“Independence Day” FT piece

Read the recent Financial Times piece below. FT Irelandfinal1 FT Irelandfinal2

My glittering career

During these unwelcome days of fear and confusion I sometimes think back over the decades to the first time I made what might be called a literary submission. One snowy afternoon on the upper floor of my aunts’ bookshop in Waterford I came…

My lovely bookshop

I’m been dreaming of better days. I’m been dreaming of the places I’ve missed, including beaches and mountains, libraries and bookshops. And in these dreams, I often swoop back in time to my lovely bookshop. In the late-1950s, my two…

Life in a Cocoon

Not until my brother, a kind man in his early sixties, rang the other day and offered to collect my shopping, did I realise I was old. I’m aware of my biological age, of course – my travel pass, pension and TV licence are all compliments…

Ireland’s forgotten famine

FAO: THE IRISH TIMES IRELAND’S FORGOTTEN FAMINE by Peter Cunningham 24 March 2020 A little over three years ago, I began a new novel, set in Sutton, County Dublin in the early 1920s. I feel a close connection to that era: my mother was…