Hamnet author Maggie O’Farrell on her new novel on the Irish famine and keeping her Bafta in the basement

We persuade her to take us into her basement to look at her Hamnet gongs. She unlocks the door, saying she’s “feeling really ungrateful now” and reiterating that “this is just where they are at the moment”.

The Golden Globe and the Bafta are still wrapped up in their boxes on a shelf. “I do care but I just find it a little bit too flashy to have them out…”

The Golden Globe is particularly heavy.

“Somebody handed it to me on stage and I really nearly dropped it on Steven Spielberg’s foot. Can you imagine?”

For now, her children are the ones enjoying the awards, by playing with them.

“There’s a lot of, ‘And the award for best sister goes to…’.”

She has tentatively started another novel but has “a superstition talking about things that I haven’t finished yet”.

Spielberg might want to get some protective footwear just in case.