“One of the Gallaghers came to live here recently,” my taxi driver says. “You know, from Oasis. We have a lot of celebrities here.” I wonder whether his list includes Ian McEwan, whose house we are heading toward. I mean to ask, but am swept away by the spring landscape of the Cotswolds – a field of green, a scattering of hills, imposing trees and traditional English cottages, like something right out of a Thomas Hardy novel.
As we reach our destination from the remote train station of Kemble, I see a country manor from the 1920s nestled in a big verdant garden. McEwan lives here with his second wife, journalist and children’s writer Annalena McAfee. He’s there to greet me, looking incredibly youthful for his 78 years. “Did you get my message about sharing the taxi back?” he asks, smiling. “I have this hybrid car and I have no idea what’s wrong with it, but I need to pop over to London.”
McEwan has a meeting with the cast of a new stage adaptation of his renowned novel, “Atonement,” which is slated to open in Chichester – the “capital” of the Cotswolds, if you will – on May 29. “If all goes well, it will also go up in London – we’ll see,” he says of the play, which has been adapted by the same screenwriter who did the film adaptations, Academy Award-winner Christopher Hampton.
