Novelist, poet, essayist and the first woman to be elected to the Academie Francaise, Marguerite Yourcenar lives and writes on her island refuge off the coast of Maine. Her work ranges from a series of celebrated historical novels, including a classic study of the Emperor Hadrian, to translations of blues and gospel songs. Characteristically, Yourcenar is indifferent to public honour. The intellectual elite of the Academy, she says, "decided to take a woman. It happened that woman was me." In Arena this week, she talks about her life and work to writer and critic Peter Conrad.