Who is Dervla Murphy? A new film captures the life of the 85-year-old travel writer

A new film about Dervla Murphy paints a fascinating picture of the 85-year-old travel writer, says Ellie O’Byrne

IREMEMBER very well that I was cycling up a hill and I looked down at my legs and thought, ‘If I kept doing this I’d reach India’.”

The story of how best-selling Irish author and adventurer Dervla Murphy decided, at the age of 30 and in the midst of the harshest winter of the 20th century, to cycle from her home in Lismore, Co Waterford to India was recounted in her first book, 1965’s Full Tilt: Ireland to India with a Bicycle.