Personal Reading, Personal Writing

This morning one of our Department teachers, Ronan Swift, gave a talk in Chapel about his reading over the years :-

Writing about our past, our memories, our home places and our ancestors is, I think, within everyone's grasp. You don't need to be a tremendously creative person to do it; we all have some story to tell. Which is why I enjoy books of this kind above nearly any other genre. Memories and autobiographies, the stories of other people's lives, told by themselves, fascinate me.

Ronan mentioned and recommended several books, including Hugh Leonard's Home Before Night, Laurie Lee's As I Walked out one Midsummer Morning, Tobias Wolff's This Boy's Life and In Pharoah's Army, and his current read, John McGahern's powerful Memoir. Read Ronan's full talk here, and see the covers of the books he mentions above. Some of these books are being shown in the Library display case.

Then he sang a 'thank you' and 'apology' song to books, the lyrics to which are here. Pupils - a 10euro book token to the winner of the competition, working out which author died youngest, and at what age? (And who was the member of staff who was on 'Sunday Miscellany'?)