I started school in St. Canice’s at the age of seven. My future comrade Dermot Bolger sat in the next door classroom, though it would be 10 years before we were formally introduced. Our classrooms looked out at St. Canice’s Church. On my way home after school, I used to stop and sit in...
Anatoly Kudryavitsky was born in Moscow on Chekhov Street. That’s why his father, a great fan of Anton Chekhov, always called his son Anthony, but his mother kept calling him Anatoly; the subject his parents never agreed on. Anyway, he feels comfortable using either name or both. Anatoly was born in Russia; however his...
I was born in Monaghan and grew up in a bewildering land of many-sided political opinion. On the one hand, the ‘North’ lay just seven miles away, but on the other I was rooted in the Irish Republic, the putative ‘South’ of many writers’ dreams. An ability to look both in two directions at...