Imbolc (or Imbolg); the first day of spring in Ireland! Imbolc also marks the publication of this wonderful new memoir In Ordinary Time by Carmel McMahon. While this is the first year we have a public holiday to mark it, this day has long been associated with Saint Brigid, one of the three Patron Saints of Ireland. It is one of the four Gaelic seasonal festivals, along with Bealtaine, Lughnasadh and Samhain. Many of us who grew up in Ireland …
Category: History
My new novel, The Witches of Vardø is inspired by the true events of a series of witch trials on the arctic island of Vardø in Northern Norway in 1662, …
The Trial of Lotta Rae is the tale of a woman who believes in justice. Who becomes notorious as she seeks that justice at an Old Bailey trial. It is set against …
A few years ago, I was researching an article about mother-and-baby institutions in Ireland for my job at the BBC and had gotten stuck. The assignment felt like wading through …
The irony is not lost on me that I was on the tube to the National Archives in London, of all places, the first time I read the name Edith …
#ReadIrishWomenChallenge22 #RIWC22 It’s April so I’m back once again with the Read Irish Women Challenge – the month where we celebrate outstanding books by Irish women. Starting on April 1st, …
As a toddler, my son was obsessed with Janet & Alan Ahlberg’s Peepo! It’s a day in the life of a baby, but in the background is the London Blitz: …
How different are we from the people who lived a thousand years ago or more? We all experience certain fundamental, universal emotions: grief, love, joy, despair. Sometimes we have to …
The Winter Guest is set in early 1921, at the height of The War of Independence- a messy, brutal war with no front lines, that often placed Irishman against Irishman. …
I grew up in the very beautiful Adelaide Hills in South Australia. It is a place of sweeping slopes of native bushland, pastoral valleys and vineyards; a place where kangaroos, …
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