Peter Somerville-Large grew up with his brother Phil in a nursery world at the top of a smart house in Dublin from where they could watch Fitzwilliam Place far below, with the horse drawn delivery vans, the animals being driven to market, and their father's patients arriving to visit the consulting rooms on the ground floor. The family had houses in the country too, with livestock and vegetable gardens, and a bevy of eccentric relations, among them Edith Somerville (of Somerville and Ross fame). When Peter was five, his father bought an island - eighty bare rocky acres on the north shore of the Kenmare River in county Kerry - which he saw as paradise. There were extraordinary parties, sailing trips, fishing expeditions. An Irish Childhood, beautifully written, takes the reader back to the sensations and excitements of children, and paints an engaging, vivid picture of a world at once so recent yet now vanished away.
- ISBN10 1841194573
- ISBN13 9781841194578
- Publish Date 21 February 2002
- Publish Status Transferred
- Out of Print 6 September 2005
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Little, Brown Book Group
- Imprint Constable
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 256
- Language English