In her eagerly-awaited new book, Alice Taylor salutes the women whose energy and generosity made such a valuable contribution to all our lives.
Category: Biography/Memoir, Folklore, Inspiring Irish Women
‘We walk in the footprints of great women, women who lived through hard times on farms, in villages, towns and cities. The lives of these women are an untold story. This book is a celebration of the often forgotten “ordinary” women who gave so much to our society.’
Alice Taylor
In her eagerly-awaited new book, Alice salutes the women whose energy and generosity made such a valuable contribution to all our lives.
'[It] warmed my heart and reminded me of the value of family, friendship and community... I was enthralled... wonderful.' Irish Independent on And Time Stood Still
Alice Taylor lives in the village of Innishannon in County Cork, in a house attached to the local supermarket and post office. Since her eldest son has taken over responsibility for the shop, she has been able to devote more time to her writing.
Alice Taylor worked as a telephonist in Killarney and Bandon. When she married, she moved to Innishannon where she ran a guesthouse at first, then the supermarket and post office. She and her husband, Gabriel Murphy, who sadly passed away in 2005, had four sons and one daughter. In 1984 she edited and published the first issue of Candlelight, a local magazine which has since appeared annually. In 1986 she published an illustrated collection of her own verse.
To School Through the Fields was published in May 1988. It was an immediate success, and quickly became the biggest selling book ever published in Ireland. It launched Alice on a series of signing sessions, talks and readings the length and breadth of Ireland. Her first radio interview, forty two minutes long on RTÉ Radio's Gay Byrne Show, was the most talked about radio programme of 1988, and her first television interview, of the same length, was the highlight of the year on RTÉ television's Late Late Show. Since then she has appeared on radio programmes such as Woman's Hour, Midweek and The Gloria Hunniford Show, and she has been the subject of major profiles in the Observer and the Mail on Sunday.
Alice has written nearly twenty books since then, large exploring her village of Inishannon, and the way of life in rural Ireland. She has also written poetry and fiction: her first novel, The Woman of the House, was an immediate bestseller in Ireland, topping the paperback fiction lists for many weeks.
One of Ireland's most popular authors, her most recent book is And Life Lights Up.
highly enjoyable read
I highly recommend it … I thoroughly enjoyed it
in these pages, we see Taylor’s remarkable gift of elevating the ordinary to something special, something poetic, even … Taylor avoids the mantel of social commentator in this book, and this is surely part of her charm. She is a teller of stories, simply that. She writes from personal experience and records the experience of others, without the gravitas and authority of an historian, but with empathy, wit and considerable poetic elegance. In The Women, she records fifteen remarkable lives that would otherwise have been forgotten. She is to be commended for that. And the fact that, like all of her books, it’s a thing of gentle beauty
highly enjoyable read
one of Ireland’s favourites … an absolutely beautiful read … beautifully finished … amazing stories that wouldn’t be known without you … the photographs in the book are special in themselves
a really special reading experience … it’s an amazing book with some wonderful stories
a book that will grip you by the heart
wonderful … put The Women on your Christmas gift list
I reckon it’s going to be another winner
