The novelist and film critic on growing up Catholic in Liverpool, and how his upbringing still resonates through his life and work today

The “Catholic novelist” is largely an invention of literary critics and historians. Those given the tag, notably Graham Greene, almost always reject it, pointing out they are novelists who happen to be Catholic, which may on occasion influence what they write, but on other occasions does not. All of which pretty neatly sums up Anthony Quinn, sometime film critic of this publication, and known to a wider world as an award-winning novelist. “I’ve never wanted to put it aside,” the 57-year-old says of his lifelong Catholicism. It is there, sometimes ­glancingly, in his books, as in the character of Callum Conlan, the gauche Irish academic in London, Burning, his latest novel. And sometimes more obviously. In his acclaimed memoir Klopp: My Liverpool Romance, Quinn explored the quasi-religious devotion inspired in him (and others) by the messianic manager of his home-town soccer team.

But “Catholic novelist”? No. “I feel I’ve been supported by Catholicism. It gave me structure as an adolescent. I had loving parents, but with that love came this idea that we were part of something else. It was invested in me and got me through difficult times. But it doesn’t shape what I write about.”