Sculpture honour for top writer Taylor

LEGENDARY storyteller Alice Taylor has come face to face with herself at a ceremony to recognise her achievements.

With 2008 marking the 20th anniversary of the publication of her bestseller To School Through the Fields, the people of her native Newmarket in Co Cork chose to honour her by installing a bronze sculpture in the village.

“I’m just so honoured,” the author said afterwards. “They did a lovely job and people can come and sit beside me if they want.”

The project was organised by the Newmarket Tidy Towns Club, which came up with the idea in autumn of last year.

The sculpture, featuring Ms Taylor sitting on a limestone slab, with her poem Come Sit a While engraved on another limestone slab, was unveiled at New Street in Newmarket on Sunday.

The popular writer travelled from her Innishannon home in west Cork with family and friends for the occasion.

“I’m delighted it was the Tidy Towns who did it because I’m very involved in Tidy Towns in Innishannon,” she said.

The book was Ms Taylor’s memoir of her childhood in the Irish countryside.

It was the biggest bestseller in Irish history, winning a devoted audience with its vivid, affectionate tales of life in a time that seems long past.

Published in 1988, it become acknowledged internationally as a classic account of childhood.

Further works, Quench the Lamp, The Village, Country Days and The Night Before Christmas were also bestsellers, followed in 1997 by her first novel, The Woman of the House and its sequel, in 1999, Across the River.

Her works, translated into many languages, have sold millions of copies worldwide and especially established Ms Taylor as a bestselling author in Japan.

The sculpture was modelled by Don Cronin from Bandon with groundwork engineering by Neil Collins from Limerick.

The unveiling was carried out by Sister Consilio from Newmarket.

Funding was provided by Cork County Council and IRD Duhallow and the Tidy Towns Club.

Andy Walsh of Newmarket Tidy Towns said that being recognised by your own people “was the ultimate honour, and that’s what the event was about”.

Ms Taylor said: “When something like this happens to you, you think ‘do I deserve this?’ and have a certain feeling of inadequacy, because most people are honoured in retrospect.”