[First posted on MyT]
I’m currently reading a fascinating book called A Secret Map of Ireland, by the Irish Times journalist Rosita Boland. The book has 32 chapters, one for each county. In each chapter the author visits a county and investigates some unusual, quirky or little-known feature, usually but not always historical (this is where I ingested a fact that I disgorged onto the site earlier … that there are 200 million eels in Lough Neagh).
Boland is a very good writer, who travelled widely in her youth (she’s not very old now … younger than me). I remember her telling once that when she was hitchhiking around the coast of Ireland for the purpose of writing a travel book, she got a lift from the Australian writer Thomas Kennealy … as it turned out, he was writing a travel book about Ireland too. Continue reading
The road to God knows where ... Brendan O'Brien 