family history


Eddystone Light today with the unyielding base of the old light nearby. (Picture: Rupert Kirkwood) AS far back as I can discover, the patriarchal side of my Celtic family has always had close links to the sea. It has brought them employment, skills and opportunities. But also uncertainty, hardship and sudden death, in peace as well as in war. They include shipwrights, blacksmiths, mariners, tidewaiters, missionaries, lighthouse keepers, fishermen, Customs officers, gunners, stokers and deckhands. Their homes have rarely been more than a brisk walk from the shipyards, docks, wharves and moorings where they worked. Even those who broke the… Continue reading

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A change of genre is in the wind. Goodbye fiction, hello non-fiction. The memoir From Paupers to iPads that I published way back in 2011 has long been due for revision. So much needed correcting or expanding in the light of subsequent research, but it was a task continually begun… Continue reading