On the Town: A book about a magical childhood in rural 1950s Ireland was toasted by the Fallon brothers and their friends this week.
"We were six boys who were brought up in this huge, rambling house in the country in Wexford," said London-based businessman Padraic Fallon, at the launch of his first book, A Hymn of the Dawn, in Trinity College's Long Room in the Old Library.
Fallon is the youngest son of poet Padraic Fallon, who died in 1974. His surviving brothers, Conor, Ivan and Brian also attended, along with family, cousins and many friends.
When he was writing A Hymn of the Dawn, "I realised I was writing an unexpected view of an Irish poet", said Fallon.
His main reason for writing the book, he said, was "I was afraid that when we all got too old, that the magic of that childhood, it was unique in many ways, would have been lost. It was an unusual childhood. We lived in relative isolation in a period in Ireland of relative innocence where we created our own forms of recreation." There was "a peculiar innocence and a sleepiness about the country then. Every place you went, there was energy in every field".
"They were fun people and hugely interested in everything," said Fallon of his parents. Visitors to the house included artist Tony O'Malley, piper Séamus Ennis, poet Austin Clarke and the art critic and former gunman Ernie O'Malley.
Brian Fallon, former literary editor of The Irish Times, said they grew up "in a literary household where books were daily topics of conversation. They were facts of life".
According to the guest speaker at the book's launch, writer and poet Anthony Cronin, Fallon has created "a marvellous alternative world . . . In the house lives a poet and he is the central figure and the book revolves around him. It's a very idyllic portrait of the poet. It is Padraic Fallon . . . free from his inner turmoil."
A Hymn of the Dawn by Padraic Fallon is published by Lilliput Press (17.99)