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Rose
Doyle lives and writes in Dublin, where she was born. She's
been writing for most of her life, more journalism than she
cares to remember as well as twelve novels, short stories, plays
for radio, TV documentaries and short film scripts. She has
a BA Mod. in English Literature and Language from TCD. A Hennessy
New Irish Writing literary award for a short story A Bisto Book
of the Year award for Goodbye Summer, Goodbye, her novel for
teenagers. She still clings to journalism, the day job she is
unable to give up. |
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A
move to historical fiction came when she determined to write
about a community of unknown and unsung 19th. century Irishwomen.
Known as Wrens, they lived bleak, unforgiven lives on the Curragh
of Kildare. Their story is told in Friends Indeed. Her second
historical novel, Fate and Tomorrow, tells of an Irishwoman's
journey to the early 20th. century Congo Free State; vast and
personal colony of King Leopold 11 of Belgium. Her story links
and parallels the frenzied, changing times in both countries
and the work of Sir Roger Casement and others to end genocide
and torture. Her third appears in September, 2003. Gambling
With Darkness is a murder mystery set in the unpredictable world
of espionage, obsession and wartime links with Nazi Germany
which existed in neutral, World War 11 Ireland. It is also the
love story of a young Irishwoman and German doctor teaching
in University College Dublin. |
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A
wordy friend once described my school days as peripatetic. I'd
been in enough schools for long enough at the time to know what
she meant. My education, formal and informal, was a movable
feast. My father was on the go a lot and, as was the custom
of the time, my mother and us children went with him.
So it happened that, when I was five and of an age to go to
school, I was sent from the village of Ballymascanlon - seven
cottages at the side of the road and where we lived at the time
- to the primary school attached to the convent in Dundalk.
This, for reasons I don't remember, didn't last long. I do remember
wooden desks and a nun or nuns. I remember sitting without moving.
Then I was finished with Dundalk and the nuns and told I would
be going to a new school in a year's time when my sister was
old enough for us to walk there together. My schooling, for
years to come, would be inextricably tied to hers.
I remember Ravensdale NS as much for the daily journey there
as for schoolroom activities. It was a long, adventuresome walk.
We left the village early, crossing the bridge and heading up
the Deerpark road; river on one side, trees on the other; to
the final lap along the forever-muddy Ducks' Walk. There were
just the two of us except in the springtime when we had the
company of two brothers from a travelling family. They wore
brown corduroy jackets and brown, knee-length corduroy trousers.
The school building was of gray, cut stone and had vaulted windows.
I loved going to school there and it was where I learned most
of what I know. The teacher, whose name I forget, was thoughtful
and kind and rewarded us for little things.
When we made our First Holy communion I dawdled on the Ducks'
Walk, found half-a-crown and missed kissing the Bishop's ring.
I thought myself thrice-blessed and so did that teacher.
Then, one day, we were climbing into a lorry and leaving Ballymascanlon
and heading for a new life in Skerries, Co. Dublin.
Skerries was like a metropolis in the grip of a perpetual winter.
Doors and windows were barricaded with sand every morning, winds
filled with rain blew every night. We went to the national school
in the town for about nine months where, at break time, we were
given currant buns and watery chocolate to drink. We were three,
maybe four, classes in one room and the teacher, a young woman
with red lipstick, set us work to do while she smoked by the
window dreaming her dreams. When we arrived at last in the capital,
to live in Ballymun, my mother announced she would go no further
with us children - and didn't. When she sent my sister and myself
to the Holy Faith Convent NS in Glasnevin I found myself back
with the nuns.
A Holy Faith schooling taught me many things. It was where I
first came across snobbery, the notion that an accent and home-made
uniform could set you apart. It was there too I discovered I
could write - and that nuns, like the rest of the world, were
both good and bad.
With then Primary Cert. behind us my mother one day announced
that Sandymount High School was the best place now for my sister
and myself. Not only did it offer a fine and broad education
but it was non-fee paying and didn't demand the expense of a
uniform. But Sandymount High School, alas, didn't have places
for us so it was onward and forward with the nuns of the secondary
school part of the Holy Faith, Glasnevin. My days there were
not a howling success. I didn't share the nuns' sense of class
and division: had no idea what was expected of me and was too
often in trouble to be happy.
When I was 15, with my Inter. Cert. in my fist, I left. Nothing
to do with the school, just another family situation. But habits
are hard to break and a few years later I was trotting between
night classes and a couple of VECs, as well as learning Latin
from a friend, in the hope of getting a Leaving Cert. Don't
ask me why I couldn't have arranged a one-stop location; too
set in my ways, I suppose. I got the Leaving Cert. and became
a student in TCD. I left there four years later with a B.A.
Mod. in English Literature and Language. It's not over yet.
Not by a long shot. My grandfather used tell us children that
a "little knowledge" was "no burden." I've always thought he
had a point. |
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