The English Daughter

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As questions were answered more were raised and suddenly, Maggie found herself with a mountain of compelling material. So that was during my childhood and there must have been similar things going on in Ireland during my mother’s childhood yet she never spoke about it even though it was a parallel to what was happening to me.”

That itself was quite an irony I think, but anyway, it meant that we spent some time in various places during the war. Camels are not indigenous to Cyprus. One-humped camels, dromedaries, were introduced by the Ottomans and used for loading and unloading ships. Was my camel so used – as heoccasionally is now, bringing salt from the near-by Salt Lake to Larnaca’s once-busy port?His ancestors must surely have been shipped from Egypt, reluctant emigrants crossing the Mediterranean to find work. To be used and possibly abused – though abusing a camel is not easy. They respond with loyalty and affection to good treatment, but are bad-tempered and dangerous when ill-treated. They will, however, work, work, work. My camel’s extraordinary body and character speak both of his own unique self and of the extreme conditions out of which he has evolved. More exactly adapted to the desert than any other creature, he needs water only every ten to fifteen days; his hump – contrary to popular belief – is not filled with water but with fat (up to 80 lbs of it); he has a double row of lashes to shield his eyes from sun and dust and he has huge, padded feet. Here in southern Cyprus the summer heat can be almost unendurably oppressive. We wait, stupefied, for the evening breeze to come to us out of Egypt. When it does, the camel and I lift our muzzles in relief, sniffing, he with that sideways grinding of his mighty, brown teeth. business stuff frightens and bores me to death, actually. Also you have to really work at it. He stretches luxuriously. “Anyway, I’m far too lazy and conceited toBob Mortimer wins 2023 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction with The Satsuma Complex The IrishWriters in London Summer School, which is organised by Dr Tony Murray, Director of the IrishStudies Centre at London Met and forms part of The Cass Short Courses programme, runs two nights a week for five and half weeks.

Dr Tony Murray said: “The Summer School isinspiring, challenging and provocative but, I hope, never dull. Once again, we have a very strong line-up of guest writers this year which, I’ve no doubt, will ensure a genuinely unique and fulfilling experience for students.” This year’s guest writers include: There was no plan to publish a book and she says that The English Daughter happened “quite by accident”.

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a disruptive effect on those around them. An immediate impression, on meeting him at his favourite Italian Then, before she died, her mother finally started talking about her past, and Maggie could begin to piece together details of her early life in Ireland. The first part of the book is based on these memories, of family gatherings, the family home and flower garden, and of growing up and playing in the fields. As fires rage and birds faint, the heat is taking its toll on wildlife. Swifts have fallen from the sky over London. Deer crowd, panting, in the hot-house shade. Among the most dramatic events was a wildfire in Norfolk’s Wild Ken Reserve where eight-two acres of thorny scrub went up in flames destroying nesting territories of turtle doves, grasshopper warblers and reed warblers.’ There are wildfires in California. In Spain. In France near where we take a family holiday. In January 2023 several European countries saw the warmest start to the year ever recorded. Is this the future? At home we’re being advised to take a new approach to our gardens, to acquire new knowledge: to make drought-resistant Mediterranean gardens. Even in my mother’s famously rain-soaked homeland – ‘If it’s not raining it’s dripping off the trees’ – the summer was so dry farmers tell me they’ve had difficulty watering their cattle. Milk yields are therefore low. EU grants encouraging more head of cattle have combined with something only just beginning to be understood, namely, climate change (something the fossil-fuel industries were aware of decades ago). Floods. Drought. Fires. She has been awarded residencies at Yaddo Colony for the Arts, Djerassi Colony for the Arts, and Anderson Center for Disciplinary Arts. I think of the camel as mine. Of course he isn’t, but he lives in the field that runs alongside our rather bare, sun-blasted garden and sometimes in the dark he roars. Mostly heharrumphs, coughs and growls, working his jaws and big soft lips constantly, looking down his aristocratic nose at me with big, sad eyes. I’m curious. Wary. My family and I are living in Larnaca, in a small grey-washed house on the fringe of the Turkish quarter. At intervals through the day we hear the muezzin call to prayer and at night Turkish pop music pulverises us with its pain and melancholy. At dusk I prowl our garden, enchanted by the star-blazing sky and the dark outline of my lonely camel.