Celebrating her 90th year today is a woman that has repeatedly been dubbed 'Ireland's greatest living writer', Edna O'Brien.
One of the country's most impressive exports, Edna told Pat Kenny that she shows no signs of slowing down as she marks the occasion with a specially-streamed lecture for Dublin's Abbey Theatre.
The Country Girls author has already filmed the 2020 TS Eliot lecture on the writer and James Joyce ahead of its 7.30pm premiere on the theatre's YouTube channel streamed from the Irish Embassy in London.
Ambassador Adrian O'Neill will introduce the lecture and there will be a post-event interview with O'Brien and Scottish novelist Andrew O'Hagan, and actor Sinéad Cusack will also perform Eliot's 'Rhapsody on a Windy Night'.
"The ambassador introduced me then went onto discuss Brexit with his counterparts," she told The Pat Kenny Show.
"There were only six people in the room. It was actually more unnerving than to be on a stage in front of hundreds. I couldn't help but look at their expressions at times ... I could see them whisper.
"All in all, it was a nervous day but it was a great and gruelling experience."
Most recently, Edna won the South Bank Sky Arts award for literature for her recent novel, Girl, a harrowing, heartbreaking tale about the girls kidnapped in Nigeria by Boko Haram. Travelling to Nigeria for research purposes, the multi-award winner mentions how Girl "was not an easy book to write"
"I could've written an easier book but I didn't want that and don't want that. My work is not done to shock but it's done because that's a subject I feel should be written about ... For me, it was a very deep and humanising journey."
Referencing the trilogy that made her famous, the nonagenarian discusses how much Ireland has changed since the '60s.
"I'm so glad The Country Girls, that little foundling, is still in print and still exists – they're actually going to do a television series on it," she told Pat.
"It has retained its vigour and kept in print. Ireland is a freer country now [than when it was first published] and hopefully less judgemental, but ultimately passion stays. The spirit of a nation doesn't vanish overnight. Sure, there's more modernity and less censorship and many good things have happened, but also a few we could have lived without.
"Irish people are more passionate and more open and dramatic with their feelings than English people. and that has been the case and will be the case forever."
Continuing on that the theme of passion and vigour, Edna told Pat that the rumours may be true that another book might be in the works:
"I'm frightened more than reluctant [to start a new book]. Sitting at a table takes huge mental energy because one is never not doing it. You're doing it when you get up, doing it when you get to bed.
"The only book, ironically, that I had any certainty about was my first book – I've often said that it wrote itself. I was the deliverer. They get harder and harder as one goes on.
"I had a lot to draw on from the Country Girls ... now its a question of one's self to go in there and pull it out. In midwifery terms, it's a longer and harder delivery. I don't know and I won't know but maybe this time next year we'll have another conversation."
