This week marks one year since Learning to be Irish was published. I wrote a few weeks ago about how difficult it is to promote a book by an indie publisher, and was pleased to be contacted by Andy Garland of Radio Kent. He had found my website after seeing my Writing from Life workshop advertised online, and invited me to record an extract from my book for the BBC Upload Show. I made a video, with the help of Dr Bob, my husband. and an extract from the audio was broadcast on Radio Kent, and some other local stations, on 16 April 2026. If you want to listen, it’s about 1 hour and 10 mins into the programme: BBC Upload Show.
Being a technical wizard (I wish), I have uploaded the video we made to YouTube. It’s just over 9 minutes long. It’s from an early chapter of Learning to be Irish. The chapter is called ‘Learning to be English’. You can watch it here.
Writing from Life
The Writing from Life workshop, which I ran on 11 April in Rochester, was a great success. In the beautiful surrounding of The French Hospital almshouses, built for the descendants of Huguenots, a dozen of us wrote from objects, photographs, and using the prompt ‘I remember…’ We looked at examples of life writing, including poems by Martin Figura and Patience Agbabi, extracts from Lemn Sissay’s memoir, My Name is Why, and Viv Albertine’s memoir, To Throw Away Unopened. The last of these prompted quite a discussion, and I explore it further on Substack. The post, on what we leave to be found after our deaths, is one of my most articles. As someone who keeps journals, notebooks and other writing, should I be concerned about who reads them after I die?
I am looking forward to running the Writing from Life workshop for a group of residents of The French Hospital. I was interested to discover that many Huguenots fled to Ireland. I wonder if I have Huguenot roots.
