Digital Literary Atlas of Ireland,
1922-1949

Frank O'Connor

Guests of the Nation (1931) Cork

'I couldn't at the time see the point of myself and Noble guarding Belcher and Hawkins at all, for it was my belief that you could have planted that pair down anywhere from this to Claregalway and they'd have taken root there like a native weed. I never in my short experience saw two men take to the country as they did [. . .] I stood at the door, watching the stars and listening to the shrieking of the birds dying out over the bogs [. . . ] as though there were nothing in the whole world but that little patch of bog with the two Englishmen stiffening into it [. . . ] And anything that happened to me afterwards, I never felt the same about again.'

TIMELINE