A Song of Ice and Fire author George R.R. Martin is winding down his eventual tour of the British Isles. Earlier this week, he received the International Recognition Award at this year’s Irish Book Awards during a ceremony in Dublin.
His acceptance speech, as transcribed by RTE, is pretty interesting. Here it is in full:
Thank you. It’s quite a thrill for me to be here and to accept this award.
I’ve been told a little about it and some of the previous winners of it and I always think that people who have gotten an award, the company you keep is always a very important part, so I’m thrilled to have been included in this company and to receive it in this place, the Irish Alamo.
My latest book Fire and Blood is a work of imaginary history and A Song of Ice and Fire is a work of fiction, fantasy novels, which I will finish. [Audience laughter]. I know I should be at home writing right now, I’m sorry! It is based on history, the 100 Years War, the Crusades, a whole lot of things from medieval history which I’ve read over the years.
I’m glad that so much of the world has fallen in love with my books and so much of the world has fallen in love with the show, but don’t neglect real history, especially at this time in our planet’s growth.
We’re living in perilous times folks, in the United States and over in England where I was and I’m sure it’s affecting every part of the world. Nothing is ever truer than those who do not know real history are doomed to repeat it.
I sometimes wake up at night wondering what precise history we’re about to repeat. Being in this building, infused with its enormous sense of history and knowing the men who fought here and the men who died here in the names of having the right to govern themselves and the right to freedom is a very moving experience.
So thank you so much for bringing me here to this place and for giving me this award. It means a lot.
When he made that joke about him finishing his books, do you think the laughter was warm and sympathetic, or the hollow mirth of the damned? Probably the first one, but my mind goes places.
A big chunk of Martin’s speech is dedicated to him worrying about the “perilous times” we’re living in. I can imagine some fans giving him grief for expressing his political views in a public forum, but I don’t see a problem with it. The guy has opinions about stuff; express away. Sometimes I wake up worried, too, but that’s probably a topic for another article on a different site, or maybe a long Reddit comment I’d live to regret.
During a Q&A session afterwards, Martin talked of lighter subjects, like how the fake map of Westeros was inspired by the real-life map of Ireland. “Initially I followed the characters,” he said, remembering his early days of writing his story, “but [at] a certain point I said ‘I’ve got to draw a map’ and that’s when I turned Ireland upside down.”
I needed a map, I had a piece of blank paper, what should this Westeros place look like? I didn’t want it to look like Middle Earth, or anything recognizable, but I wanted it to have a distinctive shape.
I used two pieces of paper, because I had a line in there already that the North is as big as all of the six lower kingdoms combined, so I had one sheet for the North and one for the South.
So I used upside down Ireland for the South [Westeros], at least as the basis.
I’m sure that played great to the Irish crowd.
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