Oliver St John Gogarty poet, playwright and doctor Part I

 Oliver St John Gogarty was born in Dublin in 1878, to a well to do middle class family.  He was born at a time when the Irish Catholic Middle class was beginning to develop, to emerge after years of suppression, and become prosperous.  Some of the richer members of that class mingled with some of the Protestant middle and upper classes. However Dublin was still a very poor city, and in spite of nationalistic feelings, many of the Catholic business class had little interest in helping the poor....Oliver's father was a doctor who had a good deal of property and was well to do.  He was sent to Clongowes Wood school, run by the Jesuits, who provided education for the better off Catholics...Gogarty was highly intelligent but as a school boy, and a young man he tended to focus on sports and having a good time, more than on his studies.  He enjoyed football, cricket, and cycling and was a good swimmer... He went to Trinity College, to study medicine like his father. 

Oliver also began to develop an interest in politics and became a member of Arthur Griffiths' Sinn Fein party which promoted Irish nationalism and campaigned for self rule.  He was beginning to develop into the polymath he later became.  He had literary tastes and while studying medicine he began to write poetry and to mix with the literary salons of the capital. He enjoyed society as well as his work, and in mixing with poets like WB Yeats he became friends with the young James Joyce. 

He was popular at college and socially because of his lively wit and personality and a certain flamboyance.  

Oliver's friendship with Joyce ended when Joyce stayed with him and another student at the Martello Tower in Sandycove Dublin.  The other 2 engaged in horseplay with a loaded gun and Joyce left.  In his novel Ulysses, Joyce portrayed Gogarty as "stately plump Buck Mulligan" and Gogarty took it badly, he was by then a respectable and well known figure in society and in medicine (which warred with his love of fun and pranks and his more liberal side) and did not want to be associated with the scandalous book. 

Rosemary Rowe novels

 Rosemary Rowe was born as Rosemary Aitken in 1942.  She was born in Cornwall but spent much of her early life in New Zealand.  She taught English language and wrote some text books on the subject.  Later, she turned to writing fiction.  She has written historical novels set in Cornwall under her own name, and then began a series of historical mysteries, as Rosemary Rowe.

the novels are set in Romano Celtic Britain, in the early years of the Roman conquest.  The amateur detective is a mosaic maker, Libertus who lives in Glevum (Now Gloucestershire).  Libertus is a freedman, formerly a Celtic nobleman, he was taken as a slave and then given his freedom many years later.  He takes up a trade as a mosaic maker and becomes involved in solving mysteries for his Roman patron, (who is an arrogant and not very generous man) and he also tries to find his wife Gwellia, who was also enslaved.  He does find Gwellia and they set up a small business together, with Libertus also solving mysteries on the side.  He and his wife also adopt one of their slaves as a son, who marries and gives them grandchildren.  The series gives a picture of life in Britain, and the Roman empire at the time.. covering the differences between Roman and Celtic life... The severities and arrogance of the Roman Empire and its laws contrasts with the more rural and looser style of life of the Celts...

Rosemary has written over 20 Libertus novels and they are mostly light and enjoyable reads....

Jill Paton Walsh

 Jill Paton Walsh died a few days ago at the age of 83.  She was a well known novelist, and also wrote several detective stories.  She was chosen by the Sayers estate to write continuations of the Peter Wimsey novels and published four.  The first was a continuation of Sayers unfinished novel Thrones Dominations which is set soon after Peter's marriage to Harriet.  Sayers only wrote a few chapters, and dropped the work and finally left off writing detective fiction to concentrate on plays.  Walsh wrote a reasonably good mystery novel.. and wrote three more.. set during and after World War II. 

She also wrote 4 light detective stories, set in Cambridge with an amateur detective who is a nurse at one of the colleges, Imogen Quy. 

She started to write in her mid 20s, having been a teacher for a time.. When she was at home with her first baby, she began to write fiction. Im sorry to hear of her death....

Simon Brett Crime Author

 Been listening to some radio plays recently, and realised that I had read the books that they were based o.  They are light detective stories, written by Simon Brett.  Simon was born in Surrey in 1945, and has written many detective novels. 

Simon was born in 1945 and went to Oxford.. on leaving, he went into the BBC and worked on radio drama.
He has  worked as a producer and script writer for the BBC for many years. He was involved with the Peter Wimsey dramas, and mixing with the actors for this gave him the idea for a detective who was an actor...

I have particularly enjoyed his Charles Paris stories.  Charles is a not too successful actor,  who gets involved in detecting crimes, usually murders.  His books started in the 1970s and give a picture of the theatre and TV acting through the last 20 odd years.  Charles is a bit of a drinker, talented but not very successful as an actor and separated from his wife Frances but they never get to the point of divorce.  He investigates murders among the theatrical community, and in doing so, we learn a bit about acting for the BBC, in the theatre and in the occasional film..  The first few are set in the 1970s and give a vivid picture of London and the theatre world just after the Sexual Revolution and the pill coming along, with lots of affairs and thespian jealousies... In later years, he has written more but allowed Charles to remain middle aged, rather than aging normally.  

He also has another series set in the earlier 20th century about an upper class pair of twins, who also investigate, (Blotto and Twinks) but I dont enjoy them as much as Charles Paris.  Other series are set in Middle England, in the traditional small village in the country, including "Mrs Pargeter" and the Fethering Mysteries.   He is well worth a read....

Ray Sawyer 1937-2018

 I've blogged before about Ray Sawyer, of Dr Hook..... but today I'd like to write another short piece on him.  

Ray was a versatile songster and clearly loved singing and performing.  He was often thought of as "Dr Hook" because of his eye patch.. but he was not the lead singer of the band.  Dennis Locorriere was the lead and had a better voice - Ray's was more of a country voice and he liked to sing the more country numbers.

He released a record called Ray which was mainly country numbers, penned by various writers.  After leaving the band he settled for some years in Nashville where he wrote and then went on tour as Dr. Hook featuring Ray Sawyer", under license from Locorriere.  He went on singing till he retired in 2015, due to declining health and his voice had begun to fail. He then lived with his family in Daytona Beach Florida.. till his death at the end of 2018. 

Ray was born in the South, in Chickasaw Alabama, in 1937 and loved music as a boy.  He used to go into blues clubs, to hear African American music and started out singing blues....

More to follow-

Margaret Irwin

 Margaret Irwin was a novelist who  mainly wrote historical novels. She was born in London in  1889 and was brought  up after her parents' death by an uncle who was a teacher in Clifton, Bristol.  She had a good education for a girl and went to Oxford, which was unusual for women at the time.  She was close in age to Dorothy L Sayers who also studied at Oxford and became a novelist. 

In 1929 she married Jack Monsell who was from an Anglo Irish family and who was a children's novelist and an illustrator.. Jack produced some of the covers for her books.

She began to write in the 1920s and most of her works were historical - but she also wrote a non fictional biography of Sir Walter Raleigh.  Like Georgette Heyer (who created the genre of Regency romance) Irwin was known for researching her works and for achieving a degree of accuracy.  She mainly wrote about kings and queens, and one of her most famous novels was "Young Bess" published in 1944, about Elizabeth I.  She wrote 2 more novels about Elizabeth, "Elizabeth Captive Princess" and "Elizabeth and the Prince of Spain."  The books  are rather romantic, depicting Elizabeth in a very favourable light, as a rebellious young girl and a patriot.  The trilogy ends with her becoming queen. 

Other novels were about the Stuart dynasty and their supporters, there is a novel about the Scottish Marquis of Montrose and his romance with Louise, the daughter of the Stuart Princess Elizabeth, who became queen of Bohemia but ended up living in exile.  Irwin also wrote a romantic biographical novel on Mary Queen of Scots and her romance with Lord Bothwell. It is rather hagiographical about Mary and exaggerates her feelings for Bothwell, but it has been well liked.  

Her best work is probably the Elizabeth trilogy which has been republished in recent years.  Part of it was made into a film in the 1950s as "Young Bess" with Jean Simmons. 

Margaret died in 1967, having lost her husband some years earlier.