At home with Dervla Murphy

From an Irish childhood to her travels through India, Rose Martin spends an extraordinary afternoon in conversation with author Dervla Murphy.

DERVLA MURPHY looks good for 82 — a bit stooped maybe — but she’s spent a large portion of her life sleeping in huts, on mud floors, in her 50-odd years of travel. She’s had her hip and shoulder done too recently but there’s nothing wrong with her mind — this is an intellect sharp as a knife and an emotional intelligence that’s utterly consummate — she probably had my number the minute I walked in the gate.

The location is her home in Lismore, Co Waterford, and the reason is the relaunch of her book, On a Shoestring to Coorg: An Experience of Southern India, the story of her first trip away with her four-year-old daughter Rachel — her only child.