Colm Tóibín Interviewed by Richard Ovenden

Celebrated Irish novelist Professor Colm Tóibín talks about his life and work with Bodley’s Librarian Richard Ovenden and receives the Bodley Medal for his outstanding contribution to literature.

Tóibín is a multi-award-winning literary novelist whose works have won the Folio Prize, Hawthornden Prize, the Costa Novel Award and the Stonewall Book Award. He has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize three times and longlisted once. His novels include The South, The Heather Blazing, The Testament of Mary, and Nora Webster. His most recent, The Magician, won the 2022 Folio Prize. It is a fictionalised story of the life of the Nobel Prize-winning German novelist Thomas, Mann, his battle with his inner desires and his family, and of the tumultuous times of two world wars, the rise of Hitler, and the Cold War. 

Tóibín’s works explore many themes including Irish society, exile, Catholicism, creativity, identity, masculinity, fatherhood and homosexuality. He is also a journalist, essayist, playwright and poet. He has taught widely at universities including Stanford University, The University of Texas, Princeton, and University of Manchester. He is currently teaching at Columbia University and is Chancellor of the University of Liverpool.
The ceremony will feature Tóibín in conversation with Ovenden, Bodley’s Librarian and director of gardens, libraries and museums at Oxford University, who will also present the author with his Bodley Medal. The Bodley Medal is the Bodleian Libraries’ highest honour, awarded to individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the worlds of books and literature, libraries, media and communications, science and philanthropy.

First presented in 2002, previous recipients at the festival have been Peter Carey (2012), Hilary Mantel (2013), Nicholas Hytner (2014), Ian McEwan (2015), Professor Mary Beard (2016), William Boyd (2017), Claire Tomalin (2018), Kazuo Ishiguro (2019) and most recently Zadie Smith (2022).  Robert Caro (2022) was the first person to receive his award at the North American edition of the Bodley Medal presentation.

Presented by the Bodleian Libraries.