Book description
These time-capsule recollections of Trinity College students in the
seventies include those of U2 manager Paul McGuinness, director of the
Gate Theatre Michael Colgan, novelist James Ryan, writer Robert
O'Byrne, judge Fidelma Macken, publisher Antony Farrell, Dillie Keane
of Fascinating Aida, Mary Harney, Liz O'Donnell and others, who have
in different ways shaped the Ireland of today. The seventies were
significant, with Catholic students allowed into the College as
British grants enabled a welcome invasion by the Northern Irish;
post-Woodstock, a global counterculture was at work. Together, Irish
nationals and expats created an interesting fusion of sensibilities,
styles and philosophies. As the decade of political and social
upheaval unfolded - from the availability of the Pill to the horrors
of Bloody Sunday and the Dublin bombings - Irish youth came to embrace
a changed Ireland. Buoyed by idealism and other substances but
tethered by pragmatism, contributors to Trinity Tales mirror a time
when everything felt possible. Kathy Gilfillan (TCD 1968-72) has
gathered in an extraodinary mix of evocative personal narratives,
which will resonate whether you went to Trinity or not.
Kathy Gilfillan (TCD 1968-72: German/English Hons) was research
assistant at Blackman Harvey in London, 1973-6. She was a copywriter for
various Dublin agencies, 1976-90, and a freelance journalist and TV
scriptwriter. She is married wth two children and lives in Wicklow. A
governor of The Rotunda Hospital, she is also a director of The Lilliput
Press, and a board member of the Strategic Committee of the Irish
Cultural Centre in Paris.
