Louis de Bernieres on Of Love and Desire, Aye Write, and his adopted cats

“It’s a horrid last line. The words, 'Liar', 'Thief,'" he says of Lines Written in Bath, November 2013, one of the angriest poem in Of Love and Desire, from which he will be reading at Glasgow’s Aye Write! festival.

He confesses: “I wasn’t going to publish this poem, but I showed it to my good friend [the novelist] Victoria Hislop, who is often a first reader of my work. She said it had made her cry, then she said, ‘You must publish it.' Another writer, whose opinion I also respect, agreed. So there it is on the page in Of Love and Desire.”

There is no doubt that Lines Written in Bath was – like so many others in this musical, witty, affecting collection of love poetry – fired in the crucible of bitter experience. But there are also many other poems in the collection about the dizzy joys and sensual pleasures of love and lust – as you would expect from the author of the international bestseller Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, in which he wrote, “Love is a temporary madness, it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides.” Which has been quoted at more weddings and civil ceremonies than you can shake a packet of confetti at.

Sadly, de Bernieres receives no royalties. “It’s too short to earn any,” he explains, speaking down the line from his home, a Georgian rectory in Norfolk, which is a lifelong DIY project. The Corelli quote, however, goes on being published in countless collections of quotations for nuptials.

The London-born 61-year-old has never been married, although he shared his life for 10 years with theatre director and actor, Cathy Gill. They had a son, Robin (11); three years later their daughter, Sophie, was born. In 2009, Gill moved out of their home, taking the children with her. Two years of “absolute hell” followed, with de Bernieres battling for joint custody, which he won some five years ago. Now the children spend half the time with him and half with their mother. “As she acts and directs, her job is random. When she’s away, I often get more than my share of them, which is a pleasure.”

When I tell him that I felt emotionally shaken on reading many of the poems in this new collection – his last, Imagining Alexandria, in which he pays homage to Greek poet Cavafy, came out in 2013 – because they were obviously written from the heart, he mentions the devastating Lines Written in Bath before I do. “It doesn’t bother me if people read the poems as autobiographical. Yes, readers do look for truth in poetry – as opposed to lies in fiction! – but in poetry it’s metaphorical truth, virtual truth. I leave it to the reader to decide what is fiction and what is not. But I'm pleased that Lines Written in Bath is in the collection.

“In any case, I’m not concerned about what people think. Interviewers come here and go away writing that they know me. They do not; they never will. But, certainly, many of these poems are about old loves – and old fantasies.”

Any new loves? “I am not going to tell you,” he replies, then adds that over the weekend, his neighbour’s son told Robin that de Bernieres has a new girlfriend. “I don’t!” he exclaims. “But the children were not happy. My son was almost hysterical, while my daughter believes her role in life is to protect me from women. Not that I need much protection nowadays."

Still, he’s had his moments. There are poems addressed to previous lovers: Laura, Paula, Sylvie, as well as others who remain anonymous since he's a gentleman. Have his erstwhile paramours read them? “Well, two of the women are dead – the French girl Sylvie of For Sylvie, Who Believed in Reincarnation, for instance. Laura likes the poem, For Laura, Anadyomene Cytheraea [it is about Greece and set in the shape of a vase]. As for Paula, of Letter to Paula (in which he writes, “...I thought I would tell you/ That you were my body’s finest hour…”) I don’t think she’s ever likely to read anything I write.”

The one person he does want to read Of Love and Desire is his beloved father, Piers, who is 92. He has dedicated the collection to him and will give it to the former soldier on his birthday on March 3. “Dad has written accomplished poetry all his life – he recited Shakespeare at mealtimes and still writes because his mind is absolutely clear. He never had the courage or the heart to do it properly. After he submitted some work to Faber, the reply came back. ‘Your poetry is not for us.’ I always thought I’d be a poet rather than a novelist because I grew up with it. I could write poetry in Latin long before I had the confidence or the knowledge to write in English.”

For years, he resisted showing his poems to anyone, despite his phenomenal success as a novelist – he’s written eight acclaimed novels and a short story collection. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, disappointingly filmed starring Penelope Cruz, made his name and lots of money, which he enjoyed spending while touring the world for two years promoting it. It’s sold 2.5million copies worldwide, but he reckons he was put on this earth to write his magnificent epic, Birds Without Wings (2004). “Yes, I do think it’s the book of my life; I’m very proud of it. I wouldn’t care if I had written nothing else.”

He was outed as a poet by Scottish poet Brian Johnstone at the St Andrew Poetry Festival. “I hesitantly showed him some unrevised work, some of which I thought lumpy, but he gave me the confidence to carry on, telling me that it wasn’t rubbish. It took me a while to know what a poem was. How do you tell if it’s not just prose cut up? I knew about metre but I also learnt that when you write you have to read a poem out loud, over and over again. I had a lot to learn. But I do like the kick of a rhyme at the end of a poem and employing assonance [vowel rhyme].

“I used to write poetry on trains – the da-da-dunh, da-da-dunh, da-da-dunh sets up a rhythm in your mind. But now trains are as quiet as ghosts. Never attempt to write a poem on a Virgin train from Manchester to London! I often create poems when I go for a walk, it’s that one-two march time, the beat.”

In his most recent novel, The Dust That Falls From Dreams (2015), he tells an epic tale of love and war inspired by the fact that his part-Scottish grandmother – “they were McEwans, Browns and Lamonts, according to Dad” – lost her fiance in 1915, changing the course of her life. “If not for his death, I would have no life,” notes de Bernieres, who plans a trilogy featuring the large cast of characters. Rosie McCosh, his heroine, finds consolation in poetry. One character remarks: “Poetry has always buttered Rosie’s parsnips.”

Does it butter de Bernieres’ parsnips? “Oh yes!” he exclaims. “It has been, and still is, the great solace of my life – apart from my children. I have a nice life anyway: I write, I'm on Facebook, which I rather enjoy, I garden, do my DIY, have my children, play the guitar, flute, banjo and, sometimes, the mandolin. And I have two cats.”

He inherited a pair of cats – one has since died –from his friend and neighbour, the novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard, who died aged 90 in January 2014. Recently, de Bernieres unveiled a plaque in her memory at her house in Bungay.

“She became my ‘Aunt Jane.’ I used to go in and cook for her every Tuesday after my family broke up. She had a Bulgarian servant who reduced everything to charcoal! In old age, Jane remained a great beauty. She would look at you beseechingly with those big, brown, spaniel-like eyes and you were lost. She often took umbrage, however, for no apparent reason. There’d be silence for months then the phone would ring. I inherited her brother Colin’s cats when he died suddenly – his cat, Basil, is beside me now sitting on a manuscript. Jane gave up when Colin died because she loved him more than anyone, although she never stopping writing until the end.”

Pausing dramatically, he asks: “Did you know that there were rumours that Jane and I were lovers? I always thought it would be caddish to deny it, so I never did.” Always the gentleman.

Of Love and Desire, by Louis de Bernieres (Harvill Secker, £12.99). Louis de Bernieres is at Aye Write!, Mitchell Library, Glasgow, on March 11. See ayewrite.com. As president of the Banjo, Mandolin, Guitar Federation, he’ll be performing at their Rally in Kelvinside Academy (March 11-13).