Memoirs Books

Book SynopsisFrancis Wheen’s brilliantly comic portrait of one of the 20th-century’s great characters, Tom Driberg: wit, parliamentarian, serial cottager, alleged communist spy and friend to the Kray brothers. There are few people for whom marriage was so ill-suited yet well attended: at Tom Driberg’s were cabinet ministers and mobsters, Betjeman and Waugh, but it was Osbert Lancaster who commemorated the sheer extraordinariness of the occasion, and with it celebrated the social life of Driberg, and an era of Englishness now passed into history when the Brideshead generation sang the ‘Red Flag’: Friends of yours and friends of mine, Friends we always thought were deadFriends who toe the party line, Friends we know are off their headLabour friends who’re gratified Girl-friends, boy-friends, friends ambiguousAt being allowed to kiss the bride. Coloured friends from the AntiguasArtistic friends, a few of whom Friends ordained and friends unfrocked,Are rather keen to kiss the groom. Friends who leave us slightly shocked,Friends from Oxford, friends from pubs, All determined not to missAnd even friends from Wormwood scrubs. So rare a spectacle as this!

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Book SynopsisThe Lilliput Press is proud to be reissuing Mary Carbery’s classic, The Farm by Lough Gur. First published in London in 1937, it was quickly reprinted. Though very well received in England and a best-seller in Dublin, some questioned its quiet recall of an elysian rural Ireland before the Land War, its image of a contented Victorian world in the rich lands of east Limerick that rather jarred with the rhetoric of De Valera’s Ireland. Its woodcut images seemed English not Irish, and its ambiguous authorship gave ammunition to the doubters – was this really the voice of old Mary Fogarty, née O’Brien, or the heavily edited text produced by an Anglo-Irish friend and littérateur, Mary Lady Carbery? The text was indeed crafted by Mary Carbery, a sharp observer and accomplished essayist, but the strength of the book rests on Mary Fogarty’s contribution: the draft notes and papers that she sent over to Mary Carbery, fleshed out by information supplied by other members of the O’Brien clan. Her memories provide what remains an entirely convincing account of the lost world of the strong-farm family in post-famine Munster, one far more secure in its social status than that of other Catholic writers such as Charles Kickham or Canon Sheehan. Eighty years later, there are still few histories and even fewer fictional accounts of that rural Catholic middle class like the O’Briens, who confidently expected to be the inheritors of the earth in a HomeRule Ireland. Their world has rarely been evoked so sensitively as in this beguiling and most engaging narrativeTrade ReviewReview of The Farm by Lough Gur by Mary Carbery Thomas MacGreevy Original Source: Ireland To-Day. Dublin. November 1937. pp.85-86. This text is available only for the purpose of academic teaching and research provided that this header is included in its entirety with any copy distributed. Fiction Peace Is Growth The Farm by Lough Gur. By Mary Carbery. (Longmans. 10s 6d). Machiavelli's axiom that a wise statesman must never go to war if he can attain his ends by peaceful methods applies not only in politics but in literature. The literature of anathema is usually less agreeable to read than the literature produced by temperate minds, and it is always more ephemeral in its effect. It arises from anger which, no matter how righteous it claims to be, is the lowest form of self-indulgence. And though it may be true that human nature is instinctively selfish, it would seem that the great mass of human beings dislike angry writing. They may read it for as long as it remains topical, but cherish it they will not. The literature that remains is the courageous literature that rises above the undeniable wretchednesses of life as it is ordered. Always it is the Virgils who are cherished, not the Juvenals. There has been an immense amount of angry Irish writing in the hundred years since we learned to write out of our own language. Swift had begun it, and our position as an underdog people made it inevitable that the tradition should be continued. Tom Moore might withdraw to where he could write peacefully and in peace, but much of our writing at home had to be partisan writing, and it is all but impossible for partisan writing not to degenerate into angry writing. Now, however, writers living in Ireland seem to be realising that, like militarists in action, angry writers merely augment the troubles they imagine themselves to be putting right. I cannot pretend to an exhaustive knowledge of contemporary Irish literature, and yet in the past eighteen months I have come across several quite realistic Irish books which were remarkable for the temperateness with which they were written. There was Mr. O'Malley's On Another Man's Wound, there was Miss Geraldine Cummins' novel, Fires of Beltaine. And now Lady Carbery has joined forces with her friend, Mrs. Mary Fogarty of County Limerick, in this memoir of home life in the rural Ireland of seventy years ago, a book in which, though facts are faced - it includes tales of the Famine and of Fenianism, of bigamy, of seduction and of imbecility - there are no harsh words. Mrs. Fogarty was brought up in an atmosphere of unsentimental loving-kindness. This was not only because her parents were comfortably off. It was also because they had character. Her father, John O'Brien, and her uncle, Father Richard MacNamara, were nationalist, but cherished the decencies and steered clear of the squalid intrigues of party politics. Her mother, a [p.86] woman of natural distinction, loved the only good literature that came her way, "classical" English literature. A sister, Bessie, listened to stories outside, read Byron surreptitiously at home, and developed into a lovably fiery Irish "patriot," first as a young girl at home and later in France, where she went to school, in Poland, where she went governessing, and in Serbia, where she married. Mrs. Fogarty, herself, went to school to the "F.C.Js." in Bruff, but though she occasionally considered the idea of becoming a nun, she rejected it, went home to Lough Gurand then returned to Bruffas the wife of Richard Fogarty. There were two younger sisters and a brother, a medical student cousin, other relatives and, not less important, a host of farm hands, maids, retainers, neighbours, "ascendency" and "people," and tramps. All these give scope for the authors' quite remarkable gifts as literary portrait painters. The book is like a symphony in terms of portraiture, for the characters are vividly depicted, not only as individuals, but as influencing each others' lives, like so many themes and orchestrations. And it is impossible to say whether the themes or the orchestrations are more admirable, the unassertive integrity of John O'Brien and of Father MacNamara the unassuming dignity of Mrs. O'Brien, the youthful eagerness of Bessie O'Brien, or the pathetic comedy of the "innocent" Dinny-bawn, the simple heroism of Mary Deasyon her wretched deathbed (hoping she would live the couple of hours necessary to finish making her own shroud), the pitiful irony of the return from Americaof a doting mother's disappointing son, the airiness of maids repeating and acting upon pishogues in kitchen and dairy ... Mrs. Fogarty, herself, standing apart from them all and observing them all with her unerring instinct for the humanly significant, has, under Lady Carbery's well-nigh perfect editing, put them and herself on the literary map of Ireland as clearly as Pushkin put the characters in his stories on the literary map of old Russia. The valley of the Lower Shannon was one of the least spoiled parts of Ireland. Now it has electricity works and aerodromes and it must, in the nature of things, become industrialised and hideous. It is very well that a Mrs. Fogarty and a Lady Carbery should have arisen to record its old lovable ways of life while there was yet time. Thomas McGreevy

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Book SynopsisA revealing meditation on the behind-the-scenes world of therapy and psychoanalysis in the 1960s. 1971 was the year Dina Glouberman went mad. Now, for the first time, Dr Dina Glouberman, renowned psychotherapist and author, co-founder of the world-famous Skyros Holidays, creator of Imagework therapy, and author of The Joy of Burnout, writes with candour and humour about a spell in a psychiatric ward. Indeed, she describes it as enlivening and enlightening, a catalyst for her rich and creative life. Into the Woods and Out Again traces the journey from those wild and intense weeks in the Middlesex Hospital through five years of "normal life" and then on to twelve years of extraordinary creativity, when she had two babies, co-founded Skyros Holidays on a Greek island, pioneered her Imagework approach to therapy and personal development, had a life-changing spiritual experience, faced the loss of her father and brother, and wrote her first book. At the end of this book, a new cycle is just beginning, as she burns out, dismantles her marriage and her life, and discovers what is next. This remarkable memoir is a revealing consideration into world of therapy and psychoanalysis in the 1960s, as well as on marriage, mothering, madness, imagination, aloneness, community and spirituality. Into the Woods and Out Again captures the inner life of a woman who has played a major role in the contemporary holistic and therapeutic world.Trade Review'This remarkable book, written with candour, humour, and great insight, is a story of hope that will inspire anyone who reads it. I'm going to buy copies for my entire family!'- Jonny Benjamin MBE, mental health campaigner'Dina has enabled many people, including me, to validate their lives. She hasthe gifts of empathy, wisdom, high intelligence and humour, and this book is never less than seriously entertaining (and entertainingly serious). I hope you enjoy this brilliant and funny book and find something in these pages that reminds you that it is still wonderful to be human.'- Sue Townsend, author of The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole aged 13 , from the Preface'Don't miss this one. It's a deep, luminous and inspiring portrait of the inner and outer journeys of a world-famous psychotherapist and community builder, full of tears and laughter in equal measure. In so many ways, it speaks to and resonates with our troubled times.'- Professor Andrew Samuels, former Chair of the UK Council for Psychotherapy'I am learning so much and laughing a lot and crying a lot. How hard it is to admit the weakness and the screw-ups... Dina did it and made it possible for the rest of us. She led the way! Such a valuable and fascinating read. Never a dull moment.'- Nell Dunn, author of Up the Junction, Poor Cow, and Steaming'Dina Glouberman has the rare ability to make her demons work for her. On the idyllic Greek island of Skyros she has created a sanctuary unlike any other. This is a remarkable book that may help those of us with our own demons to overcome them.'- Steven Berkoff, actor and directorTable of ContentsAbout the author Acknowledgements Foreword Prologue PART I OVER THE EDGE AND BACK AGAIN Chapter One - Preface to madness Chapter Two - An adult life Chapter Three - Slipping Chapter Four - Falling over the edge Chapter Five - Seeking asylum Chapter Six - The hospital as community Chapter Seven - Signs of spring Now And Then PART II THE CHRYSALIS YEARS Chapter Eight - Preface to sanity Chapter Nine - Educating Dina Chapter Ten - Fool or trickster? Now and Then PART III THE CREATIVE YEARS: BIRTHS AND REBIRTHS Chapter eleven - Preface to the creative years Chapter Twelve - A baby is born Chapter Thirteen - Seeds of Skyros Chapter FourTeen - Skyros summer Chapter Fifteen - The spirits are whispering Chzpter Sixteen - Mother of two Chapter Seventeen - The Skyros centre is born Chapter Eighteen - A symbolic community Now and Then PART IV THE CREATIVE YEARS: GAINS, LOSSES, AND THE RADICAL IMAGINATION Chapter Nineteen - Emmet dies Chapter Twenty - Just imagine Chapter Twenty-One - An insight a day Chapter Twenty-Two - Atsitsa is born Chapter Twenty-Three - Growing up Chapter Twenty-Four - Faking an orgasm before God Chapter Twenty-Five - The case of the disappearing self Chapter Twenty-Six - My father dies 241 now And Then PART V FROM BURNOUT TO NEBBISH WISDOM Chapter Twenty-Seven - Dismantling Chapter Twenty-Eight - Alone Chapter Twenty-Nine - Socrates and the pig Chapter Thirty - Nebbish wisdom Now and Then References

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