Listen to Robert expand on the title of The Running Grave and its connection to the story.
Transcript
Well, The Running Grave is from a quotation by Dylan Thomas ‘When, like a running grave, time tracks you down.’ So for me the significance of that quotation is old deeds catching up with people. Obviously, also mortality catching up with people. So Strike’s sense of his own mortality is important in this book. But interestingly the Norfolk poet, George Barker, also used the phrase the running grave in his poem.
And that is also mentioned in the book. So I think although it’s given translators for this novel a huge headache, because The Running Grave doesn’t quite work in other languages, I love it. I think it’s very evocative. The idea of the grave pursuing you. Like a wave but also all of us knowing one day we must die. Which can, actually, be a reminder to live and that too is in this book. Strike really now is starting to ask questions of himself about how he wants to spend the second half of his life. So it really worked for me.
