Sir, – I have read with interest and much pleasure, Eileen Battersby’s exquisite piece in your “Best Place to Live in Ireland” feature (Weekend Review, March 31st). I always enjoy her almost weekly book reviews and consider her the best book reviewer in this country bar none. However, to have read her particular piece on Saturday is for me to have lived momentarily in her home near Newgrange.
While in no way wishing to compare her work with that of the late Laurie Lee in his Cider with Rosie, it did bring me back to college days and the enjoyment that brought me then. Thank you, Eileen! – Yours, etc,
Sir, – A propos John Waters’s reference to “the Nordie refugee camp that is Mullaghmore” (Weekend Review, March 31st) and Trudy Lomax’s comment (Letters, April 4th). I, and several of my acquaintances, mistook the term “Nordie” as a not terribly polite way to refer to our remarkably increasing “Nordic” or Scandinavian tourists and residents. I had forgotten the very few times I have heard the term in recent years used to describe people from the north of our island.
Having visited the broader area around Mullaghmore several times and found it charming I was disappointed to hear it once again associated with a bombing that happened 33 years ago.
Perhaps it is time we all began to forget what the term “Nordie” can, or was used to, describe and not associate this charming place with an event that happened before almost half the population of the country was even born (Census 2011 initial figures). – Yours, etc,