Howard Jacobson provided a stirring final chapter to the first Leeds Jewish literary festival, Milim, telling an audience of 200 that his desire to write "a different kind" of book meant that he was 40 when his first novel was published.

"I now realise that I was in some sort of flight from being a northern, working-class Jewish boy," he recalled. "I wanted to be some other kind of boy. I wanted to write books about the upper middle classes in Britain."

Speaking about his book Shylock Is My Name - a retelling of The Merchant of Venice - he maintained that Shakespeare's play was not "Jew-hating".

Shylock was a powerfully presented character and "I had to honour that".

He described the book's art collector character Strulovitch as an "on-again-off-again Jew, someone who only realises how Jewish he is when he reads the Guardian".

Until my father died I don’t think anyone died in my novels

Mr Jacobson added that he could not understand how people could write on matters they knew nothing about. "Until my father died, I don't think anyone died in my novels. Now I kill 'em off regularly."

He confided that his father had told him on his death-bed: "Well Howard, you now have another subject."

"Which was kind of him. But I said: 'Well, Dad, you don't have to do this to give me another book.'"

The session was held in the Reuben Vincent Hall of Etz Chaim Synagogue.