Between evocative, turf-lit pictures of a hard-working, neighbourly peasantry, and matter-of-fact accounts of such shocking practices as rape-marriage, Charles McGlinchey (1861-1954), weaver and tailor, of Inishowen, has bequeathed an astonishingly detailed tapestry of life in the north-west of Ireland in a period just beyond the grasp of living memory. His memories, as told to schoolmaster Patrick Kavanagh, have been skilfully edited by playwright Brian Friel to create a book which will give readers a powerful empathy with our own ancestors, a curious sense of remembering what we cannot possibly have experienced...