&c1=usa&c2=(none)&c3=The+Guardian&c4=Media,Books,Fiction+(Books+genre),Culture+section,Colm+Toibin+(Author)&c5=&c6=&c7=2004_03_24){kind=small}
- The Guardian,
- Monday September 27 1999
Newspapers: The Irish Times every morning and usually the Guardian as well. Three or four days of the week I get El Pais, because I go to Barcelona so much. At the weekend I get everything, but only read the books pages. The Irish Times still remains an essential ingredient in Irish life. I find the columnists, particularly Mary Holland on Northern Ireland, and Fintan O'Toole on the South, absolutely essential reading.
Magazines: I read from beginning to end the London Review of Books. I get the TLS and New Yorker every week.
Books: There are a number of writers I pick up everything I can get by: Joseph Conrad, Henry James, VS Naipaul, Nadine Gordimer, Thomas Mann.
Film: Almost nothing. I used to go to everything - Fellini, Bergman, Rohmer and a number of Spanish directors like Carlos Saura. But that great European wave has finished and nothing has replaced it that interests me.
Television: Almost nothing. I watch Newsnight, unless it's about British politics. I got interested in This Life - really original and well-written. I also enjoyed Father Ted.
Radio: Radio 3, on an Irish cable system, so I get an incredibly good reception. I listen to the Irish news on RT1, which is like the Irish Times in that it is essential listening if you want to know what's going on. And a new all-classical station, Lyric FM, the greatest addition to Irish life in recent years that I can think of.
Ads: No, nothing. No.
Multimedia: I have an ancient word-processor that everybody thinks is really funny. It's slow but not that old - 1991. I wrote The Blackwater Lightship in longhand with a cheap Biro on a hardback notebook, then typed it on to the ancient word-processor, because if you're working from your own handwriting it means you get to do a whole new draft to the book, so it's actually useful in a way.
