On that occasion we were also staying in the elegant annexe area the Shelswell-White family use for bed and breakfasts. It rained - 'lashed', as we say in Ireland - from the moment we drove into the fishing town till our departure. My first stay there was, again with my mother, for my first visit to the West Cork Lit Fest. Bantry is also a country house I know quite well. On Tuesday morning I did a smaller event in the tea rooms at Bantry House. It was held in the library of magnificent Bantry House overlooking Bantry Bay in West Cork, and I am thrilled to say it was a sold-out event. I was the first event of the 2016 festival. Of course, this wasn't always the case.Īs I write, this year's West Cork Literary Festival is drawing to its close. She told me that the families of the two faiths lived alongside one another in peace. My mother used to recount to me many stories of local Protestants helping the Catholics and vice-versa (lending one another tractors, or a gallon or two of petrol when rationing during the WWII badly hit their agricultural way of life even though Ireland had chosen a neutral position). Until 1922, when the Irish Free State came into existence and British rule over Ireland was drawing to its bitter close, Laois was known as Queen's County (a nod to British monarchy). They were a struggling, hardworking Catholic family.
The farm her parents spent their hardworking lives running is still in the family and belongs now to two of my cousins. My recently-departed mother and all her family were born and bred in County Laios, set in the Midlands of Ireland. I have just returned from a memorable trip to Ireland - my semi-adopted homeland because I was actually born in London.
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