FRANK McCOURT

I was rather sad yesterday to read of the death of Frank McCourt, author of bestseller Angela's Ashes. If I spend a lot of time reading Irish writers ( and I do) it's because a crucial part of my psyche is irredeemably steeped in Catholicism, sexual and religious repression and the legacy of my parents, who grew up in a poverty most these days would regard as unspeakable. In 1930's Manchester, it was par for the course if you were working-class.

McCourt was 78 when he died, a few years younger than my late mother who died of cancer one year after retiring in 1985 . She had three daughters and worked her socks off bringing us up, for the most part in low-paid jobs in smoky pubs which probably contributed to her early death. She was an intelligent woman whose "life chances" ( as they put it these days) were pretty grim from the off. She drilled into all of us the importance of education.

McCourt was ridiculed by the literary establishment for allegedly exaggerating the horrors of his own childhood in Limerick. They weren't that far removed from the tales my mother told of sleeping four-in-a-bed with her siblings, along with bed bugs for companions, and surviving on a spartan diet where the men got what meat there was and the children mopped up the gravy with chunks of bread.

My maternal grandmother never left the house due to an ulcerated leg which these days would be sorted out with antibiotics. Instead, a nurse attended once a week. Granny's diet consisted of boiled ham, Primula cheese, Lurpak butter and endless pots of tea because she had no teeth and was reluctant to invest in NHS dentures along with other modern trappings like electric light and TV. For most of her adult life, she ruled the roost in a rented house - now long demolished - where over the decades various members of the family would come over from the West of Ireland, get jobs on the building sites, and spend the weekends spending their earnings in the local pubs. My grandfather, diminutive in stature and built like a whippet, fought in the First World War and brought up five children on very little money. Occasional lodgers eked it out a bit. An education was out of the question for his children, despite the fact they were all bright. I just happened to be part of the lucky generation which followed.

Frank McCourt's only option was, like millions before him, to head to America where he eventually became a teacher. Angela's Ashes, though no literary masterpiece, was real and true and earned him a fortune.At 67, his life was finally transformed. Other books were written though none had the impact of the first. But Angela's Ashes is a pretty good testimony, an unforgettable picture of a vanished world. We should be thankful it has gone, but never forget that it existed.