Colm Herron's Blog (18)

Women and Freedom

'The only position for women in the civil rights movements is prone.' 

     -- Stokely Carmichael, African American civil rights leader (1968)

'I have often said when Hillary Clinton…

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Added by Colm Herron on July 28, 2019 at 9:30am — 3 Comments

A Maiden So Bewitching

Do you remember this old song?

Come single belle and beau, onto me pay attention -

Don't ever fall in love, it's the devil's own invention.

For once I fell in love with a maiden so bewitching

Miss Henrietta Bell out of Captain Kelly's kitchen -

With me toora loora la, toora loora…

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Added by Colm Herron on December 19, 2018 at 7:00am — 11 Comments

The British Question (And How They Kept Disgracing Themselves)

I had decided not to go on the Bloody Sunday march in Derry, my home town, because I was too frightened. I felt I had good cause. Word was that British parachute regiment was to be on duty here that day and I knew they had gone on a prolonged killing spree in Ballymurphy, Belfast, the previous August during…

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Added by Colm Herron on January 28, 2018 at 10:00am — 2 Comments

The Israeli Occupation: Different Voices

Very recently I heard a young Israeli called Yehuda Shaul being interviewed on Radio Ulster. Yehuda is the co-founder of Breaking the Silence, an organization that aims to expose the harsh realities of the Occupation to fellow Israelis. His words made such a deep impression on me that I made up my mind to put…

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Added by Colm Herron on September 27, 2017 at 7:00am — No Comments

Jeepers Creepers! The Movie That Still Leaves 'Psycho' Standing

Hell, not just "Psycho." It’s better than "The Innocents," "The Evil Dead," "Paranormal Activity" and "The House of the Devil." It’s even better than "The Exorcist," "Let the Right One In"…

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Added by Colm Herron on July 14, 2017 at 7:30pm — No Comments

The Mass Rock

One May afternoon a few years ago my wife asked me to come for a walk in the woodland just outside Carndonagh, the Donegal town where she was born. She wanted to show me where she and her friends had played when they were children. By the time we reached the wood, the dull day had brightened and everything around us…

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Added by Colm Herron on June 3, 2017 at 11:00pm — No Comments

The Incomparable Madge Herron

In April 2004 I was launching my first novel at the Irish cultural centre in Hammersmith, London, when a lady came over to me and shook my hand.

“I think I may be your cousin,” she said. “My name is Ethna Herron. You look a bit like my people and I thought I just had to say.” She…

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Added by Colm Herron on May 3, 2017 at 7:30pm — 7 Comments

3rd of July 1970: Day of Treachery

Shortly after the death of Martin McGuinness, I listened to a radio discussion about the Provisional IRA and its origins. Among the contributors was Ruth Dudley Edwards, the self-professed revisionist historian. At one stage in the programme, I heard her say, “I can understand why people went out on civil rights marches…

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Added by Colm Herron on April 7, 2017 at 1:00pm — 33 Comments

Francis Stuart: Nazi Sympathizer? Man Of Integrity? Or Fool?

In 1961 a great Irish writer called Francis Stuart wrote a novel the like of which had not been seen before. It was entitled Black List Section H, and it didn’t find a publisher for eight years because Stuart had been banished from the literary world. In 1939, shortly before the outbreak of war, he had accepted an invitation to do…

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Added by Colm Herron on March 12, 2017 at 1:00pm — 2 Comments

My First Love

The first time I fell in love was in the children’s section of Brooke Park library. I was 11 and she was 10, and her name was Josephine and she had so many freckles on her face that she was a haze of delight.

It didn’t take long for me to work out that she changed…

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Added by Colm Herron on February 13, 2017 at 8:30pm — 4 Comments

Summer of '73

I still remember the whole thing like it was yesterday. Summer of '73 and me standing on the kitchen table in my Uncle Dan’s house in Forest Park singing Bad, Bad Leroy Brown and the whole place…

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Added by Colm Herron on January 11, 2017 at 9:00pm — 10 Comments

American Psycho? Three Thoughts About Trump

By way of introduction I should tell you that I have great affection for the United States of America. Just over a century ago most of my uncles and aunts migrated from a dirt-poor part of Donegal to settle in Chicago. If my mother hadn’t married a home-bird and moved to Derry with him I would now be living somewhere in…

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Added by Colm Herron on December 5, 2016 at 7:30am — 8 Comments

'The Wake' - #1 in Historical Irish Fiction

I've just had the pleasure of seeing my novel, The Wake (And What Jeremiah Did Next), reach #1 Best Seller status in Irish Historical Fiction on Amazon. And the news has given me exactly what I need to work harder on the new novel I'm currently…
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Added by Colm Herron on November 14, 2016 at 4:30pm — 8 Comments

'Brooklyn': Film Versus Novel

There’s a saying we have in Ireland that you’d nearly think was coined for Colm Tóibín’s novel Brooklyn. Namely, if you’ve the name of getting up early in the morning you can lie till lunchtime. And it seems to me that Tóibín lay too long when he wrote Brooklyn.…

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Added by Colm Herron on November 13, 2016 at 5:00am — 2 Comments

The Wake That Woke the Dead

I’ve heard of life imitating art, but the only time I ever saw death imitating it was at Samuel John MacPherson’s wake down in Glut, a tiny village not far from Slievefada…

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Added by Colm Herron on October 24, 2016 at 8:00am — 9 Comments

The Heifer: A Pub Story

Most of the stuff in my novels comes from my imagination but I owe a fair amount of what I write to a pub called The Rocking Chair where there’s such a variety of characters that you’d need to be brain deaf not to pick up some nuggets. …



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Added by Colm Herron on October 4, 2016 at 11:30am — 6 Comments

The Disappearing Ireland





Both of my parents were from County Donegal here in Ireland, and there can’t be many areas more deprived and remote…

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Added by Colm Herron on September 13, 2016 at 10:00pm — 16 Comments

Every Writer Thrives and Survives on Memories

On a July day nearly 130 years ago, an unknown and homesick young Irish writer trudged along a busy London street. He stopped suddenly and stood still, for he thought he could hear the tinkling of water in the midst of the bustling thoroughfare. He followed the sound and found he was looking in a shop window. There…

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Added by Colm Herron on August 25, 2016 at 7:30pm — 10 Comments

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