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

Key developments are emerging from the global stage. Hamnet author Maggie O'Farrell on her new novel on the Irish famine and keeping her Bafta in the basementJust now Share Save Add as preferred on GoogleKatie RazzallCulture and Media EditorBBC/Katie RazzallMaggie O'Farrell says she wanted to tell the whole story of Ireland just by one plot of landAs I ring the doorbell of Maggie O'Farrell's Edinburgh home, I wonder with some trepidation whether the acclaimed novelist might have become a bit starry after the whirlwind few months she's just had. She's been jet-setting between the UK and the US, attending red carpet events and won a Bafta and a Golden Globe for adapting her novel Hamnet for the big screen. O'Farrell's new novel, Land, is being published off the back of her immersion into the glitzy Hollywood awards race.

"It sort of feels like something that I dreamt," she tells me later during our interview. I needn't have worried that she has had her head turned by LA goodie bags and limos on tap. She opens her front door, sporting a big smile and a black and red jumper that says LOVE on it, with one of her three cats in tow, and immediately offers me and my colleague some tea.

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Universal Pictures Hamnet director Chloé Zhao and stars Paul Mescal and Jessie BuckleyThis is an acclaimed novelist who chose her own clothes for the awards ceremonies. "They said, 'Do you want a stylist? ' but it seemed such a weird idea to me".

Instead, she decided "I'm just going to enjoy it" and wore - appropriately - a red quill headpiece to the Baftas. For the Oscars she opted for a black veil and Victorian jet mourning necklace, not just because she was saying goodbye to her creation, but also because Shakespeare's son Hamnet "died when he was really young and he was real". The awards she won are now hidden away in her basement "until I get used to the idea.

"Getty ImagesMaggie O'Farrell in her red Shakespearean quill headpiece at the BaftasMore of that later, but we're with her to talk about Land, her sweeping new tale centred around the story of an Irish mapmaker working for the British army in the mid-19th Century. "I wanted to tell the whole story of Ireland just by one plot of land," she says. She shows me the handwritten blue book full of her early notes.

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The first line says "a novel about emigration", with subsequent pages full of stuck in post-it notes of writing. /Katie RazzallKatie Razzall looking at Maggie O'Farrell's notes for Land"I was on a train and the first sentence of the book just came into my head - it was, 'His father was ever a man of few words'. ""I wrote an awful lot," she says.

"I do remember being very excited and I know the journey went very fast". The book was inspired by her great-great-grandfather who she discovered made Ordnance Survey maps for the British from 1848, towards the end of the Great Famine in Ireland, which killed at least a million people and forced many more into exile.

The story has become one of the most prominent items on the global agenda.