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Multi-award-winning Irish novelist Sebastian Barry talks to journalist and television presenter Dame Joan Bakewell about his latest book, The Temporary Gentleman. It follows the life of Jack McNulty, brother of Eneas and Tom, who finds himself washed up in Accra at the end of the Second World War. The novel is a portrait of his life, his demons and his lost love, and of his bid for freedom from the realities of his past.

Barry’s novels and plays have won the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Prize, the Costa Book of the Year award, the Irish Book Awards Best Novel, the Independent Booksellers Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. Two consecutive novels, A Long Long Way  and The Secret Scripture, were shortlisted for the MAN Booker Prize.

Joan Bakewell is a journalist, television presenter, Labour Party peer and president of Birkbeck, University of London. She is well known as the presenter of many BBC programmes, particularly the documentary and discussion series Heart of the Matter. She has written an autobiography, The Centre of the Bed, and a novel, All The Nice Girls.