Sign up to The Irish Times Archive (1859 - 2008)My Account »

CULTURE SHOCK:The sad early death of Christopher Nolan reminds us of the crucial role mothers have played in the contribution Irish culture has made to the world

THE IRISH mammy gets a bad time in literature. She tends to be either hauntingly absent ( Ulysses) or a control freak of tyrannical proportions ( Big Maggie). Yet the sadly early death of Christopher Nolan reminds us that Irish mothers have been crucial to one of the most important contributions that Irish culture has made to the world. There is, so far as I know, no parallel anywhere to the breakthrough for writers with cerebral palsy made by Christy Brown, Christopher Nolan and Davoren Hanna. That breakthrough matters globally, but also historically. It broke a silence that had lasted for millennia. And though it was made by the writers themselves, it was crucially facilitated by their mothers.