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London (AFP)
British novelist Hilary Mantell claims she wants to apply for Irish citizenship and “return to being European”, thus leaving the United Kingdom, which left the European Union on January 31, 2020.
The writer criticized the monarchy, which “puzzles” her, saying that she “feels better in the republic”, in an interview published on Saturday by the Italian newspaper La Repubblica.
“I hope to be able to take a reverse trip for my family soon and become Irish,” explained Mantell, who is of Irish descent on her grandparents’ side.
The 69-year-old novelist, who twice won the prestigious Booker Prize for literature for the first two volumes of her trilogy about Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII’s minister to England’s King, explained that the project was “stooped” by Covid-19.
Although appreciative of where she lives, “by the sea” in southwest England, the novelist explains that she “feels the need to pack her bags ASAP, and get back to being European”.
He also described the UK as an “artificial and unstable construction”.
In the same interview, he criticized Prime Minister Boris Johnson, a hard-line advocate of Brexit, with whom he has met several times. “He shouldn’t be in public life and I’m sure he knows that,” she said, expressing her “ashamedness to live in a nation that elected this government.”
He also described supporters of Brexit as “immature opportunists, hypocrites and often silly”.
Britain’s exit from the European Union has sparked an influx of Irish citizenship applications from British-born Britons who want to maintain freedom of movement in the European Union.
© 2021 AFP
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