Meditating, Writing and the Wisdom of Confucius Writing about meditation is a little like dancing about architecture: you can certainly do it, but what exactly does it mean? And, for...

‘You should publish a selection of your columns,’ said my partner, sounding a bit less irritated than usual. ‘My Collected Works, you mean,’ I said, with brief grandiose visions of...

Becoming a Mother – Reflections on Adoptive Parenthood took five years to write but realistically I have been mentally working on it since adopting my first child in 1999. The...

As our wedding day draws nearer, it may come as no surprise that “commitment” is on my mind. But the truth is, it had emerged as an important theme in...

I didn’t plan to write this book. I’d begun work on a new novel about a family wedding in Italy but I couldn’t concentrate; I was too overwhelmed by what...

The Cow Book is the story of my life as a farmer in rural Ireland. It is also the story of my family, community and the animals I live with:...

I first came across Maria Edgeworth when I married in 1964 and came to live in Co. Westmeath, 15 miles from Edgeworthstown. Pakenhams and Edgeworths had intermarried in the early...

Before the advent of e-mail it seems to have been an irrefutable fact that persons destined by a Higher Authority to become famous would have their letters preserved from a...

Biographers are not universally loved. James Joyce called us ‘biografiends’ and Edmund de Waal, although acclaimed for his family memoir, The Hare with Amber Eyes, a book both tender and...

I started writing A Ton of Malice in 1981 – and finally finished it this year. It’s hard to know why it took so long. It’s a memoir, so the...