Frank Delaney’s Simple Courage
There’s a corner of Tipperary where the accent to the unfamiliar sometimes has people believing the speakers are English or somehow fake.
It’s an area that has yielded more than its share of celebrities and indeed it always seems odd when you meet anybody from there who is not famous.
I once worked with someone from this area for a couple of years. That means we drank and sang together until the barman told us to stop (always shortly after eight pm when the serious drinkers arrived). One of my favourite sights of this time was from a distance watching my friend and his two arm-linked companions, stumble sideways, (whilst attempting to walk forwards) into a high-profile Dublin city centre sandwich shop front window.
Although the window and many sandwiches needed replacing, my friend was not only fine but suddenly able to walk in a forward direction. Fast. And in the distance alarms and sirens sounded. Although nowadays I see his name and photograph regularly in Irish newspapers, my friend is not quite as well known as his fellow Tipperary man, Frank Delaney. Perhaps its time for a sandwich.
Frank Delaney became known to most of us in Ireland through his television broadcasting on the violence and politics of the national question, but mostly through his arts programmes, particularly his wonderful interviews. And then he made The Celts.
The television series that was The Celts - Rich Traditions & Ancient Myths, apart from being hugely informative and dispelling of growing myths, also cemented Enya, and those who would make music in fog or dry ice, as definitively Celtic. Unfortunately many people lost sight of the fact that in Enya’s case it was the tradition of music in her family and in the county of Donegal that rendered her music Celtic. They thought it was the fog.
Anyway Frank’s television series and accompanying book (which goes further, as all good books should) on the Celts should be required watching and reading for anybody who ever uses the word Celtic or draws spirals.
Since then Frank has written Ireland : A Novel, and in short it has been a phenomenom, particularly in the US. Rather than me waffle further you can listen to Frank’s thoughts on this book and storytelling in an interview he did on NPR when the book was first published last year. It’s 11 minutes long and every word out of Frank’s mouth is practically edible. You cannot but like Frank.
Next month, Rainy Day Books, on July 27, at 7:00 pm, at Rainy Day Books itself, in The Fairway Shops, 2706 W 53rd Street, Fairway, Kansas 66205, are hosting Frank Delaney in a dialogue on his new book, Simple Courage : A True Story of Peril on the Sea, which is published this month. Note that this one is supposed to be true. Oddly though it is another 1951 story. What happened to you in 1951 Frank? Could there be another book in it?
See also:
• Bloomsday in Kansas City
• Cover the Butter by Carrie Kabak
• Irish Dandies Disliked in Kansas
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