I was delighted to receive a gift of Donal Ryan’s collection of short stories A Slanting of the Sun as it was definitely on my to-buy list. I’d loved The Spinning Heart and have read it a couple of times. I had commented in my review of Around the Farm Gate that I particularly liked [...]
Around The Farm Gate is a collection of 50 stories about Ireland’s farming past, told mostly by people with childhood or young adult memories of living on a farm in various parts of the country. 500 stories were submitted and 50 were chosen.
What struck me about the writers were how many are working in (or have retired from) care
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What a week!
It started with an invitation on the Friday to go onto the Vincent Browne show on Monday night. For those who aren’t familiar with it, it’s a late night political broadcast and usually takes the format of Browne, the host, interviewing 5 people on a panel (which usually include politicians) and having a review of the next day’s papers. They were filming in Carlow and were looking for a female farmer, Suzanna Crampton ‘kindly’ sent them my way. [...]
On finishing my second book, quite a few people have asked me if writing a book is similar to having a baby and yes, I have heard people make that comparison before. I’d agree in the sense that writing and self-publishing a book brings a host of emotions, often many of them on a daily basis.
I was delighted to be asked to review Irish Farming Life by Jonathan Bell and Mervyn Watson. The book is the result of 30 years of curation and work in the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum. It deals with the history and heritage of farming:
“By history, we mean the past as described and interpreted by scholars. We use the term heritage, on the other hand, to describe how the past is presented in art, folklore, drama, music, poetry, [...]
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