By BARBARA O’DONNELL In July 2016, getting off the plane in Cork, the mobile rang with the news that a doctor had been called out to my father in his nursing home. A few days later, I swapped my London hospital for my childhood hospital and the professional became personal. As both a writer and a healthcare professional, I make …
By ANTON THOMPSON-MCCORMICK There was no point trying to be calm the night I first crossed paths with Lyra McKee. It was February 2019, and here we were in a former Pentecostal Church in central London to celebrate Anna Burns becoming Northern Ireland’s first winner of the Man Booker Prize, for Milkman. It was Burns’ first big post-Booker event and …
By ANDREW MCGUINNESS Samuel Beckett raps hard at my house. I hear him, but can’t see through the glassy eyes of the door. A package juts half-in, half-out of the mouth of it, poking fun through the letterbox like a rascally, white-furred tongue. My wife slips a fresh pair of surgical gloves on, sprays the surface with disinfectant, wipes it …
By DOROTHY ALLEN The last time I was in isolation, I had the whooping cough. I must have been aged eight or nine, in Sister Consilio’s class and laid up for so long in April, May, June, I was worried I wouldn’t be “promoted” come July. The first weeks are a blur of coughing, whooping, tossing and turning in a …
