John Banville vowed never to write such a book again after finishing his work based on the life of astronomer Dr Copernicus. Taking fact as a starting point requires so much more research than making everything up.
'There's so much wasted time researching,' he said. 'But then I read [astronomer] Kepler's life story and thought I could not pass it up.' And then there was that other story that had long interested him, those 'admirable men' of the Cambridge spy ring of 1930s Britain: Guy Burgess, Donald McLean, Kim Philby - and the fourth man, the man who helped them defect and finally was unmasked and lost all, the queen's art adviser, Sir Anthony Blunt.
Dublin-based Banville, 52, award-winning novelist and 1989 Booker Prize nominee who still works as literary editor with the Irish Times, could not resist what he calls 'the ideal story'.
The result, The Untouchable, published by Picador, is a marvellous feat of the imagination, in which Banville takes his research - talking to people who knew Blunt and 'reading a few books, not many' - and flies away with it. He says it was so much his own creation that he was surprised when reviewers played 'spot the spy', identifying which character was Burgess, which McLean, which writer Graham Greene.
But the book did not please everyone, particularly British reviewers. It was tipped for the Booker short-list but passed over.
Banville, visiting Australia as a kind of reward for excellent reviews, says the English just do not understand the book. Maybe, subconsciously, they are not happy at an Irishman subverting 'their story'.
