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 cement, interview after interview was refused, documents were difficult to access and survivors were not keen to go on the record. On top of everything else, the topic seemed so vast – the institutions had been in operation for over seven decades in Ireland – and it was hard to …
Category: Irish History
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. …
It all started, as many stories do, when I was looking for something else. While writing a previous book, I consulted the genealogy section of Clare County Library’s website for …
Serendipity is a wonderful thing. Without it, I would never have written A Little History of the Future of Dublin. Trevor White, director of the wonderful Little Museum of Dublin, …
Jo Kerrigan tells us how her latest book came about. Over the past twenty years or so, Richard and I have been exploring Ireland’s scenery and history for our books. …
Unconsecrated Ground If you want to find a cillín, you have to know what you are looking for. There will, in all likelihood, be no signpost or gate. It’s best …
It all began with a reporter’s notebook and a murder, but by the time I’d finished, the story had expanded to encompass Irish land wars, adulterous love, a trans-Atlantic assassination …
How could it possibly be that a book which starts with a brutal murder in Arizona in 1915, before settling into an account of three more killings that took place …
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