Julian Orde Abercrombie PN Review

"There was a growing awareness of the troubles in Europe. I remember being uneasy at talk of General Franco and the voice of Hitler on the radio, full of hate. Our time in The Ranch ended with the beginning of the war, and a brief move to relatives in Manchester “to make bombs”. After the failure of this move and the return to real poverty in Dublin, again in reach of the Model School, I finished my primary education there. Mr Brown, one of the teachers, had an understanding with the Christian Brothers to send them any promising boys for secondary education and I was passed on to the O’Connell Schools. My father was interested but my mother was annoyed: she assumed I would leave school at 14 like everyone else and “get a job”, but she accepted. The Christian Brothers was very different from the Model School; seedy and strict, pressured totally towards success in the exams. History was a succession of wars. Studying a poem meant memorising stanzas and phrases for quotation." Thomas Kinsella Irish Times