Pulitzer Prize winner Richard Ford was in fine form for his return to Ilkley on Saturday with a display of wit and wisdom that charmed an already doting Playhouse audience.

Adding a beguiling, drooling American voice to the characters in his latest novel, Canada, Ford indulged the paying public with two readings that sandwiched a fascinating and insightful interview about the origins of his art and the formative years that so nearly could have seen his writing talents lost to the literary world.

Indeed, such was his frustration at his lack of commercial success in those early days, struggling to make a living from his new career path (a stint in the Marines and dabbling with the law having proved less than fruitful), the Sportswriter was something of a last-ditch attempt to make it as a writer.

Despite a less-than-enthusiastic response from many of his nearest and dearest to his new vocation, Ford went on to forge an amazing career, with comparisons to literary giants such as John Updike and William Faulkner.

His latest tome, Canada, was born in 1989, but after sticking the first 20 pages “in an envelope in the freezer”, it was more than two decades before he revisited it. “I just wasn’t ready to write it,” he said. Having been raised in a “wretched” place, as he branded his native Jackson, Mississippi, it’s perhaps unsurprising he should go on to pen a novel incorporating such sweeping, wide open landscapes.

But it could have been so different. He explained: “The sales people thought they were trying to save me from failure by arguing Americans wouldn’t be interested in anything with the name Canada in the title!”

I think it’s a safe bet they, and the rest of the reading world, will be more than interested in anything Richard Ford has to say.

Richard Parker