Madam, - I was most interested to read David Marcus's Irishman's Diary of July 22nd on Maeve Brennan.
He neglects to mention an excellent full-scale biography of the writer published in 2004 - Maeve Brennan: Homesick at the New Yorker, by Angela Bourke. It is an excellent account of the life of a talented and tortured soul and also an insight into the life of a politically active family in Dublin during the War of Independence and the Civil War.
Since its publication there have been some reprints on both sides of the Atlantic of some of Maeve Brennan's work. She deserves to be more widely read. - Yours, etc,
PHILIP HARVEY, Avondale Road, Killiney, Co Dublin.
Madam, - Further to David Marcus's fine article on Maeve Brennan, the journalist who saved her father Robert from the Black and Tans in 1921 was one James Brendan Connolly, whose own story is equally fascinating.
The Boston-born son of immigrants from Inis Mór, Árann, Connolly won the first athletics gold medal (and also a silver and bronze) at the revived Olympics in Athens in 1896.
He was a well-travelled war correspondent and sailor who went on to write best-selling maritime novels which were compared favourably to those of Rudyard Kipling. His autobiographical 20 Years a-Voyaging is a fine account of his exciting life. He was the subject of a film, An Chéad Laoch, made by myself and Seosamh Ó Cuaig, which was shown on TG4 in 2003. - Yours, etc,
BOB QUINN Béal an Daingin, Galway.