POLLY DEVLIN grew up in County Tyrone, on the shores of Belfast Lough, in the fifties. Her first job was as a writer for Vogue magazine for which she became features editor. She has also been a columnist for The Sunday Times, The New Statesman, and The Observer. She has written two highly-acclaimed autobiographical books, The Far Side of the Lough and All of Us There and a novel, Dora, published by Chatto. She now divides her time between Dublin, London and her home in Somerset.

She describes her first job, as a writer on Vogue: 'I was twenty-one. One minute I was lurching on the bus to Belfast, the next I was going to Tehran to interview the Empress Farah Dibah'. This collection felt to her like 'writing home'.