My life in books: Journalist and broadcaster John S Doyle
John S Doyle: 'My bedside table is an upturned empty wine crate. There’s a lot of room in it, and many of the books are still to be read.'
Journalist and broadcaster John S Doyle was one of the founders of magazine and presents on RTÉ Radio 1.
His book Salt Wind, Rising Water, published by Merrion Press, charts how he and his wife Anne transformed a patch of land on Sligo’s coast into a thriving wood.
My bedside table is an upturned empty wine crate. There’s a lot of room in it, and many of the books are still to be read.
At the top is the third volume in the Pléiade edition of by Proust, for dipping into. At the bottom is by David Byrne, which I haven’t finished.
Nearer the top: by Máirtín Ó Cadhain, in the Liam Mac Con Iomaire and Tim Robinson translation.
It would be hard not to be cheered up by PG Wodehouse, who my grandfather put me on to when I was about 10. I laughed out loud at .
A good audiobook can add to the original, and Ian Carmichael’s reading of is hilarious.
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There are many. The poet Philip Larkin said he was at a play once and was having a drink in the interval.
He asked himself “am I enjoying myself?”. The answer was “no”, so he finished his drink and left.
As he described it, this was a liberation from the idea that you must stay with everything to the end.
When I was 18, I read . The year before, I had read . I found the mordant, resigned humour of Beckett’s characters to be just what an indolent arts student needed.
In O’Brien’s book the life of one such student is part of a fantastic framework which prompts great laughter, but of a tormented kind. I still love both.
The ‘Noddy’ books by Enid Blyton had vivid illustrations. I was terrified, probably around five years old, by a scene in which our hero tumbles down a long hole, chased by some fierce-looking soft toys.
In 1976 I read by Robert M Pirsig and by Dostoevsky.
Pirsig’s book advocated pursuing basic, physical skills as well as the life of the mind. Dostoevsky took me off to the 19th-century squalor of St Petersburg and the murderous dilemmas of the former law student Raskolnikov.
Having read these, I abandoned my own law studies and started a magazine, called .
by Benjamin Dreyer, copy chief at the publisher Random House, belongs on the same shelf as HW Fowler’s and William Strunk Jr and EB White’s . The study of any one of those three will improve a writer’s style.
A long time ago I had lunch with Benedict Kiely, Patrick McCabe, and Michael Harding in the Bailey. I was the “civilian”, invited as someone who occasionally reviewed books.
The writers — Ulstermen all — agreed that what was missing from Irish literature was a contemporary novel set in Dublin’s solid middle class, and seemed to be suggesting that I should write it. I haven’t so far.
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I went to school in Belvedere on the northside of the Liffey and we lived on the other side.
On my slow cycle home I often stopped at Hodges Figgis, where they didn’t mind you browsing for hours.
Many great Dublin bookshops have disappeared since then, but HF thrives, and I was delighted my book was launched there.
Near me, the independent Village Bookshop in Terenure and Alan Hanna’s in Rathmines endure.
A bit of both. My late father’s collection of books by and about Joyce has its own bookcase, which was also his.
Otherwise, fiction is arranged in alphabetical order; non-fiction and poetry are a bit all over the place.
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