--- title: Ian McEwan About The Children Act description: The author on wandering spouses, long lost brothers and that other Ian canonical: https://time.com/3397075/ian-mcewan-children-act/ author: Belinda Luscombe article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-09-18T10:35:18.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-21T10:15:57.775Z article:section: Entertainment og:title: Ian McEwan About The Children Act og:description: The author on wandering spouses, long lost brothers and that other Ian og:url: https://time.com/3397075/ian-mcewan-children-act/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt0be4307af444e0a9/6986a3efe8524bacf6604bcb/ian-mcewan-portrait.jpg?branch=production&width=2400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: Ian McEwan Portrait og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Ian McEwan About The Children Act twitter:description: The author on wandering spouses, long lost brothers and that other Ian twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt0be4307af444e0a9/6986a3efe8524bacf6604bcb/ian-mcewan-portrait.jpg?branch=production&width=2400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # 10 Questions With Ian McEwan > Sponsored content. 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Terms and conditions apply. * Savings buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Savings Account. * No ATM fees from Ally Bank at Allpoint and Moneypass ATMs plus we reimburse for fees charged by other ATM owners nationwide up to $10 per statement cycle. * Early direct deposit offers eligible direct deposits up to two days sooner. * Spending buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Spending Account.  by [Belinda Luscombe](https://time.com/author/belinda-luscombe/)  ## Belinda Luscombe Editor at Large Sep 18, 2014 10:35 AM UTC  Urban Zintel—Laif/Redux  by [Belinda Luscombe](https://time.com/author/belinda-luscombe/)  ## Belinda Luscombe Editor at Large Sep 18, 2014 10:35 AM UTC **Your new novel** **_The Children Act_** **is about a decades-old marriage in crisis. Does time increase the chance that a marriage will survive an affair?** In my experience, it’s more of an explosion after 35 years than it would be after five. The marriages can resume, but they don’t quite resume on the same terms. Even if they patch it together, the patches will show. **So your advice is, if you’re going to cheat, do it early?** Yes. If you’re going to cheat, do it before you get married. **The husband is aggrieved after seven weeks and one day without sex. Do you consider that an egregiously long time?** That’s what my character believes is an egregiously long time. One \[female reader\] said, “Yeah, tell him to get over it.” **A family in the book wants to withhold medical treatment for their child because they’re Jehovah’s Witnesses. A judge has to decide what to do. You’re an atheist. Is there a message here?** One thing this isn’t is an atheist tract. I was very keen to give warmth and life to the Jehovah’s Witness boy and his father. I’m really on the side of the law in this personally. But sometimes you might disrupt someone’s belief, and you find that you don’t have anything to put in its place. You might take away a network of family and social relations, a great deal of consolation and many other things. It’s not as simple as waving a wand over someone and banishing their gods and then they’ll be happy. **Did you spend much time in family court for research?** Yeah. I hung around the courts and spent time with judges. The family court seems neglected in fiction. The judgments I was reading–about the end of love, and the separation of goods and money, and the destinies of children and medical ethics–so many of them are things that fiction routinely deals with. **You grew up in Libya. Have you been back?** Not since 1960\. I long to go. I was going to go after \[Muammar\] Gaddafi. But only a fool would go now. It’s funny, I follow everything that happens there. It’s like watching a relative in distress. **As a McEwan, are you pro–Scottish independence?** I’m a “don’t know.” My wife is very pro. I worry. Because I’m half-Scots and half-English, I think this will do great harm to England’s political makeup. We might end up with a Tory government forever. And if there were a referendum on the European Union, England would probably vote to leave. And we’d just become a tiny, irrelevant offshore tax haven. **You discovered a decade ago that you have a much older brother who was a bricklayer. Isn’t that fodder for a novel?** No. Well, I don’t want to invade his space. I’m very fond of him. He’s been a real plus. I haven’t ruled out exploring that one, but I would want to deal with it fictionally. And probably before investigating that whole very interesting scenario, translate it into something else. **Do your earlier, darker novels have more or fewer fans?** Some people write to me and say, “You only ever wrote one good book.” And others say, “I just love what you’ve been doing ever since _Atonement_,” I’m pleased that there isn’t a consensus. But yeah, there are some pale young men who think _Comfort of Strangers_ is the one. **Sir Ian McKellen says people mistake him for you. Is the reverse true?** Oh, absolutely. A very famous Welsh poet told me he really admired my Richard II. I’ve never heard before that he gets it as well, and my heart leaps in joy. 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