Remembering How We StoodEdna OBrien chose John Ryans memoirs as her Observer Book of the Year in 1975, describing it as a fine and loving account of literary Dublin in the golden fifties, which purrs with life and anecdote. This classic evocation of the period 1945 55 celebrates a city and its personalities Brendan Behan, Patrick Kavanagh, Myles na gCopaleen (Flann OBrien), as well as Pope OMahony, Gainor Crist the original Ginger Man, and others a remarkable group who

It is not so much a dialect as a language stolen out of the mouths of others and bullied and half-loved into a new condition

The Language Plays of Brian Friel

She walked away

A nuanced and fascinating portrait of an era

wrote with confidence and passion about the world of his childhood and the powerful alien forces that had destroyed that world

Her work regularly appears in the Irish Times

This hidden history

a senior civil servant

and of the origins of many of the townland names

Finland and farther afield

an index of personal names

art critic and radio broadcaster