Category: Literature

Rain

A wet Sunday at Castle Park (my prep school) was a dreary affair. If you think your schooldays were the best days of your life, I feel sorry for you. After two warm, sunny days at Garrhan the weather turned on Saturday night and it drizzled persistently all day yesterday.

The Coincidence of Novembers

Instant gratification. The “I want it and I want it now” culture. But you can Go Slow. I have, maybe, bought a book. I don’t know yet because it’s on a journey. That’s marketing jargon for “we will let you know when we have raised enough money to publish the book”.

Published
Categorised as Literature

Donn Byrne

Was youse ever in Coolmain? A grand ould place that ended up owned by a Disney; the Mickey Mouse clan.

Published
Categorised as Literature

Paul Muldoon

Hugo Williams’ weekly columns in the TLS were written between 1988 and 1994. He published a selection in 1995 under the title Freelancing, Adventures of a Poet.

Upstairs, Downstairs

My memory plays tricks. I thought I watched Upstairs, Downstairs upstairs in the library at Barmeath with a TV supper on this tray and my terrier squashed beside me in an armchair. That was how I watched lots of other TV while my mother and grandparents were downstairs in the dining room.

Daydream

“They seek him here, they seek him there Those Frenchies seek him everywhere Is he in heaven or is he in hell? That demned elusive Pimpernel” 

Lost in Caves

When a dozen Thai boys and their football coach were trapped by rising water in a series of caves I heard on the news that they would have to be taught to die.

Published
Categorised as Literature

White Lion

Forty years ago every second hand bookshop was stuffed with copies of Osbert Sitwell’s four volume autobiography; handsome, salmon hardbacks with sun-faded spines published by Macmillan. They were not expensive then, nor are they now.

Swans and a Sesquicentenary

There are few swans on the tidal stretch of the Thames between Hammersmith and Richmond. Recently I have seen three where the Grand Union Canal joins the river at Brentford and I assume they come from the canal for a change of scenery.

Picnic

This picture is in the National Gallery of Victoria. It inspired Joan Lindsay’s 1967 novel Picnic at Hanging Rock. Some great novels have a great first sentence.