The Wellspring Conversations with David Owen Norris

Acclaimed novelist and dramatist Barney Norris conducts a conversation with his father, the pianist and composer David Owen Norris – ‘quite possibly the most interesting pianist in the world’ (Toronto Globe and Mail) and ‘a famous thinker/philosopher of the keyboard’ (Seattle Times) – about the nature of creativity, of Englishness, and of the changing world. The book becomes a study of the relationship between his Englishness and his work, of his inheritance and how it is projected forward into new compositions and new performance. In addition to exploring the career of this renowned musician, the father-son conversation also reveals Barney Norris’s experience of working in English theatre over the last ten years and of his practice as a novelist with a growing reputation. Their combined experience, in two fields, in two different generations, provides a thought-provoking discussion of how a place and a culture inform artistic work, and how England and Englishness have evolved during the past half century. Informative, entertaining, at times provocative, The Wellspring will become a classic.

Barney Norris was born in Chichester in 1987 and grew up in Sussex, London and Salisbury. A graduate of the universities of Oxford and Royal Holloway, his plays are At First Sight and Missing and his poetry, stories and other writings have been published in various magazines. He is the author of two acclaimed novels: Five Rivers Met on a Wooded Plain (2016) and Turning for Home (2018).