My best friend in school and college, Maria Gillis, reminded me recently that when we were in sixth year in Mount St Anne’s, during one religion class I asked our teacher if Jesus was a virgin. Maria remembers ‘everyone in the class holding their collective breath, waiting for lightning to strike’, and our lovely teacher, John Garvey, calmly replying that there was no mention in the Bible of Jesus ‘having a relationship’. I have zero memory of that and cannot …
Blog Posts
By Ciarán Murphy My experience of hurling as a young boy was not too uncommon. I loved it, I loved watching it, the best players in the country were heroes to …
Caoimhe in our Cork store reflects on the books that have shaped her… In May 2015, I was 15 years old and although I did not yet recognize my own …
Memories collide to create the inspiration for The Museum of Lost Umbrellas Back in 2020 I woke up one morning with a dream still swimming in my head: an isolated …
Usually when asked where my inspiration comes from, I tend to say that it begins with character. But The Night I Killed Him started with a location – specifically the …
I began my writing life with novels and plays and had success with three books, Priest, The Trouble with Sarah Gullion, and Bird in the Snow, and 6 plays produced …
As a crime writer and a huge crime reader, I love nothing more than discovering new authors and hearing about how my favourite writers put a book together – where …
By John Banville I have a thing against Venice. In fact, I have a number of things against Venice. The avarice. The tourists. The smells. Some years ago I was …
The art of discovering a favourite book by Jessica Harrison, Publishing Director of Penguin Classics. How do you choose a favourite book? Is it the novel you discovered as a …
I think that anybody who has ever worked in a shop has been granted a perspective on the world that is unique. A secret code understood only by those of …
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