Liam O'Connor – författare

Every family has a story … for Liam O’Connor that story goes back to his great-grandparents, William and Norry Kennedy. Using the threads of his family’s past to weave a tapestry that is at once personal yet somehow universal, this family memoir gives the reader an eye-witness perspective on the tumultuous lives of the landless, labouring class of nineteenth-century Ireland.Tales of William’s youthful adventures with the Royal  navy and serving in HM Coastguard are contrasted with Norry’s early years of domestic servitude, as their lives through these years were set against the backdrop of Britain’s near-global empire and the Big Houses of local landlords, of wars abroad and social turmoil at home, before giving way post-marriage to the priority of surviving and raising a family no matter the circumstances.Beautifully crafted with fact and fiction both playing their role, The Sailor and the Seamstress is a tender tale of joy and sorrow, life and loss and a courage and strength that endures no matter what.

This book provides an exposition on the professional and cultural life of Patrick Weston Joyce (1827–1914), more popularly known as P. W. Joyce, who lived and worked during the final phase of British rule in Ireland. The focus throughout is very much on how family, locale, and schooling influenced this significant Irish patriot, polymath, and pioneering pedagogue who worked across a range of disciplines, including education, language, history, and music. Moreover, attention is paid to how his achievements were possible only because of the variety of leading roles he played in the development of the Irish National School System between 1845 and 1893. Thus positioned, Joyce was in many ways a significant choreographer of a slow revolution in which education, in both formal and informal settings, was used to educate the Irish people regarding their cultural heritage.