I mean no disrespect to William Golding but frankly The Inheritors was completely impenetrable to a group of 17-year-old English A-Level students and we made our opinion clearly known. Luckily our brilliant teacher, the mild-mannered Mr Jenkins, had the sense to switch the text for Ian McEwan’s Atonement, then only recently published, and so began my love affair with the author’s work.

Atonement was a seminal read for me. The crushing sadness of the truth behind the romance between Robbie and Cecelia that we invest so wholeheartedly in until the end of the novel (and which they enact with such passion under the misguidedly watchful eye of Briony) spoke to my undeveloped, yearning teenage heart.

I’m a firm believer in returning to texts and the different perspectives we bring via our evolving life experience (I would probably enjoy The Inheritors now). I came back to Atonement again when studying English Literature at university, exploring the claustrophobic family dinner and palpable sexual tension of the vase scene, my heart now metamorphosed into a young adult’s, a little battle worn but still eager.

Twenty years after first reading Atonement, and with several further McEwan novels taking up residence both in small corners of my brain and physically on my bookshelves, I had the opportunity to hear him speak at the 2022 Cheltenham Literature Festival to coincide with the publication of his latest, partly autobiographical, novel Lessons.

Excuse me if I pause for breath. It was quite simply an outstanding talk. McEwan’s novels deal with the grit, the grind and the grime of life (I truly relate to his description of having young children in Lessons as ‘the slime years’) as much as they as explore the many overarching questions which we ask ourselves when not preoccupied with wiping up the daily mess.

While the talk was ostensibly about Lessons the novel, it meandered perhaps inevitably into the lessons of our existence. I found his assertion that ‘life is full of problems that never get resolved’, that at best we can either forget or accept them, both deeply depressing and wonderfully comforting. In McEwan’s view the ‘many irreconcilables’ are ‘what makes life so fascinating’.

It’s impossible to go on without mentioning that during McEwan’s talk an audience member collapsed. Thankfully the person in question was quickly attended to and was able to leave the auditorium on their feet, but it brought the fragility of life rather uncomfortably into focus during an event that was laced with poignancy.

McEwan revealed that his mother had given away a baby conceived as the result of an affair.  His description of her anguish at handing the baby to strangers on the platform of Reading Station was heart breaking. His disclosure that 55 years later when mother and child were reunited but her failing mental health meant she didn’t recognise him was unbearable.

McEwan is an advocate of mining your own experience in the writing process, giving praise to Charles Dickens on that score, and I think everyone in the room found themselves pausing for inward reflection, seeing scenes from their ‘own internal cinema’ played out before them as the author discussed both the central characters in Lessons and his own life trajectory.

As for me, I found my thoughts (as they so often do at moments of high emotion) turning to my late parents, both contemporaries of McEwan’s. Of how to live a life not tinged with regret yet mindful of the impact of decisions we make. And to my maturing heart – still open, still learning. Willing to believe in the representative power of Robbie and Cecelia’s romance even when it’s revealed as a construct.

So thank you, Mr Jenkins, for placing value on the views of a bunch of well-meaning upstarts and setting me on a path that brought Ian McEwan’s words and wisdom into my world. I think it may be time to read Atonement again.