stream of conscience; Rock star, global activist, coalition builder-Bono is, in every sense, the voice of his generation.(Interview)

Byline: Robert Sullivan

Stately, strong-voiced Paul Hewson, a.k.a. Bono, descended from the stairhead toward the beginning of an Irish day-bearing not his sunglasses, amazingly, but his thick, strong-gripped hand, extended in gracious welcome. With Ali Hewson, his wife, working at her desk, with his daughter about to sit down to piano lessons, in a house that feels vast and yet warm only partly because of the fireplace that is crackling, he intones, in a somewhat gravelly but still immediately recognizable rock-star voice, "Come and have a look."

At which point, grabbing coat, he walks, semi-solemnically, down his stairs, out onto the terrace of the Hewsons' little guest house, a terrace that sits high over the Irish Sea, that looks east toward Europe and, to be metaphoric about it, the world, which is what Bono, as is well known, is always looking at. He strolls relaxedly through his little guest house, its bathroom wall decorated with host-sanctioned graffiti, scribblings of the likes of Brian Eno, Bill Clinton, Salman Rushdie, and Michael Stipe-Stipe having mischievously signed in a corner, along, as his host gleefully notes, Bono's crack.

Out on the sea-facing terrace, Bono offers the complete ocean vista and points out the sights in the half-moon bay, including the nearby home of the Edge, a.k.a. U2's guitarist, and, a mile or so away, a little Martello tower. A Martello tower, as any fan of obscure Irish literary landmarks will tell you, is a small military turret, one of dozens built along the Irish Coast from 1804 to 1815 to defend the country against a Napoleonic invasion. Since abandoned by the military, they have tended to be inhabited by Irish artists and writers and musicians-a group including Bono himself, not to mention the writer whose writing haunts Dublin and Ireland and all things written about them for better if not worse: James Joyce. "When I owned one, I went and read all about them, 'cause I wanted to know all about them," says Bono in an excited version of his Dublin brogue. "And I went inside Joyce's tower. And I saw Joyce's guitar!"

Yes, it's true: James Joyce had hoped to be a singer, a tenor, a rock star of sorts, and today, as Bono heads back to the house, as he walks his way back up the green hill to find his wife and set off in the family car and peregrinate the hills of Ireland, Bono is hoping to be in fashion. And his wife wants to be in fashion, too, the implications of their desire being that Ali and Bono are about to take a trip to the country to thank the man whose home inspired the launch of their new fashion line, this home being a manor house on a 5,000-acre estate beautiful enough to inspire a thousand designers, a place called Luggala. "It's the artistic epicenter" is how Bono describes Luggala. Bono and Ali's new line, called Edun, is designed by Rogan Gregory, and on Edun's behalf they are about to transport a very old bottle of very fine Armagnac, in thanks for the inspiration to the lord of Luggala, a man named Garech Browne.

Behind every strong, smart, quick-witted mother and wife who has, aside from raising four children, run campaigns against British nuclear-reprocessing plants and driven ambulances to Chernobyl is a rock star. Or at least alongside her, which is where Bono is today. Bono leaves the Maserati in the suburban Dublin driveway and slunks into the passenger seat of the toy-infiltrated station wagon: in addition to two teenage daughters, the Hewsons have two even younger sons. Ali is wearing Rogan jeans under a blue slip by Yohji Yamamoto, a simple black Prada sweater, and a black Prada coat. Bono is wearing jeans, an earthy green-and-black sweater by Lainey Keogh, the Irish designer, and brothel creepers, the crepe-soled black suede boots. And then, at last, sunglasses.

"Ready, B?" Ali asks Bono. "Yes," Bono says, and the two are off on their accidentally peripatetic journey into the Wicklow Mountains. "Wicklow's the garden of Eden, isn't it? Sorry, I mean it's the Garden of Ireland," says Ali, tongue slipping on account of maybe too much fashion excitement.