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them on YouTube. There’s someone in the Hebrew text which then went
who does clocks and watches, some into Greek and Latin and Christianity.
good things about ancient Egypt, So, what is so extraordinary is that
about the Romans etc. Several of the the god who has this information
curators do videos but some won’t. gave the size of the boat, the shape
It’s a widespread thing, and it’s a very of it and all the materials you need
beneficial matter. I’m all in favor of it. to make it.

I just heard that you said you have It was like an Ikea box with all the stuff
written a book, a new book. Could inside. It was a round boat, a coracle,
you tell us more about it? which is a guffa in Arabic. They used
I wrote a book about the ghosts of to use guffas on these rivers, but
ancient Mesopotamia; it’s called The they were bigger for ferrying sheep
First Ghosts. The Babylonians believed and grandmothers across the river.
in ghosts, and they produced a huge The one in the Book is the size of a
amount of writing about them, how football pitch. We made a replica of it. to my amazement, it’s been translated
to get rid of them, what they looked There was a film of it. This book has into French, Livre de Poche.
like, what it meant when they were been translated into a few languages,
there, how to exorcise them, how to and it’s just been done into Arabic, I’ve written three books about a lady
bring them up from the dead. which is exciting. called Miss Barbellion who’s about
78 and used to be a missionary
Before that, I wrote a book called The How many books you have written then thought better of it, and what
Ark Before Noah, which was based altogether? happened to her when she was an
upon a cuneiform tablet which came Well, those are the two popular books. old lady when she came back to
to light from a visited museum. It was I like writing about Mesopotamia England. She moved into the family
part of the flood story which we had using ancient words and explaining house. They found a great big doll’s
already known about in Mesopotamia what things mean for an ordinary house in it. All sorts of adventures.
since the 19th century. This was a readership, real people, not scholars. I wrote three books about Miss
tablet which was written in about There’s no point in writing a book Barbellion, and I want my agent to
1800 B.C., and it was the moment for scholars. I’ve done two books find a publisher because the first one
when the gods told a human being like that, and then I’ve written was published by a small publisher
to build an ark because the floods some novels, children’s books, some and that was the end of that, but I’ve
will come. So, he did and put all the complex, a serological. written two more. So, I’m hoping.
animals in it, and that’s the story
behind Noah in the Bible, but it was I write all sorts of things. I have an How did you find time to do all this?
a thousand years older. agent who despairs of me because Well, I used to write a lot on the bus
he wants me to write the same book going to work. And when we went
So, it’s real? eight times so he knows what it is. away on a holiday, I was hidden in
Real I don’t know, but in ancient Iraq, One of my favorite things is to wrote the greenhouse at my parents-in-
they had this flood story with a boat a book called The Last Resort Library. law’s house and wrote books there.
that rescued life at least a thousand It’s about somebody who creates If you write a technical one or do a
years before the one in the Bible a library to rescue books, articles, serological work, everything has to
because the Euphrates and Tigris poetry and fiction that have been be perfect with the footnotes and the
rivers which bring all the water there rejected by publishers or by agents. references. Otherwise, people shoot
sometimes flood. There must have If you wanted to leave manuscripts to you the minute it comes out. So, it’s
been a very serious flood. When this library you had to have rejection very exacting and very tiring. If you
the Judeans after the destruction of letters to go with them. It’s a fictional want to write fiction, all you have
Jerusalem were taken to Babylon idea because I wrote quite a lot of to do is write what comes into your
under Nebuchadnezzar, they heard books, quite a lot of things and got all head. It’s wonderful.
this story. In the construction of the sorts of rejection letters. It made me
Genesis book, they decided to take so angry that in the end I wrote this What does your wife say?
the narrative as a teaching structure story to get my own back, and, much She’s given up on me, really, but she’s

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