My parents were militantly radical Dubliners working in Belfast when their first-born - me - came along. My mother, Celia, was vivacious, highly strung, something of an actress, both metaphorically and literally: she had had a brief career with the Unity Theatre in Euston and played the part of Ethel Rosenberg in a play whose title and author I can't remember. She also - or so she told us - was once invited by Charlie Chaplin to audition for a small part in City Lights, and thereafter was often to be heard humming the 'Limelight' theme tune in memory of the chance she declined or was unable to take (the invitation came when her marriage was falling apart). My father, Jim, was a hard-drinking raconteur, the best I have ever known, who could reduce an audience to tears (from laughter) and drive them crazy with an art of detour and digression that would have them on tenterhooks for the climax of his narrative. Never happier than when down the pub, he was completely unsuited to domestic life.

LRB 17 March 2005 | PDF Download