In her 80th year, Edna O’Brien reflects on the way her turbulent life has shaped her religious beliefs and moral values. Years in self-imposed exile from both her country and her Church have not diminished her attachment to both. Despite scandalising her family – her mother kept a censored copy of The Country Girls in an outhouse, wrapped in sacking and her father and brother once travelled to the Isle of Man to beat up her then lover, Ernest Gebler – she tells Gay Byrne she will now ask only for God’s blessing, no longer his forgiveness, if and when she meets him.