggie O'Farrell #ImagineTheWorld
"Shakespeare’s career would have been constantly interrupted by outbreaks of the plague. The theatres were the first things to be closed" - Maggie O'Farrell #ImagineTheWorld
"I couldn’t write my scenes in which Hamnet dies while I was inside my house. I had to put myself in the shed and write in 15-20 minute bursts" - Maggie O'Farrell #ImagineTheWorld
