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Hello and welcome to the Spectator's Book Club podcast. I'm Sam Leith, the literary editor of The Spectator.

This week, my guest is Professor Roy Foster, Emeritus Professor of Irish History at the University of Oxford,

I think I'm right and say that, the author of Modern Ireland and studies of Yates, among many other books.

And his new book is a short book by Princeton University Press called On Seamus Heaney.

Roy, welcome.

Seamus He is a sort of peculiar figure, isn't he?

Because, you know, we look like our poets to be kind of Mordie and miserable and troubled.

And on the surface, he seems to have been quite a happy,

well-adjusted, well-balanced man.

Is that the right impression?

Well, he was, in a phrase he used himself in a lovely poem,

rather worried poem, he was steeped in luck.

And part of luck was having a very rock solid personal,

private family life, being an adored child, having a very settled and much loved family background.

And that's rare with a great artist. I mean, I compare him to Yates at certain

points in this book as people often have done, but their backgrounds in terms of security

couldn't have been more different. At the same time, he's not as unequivocally cheerful and

sunny a character as you might assume from this.

And there are depths and darknesses from the very early work.

...