Irish Times journalist and author Frank McNally has given the ordinary, everyday grind “a new lease of life that nobody else can”, presidential candidate Heather Humphreys said at the launch of his new book on Wednesday.
Reading Mr McNally’s memoir, titled Not Making Hay, has been a “very welcome and calming distraction” from the campaign, said the Fine Gael candidate.
The memoir, she said, “moves effortlessly from the hilarious to some really very poignant moments”, some of which “really stopped me in my tracks”.
Launching the book, which explores themes that have featured in his column, An Irish Diary, over the past two decades or so, she pointed to various “wonderful stories” before remarking how it is “very clear that you can take the man out of Monaghan but you can’t take the Monaghan out of the man”.
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Mr McNally’s memoir spans his upbringing in his native county before his move to Dublin in his late teens, after which he worked as a civil servant until his subsequent career in journalism.
“I didn’t think there’s many people who could find the parallel between their old car and the peace process but that’s what Frank does,” said Ms Humphreys.
Noting that the book’s title is a nod to On Raglan Road by Patrick Kavanagh, “a Monaghan man who left his mark on Dublin and across this country”, she said Mr McNally’s works in An Irish Diary also “have left their mark”.
Mr McNally told those present that the subject of his very first column was the Orange Order and the village of Drum, Co Monaghan, where Ms Humphreys is from.
“Even though I wrote it as kind of a humorous thing, I personally was proud that there was such a community in Monaghan, that this was part of our life, that we had these two traditions and that they were respected and the Orange marches were not an issue in Monaghan,” he said.
Mr McNally said that if there is ever a united Ireland, “such respect for minorities is obviously going to be essential, and I think Monaghan is, as it was then, a microcosm of what the country at large will need to be”.
Patrick O’Donoghue, senior commissioning editor at Gill Books, told those present at Books Upstairs on D’Olier Street how he had been chasing Mr McNally for several years to write a “long overdue” memoir.
“For me, and I’m sure for many of you in the room, Frank has been hiding in plain sight as one of Ireland’s finest writers this century,” he said.
