The Knight of Glin recalls eventful summers spent in Ballybunion during the second World War, in conversation with Catherine Foley
Have you memories of a perfect summer?
My early summers were rather similar. It was in the 1940s when I was being brought up as a small boy at Glin - I can remember those summers we spent in Ballybunion on the north Kerry coast, not very far from Glin. It was a very dramatic time during the war and my mother and father were deeply affected by what was going on in Europe. My father had tried to join the Irish guards but had not been able to do so for medical reasons.
Are there particular episodes that made an impression?
There was a German chargé d'affaires who was on his holidays in the Castle Hotel in Ballybunion. My mother, who was a very forthright woman, informed the manager of the hotel, Miss Pugh, that she would not have dinner in the company of a German, so she ordered her dinner in her bedroom. All the other people in the hotel followed her example, which caused quite a ripple. There were, I was told, many German spies dressed up as tourists, cyclists and the like, taking photographs of Ireland's western coastline. A recent book by Eunan O'Halpin, Spying in Ireland, British Intelligence and Irish Neutrality during the Second World War, bears this out.
Were you very aware of the war as a little boy?
Yes, at Glin we had to block and shutter out all the windows and as there were over 120 of them, it was quite an evening's task. My mother was quite certain that there were U-boats fuelling off the west coast of Ireland (and this is mentioned by O'Halpin). She had a plan that if they came up the river Shannon, she would ask all the officers to dinner, and when they sat down, they would be given poisoned soup! That was etched on my memory. During the war years, we all constantly listened to the radio in the nursery, with my English nanny. She always called them the "Naaazis".
Was your mother a kind of heroic figure to you when you were a boy?
Yes. She was very beautiful with long legs and a classical face. She often spoke her mind and she could be quite difficult, but nevertheless she was a very brave woman. Naturally, she hated the Germans and was very proud that Winston Churchill was her cousin. Her name was Veronica FitzGerald, and she had not a drop of Irish blood. She loved Ireland and Glin and saved the old place from dilapidation. When my father died in 1949, she ran the estate until, luckily, she married a benevolent Canadian in 1954 and Glin was saved from being sold.
My father rarely came to Ballybunion. He was in a sanatorium in Switzerland for his tuberculosis in the later part of the 1940s. It was very sad as I rarely saw him at home as TB was considered contagious.
Where did you stay in Ballybunion and what kind of a place was it?
Each summer, my mother would either go to the Castle Hotel or to a seaside cottage belonging to an old Anglo-Irish lady, Miss Maunsell, who was from a distinguished Co Limerick family. This house was behind the old Protestant church, now no longer, and beyond the castle by the Men's Beach. Ballybunion is only about 15 miles away from Glin. Petrol was severely rationed in those days, so we couldn't go far. A little later, we ventured to Spanish Point in Co Clare or occasionally to Derrynane in Co Kerry.
Ballybunion has a picturesque coastline. The cliff walks were a favourite place for me to go for walks with my nanny. I did all the usual activities, such as building sandcastles. There were two strands, one for men and one for women. Ballybunion was a quiet place in those days, very different to now, though our family still go there to take the delicious seaweed baths. There were a lot of interesting ruins in north Kerry: Listowel Castle, Ratoo Round Tower and the monastic ruins at Ardfert, and promontory forts along the coastline. I loved to visit those places, given the opportunity.
What kind of a boy were you?
I was quite a solitary figure. My two sisters were much older, so I was thrown into my own company at an early age. I was addicted to reading quite young. I used to love illustrated books by Edmund Dulac and Andrew Lang's Red, Green and Yellow Fairy Books. In one of these, there was an ancient tale about the Knights of Glin. One of my favourite books was called Brendan Chase, by the writer BB. His real name was Denys Watkins-Pitchford. It was about a boy who escaped into the woods. But perhaps much more exciting was a book given to me by an old ex-Trinity professor, John Wardell, who lived not far from Foynes in a house by a creepy old Cistercian nunnery. I remember him slipping me the book in brown paper covers and saying "don't show this to your mother". It was MR James's Ghost Stories of an Antiquary. I still read them.
• Desmond FitzGerald, the 29th Knight of Glin, is president of the Irish Georgian Society, which this year celebrates 50 years of conserving Ireland's architectural heritage