Down by the Liffeyside: A Dublin Memoir

Availability: Out of Stock

ISBN: 9781999997069

Author	Kearney, Colbert
Pub Date	29/05/2019
Binding	Paperback
Country	IRL
Dewey	941.835082

Publisher: Somerville Press

Quick overview In Down by the Liffeyside Colbert Kearney gives us a witty social history of a Dublin working-class family from the 1940s to the turn of the 21st century. This was no ordinary family. Colbert’s grandfather, Peadar Kearney, was a veteran of 1916 and the War of Independence; his cousin was the IRA activist and author Brendan Behan. Peadar Kearney penned many popular nationalist songs, including ‘The Soldier’s Song’ which was to become the national anthem. He casts a long shadow over this memoir, though he died three years before the author was born.

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The Kearneys were also related to the theatrical Bourke family so this memoir teems with songs and stories that evoke the vibrant music-hall fare of Dublin’s Queen’s Theatre, where both of Colbert’s parents worked— Con as a lighting technician, Maisie as an usherette—before going on to settle in the new suburb of Finglas as part of the great urban diaspora of the early 1950s. The final section of the memoir uses historical archives in an attempt to get closer to the real Peadar Kearney, aspects of whose latter life may have been airbrushed in order to protect his heroic status.

Down by the Liffeyside is more than a tender and loving portrait of a working-class couple, it’s also a bittersweet tribute to the men and women who endured the growing pains of the Irish Free State.

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