Patrick Gale Interviewed by Suzi Feay

One of Britain’s best known novelists Patrick Gale introduces his new historical novel set in Cornwall, Mother’s Boy.

Impoverished Cornish girl Laura raises her son Charles alone after her husband returns from the First World War a damaged man and with the tuberculosis that claims his life. She gradually realises her son is a genius. Charles joins the Navy as a coder and blossoms as he experiences both the possibility of death and the constant danger of a love that is as clandestine as his work. The novel is a story of class, desire, and of two world wars. It is inspired by the boyhood and young life of the Cornish poet Charles Causley.

Gale lives on a farm near Land’s End. His most recent novels include A Perfectly Good Man, Notes From An Exhibition, the Costa shortlisted A Place Called Winter and Take Nothing With You. His television drama, Man in an Orange Shirt, was shown to great acclaim as part of the BBC’s Queer Britannia series. Here he talks to journalist and reviewer for the FT Suzi Feay.