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A literary secret

15th May 2009 by Helena 4 Comments  

Swift, Shaw, Wilde, Yeats, Joyce and Beckett: the list of great Irish literary figures is long and extremely impressive. Yesterday as I wandered around the Museum of Writers I started to wonder why this ’emerald isle’ has produced so many literary greats.

Is it something in the Guiness? Or the water? Or even the oysters?

No, it is the weather.

The weather here is so bad that you risk drowning by putting your head out of the door. So clearly you have to stay indoors. Because it doesn’t rain inside, or “in the pubs” as one Irishman told me yesterday. And what is there to do inside once all the household chores are dealt with? Especially when most of that list was around and there was no TV. You got it – write.
james-joyce.jpg

So there you have it, Ireland’s literary secret. You can see the proof in this picture of James Joyce. He is wearing a hat AND carrying an umbrella and he isn’t even outside.

The shopping in Ingolstadt Chic Shopping Outlet went well; I managed to spend my budget of 250 euros and for that I got a pair of trousers, a cashmere tank-top with matching cardigan (pink), a scarf, a beige wool cardigan and a see-through purple long top you could either wear over leggings or on the beach, with matching scarf. I also bought the MOST gorgeous rabbit-fur coat which will be very useful in Abu Dhabi, as you can imagine. But it was a bargain (in relative terms) and it is saving me from certain death through hypothermia here in Dublin.

Today we head off to Kildare, Dublin’s Chic Shopping Outlet and then Bicester Village in England. The gruelling tour goes on…..


Filed Under: Travel, blog -->, writing Tagged With: literary, secret

4 thoughts on A literary secret

  • Ruth says:
    15th May 2009 at 8:15 am

    Welcome to my world, Helen…but maybe not quite. I know the Writer’s museum well but have no idea where in Co Kildare the Chic Shopping Outlet might be.

    Hope you had a lovely time in the emerald countryside and shopped successfully too.

  • mimi says:
    15th May 2009 at 4:45 pm

    Hey, we didn’t know you were coming to Ireland, or we’d have switched on the sunshine. I have often wondered too why so many good writers come from here, and thought that it was either drink or boredom, but weather never entered my head.
    Please let us know what you buy in Kildare as I got a little book of vouchers in the paper last Sunday.
    mimi

  • Josephine says:
    1st June 2009 at 9:39 am

    Sounds perfect weather to me. I wish I could emigrate there.

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Helena Frith Powell was born in Sweden to a Swedish mother and Italian father, but grew up mainly in England. She is the author of eleven books, translated into several languages including Chinese and Russian. She wrote the French Mistress column The Sunday Times about life in France for several years. She is a regular contributor to the Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday, The Times, Daily Telegraph, Tatler Magazine and Harper’s Bazaar.

Helena has been the editor of four magazines, including M Magazine, a supplement for the Abu Dhabi-based National Newspaper and FIVE, a high-end fashion glossy, also published in Abu Dhabi. Helena was also editor-in-chief of 360 Life, a quarterly glossy magazine published with the Sports 360 Newspaper in Dubai, part of the Chalhoub Group.

Helena contributes regularly to UK-based newspapers and magazines and holds a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of Cambridge. She is working on a thriller set in Sweden as well as a novel about the relationship between Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield called Sense of an Echo.

In 2022 her short story The Japanese Gardener came second in the Fish Publishing Short Story Prize. One of her stories was also shortlisted for the Bridport Short Story Prize. When she’s not writing, she works as a headhunter for the media and entertainment industry for the Sucherman Group. 

Helena, who was educated at Durham University, lives in the Languedoc region of France with her husband Rupert and their three children.

Bibliography

More France Please, we’re British; Gibson Square 2004

Two Lipsticks and a Lover 2005; Gibson Square (hardback)

All You Need to be Impossibly French; (US version of above) Penguin 2006

Two Lipsticks and a Lover; Arrow Books (paperback) 2007

Ciao Bella Gibson Square; (hardback) 2006

Ciao Bella Gibson Square; (paperback) 2007

So Chic! (French version of Two Lipsticks) Leduc Editions 2008 (also translated into Chinese, Russian and Thai)

More, More France; Gibson Square 2009

To Hell in High Heels; Arrow Books 2009 (also translated into Polish)

The Viva Mayr Diet; Harper Collins 2009

Love in a Warm Climate; Gibson Square 2011

The Ex-Factor; Gibson Square 2013

Smart Women Don’t Get Wrinkles; Gibson Square 2016

The Arnolfini Marriage; Amazon Kindle December 2016

Smart Women Don’t Get Wrinkles (paperback); Gibson Square spring 2018

The Longest Night; Gibson Square spring 2019

 

 

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