The Lonely Arts Club

Series 2, Episode 11: Willy Russell

June 30, 2020 Institute for Creative Enterprise Season 2 Episode 11
The Lonely Arts Club
Series 2, Episode 11: Willy Russell
Show Notes

On our final episode of this series, Martin McQuillan is joined by legendary playwright, Willy Russell. 

Taking a trip down memory lane, Willy recalls the horrors of school as a youngster in comparison to the joy he found in going back to education as an adult where he found his passion for writing. 

Having spent years as a musician, writing lyrics had become part of Willy's life but it wasn't until he went back to night school to study that the world of writing changed everything. 

"This lovely man treated us all as equals and adults and I remember in the first couple of weeks, he introduced us to Animal Farm - I'd never heard of George Orwell. I went back the next week and he said to the class, "of course, you do know that this book is an allegory," and I was learning to be a bit bolder and I said, "sorry, I don't know what that means". And he said, "well it's a story that's about one thing that is in fact about another. In this case the Russian Revolution right?" Brilliant! I mean, I'd just enjoyed it about pigs and animals, but suddenly understanding completely how it mirrored Orwell's take on what happened with totalitarianism...of course I became the world's biggest bore on Orwell."

As we come to the end of series two, we'd like to thank you for your support and look forward to bringing you more guests of The Lonely Arts Club soon. 

This podcast is brought to you by the Institute for Creative Enterprise at Edge Hill University.

Making connections through culture.

The podcast is edited by Roz DiCaprio who is the producer alongside Karen Appleton and Carl Hunter.

Audio production is by Sam Auguste of Onomatopoeia Studios in Liverpool.

Music is by Joseph McDade.

For more information on the work of the Institute for Creative Enterprise and courses at Edge Hill University, visit edgehill.ac.uk/ice

Follow us on Twitter @edgehillice and Instagram @iceedgehill