Ferdia Lennon

12 February 2026

On a dark winter’s night, in the Ipswich Institute, under pools of light from our new lamps, we had a wonderfully entertaining evening listening to Ferdia Lennon speak to a full room of fifty people about his love of the classics and how he came to write his first novel.

Glorious Exploits is centred around a limestone quarry in Syracuse, Sicily in 412 BCE. Syracuse was a staging post in the Peloponnesian wars, and the quarry used for Athenian prisoners. Asked what inspired him, Ferdia said he came across an interesting passage in Plutarch’s Life of Nicias where he said that a few lines from a play might be the difference between life and death. He had an idea  he might ‘turn the camera’ to what was happening on the side of the Athenian invasion. Enter Lampo and Gelon, unemployed potters, who head down to the prisoners in the quarry to give them food and drink in return for lines from Euripides. Events lead them to hatch a plan to perform Medea.

James Phillips, interviewing, asked about the Irish vernacular that Ferdia has given Lampo and Gelon. Ferdia said the Irish voice came naturally, and ‘who knows how they spoke back then?!’ James mentioned the retellings that have been popular in recent years and Ferdia joked that he’d pitched it as ‘Circe meets The Commitments’. Agents thought it could be hard to sell but it wasn’t at all. Initially, the cover was red, making it look too much like a retelling. When Waterstones chose it as Book of the Month they asked for the yellow cover, which Ferdia prefers. James asked about Ferdia’s use of colours in the book - e.g. the Tyrian purple used in the set design. Ferdia said thoughtfully that he’d never been asked about that, but it’s important. When travelling in Greece and seeing the aridity and the blue of the sea and the sky, he’d thought of spaghetti westerns which he loved watching as a child and the weird discordance of colour they had, perhaps from being filmed in Spain.

For research, Ferdia, already steeped in the Classics, read plays, watched videos of contemporary retellings, and read academic texts. He aimed to be consistent with historical records, but to write in the gaps. His characters are composites of people he’s observed. He’s fond of Lampo and does not want to make his characters heroes or villains. Lampo was interesting, partly because he is selfish, but ‘not as much as he thinks’. 

In a lively Q and A, we heard about Ferdia’s travels to promote the book all over the world. He said his journey has been wonderful, magical and validating, especially when Roddy Doyle gave him a quote for the cover. Ferdia has hidden ‘easter eggs’ in the book for those in the know about the Classics and Irish legends. He read his own audiobook so that he could be sure it would be read by a real Irishman. The book has been optioned for film and theatre and Ferdia has drafted a new novel set in 14th century France and England. This fascinates him as a period of great social change: the Black Death, One Hundred Years War, plague, ‘all the good stuff!’ I thoroughly enjoyed Ferdia’s visit and am already looking forward to more of the ‘good stuff’.

Tricia Gilbey