Merrion Press is to publish Dirty Linen, by Martin Doyle, Books Editor of The Irish Times. The independent Irish publisher secured the UK and Commonwealth rights to the nonfiction title at auction from the literary agent Marianne Gunn O’Connor.
In the book, which builds on two essays published in The Irish Times — Dirty Linen: A Personal History of Northern Ireland, a memoir, and A Ghost Estate and an Empty Grave, an account of one family’s ordeal during the Troubles — Doyle talks to friends and relatives of Troubles victims, as well as to survivors of bomb attacks, and reflects on the Troubles’ impact on his own life and that of his community as they struggled to live normal lives. It is due to be published on October 5th, 2023.
The Troubles were a blight on all our lives, and the spores are, sadly, still in the air
The author grew up by the River Bann in the parish of Tullylish, in rural Co Down, the heartland of the once-dominant linen industry. But what was once the Linen Triangle acquired notoriety during the Troubles as the Murder Triangle. Doyle links the modern Troubles, which claimed more than 20 lives in his immediate neighbourhood, to the violence and sectarianism that surrounded Partition locally, all the way back via the expulsion of linen workers in the late 18th century to a disputed atrocity in the parish during the 1641 Rebellion.
[ Dirty Linen: a personal history of Northern IrelandOpens in new window ]
“The Troubles were a blight on all our lives, and the spores are, sadly, still in the air,” says Doyle, a former editor of the Irish Post who joined The Irish Times in 2007 and has been Books Editor since 2018. “Memories of lost loved ones can be both precious and painful, like walking barefoot on diamonds. But it is by sharing our stories that we build a ridge of common ground from which good things can grow.
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“At Merrion Press, Conor Graham, a northerner like myself, has developed an impressive list of significant titles by northern authors, such as Sam McBride, Colin Bateman, Gerald Dawe, Brian Rowan, Eimear O’Callaghan and Malachi O’Doherty. I am delighted to be working with him on Dirty Linen and feel that my story is in safe hands.”
