Book description
What is it that makes us who we are? In this beautifully written
and searingly honest autobiography, the intrepid cyclist and traveller
Dervla Murphy remembers her richly unconventional first thirty years.
She describes her determined childhood self - strong-willed and
beguiled by books from the first - her intermittent formal education
and the intense relationship of an only child with her parents,
particularly her invalid mother whom she nursed until her death. Here
lie the roots of Dervla's gift for friendship, her love of writing,
her curiosity, her hatred of cant, her hardiness and her desire to
travel. Bicycling fifty miles in a day at the age of eleven, alone, it
seems only natural that her first major journey should have been to
cycle to India.
Dervla Murphy was born on 28 November 1931 of parents whose
families were both settled in Dublin as far back as can be traced. Her
grandfather and most of his family were involved in the Irish
Republican movement. Her father was appointed Waterford County
Librarian in 1930 after three years internment in Wormwood Scrubs
prison and seven years at the Sorbonne. Her mother was invalided by
arthritis when Dervla was one year old. She was educated at the
Ursuline Convent in Waterford until she was fourteen, when, because of
the wartime shortage of servants, she left to keep house for her
father and to nurse her mother. Dervla did this for sixteen years with
occasional breaks bicycling on the Continent. Her mother's death left
her free to go farther afield and in 1963 she cycled to India. There
she worked with Tibetan refugee children before returning home after a
year to write her first two books. Full Tilt was published in 1965 and
over twenty other travel books have followed. She still lives in
County Waterford. Her daughter, Rachel, and three granddaughters live
in Italy and join Dervla on her travels when possible.
