booksellers 2 March 2008
I attended the annual Irish Booksellers Conference dinner/bunfight tonight and as always it was tremendous fun AND yours truly did it on the dry – I thought it would be good to do it just once sober and perhaps leave with my entire dignity intact…and so it came to pass so I am feeling very proud of myself and, yes, perhaps just a tad smug. Anyhow, the after dinner speech was by Richard Madeley, of Richard and Judy fame, and he was great. He spoke about the phenomenon that is their book club but also about his upcoming book called FATHERS AND SONS, which he is just finishing. It sounds like a thoroughly good read. Basically, it begins with his grandfather in 1907, aged 10, when he was bartered, to 2 bachelor uncles and a spinster aunt in Shropshire, by his family for their passage to Canada but wasn’t told about it in advance and was basically abandoned into a kind of slavery till he was 21 and he never got over it. This seeped down through the family and the men of the clan have been trying to turn that around ever since with their own sons. Fascinating, moving stuff.
