The 2008 Costa Book of the Year, The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry is a story of a life blighted by ignorance and terrible mistreatment, and yet marked still by love and passion and hope. In this extended interview, Sebastian Barry speaks about the many histories of Ireland and, even closer to home, remnants of his own family history to be found in The Secret Scripture in the fictional shape of Roseanne McNulty, one of the novel's two narrators, confined to an asylum for sixty years.