Writing History
Take a step back in time with us as we immerse ourselves in three gripping historical fictions.
Martina Devlin’s Glorious Monsters (Lilliput Press) is a spellbinding reimagining of Rome’s Romantic circle, involving the brilliant, volatile, and dangerously entangled Shelleys. Emily Hourican’s A House in Winter (Eriu) is a story of family conflict and class tension set around Princess Margaret’s visit to Ireland in 1965. Henrietta McKervey’s The Woman in the Water (Hachette Ireland) is a twisty gothic mystery set between 1930s London and Cornwall. The authors join writer Neil Hegarty in conversation.
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Martina Devlin is a bestselling author and award-winning journalist. Devlin has won numerous awards for both her writing and journalism. She has been shortlisted three times for the Irish Book of the Year awards. She writes weekly current affairs columns for the Irish Independent and has been named National Newspapers of Ireland columnist of the year. She frequently chairs literary and current affairs events and is a regular commentator on BBC and RTÉ. She was born in Omagh and lives in Dublin.
Emily Hourican is the author of ten novels, including The Glorious Guinness Girls, The Kennedy Affair, The Privileged, The Blamed and The Outsider, one book of non-fiction, How To Really Be A Mother, and a children’s book, Murder At The Ivy Hotel. Emily has been an editor and a journalist for over 20 years. Emily was born in Belfast and grew up in Brussels, where she went to the European School along with all the other Eurobrats. She moved to Dublin in 1990 and studied English and History at UCD, then did a master’s in English literature, also at UCD. She lives in Dublin with her husband, David, and their three children.
Henrietta McKervey is the author of the acclaimed novels What Becomes of Us, The Heart of Everything, Violet Hill and A Talented Man. She hasa Hennessy First Fiction Award and won the inaugural UCD Maeve Binchy Travel Award. Her Travel Award project, an exploration of the 31 Sea Areas of the Shipping Forecast, featured on BBC Radio 4. She has programmed the ECHOES festival and International Literature Festival Dublin, and contributes to the Irish Times, Irish Independent, Sunday Independent and the Brendan O’Connor show on RTÉ Radio 1.
Neil Hegarty’s novels include The Jewel; and Inch Levels, which was shortlisted for the Kerry Group Novel of the Year award. Neil’s non-fiction titles include the biography Frost: That Was the Life That Was, and The Story of Ireland, which accompanies the RTE-BBC television history of Ireland. His short fiction and essays have appeared in the Dublin Review, Stinging Fly, Cyphers, PVA, Banshee, and elsewhere; and he is co-editor of the essay collection Impermanence, which has been adapted for radio by RTE. He is a regular literary reviewer on the Irish Times and Books Ireland.
