My Writing Life: Roddy Doyle
"A woman told me she went into labour while reading my third novel, 'The Van'. She was laughing so much, her waters burst."
With The Booker Prizes longlist set to be announced next week, we asked author and one of the Booker Prize 2025 judges Roddy Doyle to give us an insight into his writing life:
What book should every writer read?
I think it’s a good idea to re-read the books that made you want to be a writer in the first place. I re-read Treasure Island and Just William every few years – as well as Ragtime, Lord of the Rings and The Code Of The Woosters.
What is the one thing you wish someone had told you before you started your writing career?
To take a bit more time off.
What is the best advice you’ve ever received about your writing?
A really nice review of my second novel, The Snapper, asked the question: does no one smoke in Doyle’s books? No one did, because I didn’t. So it made me think more carefully about habits and behaviours and phrases that aren’t mine. I don’t drink tea but I have to remind myself that a lot of people do.
Who has been an influential figure in your writing career?
A playwright called Paul Mercier. We’re friends and we worked in the same school in the 1980s. While I was starting to write, myself, I’d go to Paul’s plays – brilliant, funny dramas set in working-class Dublin – and I felt that my batteries were being recharged.
What was the proudest moment of your writing career?
A woman telling me that she went into labour while reading my third novel, The Van. She was laughing so much, her waters burst. Also, watching a child read my first book for children, The Giggler Treatment, her finger travelling across the page, under the words, as she read.
What is your typical writing day like?
These days I work in bursts, a couple a day. In between, I walk the dog or wander around Dublin city centre, or read. It’s all work. I wrote a short piece I’d just been asked to write while walking the dog. It was done – finished, in my head – by the time we got home. The dog is on 10% of my royalties.
What are you reading right now?
The Code Of The Woosters by P.G. Wodehouse.
Bookmarker or page-folder?
Bookmark – train tickets, loyalty cards.
Roddy Doyle’s first three novels, The Commitments (1987), The Snapper (1990), and The Van (1991), narrate the adventures of the Rabbitte family, residents of Barrytown, a poor housing estate in north Dublin. Both The Commitments and The Snapper were made into films, and Doyle wrote the Channel 4 series, The Family, which was televised in the UK in 1995. He won the Booker Prize for Fiction in 1993 for his novel Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, about a ten-year-old Irish boy. The Woman Who Walked Into Doors (1996) is the tragic story of Paula Spencer, alcoholic and mother of four children, locked in an abusive marriage. Doyle revisits Spencer's life in his 2006 novel Paula Spencer. His novel, A Star Called Henry (1999), is set in 1922 during the civil war in Ireland. Doyle is also the author of two plays, Brownbread (1987), and War (1989); and children's books, including The Giggler Treatment (2000), Rover Saves Christmas (2001) and The Meanwhile Adventures(2004). His children's book A Greyhound of a Girl (2012) was shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal in 2013.
He is also one of 15 Irish writers who contributed to the 'serial novel' Yeats is Dead! (2001), a murder story set in contemporary Dublin, the proceeds of which were given to Amnesty International. His book, Rory & Ita (2002), a mixture of oral history and family reminiscence, tells the story of his parents' lives. He published a collection of short stories, The Deportees, in 2007, and a second, Bullfighting, in 2011.
His most recent books include The Dead Republic (2010); Two Pints (2012); The Guts (2013), which takes us back to Jimmy Rabbitte, now in his forties; Two More Pints (2014); Dead Man Talking (2015); and Smile (2017).
Roddy is the chair of this year’s Booker Prize 2025 judges.
You can read more ‘My Writing Life’ interviews on our RLF Substack.