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Post by tirian on Jul 25, 2019 15:36:03 GMT
Hello everyone,
I am a writer of Irish parentage, originally from Manchester and currently living in North Wales. I am planning a novel aimed at 11-16 year olds set in Liverpool and Dublin during the Second World War. It's a Grail Quest story, underpinned by the Arthurian myth of the voyage from the wasteland (represented by Liverpool in the story) to the holy city of Sarras (represented by Dublin). I've referred to it as 'conservative' as its underlying theme is cultural, civilisational and spiritual renewal. Not a theme dear to the progressive heart by any means.
I'll need to embark on a fair bit of research, including at least one trip to Ireland. But what I need to get my teeth into at the moment is some really good writing - poetry, fiction or non-fiction - about Dublin in the war years. Needless to say, I'm not interested in liberal propaganda about how dour the old days were but for writing that really evokes the sights and sounds and smells of the place. Something that creates an atmosphere and casts a spell.
Any suggestions gratefully received. I hope the book, once written, will go on to play a role, no matter how small, in the renewal alluded to above.
My thanks and best wishes to you all,
John Fitzgerald.
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Post by Maolsheachlann on Jul 25, 2019 16:34:44 GMT
Great to hear from you, John, and I hope your novel goes well.
Dublin during the "Emergency" (as we called it here)? Nothing springs to mind, but I'll ponder it. I seem to remember that the Northern Irish poet Louis MacNeice wrote articles from Dublin during those years. John Betjeman was here too, possibly as an English spy. Neither would have subscribed to simplistic progressives stereotypes.
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Post by Séamus on Jul 26, 2019 4:30:37 GMT
Hello everyone, I am a writer of Irish parentage, originally from Manchester and currently living in North Wales. I am planning a novel aimed at 11-16 year olds set in Liverpool and Dublin during the Second World War. It's a Grail Quest story, underpinned by the Arthurian myth of the voyage from the wasteland (represented by Liverpool in the story) to the holy city of Sarras (represented by Dublin). I've referred to it as 'conservative' as its underlying theme is cultural, civilisational and spiritual renewal. Not a theme dear to the progressive heart by any means. I'll need to embark on a fair bit of research, including at least one trip to Ireland. But what I need to get my teeth into at the moment is some really good writing - poetry, fiction or non-fiction - about Dublin in the war years. Needless to say, I'm not interested in liberal propaganda about how dour the old days were but for writing that really evokes the sights and sounds and smells of the place. Something that creates an atmosphere and casts a spell. Any suggestions gratefully received. I hope the book, once written, will go on to play a role, no matter how small, in the renewal alluded to above. My thanks and best wishes to you all, John Fitzgerald. I know that my mother's(b.1936) memories were mostly of the North Strand being bombed by the Germans and her family's subsequent terrified run through the streets and sheltering in a (Daughters of Charity, she thinks) convent,which is probably not your average experience, but I know that THE BOMBING OF DUBLIN'S NORTH STRAND (Kevin Kearns) is still available online, not sure about in print. My father (b.1935) as his family were Phoenix Park Racecourse residents (like a lot of the staff) mostly recalls an English airforce pilot crash landing around there. It's believed he was deserting and AngloIrish accented Mrs Peard(the racecourse owners- think To The Manor Born) who was some sort of volunteer brigade corps member rode out and, in her finest Queens English,put him under citizen's arrest. My father particularly recalls the dive on the parachute, which was quickly torn to shreds, silk being a rare commodity at the time. The book about Ireland which I mentioned recently in the Whatcha Reading section was written during this period,probably hard to find now. I could reproduce the account of the sophisticated defence drills that were in use,but it may not tie in with a child's experience. |
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Post by Séamus on Jul 27, 2019 12:18:07 GMT
Hello everyone, I am a writer of Irish parentage, originally from Manchester and currently living in North Wales. I am planning a novel aimed at 11-16 year olds set in Liverpool and Dublin during the Second World War. It's a Grail Quest story, underpinned by the Arthurian myth of the voyage from the wasteland (represented by Liverpool in the story) to the holy city of Sarras (represented by Dublin). I've referred to it as 'conservative' as its underlying theme is cultural, civilisational and spiritual renewal. Not a theme dear to the progressive heart by any means. I'll need to embark on a fair bit of research, including at least one trip to Ireland. But what I need to get my teeth into at the moment is some really good writing - poetry, fiction or non-fiction - about Dublin in the war years. Needless to say, I'm not interested in liberal propaganda about how dour the old days were but for writing that really evokes the sights and sounds and smells of the place. Something that creates an atmosphere and casts a spell. Any suggestions gratefully received. I hope the book, once written, will go on to play a role, no matter how small, in the renewal alluded to above. My thanks and best wishes to you all, John Fitzgerald. Country Of My Choice,An Irish Panorama 1945 Kees VanHoek "I am sitting in the basement of Dunedin,a house on Monkstown Avenue,nerve centre of DunLaoghaire's vast Air Raids Precaution organisation. It is 10 o'clock on a midwinter Saturday evening,zero hour for the largest night exercises ever held in the borough. Eighty tons of reinforced concrete overhead and walled up around make the headquarters safe even against a direct hit. A dozen shaded lamps leave the long table one pool of light. The wall in front is one huge coloured map,detailing every street,denoting every house from Merrion to Ballybrack. On the table stands a battery of dark ebony telephones,silent as yet. Seating in front of them,barely whispering,for the tension grows audibly as the electric clock ticks on towards the fatal H hour,are the recorders and casualty clerks,gardai,fire brigade,rescue and repair service officials. Three minutes past ten....the first telephone rings,electrifying all to tense attention:the attack on Ireland's principal gateway has begun! We listen with bated breath as the girl recorder at the far end of the table repeats the message filling in the details on a printed form in front of her:"Temple Hill shelter hit. Ten people trapped,three pedestrians injured. Three houses on Temple Park Avenue on fire, fire spreading.." The chief warden marks priority of service on the fatal bulletin. Fire brigade comes first,rescue squad second. The red armletted fire official with a glance at the wind indicator on the wall takes up the telephone,a direct line to the nearest fire station. All the telephones now seem to be ringing together. On the wall map the first coloured pins are being inserted;blue for high explosives,vivid reds for incendiary bombs,the first pink for a reported road block makes it's appearance. I help the cheif warden into his trench coat. Then we into the black night. I wonder if a borough accountant is a safe enough driver as our van whizzes along streets,patrolled by helmeted ARP volunteers. We drive to Monkstown Hospital. The doctor,three black stripes in his white helmet, meets the incoming ambulance. Scores of nurses are ready in the wards. I wonder has any profession prettier girls ? The dust cover is switched from the operating theatre lamp,which glows on like a sun. The smell of ether is in the air and a probationer messenger stands ready near the hospital telephone. From down long,dark St George's street the ambulances race to St Michael's Hospital. In a Patrick Street building the little stools betray a child welfare centre. Uniformed St John's ambulance men stand near gleaming stretchers,so that the unloads ambulance can turn around at once. Everywhere men and women in uniform,nurses,doctors,;nowhere fuss or commotion,there are no bottlenecks in this flawless organisation. Back we go to the centre. The red and green and pink pins have come to dot the giant map as thickly as the proverbially Autumn leaves do Vallombrosa. Staccato comes the girl's voice at the telephone "a bomber has crashed through the roof of 5 St Peter's Terrace...pilot and crew dead...masonry heaped on basement shelter." Efficiently the entire organisation clicks in unison and the fifteen hundred ARP volunteers,all out that night,deal with just such occurrences- a serious make-believe to be prepared for the destruction of war,from which it has pleased God to spare independent Ireland" Because of my mother's experience I didn't,reading it the first time ,quite realise that it was all just a big drill. But most of his reminisces of the time were different, peaceful countryside scenes and the like. With very flowery descriptions,as can be imagined by his mention of 'dark ebony telephones'. They couldn't just be phones! |
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Post by Séamus on Jul 28, 2019 12:25:50 GMT
Great to hear from you, John, and I hope your novel goes well...etc.... Neither would have subscribed to simplistic progressives stereotypes. Description of wartime factories(cf vanHoek): "To the cross-channel press Ireland is still the land of the bog,the tumbledown cabin and the patient donkey. I would like to take these writers to the Sunbeam-Wolsey factory to see for themselves what modern Ireland is able to do. I had been around the factory and store rooms with affable deputy William Dwyer. The bay window of his office overlooks the factory highway,the five stories high main brick building, and all the others which have sprung up around it the moment this captain of industry got going. It is really a conspicuous achievement.... Sunbeam Knitwear started in the old Cork Butter Market...today with a thousand employees,Sunbeam-Wolsey is,after Guinness's and Jacobs,the third largest factory in Ireland. In Cork they even spin the wool themselves,the raw material is brought from Australia,just as the raw silk comes from Japan... there is something fascinating in modern machinery. In the hall, spinning machines are marshalled like a crack regiment. Their zooming sounds as if an air squadron hovers overhead with a clack-clack-clack thrown in for harmony's sake, I presume. It takes only a few girls to keep an eye on these endless rows of well-disciplined,almost human machines..." Earlier,on a Jacobs tour:"one day's output would reach,if one placed tin upon tin,25 times the height of Nelson's Pillar...in the packaging department...some labelled Lagos,others Vancouver,a pyramid of tins earmarked for Bogota...others were about to be girded for Barbados,Madras and Mombasa" A giant coconut-cream may have been a good replacement for mr Nelson's statue? Not Ireland of course,but the wartime activities of 72 year old Queen(mother)Mary,grandmother of the current queen,in her Gloucestershire refuge might be of interest as an example of what some got up to in the crisis: "with a zest that shamed many of her servants she set herself the task of clearing patches of ivy from walls and trees...her hostility to the energetic vine was a lifelong preoccupation whose basis is hard to fathom....the most common sight in Badminton House from 1939-1945 was Queen Mary neatly dressed right down to toque,gloves and pearls, hacking away with saw or scythe,urging on her little team,stopping to have a cigarette with them,then cheerfully announcing the end of the break" (cf.d.spoto,decline and fall) |
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Post by tirian on Jul 30, 2019 20:16:23 GMT
That's an outstanding help gents. Thanks very much and all best wishes, John.
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