Wedding day: Winifred O’Leary (second left) with her husband, Joseph Burke, at their wedding breakfast at St Anthony’s Place the other couple are Joseph’s friend Anthony – they were best friends until the Civil War – and Anthony's girlfriend I learned about the house at St Anthony’s Place – gone now but, at the time, next to the chapel of Temple Street children’s hospital – where her formidable mother-in-law sheltered prominent as well as unknown Irish Volunteers, as she referred to all those fighting or politically involved in the War of Independence who might need shelter at any time their home was raided more than once in attempts to find them. While we had tea and cake, she’d tell me about “bowsies and blackguards”, evading checkpoints and making ends meet in the most difficult of circumstances. As I walked the seafront, I remembered the days she brought me to the Gresham Hotel for an afternoon treat – to teach me, she’d say, how to behave in company. She didn’t often speak about her experiences as a young woman, but whenever she did she was witty and vivacious, invariably using the perfect word or phrase to wickedly describe a person, a place or an event. Even though she died more than 40 years ago, I could almost hear her voice retelling some of the stories she’d shared with me when I was very young.īorn in 1901, Winifred O’Leary – or Mudsie, as we called her – experienced two World Wars as well as the Easter Rising, the Spanish flu epidemic and, of course, both the War of Independence and the Civil War.

As I took my daily walks along the seafront, my thoughts frequently turned towards my late grandmother and the world events she’d lived through. I couldn’t do that during lockdown, however, so I found myself retreating into the past, constantly looking for historical parallels to deal with what we were experiencing in the present. In fact, observing people while sitting in a cafe or travelling into Dublin by bus or Dart is my preferred method of social research.

My writing generally explores contemporary themes and relationships, and although I research backgrounds and locations so that they are accurate, I’m always confident about the social history of the time I’m writing in, because I’m living it myself. I hadn’t planned to write a historical novel.

On dublin street novel